On Friday 30, December 2005, Egyptian security police brutally broke up a three-month sit-in protest being held by Sudanese refugees in Cairo, killing 30. As detailed in an October 2005 Pambazuka News article (http://www.pambazuka.org/index.php?id=29957) the refugees were protesting against their appalling conditions and the constant abuse of their rights and had camped out near the Cairo office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), demanding protection from forced repatriation and protection of vulnerable groups. Three months after the massacre, writes Barbara E. Harrell-Bond, families of the dead are still waiting to bury their loved ones.

What is happening with the bodies of those who were killed in the 30 December 2005 violent expulsion of the three-month peaceful protest aimed at the UN High Commission for Refugees in front of their Cairo offices at the Mustafa Mahmoud Park? To date, there is no evidence of any of the 29 families having lost a loved one, being successful in receiving the body from the government morgue authorities to complete the burial, either in Cairo or back in Sudan. The bodies are slowly decomposing in the central government morgue while distraught family members struggle to obtain some sense of closure in order to move forward in their grieving process.

There were understandable delays in identifying bodies and conducting autopsies. Then, because of rumours among the refugees of organ ‘snatching’, the Sudan government and the SPLM demanded they be allowed to conduct their own investigation. But there has been no public account of their findings. Still the bodies have not been released. For those yet looking for loved ones, they are no longer allowed to enter the morgue, but are shown pictures of bodies yet unidentified.

Mr. Phillip Dominic is the maternal uncle and primary relative of one of the deceased, Colletta Pashikfofe. Her relatives, a mother and brother, want her body to be buried in the Sudan. However, Colletta’s body remains in the morgue after a series of grisly experiences.

Phillip obtained funds from an Egyptian to pay the plane ticket and to have an undertaker preserve the body and prepare it for transport in a sealed casket. He accessed all the necessary documents:

- A death certificate (with no cause of death listed).
- A letter of permission from the Ministry of Health to transport the body to Sudan and confirming Phillip’s authorization as the closest living relative in Cairo to receive the body.
- A letter from the Foreign Affairs Ministry sent from Khartoum via the Sudanese Embassy in Cairo providing permission for Colletta’s body to enter Sudan.
- A document from the Ministry of Justice to confirm again that Phillip is the legal guardian of Colletta’s body and confirming that he officially took possession of the body Friday the 3rd of Feb. 2006.

He was on the way to the airport on that day with the undertaker and Colletta’s body when he was contacted by Mohamed Darwish, a 3 star police officer/general from the Zenhom station just across from the morgue. He was told that he must return immediately with Colletta’s body to the Zenhom morgue and that this order had been received “from above”. He returned as instructed at which point Mohamed Darwish signed the body back into the morgue, essentially putting a “hold” on the body, apparently preventing Phillip from receiving it again.

Phillip at this point went to the Sudanese Embassy requesting assistance and eventually went back to Zenhom on the 9th and 10th February along with the undertaker. He was told by morgue authorities that he had to go to the Interior Ministry in order to obtain a letter to have the hold released. He was also told to go to the police at Zenhom and discuss the matter directly with Darwish, who originally placed the hold.

He did so, only to find no one available, apparently due to a football match. He was told by the airlines that the ticket he purchased would expire so he was hoping to resolve the matter. He has been told by morgue authorities that he should try to convince the airline to extend the ticket until Sunday 12 February and that perhaps the matter would be resolved on the Saturday.

Phillip has been back to the morgue, to the UNHCR, and to the Sudanese Embassy on an almost daily basis since mid February. He had to change the details on his authorization letter from the Sudanese Embassy, which he did successfully, after initially having difficulties. He had to obtain a letter from UNHCR which he eventually did. However, his tireless efforts to receive Coletta’s body for transport back to Sudan, even to bury locally, appear not to have yielded any positive results.

The morgue authorities/police posted at the morgue, reportedly stated on 26 February that he could not receive the body for transport back to Sudan because they had not received authorization to release the bodies “from a higher authority”.

Phillip decided (as several other family members have now done), that he had been through enough and that, despite other family member’s wishes to the contrary, he would bury Coletta’s body locally. He assumed that morgue authorities would release the body immediately once he agreed to this. Instead they reportedly told him that he must obtain confirmation from religious figures that he would have a ceremony and burial locally. He did so with church officials confirming his intent to morgue authorities. Following this the authorities again replied that they were sorry but they did not have the authorization required to release Coletta’s body to him, even for local burial.

Phillip tried to participate in a prayer gathering at the morgue for the deceased, however, they were not allowed to gather, with police apparently fearing potential violence. Although the details are unique, in many ways it is representative of similar troubles that other families have also faced during this difficult process of attempting to bury their loved ones since 30th December 2005.

UPDATE: Per my conversations with a few of the family members, and other second hand reports, I understand that funerals did take place over at least 2 days last week, starting mid week. Apparently 8 bodies were buried initially and another 6 the next day. Additional funerals may have taken place over the weekend that I am not aware of.

Apparently representatives from both the Sudanese Embassy and Egyptian Government accompanied the bodies from the Zenholm morgue to graveside in order to ensure that there were no detours to have secondary medical opinions on cause of death (as some family members had requested originally). To date, only death certificates with the section on cause of death left blank have been issued to the families.

Some family members asked the Sudanese and Egyptian officials whose decision it was to prevent the bodies from returning to Sudan, as the government officials from the Sudanese Embassy have been apparently telling the family members that it is the decision of the Egyptian Government. However the Egyptian Government officials have apparently been telling the family members that it was the decision of the Sudanese Government. In response to such questions in the presence of representatives from both governments, the family members were apparently told to stop asking questions least they not be allowed to bury their loved ones at all.

It appears that many of the bodies still have not been buried. Phillip has not yet buried Colletta, but plans to try to do so by Tuesday of this week. Almost all of the family members whom I am in contact with have now collected their 5,700 LE from CARITAS. Average local funeral costs are apparently in the range of 300-500, with the remaining funds being seen as "compensation" for what the families have endured (no matter how grossly inadequate).

* This article was compiled from reports from AMERA-Egypt, a refugee legal aid NGO, operating as a branch of the AMERA UK Charity. Barbara E. Harrell-Bond is distinguished Visiting Professor, Forced Migration and Refugee Studies Programme, American University in Cairo.

Democracy in Uganda is not set up for fair participation, or even for equality, argues Dickson Ogolla. He says political statistics are not the only confusing things in Uganda; it is a place where most numbers don’t always make sense to everyone.

Ugandans went to the polls three weeks ago, the country’s first multiparty election since President Yoweri Museveni came to power at the head of a guerrilla army in January 1986. They were, however, the country’s third general elections, the previous two having been held under a “no party” system, in which political parties were severely restricted, and not allowed to field candidates or run on a partisan platform.

In the end, Museveni won with 59 per cent of the vote. His main challenger, Dr Kizza Besigye, got 37 per cent, while Ssebaana Kizito managed 1.5 percent. Independent candidate Abed Bwanika got 0.9 per cent and Miria Obote, former President Milton Obote’s widow, who became the country’s first female presidential candidate, scraped 0.8 per cent.

For an external observer interested in more than just who the winner would be, the bigger story about the latest election in Uganda is elsewhere. First, for a country that has a population growth rate of 3.4 per cent per year, the least one would expect is a similar growth in the population of those who want to participate in electing her government. Instead, the Uganda voter register has shrunk by 350,000 voters since the 2001 general election, to 10.4 million.

The shrinking can be explained, but not the lack of growth. In 2001 there were allegations of ghost voters. Indeed, the electoral register was cleaned, so the number of voters on the roll came down. So while this gives us an explanation of the shrinkage of the register, it does not shed any light on why it has remained stagnant. Statistically, the voter roll should have grown by at least 17 per cent, meaning there should have been 12.5 million registered voters. The point is that even before the February 23 election, 2 million people had been disenfranchised, and the burden of representation multiplied. The turn-out of 7 million, or 68.6 per cent, of the registered voters further implies that another 3 million people did not participate.

