Women workers at a 'smokeless' brick factory. Credit: Naimul Haq/IPS

By Naimul Haq
DHAKA, Jun 22 2012 (IPS)

Bangladesh, a country highly vulnerable to climate change, is doing its bit to reduce greenhouse gas (GhG) emissions and glacier-melting soot by switching to ‘smokeless’ brick-making technology.

Currently, brick-making is a cottage industry and owners fire them with anything from coal and wood to discarded tyres and plastic bags, releasing in the process  GhGs estimated to be about nine million tonnes of carbon dioxide (CO2) equivalent annually, according to World Bank studies.

Also, a scientific paper published United States-based scientists in the Mar. 2 edition of ‘Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics’, an open access journal of the European Geosciences Union, said carbon contained in soot landing on Himalayan glaciers may be melting them faster than CO2.

The paper, focused on the impact of pollution on the snows of the Himalayas and Tibetan plateau, said the soot was affecting water flow in the rivers of the sub-continent that are fed by the Himalayan snows and also changing the timing and intensity of monsoon rains by surface warming.

Such studies have special relevance for deltaic Bangladesh, a country located in the shadow of the eastern Himalayas and through which the great snow-fed rivers of sub-continent drain.

Now, with 25 million dollars spread over five years (2010-2014) a United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) programme is bringing in new technologies that are expected to significantly reduce GhG emissions and atmospheric pollution while producing green bricks in improved kilns at reduced costs.

Within that five-year period, the project’s 15 kilns will have demonstrative value, but also result in direct cumulative energy savings of 314 kilo tonnes of coal. They will save 1,470 kilo tonnes of CO2 equivalent by cumulative direct emission reduction during the 15-year expected service life of the kilns.

Bangladesh’s environment ministry has already ordered a phase-out of the outmoded fixed chimney kilns (FCK) in the country by September 2013 and their replacement with the improved Hybrid Hoffman Kiln (HHK) or the vertical shaft brick kiln (VSBK).

A  Bank study on the economic costs and benefits of various brick-making  technologies showed that where FCKs could generate 1.23 dollars per thousand bricks, VSBKs could generate 1.30 dollars and HHKs 1.39 dollars.

HHK technology, modified by the Chinese and introduced by UNDP through a local consulting firm, Clean Energy Alternatives (CEA) is, unlike other types of kilns, capable of producing bricks round the year.

Khondker Neaz Rahman, project manager of ‘Improving Kiln Efficiency in the Brick Making Industry in Bangladesh’, told IPS, “In terms of energy efficiency, reduced GHGs, complying with international rules on occupational health hazards and quality of production, the modified HHK is the best technology.

“The clay used to make the brick mixes in 30 percent dust coal, so, when burning in the oven it requires less energy and produces less CO2,” Rahman explained.

HHK units emit 40 – 60 percent less dust and carbon per brick produced than the traditional FCKs and do not emit black smoke. HHKs also use insulation around their walls to capture lost heat from the oven chambers, making for efficient use of energy.

Best of all, HHK technology is designed to use only coal as fuel and this is expected to reduce the chopping down of forests for firewood, especially in the Cox’s Bazaar and Khulna regions.

“This project is the first climate mitigation project in Bangladesh and is supported by UNDP and the Global Environment Facility,” Stefan Priesner, country director, UNDP Bangladesh, tells IPS.

According to Priesner, if successfully implemented, the project could result in annual reduction of GhG emissions equivalent to that from 230,000 passenger vehicles or carbon sequestered by more than 250,000 acres of forests.

“While the initial investment is significant, the scale of production is multiple (more than 7) times higher than a conventional factory,” said Priesner. “This in combination with the up to 50 percent energy savings makes this technological advancement an attractive value proposition for investors.

“Importantly, it addresses the problem of the largest stationary source of GhG emission in the country; saves energy; preserves the soil quality and creates ‘green jobs’ that have an important role to play in sustainable development and poverty eradication of Bangladesh.”

Md Murtoja Ali, marketing manager of CEA, told IPS: “By end of 2014 we will have 16 demonstration factories that will help transfer the technology and we are hoping to train workers, operators and managers from about 100 existing factories.”

Neal Walker, resident coordinator of the U.N. in Bangladesh, told IPS that HHK technology was attractive to entrepreneurs because it “gave investors a relatively quick return, steady production in all seasons over many years and it is environment friendly and saves soil and energy.”

Adopting a carrot-and-stick approach, local banks are lending only to those brick-making units that comply with the new regulations from the department of environment. All unregistered brick factories must apply for approval by September this year or they stand to lose their operating licenses.

Mijanur Rahman, president of Bangladesh Brick Manufacturing Owners Association, told IPS, “We welcome the change, but adapting to the new technologies requires huge investment as the modern machines and the high ground needed for round the year production is very costly.”

Rahman’s concerns are being addressed by the Bank and other partners like the UNDP and the Asian Development Bank (AsDB).

Anqian Huang, finance specialist of AsDB in Dhaka, told IPS:  “AsDB is processing a capacity building technical assistance this year to support a 50 million dollar loan implementation. The loan would have a component to help concerned ministries to strengthen enforcement to phase out the FCKs.”

The state’s central bank has also introduced soft loan schemes to support HHK technology in the light of its energy efficiency and its formal industry characteristics.

Angola is now focusing on cash crops. This is a new sugarcane plantation in Malange, Angola. Credit: Louise Redvers

By Louise Redvers
JOHANNESBURG, May 11 2012 (IPS)

Millions of Angola’s poorest families are facing critical food insecurity as a prolonged dry spell across large parts of the country has destroyed harvests and killed off livestock.
Up to 500,000 children are now thought to be suffering from severe malnutrition triggered by the collapse in food production after a lengthy dry season in the first three months of this year. Currently emergency feeding centres are being set up in the worst-affected communities.

The provinces of Huambo, Bie, Benguela and Zaire in central and northern Angola are the hardest hit, but across the country both small-scale and commercial farmers are suffering. Crop yields are down by as much as 70 percent in some places.

There are reports of subsistence farmers abandoning their fields altogether in a bid to find other paid work in towns and cities so that they can feed their families, and large commercial farms are laying off workers because there is no harvest to gather.

Despite Angola’s enormous oil wealth and the International Monetary Fund’s forecast that GDP will swell by 9.7 percent in 2012, nearly two thirds of rural households live on less than 1.75 dollars a day.

More than four decades of war (1961-2002) left the country with one of the highest child mortality rates in the world, with 20 percent of youngsters dying before they reach their fifth birthday.

Poor diet is a major factor in the high death rates and according to the latest National Nutrition Survey, carried out in 2007, nearly 30 percent of children under five are stunted, more than eight percent are wasted, and close to 16 percent are underweight.

Koen Vanormelingen, the United Nations Children’s Fund representative in Angola, explained that this year’s weak harvest was already taken its toll on the most vulnerable children, who were showing elevated rates of malnutrition.

“These people were already living on the border line and were scraping by at the best of times,” he said.

“But where they were once eating a varied diet three times a day, now they are having just one meal a day, maybe two, and they are restricted to a very poor selection of cassava and bananas.

“It is a very serious situation and we are very concerned because we are seeing a significant increase in malnutrition and malnutrition-related mortality in children,” he added.

The government has allocated 43 million dollars to an emergency response campaign, which will include the distribution of food and water supplies, as well as seeds and other agricultural inputs to help farmers salvage their wasted crops.

In addition, a 40-tonne shipment of nutritionally-enhanced peanut-based paste used to treat malnutrition has been imported with support from the Clinton Foundation. It is ready to be sent to emergency feeding centres that are being set up around the country.

“This is not a famine, it is an issue of food insecurity,” Vanormelingen explained. “There is food available; the issue is that because people are not producing as much food, they must buy more.

“And because their production has gone down, their income has also gone down so they cannot afford to buy food, and as supply falls and demand increases, prices are going up – in some cases doubling.”

This collapse in crop production is a major setback for Angola, which has been trying desperately to re- launch its once buoyant agricultural sector that was destroyed by decades of war.

In a bid to help boost output, last year the government launched a high profile 150-million-dollar microcredit scheme giving small farmers loans to buy seeds and fertilisers.

But now with yields so low, many families are struggling to repay their debts.

The União Nacional das Associações de Camponeses Angolanos, the national union of farming cooperatives, has said that the government will help bridge the payment gap with the commercial banks, which made the loans.

But Belarmino Jelembi, director of Angola’s largest rural development organisation, Acção para o Desenvolvimento Rural e Ambiente, warned: “The government needs to be extremely careful how this is managed, because there is a risk that if it is not managed well, the whole programme could fail altogether.”

He added: “What this situation tells us is that we need to do more to support the small farmers with basic tools for irrigation, so people are not so dependent on the rain for their crops.

“We need to think about the basic things at local level, rather than investing huge amounts of money in big capital projects that often turn out to be white elephants.”

Abrantes Carlos, provincial director of the Agriculture Ministry in Benguela, where around 100,000 families – or well over half a million people – are now food insecure, agreed that “more sustainable systems” of irrigation were needed.

“Benguela is a province that often faces dry spells, so we need to have better irrigation so we can overcome this situation,” he told IPS.

“We have large rivers in the province but we are not managing our supplies, and we do not have accurate data about how much water is available.”

Carlos said the lack of water in the province, where many rivers have run dry, was the worst the area had seen for over 30 years, and that for the first time since the end of the war in 2002 there were plans to start giving out food aid to families.

“At this moment people still have some food, but the situation in the next three months will likely get worse,” he said. He explained that the government was assisting in the drilling of new boreholes to try to find water, and was also providing seeds for crops that could be grown in the cooler months, in a bid to boost the next harvest.

Jelembi welcomed the government’s commitment to provide assistance, but said: “We have seen a lot of announcements about what the government is going to do to help people affected, but in practice not much is happening yet.”

By Busani Bafana
BULAWAYO, May 10 2012 (IPS)

While women constitute the majority of food producers, processors and marketers in Africa, their role in the agricultural sector still remains a minor one because of cultural and social barriers.

Jane Karuku, the new AGRA boss, dreams of seeing smallholder farmers become the drivers in Africa's quest for food security. Credit: Courtesy: AGRA

According to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), women are the majority of the world’s agricultural producers, supplying more than 50 percent of the food that is grown globally. And in sub-Saharan Africa the number is higher, as women grow 80 to 90 percent of the food in the region.

FAO says that although across the globe women are responsible for providing the food for their families, they do this in the face of constraints and attitudes that conspire to undervalue their work and responsibilities and hinder their participation in decision and policy making.

But it is a situation that the new Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA) boss, Jane Karuku, says must change in order for Africa to feed itself.

Karuku, a Kenyan business leader with a career spanning over 20 years, became the first female president of the organisation in April.

AGRA is a partnership that works on the African continent to improve food security and enhance the economic empowerment of millions of smallholder farmers and their families. It does this through nearly 100 programmes in 14 countries.

Karuku joins AGRA from Telkom Kenya, a subsidiary of France Telecom-Orange, where she was the deputy chief executive.

She told IPS about her dream of seeing smallholder farmers become the drivers in Africa’s quest for food security. Excerpts of the interview follow.

Q: Do you see your appointment as a milestone for women farmers in Africa?

A: As AGRA’s first female president, it is a great honour to advocate on behalf of the tireless women who are sowing seeds and working in fields across Africa. They are the real heroines in this story, and I hope to highlight their important contributions for a food-secure future.

Q: Do food security policies recognise the role of women farmers in the production, processing and marketing of food in agriculture?

A: Across Africa there are great signs of progress when it comes to smallholder farmers, the majority of whom are women who are building prosperous lives for themselves and their families.

Success for smallholders, however, has been lopsided. Women smallholders and rural entrepreneurs on the continent are neither participating fully nor deriving benefits in equal measure in the agri-economy owning to gender obstacles driven by cultural and societal norms. This must change if Africa is to transform the capacity to feed itself and realise the quality of life envisioned for rural households and communities in sub-Saharan Africa.

Q: In your appointment speech you said: “Smallholder farming is a way of life in Africa, full of challenges and equally full of huge opportunities.” What will you do to strike a balance for food security?

A: My focus is to work to remove the obstacles that prevent smallholder farmers across Africa from significantly boosting productivity and income, while safeguarding the environment and promoting equity. I am committed to ensuring farmers have a full range of choices when it comes to approaching their work.

Q: Smallholder farmers hold the key to food security in Africa. What is your vision for improving their situation?

A: My vision is a food-secure and prosperous Africa achieved through rapid and sustainable agricultural growth that is based on smallholder farmers who produce staple food crops. AGRA’s mission is to trigger a uniquely “African Green Revolution” that transforms agriculture into a highly productive, efficient, competitive and sustainable system to ensure food security and lift millions out of poverty.

Q: Where do you see the role of AGRA in advocating assistance for smallholder farmers to cope with the impact that climate change has on food security?

A: AGRA and its partners work together to determine the kinds of environmental safeguards farmers need to increase their yields and improve their livelihoods. By focusing on sustainable development practices, AGRA reduces environmental degradation and conserves biodiversity.

Rebuilding soil health and enabling Africa’s smallholder farmers to grow more on less land should reduce the pressure to clear and cultivate forests and savannahs, thus helping conserve the environment and biodiversity.

AGRA’s sustainable agricultural practices include improving soil health through integrated soil fertility management. We do this through using a combination of fertilisers and organic inputs, and techniques that are appropriate for local conditions and resources. Through advocating the use of agro- ecologically sound approaches to soil and crop management, such as fertiliser micro-dosing in arid areas, AGRA will guard against potential overuse of fertilisers that could harm the environment.

Q: Research is key to food security; what is your take on the current investment in agricultural research in Africa?

A: Research is critical to making the most of the full agricultural value chain – from seed to harvest. While food productivity has increased globally by 140 percent in recent decades, the figures for sub- Saharan Africa over the same period of time show a reduction. This is because farming across much of the continent has changed little in generations. The role of research is critically important.

Q: What major impact has AGRA had in Africa, and how do you plan to build on it?

A: AGRA takes a uniquely integrated approach to helping smallholder farmers overcome hunger and poverty. By focusing on seeds, soil, market access, policy and partnership and innovative financing, the programme is transforming subsistence farming into sustainable, viable commercial activities that will increase yields across the continent. I hope to continue to look for intersections and innovative opportunities to improve farmers’ lives.

Excerpt:

Ghana has taken a major step towards reducing its under-five mortality rate by becoming the first African country to introduce two new vaccines for rotavirus and pneumococcal disease.

Gladys Otabil holds her son Gabriel as he receives the pneumoccocal vaccine at La General Hospital in Accra. Credit: Jamila Akweley Okertchiri/IPS

But a United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) official in the West African country says this measure will not be sufficient to meet the fourth United Nations Millennium Development Goal (MDG) to reduce the under-five mortality rate by two thirds by 2015.

Currently, 80 children out of 1,000 do not make it past the age of five in Ghana. According to UNICEF, Somalia has the highest infant mortality rate, at 180 deaths per 1,000 live births, and Sweden and Finland have the lowest at three deaths per 1,000 live births. (source: http://www.childinfo.org/mortality_ufmrcountrydata.php). In order to achieve the fourth MDG, Ghana would have to cut its under-five mortality rate down to 40 deaths per 1,000.

“Ghana is doing a lot, but I don’t think it’s enough,” said Dr. Anirban Chatterjee, UNICEF’s chief of health and nutrition in Ghana. He was referring to this country’s efforts with the new vaccines and the Health Service’s campaign to educate mothers on nutrition. “I think there is definitely scope and need for more improvement.”

Rotavirus and pneumococcal disease are the leading causes of diarrhoea and pneumonia in young Ghanaian children. Together they account for close to 25 percent of under-five mortality and are behind only malaria as the leading causes of child deaths here.

Now both the vaccines for rotavirus and pneumococcal disease are being given to young children before they reach four months of age. The measure is currently being rolled out across the country and to select hospitals in Accra. The GAVI Alliance, a public-private global health partnership, has helped fund the vaccines, which will be available for free to all Ghanaian children. More than 400,000 children in this country of 25 million people are expected to be immunised against both diseases.

The two new vaccines are expected to prevent 12,000 pneumonia-related deaths and another 10,000 deaths from diarrhoea, said Dr. Antwi Adjei, head of the expanded programme on immunisation at the Ghana Health Service.

On Apr. 26, Ghana’s Health Minister Alban S. K. Bagbin said in a press statement that the new vaccines would give this country the extra push it needs to meet the fourth MDG by 2015.

But for UNICEF, efforts to improve the nutritional health of children and provide them with vaccinations need to happen in tandem to reduce the under-five mortality rate. Chatterjee said malnourishment can sometimes double or triple the chances of dying from a condition like diarrhoea or pneumonia.

“Malnourished children are more susceptible to contracting the disease, having severe forms of the disease, and also dying from the disease,” he said.

Exclusive breastfeeding for the first six months of a child’s life is one way to prevent malnourishment in that crucial period. UNICEF has promoted the practice because it also helps create immunity to early childhood killers like pneumonia and diarrhoea.

In Ghana, 63 percent of children are exclusively breastfed during that period, which is relatively high compared to other developing countries. However, many women do not breastfeed their children because they are not aware of the benefits, or they work in an environment – such as the informal sector – where it is difficult to do so.

Adjei said that the Ghana Health Service has regular cooperation between departments such as vaccinations and nutrition. The service’s various departments are currently meeting for Child Health Promotion Week to develop new strategies and programmes related to child health.

One big challenge for the Ghana Health Service will be to reach all children with the rotavirus and pneumococcal disease vaccines. About 87 percent of children under one in Ghana have been immunised for tuberculosis, poliomyelitis, tetanus, hepatitis B, measles and several other childhood diseases. But reaching the last 13 percent has proven difficult.

“Wherever a person is, we have a responsibility to reach them and vaccinate them,” said Adjei. “Rising costs also make it more and more difficult.”

Some isolated communities around Lake Volta in central Ghana, for instance, can only be reached by boat. It is much more expensive for the Ghana Health Service to reach these small communities than to serve urban populations.

A small number of Ghanaians also do not take vaccinations due to religious or traditional beliefs. Adjei said, for example, that the local Twi dialect has only one word for “medicine,” and it does not differentiate between preventative vaccines and drugs used to treat diseases. He said it is difficult to overcome such beliefs.

“Fortunately for us these are isolated cases,” he said.

La General Hospital in Accra was one of the first institutions to offer the vaccines in the capital on Friday, May 4. About 40 mothers were gathered at the hospital with their crying infants in tow, as they waited for their turn for their children to be inoculated.

Gladys Otabil was at La General Hospital with her two-month-old son Gabriel.

“All I understand by the addition of the two vaccines is that they will protect my child from any disease and sicknesses,” she said. Otabil added that she was also advised to breastfeed her son for the first six months of his life.

The roll out will expand to other hospitals in Accra, and across Ghana, in the coming weeks.

The only two female heads of state in Africa, Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf and Malawian President Joyce Banda, have just committed to using their positions to improve the lives of women across the continent.

