Amnesty International investigations revealed that 18 people were killed and dozens injured, despite military claims that the 2020 coup was bloodless. The organisation has listed several instances of fatal shots being fired by security forces, backed up by witness testimonies and statements from the United Nations Stabilization Mission in Mali (MINUSMA) (pictured here in this file photo). Courtesy: UN Photo/Sylvain Liechti

By Alison Kentish
UNITED NATIONS, Apr 23 2021 (IPS)

It has been about a year since anti-government demonstrations and a coup in Mali, which saw 18 people, including a 12-year-old boy being killed. But there has been no justice for the families of those injured and killed by defence and security forces during last year’s May to August protests.

Today, Apr. 23, Amnesty International released the findings of a report into injuries and fatalities that occurred titled “Killed, wounded, and forgotten? Accountability for the killings during demonstrations and the coup in Mali”.

Following field and remote interviews with victims’ families, civil society representatives, journalists and members of the judiciary, it chronicled the use of deadly force by armed forces in the towns of Kayes and Sikasso, as well as the capital Bamako.

The military seized power in Mali after forcing President Ibrahim Boubacar Keita to resign. It was Mali’s fourth coup since independence in 1960 and its second in a decade. His resignation followed months of opposition protests in the capital and the soldiers who orchestrated the coup stated that it was done to save the country. The international community strongly denounced the ouster, with the soldiers promising to oversee a transition to new elections and elect an interim, civilian leader.

According to Amnesty International, investigations revealed that 18 people were killed and dozens injured, despite military claims that the coup was bloodless. The organisation says the lack of accountability is troubling.

“Many victims were hit or wounded in the chest, sometimes in the back. Many were bystanders or people at work or at home, indicating that security forces were not firing in self-defence or response to an imminent threat of death or serious injury – in contravention of international standards,” Amnesty International said.

The document lists several instances of fatal shots being fired by security forces, backed up by witness testimonies and statements from the United Nations Stabilisation Mission in Mali (MINUSMA). This included the May 6 killing of a man in Sikasso, a city in southern Mali.

“Despite this, the authorities have not investigated the use of firearms by law enforcement against demonstrators in Sikasso leaving the families of those killed without justice, truth and reparation,” the report said.

Five days after the Sikasso incident, violent protests against police deaths resulted in more bloodshed. According to the report, an off-duty police officer shot a 17-year-old who was fleeing detention. It adds that while the officer was suspended, the teen’s death sparked widespread protests, with angry mobs attacking police stations and government buildings. It states that police fired live rounds in the crowds, leaving a 30-year-old man and a 12-year-old boy dead.

The Amnesty report says that a lack of accountability for police deaths triggered uprisings in other areas in Mali, adding that in the capital, protests in July which turned violent were ‘heavily repressed by the authorities,’ adding that armed forces fired into throngs of demonstrators, leaving 4 people dead and dozens injured.

“Although some demonstrators threw stones at security forces, occupied public buildings and at times, refused to comply with orders given by law enforcement officials, it is clear from the cases documented by Amnesty International that most of the killings and serious injuries resulted from the excessive use of force by security forces,” the report said.

Demonstrators took to the streets with numerous grievances. There was anger over the results of the parliamentary elections, stringent measures in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, including restrictions to freedom of movement and peaceful assembly, high unemployment, security and social grievances.

However, among bystanders also became casualties, including Ibrahim Traore’, a 16-year-old boy, whom the report states was shot twice by police. His brother told Amnesty International that he was denied a copy of Traore’s autopsy report.

The rights group says it worked hard to ensure that it could put a name and face to the victims, so that they are not forgotten. It adds despite progress, accountability is lacking. They say that they have been told that investigations into lethal use of force by security forces were opened, but at the time, February 2021, those probes were in the preliminary stages.

Amnesty International says it is time for accuracy and accountability. It is calling on the transitional authorities to ensure impartial and prompt investigations into cases of excessive and lethal use of force by law enforcement officers, protect freedoms of expression and assembly according to international human rights standards and ensure law enforcement authorities respect the United Nations basic principles on the use of force and firearms by law enforcement officials.

“The Malian authorities must show their determination to fight impunity by first acknowledging these killings. Victims of illegal use of force and firearms and their families must be provided with justice, truth and full reparations,” Amnesty International said.

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A herder is about to take his sheep to graze early in the morning in Mauritania, the West Sahel. Peacebuilding and stability in the region is dependent on solving the challenge of food and security, says the African Development Bank. Credit: Kristin Palitza/IPS

By Nalisha Adams
BONN, Germany, Nov 3 2020 (IPS)

In 2013, when Jamila Ben Baba started her company, the first privately owned slaughterhouse in Mali, she did so in the midst of a civil war as Tuareg rebels grouped together in an attempt to administer a new northern state called Azawad.

Ben Baba, who is originally from Timbuktu, in northern Mali — where much of the civil war conflict took place — based the business in the country’s western region of Kayes and grew it into what is considered the largest private slaughter house in the West African nation.

She started her business with a deep desire to develop one of the country’s first rural, raw resources — livestock.  Her aim was to promote Malian meat and to “make it known both in the sub-region and internationally”.

She said that while her business created 100 jobs, the company was evolving in a very difficult political and social context.

“War and Jihadists are rampant in the centre and north of Mali, which penalises us greatly in our livestock supply. Livestock farmers are forced to move constantly for their safety and that of their animals,” she said on Monday Nov. 2.

Ben Baba was speaking at the annual meeting of the United Nations Peacebuilding Commission, during which various stakeholders met to call on member states to increase funding to the commission’s Peacebuilding Fund. The Peacebuilding Fund is used as an instrument of first resort to respond to and prevent conflict.

But the impact of an Aug. 18 coup and the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic have placed the country in an unprecedented economic crisis, she said.

“Closed borders have slowed down our exports. Several purchase orders in Ghana and Guinea have been cancelled.”

Hotels that were closed during the pandemic restrictions caused her company’s turnover to drop by more than half, she said.

Ben Baba’s business success, and the success of other businesses and industries in the country and on the continent, is directly linked to peace.

While the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic has “definitely already derailed Africa’s positive growth projectory and hit the poorest and most vulnerable particularly hard, especially in fragile states,” according to Khaled Sherif, the Vice-President, Regional Development, Integration and Business Delivery at the African Development Bank (AfDB), there remains “a direct link between poverty, and extreme poverty specifically, and terrorism, as is currently being witnessed in the Sahel”.

A report released by Amnesty International earlier this year noted that rife insecurity, food insecurity and more than 7.5 million people in need of humanitarian assistance had left the region in crisis. In addition, the global coronavirus pandemic was expected to worsen the situation.

“The rise in violent extremism in the Sahel is linked to the conditions that the populations face in their daily lives. Many parts of the Sahel have never seen electricity, they have no access to potable water, education is at a premium, so these connects obviously lead to a deterioration of the security situation,” Sherif said during the same meeting.

He said that it was no surprising that in regions with chronic food insecurity, especially in Africa, “become unstable sooner or later”.

“We are all aware of the devastating consequences this means for peace, stability and social cohesion,” Sherif said.

But Ben Baba is convinced that her business could impact various factors of development within the country at different levels.

“From the bridges in our countryside, to the improvement of Mali’s balance of trade, with the creation of added value of course the creation of jobs in the Kayes region, which is usually the first region of emigration, especially for young people,” Ben Baba said.

A 2018 World Bank report showed that Mali needed to diversify its exports as “gold and cotton account for over 80 percent of total exports”. The report further suggested, “ an agriculture-based light manufacturing diversification strategy can deliver structural change by creating abundant and better paying jobs for low skilled Malians”.

Sherif called on the Peacebuilding Commission to address basic needs at a community level and to prioritise this accordingly.

“If generations of farmers are unable to get out of substance agriculture, there will always be a risk of conflict,” Sherif said. He said while there were many initiatives by development partners in this area, they all failed to reach the required scale.

“The Peacebuilding Commission should therefore focus on scaling up these interventions to avoid community pockets of fragility that lead to insecurity,” Sherif said.

He said that in Africa, where more than half the population of 1.3 billion live below the poverty line of less than $2 a day, “our priority has to be to create wealth and this takes us back to the reality of how we develop value chains,” Sherif said.

He added that the AfDB looked at the African Continental Free Trade Area as an opportunity to create a level of resilience.

But Sherif pointed out that on a continent of 54 countries, 26 countries had a GDP growth of 5 percent or more but in those same countries the GDP per capita was reducing, creating inequality.

“So how are African countries getting richer but the citizens of Africa are actually getting poorer? If we don’t address this issue, we are not addressing the basic reality of stability that is going to be a persistent problem, a perennial problem, that will affect Africa, especially fragile states, for many years to come,” Sherif said.

While there were many ways to address the issues, Sherif said he felt it was important “to start with the people and the communities that the live in, as this is where conflict ultimately manifests itself”.

He said that villages, towns, communities, local governments, municipalities could undertake certain measures to mobilise the needed investment to tackle the issues at the roots. 

“Our experience shows that food security can be enhanced locally by groups of producers getting together pooling cash resources and utilising local technologies to help with basic food processes. These are investments that can be done locally to create jobs and profit-sharing opportunities that enhance income.”

Ben Baba, however, pointed to the obstacles that women faced when accessing investment in her country.

“As a woman it’s very difficult to be involved in this very masculine world where the cultural barrier is very pronounced with prejudices against the female gender.

“Obtaining financing in a high-risk country remains complex,” she said. And if financing was given, the rates were too high that it would affect the company’s results, she explained.

“Indeed women know that the cultural problem in raising funds because of a lack of confidence in the female gender,” Ben Baba said.

She said that in order to convince one bank she had to invest almost 80 percent of a project’s equity, and despite this “we were very poorly supported by the banking network”.

“Malian industries are not very developed and those invested in by women are non-existent,” she said. “Attracting and convincing investors is almost impossible,” Ben Baba added.

But Sherif stressed that it was important to “find a model that is specific to regional development, that is specific to community development, that is specific to wealth creation, so we can begin to create a level of consumption based on increasing disposable income so we can begin to break this chain of lack of availability of growth of incomes, desperation and then lack of security.”

In a recorded message U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres said he saw great value in enriching the U.N.’s partnership with international monetary funds.

“Sustained support for peacebuilding cannot be delivered by any single actor. It requires a multi-layered strategy with several layers of financing; bi-lateral, multi-lateral and international financial insinuations working in concert,” he said.

Guterres urged donors to reverse a worrying trend and commit to spend at least 20 percent of official development assistance on peacebuilding priorities in conflict settings. 

“As the world seeks to recover from COVID-19, countries will require carefully designed and conflict-sensitive support to get back onto a sustainable micro-economic footing,” Guterres said.

But he said that the demands for the fund were far outpacing the resources.

“We’ve already had to scale back our target for 2020 by $30 billion,” Guterres said. Already some member states had responded to his call for unspent committed peacekeeping budget and he called on others to do so.

Guterres welcomed the work of both the World Bank and African Development Bank.

“It is important that these funds help tackle conflict drivers, reach marginalised areas and support key governance needs, especially those that create the conditions for private sector investment.”

Guterres said more could be done to advance innovate financing solutions for peacebuilding, including partnerships with the private sector.

But Sherif pointed out: “So long as we don’t solve the challenge of food and security, we haven’t solved the problem of fragility and we will continue to see one crisis after the other.”

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The issue of women and peacekeeping has been especially crucial during the coronavirus pandemic and subsequent lockdown. But the COVID-19 pandemic has has had a great negative impact on women in Mali in their peace building efforts. Credit: William Lloyd-George/IPS

By Samira Sadeque
UNITED NATIONS, Oct 12 2020 (IPS)

The coronavirus pandemic has affected the safety and sense of community for many women in Mali given the travel restrictions and lockdowns in place, Bassirou Gaye, an assistant researcher for a 2019 report on the role of Mali women in peacekeeping, told IPS this weekend.

“This pandemic has undermined peace building initiatives such as training sessions, exchange meetings, trips to share ideas and good practices among women,” Gaye said. “Barrier measures meant that women could no longer meet in large numbers.”

Gaye spoke with IPS following a roundtable meeting last week where the United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres discussed, with women leaders from the Central African Republic, Cyprus, Darfur and Mali, the role of women’s leadership in taking forward the implementation of the Women, Peace and Security agenda for the Secretary-General’s Action for Peacekeeping (A4P) initiative.

He highlighted how the issue of women and peacekeeping has been especially crucial during the coronavirus pandemic and subsequent lockdown.

“In the COVID-19 crisis, it has been women who have had the trust of divided communities to credibly disseminate public health messaging,” Guterres said. “Yet, it is women who are under siege, bearing disproportionate care and economic burdens and facing an alarming surge of violence in the home.”

At the roundtable, representatives from the four countries shared their views: Bintou Founé Samaké, president of Women in Law and Development in Africa (WILDAF) and Minister of Women Children and Family Affairs in Mali; Magda Zenon, Cypriot peace and human rights and civil society activist; Lena Ekomo, who leads the network for women’s leadership in the Central African Republic; and Nawal Hassan Osman, a Gender Darfur State’s Advisor in Sudan, and a member of the Darfur Women’s Platform.

At the talk, Osman lauded the women who were on the frontlines of Sudan’s 2019 revolution, “bearing all the acts of the human rights violation and atrocities from the security force of the former regime”.

She added that the current pandemic has also affected rule of law and accountability in cases of conflict-related sexual violence.

Her concerns are similar to the ones voiced by others at the roundtable.

“Day after day, year after year,  we are paying a price because of our own biases and because of discrimination that exists — we need to be able to do better,” Guterres said at the roundtable.

In his call to ensure the implementation of shared commitments about women’s role in peace building, the Secretary-General reiterated the crucial and urgent need to recognise women’s participation.

“Today, women’s participation is a cause, we must make it a norm,” he said. “That is how we will transform international peace and security. That is how we will build a peaceful future.”

Excerpts of the interview with Gaye follow. It has been edited for clarity purposes.

Inter Press Service (IPS): How has COVID-19 pandemic affected women in peacebuilding in Mali?

Bassirou Gaye (BG): COVID-19 has had a great negative impact on women in Mali in their peace building efforts [such as those mentioned above: training sessions, exchange meetings, trips to share ideas and good practices]. These unique conditions which create a safe space for women cannot be replicated via videoconferences.

The health crisis has also affected the economic activities (small businesses) that allow some women to ensure the functioning of their associations through membership fees. It is also important to note that many international structures that support women’s organisations have stopped their activities because of the pandemic.

IPS: In 2012, Mali faced a huge crisis following an Islamist insurgency in the country that led to an exodus of tens of thousands of Malians. Your report discusses at length the 2012 conflict. In what ways has that  informed women’s participation in peace and security efforts?

BG: In my opinion, the 2012 crisis has been a trigger for women to take a greater interest in governance and, more specifically, in peace and security issues despite political and cultural obstacles. They have started to better organise themselves and join forces to develop ideas, projects and initiatives for peace building. Before 2012, there was no such thing. Women’s organisations are now multiplying training and sensitisation activities on issues of conflict, security, peace and reconciliation in favour of women. In addition, many international organisations have multiplied their accompaniment of women in their peace building efforts. For example, they offer funding and capacity building activities to women.

IPS: What role do women currently play in the peace process in Mali?

BG: For several reasons, the place of women is very important in peace building initiatives in Mali. Women are at the heart of the conflict and they are the first victims: forced marriages, sexual violence, forced displacement in refugee camps, restrictions on freedom, imposition of the veil, difficulty in accessing health care, etc. Women can therefore better explain the multiple forms of insecurity than men and make proposals for concrete solutions.

In addition, women are better able to raise awareness and conduct training sessions for the many women who are not familiar with national and international legal and political texts and frameworks relating to women’s rights and their participation in conflict resolution and management.

IPS: What challenges do women in Mali face in peace building efforts in the country?

BG: Malian women face many challenges to their participation in peace building. These

challenges can be categorised on several levels:

• Social challenges: According to Malian customary and religious beliefs, women belong in the home, not in public life. Therefore, they should not be involved in the management of public affairs or in activities outside the home. If a woman, especially if she is married, engages in such activities, her family (her husband, father or brother) must first give their consent, which is often unlikely. Thus, these beliefs confine them to a background role and mean that the use of women’s expertise and potential is generally not systematic. In Mali, many women who work in organisations (associations, think tanks) for peace building, conflict resolution or women’s rights advocacy [tend to have] marital problems with husbands or their families. They are poorly appreciated by society, especially if they spend more time at work.

• There is also a lack of accessible training and information on peace and security issues. Numerous studies show that they are among the least informed segments of society.

• There is also a lack of willingness on the part of political decision-makers to involve women more in the management of political affairs so that they have the opportunity to influence decision-making processes. In December 2015, Law 052 was passed in Mali, establishing a 30 percent quota for women’s appointments to national institutions and legislative bodies. This initiative was welcomed as a victory. However, this law has not been respected by the current government, which includes only 16 percent women.

An aerial view of settlements in the middle of the desert in the surrounding area of Timbuktu, North of Mali. Courtesy: UN Photo/Marco Domino

By Issa Sikiti da Silva
BAMAKO, Mali/COTONOU, Benin , Oct 18 2019 (IPS)

Abdoulaye Maiga proudly displays an album showing photos of him and his family during happier times when they all lived together in their home in northern Mali. Today, these memories seem distant and painful.

“We lived happily as a big family before the war and ate and drank as much as we could by growing crops and raising livestock,” he tells IPS.

“Then the war broke out and our lives changed forever, pushing us southwards, finally settling in the region of Mopti. Then we went back home in 2013 when the situation stabilised,” Abdoulaye explains.

In 2012, various groups of Tuareg rebels grouped together to form and administer a new northern state called Azawad. The civil strife that resulted drove many from their homes, with communities often fleeing with their livestock, only to compete for scarce natural resources in vulnerable host communities, according to the United Nations.

• In Mali, three-quarters of the population rely on agriculture for their food and income, and most are subsistence farmers, growing rainfed crops on small plots of land, according to the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) of the U.N.

After the security situation began to improve in 2013, many returned home to rebuild their lives and livelihoods.

But soon it was the turn of the expanding Sahara Desert, drought and land degradation that became the next driver of their displacement.

“As time went by, the land became useless and we found ourselves having no more land to work on. Nothing would come out that could feed us, and our livestock kept dying due the lack of water and grass to eat, ” Abdoulaye recalls.

“Drought across the Sahel region, followed by conflict in northern Mali, caused a major slump in the country’s agricultural production, reducing household assets and leaving many of Mali’s poor even more vulnerable,” FAO says.

“We used to move up and down with our livestock, looking for water and grass, but most of the times we found none. Life was unliveable. The Sahara is coming down, very fast,” Abdoulaye says emotionally.

In the end, the Maiga family had to leave their home and broke up; Abdoulaye and his brother Ousmane heading to Benin’s commercial capital Cotonou in 2015, after a brief stint in Burkina Faso, as the rest of their family headed for Mali’s capital, Bamako.

Malian girls stand in the shade in Kidal, North of Mali. Photo MINUSMA/Marco Dormino

Threatened with creeping desertification …

The U.N. says nearly 98 percent of Mali is threatened with creeping desertification, as a result of nature and human activity. Besides, the Sahara Desert keeps expanding southward at a rate of 48 km a year, further degrading the land and eradicating the already scarce livelihoods of populations, Reuters reported.

The Sahara, an area of 3.5 million square miles, is the largest ‘hot’ desert in the world and home to some 70 species of mammals, 90 species of resident birds and 100 species of reptiles, according to DesertUSA. And it is expanding, its size is registered at 10 percent larger than a century ago, LiveScience reported.

The Sahel, the area between The Sahara in the north and the Sudanian Savanna in the south, is the region where temperatures are rising faster than anywhere else on Earth. 

The cost of land degradation is currently estimated at about $490bn per year, much higher than the cost of action to prevent it, according to UNCCD recent studies on the economics of land desertification, land degradation and drought.

Roughly 40 percent of the world’s degraded land is found in areas with the highest incidence of poverty and directly impacts the health and livelihoods of an estimated 1.5 billion people, according to the U.N.

In a country where six million tonnes of wood is used per year, reports say Malians are mercilessly smashing their already-fragile landscape, bringing down 4,000 square kilometres of tree cover each year in search for timber and fuel.

Lack of rain has also been making matters worse, especially for the cotton industry, of which the country remains the continent ’s largest producer, with 750,000 tonnes produced in the 2018 to 2019 agriculture season. Environmentalists believe Mali’s average rainfall has dropped by 30 percent since 1998 with droughts becoming longer and more frequent.

… and conflict for resources

Paul Melly, Chatham House Africa consultant, tells IPS that desertification reduces the scope for agriculture and pastoralism to remain viable.

“And of course, that may lead a few disenchanted members of the population, particularly young men, to be attracted by alternative livelihood options, including the money that can be offered by trafficking gangs or terrorist groups,” he says.

Ousmane echoes Melly’s sentiments, saying: “The temptation is too much when you live in desertification-hit areas because you don’t get enough food to hit and water to drink.

“That’s where the bad guys start showing up on your door[step] to tell you that if you join them, you will get plenty food, water and pocket money. The solution is to run away, as far as you can to avoid falling into that trap.”

Consequently, Ousmane and Abdoulaye sold the few remaining animals the family had so they could leave the country.

In Burkina Faso they hoped to find work in farming. 

However, they were not always welcomed.

“We could feel the resentment from locals, so I told my brother we should leave before it gets ugly because there were already some tensions between local communities over what appeared to be land resources,” he says.