The problem, however, seems to run much deeper. Democracy in Uganda is not set up for fair participation, or even for equality; it’s heavily weighted. One in every five voters comes from four districts - Kampala, Wakiso, Masaka and Mukono, all in the central region. But the average vote per polling station in these four districts is way below the national average, thus a measure of central tendency does not even begin to describe the lack of even spread of the vote. The skew is obvious and worrying. Ideally, each polling station should reflect the national average.

The total votes of all the four districts is much higher than all the votes from the northern region. With this kind of situation, who needs the north? It is instructive that that’s where Besigye beat Museveni with a wide margin.

An even more interesting statistic is that the number of registered voters in Uganda is not much different from that of Kenya, yet Kenya has on the minimum 6 million more people than Uganda - Kenya’s population is about 33 million compared to Uganda’s 27 million (UN, 2005). The age distribution is the same in both countries, with 55 per cent falling below 18 years, the voting age.

Is it that that there are underage or ghost voters in Uganda’s register? Is it that Kenyans are less interested in registering to vote, and Ugandans are far more zealous? Such is the internal contradiction of Uganda’s statistical politics, and it partly explains why the Electoral Commission could, when it was announcing results, confidently state at one point that with 80 per cent of the constituencies counted only 55 per cent of the votes were in, and Museveni had 63 per cent of these votes. At that point, an independent tally centre at The Monitor, which was subsequently banned, was showing a close race: 52 per cent for Museveni and 45 per cent for Besigye.

All this begs the question of whether the elections were rigged. It depends on who you ask. All the independent media were in agreement that they would be rigged even if the only evidence they adduced was that of alleged previous rigging in 2001.

In the end, the Daily Monitor independent tally centre had Museveni winning with a smaller margin - 51.6 per cent, versus Besigye’s 45.6 per cent. These were interim and inconclusive results since the government security forces closed down the centre and intimidated everybody else into not announcing anything other than the results being given by the Electoral Commission. Of course there was the usual vote buying, voter intimidation and outright vote theft in some polling stations. All these under the glare of international press and election observers.

It is amazing how a strong force of 40,000 election monitors - one for every 25 voters, and two per presiding officer - could not do much, with the sole exception of DemGroup, a consortium of local Ugandan NGOs. Otherwise, the Commonwealth and European Union were quick to make their call. Their verdict? The elections were generally peaceful.

Political statistics are not the only confusing things in Uganda. It is a place where most numbers don’t always make sense to everyone. One of Museveni’s “success” stories is his government’s success in reversing the march of HIV/Aids. The Aids infection rates are allegedly down from nearly 30 per cent (in the early nineties) to 6 per cent. However, the only scientific measure of safe sex - fertility rates - has gone up from 4.7 to 6.1 per cent. This means people are having more unprotected sex yet infection rates are coming down! Either the numbers are lying or there is a secret somewhere.

The other statistical puzzle is the economy. With GDP growth rates averaging 6 per cent per year for the past 20 years, Uganda is nowhere near achieving any meaningful development. This is little wonder, because a closer look reveals a big economic lie. In the past 20 years, the economy has failed to generate any real production either in agriculture or in manufacturing. Investment in infrastructure has not been sustained and the road network has almost collapsed. Now the country is plagued by load shedding (power rationing). Power generation at Jinja is down from 350mw to 140mw, a 60 per cent reduction. Because industrial demand wasn’t at significantly high levels, the country never felt the need to diversify from over-reliance on hydropower as its single source for energy. With Lake Victoria water levels plunging dramatically, it now faces a crisis for which it doesn’t have a quick solution.

Until about four years ago, Uganda was billed as one of Africa’s “economic success” stories by Western donors. A closer look reveals a more mixed picture. The economy is composed of 31.1 per cent agriculture, 22.2 per cent industry and 46.9 per cent services. Agriculture also employs 82 per cent of the country’s labour. What the numbers don’t tell you is that agriculture is largely subsistence and for food security.

Industry is mostly food processing (sugar and brewing), and a large proportion of those in what is described as “service” are either selling beer or riding boda boda (moped taxis). Those involved in real production are few and the service sector is merely a vehicle of transfer earnings. The large size of the service sector also means that income inequities are extremely high.

Today, just over 38 per cent of Ugandans live below the poverty line, up from 35 per cent in the ‘90s. The lowest 10 per cent of the population have only 4 per cent share of the household income, and the highest 10 per cent have almost a quarter of the household income share. No official figures are available on unemployment; just as well. Urban unemployment is estimated at over 60 per cent while underemployment or disguised unemployment stalks the rural folk.

So don’t swoon by high-sounding statistics. The GDP growth rate (9 per cent), the inflation rate (9.7 per cent) and so forth. You are better of remembering that the public debt stands at two thirds of the GDP!

The one success story most people seem to agree on is Universal Primary Education (UPE). This has worked, increasing the number of children enrolled in schools by millions. Those enrolled by end of 2004 stood at 7.3 million, up from 6.8 million in 2001. The number of primary school teachers has also increased to 10,876 from 9,187 in the same period. What does this mean for the quality of primary education? The pupil-teacher ratio is down to 50 from 54, the pupil-classroom ratio is also down to 79 from 90, but has quality improved? The gross and net primary school intake ratios (initial enrolment vs retention) have plummeted (down 24 per cent and 21 per cent respectively). Perhaps household poverty is causing huge drop-out rates, thus making the teacher and classroom ratios look good.

The UPE success, however, has created a new headache. What happens post UPE? Only 9.5 per cent of those who enroll for primary education get to secondary education. Post-primary education has become naturally too expensive, what with very high demand and no expansion on physical facilities. The result is a very expansive and privatised post-primary education.

In the meantime, with that problem unresolved, the National Resistance Movement (NRM) is proposing Universal Secondary Education from 2008. Besigye’s Forum for Democratic Change (FDC) and others have no proposal. In terms of broad education reform, there is no policy debate in Uganda although everyone acknowledges the difficulties.

So with shrinking democracy and an economy that flatters to deceive, what choices did Ugandans have in the just-concluded elections? Statistically, five: NRM’s President Yoweri Museneveni, FDC’s Dr Kizza Besigye, Democratic Party’s Mr Sebaana Kizito, Uganda People’s Congress’ Mrs Miria Obote and an independent, Mr Abed Bwanika. However, the contest was for all intents and purposes down to two candidates - the present NRM leader Museveni, and a former NRM ideologue and minister Besigye.

The once strong historical parties DP and UPC had no chance, precisely because of their controversial history, and because parties were largely banned in Uganda from 1986, until last year. The important thing is that there was no debate on these major issues. The campaign got stuck on nasty personal attacks.

There being no philosophical or ideological differences presented to voters, the people were forced to choose between change and continuity. While they were sure that Museveni stood for what he stated - continuity, it was not very clear whether Besigye could deliver what he was promising - change. It became easier to trust in continuity than to hope for change. The live broadcast presidential debates (ignored by both of the front runners) exposed the contest as that of reformers in a situation where radical change was required. Perhaps that is why Museveni won; Ugandans are biding their time instead of gambling.

If there were any lessons, perhaps the biggest was that a political party must never confuse its objectives. One should not romance with democracy when in pursuit for power, even within the law. This was the difference between the Movement and FDC (with a coterie of democracy activists) — Museveni saw democracy as a means, everybody else thought it was an end.

* Dickson Ogolla is Nation Media Group’s research manager. He witnessed the election. Email: [email][email protected] This article first appeared in Africa Insight, an initiative of the Nation Media Group’s Africa Media Network

* Please send comments to [email protected]

January 09 2005 marked the signing of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) between the Southern People’s Liberation Army (SPLA) and the Government of Sudan. This article, from Strategic Initiatives for Women in the Horn of Africa (SIHA) Network, which comprises 28 member organisations and advocates for social change and gender equality for women, assesses the lot of women one year after the CPA. In the field of employment, education and political participation, there remains a long way to go before the effects of war are overcome.

The Comprehensive Peace Agreement, signed on the 9th of January by both the Southern People’s Liberation Movement (SPLM) and the National Congress, put an end to over 20 years of civil conflict responsible for the death of 1.5 million and the displacement of 4 million in South Sudan. Through the CPA, the Sudan Interim Constitution came into being, giving hope to the throngs of Southerners living as IDPs in Khartoum as well as those who remained in the South or fled to neighbouring countries.