Malawi President Joyce Banda (left) and Liberia President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf at a women's rights event in Liberia. Credit: Travis Lupick/IPS

Both Sirleaf and Banda have long championed women’s rights. And on Apr. 29 in Monrovia, two years into what the African Union (AU) has declared the “Women’s Decade”, they pledged to work together to accelerate those efforts.

“Today is a day African women must rejoice,” Banda said as Sirleaf stood by her side. “This is our day. And this is our year. And this is our decade!” And Sirleaf affirmed her – and Liberia’s – commitment to empower women.

“The two of us have great strength,” Sirleaf said. “Together, we can do more to empower women and to ensure that women’s role in society is enhanced.” She added that her country would work with the new Malawian government to advance women’s empowerment.

To be sure, the challenges before them are great. Using the United Nations Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) as a barometer, Liberia and Malawi generally score low in the areas of gender equality and women’s empowerment, education for girls, and maternal health.

According to 2010 U.N. Development Programme (UNDP) reports on the two countries, Liberia is only likely to meet certain goals on equality and education, and Malawi remains unlikely to meet its targets for any of the three MDGs that focus on women.

But as Banda noted during her speech, there has never been a better time to advance women’s rights in Africa.

Sirleaf, a Nobel Peace Prize winner, was elected as Africa’s first female president in 2005 and reelected in 2011. While her first term in office focused on reconstructing a country devastated by two civil wars, one from 1989 to 1996 and the second from 1999 to 2003, she has set out to use her second term as president to make women’s rights and health a national priority.

Banda succeeded former President Bingu wa Mutharika after his sudden passing on Apr. 5. After she was elected vice president in 2009, she had a falling out with Mutharika, and was subsequently expelled from the ruling Democratic People’s Party and essentially barred from participating in government.

However, she remained vice president, and in 2011 she formed the opposition People’s Party. Since Mutharika’s death a number of MPs have left the former ruling party to join her.

Both Sirleaf and Banda govern countries with significant development challenges. So devastating were Liberia’s civil wars that nearly a decade since the end of the conflict, the country is still in a state of reconciliation and reconstruction.

In Malawi, Mutharika’s last years in office were characterised by an economy crumbling under government mismanagement, which was compounded by the withdrawal of donor aid because of human rights abuses.

Yet despite the fact that Sirleaf has had to focus her efforts on reconstruction and Banda is barely one month into her time as president, there is concrete evidence indicating that both women have put the advancement of women at the top of their agendas.

At her office in Monrovia, Liberian Minister of Gender and Development Julia Duncan-Cassell described advances in women’s empowerment as observable through representation in government, as well as in ordinary women’s participation in the democratic process in Liberia.

“In 1997, market women didn’t know much about elections,” she told IPS. “In 2005, they tried, but they all voted with thumb prints. But in 2011, most of the market women were able to mark their names.”

On education, Duncan-Cassell pointed to figures indicating that the ratio of girls enrolled in school continued to climb towards parity with boys. The 2010 UNDP report on Liberia and the MDGs confirms this, noting that the ratio of girls to boys receiving a primary education stands at 0.88 to one, and for secondary education, 0.69 to one. The document states that Liberia is on track to achieve its targets on girls’ education.

With regard to women’s health, Liberia’s five-year “Road Map”, launched in March 2011, aims to “halve Liberia’s high rate of maternal and newborn death” and calls for “increasing the number of skilled birth attendants at all levels of the health care system by 50 per cent.” According to the country’s 2007 Demographic and Health Survey, Liberia’s maternal mortality rate is 994 deaths for every 100,000 live births – one of the highest in the world.

Banda too has already accomplished much for women since ascending to the presidency.

She has strengthened the voice of women in government through the appointment of eight women to senior cabinet positions. She has assigned women to the positions of deputy chief secretary to government and deputy director inspector general of police. And she has advanced women’s economic empowerment through the introduction of an agricultural programme and a market initiative.

And with the presidential initiative on maternal health and safe motherhood that is still to be launched, she admits she is following in the footsteps of Sirleaf. “This one, I learned from my big sister,” Banda said.

“Malawi’s maternal mortality rate is as high as 675 deaths per 100,000 (live births),” Banda noted. “As a woman president and a mother, I feel it is my obligation to stop the unnecessary deaths of women.”

Litha Musyimi-Ogana, head of the Women, Gender and Development Directorate for the AU, applauded the partnership she sees taking shape between Sirleaf and Banda.

“I fully embrace the pronouncement,” she said in a telephone interview from Johannesburg. “It is wonderful news to hear that President Banda and President Sirleaf have prioritised the African Women’s Decade and (have agreed) to work together to advance women’s rights.” Musyimi-Ogana added that on behalf of AU Commission head Jean Ping, the organisation pledged to make its top representatives and resources available to Sirleaf and Banda, to accomplish the goals of the AU Women’s Decade.

Meanwhile, Banda said that she believed her responsibility for ensuring women’s rights extended beyond Malawi.

“I know that women in Africa still face many challenges due to HIV and AIDS, poverty, conflict, and harmful cultural practices, among other issues,” Banda said as she looked over to Sirleaf. “However, I firmly believe that you and I will tirelessly work together to make sure that women’s rights on the continent get better.”

Duncan-Cassell also noted that challenges lie ahead. But she maintained that Banda’s rise to the presidency of Malawi was a cause for celebration.

“Now we have Joyce,” she said. “Like President Sirleaf said, she’s not going to be lonely among men anymore. She has a counterpart.”

*Additional reporting from Massa Kanneh in Monrovia.

By Siphosethu Stuurman
JOHANNESBURG, May 8 2012 (IPS)

The cost of maintaining and expanding water infrastructure in southern Africa is high. And while South Africa may be in a better economic position than the rest of the region, it also faces funding challenges that are similar to those of its neighbours.

Getting water is a daily chore for this woman in Swaziland. Credit: Mantoe Phakathi/IPS

But the situation is no different elsewhere in the region, according to Phera Ramoeli, Senior Programme Officer at the Southern Africa Development Community Secretariat.

“Effectively the region needs to do a lot of work in terms of improving its infrastructure, because water supply and sanitation are dependent on the availability of water as a source. But sanitation also affects the usability and quality of water if it’s not properly dealt with,” Ramoeli said.

He added that infrastructure, especially in the water sector, is expensive. “We do not always find enough financial resources to build new infrastructure, to maintain existing infrastructure, and to operate them in a way that is efficient,” he said.

Excerpts from his interview with IPS follow:

Q: What challenges do countries in the region face in terms of providing safe and clean drinking water to their populations?

A: We do not have adequate infrastructure to handle water and treat it to make it available to all our people in the region. Even with the infrastructure that does exist, we have a problem of operation and maintenance. By and large the population in our region is not commensurate with the level of infrastructure development that is required to ensure that people get the adequate water and sanitation that they need.

Q: How much of a role has climate change played in the region’s water woes?

A: Climate change is making things worse in the southern African region because we are a region that is characterised by vulnerability and change. In other words, water varies in terms of its availability in time and space.

Some parts of the region do not have adequate water or have very little water. The countries in the southwestern parts of the region are more water-stressed than those in the northeastern and some central parts, like Zambia and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). Climate change tends to exacerbate the water problems; so does population growth.

Q: How committed is the region to meeting the United Nations Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) to provide adequate water and sanitation to all by 2015?

A: Efforts are being made to meet the MDGs. Some of the countries in the region have already achieved that but for only 50 percent of the population. The population does not remain stagnant as you try to achieve the MDGs, so the population still grows and it becomes an unreachable target. But of course that means we need to make more of an effort.

Q: Can you name a few of the countries that are well on track to meeting the MDGs?

A: It has been said South Africa is on target to meet the MDGs and maybe other countries like Mauritius, which already has 99 percent access to water and sanitation. Of course you have to look at the quality of that access, but by and large there are countries in the region that are set to meet the MDGs.

Q: Which countries are struggling to provide clean drinking water and sanitation for all?

A: We have a number of countries that remain poor in the region. Madagascar is a country that has been facing difficulties, and the DRC and maybe Angola – because the country was involved in a war that made things even worse. In those countries the backlog that they have to erode is much greater than the ones in other countries in the region.

The region is really trying its best to achieve access to water for all people. Of course it is something that is going to take some time, but it needs to be addressed urgently.

Excerpt:

It’s called “the bearing of the body” in Burkina Faso: when a death is deemed suspicious and a group of men carry the corpse through the community, believing the deceased will guide them towards the person responsible for the death. The accused – almost always women – are then chased out of their homes.

According to the Ministry for Social Action and National Solidarity, some 600 women across the country have fallen victim to this practice. Most have found precarious shelter at one of 11 centres around the country, run by various non-governmental organisations.

“It’s generally women who are accused of witchcraft – and when it’s men, they are able to move to other villages,” said Gérard Zongo, from the non-governmental organisation Commission Justice et Paix (CJP), which recently launched a campaign to support women accused of witchcraft.

Burkina Faso recently adopted a plan of action to end the practice of banishing women accused of witchcraft from their homes.

The new action plan, to be implemented between now and 2016, will see the Ministry for Social Action take over responsibility for victims of this type of social exclusion. Women driven from their homes will have access to legal and psychosocial support, as well as financial support to re-establish their livelihoods.

The plan has been five years in the making, said Boukary Sawadogo, director-general of the ministry, because its final drafting was complicated by the sensitivity of the question of witchcraft in this West African country.

“We’re not passing judgment on sorcery in Burkina, but we will respond to the facts, which are exclusion and violence,” he told IPS.

“It’s a social phenomenon which one cannot simply decree an end to. It’s a process that calls for a favourable environment to secure participation by everyone,” Sawadogo warned. “If the traditional chiefs are not ready, then you’ll never achieve it.”

While civil society and human rights organisations welcome the action plan, they are not entirely satisfied with the government’s level of ambition on this question.

“Contrary to what many people think, we could quickly put an end to this phenomenon. It calls for clear legislation; for example, we could ban ‘the bearing of the body’,” said Zongo, who directs CJP’s programmes against social exclusion.

“The authorities must be more ambitious, to achieve the plan’s objectives,” he said. “We feel they are not very proactive.”

For instance, the plan calls for legal support for women who have been excluded. But to date, only one woman has won a case – in early April – and been reunited with her family.

“It’s an excellent thing to have an action plan, but it’s still not perfect,” said Haridata Dacouré, president of the women’s rights NGO Femmes et Droits pour le Développement.

Dacouré believes that any approach which attempts simply to punish people who threaten and beat women accused of witchcraft will fail, pointing out that these actions are carried out by a crowd and it’s difficult to prosecute, convict and sentence the entire group.

Instead, she suggests measures that would oblige the head of the community, perhaps even the chief, to pay damages to the victim.

“I’m convinced that when we target the wallets of these people who burn down women’s houses, who assault and exclude women like this – when instead of the government taking care of the victims, we go into their pockets for money to reintegrate people – then they’ll think more carefully before they act,” Dacouré told IPS.

As part of its campaign to support women accused of witchcraft, Commission Justice et Paix is organising a series of “solidarity days” intended both to end these women’s isolation and to facilitate their reintegration. The campaign includes the adoption of victims by sponsors – to date, 120 women have been paired with sponsors who pay them regular visits to help ease their social isolation.

“We believe that the gravity of the problem needs to be urgently recognised,” said Sister Maria, from Ouagadougou’s Centre Delwindé, established in 1965 and home to nearly 400 excluded women, “to raise popular awareness so measures can be taken to avoid so much harm to people whose only crime is lacking the power to defend themselves.”

Social activists say that attempts to rehabilitate sex workers in this former monarchy call for special efforts to uplift the Badi, a Hindu caste that has for centuries been associated with entertainment and prostitution.

Badi sex workers await rehabilitation. Credit: Naresh Newar/IPS

Sabitri Nepali was initiated into the traditional vocation of the Badis before she turned 14. Now, at 30, she is baffled by the changes taking place in a country struggling to climb out of a feudal past and transform into a modern, democratic republic.

“My family has survived on this trade for generations. My mother was a sex worker and I continued with the family profession. It was normal for us,” Sabitri tells IPS in this remote village in Kailali district, 700 km west of Kathmandu.

Badis, estimated to number 50,000, live in the western districts of Nepal but find work in the towns and cities of Nepal and neighbouring India, including Kathmandu, Mumbai and New Delhi.

Four years ago the Nepal government banned the Badis from pursuing their traditional occupation after it came under pressure from local communities fearing that the districts where there were Badi concentrations were turning into red light areas.

But, the government made no move to implement the ban, with the result that local communities formed monitoring groups backed by vigilantes that used violent methods to compel the Badis to give up their sole means of livelihood.

“We defied the ban and continued with our traditional occupation. How could we survive without incomes? Think about our children,” says Kalpana Badi,35, who like many others uses a surname that readily identifies her caste and her profession.

The word ‘badi’ is a corruption of the Sanskrit word ‘vadyabadak’, meaning one who plays a musical instrument, and suggests a degradation in the status of the caste over time.

South Asia’s rigid caste system once defined the occupation that people could engage in and Badis formed one group that has been unable to find its way out of an unfortunate position on the social ladder. “We didn’t want to continue with prostitution but the government has failed to fulfill its promises of rehabilitation,” says Bishal Nepali, husband of a Badi sex worker.

The government did announce a package that included housing, income generation activities and scholarships for Badi children, but these were never implemented.

“This has been a very frustrating process. We don’t know why the government has been so indifferent. The Badis are in a desperate situation,” says Uma Badi, a prominent activist and one of a handful of college-educated Badi women.

“Most Badis are uneducated and have no farms or livestock,” Uma explained.

Badis were denied citizenship until 2005 when the Supreme Court ordered the government to grant it to them and also extend financial support.

According to a study published in 1992 by Thomas Cox, an anthropologist then attached to Kathmandu’s Tribhuvan University, Badi girls “from early childhood, know, and generally accept the fact, that a life of prostitution awaits them.”

Badi girls, the study said, do not get married and commonly bear the children of their clients.

Cox recorded that upper caste Nepali society gives little encouragement to Badi girls to pursue other professions and those among them who enter public schools are “often severely harassed by high caste students.”

Two decades after Cox’s study, the Badis, as members of an ‘untouchable’ Dalit (meaning broken people) caste, are still not permitted use of the village water pump or well and their situation may have worsened.

In Muda village, many Badi girls and women have fled their homes fearing the Muda Anugaman Toli Samiti (a vigilante group) whose members have been accused of beating up Badis and their clients.

Badis are not allowed to run legitimate businesses. “People fear to buy anything from my shop because they fear the villagers,” says Dinesh Nepali, a Badi male who runs a small shop selling cigarettes, vegetables and soft drinks. “How can we survive like this?”

Badi activists are aware that they are prime targets for the United Nations Millennium Development Goals that deal with women’s rights, education and poverty, and that their uplift calls for extraordinary and determined initiatives.

“A handful of non-government organisations and donor agencies have been supporting the empowerment of Badi women, but that is not sustainable. Projects come and go but only government support can provide a long-term solution,” says Uma.

There were hopes that the abolition of the monarchy in favour of republican democracy, at the end of the bloody 1996-2006 civil war, would bring positive changes to the lives of the Badis, but Nepal is still coping with political instability.

“I have met three different prime ministers in the past few years,” said Uma. “They promise support but forget us as soon as we head back to our villages.”

In 2007, Badi activists threatened to march naked through Kathmandu to embarrass the government into implementing the court-ordered rehabilitation, but that brought nothing except more promises.

The local monitoring committees – that are backed by the vigilantes – admit that the government has failed in its promise to help the rehabilitation of the Badis.

“We are trying to help the Badi women start new dignified lives but we do admit that there are no viable alternatives,” says Riddha Bhandari, a leader of Muda’s monitoring group. “The government needs to act now.”

Bhandari denied that the Muda committee was out to destroy the Badis, but said there were worries over adverse influences on non-Badi girls and the possible spread of HIV/AIDS.

African countries need more support from the private sector in order to meet the United Nations Millennium Development Goals by 2015, which include important development targets like poverty reduction, and improved health and education.

Encouraging business in Africa will help reach the MDGs. Credit: Kristin Palitza/IPS

Governments cannot do it alone, development and economic experts told delegates at the MDG Review Summit, which took place in Cape Town, South Africa, from May 3 to 4.

Businesses, experts explained, are ideally positioned to foster economic growth and create jobs, which are needed to reach the first goal to end extreme poverty and hunger.

“Achieving MDG1 can have a positive impact on all the other MDGs,” said Beejaye Kokil, manager of the African Development Bank’s statistics department. Other development goals include the reduction in in the under-five mortality rate, gender equality or environmental sustainability.

African countries have already made some progress in their development through improved economic governance and reforms, including dropping the cost of doing business on the continent, noted Kokil. As a result, Africa today belongs to one of the world’s fastest-growing regions, with average annual GDP growth of six percent. It follows hot on the heels of China and India, which each have a GDP of about nine percent each.

But the trickle-down effect from economic growth to large-scale poverty reduction has been slow. Almost 40 percent of Africans continue to live below the poverty line of 1.25 dollars a day, according to 2011 World Bank statistics.

“That’s because GDP growth in Africa is not linked to jobs for the poor,” Kokil explained, since high economic inequality and skills shortage mean that most of the poor remain unable to access newly created employment opportunities.

In addition, high population growth has been curtailing many of Africa’s economic gains. The continent also continues to face major challenges like insufficient agricultural production, lack of infrastructure, high youth unemployment, low human development, gender inequality, poor education and the negative impact of climate change.

“It’s not all rosy. MDG progress remains mixed. But the potential is there,” said Kokil.

He recommended that African countries move away from traditional donor aid and loan programmes towards an “aid for trade” model geared towards helping nations to develop trade-related skills and infrastructure to eventually become donor independent. This model places emphasis on making the private sector an integral part of a country’s development.

“The private sector has a huge role to play in Africa’s economic growth,” Kokil stressed.

Some of Africa’s key donors, like the United States, are already considering a shift away from providing unconditional financial aid to making investments that are bound to clear economic targets, said Terri Robl, minister counsellor for economic affairs at the U.S. Embassy in South Africa.

The U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, for instance, had announced earlier this year that “making investments with tangible outcomes” would become part of the U.S. aid policy, said Robl.

It means that the private sector will start playing a major role in development and many businesses have started to recognise this opportunity. Despite the fact that a company’s main focus remains profitability, corporate social responsibility has become a key element of doing business in Africa, Robl said.

“Sustainability as become a valuable asset to companies in and of themselves,” explained Robl. She is convinced that “the private sector can help governments leapfrog some of the MDGs”, by making sure that economic growth filters down to social development.

Meeting the MDGs needs much more than public-private partnerships, however. “Cooperation between governments and companies solves only two thirds of the problem. The last third must be the involvement of communities,” argued Professor Gerhard Coetzee, director of the Centre for Inclusive Banking in Africa at the University of Pretoria and a general manager at ABSA bank in South Africa.

He said that most Africans remain excluded not only from jobs but from using financial services because of high banking fees and cumbersome regulation.

Currently, most financial institutions solely provide specialised services to poor populations, such as microfinance.