Chatham House’s Melly confirms this: “There is no doubt that the overall context, of increasing pressure on fragile and sometimes degrading natural resources, is a contributory factor to the overall pressures in the region and, thus, potentially, to tension.”

 Like elsewhere on the continent, severe environmental degradation appears to be among the root causes of inter-ethnic conflicts.

Using the Darfur region as a case study, the Worldwatch Institute says: “To a considerable extent, the conflict is the result of a slow-onset disaster—creeping desertification and severe droughts that have led to food insecurity and sporadic famine, as well as growing competition for land and water.”

What is being done?

Projects such as the U.N. Convention to Combat Desertification’s Land Degradation Neutrality project aimed at preventing and/or reversing land degradation are some of the interventions to stop the growing desert. 

• Another large that aims to wrestle back the land swallowed by The Sahara is the Great Green Wall (GGW), an eight-billion-dollar project launched by the African Union (AU) with the blessing of the UNCCD, and the backing of organisations such as the World Bank, the European Union and FAO.
• Since its launch in 2007, major progress has been made in restoring the fertility of Sahelian lands.
• Nearly 120 communities in Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger have been involved in a green belt project that resulted in the restoration more than 2,500 hectares of degraded and drylands, according to the UNCCD.
• More than two million seeds and seedings have also been planted from 50 native species of trees.

Everyone, including terrorists are equal in the face of the expanding Sahara

But there remain gaps and many in Mali still remain affected. 

Community leader Hassan Badarou spent several years teaching Islam in rural Mali and Niger. He tells IPS Mali has a very complex situation.

“It is not easy to live in these areas. People there face double threats. It is double stress to flee from both armed conflict and desertification. And such people need to be welcomed and assisted, and not be seen as a threat to locals livelihoods.

“That is why we used to preach tolerance and solidarity wherever we went, to avoid a situation whereby local communities would feel that their meagre resources are under threat from newcomers. There should be a dialogue, an honest and frank dialogue when communities take on each other over land and water resources,” he advises.

Against the expanding Sahara, all are equal. Fadimata, an internally displaced person from northern Mali, tells IPS that climate change is affecting everyone in the Sahel, including terrorists.

“I saw with my own eyes how a group of heavily-armed young men came to a village, looking for food.

“They said they wanted to do no harm, but wanted something to eat. Of course we were very scared, but the villagers ended up putting something together for these poor young men. They sat down and ate, and drank plenty of water and left afterwards. I think it is better that way than to kill villagers and steal their food, livestock and water.”

Fanta Mohamet, 14, writes on the blackboard at the school she attends in Zamaï, a village near a settlement for refugees in Mayo-Tsanaga, Far North Region, Cameroon on 28 May 2019. Courtesy: United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF)

By IPS Correspondent
JOHANNESBURG, Aug 24 2019 (IPS)

Fourteen-year-old Fanta lives in a tent in a settlement in Zamaï, a village in the Far North Region of Cameroon with her mother and two brothers. They came here more than a year ago after her father and elder brother were murdered and her elder sister abducted by the extremist group Boko Haram.

The day members of the armed extremist group Boko Haram came to their home in Nigeria to search for her father, a police officer, was the day everything changed.

The fate of her sister is unknown but each year thousands of girls are abducted by the armed group and forced into marriage.

There are 1,500 other displaced people who live in the settlement in Zamaï – more than three fifths of whom are children. And while life remains difficult, Fanta has something many other children of violence in the region do not, she is able to continue her education despite the prevailing insecurity.

According to new report released Aug. 23 by the United Nations Children’s Agency (UNICEF), nearly two million children in West and Central Africa are being robbed of an education due to violence and insecurity in and around their schools.

“Ideological opposition to what is seen as Western-style education, especially for girls, is central to many of the disputes that ravage the region. As a result, schoolchildren, teachers, administrators and the education infrastructure are being deliberately targeted. And region-wide, such attacks are on the rise,” UNICEF noted.

Burkina Faso, Cameroon, the Central African Republic (CAR), Chad, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Mali, Niger and Nigeria, are experiencing a surge in threats and attacks against students, teachers and schools.

Areas where schools are primarily affected by conflict. Courtesy: UNICEF

The report also noted:

• Nearly half of the schools closed across the region are located in northwest and southwest Cameroon; 4,437 schools there closed as of June 2019, pushing more than 609,000 children out of school.

• More than one quarter of the 742 verified attacks on schools globally in 2019 took place in five countries across West and Central Africa.

• Between April 2017 and June 2019, the countries of the central Sahel – Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger – witnessed a six-fold increase in school closures due to violence, from 512 to 3,005.

• And CAR saw a 21 percent increase in verified attacks on schools between 2017 and 2019.

UNICEF Deputy Executive Director Charlotte Petri Gornitzka and UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador Muzoon Almellehan travelled to Mali earlier this week and witnessed first hand the impact on children’s education.

“Deliberate attacks and unabating threats against education – the very foundation of peace and prosperity have cast a dark shadow on children, families, and communities across the region,” said Gornitzka. “I visited a displacement camp in Mopti, central Mali, where I met young children at a UNICEF-supported safe learning space. It was evident to me how vital education is for them and for their families.”

UNICEF has supported the setup of 169 community learning centres in Mali, which provide safe spaces for children to learn.

The Global Coalition to Protect Education from Attack (GCPEA), a coalition of international human rights and education organisations from across the world, noted that in the past five years the coalition had documented more than 14,000 attacks in 34 countries and that there was a systematic pattern of attacks on education. “Armed forces and armed groups were also reportedly responsible for sexual violence in educational settings, or along school routes, in at least 17 countries, including the Democratic Republic of the Congo, during the same period.”  

In May, GCPEA released a 76-page report on the effects that the 2016-2017 attacks by armed groups on hundreds of schools in the Kasai region of central Democratic Republic of Congo had on children.

Based on over 55 interviews with female students, as well as principals, and teachers from schools that were attacked in the region, the report described how members of armed groups raped female students and school staff during the attacks or when girls were fleeing such attacks. Girls were also abducted from schools to “purportedly to join the militia, but instead raped or forced them to “marry” militia members”.

“Being out of school, even for relatively short periods, increases the risk of early marriage for girls,” GCPEA had said.

UNICEF raised this also as a concern for children affected by the conflict in West and Central Africa.

“Out-of-school children also face a present filled with dangers. Compared to their peers who are in school, they are at a much higher risk of recruitment by armed groups. Girls face an elevated risk of gender-based violence and are forced into child marriage more often, with ensuing early pregnancies and childbirth that threaten their lives and health,” the UNICEF Child Alert titled Education Under Threat in West and Central Africa, noted.

Fanta Mohamet, 14, on her way home from school in Zamaï, a village near a settlement for displaced people in Mayo-Tsanaga, Far North Region, Cameroon on 28 May 2019. Courtesy: United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF)

UNICEF has long been sounding the alarm about the attacks on schools, students and educators, stating that these are attacks on children’s right to an education and on their futures.

The agency and its partners called on governments, armed forces, other parties to take action to stop attacks and threats against schools, students, teachers and other school personnel in West and Central Africa – and to support quality learning in the region.

The U.N. body also called on States to endorse and implement the Safe Schools Declaration. The declaration provides States the opportunity to express broad political support for the protection and continuation of education in armed conflict.

“With more than 40 million 6- to 14-year-old children missing out on their right to education in West and Central Africa, it is crucial that governments and their partners work to diversify available options for quality education,” said UNICEF Regional Director for West and Central Africa Marie-Pierre Poirier. “Culturally suitable models with innovative, inclusive and flexible approaches, which meet quality learning standards, can help reach many children, especially in situation of conflict.”

UNICEF is working with governments across West and Central Africa to offer alternative teaching and learning tools, which includes the first-of-its-kind Radio Education in Emergencies programme. Other interventions also include psychosocial support, the distribution of exercise books, pencils and pens to children to facilitate their learning.

“Education is important. If a girl marries young, it’s dangerous. If her husband doesn’t care for her, with an education she can take care of herself,” Fanta said.

By Frederic Mousseau
OAKLAND, California, Jan 11 2016 (IPS)

Millions of African farmers don’t need to adapt to climate change. They have done that already.

Frederic Mousseau

Like many others across the continent, indigenous communities in Ethiopia’s Gamo Highlands are well prepared against climate variations. The high biodiversity, which forms the basis of their traditional enset-based agricultural systems, allows them to easily adjust their farming practices, including the crops they grow, to climate variations.

People in Gamo are also used to managing their environment and natural resources in sound and sustainable ways, rooted in ancestral knowledge and customs, which makes them resilient to floods or droughts. Although African indigenous systems are often perceived as backward by central governments, they have a lot of learning to offer to the rest of the world when contemplating the challenges of climate change and food insecurity.

Often building on such indigenous knowledge, farmers all over the African continent have assembled a tremendous mass of successful experiences and innovations in agriculture. These efforts have steadily been developed over the past few decades following the droughts that impacted many countries in the 1970s and 1980s.

In Kenya, the system of biointensive agriculture has been designed over the past thirty years to help smallholders grow the most food on the least land and with the least water. 200,000 Kenyan farmers, feeding over one million people, have now switched to biointensive agriculture, which allows them to use up to 90 per cent less water than in conventional agriculture and 50 to 100 per cent fewer purchased fertilizers, thanks to a set of agroecological practices that provide higher soil organic matter levels, near continuous crop soil coverage, and adequate fertility for root and plant health.

The Sahel region, bordering the Sahara Desert, is renowned for its harsh environment and the threat of desertification. What is less known is the tremendous success of the actions undertaken to curb desert encroachment, restore lands, and farmers’ livelihoods.

Started in the 1980s, the Keita Rural Development Project in Niger took some twenty years to restore ecological balance and drastically improve the agrarian economy of the area. During the period, 18 million trees were planted, the surface under woodlands increased by 300 per cent, whereas shrubby steppes and sand dunes decreased by 30 per cent. In the meantime, agricultural land was expanded by about 80 per cent.

All over the region, a multitude of projects have used agroecological solutions to restore degraded land and spare scarce water resources while at the same time increasing food production, and improving farmers’ livelihoods and resilience. In Timbuktu, Mali, the System of Rice Intensification (SRI) has reached impressive results, with yields of 9 tons of rice per hectare, more than double of conventional methods, while saving water and other inputs. In Burkina Faso, soil and water conservation techniques, including a modernized version of traditional planting pits­zai­ have been highly successful to rehabilitate degraded soils and boost food production and incomes.

Southern African countries have been struggling with recurrent droughts resulting in major failures in corn crops, the main staple cereal in the region. Over the years, farmers and governments have developed a wide variety of agroecological solutions to prevent food crises and foster their resilience to climatic shocks. The common approach in all these responses has been to depart from the conventional monocropping of corn, which is highly vulnerable to climate shocks while it is also very costly and demanding in purchased inputs such as hybrid seeds and fertilizers. Successful sustainable and affordable solutions include managing and harvesting rain water, expanding conservation and regenerative farming, promoting the production and consumption of cassava and other tuber crops, diversifying production, and integrating crops with fertilizer trees and nitrogen fixating leguminous plants.

The enumeration could go on. The few examples cited above all come from a series of 33 case studies released recently by the Oakland Institute. The series sheds light on the tremendous success of agroecological agriculture across the African continent in the face of climate change, hunger, and poverty.

These success stories are just a sample of what Africans are already doing to adapt to climate variations while preserving their natural resources, improving their livelihoods and their food supply. One thing they have in common is that they have farmers, including many women farmers, in the driver’s seat of their own development. Millions of farmers who practice agroecology across the continent are local innovators who experiment to find the best solutions in relation to water availability, soil characteristics, landscapes, cultures, food habits, and biodiversity.

Another common feature is that they depart from the reliance on external agricultural inputs such as commercial seeds, synthetic fertilizers, and chemical pesticides, on which is based the so-called conventional agriculture. The main inputs required for agroecology are people’s own energy and common sense, shared knowledge, and of course respect for and a sound use of natural resources.

Why are these success stories mostly untold, is a fair question to ask. They are largely buried under the rhetoric of a development discourse based on a destructive cocktail of ignorance, greed, and neocolonialism. Since the 2008 food price crisis, we have been told over and over that Africa needs foreign investors in agriculture to ‘develop’ the continent; that Africa needs a Green Revolution, more synthetic fertilizers, and genetically modified crops in order to meet the challenges of hunger and poverty. The agroecology case studies debunk these myths.

Evidence is there, with irrefutable facts and figures, that millions of Africans have already designed their own solutions, for their own benefits. They have successfully adapted to both the unsustainable agricultural systems inherited from the colonial times, and to the present challenges of climate change and environmental degradation. Unfortunately, a majority of African governments, with encouragement from donor countries, focus most of their efforts and resources to subsidize and encourage a model of agriculture, largely reliant on the expensive commercial agricultural inputs, in particular synthetic fertilizers mainly sold by a handful of Western corporations.

The good news is that an agroecological transition is affordable for African governments. They spend billions of dollars every year to subsidize fertilizers and pesticides for their farmers. In Malawi, the government’s subsidies to agricultural inputs, mostly fertilizers, amount to close to 10 percent of the national budget every year. The evidence that exists, based on the experience of millions of farmers, should prompt African governments to make the only reasonable choice: to give the continent a leading role in the way out of world hunger and corporate exploitation and move to a sustainable and climate-friendly way to produce food or all.

(End)

Excerpt:

By Nteranya Sanginga
IBADAN, Nigeria, Jan 5 2016 (IPS)

2016 is the International Year of Pulses, and we at the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture are proud to be organizing what promises to be the landmark event, the Joint World Cowpea and Pan-African Grain Legume Research Conference.

Nteranya Sanginga, Director General of the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA). Courtesy of IITA

The March event in Zambia should draw experts from around the continent and beyond and offer an opportunity to share ideas into the edible seeds – cowpeas, common bean, lentils, chickpeas, faba and lima beans and other varieties – now enjoying their well-deserved 15 minutes of fame as nutritional superstars.

Pulses may look small, but they are a big deal.

Nutritionists consistently find that their low glycemic profiles and hefty fiber content help prevent and manage the so-called diseases of affluence, such as obesity and diabetes. And the protein they pack holds great potential to assist the world in managing its livestock practices in a more sustainable way, so that more people can enjoy better and more varied middle-income diets without placing excess strains on natural resources.

First and foremost, we must make more pulses available. Global per capita availability of pulses declined by more than a third in the four decades following the 1960s. But production has been growing sharply since 2005, especially in developing countries. Cowpeas have been one of the specific leaders of this trend, which has been marked by very welcome increases in yield as well as more hectares being planted.

Importantly, almost a fifth of all pulses today are traded, up almost three-fold from the 1980s, a pace that vastly outstrips the growing trade in cereals. Moreover, while North America is an exporting powerhouse, so is East Africa and Myanmar; more than half of all pulses exports now come from developing countries.

There is a serious opportunity to scale up these protean protein sources.

The good news for the millions of small family farmers is that this may be more about reclaiming a traditional virtue than revolution. After all, the prolific Arab traveler Ibn Battuta wrote about Bambara nuts fried in shea oil while on a trip to Mali and the Sahel back in 1352. The cowpea fritters, known as akara in Nigeria and often seen at roadside stands around West Africa, are their direct descendants, and the elder siblings of acarajés, declared part of the cultural heritage of Brazil – where they are eaten with shrimp – and where their Yoruba name survived the dreadful middle passage of the slave trade.

We at IITA have been cowpea champions for decades. Just this month Swaziland’s Ministry of Agriculture released to local farmers five new cowpea varieties we developed – seeds that mature up to 20 percent faster and yield up to four times more. That latest success comes in great measure, thanks to IITA’s gene bank, which holds, for the world community, 15,112 unique samples of cowpea hailing from 88 countries.

Why so many cowpeas? Our question is why aren’t more being grown!

After all, cowpea contains 25 percent protein, is an excellent conveyor of vitamins and minerals, adapts to a broad range of soil types, tolerates drought as well as shade, grows fast to combat erosion, and as a legume pumps nitrogen back into the soil. We can eat its main product – sometimes known as black-eyed peas – and animals enjoy the residual stems and leaves.

So why don’t we hear more about it? Well, perhaps the world wasn’t listening, but it’s about to have another chance.

Seriously, though, cowpeas come with problems. First of all, the plant is subject to assault at every point in its life cycle, be it from aphids, mosaic virus, pod borers, rival weeds, or the dreaded weevils that fight with fungi and bacteria to consume the seeds while in storage. These are things IITA scientists try to combat, through seed breeding or spreading innovative technologies such as the PICS bags that keep the weevils out.

There is much more to learn, about the plant, how to grow it, and how to bolster its role in the food system. I’lll wager that in the Year of Pulses much will be learned about processing, a critical phase, and one that is already allowing many Nigerian businesses to prosper. Perhaps big global food manufacturers will find new ways to grind pulses into their grain products to produce healthier foods with more complete proteins.

As for farming cowpea, the plant can serve to reduce weeds and fertilizer for the cash crops. It is also harvested before the cereal crops, offering food security and also flexibility, as farmers can choose to let the plants grow, reducing bean yields but increasing that of fodder.

The plant’s epicenter – genetically and today – is West Africa. Nigeria is the big producer, but is also the main importer from neighboring countries. Niger is the world’s biggest exporter. But its ability to deal with dry weather and help combat soil erosion might be of interest elsewhere, such as in Central America’s dry corridor.

(End)

Excerpt:

Migrants looking down from the mountain behind the Spanish enclave of Ceuta in Morocco. Credit: Andrea Pettrachin/IPS

By Andrea Pettrachin
CEUTA, Sep 4 2015 (IPS)

In the middle of the mountains behind the border fence of Ceuta, the Spanish enclave in Morocco, and eight kilometres from the nearest Moroccan village of Fnideq, an uncertain number of migrants live in the woods. No one knows exactly how many they are but charity workers in Melilla, Spain’s other enclave in Morocco, say they could be in their thousands.

Ceuta is one of the main (and few) ‘doors’ leading from northern Africa to the territory of the European Union, and is a ’door’ that has been closed since the end of the 1990s, when the Spanish authorities started to build a tripe six-metre fence topped with barbed wire that surrounds the whole enclave, as in Melilla.

In the past, those waiting in the mountains for their turn to try to reach Spain had been able to build something resembling a normal life. They put up tents and at least were able to sleep relatively peacefully at night.Today, the migrants are forced to remain mostly hidden in small groups among the trees or in small caverns, and they know that all attempts to pass the Spanish border are almost certain to fail and end up with arrest by the Moroccan authorities

That all ended after 2012, when the Moroccan police started to burn down the camps and periodically sweep the mountainside, arresting any migrants they found, charged with having illegally entered the country.

These actions were the result of agreements between the Moroccan and Spanish governments, after Spain had asked Morocco to control migration flows.

The most tragic raid so far by the Moroccan police took place last year on Gurugu Mountain which looks down on Melilla. Five migrants were killed, 40 wounded and 400 removed to a desert area on the border with Algeria. According to the migrants, the wounded were not cured and were left to their own destiny.

Today, the migrants are forced to remain mostly hidden in small groups among the trees or in small caverns, and they know that all attempts to pass the Spanish border are almost certain to fail and end up with arrest by the Moroccan authorities.

They live, in their words, “like animals” and when speaking with outsiders are clearly ashamed by their condition, apologising for being dirty and badly-dressed.

The first thing many of them tell you in French is that they are students and that before having to leave their countries they were studying mathematics, economics or engineering at university.

Many of them are from Guinea, one of the countries most seriously affected by the Ebola epidemic, others come from Cote d’Ivoire, Gambia, Mali, Burkina Faso, all countries characterised by political turmoil of various types.

All of them have been forced to live in these woods for months or even years, waiting for their chance to pass the border fence.

The statistics show that some of them will certainly die in their attempts to reach Spain – either on the heavily fortified fences which encircle the enclaves or out at sea in a small boat or trying to swim to a Spanish beach.

Some of them will finally make it to Spain, perhaps after five or six failed attempts. In that case they will have overcome the first hurdle, escaping the “push-back operations” by the Spanish Guardia Civil, but they will still face the possibility of forced repatriation, particularly if they come from countries with which Spain has a repatriation agreement.

Many of them, however, will finally give up and decide to remain somewhere in Morocco, destined to a life of continuous uncertainty due to their irregular position in the country. You can meet them and listen to their stories in the main Moroccan cities, especially in the north. In most cases, they had escaped death in their attempts to reach Spain and do not want to risk their lives any longer.

Meanwhile a report on ‘Refugee Persons in Spain and Europe” published at the end of May by the non-governmental Spanish Commission for Refugees (CEAR), denounces how sub-Saharan migrants are dissuaded from seeking asylum in Spain, even if coming from countries in conflict such as Mali, Democratic Republic of Congo or Somalia, once they realise that they are likely to be forced to remain for months in a Centre for Temporary Residence of Immigrants (CETI) in Ceuta or Melilla.

In Melilla, for example, those who apply for asylum cannot leave the enclave until a decision has been taken on their application. Unlike Syrian refugees whose application takes no more than two months, CEAR said the average time to reach a decision for sub-Saharan Africans is one and a half years.

The CEAR report is only one of a long list of recent criticisms of the Spanish government’s migration policies from numerous NGOs and international organisations.

The main target of these criticisms has been the Security Law (Ley de Seguridad Ciudadana) passed this year by the Spanish Parliament with only the votes of Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy’s Popular Party. The aim was to give legal cover to the so called devoluciones en caliente, the “push-back operations” against migrants carried out by the Spanish frontier authorities in Ceuta and Melilla in violation of international and European law.