In addition to giving the South autonomy and an option of secession within six years, the Interim Constitution ensures the rights of non-Muslims as being exempt from Shari'a law. It also affirms gender equality, stating that
"The state shall emancipate women from injustice, promote gender equality and encourage the role of women in family and public life"(Sudan Interim Constitution [15(2)])

But, one year later, what has really changed on the ground for the women of Sudan? A series of interviews related to a variety of issues indicates that change is slow, and women's rights continue to be violated on a number of levels. Women continue to be wrongly imprisoned, sexually harassed and marginalised whilst those in charge do nothing to ensure their safety.

A provision relating to Shari'a law according to the CPA stated that "parts of the constitution are to be re-written so that Shari'a does not apply to any non-Muslim throughout Sudan." In theory, under the Interim Constitution, Shari'a no longer applies to non-Muslims. The reality, however, is different. The application of Shari'a law in the North remains indiscriminate, with ambiguity reigning over how laws have changed and who is exempt. Those mainly affected are women working in the informal sector. Lacking an infrastructure of support, they are continually marginalised and targeted by the authorities.

A former alcohol brewer (who wishes to remain anonymous) spoke out to SIHA about the corruption and impunity that she has experienced whilst trying to maintain a living. This woman, originally from the Nuba Mountains, had wished to attend University after completing the Sudan Certificate, but due to the impoverished situation of her family she was forced to seek employment. For this reason, she began to brew and sell alcohol. She lived every day in fear of being arrested, and on a number of occasions was captured by the authorities.

After the signing of the CPA, she heard rumours that the living conditions of women in the informal sector would improve, but: "The situation got worse and I decided to give up brewing. Our houses are still invaded in the hope of finding alcohol, and violence is more prevalent." Fearing for her safety, this woman began to sell tea. However, as a tea lady she receives no added sanctuary or security. She has no license and continues to live in fear. "I just want to feed my family," she says.
The situation of this woman is common amongst IDPs living on the margins of society in Khartoum. Lacking viable income-generating options, many women are forced into the informal sector, with numerous women brewing and selling alcohol.

One of the main issues stunting the ability of these women to enter mainstream society is their lack of education. In the war-ravaged South, there are limited options for schooling. Those schools which do exist are not governmental institutions; rather they are run by volunteers and classified as 'Community Schools'. As IDPs return to their homelands, work is in place to build schools and train teachers. However, the situation for marginalised girls remains difficult; their education being neglected by both guardians and state.

Maha Jarrah is a teacher at the Nubrass Centre, Omdurman, which offers evening classes from the basic level up to the Sudan Certificate. The students, aged15 -50, failed to receive an education whilst they were growing up. "It is very difficult for some families to send their children to school," claims Maha. "Even if you attend a government school, parents need to find money to give their children books, pay for examinations and sometimes contribute toward maintaining the school and classroom equipment." These costs are a deterrent for families with limited means. Even though Maha claims that there are more girls entering school at the basic level, she says the reason for this is a higher birth rate amongst girls. In actual fact, when parents are unable to pay for their children's schooling, they are more willing to sacrifice their daughters', rather than their sons' education. This means that more girls are missing out on their basic education, and there is a higher drop-out rate amongst girls than boys.

Illiteracy is prevalent amongst youth, and it is promising to see so many young (and old) adults returning to gain an education at evening classes like those held at the Nubrass Centre. However, it is important that today's children of both sexes receive their education whilst growing up. It is stated in the Interim National Constitution that: "The state shall provide free primary education,” [44 (2)] but as a vast number of families are still unable to pay for their children (and predominantly, their girls') education, we are forced to wonder how committed this government really is to supplying all of it's children with an equal opportunity to receive a basic education.

Since the signing of the CPA one year ago, it has been the dream of many IDPs to return to the South. However, for the majority, it is proving difficult to make their dream a reality. As refugees are given support to return to the South from neighbouring countries, the story is different for IDPs residing in Khartoum. Opportunities exist for their return, and a number of people have grasped at chances of aid in returning home; yet many families lack the knowledge and ability to seek out these opportunities.

Amal was born and brought up in a village community in the Nuba Mountains. But, as the conflicts began to threaten her and her family, she sought refuge in Khartoum. Like the majority of people who fled the conflict, Amal resides on the outskirts of the city in squalid and over crowded conditions. As a Christian IDP living in Khartoum, she feels marginalised and discredited. Living in a dwelling made of cardboard and plastic sheets, she remains nostalgic about her home in the Nuba Mountains and is eager to return. Amal's husband has already returned to the Nuba Mountains with one of his sons. However, Amal and her remaining six children were left behind in Khartoum with no financial means of returning. Although she has employment as a cleaner and also works as a tea lady, Amal cannot afford the money for transport and so the family unit has been broken. Amal states that there is no infrastructure in place to help IDPs return to their homelands. Those who go do so through their own prerogative. Both the government of Sudan and the SPLM signed the CPA which stated that they would "Formulate a repatriation, resettlement, rehabilitation, reconstruction and development plan to address those areas affected by war", [1.5.4] but Amal remains unaware of any plan that can aid her in returning to her home.

A victory awarded to women through the CPA is the increase of female political participation. Through stating that: "The equal rights of men and women to the enjoyment of all civil and political rights set forth in the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights…shall be ensured…", [CPA 1.6.2.16 (a)], the CPA is allowing women a window through which to voice their concerns. It is promising to note that the number of women politicians has increased within the Interim Government of Sudan. The number of female MPs has risen since the CPA to an all-time high of 25%. But will their participation in parliament make a difference to the voice of Sudanese women? As the situation currently stands, this remains to be seen.

* This article was compiled by Strategic Initiatives for Women in the Horn of Africa (SIHA) Network. SIHA is a network of civil society organisations from North and South Sudan, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Djibouti, Somalia and Somaliland. Founded in 1995 by a collection of women's groups with the view of strengthening their capacity, SIHA has grown over the years and is now comprised of 28 member organisations. More information

* Please send comments to [email protected]

The phenomenon of blogging has exploded globally, with the new medium being hailed for its ability to democratise the global conversation. But that doesn’t mean the blogosphere doesn’t reflect existing prejudices within society. Sokari Ekine explores the more sinister side of the blogoshpere, focusing specifically on the abuse of women.

Last weekend the number of blogs topped the 30 million mark, according to the UK Guardian technology section. In it’s leader entitled “In Praise of the Blogosphere” it suggested that blogging “is graduating from being a minority sport to a mainstream activity”. It listed three factors that had led to this huge spate in the growth of blogs: the ease of setting one up; the functionality of blogs that has grown to include video and audio clips plus a wide range of social networking features, particularly the use of “tags” for sharing music, bookmarks, books and photos; and most importantly that “they are becoming politically and socially important as like-minded people around the world share thoughts and pictures and call decision-makers to task”.

The article, like most on blogging, presents a scene of harmony and freedom of speech as the economic and technological barriers to publishing are removed, enabling the democratic grassroots media (New Media Musing) to speak out as they choose.

Other articles on the blogosphere are written in a similar vein, using phrases like “citizens media revolution” (Our Media) “social media”, “grassroots media”, “mavericks of the online world” and so on. Having blogged for two years I cherish the technology that enables me to say what I like and how I like. I do not have to consider editorial constraints or advertising interests. The only standards I have to adhere to are my own. I am free as the wind to speak as I wish.

But there is a dark side to the blogosphere. As Rebecca Blood writes:

“The weblog's greatest strength - its uncensored, unmediated, uncontrolled voice - is also its greatest weakness…”

She argues that the editorial and adverting constraints on the mainstream media ensure that ethical standards are maintained. However, the lack of constraints on blogs, which at the same time make them so vibrant, compromises their integrity and therefore their value.

But blogging is not just about writing. It is also about the interaction between the writer and the readers. The writer is exhibiting their ego and the reader is engaging in overt voyeurism. We bloggers know when someone has been to our blogs, how long they spend there and what they read. After all that is why we are writing. We created our online identities so others would take a look and watch and try to discover through our words who we are and what we think.