“That is helpful, but not good enough to eradicate poverty in the long term. Ultimately, we need to move from microfinance to financial inclusion,” said Coetzee. “I see a clear link between a population’s access to finance and a country’s ability to reach the MDGs. By giving the poor access to financial services, we improve their income, thereby decreasing poverty levels.”

Coetzee advised that there should be a reduction in the direct costs of banking, such as fees and transactions. He added that there should also be a reduction in the costs of the indirect financial price tag, including the cost of transport and the time that rural populations spent to reach services.

In South Africa, one of the continent’s strongest economies, only 63 percent of the those 16 years and older have a bank account, the most basic of all financial services, according to a 2011 survey by African financial research company FinScope.

“That shows that using banking to improve poverty and thereby the MDGs remains a major challenge,” said Coetzee. “We still have a long way to go.”

It was tough for Hassan Toure to decide to stay in his small town on the outskirts of Kidal, in northern Mali. The government troops had withdrawn on Mar. 30, and several armed groups, including militias and bandits, were operating in the region.

Child combatants had been seen in the ranks of the Tuareg rebels in Mali. Credit: William Lloyd-George/IPS

“I wanted to leave for my children’s sake,” says Toure, speaking over the phone to IPS, and withholding his real name because he fears reprisals. “But my shop is the only thing I own, and I couldn’t let it be looted and destroyed by the thugs.”

Toure regrets the decision now.

He says that he tried to prevent his children from going outside at all, “but they’re at that age.” On Mar. 29, he says, his eldest son, 15, never came home, and is still missing.

“Other kids in the neighbourhood say he went with some armed men,” says Toure. “I cannot sleep. I am so worried about what might happen to him with those men.”

While Toure’s story, like most reports from the north of Mali, is difficult to confirm, his fears could be very real.

According to Corinne Dufka, a senior West Africa researcher for Human Rights Watch (HRW) who conducted a 10-day fact- finding mission to Mali in April, all the witnesses her organisation interviewed had reported seeing child soldiers in the rebel ranks.

Child combatants had been seen in the ranks of the Tuareg rebels, namely the Movement for the National Liberation of Azawaad (MNLA).

According to a HRW report titled “Mali – War Crimes by Northern Rebels”, released on Apr. 30, “many (children) were described as carrying military assault rifles and wearing fatigues that some people said were falling off their bodies.”

“The presence of children within the ranks of armed groups in northern Mali is a very disturbing development,” says Dufka.

“Commanders of these groups should immediately cease their recruitment of anyone under 18, release all the children from their forces, and work with child protection agencies to return them to their homes where they belong.”

Witnesses told HRW that child combatants appeared to be between 15 and 17 years old; however, some appeared to be as young as 12. Teachers from the region also told HRW that they recognised some of their students in the MNLA’s ranks.

Tuareg rebels, under several different names, have been fighting against the Malian state since its independence in 1960. Due to the political instability in Bamako where a Mar. 22 coup d’état toppled the government of President Amadou Toumani Touré, and an influx of weapons from Libya, the rebels managed to sweep across the north of Mali and announce a new state, Azawad, on Apr. 6.

This may have been slightly premature. Reports suggest that they are far from being in control of the situation and are competing with several Islamist groups in the region.

One group, Ansar Dine, led by former Tuareg rebel leader Iyad Ag Ghali, has expressed his group’s desire to apply Sharia law in the region. Ansar Dine does not want independence, but rather to establish an Islamic state.

Witnesses told HRW that they have seen fewer child soldiers in their ranks, but were concerned about Ansar Dine’s new wave of recruitment in the northern Malian regions of Gao, Dire and Niafounke in mid-April. It is reported that children have already been recruited and trained by Ansar Dine in camps outside of Gao.

Adding to concerns about the future of northern Mali are growing reports of foreign Islamist groups increasingly operating in the region. While they have long had a presence in the region, it is only recently they have been able to take advantage of the power vacuum and openly move around.

According to reports, the Nigerian Islamist group, Boko Haram, as well the regional Al-Qaeda group, the Al-Qaeda Organisation in the Islamic Maghreb, and its offshoot, the Movement for Unity and Jihad in West Africa (MUJAO), are all currently present in the north of Mali. They are also reported to be using child soldiers.

On Apr. 6, armed men stormed the Algerian consulate in Gao, kidnapping the consul and six staff members. According to an MNLA source, Boko Haram and MUJAO members had kidnapped them.

When the MNLA tried to rescue the diplomats, the joint Boko Haram-MUJAO force sent five young boys aged between 10 to12, with explosives strapped to their chests, to deter them.

The source says that the MNLA were told that if they did not leave, the young boys would blow everyone up. In response, the MNLA withdrew.

In addition to the inclusion of children in rebel ranks, HRW has reported numerous incidents of young girls being abducted and sexually abused. Witnesses say the MNLA has been taking girls as young as 12 to abandoned buildings and repeatedly raping them over the course of several days.

“We’re very concerned about what appears to be a drastic increase in the targeting and sexual abuse of women and girls by armed groups in the north,” says Dufka.

The vulnerability of women in the north is increased by the lack of medical care, non-existent rule of law, and limited humanitarian assistance.

The United Nations Office of Humanitarian Affairs estimates that since January 2012, at least 284,000 people have fled their homes as a result of the armed conflict in the north. Of this number, about 107,000 are believed to be internally displaced, while the rest have fled to neighbouring countries, notably Niger, Burkina Faso, Algeria and Mauritania.

Civil society groups are calling on the United Nations peacekeeping mission to withdraw support from a disarmament programme they say could spark further violence in South Sudan’s volatile Jonglei state.

Members of the Murle group displaced by ethnic violence await food distribution in Gumuruk, Pibor county, in South Sudan's Jonglie state. Credit: Jared Ferrie/IPS

Jonglei has long been plagued by ethnic tensions and cattle raids made exceptionally deadly because of the easy availability of arms left over from a two-decade civil war that ended in 2005. With an aim to quell violence, the government on Mar. 12 launched a disarmament campaign – first by asking civilians to turn over weapons voluntarily, and as of May 1, enforcing the order.

Now, a coalition of civil society groups has released a report documenting alleged abuses during the voluntary phase of the campaign, which it says received logistical support from the U.N. Mission in South Sudan (UNMISS). The groups warn that violence could escalate now that the government has moved into the enforcement phase.

Incidents documented in the Apr. 30 report, titled Perpetuating Cycles of Violence, include: tying young men to trees and beating them, simulated drowning, and an armed clashbetween the Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA) and members of the ethnic Lou Nuer community who resisted disarmament. That clash resulted in both civilian and SPLA casualties.

“UNMISS is providing material support for a violent, abusive process that weakens support for the state and continues the cycle of violence in Jonglei,” said the report, which was released bythe civil society groups Pact, Community Empowerment for Progress, Standard Action Liaison Focus, Serving and Learning Together and the South Sudan Law Society.

UNMISS denied giving “direct support” to the campaign, which has been carried out by the SPLA. The mission’s assistance has beenlimited to transporting officials throughout the state “to sensitise the population about civilian disarmament process,” Josephine Guerrero, a spokeswoman for the mission, told IPS May 1.

“As UNMISS has not provided any civilian or military contributions to the process, there is also nothing to ‘withdraw’,” she added.

But one of the report’s authors, who declined to be named due to the sensitivity of the issue, argued that transporting government officials by helicopter constitutes support for the campaign. The author added that UNMISS endorsed the voluntary campaign in a Mar. 12 press release.

Guerrero said UNMISS monitoring teams have reported human rights violations tothe government.

South Sudan’s government spokesman, BarnabaMarial Benjamin, denied that abuses have taken place. “There is no violence up to now,” he told IPS in Juba on May 1. “There’s no resistance anywhere. You may get a few people hiding guns somewhere, but it is going well.”

Medecins Sans Frontiers provided IPS with the number of patients it treated for injuries related to the disarmament campaign. The organisation said it has treated 30 people so far, two of whom died due to their injuries. While most sustained injuries from beatings, at least three had gunshot wounds.

The South Sudanese government launched its disarmament campaign in the wake of attacks on ethnic Murlecommunities by members of the Lou Nuer ethnic group. The assault followed a year of clashes between the groups that killed at least 1,000 peoplefrom both sides, according to the U.N.

In the weeks running up to the attacks,UNMISS air patrols reported that as many as 8,000 Lou Nuer youth were marching toward Murle communities in Pibor county, which is about 273 kilometers from Juba. Despite advanced warning, the government said it was unable to deploy enough troops to stave off the assault. Government officials blamed logistical problems. Much of Jonglei, a state roughly the size of England, is inaccessible by road. And many of the existing roads become impassable when it rains.

The U.N. said the violence affected 160,000 people, many of whom are still displaced and reliant on food aid. The Pibor county commissioner claimed about 3,000 people were killed during attacks against the Murle in Pibor county. Both the government and the U.N. dismissed that figure, but have failed to provide their own estimate despite repeated requests from journalists.

UNMISS investigated the violence,andHilde Johnson, the U.N. secretary general’s special representative for South Sudan, told reporters on Mar. 6 that the UNMISS report would be made public within weeks. But two months after her statement, and four months after the attacks, UNMISS has yet to release its findings.

“UNMISS is finalising a comprehensive report on the violence in Jonglei, which will be shared with the government once it is completed,” said Guerrero, the mission’s spokeswoman. “It will of course be available to the public.”

The Perpetuating Cycles of Violence report notes that disarmament programmes have been carried out in Jonglei at least five times in the past six years without success.

Not only have such campaigns failed to rid the state of weapons, but they have been marked by beatings, torture and the killing of civilians, according to previous reports. During a 2006 campaign that collected 3,000 weapons, for example, the Geneva-based Small Arms Survey calculated one death for every two weapons seized.

The authors of Perpetuating Cycles of Violence argue that the proper conditions must be in place before civilians will feel secure enough to hand over their weapons voluntarily. These include strengthening the policing and justice systems, addressing political grievances, promoting peace and reconciliation between ethnic groups, and providing basic services such as education and health care.

Until those conditions are met, both the government and UNMISS should halt the current campaign, which is likely to result in increased violence as it moves into its enforcement phase, the report said. “Far from being an answer to insecurity in Jonglei, disarmament is a part of the cycle of violence that has plagued the state.”

Cashew nut growers in the southern Senegalese region of Casamance are complaining bitterly that intermediaries are cutting them out of a fair share of the profits.

The Casamance region produced 40 million dollars worth of cashews in 2011 – 40,000 tonnes – and employed more than 220,000 people, according to figures from the Chamber of Commerce in Ziguinchor, the regional capital.

But as of April this year, production stood at only 8,000 tonnes, more than 15,000 tonnes less than at the same point last year, says Ismaëla Diémé, the president of the Casamance Agricultural Producers’ Cooperative. The sharp drop has been attributed to unfavourable growing conditions, a decrease in rainfall, conflict in Casamance – where anti-personnel mines have been laid on farms – and producers discouraged by low prices.

Almost all of Senegal’s cashew harvest – gathered between April and June as the dry season draws to a close – is sold on in the form of unprocessed nuts for export. Large-scale Indian buyers come to the capital, Dakar, and contract local traders to actually purchase cashews; these traders in turn dispatch freelance agents to the often remote villages where farmers have nuts for sale.

Producers told IPS they faced numerous obstacles with respect to storage and transporting their crop from their villages to urban centres. They also said traders offered them laughably low prices for cashews, and argued that they were exploited by intermediaries who depress prices only to resell the nuts for far more to Indian exporters.

Idrissa Diatta, a farmer from Diattacounda, some 80 kilometres from Ziguinchor, said traders offer the equivalent of 60 U.S. cents per kilo at the farm gate, but are reselling it to exporters for nearly three times more, around 1.70 dollars.

He believes the best way to overcome this is to deal directly with the Indians, but says the middlemen have blocked all attempts so far. “The Indians will never come to see us here. They pass the work on to intermediaries. We’re thinking of getting ourselves organised and sending a delegation to the buyers in Dakar (the Senegalese capital) to discuss things,” he said.

Abdoulaye Diatta, another planter, says traders sometimes claim prices are low because supply exceeds demand, or foreign currency exchange rates are unfavourable. “But if the dollar exchange rate has shifted, or there’s really an oversupply, then we wouldn’t see a single cashew nut plucked from the bush. But no: every nut’s sold. Right now, they’re trying to swap us a sack of rice for two sacks of cashews: it’s ridiculous.”

But Jean-Marie Badji, one of the much-maligned middlemen, says the price of unprocessed cashews varies according to changes in the world market, and traders are trying to make ends meet, not trying to dupe growers.

“Look, we have to travel out to these villages to collect cashews. The roads are in terrible condition, and the truckers charge us heavily to transport goods over them. And we’re talking about completely isolated villages. If we pay more than 250 or 300 CFA (less than a dollar), we risk going bankrupt,” he told IPS.

Badji says that sometimes it is growers themselves who undercut prices. “In the first week of April, we were out in a village called Koundump. We came across a producer who hadn’t sold his nuts because of the utter isolation of the place. When he saw us, he offered us his entire stock for 200 CFA per kilo. I couldn’t refuse it,” he said.

Elimane Dramé, who employs 43 people at a facility that can process 250 tonnes of cashew nuts a year, says the sector has struggled to access operating capital. He says banks are typically willing to loan them only a third of what they need, causing delays in payment and leaving small producers in difficulty.

He told IPS that producers’ need for financing is seasonal. A farmer needs money to put up a storehouse immediately to safely hold the incoming harvest, but the bank often refuses to loan him money and he may be forced to sell hastily, reducing his ability to negotiate prices from a position of strength.

Ibra Fall, who works in the office of the governor of Ziguinchor, has a different take. He says producers are also in difficulty because they fail to fully exploit their resource locally.

“With local processing capacity able to handle less than five percent of the harvest, the only alternative for producers is to sell unprocessed nuts to exporters – with no real power to negotiate. Also, the cashew apples are falling unused beneath the trees, with only a small amount used to make cashew wine.”

Diémé with the Casamance Agricultural Producers’ Cooperative told IPS the problems facing producers ultimately stem from a lack of coordination that prevents them from defending their interests against those of others in the value chain.

“Because we are so poorly organised that it’s hard for a partner, no matter who it is, to meet us halfway, and because we have not improved our growing techniques, our yields. Basically, we don’t inspire confidence.”

Female teachers have transformed primary education in rural Bangladesh. Credit: Naimul Haq/IPS

By Naimul Haq
DHAKA, May 1 2012 (IPS)

Bangladesh continues to score good grades in achieving the Millennium Development Goal (MDG) of gender parity in education by 2015, with the trend of more girls than boys attending primary school accelerating this year.

Early estimates for the accounting year that ended March show an enrolment ratio of 52:48 favouring girls, which is consistent with the trend since 2010 when girls overtook boys in primary school enrolment.

“Eliminating gender disparity in primary education by Bangladesh, recognised worldwide, is the result of strong political commitment,” A.K.M. Abdul Awal Mojumder, secretary, ministry of primary and mass education (MoPME), told IPS.

Hiring female teachers, involving non-government organisations (NGOs), and paying out cash subsidies are among interventions that helped turn around the situation of a decade ago when schooling for girls was unthinkable in parts of Bangladesh because of social and religious barriers.

Since 2000, the MoPME has been implementing a policy of hiring women as primary school teachers, and currently 90 percent of the 182,000 teachers in Bangladesh’s 37,500 primary schools are female. Also, 95 percent of school management committees are headed by women.

“Classrooms run by female teachers created an environment for girls to attend schools,” said Aziz-ur-Rashid, headmaster of a primary school in Niphamari district. “The retention rate increased remarkably as a result.”

The primary education stipend project (PESP), funded by the World Bank, the Asian Development Bank and the Norwegian government, was aimed at increasing enrolment, attendance, retention and performance of primary school-aged children from poor families.

PESP money is deposited directly into individual bank accounts every six months. The monthly stipend varies from Taka 25 (three cents) for a student of class VI to Taka 60 (seven cents) for a class X student.

In addition, every candidate appearing for secondary school certificate final examination is entitled to six dollars to cover examination fees.

Wherever state-run institutions could not take up the challenge of enrolling and retaining girls in school, NGOs stepped in to help the children in the ‘dropped out, left out or missed out’ categories, especially in the remote, hilly or wetland areas.

“There is tremendous enthusiasm among rural children to attend classes, some riding boats to attend classes,” says Humayun Kabir Selim, director of Palli Bikash Kendra, an NGO that operates 10 primary schools in the vast wetland areas of Mithamoin in Kishoreganj district.

With NGOs roped in, the net enrolment rate increased from 73.3 percent in 1992 to 94 percent by 2011. Dropout rates, one of the main concerns, also declined from 38 percent in 1994 to about 30 percent in 2011.

NGO-run schools have good instructional material, trained and motivated teachers and, most importantly, the flexibility to conform to the needs and capacities of the community. NGO-run primary schools often operate out of one-room houses made available by grateful local communities.

“The flexibility makes for better attendance as children do not have to walk distances as is the case with many state-run primary schools,” said Waheeda Mahmud, a primary school teacher with a local NGO in the Nachol sub-district in Chaipainawabganj district.

“Parents feel safer when the school is located around the corner. They also consider female teachers to have more patience,” said Samsun Nahar Lina, who heads ‘Shakkor’ an NGO that runs several free primary schools in Rangpur district, 370 km from Dhaka.

Ten-year-old Aireen Akhtar was ‘left out’ until two years ago when determined advocacy persuaded her parents to send her to a nearby NGO-run school in the Charpara village of Mithamoin sub-district, about 130 km from Dhaka.

Says Aireen, a shy but confident pupil in a class of 12 girls and seven boys: “Every day we learn something new. It’s fun. There is no fixed timetable for classes and there is no homework.”

There are several non-formal primary education (NFPE) systems in Bangladesh but the one devised by the Bangladesh Rural Advancement Committee (BRAC), reputed to be the world’s biggest NGO, is popular with people involved in primary education.

BRAC began implementing NFPE in 1985 with its one-classroom schools and selecting and training female teachers from the local community.

Shafiqul Islam, head of BRAC’s education programme, told IPS: “A lot of children come from poor rural families and are into income-generating activities.

“The rigidity and inflexibility of the formal education system had put education beyond the reach of these children… flexible school timings are key to our success.”

Since 1985, BRAC has set up 38,000 non-formal schools in 470 sub-districts. Over 1.2 million children (70 percent of them girls) attend BRAC schools, forming the largest private school chain in the world.

Rasheda K. Choudhury, executive director of the Campaign for Popular Education (CAMPE), told IPS: “Bangladesh’s achievements in promoting gender equality are largely due to initiatives launched by NGOs which believe in flexible academic calendars.”

CAMPE, a coalition of more than 1,300 NGOs, works to achieve MDG 2 and MDG 3 by implementing quality education through advocacy and capacity building. These are part of the eight goals defined by the United Nations to be met by 2015.

While MDG 2 demands that all children complete a full course of primary schooling by that year, MDG 3 calls for the elimination of gender disparity in primary, secondary and tertiary education.

There are now 16,539,363 students studying in 81,000 primary schools in Bangladesh, including those run by NGOs, communities and madrassas (religious schools).