On the Spanish mainland, said the CEAR report, migrant’s right of asylum is seriously undermined by the bureaucratic lengths of application procedures and the political choices of the Spanish authorities.

Calls from CEAR and other NGOs to end “push-back operations” seem very unlikely to be taken into consideration soon by the Spanish government and Parliament, in view of the general elections later this year.

Edited by Phil Harris   

Portrait of a girl in Timbuktu, Mali. Credit: UN Photo/Marco Dormino

By Jean-Luc Stalon
BAMAKO, Jul 7 2015 (IPS)

The recent peace agreements in Mali offer grounds for optimism. It’s now time to capitalise on the accord to accelerate recovery, reconciliation and development. An important part of that process will entail placing the country’s youth at the center of the country’s agenda for peace and prosperity.

With its youthful population and track record of civil crises, Mali is the perfect case study on the relationship between youth and stability. Mali’s fertility rate is second only to Niger’s.The youth of today mix identities, from the traditional to the modern and need to be accompanied and mentored as they define their sense of self.

Yet in a country that doesn’t provide jobs, opportunities for decision-making and a sense of purpose, this youth bulge is more likely to be a powerful demographic time bomb rather than a driver of economic growth.

The complex crisis that hit Mali in 2012 compounded the issue, as armed groups found fertile ground for recruitment in Mali’s large pool of poor, disaffected, uneducated youths, enticed both by easy money and radical ideologies. The conflict also fueled important migration flows to North Africa and Europe.

Now more than ever, the country’s youth need solutions that are specific to their daily realities and will discourage them from going astray. Achieving that objective implies helping them out of the vicious cycle of unemployment, violence and poverty. Young women and men also need to be heard and should have a role in decision-making and peace processes.

To that end, the government and its partners have put into place a vast array of youth employment policies, as well as programmes to strengthen social cohesion, reintegrate displaced people and mobilise national volunteers.

These initiatives have done a lot for those targeted, but they fall short of a comprehensive, national solution for reintegrating youths and increasing their prospects for a better life.

In fact, unemployment rates among young women and men seem to have stagnated. In 2011, unemployment rates among 15 to 39 year-olds revolved around 15 percent, yet independent assessments suggest they could be as high as 50 percent when underemployment is taken into account.

As a result, in a country struggling against terrorism, organised crime and social cleavages, more and more young peole turn to violence and radicalism.

There needs to be a fundamental shift in the way that we look at youth development. Such an approach would look holistically at how to integrate young people in the economy and create new generations of entrepreneurs, while giving them a political voice and a sense of purpose within their communities and the wider nation.

First, we need to boost education, skills training and employment opportunities while at the same time serving Mali’s economic diversification and transformation agenda. This would require investing in promising sectors such as information technology, and creating learning centers and peer-to-peer networks in close collaboration with the private sector.

In this regard, Mali could learn from other successful initiatives, such as the public-private partnership developed in Kenya to create linkages between the formal and informal sectors of the economy.

Second, young Malians need to feel their likings and aspirations are taken into account in their country’s major decisions. Youth should be encouraged to vote and have a chance at running for office in a political system that favours inclusivity, trust and peaceful change.

The upcoming local elections and peace agreement implementation present an opportunity for better youth involvement and representation in the decision making process.

Third, young Malians need a sense of purpose but far too often their desires, opinions and spiritual leanings aren’t seriously considered. These can include joining a community, increasing their exposure to global events and causes, or creating a more affluent life.

The youth of today mix identities, from the traditional to the modern and need to be accompanied and mentored as they define their sense of self. Doing so would go a long way to eliminating intolerance, conflict and even radicalization.

Young women deserve our full attention. Much more needs to be done to ensure they can exercise their basic human rights, including those that relate to the most intimate or fundamental aspects of life, such as sexual and reproductive health, and freedom from violence.

There cannot be peace, poverty eradication and the creation of a more prosperous and open society in Mali without young people. A more holistic approach would be more effective and sustainable.

It could include new mechanisms such as a trust fund for youths, new channels of inter-generational dialogue and a more global outlook in the exchange of knowledge and development experiences. If we succeed in doing so, Mali could embark on an incredibly successful development path.

UNDP is working with young people from all walks of life so they can find a decent job, contribute to their communities and build a better future for Mali as a whole.

Edited by Kitty Stapp

Excerpt:

Putting the spotlight on culture. Credit: A.D. McKenzie/IPS

By A. D. McKenzie
FLORENCE, Oct 4 2014 (IPS)

International experts working in the creative sector are calling for governments to recognise the integral role that culture plays in development and to ensure that culture is a part of the post-2015 United Nations development goals, to be discussed next year.

At UNESCO’s Third World Forum on Culture and Cultural Industries, which took place Oct. 2-4 in Florence, Italy, representatives from a range of countries discussed the contributions that culture can make to a “sustainable future” through stimulating employment, economic growth and innovation.

The United Nations cultural agency pointed out that the global trade in cultural goods and services has doubled over the past decade and is now valued at more than 620 billion dollars, although there is some disagreement on this figure.

But, apart from the financial aspects, culture also contributes to social inclusion and justice, according to UNESCO Director-General Irina Bokova, who inaugurated the forum at Florence’s Palazzo Vecchio.“Countries must invest in culture with the same determination they bring to investing in energy resources, in new technologies … In a difficult economic environment, we must look for activities that reinforce social cohesion, and culture offers solutions in this regard” – UNESCO Director-General Irina Bokova

“I believe countries must invest in culture with the same determination they bring to investing in energy resources, in new technologies,” she said. “In a difficult economic environment, we must look for activities that reinforce social cohesion, and culture offers solutions in this regard.”

Bokova told IPS that the forum wanted to show that culture contributes to the “attainment” of the various development goals, which include ending extreme poverty, achieving universal primary education and gender equality, and ensuring environmental sustainability.

Many governments, however, are not investing enough in the cultural or creative sectors even when these industries have proven their worth. Some states prefer to build sports stadiums that are rarely used rather than to support the arts, said Lloyd Stanbury, a Jamaican lawyer in the music business who participated in the forum.

“In the case of Jamaica, we’ve shown that we can compete and win globally at the highest levels in culture,” he told IPS. “Reggae and Rastafari have put Jamaica on the world map and the debate is happening right now about what the government can do to invest more in culture.”

Stanbury said that arts education should have the same status as traditional curricula. “Students are sometimes told, ‘oh, you can’t do maths? Go and draw something’ but their drawings aren’t considered valuable,” he said.

In some developing countries, the arts are seen as a peripheral sector, not a “real” industry and that must change, he argued.

In addition, Stanbury said in his presentation to the forum, in many developing countries, “segments of the music and entertainment community do not enjoy harmonious relationships with government and government institutions, particularly where there is evidence of government corruption that artists speak out against in the creation and presentations of their work.”

For many governments, meanwhile, investing in culture naturally comes a long way behind providing proper health, sanitation and electricity services and developing transportation infrastructure. Yet, culture can help in poverty alleviation, job creation and peace building, experts said.

Peter N. Ives, Mayor pro tem of the U.S. city of Santa Fe, New Mexico, detailed how the city had invested in the arts, through allocating one percent of hotel-bed taxes (or lodger taxes) for cultural activities, among other measures.

“Santa Fe now has more cultural assets per capita than any other city in the United States,” he said, adding that “inclusion” of all groups was a key element of the policy, in which “everyone brings their creative gifts to the table”.

The city has an Arts Commission, appointed by the mayor, that “recommends programmes and policies to develop and promote artistic excellence in the community” and it has followed a multi-cultural route.

The result is that Santa Fe has increasingly drawn writers and visual artists, as well as tourists, because of its growing number of museums, performances and outdoor sculptures – also one of the reasons behind its designation as a UNESCO Creative City.

Such “success stories” may seem far-fetched for many poor or middle-income countries, faced with a variety of crises including conflict. But experts at the conference described grassroots schemes where intra-community violence, for instance, decreased when community members were actively encouraged to produce art about their lives.

Other representatives examined how creating film and literary festivals had contributed to a sense of national pride and cohesion. In the Caribbean and in parts of Africa and Asia, for example, the growth of festivals and cultural prizes has given a general boost to the arts in some countries, reflecting what wealthy countries have known for some time.

The forum, jointly organized by UNESCO, the Italian government, the Tuscany region and the Municipality of Florence, also examined how culture can be preserved in war-affected regions, with a focus on recent UNESCO cultural heritage preservation projects (funded by Italy) in Afghanistan, Mali and other states.

Denmark and Belgium, meanwhile, provided a look at how overseas development aid to cultural activities can promote employment, training and youth involvement in society, especially within a human rights context.

“We’re living in a very hostile environment for development cooperation and also for culture and development, but I’m launching an appeal for more cooperation in this area,” said Frédéric Jacquemin, director of Africalia, a Belgian organisation that sees culture as “a motor for sustainable human development”.

Participants in the forum produced a ‘Florence Declaration’ calling for the “full integration of culture into sustainable development policies and strategies at the international, regional and local levels.”

The Declaration said that this should be based on standards that “recognise fundamental principles of human rights, freedom of expression, cultural diversity, gender equality, environmental sustainability, and openness and balance to other cultures and expressions of the world.”

(Edited by Phil Harris)

A nutritionist assesses the health of a child in the Sahel. Red indicates severe malnutrition. Credit: Kristin Palitza/IPS

By Noel Marie Zagre and Gary Quince
JOHANNESBURG, Sep 24 2014 (IPS)

Eric Turyasingura chases after a ball made from plastic bags outside his mud-brick home in the mountains of southern Uganda.

Yelling in his tribal tongue, Nkore, “Arsenal with the ball! Arsenal with the ball!” he jostles with his younger brothers for possession. 

The fame of the English soccer club has reached even his little ears. Pretending to be a sports star offers a moment of escape from his daily struggles.

At five years old, Eric’s tiny body already tells a story of poverty and lost opportunity. He is six inches shorter than he should be for his age. His arms and legs are pencil-thin and his head is out of proportion to his body.

Because he is stunted, experts say his chances growing up healthy, learning at full potential, and getting a job, let alone play professional soccer, have been greatly diminished.

In 2013, a United Nations Report said one in four children under five years, across the world – a total of 165 million – were stunted, while last year The Lancet estimated that undernutrition contributed 45 percent of all under-5 deaths.

Often beginning in the womb as poverty-stricken mothers live hand-to-mouth, stunting can be a lifelong affliction. Studies show it is linked to poor cognition and educational performance, low adult wages and lost productivity. A stunted child is nearly five times more likely to die from diarrhoea than a non-stunted child because of the physiological changes in a stunted body.

Development agencies say significant progress has been made in ensuring children are properly nourished, and as a result, the incidence of stunting is declining.

However, huge challenges remain and in sub-Saharan Africa, the proportion of stunted under-fives is two in five. With crises in South Sudan, the Central African Republic, Syria and now Iraq displacing millions of people, combating hunger and ensuring stunting rates don’t creep back up has become a top priority.

“We will not eliminate extreme poverty or achieve sustainable development without adequate food and nutrition for all,” said U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki Moon at a meeting of global hunger agencies in Rome.

“We cannot know peace or security if one in eight people are hungry.”

As such, the first “pillar” of Secretary General’s “Zero Hunger Challenge” aims to eliminate stunting in children under two years old.

The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) is also a partner in the Scaling Up Nutrition (SUN) Movement, another major global push, bringing together more than 50 countries in an effort put national policies in place and implement programme with shared nutrition goals.

One innovative programme – the Africa Nutrition Security Partnership, being implemented by UNICEF and funded by the European Union since 2011- is combating stunting both at the community level and the institution level.

Acutely malnourished children at risk of death are directed to health clinics, and at the same time health institutions and partners are given the tools they need to improve infant and young child feeding practices and hygiene, and better fight hunger and disease. The four-year programme focuses on Ethiopia (with a stunting rate of 44 percent), Uganda (33 percent), Mali (38 percent) and Burkina Faso (35 percent).

The aim is to change behaviour among households, set up systems for effective multisectoral approaches and increase government capacity, enabling these countries to battle against the effects of hunger long after the programme is complete.

In Uganda, for example, community workers have been provided with smart phones, programmed with information about hygiene, postnatal care and proper infant and maternal diet. The workers share the information with household members and then log their location on the smart phone’s GPS to prove they were there.

In Mali’s capital, Bamako, funding has been provided to broaden a master’s degree to provide advanced training to healthcare professionals about how to best design and implements nutrition programmes.

In Ethiopia, schoolgirls are being encouraged to delay marriage and pregnancy until they are at least 18, as a way of preventing intergenerational undernutrition. Older women are better able to carry a baby and rear children with stronger bodies and minds.

The increased focus on stunting by the humanitarian community is telling: its prevalence has become a kind of litmus test for the well being of children in general. A child who has grown to a normal height is more likely to live in a household where they wash their hands and have a toilet; is more likely to eat fruit and vegetables, is more likely to be going to school; is more likely to get a good job; and is less likely to die from disease.

Moreover, tipping the balance in favour of a child’s future isn’t as hard as some might think. The simple act of reinforcing the importance of exclusively breastfeeding a baby for the first six months of his or her life, for example, increases an infant’s chances of survival by six times.

Most of the regions where the partnership is being run have ample food to go around. It is other factors, such as failing to properly wash and dry utensils after meals, selling nutritious homegrown foods at market rather than eating them, and cultural sensitivities to things like vegetables and eggs that are causing problems. As such, simply education programmes can make a real difference and save countless lives.

The other challenge is ensuring there is enough political will to keep those programmes running. If the international community remains focused, the downward trend in stunting will continue. It could only be a few short years before children from modest African communities like the mountains of southern Uganda get to really play for teams like Arsenal. Children just need to be allowed to grow to their full potential and good things will follow.

Edited by: Nalisha Adams

Excerpt:

The government of Mali and Touareg rebels representing Azawad, a territory in northern Mali which declared unilateral independence in 2012 after a Touareg rebellion drove out the Malian army, resumed peace talks in Algiers last week, intended to end decades of conflict.

The talks, being held behind closed doors, are expected to end on July 24.

Negotiations between Bamako and representatives of six northern Mali armed groups, among which the National Movement for the Liberation of Azawad (MNLA) is the strongest, kicked off in Algiers on July 16. Diplomats from Mauritania, Niger, Chad, Burkina Faso, the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) and other international bodies are also attending the discussions.

Moussa Ag Assarid, MNLA spokesperson. Credit: Karlos Zurutuza/IPS

IPS spoke with writer and a journalist Moussa Ag Assarid, MNLA spokesperson in Europe.

You declared your independent state in April 2012 but no one has recognised it yet. Why is that?

We are not for a Touareg state but for a secular and democratic multi-ethnic model of country. We, Touaregs, may be a majority among Azawad population but there are also Arabs, Shongays and Peulas and we´re working in close coordination with them.

Since Mali´s independence in 1960, the people from Azawad have repeatedly stated that we don´t want to be part of that country. We do have the support of many people all around the globe but the states and the international organisations such as the United Nations prefer to tackle the issue without breaking the established order.

And this is why both the United Nations and Mali refer to “jihadism”, and not to the legitimate struggle for freedom of the Azawad people.

However, we are witnessing a reorganisation of the world order amid significant movements in northern Africa, the Middle East, and even Europe, as in the case of the Ukraine. It´s very much a clear proof of the failure of globalisation and the world´s management.“We [the people of Azawad] do have the support of many people all around the globe but the states and the international organisations such as the United Nations prefer to tackle the issue without breaking the established order” – Moussa Ag Assarid

The French intervention in the 2012 war was seemingly a key factor on your side. How do you asses the former colonial power´s role in the region?

The French have always been there, even after Mali´s independence, because they have huge strategic interests in the area as well as natural resources such as the uranium they rely on. In fact, you could say that our independence has been confiscated by both the international community and France.

The former Malian soldiers have been replaced by the U.N. ones but the Malian army keeps committing all sort of abuses against civilians, from arbitrary arrests to deportations or enforced disappearances, all of which take place without the French and the U.N. soldiers lifting a finger.

Meanwhile, Bamako calls on the French state to support them under the pretext they are fighting against Jihadism.

Another worrying issue is the media blackout imposed on us. Reporters are prevented from coming to Azawad so the information is filtered through Bamako-based reporters who talk about “Mali´s north”, who refuse to speak about our struggle and who become spokesmen and defenders of the Malian state.

So what is the real presence, if any, of the Malian state in Azawad?

Mali´s army and its administration fled in 2012 and the state is only present in the areas protected by the French army, in Gao and Tombouktou. Paris has around 1,000 soldiers deployed in the area, the United Nations has 8,000 blue helmets in the whole country, and there are between 12,000 and 15,000 fighters in the ranks of the MNLA.

We coordinate ourselves with the Arab Movement of Azawad and the High Council for the Unity of Azawad. Alongside these two groups we hold control of 90 percent of Azawad, but we are living under extremely difficult conditions.

We obviously don´t get any support from either Mali or Algeria and we have to cope with a terrible drought. We rely on the meat and the milk of our goats, like we´ve done from time immemorial and we fight with the weapons we confiscated from the Malian Army, the Jihadists, or those we once got from Libya.

You mention Libya. Many claim that the MNLA fighters fought on the side of Gaddafi during the Libyan war in 2011. Is that right?

Many media networks insist on distorting the facts. Gaddafi did grant Libyan citizenship to the Touaregs but he later used them to fight in Palestine, Lebanon or Chad. In 1990, they went back to Azawad to fight against the Malian army and, even if we had the chance, we did not make the mistake of fighting against the Libyan people in 2011.

Gaddafi gave Touaregs weapons to fight in Benghazi but the Touareg decided to go to Kidal and set up the MNLA. It´s completely false that the MNLA is formed by Touaregs who came from Libya. Many of our fighters have never been there, neither have I.

Do Islamic extremists still pose a major concern in Azawad?

In January 2013, AQMI (Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb), MUJAO (Movement for Unity and Jihad in West Africa), a splinter group of AQMI and Ansar Dine attacked the Malian army on the border between Mali and Azawad.

Mali´s president asked for help from Paris to oust them but it´s us, the MNLA, who have been fighting the Jihadists since June 2012. The United States, the United Kingdom and France claim to fight against Al Qaeda but it´s us who do it on the ground. Ansar Dine has given no sign of life for over a year but AQMI and MUJAO are still active.

One of the most outrageous issues is that Bamako had had strong links with AQMI in the past, or even backed Ansar Dine, whose leader is a Touareg but the people under his command are just a criminal gang. Today, the Jihadists backed by Bamako have become stronger than the Malian army itself.

Are you optimistic about the ongoing talks with Bamako?

So far we have signed all sorts of agreements but none of them has ever been respected. Accordingly, we have already discarded the stage in which we would accept autonomy, or even a federal state. At this point, we have come to the conclusion that the only way to solve this conflict is to achieve our independence and live in freedom and peace in our land.

Mali has never fulfilled its word so that´s why we call on the international community, France and the United Nations.

Spanish Refugee Aid Commission centre in the southern city of Malaga. The banner on the second floor balcony reads, “The right to live in peace.” Credit: Inés Benítez/IPS

By Inés Benítez
MALAGA, Spain, Jul 21 2014 (IPS)

Little Samir covers his face with his hands as he plays under the orange tree in the centre of the inner courtyard of the Spanish Refugee Aid Commission (CEAR) centre in the southern city of Malaga. He is four years old and has spent nearly a year in Spain, where he arrived with his parents, fleeing the war in Syria.

Samir (not his real name) and his family, who remain anonymous at their request, were among millions of Syrians who abandoned their homes and way of life to escape the conflict that flared up in March 2011.

Some of those who seek protection in the European Union come to Spain by plane with a visa, but others come through Morocco, crossing the borders into the Spanish enclaves of Ceuta and Melilla in North Africa, with fake documents purchased on the black market.

“The journey from Syria to Spain can take up to three or four months,” Wassim Zabad, who is from Damascus and has lived in Malaga for 11 years, told IPS.

“Why does Spain offer less help to refugees and take longer to process asylum applications than Germany or Sweden? If I had known it, I would have travelled to another country." -- Adi Mohamed, a 33-year-old Syrian
Many people reach Morocco after travelling through Egypt, Libya and Algeria, said Zabad, who owns a travel agency specialising in taking Spanish tourists to Lebanon, Egypt and Syria. Business is bad because of the conflicts in those countries.

In his view, the conditions for refugees “are quite bad” in Spain, which is why “98 percent of Syrians” move on to other countries where they may have relatives or believe there are better facilities and economic assistance, especially France, Germany or Sweden.

Francisco Cansino, the CEAR coordinator for eastern Andalusia, told IPS that the majority of Syrians his organisation helps, coming from the Melilla Centre for the Temporary Stay of Immigrants (CETI), prefer to request asylum in other EU countries, although the standard procedure is for them to seek asylum in the country of entry, and this is what they are told.

The European Commission’s Dublin II Regulation of Feb. 18, 2003 establishes the principle that the first safe country entered by an asylum seeker is responsible for examining the asylum application, and provides for the transfer of an asylum seeker to that EU country.

“They don’t stay. They leave because they think their chances are better in other countries. They ask to leave the same day they arrive. They say they have relatives in Europe,” Cansino said. In his view, Syrian refugees are “suddenly facing an abyss of uncertainty.”