The African blogosphere is one sphere that has seen a huge growth of new blogs in the past 6 months. For example in Nigeria the number of blogs has trebled in the last 9 months and each month new blogs are being created. The majority of African bloggers are still men, although the number of women is slowly increasing. African blogs tend to fall into three loose categories. First, journals or diary blogs, topic specific blogs such as technology or music blogs, and current affairs and political blogs with commentary.

The African blogosphere is no more homogenous than Africa itself. Each blogosphere tends to have it’s own characteristic such as more conversations between bloggers or less topic specific blogs and more commentary and so on. For example the Nigerian blogosphere tends to be equally divided between all three blog types but with more women writing journal and diary type blogs than men. Some countries are not as developed as others. The Ethiopian blogosphere, though relatively quite small, is very active and dominated by political commentary blogs. Kenya is the largest, followed closely by Nigeria.

Recently Nigeria in particular, has become the sight of much intolerance expressed through homophobia and misogyny. The abuse of women has been particularly disturbing. Comments have been left on womens’ blogs and posts, written using misogynist language against women and lesbians.

This is not to say that there is anything objectionable about someone expressing opinions against homosexuality whether via a comment or through a post on a blog. However these are not simply rational comments. The comments and posts are personalised and the language used is derogatory and misogynist, such as “lesbos need a dick whipping”, “bitches” and “menopausal bitches”. In some instances individual women have been stalked and intimidated even as far as names being revealed. Whilst individuals are entitled to their opinions, when the conversation degenerates into offensive hate speech advocating violence against women and homosexuals, this is not acceptable.

Because people see the blogosphere as a space where they can express themselves freely and often anonymously, they feel they do not have to adhere to the constraints in speech that they would in the non-cyber world. These issues become more apparent as the number of blogs grow and as people from different backgrounds and countries are brought together in one huge global blogosphere. At any one time there are thousands of conversations taking place.

People who would not normally have contact with each other whether because of geographical space or just personal preference now have the possibility of sharing conversations. The blogosphere reflects the non-cyber world in that the lack of shared values, ideological consensus and cultural differences amongst people can and does result in conflicts and confrontations between groups and individuals on their blogs. Thus the dichotomies of gender – male and female; sexual preference be it heterosexual and homosexual; geographical location; Africa the homeland and Africa the Diaspora; African and non-African - all have the possibility of being exacerbated because except in the case of gender these pairs are not often thrown together within the same space.

With specific reference to Nigeria and other African countries, women are being abused when they do not conform to certain types of behaviour. The emerging female voice on the Nigerian blogosphere is often in contrast to the prescribed gender roles in Nigeria that do not threaten existing patriarchal systems. Women can and do use their blogs to “speak” out against male oppression in ways they may not do in their daily lives. Blogging anonymously they feel free to express their aspirations for a different Nigeria where women are not subservient to male domination. Many men find this problematic and feel they are loosing control and power over women. Their response is to use misogynist and homophobic language to berate and intimidate the women who speak out.

Women in the Diaspora are exposed to a more sexually open environment and one where sexism and homophobia are not so socially acceptable. This is a further challenge for men in the “homeland” who may resent and fear this freedom because it may influence “their” women at home. It is common to berate those living abroad as having lost their cultural traditions and become soiled by western society which is viewed as being morally inferior. As I mentioned earlier the blogosphere provides people with the opportunity to develop an exaggerated ego and to engage in voyeurism.

The sexual nature of the comments left by some men on blogs indicate the sexualisation of this voyeurism. Young men are able to feed each other’s ego and sexuality by egging one another on as they publicly engage in “male” chat about women, much of which includes the use of misogynist language. Some women also participate in these “conversations”, cheering the men on as they act out their “machoness” and collude in the abuse of their sisters.

It needs to be said that the numbers of men engaging in abusive behaviour is relatively small. In fact a number of male bloggers have themselves been very outspoken against the abuse of women, whether in the blogosphere or in the non-cyber world, but there are still many who though not participating in abuse are silent. Despite the abuse, women are determined to continue blogging, to expose misogyny where it exists, and to find ways of supporting each other just as they have always done and continue to do so offline.

The sheer number of blogs and the global nature of the blogosphere allows for the potential exchange of ideas, empathy and tolerance across the numerous dichotomies that exist in an increasingly complex and changing world. For Africa, the rapidly developing blogosphere provides the possibility of bringing about a much-needed alternative and progressive voice and cross continent collaboration through a citizen’s media. It is important that these possibilities are not side tracked or diminished by a few destructive non-progressive elements. African bloggers of today are pioneers and as such it is the duty of all of us to create a blogging environment where women are free to express themselves without fear.

* Sokari Ekine produces the blog Black Looks,

* Please send comments to [email protected]

Sources:

Guardian Technology:

In this article, Marywam Uwais, barrister and human rights advocate, argues that Islam and women’s rights are compatible. Using a framework of Islamic law, as well as the newly ratified Protocol on the Rights of Women in Africa and the Cairo Declaration on Human Rights in Islam, Uwais takes an in depth look at a number of factors affecting African Muslim women. With her background in law, Uwais has provided an extremely important tool for women’s rights advocates in Muslim Africa, linking issues facing women to concrete support for their rights within both the Quran and Islamic law.

Introduction

The Protocol to the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights on the Rights of Women in Africa was adopted in July 2003 during the 2nd Ordinary Session of the African Heads of States in Maputo, Mozambique. It was considered by women all over the world, as a decisive step towards securing a legal framework for the protection and advancement of women’s rights in Africa. Its swift ratification enabled it to come into force in November, 2005 and underscored the importance and the concern Member States attach to the injustices suffered daily by African women. These injustices take the form of physical and mental violence, social, economic and cultural rights abuses, exploitation of vulnerabilities, and the discrimination and disadvantages arising as a consequence thereof.

This paper attempts to draw comparisons between the contents of the Protocol and the rights of women within the Islamic legal framework, with a view to highlighting areas of common concern, and especially those Islamic concepts and legal principles that lend credence to the provisions adopted by the African Union, for the protection of Muslim African women, in particular.

One of the major concerns is the harsh, dogmatic and rigid interpretations of the Qur’an and the Hadith, adopted and conveyed by many scholars and in territories where the Shari’ah prevails (Shari’ah jurisdictions). These interpretations provide cover for many injustices, which cannot be justified under a religion that professes universal and substantive justice for all, and especially the vulnerable within the society. Close study demonstrates, however, that many of these interpretations/beliefs arise from ignorance of the true precepts of the faith, deriving from patriarchal cultures and traditions, rather than benevolent interpretations of the primary sources of the Shari’ah, in line with the spirit of the Qur’an and the traditions of Prophet Muhammad (SAW).

This article will thus consider several of the issues important to Muslim women in Africa, including access to justice, polygamy, economic rights and the right to political participation. An attempt will be made to connect these issues to the Muslim context, international rights treaties and potential solutions to each topic.

Access to Justice

Islam, being a faith that commands the doing of substantive justice to all, also stresses equality of all before the law, irrespective of social standing, gender, religious inclination and other similar considerations. One of the chief mandates for human rights within the Muslim context comes from the Cairo Declaration on Human Rights in Islam, pronounced by the Organisation of Islamic Conference (OIC). Thus, Article 19 of the OIC Declaration provides that:

(a) All Individuals are equal before the law, without distinction between ruler and the ruled; and
(b) The right to resort to justice is guaranteed to everyone.

Moreover, Article 8 of same states;

Every human being has the right to enjoy his legal capacity in terms of both obligation and commitment, should this capacity be lost or impaired, he shall be represented by a guardian.

Much, however, needs to be done by Member States to overcome barriers to securing the protections afforded to women under the law, as many of such structures and mechanisms are not in place, and the overwhelming circumstances of poverty and ignorance serve as formidable obstacles to the realization of women’s rights. While comprehensive codification is advocated for in many areas (especially in the vast and interrelated field of family law) care should be taken to ensure that the laws under contemplation, though seemingly positive, do not have an adverse effect on women in practical terms. For instance, experience has shown that in some cases, efforts at enforcing strict regulation have merely had the effect of rendering such negative practices ‘invisible’. Regulation should, therefore, not be so strict as to further aggravate the circumstances unfortunate women find themselves in, nor remove all avenues for the ability to exercise just and compassionate discretion.