Stefan Priesner, country director of United Nations Development Programme in Bangladesh, told IPS: “In general, progress has been sound. Indeed, on many MDGs, including expanding education, Bangladesh has either exceeded or is well on track to achieve the goal by 2015.”

Since January, various groups of Tuareg rebels in Mali have come together in an attempt to administer a new northern state called Azawad.

Malian rebels do not have the support of most ethnic groups in the north of the country. Credit: William Lloyd-George/IPS

While this was announced on Apr. 6, the rebel grouping’s control of the region remains questionable, and the roots behind the conflict, complex.

After the colonial French departed in 1960, the region was carved up and the Tuareg nomadic communities were placed into several different countries.

According to Professor Jeremy Keenan, the French felt close to the Tuareg and not the southern ethnicities in Mali, due to their matriarchal society, similar class structures, monogamous nature and a romantic notion that the French had of the Taureg people.

“The French patronised them, it made certain Tuareg clans feel superior,” says Keenan.

When Mali gained independence, Tuareg communities in the north suddenly found themselves under the rule of the southern tribes, whom some Tuareg clans believed to be inferior.

“Their world was turned upside down and they didn’t like it,” explains Keenan. “They felt as though they had done pretty badly out of the colonial shift.”

Unhappy with the new setup, a handful of Tuareg led a small rebellion in 1963. This started when Alladi Ag Alla, a Tuareg rebel, attacked two policemen as they travelled on camel across a remote desert.

The Malian army responded, crushing the rebellion within a year. Soon afterwards, severe drought hit the region from 1969 to 1974 and from 1982 to 1984, and forced thousands of Tuareg to flee to neighbouring countries in search of work and food.

But in 1990, hundreds of Tuaregs returned under the leadership of Iyad Ag Ghali, now the leader of the Islamist faction, Ansar Dine, which is currently calling for Sharia law to be implemented in Mali.

After an initial attack on a small police camp, conflict raged until 1992 when the rebels entered into talks with the Malian government.

The resultant National Pact, which was signed in 1992, fractured the movement. While some Tuareg leaders were keen to negotiate with the government, others took a hard-line approach. Those who disapproved of their comrades’ desire to compromise fled to neighbouring countries. And most of the rebel leaders who remained were given special positions in the state military.

Despite peace agreements, rebels said that the Malian government did not fulfil their promises and anger simmered away. This was until 2006 when a new rebellion broke out after insurgents attacked Malian army installations, only to stop again after ceasefire talks brokered by Algeria.

The result of the talks, the Algiers Accords, promised the Tuareg rebels greater autonomy, economic development, and the protection of Tuareg culture. But the agreement broke down again.

However, one Tuareg rebel leader, Ibrahim Ag Bahanga, refused to negotiate. When the Algiers Accords were being worked out, he was still attacking the Malian army. But in 2009, he was finally pushed out of Mali and found refuge in Libya.

There he teamed up with several former revolutionary commanders who had left Mali after the 1990 rebellion. They included Mohammed Ag Najim, the National Movement for the Liberation of Azawad’s (MNLA) current chief of staff. Once again plans began, to launch another rebellion, one that would be stronger than ever before.

As anti-Muammar Gaddafi protests began in Libya’s capital, Tripoli, Ag Bahanga made plans to travel back to Mali with a handful of leaders to restart their rebellion.

The group returned to Mali in October 2011, and was followed by hundreds of Tuareg mercenaries, who were once hired by both Gaddafi and the Libyan National Transitional Council, and who were armed with stolen Libyan weapons. This was the beginning of the latest conflict.

According to MNLA spokesman Moussa Ag Acharatoumane, few of his people were loyal to Gaddafi, and they never forgot the atrocities committed against the Tuareg people in Mali.

“We would attack a police force and they would respond by attacking any Tuareg they could find,” explains Acharatoumane.

The most notable perpetrators of war crimes were members of Ganda Koy, a Songhai militia funded by the Malian army, which allegedly committed several massacres against unarmed Tuareg civilians.

While some MNLA commanders do have grounds for complaint against the Malian government, and genuine dreams for the creation of a Tuareg state, observers are sceptical of how much public support they have in the region. They are also not convinced that the concept of Tuareg nationalism is embraced by all.

According to West Africa expert Tommy Miles, the MNLA do not have the support of most ethnic groups in the north, who see the rhetoric of the movement as another way for noble Tuaregs to dominate their communities.

Milesargues rather than being a national liberation struggle, “northern Mali now looks like the locus of an armed political struggle between rival local Tuareg leaders, which has cascaded into a general collapse of the social order.”

Miles explains this by pointing to the dominance of the Ifghoas clan members in the rebellions. Few other Tuareg clans are interested in the desire for an independent state.

According to Keenan, in order to understand the true reasons motivating the Islamist groups operating in the north, one has to look at their links with the Algerian regime and the drug trade.

“These are the two elephants in the room,” explains Keenan. “Algeria’s secret service, the Département du Renseignement et de la Sécurité (DRS), has operatives in all these groups in the region.”

Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb and the Movement for Unity and Jihad in West Africa, through proxy drug smugglers, make vast amounts of money out of the drug trade. Like many other groups in the region, they have a major vested interest to be in the north of Mali, where they can control the transportation of cocaine.

“In addition to several other agendas, the DRS wants to keep instability in the region in order to secure the drug trade,” Keenan says, adding that the DRS is also trying to keep the Islamist groups off Algerian soil and in the north of Mali where they can use operatives to control the situation.

Several anti-MNLA groups are emerging and there is a growth in the number of foreign Islamist groups operating in the region. As the conflict becomes increasingly complex and fractured, the MNLA’s history of grievances becomes more distant. As clans, factions and Islamist groups take up guns for their own interests, the region edges closer to all-out civil war.

After almost a decade of major economic transformation, the Lao People’s Democratic Republic is on the brink of World Trade Organisation (WTO) membership.

But the small country’s Herculean effort to join the exclusive trade club is a reminder to the ten other least developed countries (LDCs) now seeking membership of the cumbersome process involved.

“LDCs think it is easy to accede to the WTO, like becoming a United Nations member, but it is not,” Nicolas Imboden, director of the Geneva-based Ideas Centre, told IPS. The non-governmental organisation has been counselling Lao PDR, whose accession will be completed in October, for fourteen years. It is now starting to assist Liberia and Comoros, two other least developed countries on a waiting list that also includes Afghanistan, Bhutan, Equatorial Guinea, Ethiopia, Sao Tome, Sudan, Vanuatu and Yemen.

“They have to adopt the rules of the WTO and this is a huge task for most of them,” said Imboden. “They must undertake reforms, completely revise their legal systems and establish rules that apply to all foreign investors and importers, without discrimination.”

Imboden noted that many LDCs justify clamouring for membership on the grounds that it will open up new markets, a motive he argued is “flawed”, since LDCs already have good trade relations with most countries.

Rather, the “benefits” of membership are mainly domestic: aligning national economic policies with the WTO regime sets up the basis for improved economic efficiency and attracts companies eager to invest in these countries, not because of their market size, but to export to the neighbouring region.

“Reforms related to WTO accession require a change of attitude, not only a change of law,” Khemmani Pholsena, vice-minister of industry and commerce for Lao PDR, told IPS. “Lao PDR has reviewed and enacted some 25 trade-related laws and 50 other legislations since 2000. And I believe that these reforms will strengthen the rule of law, thereby cutting down on undue privileges and possibilities of corruption.”

Laos is still a communist country and transforming its state-run economy into a free market system is a huge task, particularly when a part of the administration wants to open up the economy and some party members don’t.

For example, before the accession process began, exporters had to deposit their money in Laotian banks and convert it into the local currency, while importers had to pay for a special licence. If the government felt a particular import was undercutting state-owned enterprises, it simply did not issue the licence.

“I remember having seen a whole store of watches at the central market in Vientiane,” Imboden continued. “Importing watches was forbidden, but they were coming in illegally and the government would not acknowledge that it was unable to control the licences. Now all this (illegal licencing) is abolished.”

“From the experience of other recently acceded members, such as Cape Verde and Tonga, contentious issues (for Lao PDR) at this stage may include trading rights, customs valuation, and intellectual property,” Pholsena admitted.

Intellectual property has not hitherto been protected in Laos, so the country has had to build up a national institution and set up laws on patents and patenting rights.

“In 2003 there were few lawyers in the country and nearly half of them were working on intellectual property,” Imboden recalled. “This is not in line with Laos’ priorities. The WTO asks LDCs to adopt provisions on intellectual property that may be necessary and useful, but not needed at this stage of development and take up too many resources.”

Services liberalisation may also be a challenge, since acceding countries have to liberalise more aggressively than others. “Recently acceded countries have to pay a higher price for WTO entry,” Pholsena said.

For example, “Out of a total of 160 services sub-sectors, Cambodia committed to 110, in contrast to 24 sub-sectors made by existing LDC members. Lao PDR is facing pressure to liberalise at a similar level.”

“We are aware that there will be both winners and losers as a result of these reforms and the government has to do its utmost to help the latter overcome the negative effects and transform challenges into opportunities,” Pholsena added.

She believes sectors like tourism, agro-business and natural resource-intensive industries are in Lao PDR’s comparative advantage and will prosper.

Imboden, too, is positive. He doesn’t see many risks for Laotian industry. Competition from ASEAN (the Association of Southeast Asian Nations), with which Laos has a free trade agreement, already exists; and competition from the rest of the world is going to be limited since Lao PDR doesn’t have big industries or inefficient state-owned enterprises, like China did.

In agriculture, he argues, the accession process has already had positive effects. In flat lands, exports have increased. Lao PDR cultivates coffee that is processed locally and exported with a good value added. And the majority of people who live on small plots and produce mainly sticky rice will face little competition from abroad, he added.

A big chunk of the accession process is represented by the market access negotiations that are held bilaterally. Each WTO member asks the acceding country to reduce tariffs on certain items by a given percentage. Most of them don’t put excessive demands on LDCs, but some do.

Ukraine, for example, put a lot of pressure on Lao PDR at the end of the accession process, like it did with Montenegro, blocking the accession of this small European country for a year.

It asked Vientiane to reduce a substantial number of tariff lines below the applied rate, which had never before been demanded of an LDC.

“We told Laos not to give up and the other countries tried to convince Ukraine to be less demanding, particularly after the last WTO ministerial conference, where the decision was taken to ease the accession of LDCs.”

Lao PDR also had very difficult negotiations with the United States, but Washington has relaxed some of its requirements.

Primary school in Goroka Credit: Catherine Wilson/IPS

By Catherine Wilson
GOROKA, Papua New Guinea , Apr 29 2012 (IPS)

Sexual harassment of school-going girls is one factor that may prevent this Pacific island nation from achieving the Millennium Development Goal (MDG) of eliminating gender disparity in education by 2015.

Papua New Guinea (PNG)’s new free education policy has dramatically increased school enrolment, and a gross enrolment rate of 80 percent is within reach by 2015. But the third of the United Nations’ eight MDGs, that pertaining to girls’ education, remains elusive on current trends.

While PNG’s constitution promotes equal participation by men and women in national development, political, cultural, social and infrastructural factors inhibit retention of girls within the school system, reflecting a wider lack of women in the formal workforce, governance and decision-making roles.

The United Nations Development Programme rates the nation at 153 out of 187 countries, with a gender inequality index of 0.674. The education department reports the average educational attainment of girls is grade 10 and, for boys, grade 12, the final year of secondary school.

However, the nation’s cultural and social diversity means there is geographical variance.

In the Autonomous Region of Bougainville, where matrilineal societies are prevalent, there are 16,821 male and 16,120 female school students. In the Eastern Highlands Province, the literacy rate for males is 51 percent compared to 36.5 percent for females.

There were 7,127 male and 5,872 female students in primary level grade three in 2009. In grade 12, the number of female students, 180, was less than half the male enrolment of 494.

In the highlands, where most people practice subsistence agriculture and the average cash income is low, girls can be particularly disadvantaged, especially if there are no local schools.

“The (poor) state of school infrastructure, particularly in rural areas, is a significant hindrance to the achievement of equitable education outcomes,” said Arnold Kukari, leader of the universal basic education research programme at the National Research Institute.

Betty Hinamunimo, field officer with Care International, a non-government organisation (NGO) which works in partnership with the education department, said factors impeding girls’ education included “distance and cultural and social barriers, such as the fear families have of sending girls to urban centres where their safety is not guaranteed.”

Girls in PNG are at high risk of domestic and sexual violence, sexual harassment in schools, commercial exploitation and HIV, which pose serious threats to their health and education.

Ume Wainetti at the Family Sexual Violence Action Centre (FSVAC) said, “When FSVAC conducted the study on violence against children in 2005, young girls in rural schools said they get harassed by teachers and by male students, especially when they are going to school or going home.”

Wainetti said many of the young girls interviewed by FSVAC, an NGO based in the capital of Port Moresby, were already mothers.

Cultural and social barriers to education include the burden placed on girls of family care, domestic responsibilities and customary marriage, which can occur from 12 years. The International Centre for Research on Women (ICRW) estimates that a third of girls in the developing world are married before 18 years and begin child-bearing before 20 years.

The education department’s gender equity strategic plan (2009-2014) stresses the need to develop gender mainstreaming activities in schools and train all staff in gender sensitisation and sexual violence awareness.

Philip Afuti, president of the PNG teachers’ association, Eastern Highlands, and head teacher of North Goroka primary school, is committed to gender equality. Eighty percent of teachers are female, while the school has 630 male and 523 female students.

“We want to see the girls have an equal opportunity as boys in the education system,” Afuti declared. “They should be able to build this nation in partnership. We want to see that. PNG will only develop when both males and females are educated.”

This year, the national government rolled out a free and subsidised education policy, which has impacted female enrolment. Students attending elementary prep to grade 10 at secondary school do not have to pay tuition fees while those in grades 11 and 12 pay only 25 percent of fees.

“We have increased the numbers of females enrolling,” Afuti verified. “Some who left a few years ago have also come back.”

But there is a limit to the expansion of the education system.

“The government has taken a bold step to abolish school fees at the basic education level, thus addressing a critical access barrier, enabling more children to be enrolled and complete a full cycle of education,” Kukari explained.

“However,” Kukari said, “at this juncture, the education system does not have the absorptive capacity to accommodate all children wanting to enrol and to provide a sufficient number of teachers to ensure that children are provided with a quality education as well.”

There are also inadequate mechanisms of support for school-going girls suffering from sexual abuse. “If there are avenues for redress to such offences, these are not made known to students and parents,” Wainetti said.

“It is unfortunate that many teachers will not do anything about these abuses until the parents of the girl or boy turn up at the school to beat up the students who have been harassing their child,” Wainetti said.

The ICRW advocates that educated girls ‘who become healthy, productive and empowered adults are a force for positive social, economic and political change.”

Betty Hinamunimo agrees that, in rural communities, women working as literacy teachers are being valued more in the community and respected, and as role models they are contributing to changes in community attitudes and greater support for educating daughters.

“There is no doubt that PNG’s health, economic and social indicators will improve if there are more educated and professionally qualified women,” Kukari concurred. “They would make a very big difference in government, business, the private sector, public service and many other areas.”

As thousands of people flee the conflict in South Sudan’s northern border states, increasing numbers have also been forced to leave their homes and towns in search of affordable food.

The conflict in South Sudan has more than doubled the price of basic commodities, making it difficult for many here to afford. Credit: Charlton Doki/IPS

As tension between South Sudan and Sudan continues in the South Sudanese northern areas of Unity, Upper Nile, Northern and Western Bahr al Ghazal states, the conflict has more than doubled the price of basic commodities, making it difficult for many here to afford.

In the border town of Bentiu, the price of a 50-kilogramme sack of sorghum has increased from 10 dollars to 24, while a kilogramme of sugar has tripled from one to three dollars.

“A 20 litre jerry can of cooking oil rose from 20 to 40 dollars in the last two weeks,” said Simon Kenyi, a teacher in Bentiu.

“Traders who used to bring in these goods from Elobeid in Sudan’s Southern Kordofan state are unable to do so now because the border is closed,” he added.

For the last month, traders who usually import foodstuffs from Southern Kordofan in Sudan have been victims of violence along the route to South Sudan. Many have stopped trying to cross the border altogether.

The rapid increase in prices of consumer goods has forced residents of Bentiu, which is the capital of Unity state, to flee to towns in South Sudan’s greater Equatoria region, where consumer goods imported from East Africa are in abundance and relatively cheaper. The southern states of Western, Central and Eastern Equatoria share borders with the Central African Republic, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Uganda, Kenya and Ethiopia.

“Many people here are moving their families to Juba and Yei, in Central Equatoria state, because they can no longer afford food,” Bonifacio Taban, a local journalist in Bentiu, said.

Fighting between South Sudan and Sudan took a turn on Apr. 10 when South Sudan occupied the disputed oil-producing town of Heglig, in Sudan’s Southern Kordofan state. Both countries have laid claim to the town, which lies in a border area.

According to South Sudan’s Minister of Information Barnaba Marial Benjamin, the country occupied Heglig to stop Sudan’s military, the Sudan People’s Armed Forces or SAF, from continuing to launch ground and air attacks from the area.

The South Sudanese army, the Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA), were ready to withdraw provided that international monitors were sent to Heglig and Sudan agreed to international arbitration to determine which country owns the area, he had said at the time.

However, after South Sudan’s withdrawal on Apr. 23, the country says that Sudan has continued attacks.

Unity State Governor Taban Deng Guy said this week that 75 people had died in aerial bombardments in his state in the last few months; it includes casualties in Bentiu town and other parts of the state.

In the same state, thousands of civilians have been displaced following ground clashes between the SPLA and the SAF, and aerial bombardments by the latter.

South Sudan’s Deputy Minister of Humanitarian Affairs and Disaster Preparedness Sabrina Dario Okolong said that residents of Unity state are fleeing the aerial bombardments in the northern part of the state and were making their way south to Nhiakdiu, Mayendit, Leer, Koch and Guit counties in search of safety.

“We also have about 1,500 people who have been displaced from Pariang County (a county in Unity state that borders Heglig) and we have the United Nations agencies verifying 1,693 IDPs in Pariang and 303 IDPs in Panyang,” Okolong said. Panyang is an administrative unit comprised of a number of villages within Pariang County.

An aid worker, who did not want to be named, estimated that 5,000 to 10,000 people had become internally displaced in the state.

The death toll from the conflict is not known, however, the U.N. says after South Sudan withdrew from Heglig, 16 civilians were killed in air raids and ground attacks within Unity state alone.

Dozens of foreign traders from Kenya, Uganda, DRC, Ethiopia and Eritrea are fleeing Bentiu where, on Apr. 23, SAF warplanes bombed a market and a bridge killing four people and wounding four others.

Makosa Kabanga, a Congolese trader who arrived in Juba from Bentiu on Apr. 24, said he was scared to stay in Bentiu because of the air raids.

“We were five Congolese who left Bentiu for Juba late last week. We feared the fighting in Heglig. Although Bentiu was a bit far from it, it was too much for us,” he told IPS. “We feared that there was going to be bombing in Bentiu and that’s what happened after we left. We will only return to Bentiu when the fighting and bombing stops,” he said.