Four Syrians – a couple with two children – have been living at the Malaga CEAR centre for the past few weeks. They receive shelter, food, clothing, a monthly allowance (equivalent to 68 dollars per person), Spanish language classes and job training programmes. CEAR is an independent volunteer-based humanitarian organisation.

So far in 2014, some 200 people from Syria have been cared for in this centre, Cansino said.

“Only a minority of Syrian refugees come to Spain. The majority are displaced within Syria itself or seek safety in neighbouring countries,” David Ortiz, the head of the Red Cross Refugee Reception Centre in Malaga, told IPS.

At this Red Cross centre, one of seven in the country, 13 of the 20 beds are occupied by Syrians and Palestinians who were living in Syria. Among them are two families with children, who have been attending school since they arrived.

A total of 100,000 people have died in the war in Syria, 10,000 of them children. About 2.6 million people have fled to other countries, and 6.5 million are internally displaced, according to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR).

“Syrian refugees come to us tremendously traumatised,” said Ortiz. They have to rebuild their lives, learn a new language and find work in a country like Spain, where the unemployment rate is over 25 percent, he said.

A report on the situation of refugees in Spain, presented by CEAR in June, indicates that the country received 4,502 applications for asylum in 2013, compared to 2,588 in 2012, owing to an increase in applications from persons from Mali (1,478) and Syria (725).

According to Eurostat data cited in the CEAR report, in 2013 some 435,000 asylum seekers came to the EU. The largest group came from Syria (50,000) and the applications were mainly directed to Germany, with 109,580 applications, followed by France and Sweden. But only three percent of Syrian refugees have been granted asylum in Europe.

“I hope to find stability here in Spain,” said Adi Mohamed, a 33-year-old Syrian, who had a visa that allowed him to fly to Malaga in April, where he lives with some Syrian friends. He owns a restaurant in Palmira, near Homs, and he is worried about the safety of his parents and the five brothers and sisters he left behind.

Mohamed, who ran a restaurant with fifty employees, asked, “Why does Spain offer less help to refugees and take longer to process asylum applications than Germany or Sweden? If I had known it, I would have travelled to another country,” he said.

The length of stay in the refugee reception centres is six months, renewable for the same period in the “very frequent” case that the asylum application has not yet been determined. Families with children may stay for up to 18 months, Ortiz said.

“Asylum processing times are different in different EU countries, and so are benefits for refugees,” said Ortiz. He complained that the Dublin Regulation was “unfair” to oblige refugees to apply for asylum in the country where they first enter the bloc.

In a report published Jul. 9, Amnesty International (AI) says that while 1.82 billion euros (2.46 billion dollars) of EU funding was allocated to control of its external borders between 2007 and 2013, only 700 million (950 million dollars) was spent on improving the situation for asylum seekers.

The AI report accuses EU migration policies of “putting the lives and rights of refugees and migrants at risk” when they try to cross into the EU, especially through Bulgaria, Greece and Spain, and warns that some 23,000 people have lost their lives trying to get into Europe since 2000.

Several NGOs have denounced inadequate conditions at the Melilla CETI, which houses hundreds of Syrian and sub-Saharan migrants, as well as delays in processing asylum applications, which prevents them from leaving Ceuta or Melilla under Spanish law.

According to the UNHCR report ‘Syrian Refugees in Europe: What Europe Can Do to Ensure Protection and Solidarity’, published Jul. 11, the CETI was housing 2,161 people as of Jun. 12, when its maximum capacity is 480. Among them were 384 Syrian adults and 480 children.

(END)

A girl playing in a United Nations Refugee Agency camp in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso in February 2013. Refugees here fled their native Mali in March 2012 when Islamist groups took control of the north of the country. Credit: Marc-André Boisvert/IPS

By Marc-Andre Boisvert
ABIDJAN, Mar 19 2014 (IPS)

In West Africa, the Malian and Ivorian political crises have resulted in the biggest number of refugees in the region. But brewing insecurity could mean that they will be unable to return home any time soon as armed groups remain a threat to West Africa.

In Nigeria, Islamist groups have targeted civilians, and are now hiding in neighbouring Niger and Cameroon. In Mali, even though the United Nations mission is providing military support, the Movement for Unity Jihad in West Africa (MUJWA) Islamists remain a threat and there have been a number of bomb explosions.“We have to have military escorts in this region to protect the mission from possible kidnappings.” -- Mohamed Bah, UNHCR

Côte d’Ivoire too has faced insecurity. While the country recovers from its post-electoral crisis that resulted in over 3,000 deaths between 2010 to 2011, refugees are slow to return from Ghana, Togo and Liberia.

There are now 93,738 refugees, mostly in Liberia, Togo and Ghana, and 24,000 Ivorian internally displaced persons (IDPs), according to the U.N. Refugee Agency (UNHCR).

But the situation in the west of the country, in Bas-Sassandra, where most of the killings were perpetrated during the post-election crisis, remains fragile with the resumption of attacks during the last few weeks.

Ilmari Käihkö is a PhD student at the department for Peace and Conflict Research at Uppsala University, Sweden, who has conducted extensive field studies in eastern Liberia and investigated the Ivorian refugee areas there.

He said that Ivorian refugees were waiting for the results of the 2015 presidential elections before deciding whether to return home.

“Refugees believe that [current President Allassane ] Ouattara will lose. There might be a negative reaction if he wins,” he told IPS.

Côte d’Ivoire’s government has made a special effort to encourage the return of its refugees. It has sent several envoys to refugee communities to share the word that they will be welcomed when they return home.

This policy is working in part as several notorious supporters of former Ivorian President Laurent Gbagbo have come back to Côte d’Ivoire, including former Abidjan Port Authority director Marcel Gossio and over 1,300 ex-combatants.

Gbagbo, who is awaiting trial before the International Criminal Court, is accused of crimes against humanity for his alleged role in the 2010 to 2011 post-electoral crisis.

For Käihkö, the situation remains tense and the potential for more violence remains high as there are also land ownership issues in western Côte d’Ivoire that need to be addressed to ensure the safe return of the refugees.

The Ivorian refugees in Liberia are mostly from western Côte d’Ivoire, where some of the world’s biggest cacao producers originate. However, many have lived on the land without title deeds, adhering to the policy of “the land belongs to who takes care of it”. This has resulted in a conflict of ownership of land between the native Guérés and settlers to western Côte d’Ivoire.

According to Käihkö, the issues concerning land ownership are a key reason why many Ivorian refugees choose to remain in Liberia — many feel they don’t have anything to return to.

Nigeria too faces ongoing insecurity.

Already, violent attacks perpetrated by the Islamist militant group Boko Haram in northern Nigeria have forced 1,500 persons to flee in southern Niger’s Diffa Region and more than 4,000 to Cameroon over the last few months.

Boko Haram has targeted schools, hospitals and other institutions perceived as being from the West. And, as the number of refugees and IDPs increases, operations to provide aid for these people have been restricted because of security fears.

And it’s not just in Nigeria that the security situation has complicated humanitarian operations.

Across the region, aid workers have been abducted and attacked, and expat workers are becoming targets. On Feb. 8, an International Red Cross Committee convoy was attacked and five Malian employees were kidnapped by MUJWA.

As humanitarian agencies become targets they are increasingly forced to spend money on security for their staff that ideally should go to those in need.

“We have to have military escorts in this region to protect the mission from possible kidnappings,” Mohamed Bah, information officer at the Burkina Faso’s UNHCR office, told IPS.

Burkina Faso shares a border with Mali and although the security situation remains relatively stable, UNHCR says “strict security measures are in place in rural areas, particularly in Dori and Djibo, limiting the office’s access to its people of concern.”

This complicates both aid operations and repatriation.

“This insecurity limits access to repatriate in Mali. We need MINUSMA [U.N. Multidimensional Integrated Stabilisation Mission in Mali] support to go meet the repatriates. Several NGOs have limited their presence in return areas,” Olivier Beer, from the UNHCR’s Mali office, told IPS.

Young girls near a United Nations Refugee Agency camp in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso in February 2013. Refugees here fled their native Mali in March 2012 when Islamist groups took control of the north of the country. Credit: Marc-André Boisvert/IPS

In December 2012, few weeks before French forces started to bomb Islamist targets, there were as many as 500,000 Malian refugees and IDPs.

Now, as the stabilisation effort continues with MINUSMA slowly taking over military operations, numbers have reduced to 167,000 refugees in isolated camps in neighbouring Burkina Faso, Niger, Algeria and Mauritania. Within the country there are about 200,000 IDPs.

The UNHCR does not recommend a homecoming yet.

“For an organised UNHCR-backed return, there are some protection criterions that need to be met to ensure safety and dignity,” Beer said. A lack of housing and schooling, insecurity and no access to justice have all contributed to the delay in repatriating refugees.

However, it may take longer for the refugees to return home, even if the security issues are resolved. Several U.N. agencies and NGOs have warned that West Africa faces a grave food crisis.

More than 800,000 Malians, according to British NGO Oxfam International, currently need food assistance, and numbers are likely to reach even more critical proportions when food reserves will be empty when the lean season will start in mid-May.

Côte d’Ivoire refugees will also face a challenge. UNHCR Liberia bureau chief Khassim Diagne stated that if their food supply was not increased within two months more than 52,000 Ivorian refugees in Liberia would starve.

Aminata Diarra holds up a picture of her brother Malamine, a Red Beret who disappeared in early May 2012. Credit: Marc-André Boisvert/IPS

By Marc-Andre Boisvert
BAMAKO, Feb 13 2014 (IPS)

Aminata Diarra last saw her brother, Malamine, a member of the Malian Red Berets, special forces loyal to ousted president Amadou Toumani Toure, alive on national television almost two years ago.

It was in May 2012, not long after after General Amadou Haya Sanogo, then a Captain, had seized control of the country’s capital Bamako. The military, which suffered several humiliating defeats against Tuareg rebels in the country’s north, initiated the mutiny against the government in their bid for more resources to fight the uprising in northern Mali."We know our relatives have been tortured and killed. We found each other in pain. We will fight for justice." -- Bintou Maiga Sagara, mother of missing Red Beret, Dokale

It was only five days after the coup that Malians learned the name of the junta leader. Sanogo gained instant popularity among a population that saw the democratically-elected government as corrupt. Small Chinese motorcycles, a very popular means of transportation in Bamako, were decorated with stickers of the new leader.

“He offered us hope. But now we know that he was there to enrich himself,” Oumar Sanogo tells IPS while drinking tea with friends at the corner of a street, in the shade of a newspaper stand.

For a few weeks, Sanogo was head of state until international pressure forced him to step down. Constitutional order and a transitional government, headed by the president of the National Assembly, Dioncounda Traore, were then established.

But this was not before hostilities between the Red Berets and Sanogo’s Green Berets resulted in the exchange of fire in April 2012 in what has been dubbed a “counter-coup”.

The Missing 21 Red Berets

Stories about who started the hostilities remain unclear, but several Red Berets were killed and arrested. Diarra’s brother was one of 21 Red Berets who disappeared after the counter-coup failed.

The last time the families of these 21 Red Berets saw them alive was on national television, soon after their arrest at Sanogo’s headquarters, the Kati military base just outside Bamako.

“I went on May 2^nd [2012] to Kati to see if my brother was alive. I went back every day. I received threats. I kept going. But we never had news,” Diarra tells IPS.

She explains that, while some succeeded in finding their missing family members after the “counter-coup”, all communication about the soldiers stopped around April that year.

While this West African nation is slowly moving on from the 2012 military coup, and the occupation of its north by Islamic extremists – the country held elections here in July 2013 – families of the military victims are stilling awaiting justice for what is considered to be the other Malian crisis.

Sanogo was arrested and charged for murder and kidnapping in November 2013. And soon after his arrest a mass grave containing 21 bodies was discovered a few kilometres from his Kati military base. Many believe that these are the bodies of the 21 missing Red Berets.

It is hoped that any day now the DNA results of the soldiers will be made public.

“We are patiently waiting for results. Then, justice will be able to act,” says Diarra, who is also a jurist.

Bintou Maiga Sagara is also watching the situation closely. Her son, Dokale, was among the ones that disappeared.

“I am relieved that they discovered the [bodies],” she tells IPS, showing a picture of her son in uniform.

Sagara has faith that justice will be done.

“Mali is not a violent country. We know our relatives have been tortured and killed. We found each other in pain. We will fight for justice,” she says.

While human rights violations and violence committed by the army have yet to be investigated in the north, the think tank International Crisis Group said in a January  report that there is a need for reform in the military as well as “guaranteeing the republican character of an army that will not engage itself into politics.”

But Moctar Mariko, president of the Malian Association of Human Rights, believes it is important to first shed light on the several episodes of violence before moving forward.

“Mali has a long tradition of impunity, especially within the army. It is time to move away from that,” Mariko tells IPS.

Justice for All

But Sanogo and his followers are not just accused of killing Red Berets. In September 2012, a mutiny was quenched when several of Sanogo’s former supporters revolted against him.

Thirty Green Berets were arrested and then released, but at least eight men have disappeared.

Three bodies were found a month later in October 2012. But the five other men are still missing and their families are still waiting for answers to see if their brothers, sons and husbands are alive.

Nantoume Fatoumata Doumbia’s brother, Lassine Keita, disappeared while drinking in a bar in Kati in September 2012. His body was found a few days later.

“I knew what happened. The day after the mutiny, Sanogo said that he will kill all the ones that rose up [against him],” she tells IPS calmly.

Fanta Keita still does not know what happened to her husband, Ibrahim Doumbia.

“We want to know the truth. We want to know if they are alive or not. It is impossible to keep living that way,” she tells IPS.

People washing clothes on the shore of the Niger River in Mali’s capital, Bamako. Mali’s recent conflict destroyed the economy and created pressure on households. But the economy is slowly improving. Credit: Marc-André Boisvert/IPS

By Marc-Andre Boisvert
BAMAKO, Feb 6 2014 (IPS)

Under the harsh Sunday afternoon sun, Daouda Dicko washes his client’s clothes on the shore of the Niger River, which runs through Mali’s capital, Bamako. “I started doing this to survive two years ago. Now, I am used to it and I don’t mind the extra money it brings,” Dicko, who also works as a gardener, tells IPS.

Dicko struggled to feed his family during Mali’s political crisis in March 2012 when Tuareg rebels and then Islamists took control of the country’s north, which comprises almost two-thirds of this West African nation. But military intervention from France liberated the north in January 2013 and led to elections here in July that year. “The economy is not in shambles. It is dead.” -- member of parliament Aicha Belco Maiga

The conflict destroyed Mali’s economy and created pressure on households. But the country’s economy is slowly showing signs of improvement.

Binetou Diarra arranges plump tomatoes on her wooden stall in the Quartier du Fleuve, a market in Bamako.

“Prices increased a lot a year ago. But now they are back to almost normal,” 37-year-old Diarra, who is wearing a T-shirt from last year’s presidential campaign, tells IPS.

Cooking oil, which had risen to a high of 1,200 CFA (2.47 dollars) in September 2012, has now come down to 850 CFA (1.75 dollars). But in Bamako, it is not only in consumers’ pockets where one can find visible signs of economic recovery.

Hotels, which were all closed between 2012 to 2013, have now reopened. However, they are no longer filled with the 250,000 tourists whom, according to the Mali Tourism Office, would flock to the country back in 2009.

The Hotel de l’Amitié, one of the tallest buildings in the capital, has now become the seat of the United Nations mission here. Other hotels are filled with staff from NGOs and from other missions to help get Mali back on track. Restaurants and business are also busy with the return of expatriates.

Fatoumata Coulibaly and her friends have stalls close to several expatriate neighbourhoods. And the return of the expats has had a direct effect in their wallets. “There is more money coming in. It is not easy to survive, but we are positive. We know the worst is behind. Inshallah,” Coulibaly tells IPS.

Heading Towards Growth

In January, Christine Lagarde, managing director of the International Monetary Fund, said that Mali’s GDP growth will increase by 6.6 percent in 2014, which is a higher growth than the 5.7 percent predicted  a couple of months earlier.

Lagarde told the press in Mali that the country now has to move from an economic crisis to recovery. “We now have to strengthen economic fundamentals to increase growth, job creation and to decrease poverty.”

But it will be a challenge.

When sanctions were imposed here after the 2012 coup, the country lost the 30 percent of its 3.5-billion-dollar budget that was foreign-aid dependent.

The government’s centralised offices in the Cité Administrative, a Sahelian-inspired complex on the Niger River’s shore, became a phantom district for over a year because of the money shortage.

“We have been totally paralysed during the crisis. I received my salary, but it was late. And we had no budget to pursue operations. But now things are back to normal. We are paid and we have the tools to work,” Fofana Daouda, a civil servant from the ministry of family, tells IPS.

The North Remains in Economic Crisis

But while the country’s capital is experiencing a slow recovery, Mali’s north still lacks economic opportunities and many are still living in extreme poverty, says Dedeou Traore, a member of parliament for the northern region of Niafunke.

“The economy is bad,” Traore tells IPS. Northerners, whose livelihoods were largely dependent on subsistence agriculture, have lost everything.

“In Niafunké, the Prefect is back, but the Justice and other state institutions [have not returned]. People feel that they are abandoned,” Traore says.

In May 2013, international donors offered almost 3.5 billion dollars to reconstruct Mali. But this week donors are meeting in Brussels as only half of the funds have been received.

Meanwhile, Oxfam International has called for better governance and the better distribution of state resources, in a report released on Feb. 5.

The report denounces “the combined impact of weak decentralisation, corruption, and a lack of transparency regarding budget allocation and the distribution of aid has led to a widely-held belief that the country’s citizens are not receiving their fair share from the government.”

“The situation in northern Mali remains fragile. Donors must not forget that more than 800,000 people need immediate food assistance due to the impact of conflict, weak harvests, and poor rains.  Mali needs a comprehensive response to the many challenges it faces,” says Mohamed L. Coulibaly, country director for Oxfam International in Mali.

Aicha Belco Maiga is a member of President Ibrahim Boubacar Keita’s Rally for Mali party, which has the majority seats in parliament. She represents the region of Tessalit, one of the most remote and arid places in Mali near the Algerian border.

“In Tessalit, all economic activities have stopped. The town is empty. People who stayed had to sell their belongings for food. There is nothing to eat. There is no functioning administration. It is so bad that you see more Algerian dinars being exchanged than CFA Francs [Mali’s currency],” she tells IPS.

“This population needs our help. The economy is not in shambles. It is dead.”

Agaichetou Toure fled Gao in March 2012 for Bamako. She is still waiting to return home. Credit: Marc-André Boisvert/IPS

By Marc-Andre Boisvert
BAMAKO, Jan 31 2014 (IPS)

In her traditional orange headdress, Agaichetou Toure sits quietly in a waiting room in Kalaban-Koura, a popular neighbourhood on the outskirts of Mali’s capital Bamako. 

It’s taken Toure almost two years to register as an internally displaced person (IDP) because until now she did not know that centres for this existed or that they provided aid for people like her. It was while running errands that she heard a crowd speaking about a new centre that had opened. So she came.Many IDPs fear returning ... Protection for locals is minimal. Basically, for now, populations are left by themselves." -- Almahady Cisse from Cri de Coeur

Toure fled Gao, the capital of Mali’s south-eastern Gao Region, the day after Islamists entered and took control of the city in March 2012. Along with her three children, she boarded a canoe and crossed the Niger River as the sound of rifle fire rung out in the background.

Her two older children crossed into neighbouring Niger and took refuge with an aunt. Toure and her eight-year-old daughter boarded a bus and travelled for four days to reach Bamako, about 1,200 kilometres south of Gao, to take refuge with her brother.

Difficult Living Conditions

Almost two years later, their living conditions remain difficult as they stay with Toure’s brother, his two wives and eight children in his two-bedroom home. The sleeping arrangements aren’t any better. Each night, depending on which wife her brother sleeps with, Toure has to sleep in a different bedroom.

“I am stuck in Bamako. I don’t like it. But I have to [stay],” says the 42-year-old who is one of eight women waiting to be registered at this IDP centre. Toure’s home city of Gao was targeted by rocket attacks last week.

It has been a year since this West African nation’s government took back control of its north, and six months after peaceful elections were held here.

In January 2012, a Tuareg rebellion triggered a series of events that lead to the fall of almost two-thirds of Mali’s territory. The Tuareg rebels were soon ousted by Islamist movements, several of which are linked to Al Qaeda. But military intervention from French, and later African, troops, liberated the north in January 2013 and led to elections here in July of that year.

But hundreds of thousands of displaced persons and refugees have still not returned to their homes.

The International Organisation for Migration (IOM) in Mali says that, as of January, there are 217,811 displaced persons, mostly in the southern part of the country and in Bamako. It is a reduction from the 353,455 IDPs recorded in June 2013. In addition, about 167,000 refugees remain in camps in neighbouring countries.

In a spartan, but brand new office in Kalaban-Koura, Mahamane Allassa Assofaré sees about 20 IDPs a day who wish to be registered. This office is one of the five centres run by the Agency for Technical Cooperation and Development (ACTED) in collaboration with the IOM.

Assofaré documents the story of each IDP who comes through the doors. It’s the first step in helping them receive aid, basic services, professional training, cash transfers and maternal care.

“They face a lot of problems. The cost of living is much more expensive in Bamako than where they are from. There are issues with health, food, housing,” Assofaré tells IPS while handing a questionnaire to an IDP.

IOM estimates that around 57 percent of the 353,455 IDPs registered in June 2013 have now returned to their homes, 78 percent of whom say that the improved security situation motivated their return.