In addition, law reform and regulation must be accompanied by wider efforts at social change, such as the empowerment of men and women with the essential knowledge of the rights available to women under the Shari’ah, (including the necessary financial wherewithal), as many of the positive, beneficial decisions taken (even under the common law) can hardly be enforced due to the fact that too many violations go unnoticed and undocumented (and are thus considered the norm) and that the circumstances of poverty, ignorance and illiteracy are all-pervasive, especially in the rural areas.

Polygamy

Muslim scholars argue that polygamy is permitted as a remedy for certain social diseases, under certain strict conditions. Without delving into the arguments on the justification for polygamy in today’s context (especially since the practice is deeply entrenched and accepted as the norm, even by women, in many African jurisdictions), it would only suffice to point out that the ability to treat co-wives justly is a strict precondition to the practice, following the verses in the Qur’an;

‘…marry women of your choice, two, three or four; but if you feel you may not be able to deal justly (with them), then only one . . .That is nearer to prevent you from doing injustice.’

' . . . you will never be able to do perfect justice between wives even if it is your ardent desire . . .'

Obviously, these verses do not convey an unrestrained license to men, for the multiplication of wives and monogamy seems to be the preferred option. Unfortunately, polygamy has attained the status of an abiding culture in our own jurisdictions, without regard to the underlying necessity for fairness and justice between wives, being the normative values embedded intrinsically therein.

Since Muslims accept that cohesion of the family unit is the objective of the Shari’ah, surely where blatant abuse of a permission granted in good faith has become the norm (to the extent that disarray has become the consequence of a practice that typifies the letter, but not the essence of the Shari’ah) time has come for the Courts, and the Shari’ah jurisdictions to intervene for the purposes of protecting the vulnerable. The Shari’ah jurisdictions are under a duty to protect all, including women, so it would be appropriate for a regulatory law to be passed that reinforces controls and checks the abuse of the Qur’anic verses.

Thus, Courts should be empowered to enquire into the circumstances of all men who wish to marry subsequent wives, in respect of issues such as capacity and the discharge of their basic obligations as they exist or are stipulated in the marriage contract, as is happening in several Shari’ah jurisdictions across the world. Justification and proof should be demanded from, and given by, men for contemplated subsequent wives, on issues such as whether they can afford to maintain them, accommodate them with some measure of privacy (privacy being a major right under the Shari’ah), whether the existing wife consents to such addition (in emulation of the conduct of the Prophet when Ali, his daughter’s husband, sought for advice for a subsequent marriage), otherwise the woman would be compensated on agreeable terms. The State must step in, as the Authority responsible for protecting the weak in their respective spheres of authority.

Moreover, it is clear that Islam permitted polygamy as a social remedy under certain strict conditions (without which the plurality of wives is prohibited). Some Muslim countries have accordingly advocated for an outright prohibition, or introduced legislation that empowers the judiciary to refuse permission for the taking of a subsequent wife, because the man is found not to be in a position to sustain both wives, satisfactorily (in terms of maintenance, etc). While this approach has been criticized as restrictive (in that it takes away the man’s discretion and certain perceived rights), it could serve as the procedural means of ensuring that the ability to do justice is not subjective, and authorizes the intervention of an impartial third party, thereby ensuring justice in the true spirit of the Qur’an. This is especially because the condition of doing justice between co-wives is seldom given any consideration by men where polygamy is practiced.

Economic Rights

In Islamic law, women are entitled to hold property of their own, in their name and within and after marriage, as the case may be. This includes the right to earn, acquire, access and dispose of her property. Although the law provides that she may not be forcefully dispossessed of the same, these rights appear to exist more in theory. Muslim women in Africa remain largely economically dependent on their male counterparts, especially since the control of her property, if any, is invariably in the hands of male relations.

Access to credit, bank loans, mortgages and the like is still heavily skewed in favour of men and many socio-cultural and economic barriers militate against women enjoying financial independence. Indeed, although there are no categorical religious injunctions against women owning property, even the policies of Member States fail to acknowledge the current statistics that disclose that women are increasingly becoming the breadwinners of their households. Age-long prejudices, attitudes and behaviour need also to alter, to effectively take into account the peculiar problems women face in trying to assert their rights.

The Right to Political Participation

With respect to political leadership, Shari’ah places utmost emphasis on good governance, founded on justice, equity and responsibility. The Qur’an states clearly that sovereignty of the heavens and the earth belong to God, it also provides that God has made human beings His agents and representatives, without distinction as to gender. Arising from these verses and the traditions of the Prophet in support thereof, there is a consensus that every Muslim has the right and opportunity to participate directly or indirectly in the country’s public affairs and electoral processes, and the prerequisites of leadership are regarded as the capacity to exercise righteousness and to uphold justice for all.

Nowhere in the Qur’an or the Hadith is there any prohibition of participation of a woman in her country’s affairs. The Hadith that is often utilized as authority to deny such participation (where the Prophet was reported to have said that a Nation that leaves its affairs in the hands of a woman would not prosper) is said to be of doubtful authenticity by several Scholars. The historical context of that tradition is said to have been the event when the Prophet received news that Khusro’s daughter, who was widely perceived as authoritarian, had succeeded the throne. The comment was considered to be in specific relation to her person. Indeed, in contrast to this position, verses 32-34 of the Chapter on Ants (Naml) in the Qur’an extol Bilqis, the Queen of Sheba, as a ruler enjoying great wealth, dignity and the full confidence of her subjects. If it were an aberration to have a female ruler, Sheba would not have been worthy of such honour, as to be mentioned so commendably by God. Moreover, women as a group are known to have participated in the initial pledge of allegiance (bay’a) extended to the Prophet, by Muslims, which is a significant pointer to the fact that even in those days, women were considered an integral part of the Muslim community, participating in the political activities of their society. It is also reported that Aisha, the widow of the Prophet, led and commanded the Battle of the Camel, with many of the companions of the Prophet in her army, and none of them disclaimed her authority to lead.

Conclusion

Today’s realities make it imperative that mechanisms and in-built structures within Islamic Law (such as doctrines for the development of the Shari’ah) must be activated by our own Scholars and Jurists. This is for the benefit of the female gender, if only to enable constructive, contextual interpretations of the primary sources of the Shari’ah, as was done many centuries ago by Islamic jurists and scholars of repute in their own times within the Islamic world. As has been shown, there is ample room within Islamic law for Muslim States to remedy the problems and seeming contradictions between the position of women in Shari’ah and the provisions of the Protocol, utilising an open mind that views the issues as complementary, rather than incongruous. Good faith, backed by political and humanitarian will, are capable of ensuring the flexibility required to resolve the apparent ‘conflicts’ between Islamic Law and the contents of the African Protocol, thereby creating the understanding that would lead to the harmonisation and realisation of common standards of universalism, irrespective of gender and other similar considerations, in Africa and the world, at large. A positive attitude for managing variations through the synergising of rights norms (as replete in the Protocol) with Islamic legal principles is necessary and imperative, for formidable and comprehensive protections to be afforded women in developing countries, of which African Muslim women form a significant portion.

* This article is comprised of extracts from a longer paper by Maryam Uwais, who is Principal Barrister at Wali-Uwais & Co. in Nigeria. She is also involved in the National Human Rights Commission.

*Please send comments to

Providing Pambazuka News readers with a clear linkage between women’s rights and Islamic law, Dr. Muhammad Tawfiq Ladan argues that a significant relationship exists between what the Protocol on the Rights of Women in Africa and Sharia have to offer to Muslim communities in Africa. Detailing the basis for women’s equality as provided for within the Quran and Islamic law, this article argues that Islam recognises that while men and women are not the same, they are certainly not unequal. The article concludes with a number of important recommendations for advocates working in African Muslim countries to ensure the rights of women.