But in South Sudan’s capital city of Juba some commodities are not so easy to find. Fuel stations have run out of petrol and there are long queues of motorbikes and cars as people wait their turn to purchase the commodity, which has almost doubled in price since the fighting intensified.

“We used to buy a litre of petrol at one dollar but now it costs more than three dollars,” Moses Taban, a motorcycle taxi operator, said.

An oil dealer in Juba, who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of repercussions, said he believed that there is a shortage of petrol because the SPLA purchase large quantities of fuel from him recently.

“The SPLA bought hundreds of thousands of litres from us. It takes time to bring in more fuel from Kenya… that is why you are seeing a shortage,” he said.

Rebel leaders in Guinea-Bissau have released the country’s prime minister and interim president, who were arrested in the country’s Apr. 12 coup, and have flown them to Côte d’Ivoire.

The release of Carlos Gomes Junior and Raimundo Pereira is an encouraging response by the junta to demands by the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS ) for the immediate restoration of constitutional rule.

ECOWAS has given Guinea-Bissau’s military junta 72 hours until Apr. 29 to restore constitutional order, and decided to send a contingent of at least 500 soldiers to the country, which has been in crisis since the coup d’état.

“We can’t tolerate this usurpation of power by the junta in Guinea-Bissau any longer,” Ivorian president Alassane Ouattara, the current head of ECOWAS, declared during an extraordinary summit held in Abidjan on Apr. 26, adding that the coup leaders must must step down and allow a transition process to be put in place quickly.

At the conclusion of the summit, ECOWAS warned that if the junta in Bissau did not accede to its demands, the regional body would immediately impose sanctions on members of the military command and their associates.

ECOWAS further threatened to take diplomatic, economic and financial sanctions against Guinea-Bissau without excluding the possibility of referring cases for prosecution by the International Criminal Court.

West African heads of state also decided to send troops to both Guinea-Bissau and Mali.

“The force to be deployed in Mali will assist the transitional bodies and the interim government to respond to any eventuality should the use of force be needed to restore the territorial integrity of Mali,” the president of the ECOWAS Commission, Désiré Kadré Ouédraogo, said at a press conference.

Ouédraogo said negotiations are ongoing with the Tuareg rebels who control the northern part of Mali, and the contingent initially being dispatched to Mali will be charged with maintaining peace and security for a one-year transitional period which is expected to end with elections.

But should talks with the northern rebels fail, he added, the mission could be reinforced with combat units.

Mali’s interim leader, Dioncounda Traoré, took part in the summit, with the Mauritanian president, Mohamed Ould Abdel Aziz, also present – Mauritania is not a member of ECOWAS, but was specially invited as it shares a border with Mali.

The leaders of the coup in Guinea-Bissau have reportedly agreed to the deployment of a contingent of 500 to 600 soldiers to the country under ECOWAS’s authority. This force will have the task of facilitating the withdrawal of the Technical and Military Assistance Mission from Angola to Guinea-Bissau, assisting with the reform of the country’s army, and helping to maintain security during a transition programme that is to be put in place.

Troops for this force will be provided by Nigeria, Togo, Côte d’Ivoire and Senegal, under the command of Colonel-Major Barro Gnibanga, from Burkina Faso.

The summit of heads of state also established a regional contact group with the mandate of coordinating implementation and monitoring of ECOWAS decisions on Guinea-Bissau. This group will include Benin, Cape Verde, Gambia, Guinea, Senegal and Togo, with Nigeria acting as head.

“ECOWAS is trying to maintain a firm line in managing these two cases. There has been a slight backtracking on the situation in Mali, because regional leaders have recognised that what’s going on in the north is more complicated than they had imagined,” Abidjan-based political scientist Barthélémy Kodja, told IPS.

“While in Guinea-Bissau the framework is well-defined and easy to manage with the deployment of a military force, Mali’s situation calls for major human, material, and financial resources,” he said.

“At the beginning, the feeling was that ECOWAS would get involved militarily in Mali to fight the Tuareg rebels and other armed groups,” Kodja said. “Regional leaders, especially the current ECOWAS head Alassane Ouattara, showed some willingness to engage in this way, but it was wise to review these plans because getting bogged down (in conflict there) was going to cause serious problems throughout the entire sub-region, and even beyond its borders.”

The coup in Mali took place on Mar. 22, since which time Tuareg rebels and armed Islamist groups have seized control of the northern part of the country. The president overthrown by the coup, Amadou Toumani Touré, agreed to resign and allow the installation of a transitional government directed by the president of the National Assembly, Dioncounda Traoré. Cheick Modibo Diarra was named prime minister of this transitional administration on Apr. 17, and he last week formed a unity government.

Guinea-Bissau’s coup occurred on Apr. 12, as the country was awaiting the second round of presidential elections planned for the end of April. Soldiers fired on the residence of the prime minster, Carlos Gomes Junior, subsequently arresting him and the country’s interim president, Raimundo Pereira.

Saffa Momoh Lahai was just two years old when his father was killed during Sierra Leone’s civil war. Rebels attacked their family home in Kailahun District, in the eastern reaches of the country, and shot Lahai’s father when he tried to resist.

Saffa Momoh Lahai lost his father in Sierra Leone’s civil war and said justice prevailed when former Liberian President Charles Taylor was convicted. Credit: Mustapha Dumbuya/IPS

More than a decade later, Lahai went to the local seat of the Special Court for Sierra Leone in Freetown to hear the verdict read out in the trial of Charles Taylor, the former president of Liberia (1997-2003) who was convicted on Thursday Apr. 26 of aiding and abetting crimes against humanity and war crimes in Sierra Leone.

The verdict, which was read out by Judge Richard Lussick from The Hague, was televised live across Sierra Leone.

“I am so happy that Taylor has been found guilty,” Lahai told IPS after hearing the verdict, which was handed down in The Hague.

“It cannot bring back my dead father, but it feels good that justice has now prevailed over injustice and evil, and that makes me very happy.”

Many victims of the war in Sierra Leone were quietly pleased with the ruling, though the response was muted. Thousands across this West African country sat glued to TV sets or transistor radios to hear the court’s findings. Most simply went back to their daily lives after the verdict was read.

Haja Bintu Mansaray’s husband was killed by rebels in Koinadugu District, northern Sierra Leone, right in front of her.

“This verdict cannot bring back my husband, but my children and I can take solace from it,” said Mansaray, who added that she would never forget seeing her husband murdered.

Like many Sierra Leoneans, she said she has struggled to survive since the war, finding it difficult to pay her children’s school fees. While the conflict ended in 2002, the country has remained near the bottom of the United Nations Human Development Index, and much of the damage done is yet to be repaired.

Taylor was convicted of supporting the Revolutionary United Front (RUF), a rebel faction led by Foday Sankoh, which invaded the east of the country in 1991. The RUF unleashed 11 years of suffering on the civilian population, with mass amputations, rape, sexual slavery and the use of child soldiers characterising its campaigns. The RUF sought control of the rich alluvial diamond fields in the eastern part of Sierra Leone.

In Kono District, one of the longest-suffering regions during the war, survivors said they were happy with the guilty verdict, but were anxious to know what the sentence would be.

“I would give him a slow agony of a death, because he was the one responsible for the amputations, the killings, the destruction of lives and property,” said Eric Kellie, in Kono’s capital town of Koidu.

Kellie’s brother and mother were killed during the war, and his home was destroyed. More than a decade later, he is still trying to pick up the pieces.

“It has been very difficult for a long time,” said Kellie.

An estimated 50,000 people were killed during the war, with thousands more raped or suffering amputations. And since the war’s end, Sierra Leone has seen far less international support than neighbouring Liberia, which suffered a 14-year war after Taylor invaded the country with a small rebel faction in 1989. Taylor has not been indicted for any of the atrocities committed during the Liberian war.

Eldred Collins, the former RUF spokesman and current spokesman for the political party of the same name, said that Taylor was not to blame for the war, which he attributed instead to Sierra Leone’s long history of corrupt and unjust governance. In order to prevent another conflict, those conditions need to change, said Collins.

Abdul Rahim Kamara, director of Manifesto 99, a human rights organisation following the special court, said the trial had “sent out a loud and clear message, not only to Sierra Leone but to the whole continent: that the days of impunity are over.”

“This should be a warning to all sitting officials that one day they will be held accountable for what they do,” said Kamara.

In Freetown, Alhaji Jusu Jakka, the director of the War Amputees Victims’ Association, said he was “happy” and “relieved” after the verdict. But he pointed out that the Taylor trial cost a great deal when little has been done for the victims of the war. The trial reportedly cost 50 million dollars.

“The international community has spent more money on perpetrators, rather than victims, who suffered the atrocities perpetrated by these people,” said Jakka.

He said the judgment was a victory for victims, but he expected more reparations.

The verdict represents the first time a head of state has been found guilty of war crimes since the end of the Second World War. Taylor is the first former African head of state to be tried for crimes against humanity, and the case has been hailed as an end of impunity for African despots.

A sentence is expected on May 16. Taylor’s lawyers have said they will appeal.

*Additional reporting by Jessica McDiarmid in Kono District, Sierra Leone.

Farmers in the Democratic Republic of Congo are embracing a new variety of cassava which, in combination with improved agricultural techniques, easily outperforms yields from other popular types of this important crop.

Farmers in the Democratic Republic of Congo are embracing a new variety of cassava. Credit: Credit: André Thiel/Flickr

Cassava is a staple food in many parts of DRC, and farmers disappointed with harvests of the popular F100 variety, which has proved vulnerable to a plant disease called mosaic, have turned to a newer strain with great success.

“We produced 58 tonnes of TME 419 cassava from a two hectare field in 2011,” said 27-year-old Romain Twarita. “That’s a yield of 29 tonnes per hectare, compared to the 10 or 12 tonnes per hectare of F100 that we harvested in 2010.”

Twarita, the coordinator of Action Jeunes Pour le Développement de Nkara (AJDN), an association of 22 young farmers at Nkara, 90 kilometres from Kikwit, the capital of the southwestern DRC province of Bandundu, says the 2011 crop brought in more than 25,000 dollars for AJDN, against 10,000 dollars the year before, and just 3,000 dollars in 2009, the year the association was established.

He said AJDN has also adopted “binage”, a new method of hoeing which maximises the benefits of irrigation –”worth two waterings”, as Twarita put it. Binage calls for the surface of the soil to be broken up, to allow more rain to soak into it. The young farmers also use compost and manure to enrich the soil with organic and mineral matter.

“The big problem is a shortage of farm implements, and the lack of understanding from landowners who ask so much money for a plot – 40 or 50 dollars for half a hectare, depending on location,” he told IPS.

“The cassava is bought from farms here by traders, then sent to the capital, Kinshasa, where it sells fast,” said Jacques Mitini, president of the provincial network of small farmers’ organisations in Bandundu, which includes 255 smallholder associations, nearly a third of these representing young farmers between the ages of 21 and 33.

In the west of DRC, in Bas-Congo province, the Comité de Développement de Kakongo (CDK) is planting trees to create windbreaks and maintain soil moisture, boosting production of other crops on a three-hectare plot.

“We are using intercropping, that’s why there are these wind-breaks of moringa trees which also fertilise the earth without us needing to use chemical fertilisers. Irrigation is also important,” said Espérance Nzuzi, president of Force Paysanne du Bas-Congo, a network of 264 smallholder farmers associations, including 87 created by youth.

“The 84 tonnes of TME 419 cassava harvested last year earned us 39,960 dollars, compared to just 6,160 dollars from 14 tonnes of F100 in 2010,” said Nzuzi.

On two hectares on the outskirts of Kinshasa, the Congolese capital, another youth association, Jeunes Dynamiques de Malulku (JDM), has also found success with the adoption of new techniques.

“We’ve only been practicing binage since we started this venture in 2010. We produced 15 tonnes of TME 419 from a single hectare that year, but in 2011 we harvested 28 tonnes from a hectare and a half, applying a little bit of chemical fertiliser,” said Anne Mburabata, 32, president of the association.

“Before we started popularising TME 419 cassava, we tested it carefully,” said Didier Mboma, who heads the technical innovation service at the Impresa Servizi Coordinati (ISCO), an Italian NGO which is making free cuttings of the new cassava variety available to farmers.

“Since the tests in 2008, we have planted 3,000 cuttings, and we have harvested 30,000.”

Mboma said that young farmers are strongly establishing themselves as productive farmers, while contributing to the country’s food security.

“Young farmers must move towards professionalisation, and take control of the entire value chain from production, to processing, to marketing,” said Dr. Christophe Arthur Mampuya, from the Ministry of Agriculture, Fishing and Livestock.

“The TME 419 variety is a high-yielding one. It’s also among the best varieties being promoted,” he said.

Mampuya said emerging young farmers must also plant woodlots, as adoption of the new cassava variety is scaled up.

“TME 419 is more popular in the west of DRC than in the east, but step by step, the variety could spread across the country,” said Paluku Mivimba, president of the National Confederation of Agricultural Producers of Congo.

When the verdict against Liberia’s former President Charles Taylor for war crimes in Sierra Leone is handed down on Thursday, it will be of no help to the many former combatants of the country’s brutal civil war who have not been reintegrated into society. Instead, they will continue to pose a threat to Sierra Leone’s future stability.

Ishmael Beah, a former child soldier and UNICEF Advocate for Children Affected by War worries about the country’s former child soldiers. Credit: Mustapha Dumbuya

Taylor is being tried by the Special Court for Sierra Leone at The Hague. He is charged with crimes against humanity, mass killings, sexual violence and the use of child soldiers through his support of the rebel Revolutionary United Front in exchange for “blood diamonds”. Taylor is alleged to have masterminded the use of drug-fuelled child soldiers in combat.

Ishmael Beah is one of those former child soldiers. He was forced to join Sierra Leone’s 1991-2002 civil war at the age of 13, when he was recruited into the government army. While he has been able to turn his life around and was appointed the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) first Advocate for Children Affected by War in 2007, Beah worries about the country’s former child soldiers who are now unemployed.

“If Taylor is found guilty, it will be a great victory, not only for Sierra Leone, but for the whole of West Africa,” says Beah, who fought in the army for three years before being rescued by UNICEF.

“But if he is acquitted, it will be a big blow to everyone in Sierra Leone and the rest of West Africa.”

Beah says that with Sierra Leone’s elections approaching in November, the youth should be employed in order to avoid them being used by political parties to disrupt the electoral process.

“One of my greatest fears in Sierra Leone now is, if you have a large number of disgruntled and idle young people who have nothing to do with themselves, you have the possibility of sparking anything,” says Beah.

In September 2011, political violence in the southern city of Bo left one dead and 23 injured. The government’s Kevin Lewis Commission of Inquiry into the incident found that political parties were using ex-combatants as unofficial bodyguards. Political violence later erupted across the country in January after a by-election.

Unemployed youth are easy targets for recruitment, says Beah.

“The guy hasn’t had anything to eat for today, so he is not thinking long term, he’s thinking short term, about what he can eat now,” says Beah.

“I used to be in that position. You can’t expect anybody with short-term thinking to think for the future if you can’t provide them with the opportunity to have one.”

The U.N. estimates that 10,000 child soldiers were used in Sierra Leone’s brutal civil war. During it rebels cut off the arms of those who had voted in the country’s elections, and left more than 50,000 people dead.

The U.N.-brokered Disarmament, Demobilisation and Reintegration (DDR) process was meant to disarm and provide training to former fighters, and support them to rejoin their communities. Ex-combatants received vocational training in areas such as mechanics, driving and carpentry.

According to a 2005 U.N. report titled Disarmament, Demobilization, Reintegration and Stability in Africa, about 71,000 ex-combatants were disarmed and demobilised.

But many former fighters say that the programme did not work.

Tamba Fasuluku was known as “Rainu” when he was the commander of a rebel faction called the West Side Boys.

Fasuluku says that he was fortunate to be reintegrated into society and now works as a pastor. But he says that many of the young boys his forces conscripted have not been so lucky.

“It pains me now to see these young boys languishing on the streets without jobs,” says Fasuluku. “They have also become easy targets for greedy politicians who use these boys to cause trouble in society.”

He agrees that most of the political violence in Sierra Leone is perpetrated by ex-combatants. He says it is because they were given access to arms and exposed to violence at a tender age during the war. He adds that it is also because their families and society are yet to welcome them back as members of the community.

“If the government and other stakeholders do not come together to take these boys off the streets, they will continue to go astray, and that’s dangerous for peace,” says Fasuluku.

Dr. Alfred Jarret, the head of sociology and social work at Freetown’s Fourah Bay College, calls the DDR programme an “abysmal failure”.

Bobson Yappo Sesay, a former child soldier, agrees: “I was disarmed and never got any benefit from the DDR programme.”

“I can’t go home again,” Sesay says, explaining that he now lives as an unemployed youth in the capital, Freetown.

Jarret says ex-combatants were not well trained and because of Sierra Leone’s high unemployment rate many were unable to find work. According to the Ministry of Labour, the national youth unemployment rate was about 46 percent in 2008. The professor also says that former fighters face discrimination from potential employers and society at large.

Until the government revisits its policy on ex-combatants and tries to engage them, it will pose a serious threat to the country’s security, says Jarret.

The government itself says it offers no support to former fighters. Ibrahim Satie Kamara is the spokesperson for the National Commission for Social Action, the government agency responsible for the reparation programme for victims of the conflict.

Kamara says that the government’s reparations programmes cater for victims, such as amputees, the severely war-wounded, and children affected by the war.

Ex-combatants, including former child soldiers, fell under the DDR process. There is no government reparation programme for them, he says.

Kamara adds that war victims are discontent with the amount of support being given to former fighters, who are often viewed as perpetrators who unleashed suffering on the people.

Beah says the former DDR programme worked well for some but others missed out or needed more help. And now there is nothing left to help them.

“You can’t just take the guns from them and then teach them how to fix a car and expect them to do miracles with their lives when they don’t have the resources.”

It was the middle of the day when Tabisou, 72, suddenly saw people from her town of Amderamboukane in Mali fleeing for their lives. Her family had no time to pack their things; the fighting had already begun.

Several of the children in Abala camp are visibly malnourished, and NGO workers are concerned about potential epidemics. Credit: William Lloyd-George/IPS

“Everything I have worked for over my whole life was lost. Just like that,” says the elderly woman who comes from a family of farmers as she sits in a United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR) tent at the Abala refugee camp, 85 kilometres from the Mali-Niger border. “We had to leave all our animals and food.”

Tabisou is one of nearly 270,000 refugees who have had to flee their homes since January, when conflict erupted in northern Mali. That had begun after hundreds of Tuareg mercenaries, formerly hired by slain Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi to fight alongside him, returned to Mali after he was toppled, with heavy weapons, to restart their own five-decade-old rebellion.

The National Movement for the Liberation of Azawad (MNLA) claims to fight against the marginalisation and oppression of the Tuareg people in northern Mali. The Tuareg are a Berber people of the desert and traditionally are nomadic and have long complained that the Malian government has marginalised them.