Niamoye Alidji is an IDP whom IPS met two years ago. She was one of the first people to return to her home in Timbuktu, a town on the list of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation’s (UNESCO) world heritage sites, in northern Mali. And she is happy that she did.

“People are slowly coming back. Shops are reopening. School is starting. In Timbuktu, things are getting much better. We are safe,” she tells IPS over the phone.

There’s Nothing To Go Back To

If Timbuktu has been pacified, several regions are far from secure. The city of Gao was targeted by rocket attacks last week. This week, it was the turn of Kidal, a city in northern Mali. In those areas, the security situation still remains fragile.

“Our position is that we do not encourage massive returns,” Olivier Beer, from the U.N. Refugee Agency (UNHCR), tells IPS. “Safety does not explain it all.”

He says that the humanitarian conditions of the refugees and the absence of state facilities are reasons not to support mass repatriation.

Almahady Cisse from Cri de Coeur, a Malian collective that was created to support the victims of the humanitarian crisis in the north, agrees.

“There is a lack of accompaniment measures. Many IDPs fear returning, especially civil servants, which delays state support. Few schools have reopened. There are still limited health facilities. Protection for locals is minimal. Basically, for now, populations are left by themselves,” Cisse tells IPS.

Abdoulaye Haidara, 50, from a village close to Bourem, a town in Goa Region, has been living in Bamako for almost two years. He is reluctant to return home.

“I talk to my family in Bourem. It seems better. I would like to go back, but there is nothing left there. Everything I had has disappeared. And I have no way of feeding my four kids there. It serves no purpose to go back,” he tells IPS.

Assofané says that because of the lack of services and facilities in the north, many IDPs who went home after the violence, are returning to Bamako.

“They lost everything in the pillage, and the economy is quite bad,” explains Assofané.

And there remains a stream of newly displaced IDPs moving to Mali’s south.

Situation is Fragile 

The IDP situation here is fragile.

“We have done an in-depth investigation and the IDP situation has lead to a slow precariousness of host families,” Nicolas Robe, country director for ACTED, tells IPS.

Several IDPs have moved in with their extended families, burdening many of these households. The situation is becoming unbearable for some and several households have reached out for aid.

The IOM estimates that many IDPs will need food assistance to return home. About 800,000 people need immediate food assistance and about three million of the country’s 14.8 million people are at risk of lacking food in the next three months.

It is no wonder that Cisse from Cri de Coeur believes it is a good thing that IDPs are not forced to return home.

“A return should not be premature. Someone that has lost everything needs support. They need time to organise for the best return possible. And so far, we are still in this process.”

There are conflicts old and new crying for solution and reconciliation, not violence, with reasonable, realistic ways out.

Take the South Sudan conflict between the Nuer and the Dinka. We know the story of the borders drawn by the colonial powers, confirmed in Berlin in 1884. Change a border by splitting a country – referendum or not – and what do you expect opening Pandora’s box? More Pandora.

There is a solution: not drawing borders, making them irrelevant. The former Sudan could have become a federation with much autonomy, keeping some apart and others together in confederations-communities, also across borders. Much to learn from Switzerland, EU and ASEAN.

Johan Galtung, rector of the TRANSCEND Peace University. Credit: IPS

Take the Maghreb-Mali+ complex: a road to peace runs through Tuareg high autonomy and confederations of the autonomies, in addition to the state system. Proceeds from natural resources – oil, uranium, gold, metals – should benefit the owners, not former colonisers. The United Nations’ task is to make the West comply with socioeconomic human rights.

Take what is called the last colony (well, Ulster? Palestine?): Sahrawi, Spain’s shame for not having decolonised; the United Nations Charter Article 73 formula is not perfect but differential treatment is unacceptable.

Take Ceuta and Melilla, “Spanish” enclaves in Morocco, and Gibraltar, an “English” enclave in Spain: use the Hong Kong formula with sovereignty for the owners, flag and garrison, and leave the system as it is.

Geography and history matter; sovereignty for one, system for the other. Not a bad formula for the Falkland/Malvinas islands or Northern Ireland, with a reborn Republic of Ireland in a Confederation of British Isles.

Back to Berlin 1884, institutionalising the outrageous sociocide, with genocide and ecocide, perpetrated on Africans on top of centuries of Arab-West slavery. But do not forget the Congress of Berlin six years earlier, in 1878, doing the same to the Balkans, with the infamous Article 25 giving the Dual Monarchy, Austria-Hungary, the right to occupy and administer Bosnia-Herzegovina temporarily.

On Oct. 6, 1908 they did exactly that, Turkey and Russia both being weak. What do you expect when annexing someone’s land? A resistance movement of course, and ultimately, on Jun. 28, 1914, the sacred date to the Serbs, having been defeated by the Turks 525 years earlier: Two shots rang out in Sarajevo.

One century later “historians” (who pay their salaries, states?) see the shots as the cause of World War I, not what caused the shots; like seeing the terrorists, not what causes terrorism.

Then as now the same two stories, nations made prisoners of states, and states-peoples made prisoners of empires. Sarajevo used against terrorism.

U.S. President Woodrow Wilson used self-determination to dismantle the beaten Prussian, Habsburg and Ottoman empires; but not the victors’ empires as a young Vietnamese in Paris experiences, chased away from the U.S. Embassy: Ho Chi Minh, claiming the same for his people.

And the U.S. Versailles delegation rejected that claim by Sudeten Germans against Czechoslovakia; accepted by England, not to “appease” Adolf Hitler, but to rectify a wrong.

What a fantastic chance for German-Austrian foreign policy!

Start this 2014 centenary year preparing 150 anniversary conferences, in 2028 and 2034, apologising for 1914, undoing some harm, letting Africans be Africans and Balkans be Balkans of various kinds, stop blaming their victims for being unruly, restless, terrorist and so on. The peaceful century 1815-1914: some peace! Don’t miss the chance.

But they were not alone. In 1905 the U.S.-Japan, Taft-Katsura (later president and prime minister, respectively) agreed to U.S. rule in the Philippines and Japanese rule in Korea, in the interest of “peace in East Asia” – their peace, meaning rule. A good century later the Obama-Abe (president and prime minister, respectively) uneasy agreement on Japan’s aggressive policy.

The solution to the Korean Peninsula conflict is a peace treaty and normalisation with North Korea, a Korean nuclear free zone and work on the open border-confederation-federation-unitary state continuum.

If the U.S. fails to go along, why not go ahead, also multilaterally and via United Nations.

But they were not alone: in 1917 Balfour Jewish homeland followed the Sykes-Picot treason with four disastrous colonies. With a major difference, however: the Jews had been there before; some title to some land, but not to an ever-expanding Jewish state (just one word away from “only Jewish”).

The road to peace must pass through a pre-1967 Israel with Jewish characteristics, Palestine recognised, a Middle East Community of Israel with border countries, an Organisation for Cooperation and Security in West Asia, with Syria (an upper chamber for the many nations with cultural autonomy – Ottoman millet), Iraq (maybe confederation, with no U.S. bases), the Kurds (autonomy in the four countries for some land, a confederation of autonomies), Iran (an end to Benjamin Netanyahu extremism), a moderate Israel, and International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) inspection.

Afghanistan? Full U.S.-NATO withdrawal, an end to foreign bases, coalition government, Swiss-style constitution with much autonomy for villages and nations, and gender parity. But let Afghans be Afghans.

China’s claims on sea and air space? Too much, but the Chinese had been there before, 500-1500; some title to some sea, some air.

And U.S.-China: direct cooperation for mutual benefit, make it more equal; the U.S. is cheating itself, building warehouses, not factories.

U.S. spying on the world: the point is not clemency for Edward Snowden but to drop the NSA and punish those, also allies, who violated human rights.

The West tries to claim the moral high ground by changing discourse to something they think they have and others do not: democracy. Running a huge colonial-imperial system against the will of others? Some democracy.
(END/COPYRIGHT IPS)

Churches in Diabaly, central Mali, were looted and destroyed during the Islamist occupation. Credit: Marc-André Boisvert/IPS

By Bryant Harris
WASHINGTON, Jan 15 2014 (IPS)

A year after Mali’s civil war came to an end, experts here are increasingly concerned that the country risks an eventual return to violence, particularly as Malian authorities continue to marginalise the restive north while neglecting to pursue meaningful political and economic reforms. 

Indeed, a lack of equitable opportunity across Mali has caused northern Tuareg separatists to cite political and economic marginalisation as their reason for rebelling in the first place. The Tuaregs have contested Mali’s north since the 1990s, launching four separate rebellions, finally succeeding due to arms obtained from the Libyan Civil War against Muammar Gaddafi in 2011.“There have been promises made for increased development and local autonomy, but the Malian government strategy is simply to buy off the leader of the rebellion." -- J. Peter Pham

In 2012, Al Qaeda-linked groups took advantage of the insurgency and a military coup to establish control over the area, though Malian authorities were eventually able to expel the Islamist militants with the aid of French intervention. This led to a June 2013 ceasefire accord known as the Ouagadougou agreement, which allowed the government to station soldiers in the north and paved the way for democratic elections last summer.

Yet today, analysts suggest the Tauregs feel that the Malian government has not lived up to its past promises.

“The Tuaregs as a whole regret their temporary alliance with extremists who pushed them out right away but are by no means fully reconciled with the government in Bamako,” J. Peter Pham, director of the Africa Center at the Atlantic Council, a Washington-based think tank, told IPS.

“There have been promises made for increased development and local autonomy, but the Malian government strategy is simply to buy off the leader of the rebellion – but not address the underlying causes. People have to see some sort of benefit for being part of the state and that has not been the case.”

On Sunday, Malian President Ibrahim Boubacer Keita concluded a three-day trip to Mauritania, where he signed a joint statement increasing cooperation between Malian and Mauritanian security forces as France reduces its presence in Mali. Yet analysts from the International Crisis Group (ICG), a watchdog group, are warning that the country’s internal security remains fragile.

Further, a new ICG report cautions that “the urgent need to stabilise the [security] situation should not detract from implementing meaningful governance reforms and a truly inclusive dialogue on the future of the country.”

Similar sentiments recently came during an official mission to Mali by the International Monetary Fund.

“[G]rowth in Mali must be more equitable and more inclusive,” Christine Lagarde, the head of the Washington-based IMF, wrote in a blog entry last week. “This means that all sectors in Mali’s economy should have access to opportunity, including in the education sector and participate in the benefits of growth.”

Limited reconciliation

The Malian government’s inability to adequately include the north in the economic growth that Lagarde recently praised has hindered reconciliation attempts.

After the conflict, civil service workers staffing these institutions have been slow to return to the north, even as northern infrastructure is in need of rehabilitation.

The lack of public services and economic relief in northern Mali has reportedly made the Malian government even more unpopular, resulting in several protests. In late November, for instance, the Malian army opened fire at civilians attending a protest.

The ICG suggests that Malian authorities should focus on the reestablishment and improvement of judicial, health-care and education systems. The report also calls on the government to end its reliance on community-based armed groups to establish order and launch investigations into the army’s abuse and harassment of civilians.

The unrest has also hindered the shipment of humanitarian aid, while the country continues to lack the resources to restore services in the north. In October, the secretary-general reported that some 65 percent of health centres in conflict-affected areas are either partially functional or completely destroyed, while half of schools are closed.

Despite the government’s unpopularity in the north, a United Nations mission, known as MINUSMA, has worked to support Mali’s National Commission for Dialogue and National Reconciliation, established in March 2013 to foster improved relationships between the Malian government and northern separatists. But in an October report, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon described the “dialogue and reconciliation activities” as “limited”.

Mali has also established a series of conferences focusing on northern decentralisation to soothe unrest by giving Tuareg separatists more autonomy. However, the ICG’s new analysis warns that “the meetings should be more inclusive … and result in prompt, tangible actions,” such as the delayed transference of some state resources to local authorities.

Critics of the reconciliation talks note that they are top-down initiatives from Bamako, Mali’s southern capital, rather than community-led. As a result, armed groups in the north have refused to participate in the meetings on the grounds that the government is uninterested in actual dialogue.

Volatile security

As southern Mali attempts to reconcile with the north, the security situation overall remains tenuous, with significant transitions underway.

“Because of limited resources, budget complaints, and demand elsewhere, you’ll soon be left with barely 1,000 French troops,” the Atlantic Council’s Pham says.” Most of these will be engaged in the southern part [of Mali] and not the northern two-thirds, leaving an undersized and under-equipped, predominantly African, force roughly trying to hold a very large territory.”

Rinaldo Depagne, the ICG’s West Africa director, tells IPS that while the Malian government has not violated the terms of the June 2013 ceasefire, “there’s a kind of will from the government to opt out of the frame of the agreement.”

However, Depagne believes that there is cause to be hopeful. “While certain parts of the agreement are not yet respected, that doesn’t mean they won’t be in the near future. We don’t know if they are ready to fully accept the arrangement but it’s predictable that they could.”

The U.N. secretary-general, meanwhile, found that both parties had violated the ceasefire through the “uncoordinated movement of troops”. Consequently, Malian forces and northern militias continue to clash amidst “armed banditry, new jihadi attacks, and inter-communal violence,” the report notes.

Pham also questions how successful the French intervention was in removing jihadist militants from northern Mali.

“If one believes the numbers put out by French spokesmen or African spokesmen, about 600 militants have been killed in the last year and roughly a little over 400 have been taken prisoner,” he says. “This leaves you with more than 1,000 militants who are unaccounted for and are either biding their time hiding in communities they’re well-integrated into or up in the mountains.”

In the face of northern unrest, MINUSMA has played an active peacekeeping role since France’s offensive in the north. Depagne says that while there are 6,000 MINUSMA troops in Mali right now, “there should be more than 10,000.”

Depagne suggests U.N. forces could be at “full scale” in the coming months.

A view of the briefing room as Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon (left, facing camera) addresses journalists at his annual end-of-year press conference. At his side is his spokesperson Martin Nesirky. Credit: UN Photo/Eskinder Debebe

By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, Dec 16 2013 (IPS)

As the ongoing crises in some of the world’s hot spots – including Syria, the Central African Republic, Mali, Libya, Palestine and Darfur, Sudan – continue unabated, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon Monday singled out some of the biggest challenges facing the international community in 2014.

At his traditional year-end press conference, Ban said 2013 was the year in which the Syrian conflict, now in its fourth year of relentless killings, has “deteriorated beyond all imagination”."I can think of nothing I would rather see in 2014 than for world leaders to emulate [Mandela's] example in upholding their moral and political responsibilities." -- Ban Ki-moon

“The people of Syria cannot afford another year, another month, even another day of brutality and destruction,” he added.

And 2013, he noted, was also the year in which the Central African Republic “descended into chaos”.

The situation in the Central African Republic has become “one of the most serious crisis issues for the United Nations to manage,” he said.

“I am gravely concerned about the imminent danger of mass atrocities,” Ban warned, appealing to the country’s transitional authorities to protect people.

The crisis in both Syria and the Central African Republic will remain two of the primary issues high on the U.N. political agenda in 2014.

The Syrian crisis is furthest from a resolution since the Security Council remains deadlocked with two veto-wielding permanent members, Russia and China, opposed to any sanctions against the beleaguered regime of President Bashar al-Assad.

A conference of the warring parties is scheduled to take place Jan. 22 in Geneva. But it is in danger of unraveling over several contentious issues, including the composition of the rebel forces’ representation at the conference, and whether or not Iran and Saudi Arabia should participate, besides the five permanent members of the Security Council, namely the United States, UK, France, Russia, China, plus Germany (P5+1).

Meanwhile, the fighting between the government and rebel forces in the Central African Republic has been temporarily thwarted with the deployment of French and African forces.

But as the battle intensifies, Ban is expected to call for an upgrade of the joint military force, called the International Support Mission for the Central African Republic, into a full-fledged U.N. peacekeeping force.

Asked about the important lessons he may have drawn after six years in office, Ban said he was “just amazed there are still so many challenges unresolved”.

The number of crises now seems to be increasing than during his first term, which began in January 2007. At that time, the situation in Darfur was the most serious issue, he said.

“Now you have so many issues,” said Ban, specifically Syria, the Central African Republic and Mali.

Making a strong case for international collaboration, he said “nobody, no organisation, no country, however powerful, however resourceful” can singlehandedly resolve the current crop of problems.

“That is a very important lesson which I learned, and that is why I have been appealing and reaching out to member states: please, let us work together.”

But he cautioned that he himself or even the United Nations cannot do it alone. “We need support from many regional and sub-regional organisations,” he said.

As the situation in Syria continued to deteriorate, there was a humanitarian appeal Monday for a staggering 6.5 billion dollars in funds. The collective appeal came from several U.N. agencies involved in humanitarian assistance to 9.5 million people affected by the fighting in Syria.

The U.N.’s Emergency Relief Coordinator Valerie Amos, and the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees, Antonio Guterres, described the crisis as “appalling”.

Jens Laerke, spokesperson and public information officer at the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, (OCHA), told IPS the combined appeal is “the largest ever appeal for a single emergency.”

Asked how much of this will be realised, he said, “We certainly hope the generosity shown by donors in previous years will also apply this time round. Having said that, appeals are rarely if ever 100 percent funded.”

At the press briefing, Ban also laid out some of the key success stories of 2013.

Alongside the new and ongoing crises, he said, 2013 was also a promising year for diplomacy.

The United Nations reached a landmark agreement on the destruction of Syria’s chemical weapons programme, while the 193-member General Assembly adopted the Arms Trade Treaty, “realising a long-held dream.”

At the same time, member states agreed on a roadmap for shaping the post-2015 development agenda, which will include a new set of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), a logical successor to the U.N.’s Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) whose deadline is 2015.

Ban also said the climate change conference in the Polish capital of Warsaw last month “kept negotiations on track for an agreement in 2015.”

And across the Sahel and West Africa, peacekeeping and mediation promoted stability, with the people of Mali conducting peaceful legislative elections last week.

Saturday’s “bombing attack in Kidal will not deter us,” he added.

Ban also referred to “another highlight of 2013”: the agreement reached last month between Iran and the P5+1 countries on Iran’s nuclear programme.

“I hope this initial understanding will be followed by a comprehensive agreement on all outstanding concerns,” he declared.

Finally, 2013 will be remembered, he said, as the year in which the world bid a sad but celebratory farewell to former South African President Nelson Mandela.

“I can think of nothing I would rather see in 2014 than for world leaders to emulate his example in upholding their moral and political responsibilities,” Ban said.

Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka. Photo Courtesy of UN Women

By Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka
UNITED NATIONS, Oct 18 2013 (IPS)

When war erupts, women are often the first to experience the harsh brutality and the last to be called to the peace table. A resolution adopted Friday by the U.N. Security Council moves us one step closer to the full participation of women as leaders for peace and security.

By unanimous vote, the Council adopted a resolution that sets in place stronger measures to enable women to participate in conflict resolution and recovery, and puts the onus on the Security Council, the United Nations, regional organisations and member states to dismantle the barriers, create the space, and provide seats at the table for women.Without an invitation, [Malian women] walked into the talks and raised the alarm about the attacks against women and girls.

Despite increases in the numbers of women in politics and in business leadership, very few women have lead roles in formal peace talks, in spite of the significant role they play in community-level reconciliation. Peace negotiations and all institutions linked to conflict resolution remain male-dominated.

Since the end of the Cold War, women have represented only four percent of signatories to peace agreements, less than three percent of mediators of peace talks, and less than 10 percent of anyone sitting at the table to negotiate on behalf of a party to the conflict.

Yet decisions on matters such as power-sharing, natural resource management, electoral systems, land and property restitution, disarmament, justice and reparations can have a profound effect on women’s lives and prospects for lasting peace. These decisions have an impact on women’s political participation, economic and physical security, and on the way war crimes against women are perceived and prosecuted.

In many current conflict resolution processes, such as those for Syria, Democratic Republic of Congo, or Somalia, there have been few opportunities for women to participate directly. UN Women hopes that this new Security Council resolution will trigger opportunities for women’s direct engagement, setting priorities for recovery in their countries.

There can be few better investments in building a sustainable peace than involving women. They connect the talks to the lives of those affected by conflict. They help generate broad social buy-in to the peace. U.N. Women therefore invests in building coalitions of women to influence negotiations.

Last year in Mali, for example, after women were routinely targeted when extremist groups took over the northern part of the country, resulting in rape and the removal of women from public office, women were told to stay out of public space. With men fleeing from attacks and forced recruitment to rebel forces, women were left to head households with no means of seeking water or food, or of reaching to the outside world for help.

This story is not unusual. Nor is what happened next. Women across Mali demanded inclusion in the conflict-resolution efforts that began immediately in nearby Burkina Faso. In response, UN Women began convening huge meetings of women from civil society and government leaders from across the country to set out their own priorities for peace and demand a space at the peace table.

UN Women arranged for four women peace leaders to fly to the peace talks in Ouagadougou. Without an invitation, they walked into the talks and raised the alarm about the attacks against women and girls and the dire situation facing them in refugee camps and in towns occupied by armed forces. They demanded inclusion in efforts to stop the fighting so their needs could be addressed and their human rights protected.

Security Council resolution 2122 spells out specific measures to protect women’s rights, including their right to sexual and reproductive health. It outlines measures so that delegations to peace talks, post-conflict national leaders, peacekeepers, mediators, foreign ministers and their staff put into action the commitments set out in Security Council resolution 1325, the first one calling for women’s engagement in conflict resolution, adopted 13 years ago.

This is important because sometimes it takes a woman to make a difference. It was not until there were more women in international criminal tribunals that there was a significant increase in indictments listing sexual violence as a war crime.