This paper argues that the Protocol on the Rights of Women in Africa provides a strategic platform for advocates seeking to bring women’s human rights to the attention of citizens, organizations, governments and policymakers throughout Africa. It further argues that there is a significant relationship between the Protocol and the Sharia in terms of the objective, nature and scope of women’s rights.

Hence this paper seeks to realize the following objectives:

1. To provide an overview of the Protocol with special emphasis on the key survival, development, protection and participation rights of women in Africa;
2. To establish a significant relationship between the Protocol’s core provisions and the Islamic perspective on gender equality.
3. To conclude with some viable options for effective strategies in promoting and protecting women’s rights in Africa.

The Protocol on the Rights of Women in Africa

This part of the paper seeks to highlight the significance and potential of, and the rationale behind the Protocol and to examine the key provisions of the protocol relating to women’s rights in Africa.

Significance and Potential of the Protocol

The African Union adopted on July 11, 2003 in Maputo, Mozambique, a landmark treaty known as the Protocol on the Rights of Women in Africa (the protocol) to supplement the regional human rights charter, the African Charter on Human and People’s Rights (the African Charter). The protocol, which entered into force on 25 November 2005 after securing 15 ratifications by African governments, provides broad protection for women’s human rights, including gender equality and justice.

The significance and potential of the protocol go well beyond Africa. The treaty contains a number of global firsts. For example, it represents the first time that an international human rights instrument has explicitly articulated a women’s right to abortion when pregnancy results from sexual assault, rape, or incest; when continuation of the pregnancy endangers the life or health of the pregnant woman; and in cases of grave fetal defects that are incompatible with life. Another first is the protocol’s call for the prohibition of harmful practices such as female circumcision/female genital mutilation (FC/FGM), which have ravaged the lives of countless young women in Africa.

The protocol can help advocates pressure governments to address the underlying social, economic, political, and health-care issues that contribute to the dismal states of women’s conditions throughout Africa, and through the reliance on the Quranically dictated values on gender equality, links to the protocol can be established in order to strengthen the rights of Muslim women throughout the continent.

Gender Equality and Justice under the Sharia

The Sharia, technically referred to as a ‘believer’s law’ in Islam, has two components. The divine component is founded on the provisions of the Holy Quran and the Sunnah of the Prophet of Islam. The human component of the Sharia is largely rooted in the exercise of ijtihad, technically referred to as the human initiatives to embark on research, provide judicial interpretations of the provisions of the divine component of the Sharia, resort to legal opinions or fatwa, juristic analysis, discourse or interpretations, as well as analogical deductions of rule by qualified mujtahids or scholars from the letter and spirit of the Holy Quran. Hence while the divine component is immutable, the human aspect of the Sharia is liable to err.

It is generally thought that the Sharia treats women unfairly and gender equality and justice are not possible within the Islamic legal system. This assertion is partly true and partly untrue.

Partly true as far as the resort to the process of ijtihad, the outcome and application of this process is not reflective of the changing needs and circumstances of the Muslim Ummah and not consistent with the values that the Quran repeatedly asserts in four words: ‘adl (Justice), ihsan (Benevolence), rahmah (Compassion) and hikmah (Wisdom). These Quranic values are very close to, and in fact, are the essence of human rights. One cannot think of human rights of any individual or group in the modern world without these values. Justice is as fundamental to human rights as benevolence, compassion and wisdom are. One cannot have a humane society without it being a just society.

The notion is partly untrue as far as the concept and respect for human rights are quite integral to the teachings of the Quran and the practice of the Prophet. Both the Quran and the Sunnah have remained for Muslims the framework within which to promote and protect these individual/group human rights. And the Quran has recognized and supported women’s rights in particular to: independent ownership of property, education, inheritance, free consent in marriage, divorce, child custody, voting rights, and to full legal capacity. However, there is the need to improve on women’s access to justice and to practically enhance gender equality in Muslim societies.

Quranic Perspectives on Gender Equality

The expression “Quranic perspective on Gender Equality” was judged to be the most suitable title for it orients us towards discovering those core principles in the Quran itself which form the understanding framework for our societies throughout the Muslim world. It is a society based on Quranic principles which is the goal of all Muslims, even though we may unknowingly deviate from time to time from those principles. It is the conference to a Quran-based society for which we must all work if the Muslim peoples are to enjoy a felicitous future. It is not an Indonesian, Pakistani, Saudi Arabian, Egyptian, Sudanese or Nigerian version of that society that we should regard as the indisputable norm, but one firmly based on the teachings of the Holy Quran. Only therein can we find a proper definition of women’s role in society. Since it is these teachings which are the subject of this sub-heading, the above seemed the most proper title.

By this choice of title one needs to emphasize that Muslims should regard the Holy Quran as our guide in all aspects of our lives. It is not only the prime source of knowledge about religious beliefs, obligations, and practices, it is also the guide, whether specific or implied, for every aspect of Islamic civilization.

As a step in this direction, let us consider what the Quran has to teach us about gender equality in the society towards which we should be striving, and ponder its effect on the position of women. What are the basic characteristics of a Quranic society which particularly affect women?

Five characteristics, which seem basic, crucial and incontrovertible of Quranic society are to be considered. Although they are presented in a series, each one rests upon the others and affects them. The interdependence of these five characteristics makes it difficult to speak of any one of them without mention of the others, and of course they do not and cannot exist in isolation from one another.

The characteristics include the following:

The Quran acknowledges the equal status and worth of the sexes, and the first of these Quranic confirmations of male-female equality are contained in statements pertaining to such religious matters as the origins of humanity, or to religious obligations and rewards.

Secondly, Muslims abide by a dual sex society rather than a unisex society. While maintaining the validity of the equal worth of men and women, the Quran does not judge this equality to mean equivalence or identity of the sexes. The society based on the Quran is, in contrast, a dual-sex society in which both sexes are assigned their special responsibilities. This assures the healthy functioning of the society for the benefit of all its members.

Third, of utmost importance is the interdependence of all members of society. Contrary to the contemporary trend to emphasize the rights of the individual at the expense of society, we find the Quran repeatedly emphasizing the interdependence of the male and female, as well as of all members of society.

Fourth, the value of the extended family is synonymous with Islam, as it serves to improve male-female relations. Thus, family connections reaching far beyond the nuclear unit are evident in strong psychological, social, economic and even political ties.

The fifth basic characteristic of a Quranic society is that of patriarchy. In order to acquire stability and cohesiveness, within Islam, patriarchy dominates, with men assuming responsibility for maintaining society.

The above analysis thus demonstrates that while women and men may be different, they are still equal, and as such, deserve equal treatment. The Quran thus provides the basis from which women are to be seen within Muslim communities, while the protocol offers the legal protection for all African women, including those living within an Islamic context.

Conclusions and Recommendations

It is evident from the above analysis that, both the Protocol on the Rights of Women in Africa and Islamic law recognize the crucial role of women in the preservation of family and societal values and seek to promote and protect women’s rights as human beings, then as citizens of their respective states, and finally as members of a vulnerable group that are largely abused, disadvantaged, marginalized and discriminated against in every human society.

Further, how men and women (especially political and public office holders, religious and community leaders, gender insensitive scholars, policy formulators and implementers) perceive women’s rights and to what extent their decisions and behaviour reflect a concern over such rights, are questions that require: continuing human rights education; aggressive public enlightenment campaigns; multidisciplinary research and a cross-cultural approach to the understanding, articulation and promotion of women’s rights as human rights in the civil, political, social, economic, cultural, environmental and development contexts.

At the same time, because legal and policy reforms and ideas about human rights can only provide a receptive context for changes in behaviour and do not by themselves produce these changes, it is important also to devote our attention to the practical realities that would support or hinder these reforms. These range from the economic and health infrastructure, to patterns of family formation and dissolution, and the diffusion of ideas through education and exchange. In other words, to all those conditions that are prerequisite to the effective protection of women’s human rights and the promotion of gender equality and gender justice.

Viable Options for Advocates

First, advocates in countries that have not yet ratified the protocol should press their governments to ratify.