Tabisou does not care much for the MNLA’s grievances. “I am an old lady, and have many grandchildren,” she says pointing to the gaunt and dirtied children’s faces gathered around her in the tent. “The rebels do not care about us, they treated us very badly.”

Tabisou claims the rebels came into her home, waved guns in her face, and asked all the children to line up outside. “I thought they were going to kill us, luckily two of the rebels told the others to calm down.”

According to UNHCR representative Mariata Sandouno most of the refugees have fled due to fear of the various armed groups.

“Most of them said that they fled out of fear, also due to ongoing looting by bandits, and the withdrawal of the national army has made them feel insecure,” explains Sandouno. The army withdrew from Amderamboukane in January when the rebels seized control of the town of 3,000 people.

“Also some refugees said it was a very confusing scenario as they were not able to distinguish which of the groups armed men belonged to.”

The refugees come from the Haussa, Tuareg and Songhai ethnic groups. According to Ibrahim Ag Abdil, a 30 year-old pastoralist, few of the people in the camp support the MNLA’s cause. The MNLA is an umbrella term given to groups of armed Tuaregs who have come together with the declared goal of administrating an independent state, Azawad.

“Mali is already a very poor country, we have to rely on the United States, the United Kingdom and Europe for aid,” he explains. “The MNLA are just making more divisions. How can we survive as two countries, when we are barely surviving as one?”

Ag Abdil says the MNLA stole all the motorbikes belonging to civilians in his town of Amderamboukane. After the MNLA left, he says, bandits entered the city and looted all the shops and homes.

“We don’t know if there is even anything left,” he tells IPS. “The MNLA are not protecting civilians’ possessions, they are just attacking towns, leaving them, and then the place is empty for bandits to come and steal.”

Next to him, Ajawa, 72, nods his head. “They say they fight for all the Tuaregs but in fact they only fight for a few, many Tuaregs don’t support them,” he says. “Now we’re stuck in this camp. It is painful to see my people begging for handouts, and our children not able to go to school.”

When the MNLA arrived in Amderamboukane, the citizens fled the eastern Malian town and walked two months to find refuge in Niger. When these refugees first arrived, they stayed in a makeshift camp at Sinegodar, 10 km from the border.

“We were always worrying about warmth at night, and food during the day,” says Salima, 19. Several of the children in Abala camp are visibly malnourished, and NGO workers are concerned about potential epidemics.

There are currently 6,286 refugees at Abala camp out of an estimated 26,500 who have fled to Niger. The rest are in Burkino Faso and Mauritania, while there are over 80,000 internally displaced inside Mali. UNHCR will soon open more refugee camps in Mangaize and Ayorou, both towns in Niger.

According to Antonio Jose Canhandula, head of UNHCR’s emergency team, the biggest concern for the agency at the moment is that the refugees are entering a food crisis in Niger.

“These refugees are coming into a food crisis in Niger, which will aggravate the situation here,” says Canhandula. “They are nomadic people, coming with cattle and other animals, so we are trying to adapt to their needs and minimise the burden on the host community, who are already facing a famine and water shortage.”

UNHCR reports that there are currently 300 urban refugees in Niamey. Most of the refugees coming through Niamey are government members who have travelled from Gao in Mali. They are seeking assistance to return to Bamako, Mali’s capital, and reunite with their families, collect salaries or just show they have not abandoned their jobs since the Mar. 22 coup that overthrew the government. There are also reports of military staff fleeing to Niamey in order to return to Bamako.

Increasing numbers of Malian women are being raped by Tuareg rebels and armed groups that have swept across the north of Mali since the beginning of year, expelling all government troops from the region.

Increasing numbers of Malian women are being raped by Tuareg rebels and armed groups that have swept across the north of Mali since January. Credit: William Lloyd-George/IPS

According to Corinne Dufka, senior West Africa researcher at Human Rights Watch, who is currently on a mission in Mali, there have been reports of rape and sexual violence taking place in towns and villages across the region.

“We’re very concerned about what appears to be a drastic increase in the targeting and sexual abuse of women and girls by armed groups in the north,” Dufka told IPS.

“Since rebel groups consolidated their control of the northern territory they call the Azawad, Human Rights Watch has documented several cases of rape and many others cases in which girls and women have been abducted from their homes, towns and villages, and very likely sexually abused.”

Dufka reports that most of the abuses have been, “perpetrated by rebels from the MNLA and to a lesser extent Arab militias allied to them.”

The National Movement for the Liberation of Azawad (MNLA) is an umbrella term given to groups of armed Tuaregs who have come together with the declared goal of administrating an independent state, Azawad.

Since the colonial French left the region in 1960, there have been several Tuareg rebellions against the Malian government. Previous uprisings ended in negotiations and the appointment of rebel leaders to state positions.

However, the rebels say the Malian government has failed to stick to promises made in negotiations, and continue to demand an independent state.

This time, armed with a heavy arsenal of weapons left over from previous rebellions, and additional arms coming from Libya over the last few years, the MNLA have made unprecedented advances. This was made easier by the coup in Bamako and the subsequent withdrawal of state military in the north.

Commenting on the allegations made by Human Rights Watch, MNLA spokesman Moussa ag Assarid, currently in the Malian city of Gao, denied MNLA men were involved in the sexual violence. “These men are not MNLA, but are other men around,” says Ag Assarid speaking over the phone from Gao. He admitted, however, that “We cannot control all the people in Azawad.”

Although the MNLA declared an independent state on Apr 6, residents in the region say the rebel movement does not really seem to be in control. “One day, one armed group will come into town, then the next day it will be another; we feel very unsafe,” one resident in Gao who preferred to remain anonymous told IPS over the phone.

Since the conflict began, several armed Islamist groups have emerged in the region, adding to concerns for the future of women’s rights.

One group, Ansar Dine, led by Iyad Ag Ghali, a prominent leader in previous Tuareg uprisings, has begun attempting to enforce Sharia law in the north. Soon after entering Timbuktu, Ag Ghali announced the group’s beliefs on the radio.

“Misfortune is due to people’s lack of faith in God, and because they have abandoned the practice of Sharia, because we have changed our way of life under the influence of whites,” he said.

While Ag Ghali is estimated to only have around 300 men in his ranks, his influence goes far and wide. Many MNLA commanders are still loyal to him from previous rebellions, as are drug smugglers, and other Islamist groups in the region.

Since Ansar Dine announced Sharia law, there have been unconfirmed reports of Ag Gali travelling with leaders from AQIM, the regional Al Qaeda group. It is also believed that Nigeria’s extremist group, Boko Haram, and the Movement for Unity and Jihad in West Africa have been operating in the region.

As residents report foreigners increasingly being spotted in the Islamists ranks, fears grow that Ag Ghali’s goal of creating an Islamic state could be closer to being achieved. Many Malian women, who have enjoyed freedom and relative equality compared to women in other countries in the region, are concerned this freedom could soon be a thing of the past.

“Since these groups have arrived, we hardly go outside, we are terrified what will happen if we forget to do something they have told us to do,” a 40-year-old market vendor in Timbuktu, who also wished to remain anonymous, told IPS.

“I have been working in the market all my life, it is how I feed my children, how can I just stop now? Even if they allow me to work, I am not used to sitting in the baking heat all day covered head to toe.”

It is reported that Ansar Dine and other Islamist groups have been going door-to-door ordering women to wear veils and respect Islamic law. They have been going to hairdressers and ripping down photos of unveiled women, shutting down brothels and prohibiting the sale of alcoholic drinks.

While there have not been any reports of women being punished by Ansar Dine for failing to adhere to Sharia law, women in the region are growing increasingly fearful of the possibility that they will start being punished if the Islamist group gains more control.

Food, electricity and infrastructure have also been severely affected by the conflict. In many cities food and water are running low, and it has been difficult for civilians to receive humanitarian aid.

“The vulnerability of women in the north is increased by the lack of medical care, non-existent rule of law institutions, and limited humanitarian assistance which could mitigate their suffering and deter further abuse,” says Dufka.

Olivier Forgha Koumbou washes some freshly picked carrots in a small brook and eats them with relish. His thriving farm in Santa, in Cameroon’s North West region, looks like a miracle in the midst of surrounding farms where carrots, lettuce, potatoes and leeks have withered and died.

Olivier Forgha Koumbou’s son waters his thriving farm in Santa, in Cameroon’s North West region. Credit: Ngala Killian Chimtom/IPS

Rains fell lightly here in early March, but it was not enough to prevent the sun from withering the crops as traditional methods of irrigation failed because of the low rainfall. In the North West region the average annual rainfall stands at just 380 mm, but it is meant to be between 1,000 to 2,000 mm. “The farms have failed me this year,” 43-year-old farmer, Tembene Tangwan, tells IPS.

He explains that because of the low rainfall he cannot use his traditional method of irrigating his crops.

“We used to pipe water from a higher altitude to our farms, and used sprinklers for irrigation. But now, the water sources are drying up, and the low pressure in the system cannot carry water through the pipes,” he says.

“We can only pray that the rains will come back,” he adds.

But his neighbour, 32-year-old Koumbou, is not sitting back and putting his hands together in prayer to ask that the rains return. As he weeds through his crop of carrots, he proudly says: “We develop new strategies when we are faced with an additional challenge.”

Instead of standing back and watching his crop wither, Koumbou began water harvesting.

“I discovered that during the night, the volume of water in the nearby stream increases. So I bought containers to store water in, and at night I take my farm workers to collect it. The water is then used during the day to irrigate the crops,” he tells IPS.

Koumbou is already setting a trend, and other farmers are now starting to follow his methods. “It’s the only way out,” says Christopher Neba, who has also begun water harvesting.

Koumbou has been cultivating carrots, potatoes, cabbages, lettuce and leeks for the past 25 years. He says that his mother introduced him to farming at a tender age.

“When I turned seven, I began accompanying my parents to the farm. I have remained a farmer ever since.”

Today, he makes an average profit of just under 5,000 dollars annually. But this year he believes he will make even more.

“The fact that many farmers lost hope and abandoned their farms means that prices will rise significantly this year, and that means more profit for me. I do sympathise with my neighbours, but that is how things stand for now,” he says.

While there are no concrete figures available of how many farmers have given up on farming, it is not a welcome development in a country that largely relies on food imports.

Cameroon spends an average of 122 million dollars a year to import rice, sorghum, and millet. Last year, shortfalls in rice production led to the importation of 80,000 tonnes, which cost 240 million dollars.

This comes amid rising food insecurity in the country. The United Nations World Food Programme says that 400,000 people in Cameroon’s north require 40,000 tonnes of food aid to avoid going hungry.

Meanwhile, the North West regional delegate for agriculture, Cletus Awah, blames the water shortages on reckless agricultural practices.

“We have told farmers to limit their farmlands to at least 15 metres away from water sources. But very often, they farm right on the riverbeds, destroying the vegetation that protects these water sources and, therefore, water levels are bound to drop,” he tells IPS. Awah believes a solution to the dwindling water supply will come when farmers begin to protect water sources. “Farmers must immediately stop farming too close to streams, brooks or wetlands,” he says.

Koumbou has heeded the appeal.

“It is our fault that water sources are drying up,” he says. “We discovered that the marshy lands here were so fertile that we cultivated them without thinking of the consequences. Gradually, the water receded, and now we are paying the price. This year, I did not cultivate the marshy land on my farm and that is why I still have some water.”

Meanwhile, the regional department for agriculture also believes water harvesting is a short-term solution for farmers.

“As a matter of urgency, we plan to construct water storage facilities so that the little available water can be harvested and stored for eventual use by farmers to irrigate their crops,” Awah says. He adds that a long-term strategy is to plant trees that can help protect water sources.

Six West African heads of state will attend a regional summit in Guinea on Monday, to discuss the situation in neighbouring Guinea Bissau, where an Apr. 12 coup d’état aborted presidential elections.

The Economic Community of West African States sent a delegation to Bissau, the capital, immediately following the coup to urge the immediate restoration of constitutional rule.

Ahead of the Apr. 23 summit, ECOWAS has rejected the authority of a National Transitional Council (NTC) which the coup plotters’ say they have put in place to run Guinea-Bissau for the next two years.

The NTC was established following the signing of an accord on Apr. 18 by the junta and leaders of 20 opposition parties who have come out in support of the coup.

The junta announced that the council was to be headed by Manuel Sherif Nhamadjo, who finished third in the first round of presidential elections on Mar. 18. However, Nhamadjo told Al Jazeera: “I was not consulted for the post of president of the transition.” He said he would remain in his current position as vice president of the ruling African Party for the Independence of Guinea and Cape Verde (PAIGC).

Ibrahima Sory Diallo, from the Party for Social Renewal (PRS), was named as vice president by the junta. The PRS’s presidential candidate, Kumba Yala, was runner-up in the March poll, but has refused to contest a second round against the ruling party candidate and former prime minister, Carlos Gomes Junior, alleging fraud by his opponent.

Following the coup, the PAIGC has joined a coalition with eight other parties in denouncing the NTC as illegal and calling for a return to constitutional legality and the completion of the electoral process.

ECOWAS said on Apr. 19 that it regarded the creation of the NTC as an “usurpation of power”, and reminded the coup leaders that they had earlier this month committed themselves to working with the regional body – to which Guinea-Bissau belongs – to allow the immediate restoration of normal constitutional rule.

The West African leaders urged a swift restoration of constitutional order as well as the release of Gomes Junior and Raimundo Pereira, who was appointed as interim head of state following the death of President Malam Bacai Sanhá in January after a long illness. Both leaders were arrested and have been left out of the transition programme imposed by the military rulers.

The International Committee of the Red Cross, which was able to visit the interim president and former prime minister in custody, said it had been able to give them medical supplies, clothes and toiletries, adding that both men have been allowed to send news to their families.

According to some sources, the coup’s leaders on Apr. 20 announced that five ECOWAS heads of state would visit Bissau on Monday for discussions with military and civil authorities, with a view to finding an exit from the country’s political crisis. But the junta did not specify which ECOWAS leaders they were expecting, and the information has not been confirmed by the regional body.

The Community of Portuguese Speaking Countries (CPLP), currently headed by Angola, adopted a resolution at an Apr. 14 meeting in the Portuguese capital, Lisbon, calling for the creation of an “intervention force under the aegis of the United Nations.” The CPLP continues to insist on the deployment of soldiers with the assistance of ECOWAS, the African Union (AU) and the European Union.

But Guinea-Bissau’s military command has accused Angola of interfering in security matters of their country. But Lieutenant Colonel Daba Nah Waina, one of the coup leaders, told IPS, “The crisis has been brewing since Angolan soldiers arrived in Guinea-Bissau with vehicles and weapons, but without notifying the chief of staff of the armed forces of the country.”

The Angolan government operates a bauxite mine in the east of Guinea-Bissau – the country is one of the world’s leading producers of this mineral – and also has an interest in a project to construct a new port in the south.

Since October 2011, some 300 Angolan troops have been present in Guinea-Bissau, drafted in to reform the army and police of the country in line with an agreement between the two governments. But the coup plotters accuse Angola of wanting to “destroy” the country’s army and called for the withdrawal of the troops.

For its part, the African Union decided on Apr. 17 to suspend Guinea-Bissau from all AU activities with immediate effect, pending restoration of constitutional order.

Both the African Development Bank and the World Bank, which have called for a swift resolution of the crisis, have suspended development programmes in Guinea-Bissau, with the exception of urgent assistance.

By Naresh Newar
DANG, Nepal , Apr 20 2012 (IPS)

Five years after Nepal abolished Kamalari, a system of girl slavery, thousands of young women are still awaiting promised rehabilitation and support from the new democratic republic.

Some 11,000 ‘liberated’ Kamalari girls, many of them from this impoverished southwestern district, hope to see some of the money accumulating since 2006 when the Supreme Court ordered the setting up of a fund for the welfare of the girls and their families.

In 2011 alone, the government allocated close to 2.5 million dollars towards the rehabilitation of the girls, which covered scholarships, vocational training and residential support.

But, so far, not even 70,000 dollars have been spent on the welfare of the former slave girls, according to the Mukta Kamalari Bikash Manch (Free Kamalari Development Forum), a network the girls have formed to fight for their rights.

“We know that there is a huge amount of money set aside for us, but we haven’t seen any of it being used for our rehabilitation,” says 20-year-old Urmila Chaudhary, a former slave girl who was rescued after 10 years of bondage in a wealthy Kathmandu household.

Speaking with IPS in Dang, some 200 km southwest of the capital, Urmila recalls how she was sold into slavery by her parents when she was barely six and deprived of a childhood.

In 2008, Urmila was rescued through the efforts of Friends of Nepal (FNC) and Nepal Youth Opportunity Foundation (NYOF), non-government organisations (NGOs), that jointly rescued over 11,000 girls from extreme exploitation.

Since then, she has been a leading activist against the Kamalari system, pressurising the Nepal government to fulfill its promise.

Introduced during the 1950s, mostly in the five districts of Dang, Banke, Bardiya, Kailali and Kanchanpur in Nepal’s southern plains called the Terai, the Kamalari system was the only way the Tharu ethnic group could pay back debts owed to exploitative landlords.

While Tharu adults and male children were forced to work under a parallel bonded labour system, called ‘Kamaiya’, in the landowner’s farms and household, the girls were sold off under Kamalari.

Young Tharu girls were systematically sold off through middlemen to households in the capital and other major cities on verbal contracts that provided for the payment of 50-70 dollars a year to the parents.

“Rescuing the girl children was a huge breakthrough, but sadly, the girls never received much support from the government,” says Som Paneru, executive director of NYOF.

“We have to start a nationwide protest movement soon and we will take to the streets in the capital to push the government to help former Kamalari,” says Bhagiram Chaudhary, director of Society Welfare Action Nepal (SWAN), an NGO in Dang.

The neglect of Kamalari girls squarely blots the Millennium Development Goals pertaining to education and poverty. Although Nepal boasts of progress in the two concerned MDGs, there are wide disparities among ethnic groups and between rural and urban populations.

The MDGs are eight development goals that United Nations member states are committed to achieving by 2015. The first three pertain to eradicating extreme poverty and hunger, achieving universal primary education and promoting gender equality.

Kamalari girls, due to the extreme poverty of their families, are unable to attend schools and most go hungry, according to activists.

Although enrolment rates in Nepal’s primary schools now stand at 93.7 percent, over 200,000 children from the most marginalised and hardest to reach are out-of-school, according to the MDG Progress Report 2010. NGOs say that most of those out-of-school are from among the Kamalari. “So far, I have only received seven dollars for a whole year and I don’t know what to use the money for,” says Kalpana Chaudhary, a young Kamalari who fears that she will have to drop out of school soon.

“Though they have freedom and no longer have to wake up to slavery each day, they often go to bed hungry,” Urmila said.

Activists fear that the girls will be compelled to return to working as slaves since their impoverished parents cannot afford to take care of them. NGOs like SWAN, NYOF and FNC are struggling to help them, but their funds are limited.

“At the NGO level, we are trying to help with their education and support for their families, but we have limited resources,” says Chaudhury at SWAN.