And the U.N.’s appointment of a woman lead envoy for conflict resolution – Mary Robinson, Special Envoy for the Great Lakes Region – has brought a new approach to mediation. In her first months of taking office, she convened a massive conference of women leaders from across the region in Bujumbura to guide her work and the way forward.

With today’s resolution, the Security Council is recognising something very important: that gender-based inequality, just like poverty, is an injustice that fuels conflict and undermines peace, and that gender equality and women’s full participation are critical to international peace and security.

Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka is Executive Director of UN Women.

Mali’s presidential election has been won by Ibrahim Boubacar Keita after his rival conceded defeat in the second-round runoff.

Ex-Finance Minister Soumaila Cisse said he had congratulated his rival Keita on winning the vote and wished him good luck,  news agencies had reported on Monday.

Cisse’s concession, hours after he complained the election had been marred by fraud, will deepen optimism for Mali’s recovery.

Al Jazeera’s Ahmed Idris, reporting from outside Keita’s headquarters in Bamako as the news of his win came in, said there seemed to be celebrations already taking place as some international observers were seen congratulating Keita.

“The general feeling here is that people are actually happy that this has come to a peaceful end, and that Mali finally has a president,” he said.

Keita, a former prime minister, inherits a broken nation and must still negotiate peace with northern rebels.

No official results have yet been released following Sunday’s runoff, but reports put Keita well ahead.

Keita had been widely expected to win Sunday’s vote, having swept the July 28 first round with nearly 40 percent of votes on a ticket to restore order after a March 2012 military coup allowed separatist rebels to seize control of the northern two-thirds of Mali.

Cisse said earlier on Monday that the vote had been tainted by intimidation. However, international and local observers said that, despite small irregularities, the process had been credible.

‘Important stage’

“This election, from a democratic standards point of view, is a success,” said the head of a EU observer mission, Louis Michel.

“It is an election that allows Mali now to start finishing the process that it has begun: the return to a normal democracy,” he added.

France sent thousands of troops in January to break rebels’ grip on northern Mali.

Paris now aims to pull out its contingent to a rapid response team of 1,000 troops to face the scattered threat, while handing broader security duties to a 12,600-strong UN peacekeeping mission being deployed.

Keita received the backing of 22 of the 25 losing first round candidates.

Diplomats now hope a clean election will give him a strong mandate to negotiate a lasting peace with northern Tuareg separatists, reform the army and tackle deep-rooted corruption.

“This was an important stage in the transition in Mali towards peace and reconciliation,” UN Special Representative for Mali Bert Koenders said.

“There were small imperfections … but the lack of violence was impressive in a country which has just emerged from conflict.”

Published under an agreement with Al Jazeera.

Ramatou Wallet Madouya (r) and her sister Fatma (l) in Goudebo camp, Burkina Faso on February 14th 2013. They are many Malians who fled the fighting in their country and will not be able to vote in Sunday's Jul. 28 presidential election. Credit: Marc-André Boisvert/IPS

By Soumaila T. Diarra
BAMAKO , Jul 27 2013 (IPS)

An increasing number of Mali’s political groups have warned of widespread fraud ahead of the presidential election on Sunday Jul. 28.

Reports of intimidation by the army, interference by religious authorities, and claims that there are almost two million extra biometric voters’ cards, have led to uncertainty whether the elections will be free and fair.

“We want the future president of Mali to be chosen through the polls and not through manipulation by non-political actors,” Amadou Koïta, political secretary of the Front for Democracy and the Republic (FDR), told journalists here on Tuesday, Jul. 23. The FDR opposed the Mar. 22, 2012 military coup that overthrew former president Amadou Toumani Touré.

The military had been unhappy with the government’s handling of a Tuareg rebellion in the north of this West African nation. The rebellion saw the Tuareg take over nearly two-thirds of the country for a short time until April 2012. A coalition of armed Islamist groups allied with Al-Qaeda took control of the territory.

This created a human rights crisis in the north. Human Rights Watch said that the rebels engaged in extensive looting, pillage, recruitment of child soldiers and rape of women and young girls.

On Jan. 11, at the request of interim President Dioncounda Traoré, France launched a military intervention that drove the extremists out and paved the way for the Jul. 28 elections. But it appears peace is still a far off dream for Malians. There are an estimated 6.9 million eligible voters but more than 467,000 people – around a third of the population in the north – are currently displaced.

“We have to fight through democratic means, not throught intimidation. That will not work. They tried to intimidate us with weapons after the coup but FDR resisted,” Koïta said. He believes that a faction of the army is openly campaigning for a candidate whom he declined to name.

Members of the FDR also condemned political interference by religious authorities. “Religious leaders are campaigning for a particular candidate, who has paid some of them to campaign for him,” Ibrahima N’Diaye, FDR vice-president told IPS.

The use of biometric cards, which all parties had supported, has also became a source of contention.

“Approximately 1.9 million voter registration cards without photos are in the Ministry for Decentralisation. We still don’t know what the minister is planning to do with them,” Fatoumata Ciré Diakite, a women’s rights activist and FDR member, told the press.

FDR believes that 4,500 voter registration cards were handed over to followers of a religious leader in Nioro du Sahel, a town in northeastern Mali near Mauritania. The town itself has less than 4,500 inhabitants and the religious leader is said to be a supporter of one of the 27 presidential candidates.

There are two leading candidates, former prime minister Ibrahim Boubacar Keïta and former minister of finance Soumaïla Cissé.

On Jul. 20, armed men abducted five electoral agents and a local official in Tessalit, near the northern town Kidal. Many fear that rebels may disrupt the elections.

“We mustn’t forget that there are still security concerns in the Kidal region. Even if six hostages were freed, there is a danger that violence will upset the polling process in that area,” Oumar Touré, a lawyer based in Bamako told IPS.

“The interim president took measures to restore calm by meeting representatives of the rebel Tuaregs and by cancelling arrest warrants against others. The arrangement is provided for in the Ouagadougou agreements, but one can only hope that this will be enough,” Touré said.

Amid this discordant atmosphere, Malian women hope that the future president will promote their rights. There has been an increase in campaigns to raise political awareness among women, who constitute the majority of voters.

“We are hoping that these will strengthen our ability as female leaders to defend peaceful elections,” Nana Sissako, a member of a multi-party watchdog group of women politicians who are calling for non-violent and fair elections in Mali told IPS.

Women represent 52 percent of Mali’s of 15. 8 million people, but have low political representation.

According to the 2009 statistical bulletin of the National Documentation and Information Centre on Women and Children, only 15 out of 147 members of parliament are women. Out of 703 mayors, only eight are women, and there are only 927 women among 10,774 municipal councillors.

In 2006, the Malian National Assembly voted against a draft law for equal representation in parliament but it ratified several regional and international texts and conventions, including the United Nations Convention to Eliminate all forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW).

Bintou Coulibaly from local NGO the Association for the Protection of Women’s Rights, hopes that the country will apply CEDAW provisions.

“In this way, we could achieve the 30 percent quota for female representation at all decision-making levels that we have been calling for for a long time,” she told IPS.

The village of rape survivor Angeline Mwarusena in DRC continues to be threatened by militia. Credit: Einberger/argum/EED/IPS

By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, Jul 16 2013 (IPS)

Despite the United Nations’ “zero tolerance” policy against sexual violence, there has been a rash of gender-based crimes in several of the world’s conflict zones, including South Sudan, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Northern Uganda, Somalia, the Central African Republic – and, more recently, in politically-troubled Egypt and Syria.

Describing rape as “a weapon of war”, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon told the Security Council last month that sexual violence occurred wherever conflicts raged, “devastating survivors and destroying the social fabric of whole communities”.

“It was a crime under international human rights law and a threat to international peace and security,” he said.

Since most of the heinous crimes are taking place in conflict zones overseen by U.N. peacekeeping missions, the United Nations is unleashing an army of Women Protection Advisers (WPAs) to specifically curb sexual violence in war zones.

For starters, they will be deployed with peacekeeping missions in South Sudan, the Central African Republic, Cote d’Ivoire, DRC, Mali and Somalia.

Asked if these WPAs will be confined to Africa, Andre-Michel Essoungou of the Public Affairs Division at the U.N.’s Department of Peacekeeping Operations and Field Support told IPS, “There is no restriction to a region of the world in this regard. But the process is starting with these missions for the time being.

“The recruitment procedures are currently underway,” he added.

Marcy Hersh, a senior advocate for women and girls’ rights at Refugees International, told IPS her organisation insists that prior to the further deployment of WPAs to peacekeeping and political missions, the United Nations should take urgent action to ensure that WPAs are trained before their deployment and encouraged to work collaboratively with already operational humanitarian structures.

Additionally, they should be held accountable to fundamental and non-negotiable ethical and safety criteria for investigating sexual violence in conflict, which preserves the safety and dignity of survivors.

She said the recently unanimously passed Security Council Resolution 2106 includes language that is in accordance with these recommendations in its calls for the timely deployment of WPAs, their adequate training, and their coordination across multiple sectors.

Given this strong language, combined with the statements from multiple member states that WPAs should be deployed to all peacekeeping and political missions, Hersh said, “I am confident that the United Nations will work urgently to improve the rollout of WPAs.”

She said she is also hopeful that the United Nations will ensure that WPAs collect timely, objective, accurate and reliable information as a basis for prevention and response programming and preserve the safety and dignity of sexual violence survivors.
The secretary-general said that U.N. Women and the Department of Peacekeeping Operations (DPKO) have developed, on behalf of the U.N. Action Network, the “first-ever scenario-based training programme for peacekeepers”, some of whom, along with aid workers, have been accused of sexual violence – specifically in South Sudan, DRC, Cote d’Ivoire and Haiti.

The United Nations will also set up a team of experts on “the rule of law and sexual violence in conflict”, described as an important tool for strengthening national justice systems and legal frameworks.

The team has already provided technical advice to governments in the Central African Republic, Colombia, Cote d’Ivoire, DRC, Guinea, Liberia, Somalia and South Sudan.

Zainab Hawa Bangura, the U.N.’s special representative on sexual violence in armed conflict, points out that 20 years ago, the United Nations had provided “irrefutable evidence” of widespread and systematic rape in the countries of the former Yugoslavia.

She said that during a recent visit to Bosnia – where an estimated 50,000 women had been raped or been victims of sexual violence – she discovered that, to date, only a handful of prosecutions had occurred.

“Thus the victims of those crimes continue to walk in shadow and shame, unable to lay the past to rest and move forward.”

More recently, in late June, the United Nations described as “unacceptable” several cases of rape of young girls in DRC.

Nine young girls, aged between 18 months and 12 years, were admitted to a hospital in South Kivu with marks of violence on their bodies and very serious internal wounds, resulting in the death of two.

“Such violence and abuse is unacceptable and must be brought to an end,” said Roger Meece, head of the U.N. peacekeeping mission in DRC (MONUSCO).

“These abuses are said to be related to harmful traditional practices perpetrated by individuals who kidnap young children from their communities,” he said.

There have also been widespread reports of 135 women and girls allegedly raped by government soldiers in Minova in eastern DRC back in 2012.

Najat Vallaud-Belkacem, France’s minister for women’s rights, told reporters at a U.N. press briefing last month that condemnation of such crimes was not enough and that perpetrators should be prosecuted.

“France was very disturbed by such atrocities, whether committed by a rebel group or by government troops,” she added.

Two Tuareg girls playing at Goudebo Refugee Camp in Burkina Faso. The crisis forced 170,000 refugees, mostly Tuaregs and Arabs, to flee north Mali in fear of retaliation from the Malian army. Credit: Marc-André Boisvert/IPS

By Lydia Lim
UNITED NATIONS, Jul 5 2013 (IPS)

As the new 12,600-strong United Nations peacekeeping forces don their blue helmets and prepare to take over from African-led forces in Mali, a nation consumed by corruption and extremism, concerns remain whether U.N. troops will successfully execute this transfer of authority.

The African-led International Support Mission to Mali (AFISMA) contributed its 6,237 troops to the U.N. peacekeepers under the U.N. Multidimensional Integrated Stabilised Mission in Mali (MINUSMA) on Monday.

“Mali has experienced what can only be described as a phenomenal collapse in the last 18 months,” Corinne Dufka, a senior researcher with Human Rights Watch, told IPS."Mali has experienced...a phenomenal collapse in the last 18 months."
-- Corinne Dufka

After being identified as a relative success story among developing nations, with a few largely democratic elections under its belt, in early 2012 Mali was confronted by a Tuareg movement, along with Islamic armed groups, that led to the displacement of hundreds of thousands of people.

“The current situation in Mali is a result of many human rights violations, so there are certainly concerns that the U.N. troops deployed are setting the right example and that they are beyond any reproach themselves,” Philippe Bolopion, United Nations director of Human Rights Watch, told IPS.

Several human rights organisations have spoken out against the inclusion of Chad, a country censured for its persistent use of child soldiers, among MINUSMA’s troop-contributing nations. Chad was placed on U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon’s list of shame for countries that recruit children in armed groups.

Chad’s participation in the U.N. peacekeeping mission could be seen as a potential credibility issue, Watchlist Research and Reports officer Layal Sarrouh told IPS.

“We (Watchlist) think from a global standpoint that listed parties who are on the secretary-general’s annexes for committing grave violations against children, should not be included in peacekeeping missions,” Sarrouh said.

Watchlist monitors and reports on the situation of children affected by armed conflicts in specific countries around the world.

Bolopion told IPS that Chad must deliver on its promise to take all necessary steps to end child recruitment. Otherwise, the country should be expelled from the U.N. mission, he said.

Currently, the U.N. does not have a policy to stop Chad from joining MINUSMA, but it does have a screening policy to check for child soldiers before deploying peacekeeping troops.

“We can only hope that the U.N. will deploy every effort to screen its own troops,” Bolopion said.

Other concerns remain that are unique to MINUSMA. Unlike other missions, which typically carry out pre-deployment training for troops in their respective countries before collectively entering the country in conflict, MINUSMA is a consolidation of troops old and new to Mali.

Some peacekeepers are setting foot in Mali for the first time, while others have been active for half a year under AFISMA, with varying levels of training under their belts.

U.N. Security Council Resolution 2085, which authorised AFISMA in December 2012, had strong human rights safeguards and good language on pre-deployment training, according to Sarrouh. However, many of those safeguards were not in place when AFISMA was deployed to combat insurgents only a month after the Security Council’s approval.

“They (AFISMA) were deployed much more quickly than was expected and in such a rapid and unexpected way that certain steps that were to be followed got skipped over,” Sarrouh told IPS. “Now, (MINUSMA) is trying to figure out how to catch up, essentially.”

Watchlist’s new report detailing violations against children by armed groups in Mali points out that over the past year, AFISMA had no standard operating protocols in place for the transfer of child soldiers to Malian authorities.

“The troops have a very large role to play in child protection, and they require training to understand how they should approach that role,” Sarrouh said.

Sarrouh also stated that there have been increased reports of prostitution and sexual exploitation in Mali by AFISMA troops over the past year.

“That’s not unusual, unfortunately, in conflict, and it is very problematic as (AFISMA) troops become peacekeepers,” Sarrouh said. “Under a U.N. peacekeeping mission, there is a higher standard set and more strict guidelines and protocols to be followed, including ones on sexual exploitation and abuse.”

These gaps in training and human rights protocols that were identified with AFISMA will be carried over by MINUSMA unless the new peacekeepers receive sufficient training to uphold standards appropriate to the U.N. mission.

Bolopion said that “Despite the pressure to quickly deploy, we hope the U.N. will take these obligations very seriously.”

Tebu security staff at Saharan oil fields in southern Libya. Credit: Rebecca Murray/IPS

By Rebecca Murray
SOUTHERN LIBYA, May 17 2013 (IPS)

Kaltoum Saleh, 18, is elated to graduate from her overcrowded high school in the remote Saharan town of Ubari, near the Algerian border.

Saleh, a member of Ubari’s indigenous Tebu tribe, says that for decades under former Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi, the Libyan Tebu suffered from state-sanctioned discrimination, which stemmed in part from the failure of the semi-nomadic tribe to register under Libya’s 1954 citizenship law.

Gaddafi’s subsequent “Arabisation” campaign, intended to erase indigenous language and culture, also contributed to discrimination against the Tebu, many of whom were deprived of citizenship papers. As a result, they were barred from decent health care, education and skilled jobs. They often worked for low pay or as subsistence cross-border smugglers.

The tribe was swift to join the revolution against the regime in 2011, and with Gaddafi’s overthrow, the Tebu hoped to attain what they had long been struggling for: their full rights as citizens.

More than two years after the revolution, Saleh proudly says that her father, once a security guard, is now a hospital manager. She herself has considerable ambitions and is striving to become a human rights lawyer and fight for Tebu rights.

“The revolution was good for our self worth,” she says optimistically. “Now I feel like a Libyan citizen.”

But the revolution has not produced all the gains the Libyan Tebu have sought.

They lack sufficient representation in the Tripoli-based government, are in conflict with neighbouring Arab tribes, partly over resources in the current power vacuum, and are still branded by some Libyans as ‘foreigners’.

Guarding southern borders

In their quest for equal rights, Libya’s Tebu are now positioning themselves as valuable and natural guardians of the country’s vast southern borders.

Stretched across Libya’s south, the Tebu live in Ubari, Sebha and Murzuq in the west, and across the Sahara nearly 1,000 kilometres to the Kufra oasis in the east.

The desert terrain, with no roads across its width, is rich in underground water – which is diverted to ninety percent of Libya’s population along the coast – as well as oil and precious minerals.

It is also a haven for illegal cross-border trade, with weapons, government-subsidised gasoline and food smuggled out, and migrants and drugs transported in.

At the beginning of the revolt in 2011, Gaddafi promised both the indigenous Libyan Tebu and Tuareg citizenship papers and rights in exchange for their support.

While the Tuareg threw their lot in with his regime, only to find themselves on the losing side, the Tebu say they instead took Gaddafi’s weapons, and turned them and their desert expertise against him.

“Our forefathers came here hundreds of years ago,” explained Ibrahim Abu Baker, a Tebu archeologist from Ubari. “When we hold the sand, even in the night when the moon is shining, we know where we are.”

Although the Tebu were heralded for their revolutionary role guarding Libya’s southern borders and oil wells, with just two Tebu representatives out of 200 in the current General National Congress (GNC), their fight for equal rights is just gearing up."The Tebu want to close the chapter so they can get their citizenship, healthcare and education."
-- Mohammed Sidi

“During the revolution, people were perfect, excellent,” said Ali Ramadan, a Tebu military commander. “But when we returned to normal life, we found all the same people in their old positions, doing the same thing.”

In 2012, brutal clashes erupted between Tebu and Arab tribes in the desert towns of Sebha and Kufra. Mostly over power and resources, including smuggling routes, the fighting left hundreds dead and wounded, destroyed infrastructure and deepened animosity between neighbours.

Now an enormous wall and wide ditch encircles Kufra, built and controlled by the Arab Zwai tribe, who share the town with the minority Tebu. A tense ceasefire – not peace – is in place.

There is more optimism in Sebha. Last month, community elders successfully hammered out a reconciliation agreement between the western town’s Tebu and Arab Awlad Suleiman tribes.

“The Tebu want to close the chapter so they can get their citizenship, healthcare and education,” said Mohammed Sidi, one of the chief negotiators.

But Sidi still had reservations. “The wise people are together,” he said. “But the young people are separated now. The bad people – like those working in smuggling – are still together. They can’t negotiate because their experience is low. How do we bring those people together?”

Ubari, over 100 kilometres west of Sebha, is the last in a chain of fertile desert oases surrounded by sand dunes before the Algerian border. Dominated by the semi-nomadic Libyan Tuareg, who are also indigenous and have strong cross-border ties, this desolate corner thrived as a tourist destination until the 2011 revolution.

Now Ubari is known as a stop on the rumoured smuggling routes south to Mali and for its lucrative oil fields. It is also where Saif al-Islam Gaddafi, a son of Muammar Gaddafi, was apprehended while trying to flee Libya after the fall of Tripoli.

The Tebu, along with Tuareg and Arab militias, maintain an uneasy presence here, legitimised and paid for as part of the Ministry of Defence’s auxiliary Shield of Libya brigades and by private oil field security companies.

For now, they are the border guard presence. While the Tebu loosely patrol the southern border from Niger to Egypt, the Tuareg control Libya’s far southwest corner and the Algerian frontier running north to Ghadames.

Keeping an uneasy peace

The war in Mali, the terrorist attack against the nearby Amenas oil field in Algeria, the French Embassy bombing in Tripoli and rumours of Islamists trafficking weapons and fighters south have heightened community tensions.

“Libyans were very worried when the French intervention started in Mali,” a western diplomat, who spoke on condition of anonymity, told IPS. “Their main concern is that Islamists being flushed out by French jets could seek refuge in the kind of ungoverned space in southern Libya. They are worried about extremist groups moving through the region.”

Concerned about Libya’s porous frontier, the European Union and countries including the United States and United Kingdom are providing “advisory” roles in building up the government’s border guard.

The U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM) has established a military base for drones on the south side of the Libyan border, in Niger.

“Broadly speaking, there are localised rivalries, ethnic rivalries and tribal rivalries in the south,” said the western diplomat. “A long-term solution for border security would most probably include both Tebu and Tuareg because they know the region and they live on the borders.”

Chaotic downtown Ubari is filled with migrants, most from Mali and Niger, who congregate on damaged sidewalks hoping for work, while Tuareg and Tebu tribesmen, wrapped in elaborate scarves to shield themselves from the dust, drive by in honking Toyota pickups.