Second, there is the need to uphold the protocol’s objectives. Any state that ratifies the treaty immediately assumes an obligation to uphold its stated objectives: to ensure the promotion and protection of women’s human rights; to ensure the implementation of the protocol at national level; and to submit periodic reports to the African Human Rights Commission, as well as provide appropriate legal remedies to any woman whose rights are violated. The adoption and repeal of legislations, implementation of policies and programmes, and enforcement by national-level courts and other mechanisms of existing legal standards can fulfill the obligations outlined in the protocol.

Third, advocates can lobby governments to reform national laws and policies that hinder women’s human rights under the protocol. Fourth, advocates need to push national and local policymakers to enact policies and programmes that seek to fulfill women’s human rights: - e.g., violence against women; sexual discrimination against women; a woman’s right to sustainable development and to participate in governance, decision-making process at all levels and in politics. Fifth, advocates can bring cases before national courts to help address violations of women’s sexual and reproductive rights, rights to a healthy and sustainable environment etc. Sixth, treaties help advocates articulate the nature and content of women’s human rights. The language of the protocol, therefore, may be used to educate women and men, policymakers, and advocates on the meaning and significance of legal standards, entitlements, and obligations as they apply to women’ rights in Africa. Seventh, conduct trainings for those who protect, promote and advance women’s rights in Africa on the African Human Rights System and the role of the protocol.

Finally, advocates need to lobby member states of the African Union to ensure that the African Human Rights Enforcement mechanisms are effective.

*This article is comprised of extracts as well as summary from a longer paper presented at a symposium co-convened by the Babiker Badri Scientific Association of Women, Afhad University for Women, which was organised by the Solidarity for African Women’s Rights (SOAWR) Coalition during the 6th African Union Summit in January of 2006 in Sudan.

* Please send comments to

This article, meant to be a basic introduction to the topic of Islamic women’s rights in Africa, argues that the two are not mutually exclusive and that women’s rights are in fact provided for within the main frameworks of Islam. While this has been largely little or misunderstood, there is a growing awareness of the fact that neither Islam nor women’s lives are static, and the movement to increase the rights of women is growing within a framework that does not harm the positive and strengthening aspects of Muslim culture.

Issues of human rights for women in African Muslim regions are usually highly contested, though more often they are little understood. Too frequently the discourse surrounding Muslim women’s rights in Africa centers on their lack of empowerment, which can be seen as ironic, considering that Islam is in fact a highly egalitarian religion at its core. Devastated by colonialism, war and poverty, many Muslim African countries are challenged with the task of rebuilding societies based on religious beliefs and cultural identities. At the same time, the recognition of the legitimate and Quranically provided for rights of women must be taken into account, taking also into account the international treaties and global pressures of democracy and rights.

Islam and women’s rights are not mutually exclusive, in spite of the fact that Islamic laws are often disconnected between how they are enacted in practice and what they officially state in writing. The allowance of custom into the legal system and the right to freedom of conscience (interpretation) are two of the ways in which the laws or Shariah of Islam have been narrowed, among numerous others. Further, it is difficult to interpret or critically assess Islamic law without Islamic education, which has been denied to many Muslims across the globe (due to colonialism and political control, among other reasons). Thus, there is widespread misunderstanding as to what the Qur’an actually says.

At the core of Islam is its creation story, which affirms that male and female were created equally, thus leaving no hierarchy in gender creation. Furthermore, Muslim women are independent legal entities, able to retain their own names, financial independence and property at all times. Women are also to be provided for in the instance of divorce. They are to be given a share of relative’s inheritance on the passing of a husband or father. Muslim women, in the Qur’an, are also given the opportunity to work, and to provide an income for themselves. At the same time, while housework and the raising of children is in many instances still prescribed along gender lines, children are to be brought up by both parents, with each consulting one another on important matters. These are just some of the examples of the rights accorded to women within Islam – according to the Qur’an, the hadiths and Sharia (Islamic law). This is obviously a cursory overview of a complicated and deeply historical issue, but it hopes to show simply that there is a side of Islam not often represented in mainstream media or discourse. Further, while many of these rules and ideas are recorded and guaranteed in writing, they are not always practiced. In reality, many Muslim women do not have access to any of these rights.

There are many issues important specifically to Muslim women in Africa, and these are in fact integral to a global perspective in terms of guaranteeing basic human rights. Women comprise over half of the population in Sub-Saharan Africa, including those countries where Islam is practiced. These nations include Mauritania (100% Islamic), the Francophone countries of Burkina Faso (50%), Chad (50%), Cameroon, Mali (90%), Niger (80%) and Senegal (92%) and the Anglophone countries of Ghana and Nigeria (which has a 50% Muslim population). In these places, Islam has a strong influence on women’s roles, access to information and rights. These issues are embedded, for African Muslim women, not only within their religious beliefs but also larger local culture, tradition, and customs.

In some places, the respect accorded to women within Islam is upheld; in other places, women struggle to gain access to these rights. This is the case because within Islam (and many other religions, for that matter), women symbolise a large part of tradition and cultural identity. Changing anything in regards to women’s rights is thus regarded as changing Islam. Those involved in the women’s movements of these countries struggle against this idea. Their protests are sometimes banned, or greeted with backlash – rarely welcomed by those in power. But their movement is growing – they are participating in debates, conferences, television and radio talk shows. Many of those involved are educated women – lawyers, social workers, and academics. This struggle against religious conservatives means that the criticism they receive is invoked through religious and theological means, whether valid or not. This, for many of these activists, means that the work they must do for women must be centered on civil rights, rather than religious ones, as efforts to reform Islam from within, keep failing. Women’s Islamic discourse cannot be discounted, however, as it is starting to provide counterpoints. This is limited at the highest level, however, by the fact that women lawyers are banned from representing women in the Sharia (Islamic law) courts.

A brief overview of some of the most pressing issues facing Muslim women in African nations shows that there is a lack of legal reform in areas traditionally governed by customary and religious laws. Women suffer discrimination in the areas of marriage and divorce laws, property and inheritance laws that favor men, societal norms that condone violence against women, lack of access to proper reproductive and sexual health and rights and lack of access to education. In some of these nations, women are still forced to undergo female genital mutilation. Further, on an everyday basis, women’s roles are confined to those traditionally performed along gender lines – transgressing these boundaries is not a choice for most, should they desire to live beyond these prescribed roles. Freedom of movement and lack of a public life or voice are also a reality for many.

The solutions to these complex and ingrained problems will not come easily. Women’s behavior and roles, in many ways, uphold the core of what Islam is. Changing the way women are valued and treated thus requires not only legal, political and cultural change, but also a shift in attitude. Accomplishing this task without harming the positive essence of Islamic culture and tradition will be difficult, but integral towards realizing women’s rights.

However, there are numerous groups in Africa working towards realizing the rights of Muslim women. Their political and community level participation is in fact an important part of Islam, and is a duty owed to their society. In many African nations there exist small groups of dedicated women working for little pay, in conditions which are sometimes dangerous, to promote the rights of Muslim women. They work to strengthen laws that protect women within customary, statutory and religious laws, lobbying at local, regional and national levels. These groups provide knowledge and awareness to rural and urban women regarding how to exercise and develop their rights and advocate on their behalf in social and legislative realms.

* Researched and written by Karoline Kemp, a Commonwealth of Learning Young Professional with Fahamu.

* Please send comments to

Sources:
http://hrw.org/women/overview-mena.html
http://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/genislam.htm

http://www.baobabwomen.org

Further Reading for International Women’s Day:

Exercising Power for Change - Statement by Noeleen Heyzer, Executive Director of UNIFEM, on the occasion of International Women’s Day
http://www.un.org/events/women/iwd/2006/
Global: Millions of girls still out of school on International Women's Day
http://www.campaignforeducation.org
Inspiring Potential – Background and Tool Kit
http://www.internationalwomensday.com/
Groups blast U.N. on gender parity

Sex worker rights group participating in national bus trip to stop violence against women and children
http://www.hrea.org/feature-events/iwd.php
IWD - Aspiring decision makers do battle with tradition

Nyaradzai Mugaragumbo-Gumbonzvanda, Regional Programme Director for the United Nations Development Fund for Women in Eastern Africa, pays tribute to the everyday heroines of the African continent. It’s not only the women in parliament that need recognition, but also those in local authorities, in health boards, water boards, education committees, budget committees and in the home, she writes.