Chaudhary estimates that the cost of keeping a Kamalari girl in school is about 15 dollars a month. He and the activist Kamalari girls have often travelled to Kathmandu to visit the education ministry, but have only succeeded in spending more resources.

“The government should be taking the responsibility, and they have the funds. We cannot say when we will receive the promised money,” says Urmila. “The parents often scold their girls for coming back home instead of working to support the families.”

Some officials lay the blame on prolonged political instability. The former monarchy is still struggling with a difficult peace process that followed the end, in 2006, of a bloody civil war that lasted a whole decade.

“The price of freedom has been quite high for us, and while we enjoy so much from liberation, our struggle to lead a new life is yet to begin,” says Urmila.

Government and sanitation experts say Zimbabwe needs to increase efforts to promote good hygiene and invest in toilets and clean water provision, as the country grapples with a typhoid outbreak.

Zimbabwe’s challenge is to change people’s attitudes about sanitation and hygiene. Credit: Busani Bafana/IPS

The country has reported more than 3,000 cases of typhoid since March. Typhoid is transmitted by the ingestion of food or water contaminated with the feces of an infected person. Most of the cases are from the country’s capital, Harare, and there have been at least two reported deaths

However, the use of the “bush toilet” or open defecation is a much-used practice, which the Zimbabwe government is concerned about. Zimbabwe’s Minister of Water Resources Samuel Sipepa Nkomo said it reflects the ingrained attitudes about sanitation and hygiene among the people in this southern African nation.

“We have a big problem with regards to open defecation and we have to put our heads together to deal with it,” Nkomo told IPS.

Zimbabwe paid a high price for its limited investment in sanitation and water programmes between 2008 and 2009. More than 4,000 people died from cholera and over 100,000 were infected because of poor hygiene and a lack of toilet facilities. Cholera is also is transmitted by the ingestion of food or water contaminated with the feces of an infected person.

“The spread of cholera said that our hygiene was poor and we were not washing our hands at regular intervals. Besides, typhoid is a disease of hygiene,” said Noma Neseni, executive director of the Institute of Water and Sanitation Development, a non-governmental organisation that is a regional centre for institutional capacity development in the water and sanitation sector.

Neseni said Zimbabwe’s challenge was to change people’s attitudes about sanitation and hygiene. “We are not focusing on hygiene promotion, but more on infrastructure, which should not be the case.”

Data compiled by the World Health Organization and the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) Joint Monitoring Programme shows that Zimbabwe’s national targets are 80 percent for rural sanitation, 100 percent for urban sanitation, and 100 percent for rural and urban water supply.

Based on the most recent estimates of sanitation coverage in 2010, Zimbabwe needs to increase coverage from 52 to 77 percent in urban areas and from 32 to 68 percent in rural areas to meet the Millennium Development Goals, the eight international anti-poverty and development goals that the United Nations member states agreed to achieve by the year 2015.

“If there is persistent hand washing, no one will succumb to diseases,” said Neseni. “We have more infrastructural development, but infrastructure without the requisite attitude will not achieve much. We need hygiene awareness. Part of the problem is that we take sanitation and water as the preserve of the government; we need the private sector to work in partnership with everyone.”

Neseni called for a coordinated public-private sector approach to tackling Zimbabwe’s challenges in sanitation, hygiene and water supply.

These key issues are the focus of the second High-Level Meeting of the Sanitation and Water for All (SWA) partnership hosted by UNICEF in Washington D.C. on Friday Apr. 20.

The meeting has brought together more than 60 ministers responsible for water and sanitation and finance from over 30 developing countries. Also present are donors and civil society organisations committed to accelerating progress towards universal access to safe water supply, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) through increased investment.

According to the SWA briefing note, the ministers are expected to come up with resolutions on how to address the WASH crisis.

Nkomo was quick to admit to Zimbabwe’s poor performance in this area.

“On sanitation, we are bad, though we are better on water provision,” Nkomo told IPS from Washington D.C. “The outbreak of cholera in 2008 and typhoid this year were loud warning bells about the consequences of not spending more money in sanitation and water infrastructure. But we are making efforts to improve the situation once and for all.”

Nkomo, who is accompanying Zimbabwe’s Finance Minister Tendai Biti to the meeting, said the country was drafting a national sanitation and water strategy for presentation to stakeholders by the end of April.

“This will be a multi-sectorial approach to raise awareness about the dangers of open defecation, and we should not be found wanting when it comes to providing proper infrastructure.”

The strategy will guide investment and promotion of sanitation, and access to clean water in urban and rural areas. This week, Zimbabwe’s Ministry of Health and Child Welfare warned that waterborne cholera remained a threat.

Figures released this week by the Epidemiology and Disease Control Unit in the Ministry of Health and Child Welfare show that cholera cases for the first quarter of 2012 doubled to 8,154 from the 4,000 cases reported during the same period last year. Half of these cases were for children under the age of five. The ministry said it is planning to introduce vaccines to curb the number of cholera cases in children.

Explosives, high-watt light bulbs, monofilament nets, and poison: these are a few methods fisherfolk are using to catch ever-dwindling fish stocks off Ghana’s shores.

Thomas Essuman says Ghanaian fisherfolk know that using poison, dynamite and illegal nets to catch fish is doing long-term damage. Credit: Jessica McDiarmid/IPS

“Before, your boat was full,” says Thomas Essuman, a 20-year veteran of the seas around Takoradi- Sekondi, a city in western Ghana. “Now, you don’t get fish like before.”

As the number of fish continues to decline in this West African nation, those who rely on the sea say they have no choice if they want to catch enough to survive.

“If you don’t use those things, your net will be empty,” says Essuman.

He says that many use light to attract fish. Others use the pesticide DDT (dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane) to poison fish, or dynamite, to kill large numbers that can be scooped up.

Fisherpeople know the practices are harmful, Essuman says. “They will destroy the country because fishing brings life. If you spoil the sea, the fish don’t come, and how are you going to earn money?”

Samson Falae, who has been fishing in western Ghana for 30 years, says dynamite scares fish out to deeper waters, and boat owners have to use more and more fuel to follow them.

“If you go far out and you don’t get enough fish, you can’t afford to go the next day,” says Falae.

Ghana released regulations to govern fishing in 2010, prohibiting many of these common practices. The regulations also restrict mesh sizes and types of nets, areas where fishing is permitted and sizes of fish that can be caught.

Alex Sabah, the director of the fisheries department in Ghana’s Western Region, says fish stocks are in danger of collapse. There are an estimated 200,000 Ghanaian pirogues now fishing, as the fisherfolk strain to feed an ever-larger population. Boats are going about three times further out to sea than 10 years ago to find fish.

And, he says, they are catching baby fish, small fish that serve as food for larger species, and are decimating sensitive areas such as estuaries. Only one of 30 common fish species in Ghana’s waters is not considered threatened, he says.

“They are destroying the stocks. If the stocks collapse…The little pain now of regulation is better than the bigger pain later.”

But, Sabah says, “We are having a hell of a time stopping it.”

Shortly after the regulations came out, fisheries officers, police and the navy cracked down, making arrests, seizing equipment and laying charges.

Fisherfolk did not take kindly to the new measures, and the situation deteriorated into violence and demonstrations.

“There have been clashes with the navy,” says Sabah. “We arrested a number of them and put them before the courts.”

He says enforcement is hindered by a lack of political will and, at times, interference by politicians eager for votes from the millions who rely on fishing in this West African nation of 25 million people. Politicians have phoned the department and ordered enforcement efforts to stop, says Sabah.

“In that situation, we are helpless,” he says.

Sabah says the introduction of regulations should have been handled differently, and that they are working on a new strategy. The department, he adds, needs to do more to educate fisherpeople on the effects of illegal fishing practices and to win their support for conservation efforts.

The fisheries sector sustains millions of West Africans – as much as a quarter of the workforce, according to the Environmental Justice Foundation (EJF), a London-based charity focused on environmental abuse.

EJF notes fish stocks are under siege from foreign boats illegally harvesting off the coast. The group estimates that sub-Saharan Africa loses about one billion dollars to illegal fishing annually.

But Sabah does not attribute all of Ghana’s troubles to foreign boats. “We cannot blame it all on them,” he says. “Our local fisherfolk are using the wrong procedures.”

Kofi Agbogah, deputy director and programmes coordinator at the Coastal Resources Center in Tadoradi-Sekondi, says regulation measures need to include fisherpeople and provide “enabling conditions”.

“They understand the issues, they know that something must happen,” said Agbogah, whose organisation is implementing a USAID (the government agency providing United States economic and humanitarian assistance worldwide) programme on coastal and fisheries governance.

“But if something happens, will he (the fisherman) get food to eat tomorrow morning? Once you take the net from the guy, he will be prepared to die.”

The Aditmari Maternity Centre (AMC) is unpretentious but hygienic, and its staff of paramedics welcomes pregnant women from the poor farming villages of this district, 375 km northwest of Dhaka.

Nurse Afroz counsels an expecting mother at the Aditmari centre. Credit: Naimul Haq/IPS

Asphalt roads lead up to the single storey, located in the centre of Aditmari sub-district, that has a labour room equipped for normal deliveries, a ten-bed post-labour room, two rooms for counselling and a waiting room with a wide porch for men.

Best of all, the charges for a normal delivery at the AMC are just 2.4 dollars, affordable in impoverished Bangladesh where the per capita income in 2011 was 818 dollars, according to official figures in the Bangladesh Economic Review.

It was at the AMC that Sajeda Begum gave birth to a healthy baby girl two weeks ago. “My daughter had no signs of pre-delivery complications,” says a smiling Tahmina, Sajeda’s 53-year-old mother.

Affordable but reliable maternal health services are what allowed Bangladesh to bring down the resource-poor country’s maternal mortality rate (MMR) from 322 deaths per 100,000 live births in 2001 to 194 deaths in 2010.

Bangladesh’s achievement is impressive considering its classification by the United Nations as a least developed country. Also, better-off neighbours, India and Pakistan, are faring worse with MMR ratios of 212 and 260, respectively.

Improved access to obstetric care, more institutional deliveries and better use of family planning methods are expected to help Bangladesh achieve the United Nations Millennium Development Goal (MDG) of reducing MMR by three-quarters during the 1990–2015 period.

Also encouraging is the fact that the rate of decline in maternal mortality, at an average of 5.5 percent per year, is better than the 5.4 percent required for reaching the MDG by 2015.

As in many other LDCs, the gap between rich and poor in Bangladesh’s maternal health can be stark. Had Sajeda gone to a private clinic her delivery would have cost at least 60 dollars.

Sajeda also did not have to worry about access to care during pregnancy as she regularly received antenatal checkups.

“Sajeda attended the clinic eight times and followed instructions. It is quite amazing that she delivered on due date,” said Shaheen Afroz, chief staff nurse at the AMC, run by the Rangpur Dinajpur Rural Services (RDRS), a non-government organisation (NGO), since 1981.

There are now eight outreach maternity centres in Aditmari sub-district where pregnant women are referred to for examination, but deliveries are done only at the AMC. Patients are registered in coordination with regular government healthcare services to avoid duplication.

Mosammet Elifa, a community health worker at the Mohishkhocha outreach centre, said: “We go from door-to-door to meet pregnant women and invite them to register for antenatal care.”

“We also explain the risks of delivery at home at the hands of untrained birth attendants,” said Elifa. “In the last ten years we have had no records of maternal deaths in our community.”

“We charge only 24 cents for registering a pregnant woman. Thereafter, the consultations, drugs, such as those for sexually transmitted infections, iron and vitamin supplements, blood tests and routine examinations are given free of cost,” said Afroz.

Deepali Rani, 28, now in her second trimester, told IPS that she comes from Durgapur village for regular clinics at the AMC. “My relatives and friends told me about this centre and I find the treatment here good and systematic.”

Project coordinator at RDRS, Komol Kumar Joardder, told IPS that on average 30 women avail of the facilities daily at the AMC. “While the women are waiting to be examined we run awareness programmes on safe motherhood and try dispel traditional myths and old wives tales.”

Aditmari has handled 35,000 successful deliveries with no record of maternal deaths, although 464 cases with complications were referred to larger hospitals.

Aditmari’s is just one of thousands of stories of efficient maternity services that are helping Bangladesh reduce MMR and increase skilled birth attendance.

The proportion of women delivering at a facility or with assistance from a professional birth attendant has increased from nine percent in 2001 to 23 percent in 2010 and may well reach the 50 percent target by 2015. However, some 2.4 million deliveries still happen at home, annually.

The directorate of health services (DHS), the key agency implementing reproductive health programmes in collaboration with NGOs like RDRS, holds that the key lies in training a cadre of community health workers who are now gradually replacing untrained or traditional birth attendants.

DHS chief, Khondhaker Shefyetullah, told IPS, “Maternal deaths are decreasing in rural areas as expecting mothers are now more conscious of safety and prefer delivery at professional hands rather than at the hands of untrained birth attendants.”

Arthur Erken, United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) representative in Bangladesh, told IPS, “The decline in maternal deaths suggests that many pregnancies with complications are now being selectively sent to facilities, as intended.”

Erken noted a substantial increase in women with obstetric complications seeking treatment at a facility – 29 percent in 2010 compared to 16 percent in 2001. “This indicates that both awareness and referral systems are improving.”

Prof. Nasima Begum, secretary-general of the Obstetrical and Gynaecological Society of Bangladesh (OGSB), attributes a major part of Bangladesh’s success to trained community skilled birth attendants (CSBAs) who are in direct contact with villagers and play a vital role in MMR decline.

“About 12 percent of all deliveries in the rural areas are caesarean, which means that the CSBAs are properly identifying the risk cases and sending them to the right place for emergency deliveries,” Nasima said. “Earlier, expecting mothers with complications simply died for lack of professional guidance.”

Training programmes run by the OGSB receive support from UNFPA. The UN agency also provides support for improved facilities at the health centres in rural areas and for emergency obstetric care at some 70 hospitals.

There are currently some 7,000 CSBAs serving 10,000 community clinics across Bangladesh and more are being trained to fill up vacant posts in community clinics – the first tier of health and family planning services at the village level.

In the eastern Sierra Leonean community of Lambayama, rice paddies are carved far into the landscape before being abruptly halted by distant hills. Aside from a paved road that draws a grey line through the green, swampy valley, it looks much as it did a century ago.

Emmanuel Kargbo, a 26-year-old farmer, pushes a motorised soil tiller recently given to his farming cooperative. Credit: Damon Van der Linde/IPS

But under the sound of leaves rustling in the wind and chirping insects is the distant low hum of tilling machinery, a signal of the gradually changing way farmers are growing and selling this West African nation’s staple food.

The Smallholder Commercialisation Programme (SCP) is trying to put local farmers back in control of the country’s most-consumed crop. This government-run programme is in its fifth year of operation, and farmers say they are just beginning to discover there is money to be made in agriculture. Some components of the SCP are supported by the European Union and other development partners.

“Before, there was no profit. We had enough to eat, but not enough to sell,” said Zainab Makabu, who started farming rice to support her four children. “Now, we harvest, we sell some, we pay our children’s school fees and we eat some. Without this farming, we couldn’t educate our children.”

People in Sierra Leone often say that if they have not eaten rice, it is as if they have not eaten at all. Data from the 2009 “Economics of Rice Production in Sierra Leone” report, funded by the Soros Economic Development Fund, states that at least 40 percent is still imported from other countries like Pakistan, Thailand and neighbouring Guinea.

Increasing local rice production not only helps keep prices more stable, but also promotes national food security. Agriculture contributes about 50 percent of the country’s GDP and employs over 75 percent of the national work force. Still, most of the small farming in Sierra Leone is for sustenance – the farmers who produce it consume it or trade it without much money ever changing hands.

The SCP is trying to change the way farmers operate in three ways: by mechanising production, organising individuals, and promoting business. Through the programme, farmers are given seeds, machines, fertilisers, and training. The goal is to increase the crop yield and provide mechanisms that facilitate selling the product on the market.

“On the local level, small scale farmers are trying to expand on their production level, which is the thrust of the policy objective – to increase productivity through the farmer-based organisation. In the past, they were not getting the kind of requisite training that would help them increase their production levels. But now we see the farmers are getting the requisite training,” said Joseph Tholly, the District Agricultural Officer for the Lambayama community.

He added that previously farmers would just plant crops for their own consumption.

“They weren’t business-minded,” said Tholly. “In the past, you would only see old people involved in agriculture, but now we also see youth going into all different components of the business.”

Sierra Leone’s 1991-2002 civil war hit small farmers hard. Most of the fighting took place in rural areas, forcing many farmers to flee their land for Freetown, the capital city. But the city is congested with traffic and people, and there is not enough work to go around.

Tholly says the SCP programme tries to draw people back to the countryside with the potential of better pay and a higher quality of life. And it may be working. When the programme began, about 10 percent of people in his district earned their living from agriculture. Today, the number is closer to 60 percent.

“I’ve learned how to work this machinery and at the end of the day, I’m making a bigger profit for myself and my family,” said Emmanuel Kargbo, a 26-year-old farmer. “I don’t plan to do any other kind of work.”

On a local level, the hub of the SCP is the Agricultural Business Centre (ABC). These clusters of buildings house the machinery to harvest and process crops, store the rice before selling it, and act as the administrative centre for farming collectives.

Each farmer makes a contribution of rice every year, which the ABC sells, putting the money in an account to be used for things like equipment maintenance. In Lambayama, Joseph Fecah manages the finances for one of the country’s 108 ABCs. He says they have not only been able to make a profit through the commercialisation programme, but have used this money to build an additional storeroom with no assistance from the government.

“It is an expansion on traditional farming. Initially they were doing it on a small scale but the government is encouraging us to do farming on a larger scale,” said Fecah. “We have money going in constantly. We’re doing well, for now.”

The EU has supported development initiatives in Sierra Leone for the past 40 years, and has been involved in the small-scale agriculture programme since its inception. Through the European Agricultural Fund for Rural Development (EAFRD), the EU provides 16 million euros a year in donations for training and investment in initiatives like the SCP.

The programme has had its challenges, and with a 25-year plan, there is a long way to go. Farmers say they need more donations in the form of transportation to move their products, and better packaging to further increase the commercial viability.

**The original story that moved on Apr. 12 has been re-issued with new sources.

Sam Kojo stands in a thigh-high pile of brown seaweed that blankets a beach in western Ghana. Behind him, a decomposing mound of Sargassum stretches down the shore past the fishing village of Beyin.

Sam Kojo, chief fisherman of a village in western Ghana, says an influx of seaweed has crippled the fishing industry for months. Credit: Jessica McDiarmid/IPS

“Ever since I was born, I have not seen this,” says Kojo, holding a clump of the seaweed in his hand. He has been fishing since he was 10 years old, but since the weed began washing in about three months ago, he has been unable to work.

“We have a big problem because when we cast our nets, all the weeds would come inside the net and we would catch nothing,” says Kojo, through a translator. “So we decided not to continue fishing.”

Sargassum is the algae after which the Sargasso Sea – an elongated region in the middle of the North Atlantic Ocean – is named due to the large accumulations there. In the past year, it has been showing up in unprecedented quantities on beaches from the Caribbean to West Africa, wreaking havoc on tourism and fishing industries.