Chieftains work hard to maintain the peace in mixed Libyan Tebu and Tuareg communities, like Ubari. They understand their shared battle is to overcome discrimination from Libya’s Arab population and to secure their rights.

Shamsideen Khoury, an 18-year-old Tebu student in Ubari, fought in the revolution and has faith in the future. He seeks a different path from his deceased father, who was a low level security guard. “I want to be an architect,” he says quietly. “I want to build a new Libya.”

International donors pledged yesterday to mobilise 3.25 billion Euros to rebuild Mali, a figure that surpassed all expectations. But experts warn that the country does not have the absorption capacity for so much aid, while others say donors should pressure the Malian government to stop ongoing human rights abuses.

In January of this year, a French-led intervention ended more than a year of sectarian violence in the north of Mali. The intervention managed to stall the conflict, but the situation in the region remains tense.

More than 467,000 people, around one third of the population in the north, are currently displaced, and the United Nations announced on Tuesday that it needs at least 222 million Euros to address immediate food and other humanitarian needs.

Northern Mali is also facing its second food crisis in two years, the country’s economy is in decline, and over the last year it fell to one of the five poorest countries in the world, according to the United Nations (U.N.) Human Development Index.

The 3.25 billion Euros were pledged by the international community at a donor conference in Brussels yesterday for the reconstruction of this West African country. The high level meeting, organised by the European Union and France, together with Mali, welcomed 100 delegates from countries, regional organisations, U.N. agencies, EU member states and other development partners.

Pledges were made on the basis of the “Plan for the Sustainable Recovery of Mali, 2013-2014”, presented by the Malian government, which says that an amount of 4.343 billion Euros is needed to fully implement the plan.

Aid agencies and non-governmental organisations were careful in welcoming the influx of aid, however. “These pledges need to be seen as a down payment and not a one-off cheque,” Marietou Diaby, Malian country director for the NGO Oxfam, said in a press release following the meeting."These pledges need to be seen as a down payment and not a one-off cheque."
-- Marietou Diaby,

“Donors must now support a new development contract between the people of Mali and their government which tackles poverty, corruption and inequality – issues that lie at the heart of the crisis,” Diaby noted, adding that crises such as Afghanistan and Somalia show that winning a military conflict is never enough to achieve sustainable peace and security.

EU officials in the field have also expressed concern about the enormous amount of money about to flow into a country that is not yet ready for it. According to one official, who requested anonymity, “The country does not have the absorption capacity yet. Other issues have to be dealt with first.”

“Donors want to move quickly, get the country back on its feet and show results as quickly as possible,” Tidhar Wald, EU conflict and humanitarian policy advisor at Oxfam Brussels, explained.

“But if we inject this amount of money, without proper guarantees in terms of sources management and transparency, into a country that is poorly governed, services are not functioning and some parts of society are benefiting more than others, the situation will hardly get any better,” Wald cautioned.

Just ahead of yesterday’s high-level meeting, Oxfam published a report stressing the need for smart development aid. “The Brussels meeting was intended to bring Mali back to normal,” Wald told IPS, “but even before the rebellion in the north started, Mali was in a crisis.”

“Its society has been eroding for decades because of previous ethnic conflicts, corruption, lack of transparency and other governance issues,” he described. “There needs to be a new contract between the Malian government and its people. The reconstruction plan needs to be inclusive; all Malians should benefit from it.”

“We have to make sure that the government is made accountable to its people, that people can influence decision making, that civil society is part of the decision-making process,” Wald concluded.

According to Oxfam’s report, donors should commit to providing aid at least for the next 15 years, the amount of time needed to successfully undertake necessary government reforms and tackle the root causes of poverty. This time frame, however, stands in stark contrast with the two years mentioned in the Malian government’s reconstruction plan.

Other experts also point to the fact the conflict in Mali is not over yet and human rights violations persist. On Tuesday, Amnesty International accused government forces of carrying out extrajudicial executions in the north. Islamic militants have been reported recruiting child soldiers and killing civilians and wounding government soldiers.

U.N. officials, meanwhile, have expressed grave concern about retaliatory attacks against Tuared and Arab communities in the north after government troops retook towns held by Islamic rebels. As a result, both Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch urge donors to pressure the Malian government to end to human rights abuses in the country.

Togolese Soldiers line up on the tarmac after arriving at Bamako Senou International Airport in Mali in early February, 2013. The soldiers are a small part of the African-led International Support Mission to Mali. Credit: Thomas Martinez/IPS

By Jim Lobe
WASHINGTON, Apr 12 2013 (IPS)

With France withdrawing troops after chasing Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) from towns in northern Mali, the central government in Bamako should urgently launch a serious process of national reconciliation, particularly with the Tuareg and Arab minorities, according to a new report by the International Crisis Group (ICG) released Thursday.

Among other steps, the authorities should prevent the persecution by the security forces of the civilian population, especially in communities allegedly associated with rebel or armed Islamist groups that controlled the north for the 10 months preceding the French intervention in January.

Bamako’s leaders also should not impose pre-conditions, such as immediate disarmament, that make dialogue with the National Movement for the Liberation of Azawad (MNLA), the Tuareg independence group, more difficult, according to the ICG.

They should also ensure that the country’s radio and television stations do not incite or aggravate existing ethnic divisions in the country, especially in the run-up to national elections that are supposed to take place in July, according to the 47-page report.

“Elections must be held soon but not at any cost,” according to Gilles Yabi, ICG’s West Africa Project director.

“The radicalisation of public opinion is a major risk, and Mali’s leaders and institutions must take firm action to prevent people, especially those in the south, (from) lumping together rebels, terrorists and drug traffickers with all Tuaregs and Arabs,” he said.

As if to underline the urgency of the challenge, the ICG report, ‘Mali: Security, Dialogue and Meaningful Reform’, was released just as Human Rights Watch (HRW) announced that two Tuareg men who had been detained by Malian soldiers in a small town near Timbuktu had died while in detention at Bamako’s Central Prison.

The two were part of a group of seven men, aged between 21 and 66, who were arrested in mid-February on suspicion of supporting Islamist groups, including AQIM. The men were subsequently transported to the Bamako prison, according to HRW which interviewed the men there Mar. 20.

HRW said the two men probably died of excessive heat, given the lack of ventilation in the room in which they were held, possibly combined with the injuries they received from the earlier abuse, which included repeated beatings and burning. The surviving five were reportedly moved to a different room after the two deaths, HRW reported.

The deaths came amidst continuing reports of abuses against Tuaregs, Arabs, and Fulanis by Malian soldiers who returned to the north alongside French forces in their drive to oust AQIM and its allies. Since then, HRW’s Sahel expert Corinne Dufka told IPS, at least 13 members of the three minority communities have been summarily executed by Malian security forces and at least another 15 have “disappeared”.

“These abuses by the army in reconquering the north are exacerbating already existing ethnic tensions,” she said.

The chaos into which Mali descended began at the beginning of 2012 when MNLA, whose forces were fortified by returning and well-armed veterans of Libyan leader Moammar Gaddafi’s security forces, chased the Malian army out of the north, precipitating a military coup that ousted the democratically elected government in Bamako.

AQIM, initially a mainly Algerian movement that had dug deep roots into northern Mali after its defeat in Algeria’s civil war, was able to wrest control of most of the region from the MNLA by last June.

As its control spread over the succeeding months, Mali’s neighbours and Western countries, including the U.S., which had provided hundreds of millions of dollars in aid and training to Mali’s military as part of its Trans-Sahara Counter-Terrorism Partnership Initiative during the previous decade, became increasingly alarmed.

By December, the U.N. Security Council approved a plan for the eventual deployment of a West African force to take back the region. In January, however, one of AQIM’s affiliates launched an offensive southwards, triggering the France’s intervention.

French troops quickly took the region’s three most important towns – Gao, Timbuktu, and Kidal – paving the way for both the return of the Chadian army and contingents of the West African peacekeeping force (AFISMA).

French and Chadian forces, backed by U.S. intelligence assets, notably reconnaissance drones newly based in neighbouring Niger, then entered the northern-most part of Mali to pursue AQIM militants into their sanctuaries as part of the ongoing “war against terrorism”.

Militants have since staged a number of suicide attacks against
targets in the cities. According to the ICG report, the ability of AFISMA, which is likely to absorb the remaining French troops as part of a rehatted U.N. stabilisation mission, to maintain security for the civilian population is “unclear”, while a senior Pentagon officials testified here earlier this week that it was a “completely incapable force”.

Paris announced this week that about 100 of its 4,000-troop intervention force have pulled out – the start of a phased withdrawal that will leave about 1,000 French soldiers as part of the proposed stabilisation mission by the end of the year.

At the same time, a 550-man European Union (EU) mission began training Malian soldiers last week in hopes that they will eventually play a major role in defending the country against the AQIM threat. The mission is also aimed at reforming the military institution, including fighting endemic corruption and subordinating itself to civilian control.

Meanwhile, some Republican lawmakers here, notably Sen. John McCain, who just returned from a trip to Mali, are pressing the administration of President Barack Obama to restore and expand military aid to the Malian army. Direct U.S. military assistance to the army was cut off after the coup, and the administration appears more inclined to defer to the EU at this point.

The ICG report stressed that political initiatives are at least as important as military measures.

“Focusing on terrorism alone risks distracting from the main problems,” according to Comfort Ero, ICG’s Africa director. “Corruption and poor governance are more important causes of the crisis than the terrorist threat, the Tuareg issue, or even the north-south divide.”

“The challenges for the region and the U.N. are to align their positions on the political process and to insist that Malians, especially their elites assume responsibility for reversing bad governance and preventing another crisis,” she said.

HRW’s Dufka agreed, noting that Mali’s collapse last year showed that “its so-called democracy was built on very, very weak foundations …but should also illuminate the challenges it faces – addressing endemic corruption, strengthening rule-of-law institutions, and ending chronic human-rights abuse.

“Addressing the Tuareg problem is key to the future of stability in Mali,” she noted, adding that top priority should be given to returning the tens of thousands of Malians now living in refugee camps to their homes.

*Jim Lobe’s blog on U.S. foreign policy can be read at http://www.lobelog.com.

Two Tuareg girls are playing at Goudebo Refugee Camp in Burkina Faso. In the refugee camps, many Malian children have already missed crucial weeks and months of schooling. Credit: Marc-André Boisvert/IPS

By Issa Sikiti da Silva
DAKAR , Apr 11 2013 (IPS)

Malian widow Mariama Sow, 30, and her three children are trying to find some semblance of normalcy in their lives in Dakar, Senegal, since they left the historic city of Timbuktu in northern Mali last June to escape the Islamist occupation.

Sow and her children are now living in relative safety with her eldest sister in this West African nation, as she helps her sibling run her two tangana (informal township restaurants).

“The (Islamist) occupation was not good at all, it affected many lives and will continue to haunt many of us for years to come,” Sow tells IPS, refusing to explain further, except to say it was “hell”.

“Though I’ll never forget what happened, I decided to get over it and focus on the future of my three children who are now eating well thanks to my elder sister’s support,” she says emotionally, adding that the imposition of Sharia Law in northern Mali affected not only women, but everybody in the occupied territories.

As she speaks, a group of men who work at a nearby construction site each wait their turn to be served with a plate of tchep (fried rice and fish).

But Sow is still concerned about the future of her eldest child. Her eight-year-old son has not attended school since armed Islamist groups allied with Al-Qaeda occupied northern Mali back in April 2012. Her daughters, aged four and two, are yet to attend school.

“My son’s first year at school was disrupted by the occupation. It’s now a dilemma because he has not been attending school since, and next year he will be nine. And I’m not sure when real peace will return to Mali so that he can go back to school again,” she says.

While a French-led international intervention in January – requested by Mali’s interim president Dioncounda Traore – eventually pushed the Islamist fighters out of the north, real peace in the West African nation seems a long way off. Defeated Jihadists have now resorted to suicide bombings and other guerrilla attacks.

A report, “Mali in the Aftermath of the French Military Operation”, released in late February by the South African-based Institute for Security Studies, called for the north to be quickly stabilised and secured now that it has been liberated.

“In order to consolidate the military gains achieved and given France’s expressed desire to scale down its presence or, at least, to ‘multilateralise’ its commitment, the idea now is to deploy a United Nations operation that will take over from AFISMA (African-led International Mission in Mali),” the report, authored by Lori Anne Théroux-Bénoni, states.

The war in northern Mali has driven thousands of men, women and children away from their homes. To date, there are 167,370 Malian refugees scattered in five countries in West Africa, the United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR) says.

Mauritania has the highest number, 68,385 refugees, followed by 50,000 refugees in Niger, and 48,939 in Burkina Faso. There are 26 and 20 refugees in Guinea and Togo, respectively.

Awo Dede Cromwell, reporting officer for the situation in Mali at the UNHCR’s regional office for West Africa, tells IPS that there are 31 Malian asylum seekers in Senegal whose status has yet to be examined by the National Commission of Eligibility at the Interior Ministry. “They are seven females and 24 males. There are three children among the 31 asylum seekers,” Cromwell explains.

Sow, however, is one of a number of refugees in Senegal who have not registered with the UNHCR, as she was lucky to be taken in by a relative. Many Malians are not so lucky, as they have been forced to live in refugee camps in Niger, Mauritania and Burkina Faso.

But the situation her son faces with his schooling is the same as that of other Malian refugee children.

“In the refugee camps, many Malian children have already missed crucial weeks and months of schooling. If they don’t get access to education quickly, they may even miss the entire school year and be at risk of dropping out of school when returning to Mali,” Laurent Duvillier, regional communication specialist at U.N. Children’s Fund (UNICEF) West and Central Africa, explains to IPS.

“The future of these Malian schoolchildren shouldn’t be jeopardised because they are refugees. How can Mali rebuild after the conflict if thousands of its children are deprived from access to education?” he asks.

Duvillier says children who fled violence in Mali have been through a lot of suffering and that getting access to education also means getting back to a “normal life” – playing with other children, learning and smiling.

He says parents who are refugees have little time to look after their children. “If children are left alone, they can easily be at risk of all kinds of abuse and violence. It’s a great relief for parents if they know there is a safe place where their children can learn and play without being in danger.”

Duvillier says that together with the UNHCR, UNICEF is working to train volunteer teachers, distribute school supplies to refugee and displaced children from Mali, and set up tents where teaching can take place in Niger, Mauritania, Burkina Faso and Mali.

“But unfortunately, many Malian refugee children still have no access to education. We need more children in temporary learning spaces, we need more trained and equipped teachers, we need to make sure that what refugee children learn in the camps can be of great use once they go back to Mali.

“More resources are needed as requirements for education needs remain largely underfunded to date,” he concludes.

Malian children in the Abala refugee camp in Niger. Credit: William Lloyd-George/IPS

By Issa Sikiti da Silva
BAMAKO , Mar 22 2013 (IPS)

One of Amina Diallo’s sons, 14-year-old Salif, has been missing since August last year. She thinks Islamists kidnapped him while he was on his way to the market in their hometown of Gao, in northern Mali, and recruited him as a child soldier.

“Wherever he is, he must know that I still pray for him to come back alive and well,” she tells IPS.

While a French intervention allowed the Malian army to reclaim the north of the country in January – it had been held for more than a year by Islamist militants composed of Al-Qaeda in Islamic Maghreb, Ansar Dine and the Movement of Unity and Jihad in West Africa – this West African nation still remains in turmoil with hundreds of thousands of internally displaced people, missing and abducted children and food shortages.

Diallo and her four other children now live at a relative’s home in Bamako after they left Gao last October. But despite Diallo’s hopes that Salif might return, chances are unlikely.

She tried to search for her missing son, only to be told by local authorities that they were sorry for her loss, and that the Malian army was doing its best to find out where the children were taken.

Media relations director of Christian relief agency World Vision, Laura Blank, tells IPS that children in Mali still remain at risk.

“Unsupervised children are also vulnerable to sexual harassment and violence, including the potential to be recruited as child soldiers by armed groups. This continues to be a concern for World Vision.”

A Human Rights Watch (HRW) report published in February found that children as young as 11 were placed on the Islamist rebel frontline. Shocked residents told HRW researchers that they saw bodies of child soldiers lying in pools of blood after the fighting. The United Nations Children’s Fund reported at least 175 children were used as soldiers in the conflict last year.

Blank says that her organisation is working with volunteers to share valuable child-protection messages with local communities, which will hopefully empower parents to keep their children safe.

“Children and their families remain vulnerable. They have increasingly limited access to food, water, medicines, and safe shelter, and are prone to diseases,” Blank adds.

Not all children are reported to have taken part in active combat. Some were also used as porters, cooks and spies. Others were offered as sexual slaves to combatants.

Oumou Camara was forced to watch as heavily-armed gunmen, who conducted door-to-door operations in their area in Gao, snatched her 16-year-old daughter from her. They were looking for underage girls, widows and other unmarried women to “marry off” to the mujahidin (combatants of religion).

“They took my daughter away at gunpoint and threatened to shoot us if anyone in the house objected,” the mother of seven tells IPS. “I never saw her again.”

Camara has given up all hope of ever finding her daughter and has no faith in the authorities. “What can the authorities do if they couldn’t even fight their own war? I’m powerless and can only hope and pray.”

Getting comment from the Malian government is impossible. The state has barred independent reporters from entering the war zone, and threatened to detain and prosecute anyone who publishes “sensitive information” that could incite mutiny under the current state of emergency.

But as rights groups try to protect Mali’s vulnerable children, they are also concerned about the growing food crisis in the country.

Oxfam International says that food prices have rocketed, aggravated by a shortage of cereals on the market. Rice has gone up by more than 50 percent since October last year.

“Many traders in Gao region have moved and/or sold out their remaining stocks from Gao to villages and communes outside of the town,” Oxfam International campaign manager in Mali, Ilaria Allegrozzi, tells IPS.

Also, the population has very little cash available as banking systems were disrupted by the conflict.

“Most people in the Gao region don’t have any money left, are in debt, and have sold assets – exhausting their coping strategies,” she says.

Allegrozzi says Oxfam International aims to provide food aid to at least 70,000 people. And Blank says that as of December, World Vision reached nearly 130,000 people in Bamako, Segou and Sikasso, in southern Mali.

Against this backdrop, finding abducted or missing children will prove difficult, as the conflict here has displaced 260,665 people internally, according to the U.N. Office for Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. In addition, there are some 170,313 registered refugees in neighbouring countries such as Niger, Mauritania and Burkina Faso.

Many are reluctant to return to their former homes because of the food shortages. Diallo is one of them.

“I’m not in a hurry to go back because even if the war is over, what will we eat? What will I sell and buy in the market? Gao is thirsty, hungry and angry.”

Two Tuareg girls are playing at Goudebo Refugee Camp in Burkina Faso. The crisis has forced 170,000 refugees, mostly Tuaregs and Arabs to flee north Mali in fear of retaliation from the Malian army. Credit: Marc-André Boisvert/IPS

By Marc-Andre Boisvert
OUAGADOUGOU, Burkina Faso, Mar 13 2013 (IPS)

As the Malian army and its foreign partners are slowly securing northern cities in the West African nation, it is still unclear how the country will turn its back on the political crisis that led to the March 2012 military coup.

“If the Malian government wants to re-establish itself over Mali, they need the National Movement for the Liberation of Azawad. We, Tuaregs, have been at war for 52 years. And we will continue until our people’s living conditions change,” Ibrahim ag Mohamed Assaleh, from the separatist organisation known by its French acronym MNLA, tells IPS in an exclusive interview in Burkina Faso’s capital, Ouagadougou.

In January 2012, the MNLA led an attack against a military base in Menaka, in Gao region, calling for an end to the marginalisation of northern Mali‘s nomad populations. Three months later they took control of the country’s north. Soon after, however, the MNLA was pushed aside by a coalition of Islamists militants composed of Al-Qaeda in Islamic Maghreb, Ansar Dine and the Movement of Unity and Jihad in West Africa.

“The (January) intervention of France and the international community is welcomed in the Azawad by the MNLA as long as they are fighting terrorists, who we have fought for many months,” says Assaleh, who is part of the team negotiating with the Malian government.

On Jan. 29, Mali’s interim President Dioncounda Traoré announced a roadmap for transition, setting elections for no later than the end of July. But the MNLA says it has not been consulted and included, and therefore will not participate.

“They might organise elections where they feel like it. But we do not see those elections happening, at least in our land. Our concerns have not been taken into consideration,” says Assaleh.

Mediation was initiated between the Malian government, the MNLA and the Islamist group Ansar Dine by neighbouring Burkina Faso’s President Blaise Compaore in August 2012, but the talks are now stalled.

“They still occur, but at a slower pace since the French intervention was launched,” explains a member of the Burkinabe mediation team who prefers to remain anonymous. Mali has been pressured by United Nations Resolution 2085 to negotiate with non-terrorist groups.

“Some lobbies in Bamako do not see the point of negotiating any more. That weakens peace. And this might be costly to the government,” comments Assaleh.

Yvan Guichaoua, a West African expert on non-government armed groups and a lecturer at the University of East Anglia, tells IPS that the responsibility of the present chaos is shared between those in the north and south of Mali.

“The problem is that Bamako authorities show no intention at all to negotiate with the MNLA at this stage. The MNLA is considered to have initiated the present chaos, which is only partly true – recurring rebellions have hit Mali since its independence.”

However, Dr. Roland Marchal, senior research fellow and specialist on the economics and politics of conflict in sub-Saharan Africa at the National Centre for Scientific Research, based at Sciences-Po in Paris, tells IPS that a political compromise between the government, the MNLA and Ansar Dine is not the way to secure northern Mali.