It started collecting on the beaches of western Ghana about three months ago, locals say. And in Beyin, it is bringing this small fishing village of a few hundred people to its knees.

Kojo says that with the boats kept ashore, people are going hungry and families can no longer pay their children’s school fees. He says theft is increasing along with the desperation.

His son Raymond says they saw the Sargassum floating on the water a few days before it hit the shores.

“For months now, we haven’t gone to sea,” says Raymond. “We’re hungry. Here, there are no other jobs.”

Beyin has a fledgling tourism industry. It serves as the launch point for trips to Nzulezu, a stilt village in the area that draws several thousand visitors a year. But fishing remains the main source of income.

Ernst Peebles, an associate professor of biological oceanography at the University of South Florida, says in an email that mats of Sargassum accumulate wherever ocean currents take them. The influx in Africa and elsewhere probably does not reflect increased local growth of Sargassum.

“More than likely, it is an indication that oceanic currents or eddies are closer to shore than usual. Persistent onshore winds can also help create such accumulations,” he adds.

In 2011, the eastern Caribbean was ridden with Sargassum, which plastered beaches at popular tourist destinations such as Antigua and Barbuda, Barbados and St. Martin. Some resorts closed down while tonnes of the algae were removed. In some areas people were warned not to swim due to the risk of getting tangled in the weeds. Sierra Leone, northwest of Ghana, also experienced an influx in 2011.

Brian LaPointe, who has studied the algae since the 1980s, said Sargassum circulates continuously between the Sargasso Sea, the Caribbean and the Gulf of Mexico, where it is picked up by the Gulf Stream current and can move east to the Azores, and even to West Africa.

Scientists are not sure what has led to the recent increase in the amount of Sargassum in circulation, said LaPointe, an expert at the Harbor Branch Oceanographic Institute at Florida Atlantic University in the United States.

“This is a very widespread phenomenon,” says LaPointe. “Almost every corner of the North Atlantic is reporting really large amounts of Sargassum.”

Nutrient levels in the ocean, particularly near shore, are increasing due to human activities such as fertilisation and the dumping of sewage, which in turn lead to faster algae growth.

The 2010 oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico may also play a role, says LaPointe, by further increasing nutrients the algae feed on. Hundreds of millions of gallons of oil spewed into the water after BP’s Deepwater Horizon rig exploded on Apr. 20, 2010.

“Last year, following the Deepwater Horizon spill, is when we saw this mass influx of Sargassum to a number of areas.”

LaPointe also points to a 2010 temporary change in currents in the Gulf of Mexico. A current “short circuited,” creating the Franklin Eddy, which meant outflow from the Gulf virtually stopped for months.

A blessing for those scrambling to contain the oil spill, the eddy also may have served as a “big incubator” for Sargassum, says LaPointe.

About six months after the eddy broke down, reports of large amounts of Sargassum began coming in.

“This could contribute more Sargassum not just to the west of the Atlantic, but the Azores and Africa as well,” he says.

LaPointe is working with researchers at the University of South Florida to monitor Sargassum movement via satellite imaging, in order to alert local managers of an imminent landing.

Back in Beyin, Ghana, the shore at Tenack Beach Resort is piled high with foul-smelling Sargassum, interlaced with the usual debris: plastic bags, flip-flop sandals, bottles, and other rubbish.

Hotel manager Nana Awuku says customers have complained about the seaweed.

“We tried to clean it but this is beyond us,” says Awuku. “It has to be tackled at a national level.”

He is quick to point out that, while Sargassum is affecting the resort, it is the fisherpeople who are really suffering.

“The bulk of the people in this area rely on the sea for their livelihood, which is fishing,” says Awuku.

Some fishers with deep-water boats are going far out to sea to get beyond the algae, but the added cost of fuel for the longer trip is crippling.

Kofi Agbogah, deputy director and programme coordinator at the Coastal Resources Center in Takoradi, a city about 160 kilometres from Beyin, calls the algae a “food security issue.” The centre studies a more common form of green algae that is also damaging local fishing.

“If fishermen cannot fish because of the presence of this green algae, or brown algae, it means that their children are going to go hungry, their pockets are going to be empty, their wives cannot go to the market.”

Residents of Zimbabwe’s water-scarce city, Bulawayo, are concerned about the government’s slow response to finding a permanent source of water to cover their needs.

Bulawayo only has a 20-month supply of water left if the seasonal rains do not come. Credit: Busani Bafana/IPS

In March the city announced that it would only have a 20-month supply of water left if the seasonal rains do not come. Zimbabwe has experienced poor rains over the past few years.

Though the Zimbabwe Meteorological Services Department had predicted rainfall would peak from October to December 2011 for some parts of the country, it forecast that Matebeleland, would receive below average rainfall. Bulawayo is the country’s second-largest city, and although it is located in the former Matebeleland province, it is now treated as a separate provincial area.

Four of the city’s five supply dams, which have a total capacity of 362 million litres, are half full. The fifth dam is not operational.

As a result, municipal authorities have implemented a water rationing programme. Currently Bulawayo’s daily water use is 145,000 cubic metres, which the city council says needs to be reduced to 120,000.

“Domestic consumers are being allocated 400 and 350 litres a day in the high and low income areas, respectively,” city director of Urban Planning Job Ndebele told IPS. “Water-based industries are being rationed to 80 percent of their average consumption, while other industries are being allocated 75 percent of their average consumption.”

But residents like Henry Sithole are worried that water rationing may become a permanent feature. Many feel that the government’s plans to revive a 100-year-old idea to draw water from the Zambezi River for Matabeleland South province, which includes Bulawayo, may take far too long to implement.

“Water rationing is serious and I think residents have experienced it for too long,” Sithole told IPS. “The Zambezi scheme should not be the only solution talked about because it will not end water rationing today or tomorrow, even though it is the major part of the solution.”

The Matabeleland Zambezi Water Project is a grand scheme, first suggested to ease Bulawayo’s water problems in 1912 through the construction of a pipeline from the Zambezi River to the city. The scheme has been postponed by successive governments because of the high cost of building the over 400- kilometre pipeline.

However, in March the government announced that 900 million dollars had been sourced from a Chinese bank for the building of the Gwayi-Shangani Dam, the first phase of the project. It is estimated to cost a total of 1.3 billion dollars.

But residents and civil society organisations want the government to declare Bulawayo a water crisis area, to speed up corrective action.

Civil society representatives drew up a petition in March. They aim to collect a million signatures to lobby the government to act on finding a secure water source for Bulawayo.

The regional chairman of the National Association for Non-Governmental Organisations, Goodwin Phiri, told IPS that a solution needed to be found soon.

“The government cannot ignore the issue of water because it is a national issue…we are saying it is time government proved its commitment because, without water, the region is as good as dead.”

Though the government is currently building a 42-km pipeline from Bulawayo to the Mtshabezi Dam, in Matabeleland South province, the project has faced resistance from local communities.

The Gwanda Municipality in Matabeleland South has complained that it was not consulted, and raised concerns that if implemented, the project would leave the town of Gwanda without water. Although the project is moving ahead for now, it remains uncertain whether it will be completed.

But water appears likely to become a political negotiating tool for votes as President Robert Mugabe’s Zimbabwe African National Union – Patriotic Front, one of the partners in the Government of National Unity, wishes to hold general elections later this year.

Civil society organisations see this as an opportunity to get political parties to act on the issue. However, no concrete date has been set for elections as the country battles to find common ground on a new constitution.

Economic analyst Eric Bloch, who was involved in the 1987 Matabeleland Zambezi Water Project, which has since become a national initiative, said that there was finally action on the project because it was aimed at drawing votes.

“Now with the awareness that we are likely to have the country’s most-contested elections, there is growing concern about acquiring votes within Matabeleland. Hence the government’s creation of the Distressed Industries and Marginalised Areas Fund (Dimaf) and the progress on the Zambezi water scheme are all a vote-catching exercise. But it will happen because the project will have commenced under its contract before the elections,” Bloch told IPS.

More than 87 companies closed in Bulawayo in 2011. This prompted government to set up the 40- million-dollar fund that year. Dimaf is to help companies that have faced viability problems, including those that have closed down. However, it is mired in controversy as no company has benefited from the initiative.

Awuissa Walla has no regrets over choosing farming as a profession. He earned a degree in agronomy a decade ago, and borrowing money from friends, set himself up on an 18-hectare plot at Badja, some 50 kilometres from Lomé, the Togolese capital.

“We often say here that you can never go wrong with the land, and I can confirm this as I’m in the business myself,” the 40-year-old Walla told IPS.

“I grow a wide range of things to try to get the most from my farm,” he said. His land is dotted with all sorts of fruit, especially oranges, lemons, mandarins, bananas and pineapple.

Part of the land is dedicated to coconut and oil palms, and there is a stand of teak and heaps for yams in another corner, but his main crop is maize.

“I grow maize on eight hectares and I usually harvest four tonnes per season – around 40 sacks of maize,” he said. He plants maize twice a year, harvesting it three months later and earning about 1,250 dollars from each crop.

Walla has hired sharecroppers who use modern methods to increase their production, including a tractor. Some of the crops are irrigated using water from a borehole on the property.

He is also a beneficiary of a programme set up by the Togolese government to supply farmers with fertiliser, the 1.3 billion dollar National Investment Programme in Agriculture (PNIASA).

PNIASA has made 30,000 tonnes of fertiliser available to farmers each year at heavily subsidised prices, the programme paying roughly a third of the cost of this vital farm input.

The Togolese government wants to bring the country’s subsistence agriculture sector into a true market economy, and has indicated that improving the quality and availability of seed will be its next priority.

“The government has helped us with seed and fertiliser, which has allowed us to have a good harvest,” said Donné Amémadon, a smallholder in Tsévié, north of Lomé.

Each of the country’s last three growing seasons smashed records for grain production, particularly for maize and sorghum: climbing from around 31,000 tonnes in 2009 to 95,000 tonnes in 2010 and 110,000 tonnes in 2011.

The surplus was sold through the National Food Security Agency (ANSAT) to the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) for use in other African countries. At the beginning of this year, WFP bought 8,000 tonnes of maize, as compared to 6,000 last year.

On Apr. 7, WFP and ANSAT signed a new contract under which Togo will supply 10,300 tonnes of maize to famine-stricken Niger, at a cost of 4.8 million dollars which will be paid directly to producers. WFP will also buy a further 6,000 tonnes of grain destined for Ghana.

In addition to the country’s support for smallholders, farmers have been blessed with favourable weather.

“Our country still enjoys excellent rainfall which, in combination with sound agriculture policy, ensures our food security,” said Zackari Nandja, the minister of water. But, he said, if agriculture is truly to serve as a motor for development, then the management of water will have to be taken into account.

Agriculture extension worker Koudjo Kligbé agrees: “We need appropriate technical advice for farmers at all levels, especially regarding water management. We need to start from what farmers already know, from what they are already doing, and then we can see what new things they can learn.”

According to official figures, agriculture employs 70 percent of Togo’s population of six million and represents 40 percent of GDP. Around 10 percent of the national budget is allocated to this sector.

“We have launched many projects, including the Project to Support Agricultural Development, which will help small farmers develop their land and construct storage facilities,” said Messan Kossi Ewovor, the minister of agriculture. He encouraged smallholders to join together in organisations which will strengthen their voices in decision-making in areas that affect them.

The International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) is providing 13.5 million dollars in financing for this support programme.

Like many rural youth, Abdoulaye Soumah spent a few years in Conakry, trying his hand at various jobs in the big city. But he has since returned to his home village, transforming a seven-hectare plot of land inherited from his parents into a model of success.

“I produce about three tonnes of rice per hectare, and harvested a total of 20 tonnes in November. I keep a small part to feed my family and sell the rest,” Soumah told IPS during a tour of his fields at Somayah, 50 kilometres from the capital.

“A 100-kilo sack of rice sells for 650,000 Guinean francs (around 100 dollars). My harvest is generally bought up by rural traders and some from the city. They buy unprocessed rice, which they store before reselling it in markets in Conakry,” he said.

Soumah doesn’t own any agricultural machinery. Since setting up his farm in 2008, he has relied on relatives and locals hired on an occasional basis – paying each worker less than a dollar a day – for labour-intensive tasks like planting, weeding and harvesting.

He also enjoys support from local agricultural extension workers like Sékou Mansaré.

“Even though there is abundant rain in the region, we’re practicing irrigated rice cultivation here,” said Mansaré, explaining a system of small embankments and trenches that channel water through the rice fields.

“We sometimes use pumps to adjust the water level as needed during the different stages of growth, or to drain the water before the harvest,” said Mansaré, who also advocates the use of organic fertiliser.

He advises farmers to use locally-available resources wherever possible. He makes fertiliser from agricultural waste like cow dung and chicken manure, and the water for irrigation comes from the nearby Mériyéré River.

Rice is the staple food for Guineans, with national output ranging between 500,000 and 700,000 tonnes per year, according to statistics from the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization. But the country’s rice harvest is not enough to feed its population of 10.6 million, and Guinea imports between 200,000 and 300,000 tonnes of rice per year.

An initiative launched by the government in 2011 is aimed at reducing the dependence on imports by increasing domestic production by farmers like Soumah.

“I grow a local rice variety called ‘Djoukémé’, which is prized for the way it expands when it’s cooked,” he told IPS.

With his rice farm providing him with an income of roughly 20,000 dollars a year, the 29-year-old has been able to send his children to school, build a house for himself, and even reinvest some of his profits in a small flock of sheep and a motorcycle, which he operates as a local taxi.

“The Soumah farm should be an example for other youth who balk at working the land for a living. They should be inspired by his success,” said Koleya Bangoura, a prominent personality in Somayah.

“Farming is difficult,” he conceded, “and young people don’t always have access to credit to finance their projects.”

Bangoura also noted a growing scarcity of land for aspiring farmers due to urban sprawl from the capital.

In May 2011, Guinea and the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) signed an agreement providing 31 million dollars to support the country’s national investment programme in agriculture. The overall objective of the programme is to sustainably boost income and food security for poor rural people in Guinea.

“IFAD, working with Guinea, is investing a lot in response to the challenge of food insecurity,” said Jean Marc Telliano, Guinea’s agriculture minister, in Rome in February.

Visiting Somayah, IPS noted that there is a lack of information among potential beneficiaries as to how to access the new support.

“I heard that the conditions for selection for loans are very rigorous,” Soumah told IPS. “In any case, I don’t want to become dependent on support like this.”

Ibrahima Bangoura, from the Association of Youth for Agricultural Development, based in Conakry, said: “We have to improve the perception of financing amongst role-players in the agriculture sector. This is a key responsibility for the government and donors.”

As the process of reintegrating South Sudan’s child soldiers into their old lives begins soon, the Sudanese People’s Liberation Army renewal of its lapsed commitment to release all child soldiers from its ranks in March could mean that within two years children will no longer constitute part of the country’s militia groups.

Southern Sudanese soldiers from the Sudanese People’s Liberation Army. Militia groups affiliated with the army still recruit child soldiers. Credit: Peter Martell/IRIN

The SPLA, which is the military wing of the South Sudanese political party, the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement, is one of the few remaining national militaries in the world on the United Nations’ list of parties to conflict who recruit and use child soldiers. The U.N. Children’s Fund (UNICEF) estimates there are 2,000 child soldiers in South Sudan. Though none are within the official SPLA, they are affiliated with militia groups that have earned amnesties from the government and are being integrated into the national military.

If the SPLA follows the action plan it has drafted and signed – removing all child soldiers from the militias and working to get them education and training opportunities – the country could be off the list in as soon as two years.

For the child soldiers, though, the process of reintegration could take much longer, as they enter schools or learn skills that will provide other opportunities for making a living outside army barracks.

The process will begin, according to Fatuma H. Ibrahim, the chief of UNICEF’s child protection unit in South Sudan, by identifying and securing the formal release of all child soldiers. On their way out, they will be given civilian clothing, because “what is military remains with the military,” she said.

The youth, who can range in age from as young as 12 up to 18, will undergo some group therapy sessions with social workers to try to understand how they came to join the militias and to talk about any violence they may have encountered.

She said there will be about one percent who “really need some clinical management,” though their options will be limited in a country with few psychiatric resources. “It’s a very big problem. Most receive tablets, but that’s it.”

Family members will also meet with social workers to discuss reintegration and ensure that the children will be welcomed back and discouraged from re-joining.

“The parents have to be ready to receive them,” Ibrahim said. In some communities in South Sudan that includes a symbolic transition ceremony.

In a country that has known war for more than two decades, the military is often one of the few viable economic opportunities for young men. Many of the children UNICEF and its partners remove from the ranks followed that pattern – looking to a position with a militia to provide some financial security for themselves and their families.

One of UNICEF’s big challenges is providing opportunities that deter the delisted child soldiers from going back. After the new release rounds take place, the youth will be given an opportunity to choose between going to school, which many of the younger ones will opt for, Ibrahim said, or learning a trade. The country’s limited job market means older youth are encouraged to learn skills like carpentry, which is in increasing demand in rapidly growing towns. In the future, they will be trained in two skills, in case the first one does not prove marketable.

UNICEF and other organisations are also working to provide incentives to keep the child soldiers from re-enlisting. Ibrahim pointed to a livestock-rearing project, where former child soldiers are given a goat to raise and breed.

If the programme is going to work, she said, the incentives have “to be meaningful.”

South Sudan’s new action plan was officially signed on Mar. 16 by the country’s Ministry of Defence, the U.N. peacekeeping force in South Sudan – UNMISS, UNICEF and Special Representative of the Secretary-General for Children and Armed Conflict Radhika Coomaraswamy.

Since it achieved independence last year, South Sudan has seen sporadic violence flare up across the country. In the north, there are ongoing hostilities with Sudan. And various parts of the country – especially Jonglei state – have seen consistent intertribal conflict over land rights and cattle.

Coomaraswamy said most of the country’s child soldiers are found in the north, where violence has been most consistent.

South Sudan has been on the U.N. list long before its independence in July 2010. The earlier incarnation of the SPLA – the Sudanese People’s Liberation Movement – was one of the original groups included when the list was drafted in 2002.

In 2006 a Comprehensive Peace Agreement was signed between north and south Sudan, which ended decades of fighting and paved the way for South Sudanese independence. At the time, the SPLA committed to an action plan to release its child soldiers, though it did not completely follow through.

By 2009, monitoring organisations had found no child soldiers within the main SPLA, though they still existed in the militia groups.

Coomaraswamy said the country’s renewed commitment comes from “the power of the list” and pressure from international partners.

And while the U.N. has never sanctioned South Sudan over its inclusion, she said there was always a possibility that would happen. The Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), for instance, has suffered sanctions as a result of its inclusion.

Coomaraswamy said her office is currently in negotiations with the DRC, Myanmar, also known as Burma, and Somalia – the only government militaries who have not yet signed on to an action plan. 
 *Andrew Green is reporting from South Sudan on a fellowship from the International Reporting Project,
 an independent journalism programme based in Washington, D.C.