“First, all those actors may not be representative of the population enough to define and enforce an agreement. That is why a formula such as a National Conference that would encompass many actors rooted in the political, social, religious and cultural arenas, may offer a greater chance to reach a sustainable agreement,” he says, adding that all three groups also face allegations of huge violations of basic human rights.

“There is a need to fine tune between a new social contract that would include some kind of amnesty and the need for justice. This can be achieved by the Malians themselves, not the international community or the International Criminal Court (ICC).”

The Malian army has been accused of committing arbitrary killings against the Tuaregs – executions that have been documented by several human rights groups. The claims forced the Malian army chief of staff, General Ibrahima Dahirou Dembele, to call presumed military perpetrators back from the front.

Human Rights Watch accused the MNLA and its allies of committing executions, pillages and rapes during a 2012 attack on the Aguelhok military camp in northern Mali. The MNLA detained and executed up to 153 Malian soldiers, according the Malian government and the International Federation of Human Rights.

The allegations were serious enough for the ICC to launch an investigation. The Malian government has issued arrest warrants against 26 people, including Assaleh. Four members of the MNLA have been arrested in Mali, to date.

“The warrants are a non-event,” defends Assaleh. “Agelhok’s January 2012 massacres have not been perpetrated by the MNLA. We want an independent inquiry and we are ready to participate with the ICC.”

Beyond the roadmap, Assaleh remains sceptical of developments.

“We have signed many agreements in the past. Now we need to apply them. We need a definitive solution to the problems of the Azawad. Since the coup, nothing has changed. (Mali’s ousted President) Amadou Toumani Touré’s networks are still really powerful and want to retain control. The MNLA will not support that.”

But who does the MNLA represent?

Assaleh is adamant that the MNLA represents 90 percent of Tuaregs, 40 percent of Fulanis, and 30 percent of Arabs.

“We have legitimate historical claims, even if we are a minority. This is our land. We invited all Tuaregs to join. But many do not want to talk to us. Among them are people who have supported all regimes, including the one of the dictator Moussa Traoré …they stayed in Bamako to keep their salaries, their privileges,” Assaleh says, referring to several Tuareg personalities who have joined the government and, he believes, made a lucrative business of the development of the north.

But Guichaoua says the MNLA remains heavily Tuareg “despite some roles offered to non-Tuaregs (Arabs, Songhay) in its official, yet phony, structure of command.”

“As a result, it arguably represents a small share of the population of the Azawad, mostly the Idnan and Chamanamas Tuareg tribes,” he says.

Marchal agrees, saying that the MNLA is poorly representative of the Azawad or Tuareg population in north Mali.

“The MNLA is seen as a group of thugs by many in Mali,” he says.

In Kidal, the MNLA’s stronghold in northern Mali, the French and Chadian army have ensured the securitisation of the area in cooperation with the MNLA, to the detriment of the Malian army. According to the MNLA, the Malian army is not able to protect northerners and Assaleh says the deployment of the army could only lead to more repression for Tuaregs.

But Guichaoua says that building a legitimate political representation from within the country will prevent the recurrence of another rebellion.

“(It) is the challenge ahead.”

*Additional reporting by Mathieu Carat in New York

Ramatou Wallet Madouya (r) and her sister Fatma (l) in Goudebo camp, Burkina Faso. They are many of the Malians who fled the fighting in their country. Credit: Marc-André Boisvert/IPS

By Marc-Andre Boisvert
GOUDEBO, Burkina Faso, Feb 22 2013 (IPS)

Fatimata Wallet Haibala sits among a group of women and teenage girls under a tent, her handicapped boy on her lap. The scene could be a rural picture of a Tuareg gathering in the desert. But the mother mother of five resides in a refugee camp in Goudebo, Burkina Faso, almost 100 kilometres from their home in Mali.

“Life is harsher for women in the camp,” she tells IPS. “We have to take care of the family — men can walk around freely.” The widow makes money by re-selling to her fellow refugees the boxed milk and sugar that she buys from outside the camp. She has been here for more than a year now, escaping Mali before the crisis first hit in 2012.

In early 2012, a rebellion saw the Tuareg – a traditionally nomadic community living across parts of Mali, Niger and Algeria– take over the north and nearly two-thirds of the country. But they did not hold the terrority for long.

In April 2012, a coalition of armed Islamist groups allied with Al-Qaeda chased out the secular Tuareg-led National Movement for the Liberation of the Azawad.

The coalition – composed of Al-Qaeda in Islamic Maghreb, the Movement for Unity and Jihad in West Africa (MUJWA), and Ansar Dine – was able to hold on the territory until a French intervention allowed the Malian army to reclaim the north last month.

The crisis, so far, has created over 150,000 refugees in neighbouring countries – 40,000 in Burkina Faso alone – and 230,000 internally displaced persons within Mali.

Every day, new refugees arrive at the camps. Most are “fair skinned” – Malian Arabs and Tuaregs.

Fear of the retaliation at home

The late father of Haibala’s children, a Tuareg, was a soldier loyal to the Malian army who died fighting a rebellion in Agelhok in eastern Mali, last February.

As soon as the rebellion came closer to her home, Haibala chose to leave. She arrived in the camp in February 2012, long before Islamists imposed Sharia law in the north.

“In Gao, all “fair skin” left. Now, we hear that they hunt us – I don’t see the day yet when we will go back,” the 49-year-old woman says.

Fresh attacks shook the town as recenlty as Thursday, Feb. 21., when the Malian army battled Islamists.

The fear of retaliation from their communities back home is the main reason why they do not want return to Mali.

Stories of attacks against light-skinned folks, true or false, are intertwined with the harsh memories of the Tuareg rebellions of the 1990s, during which the Malian army and paramilitary groups executed several Tuareg and Arab civilians.

Recent statements from Human Rights Watch confirm that executions have been carried out by the country’s army on suspected Islamist rebels and supporters, but President Dioncounda Traoré denied the allegations on Feb.20.

Safe – for now

Meanwhile, the refugee women gathered under a tent in the camp to discuss rumours of rapes and killings.

Though none of the women here have been witness to the atrocities, they have heard stories. “We know that some traders have been killed by the army at Gao’s market,” comments Fatma Targui.

Further away, in another tent, Abou Haoula and some friends drink tea. Tradition prevails in Goudebo and men and women do not mix much here.

The men arrived here in January from Gao. Some came by cars, some rode on the back of donkeys or camels. When they reached their country’s boarder with Burkina Faso, they were taken in by the United Nations Refugee Agency.

“We fled because of the bombings and fighting – that was just too much. A lost bullet could have hit us … We had to leave,” explains Haoula, who is in his fifties.

He says that, from the time of the Islamist invasion untill the bombings, they had been able to receive a steady delivery of food from Algeria and from Bamako. After the French launched the first bombings in January, all life and the deliveries of needed supplies stopped. It is only then that Hauola and other refugees left.

“The MUJWA was harsh, but they left us alone if we complied by the rules,” Amidy Ag Habo, tells IPS. Back home, he was the deputy mayor of N’takala, a small town 60 kilometres outside of Gao.

“We did not know the Islamists. They were foreigners,” he adds, but still, the “fair skinned” are perceived as allies to the MUJWA in Gao.

The Goudebo refugee camp lies in an arid region. Here, NGOs had to dig water holes and build basic infrastructure to meet the needs of some 7,444 refugees who had to be relocated here in January.

Fears that fighting from Mali would spill across the border and kidnapping threats were some of the reasons why authorities relocated the camp.

Inspite of the harsh conditions, Haoula is relieved to be here. “Now, we are able to sleep tight. I was not able to close an eye in Mali,” he says.

The men, still dressed in their Tuareg headscarves, share the feeling that it is most likely payback time in Gao.

“There is no government in northern Mali now. All decisions are taken by the military. They are the police, the judges, and the government. The French do not kill. They simply disregard what the Malian army is doing,” says Habo.

For Fatou Wallet Mahadi, the Islamists were a lesser evil compared to the Malian army.

“There is no Mali without Azawad. We, Tuaregs of the Azawad, now belong to Mali. We trust that one day we will be able to go back. But right now it is impossible. There are too many tensions. We are tired of violence erupting every 10 years. When we go back, we need to work on a real solution to live together,” she says.

Despite uncertainty and the ongoing conflict, Mali will work to rebuild and safeguard its cultural heritage, says the West African country’s minister of culture Bruno Maïga.

Maïga was in Paris this week to attend a “day of solidarity with Mali” organised by the United Nations cultural agency UNESCO at its headquarters here. The events brought together cultural experts, government officials, artists and academics to assess the damage done to Mali’s world heritage sites and ancient manuscripts, and to map out a plan of action.

“The jihadists…by burning manuscripts, prohibiting traditional practices in the occupied regions, forbidding the listening to music, sowing terror…wanted to crush our spirit, our very cultural essence,” Maïga said. “Their objective was to destroy our past, our culture, our identity, and overall, our dignity.”

Maïga told IPS that he hoped the day would lead to a “real beginning” of rebuilding Mali’s heritage. “I hope there will be concrete action, and that’s why I’ve come, despite all the difficulties.”

Sixteen mausoleums and the three major mosques in the iconic town Timbuktu were first inscribed on UNESCO’s World Heritage List in 1988. The Tomb of Askia in the city Gao, dating from 1495, was added to the list in 2004.

Last July this tomb and the mosque Sidi Yahi were put on the agency’s “in danger” list following the destruction of 11 of the mausoleums, and of the doors of Sidi Yahi.

The destruction – attributed to armed Islamist rebels – took place during the year of conflict that began in northern Mali in January 2012. As French and Malian forces retook Timbuktu in late January this year, retreating rebels set fire to the Ahmed Baba Institute, destroying some of the precious ancient manuscripts that were held there.

Maïga told journalists that about 2,000 to 3,000 manuscripts may have been lost but that an estimated 300,000 other documents are in safe-keeping. He declined to give their location, citing security concerns. Many of the texts date from the 13th to 16th centuries and were produced by renowned scholars from the city and other areas.

The manuscripts were in the process of being digitalised, but the rebels shattered computers and other equipment installed to do this, Maïga said. “They broke everything,” he told IPS, adding that a renewed digitalisation process is a priority for the ministry of culture, once peace has been restored.

“Mali has a very rich culture and history that has served to cement social cohesion,” Maïga said. “For hundreds of years, different communities have lived together in respect for diversity. It’s this diversity, this spirit of tolerance, and this creativity…that the Islamists have been trying to destroy. We must resolutely oppose this.”

Following a day of talks on Monday, Mali and its partners adopted a draft action plan for the “rehabilitation of cultural heritage and the safeguarding of ancients manuscripts.” Lazare Eloundou, chief of the UNESCO World Heritage Centre’s Africa unit, said that the cost of digitalizing the manuscripts and rebuilding the mausoleums was estimated at between 10 million and 11 million dollars.

He said that the agency had set up a special account to receive funds for the work ahead, and the day of solidarity was also a means of drawing attention to the need for contributions from private and public donors.

Aurélie Filipetti, France’s minister of culture and communication, who attended the day’s opening ceremony, said that French institutions would participate in the training of Malian cultural experts in the areas of conservation and restoration of patrimony.

“Mali is an important artistic, cultural and spiritual source, and the role of France, of UNESCO and of the entire international community is to help the Malian people to rediscover their dignity and the pride in their culture,” Filipetti told journalists.

“When France intervened, it was to preserve the territorial integrity of Mali and above all to safeguard the Malian people,” Filipetti added. “And the Malian people need their heritage and culture.”

Institutions such as the Paris-based Quai Branly Museum, which focuses on indigenous art and civilisations, and the National Library of France will lend their expertise to the restoration and reconstruction work, Filipetti said.

“No spiritual or temporal principle can justify depriving a people of their history,” she said.

As the conflict continues, with sporadic attacks, experts fear that Malian cultural artifacts will become part of the international trade in illicitly obtained art objects that is valued at 6 to 8 billion dollars annually.

UNESCO officials said that some items were already believed to be on the market, but the agency hopes that neighbouring governments would act to prevent objects entering their countries.

UNESCO’s director-general Irina Bokova said that the agency would work with its partners and with the international police organisation Interpol to stem the sale of such art objects. She also stressed the importance of culture to nations.

“We want to send a very strong message about the importance of culture, about the importance of heritage,” she told journalists. “A message that rejects the destruction of heritage because it destroys the identities of people.”

Bokova, who visited Mali at the beginning of the month with French President François Hollande, said she saw firsthand the burnt remnants of some of the manuscripts.

“For us, Timbuktu, Gao, the heritage of Mali all go beyond the sheer description on the World Heritage List because (they show) the development of Islamic civilisation, and of dialogue among cultures. The manuscripts…have records of Islamic science, of medicine, of astronomy, of spirituality, philosophy,” Bokova said.

Mali, long praised as a stable democracy and success story, was in reality a fragile state that collapsed, says a new report. Burned cars and abandoned tanks are relics of the violent fighting in Diabaly. Credit: Marc-André Boisvert/IPS

By Carey L. Biron
WASHINGTON, Feb 20 2013 (IPS)

Development workers and aid strategists are urging the U.S. government to adopt a comprehensive strategy for addressing root problems in “fragile states”, warning that an outdated focus on military intervention is draining resources and exacerbating security problems.

Noting Washington’s ongoing policy confusion over how to deal with the aftermath of the Arab Spring uprisings, researchers with the Washington office of the Society for International Development (SID), an international network, are suggesting a restructuring of parts of the federal government to allow for longer-term planning and state-building initiatives.

A new high-level State Department position, the SID researchers say, should be mandated to focus on four issues: demographic pressures, inequality, fragmented security structures and state legitimacy.If our counterterrorism relationship with Egypt served as the core of our relationship, what tariff did we pay on other things that … would have been really important?

Importantly, they are also urging a delinking of state-building initiatives from broader military and intelligence activities. Not only do these latter remain focused largely on counter-terrorism and counter-insurgency approaches, but they have tended to lurch from short-term crisis to crisis.

“Mali, for example, long praised as a stable democracy and success story, was in reality a fragile state that collapsed,” notes a new SID report, released here on Tuesday (online copies are not yet available). “Currently, some 40-60 states, representing over one billion people, are fragile political entities and potential arenas of instability.”

Beyond the security concerns, this has serious implications for development aims. According to the World Bank, by 2015 half of those living on less than 1.25 dollars a day will be in fragile countries. Further, the problem is getting worse, with research from the Brookings Institution, a Washington think tank, reporting that extreme poverty doubled in fragile states from 2005 to 2010.

Yet, the report states, “The U.S. does not have a strategy for addressing the fundamental problem of fragile states.” Just two parts of the U.S. government are said to have a functioning definition on what constitutes a “fragile state” – the army and USAID, the overseas development agency.

“Because of the trends of history after World War II, the Cold War and now the threat of terrorism, an awful lot of our security policy tends towards military solutions,” General (Rtd.) Michael Hayden, a strategist now with George Mason University, said Tuesday at the release of the SID report.

“Fundamentally, the U.S. national security structure comes out of a law passed by Congress in 1947, and it’s a structure well-suited to the problems of the mid-20th century.”

Hayden told IPS that Egypt was one fragile state where the United States’ singular focus on the “war on terror” proved counterproductive.

“If our counterterrorism relationship with Egypt served as the core of our relationship, what tariff did we pay on other things that … would have been really important?” he asked.

“For example, how much did the American embassy [in Cairo] feel free to reach out to the Muslim Brotherhood or establish contacts with the political opposition? And was that harnessed by how much they did or did not want to put the counterterrorism relationship at risk?”

Hayden suggests that such an approach may have made sense for a few years after the attacks of Sep. 11, 2001, but says “even I can’t deny that this distorts other things that in the long term might be more important.”

Diplomatic experiment

The United States is far from alone in its failure to commit significant resources to addressing the base causes of instability in fragile states. However, some European countries have recently made moves in this direction.

Over the past two years, the British government has moved to target the bulk of its overseas aid programmes towards countries deemed fragile. The German government, too, has announced that it will be overhauling its official strategy for dealing with fragile states.

To a great extent, this new discussion is being led by the United Nations, which is currently debating how to add the unique concerns of fragile countries to the post-2015 iterations of the Millennium Development Goals. And, in late 2011, 19 countries agreed to become part of a framework known as the New Deal for Engagement in Fragile States, under which unstable states agree to a series of self-assessments aimed at strengthening certain indicators.

According to Pauline H. Baker, a co-author of the new SID report, the proposed framework, which she calls a “new diplomatic experiment”, needs to be seen as the United States’ potential offering to this discussion.

“There’s been a growing literature on this whole phenomenon, but very little government thinking about fragile states as a category of threats to security,” she says. “Previous studies have tended to focus on terrorism, political extremism or mass atrocities, but our view is that the United States needs to address the underlying drivers of this fragility, not merely react to the symptoms.”

This mindset has not subsided, she suggests, and instead is currently finding new ground.

“People are talking about Africa being the new frontier for counterterrorism, and all of the news that we’re seeing is all about military approaches,” she says. “But if you really want to fight terrorism, you have to fight the conditions that gave rise to it, and those are not military solutions – those are non-military solutions.”

She continues: “You have to deal with inequality, with demographic pressure, with the security forces in how they behave and how they’re structured.”

Willing partners

This conversation could well be moving forward in development policymaking here. In late January, a U.S. Army major made a high-profile call for USAID to be given a seat on the National Security Council.

Yet it remains unclear how exactly policymakers would decide on which fragile countries to engage with more closely. Baker and others involved in the new report stress that such initiatives would only work if Washington were to engage only with “willing partners”.

“We were very strong in saying that we can’t just barge in and say, ‘You’re a fragile state and this is the way we think you should be running things,’” she told IPS.

Instead, she says, the programme would require an “equal partnership” as well as a willingness to commit to broad-reaching reforms.

“In some cases – Afghanistan being one of them – we didn’t quite assess the commitment side of the story,” she says. “Countries who have regime survival as their primary focus, we won’t work with them – not until we know we’re working with a group of reformers who we feel really want to change their country.”

Togolese Soldiers line up on the tarmac after arriving at Bamako Senou International Airport in Mali in early February, 2013. The soldiers are a small part of the African-led International Support Mission to Mali. Credit: Thomas Martinez/IPS

By Soumaila T. Diarra
BAMAKO , Feb 13 2013 (IPS)

Soldiers belonging to the African-led International Support Mission to Mali continue to stream into this West African nation, as several hundred troops have already been deployed to secure towns across the country.

Troops from Benin, Cote d’Ivoire and Senegal – representing the Community of West African States (ECOWAS) contingent of AFISMA – are among the recent arrivals in Bamako. According to a source close to the Malian Ministry of Defence, over 5,000 West African soldiers will be stationed in Mali before the end of February and about half of these have already arrived.

The central Malian town of Markala is currently host to 600 troops from Burkina Faso.

“We have felt safer since the arrival of the Burkinabé soldiers. They are based at the military school and have not given anyone any problems,” Markala Mayor Demba Diallo told IPS.

“Hardly five minutes go by without seeing Burkinabé soldiers on patrol. They have secured the town and surrounding areas,” Diallo added.

In the nearby town of Ségou, 250 Nigerian soldiers are stationed, while Togolese forces are stationed in San, a town a little further to the north. Troops arrived directly from Niamey and Niger to their base in Gao, one of the largest cities of northern Mali,  which was recently liberated from Islamist occupation by French troops.

France launched a military intervention in Mali on Jan. 11 at the request of the country’s interim President Dioncounda Traoré after extremists advanced on the town of Konna, 60 kilometres northeast of Mopti. Since April 2012 about two-thirds of the country had been occupied by Islamist rebels. Following the successful intervention, France now plans to pull its troops out by the end of March.

Negotiations have begun to place ECOWAS troops under United Nations command. However, the BBC reported that United Nations official Deputy Secretary-General Jan Eliasson Tuesday, Feb. 12, said that the Malian government was “hesitant” to allow a U.N. peacekeeping force in the country.

“To date, between 65 to 70 percent of the AFISMA contingent is now in Mali,” Colonel Yao Adjoumani, the AFISMA spokesperson, told a press conference in Bamako on Feb. 6.

Adjoumani also announced that Guinean troops had crossed the Malian border, adding that the AFISMA mission will be fully deployed by mid-February. However, he declined to reveal the total number of troops, their stations and the deployment timetable, citing security reasons.

Meanwhile, senior government officials have called for unity among the Malian army.

Internal clashes rocked the Malian capital, Bamako, last Friday, Feb. 8, when gun battles erupted between the Red Beret units who support deposed President Amadou Toumani Touré, and the Green Berets who back the March 2012 coup leaders. The Malian army ousted the democratically elected civilian government last March.

Hospital sources have reported that two teenagers were killed and 13 people sustained gunshot wounds during the fighting.

Mahamane Cissé, a senior official in Gao, told IPS via telephone: “Right now, Mali needs a united army. We have to focus on the country’s total liberation. Once that is achieved, the army can work out its differences.”

The U.N. World Food Programme (WFP) has resumed the distribution of food aid to the north of the country. The organisation had stopped food aid deliveries following the outbreak of fighting in January.

“Food deliveries to northern towns like Timbuktu, Goundam and Niafunké have started by boat,” the WFP communications chief, Daouda Guirou, told IPS.

The opening of the Sevar-Douentza highway has made it possible to deliver food to Gao. “Food distribution to residents will begin shortly,” Guirou confirmed.