Rosemary called me five times this week encouraging me to write something for International Women’s Day, 2006. I was not sure what to write, say or dream about! Women in decision-making, public office, the numbers, the politics, the influence they have or do not have! I was not sure. I woke up inspired. Yes, I can indeed share my thoughts, dreams and give a eulogy to African heroines, and especially African women who continue to meet the challenges everyday, who are creating change and whose voices, views, energies and creativity is never recognized, counted or valued.

First a tribute is to my own mother, Rozaria, who gave birth to more than a dozen children, a 3rd grade graduate who sent us all to school, and lived as a widow for more than 27 years. She was never a parliamentarian or a councilor, but she was on 24-hour call in her community, supporting, contributing and advising. She sat in the local school board and was a leader in her local church. She met many, many, many challenges in life, but she also created change. She influenced the family, the community and the school. She died a leader and a queen of many hearts.

Through her work we continue to struggle for justice, for equality, for rights, for dignity and for a life free from want and fear.

Many women in Africa are like my own mother. They assert themselves within the space they have. They know what is good for their children, community and country and strive for the same. They are heroines whose names are inscribed in our hearts but whose leadership, wisdom and contribution is not counted nor recognized. We continue to wallow in the pain of the low numbers in parliament and in public office. If women are not in these public offices, they are in their houses and communities meeting the challenges and trying to make a difference. They are also trying to access public office! Just like every woman is a worker, every woman is a decision maker.

The question is how do we translate women’s skills, passion and commitment to public expression and presence in public office? Why do we have a fixation with the apex, instead of diffusing the power from the apex to the other and more important levels of governance?

Transformational leadership with women must equally be about changing the value base. It must be about the totality of women’s space and eulogizing every space in which women are making decisions. In public office, we must continue to struggle for gender parity, but not at the expense of celebrating where women are already trying to influence change and meeting many struggles.

On this international women’s day, I call on the recognition of women in decision-making beyond the numbers of women in parliament. I call on the world and Africa to measure where it matters most for women: women in local authorities, in health boards, water boards, education committees, budget committees. Since most women are the ministers of finance (some say “cashiers”) at home, why not in government, why not chair finance committees in parliament and in the local boards?

I give a tribute to every woman today, as you continue to make decisions about your family, your life and posterity. This happens in the face of discrimination, poverty, wars, HIV & AIDS and even exclusion. Women are carrying even more than half the sky, today; especially in the part of the world we call Africa.

* The writer is the Regional Programme Director for United Nations Development Fund for Women in Eastern Africa.

* Please send comments to

An early morning raid on media institutions in Nairobi has shocked Kenyans accustomed to media freedom and a vibrant local press, as well as sparking alarm amongst human rights groups, donors and opposition politicians. Ochieng Rapuro gives an account of the situation.

Hooded and heavily armed policemen on Thursday morning raided the offices of the Standard Media Group, shutting down KTN television station and burning copies of the edition of the Standard newspaper. The raid came three days after three journalists working with the media house were arrested by the police and kept in custody beyond the 48 hour limited provided for in law.

The journalists were arrested over publication last Saturday of a story claiming that President Mwai Kibaki held a secret meeting with Mr Kalonzo Musyoka, an opposition MP and a former member of the Kibaki Cabinet who was sacked after he campaigned against a Government supported draft constitution last November.

The Government suffered a devastating defeat in the referendum vote that divided the Kibaki Cabinet. Last Saturday’s story had claimed that Mr Musyoka had met the President at State House, Nairobi where they held discussions on a wide range of political matters including the appointment of Mr Musyoka as the Vice President.
Though Mr Musyoka himself has denied ever holding such a meeting with the president, he has since issued a statement disassociating himself with the latest events and maintained that there were legal channels to seek redress.

Yesterday, the Minister of State in charge of Internal Security, John Michuki, said the raiders were police officers acting on official orders. A statement issued by police late afternoon said the raid had been conducted in the interest of national security. The statement said intelligence gathered by the police had indicated the Standard Group had the intention of orchestrating ethnic hatred in the country.

Human Rights groups condemned the police action as unlawful use of state security machinery to curtail press freedom. The groups said it was the latest in a series of actions that the Kibaki administration had undertaken to curtail press freedom since coming to power in January 2003.

The police operation was led by the Nairobi Area Criminal Investigations boss Sammy Githui and his operations counterpart Jim Njiru. In the shadows of darkness the police squad first attacked the media house’s head offices in Central Nairobi before moving to its press located in the city’s industrial area. It was the night that the autocratic hand of the Kenyan government came down hard on the media as it moved in to immobilize the printing press.

Despite initial denials, it was clear that this was a police raid. Workers at the Standard’s printing press offices said the leader of the raiders was heard communicating with a senior police officer at the Buruburu Police Division (OCPD) informing him that the operation was underway. Mr Justus Nyawaya, the night supervisor, says he saw a group of heavily built men armed with AK47 rifles and wearing red reflective jackets ordering the workers to lie down.

The invaders rounded up all the guards and their dogs and held them hostage for the entire three hours that the operation was underway, taking away mobile phones and personal effects from the workers and snatching the company’s car keys from the drivers.

* Ochieng Rapuro is an Editor with the Standard Newspapers

* Please send comments to [email protected]

* See the Reuters report 'Raid on media group shocks Kenyans' (http://tinyurl.com/kwefv) for more information.

When it comes to the International Monetary Fund (IMF), most people agree that change is needed. Disagreement arises when discussing the type of change. Some say the IMF has done so much damage and is so discredited that it should be scrapped altogether. Others argue for varying degrees of reform that will move the IMF towards being an organisation that is accountable and democratic. Here, Hetty Kovach from the European Network on Debt and Development discusses what needs to be reformed.

Over the last couple years, many emerging economies have turned their back on the International Monetary Fund (IMF), due to a serious lack of faith in the Fund’s policy advice and frustration at their severe under-representation and lack of voice within its structures . In December 2005 for example, both Brazil and Argentina made surprise announcements that they would settle the entirety of their debts to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) ahead of schedule. According to the Argentine Government, this decision was taken explicitly to free Argentina from IMF conditionalities and interference. In South Africa, the Government refused to even start borrowing from the IMF, probably after having looked at the rest of the continent’s experiences with the Fund.

One might think that with the announcement last year by the IMF to cancel its portion of debt owed by some HIPCs, many developing countries would also at last have the choice to be IMF-free; unburdened by the load of IMF debt payment. Unfortunately, nothing could be further from the truth. Firstly, last year’s debt cancellation deal only covers a handful of developing countries. For example, in Africa only14 countries will benefit this year, with a further 18 still pending. Secondly, as long as nearly all official donors/creditors continue to tie their much-needed aid and bilateral debt relief to the presence of an IMF program (or signal in the case of the new Policy Support Instrument in Nigeria), developing countries will remain in the IMF’s grip, pushed to take out new programs and implement new Fund conditions, no matter how politically intrusive or development unfriendly these policies may be.

Civil society organizations both in the South and the North have campaigned for many years for bilateral donors to de-link their funding from the IMF, but progress has been slow. Donors argue that they are dependent on IMF macroeconomic analysis in the absence of another institution with the Fund’s economic capacity and reach. A couple of years ago the European Commission made it an official policy to not automatically withhold money from a developing country that goes off-track with the IMF, reserving the right to continue lending if it feels this is appropriate. The UK Government last year also announced a new conditionality policy, which again in theory de-linked funding from the IMF signal. However, in reality, neither of these policies have been put into practice and tested and remain firmly on paper only.

If exit from the IMF is not an option for most developing countries in the foreseeable future, then how can the IMF better meet developing countries needs or at the very minimum do least harm?

There are three key areas which are in urgent need of reform if the Fund is to play a more constructive role in developing countries. Firstly, the IMF must radically reform the conditions it attaches to its lending programs. The Fund needs to provide developing countries with more space to determine their own economic policies. The 2005 G8 Declaration argues that ‘developing countries have the right to decide their own economic policies’). However, current Fund conditions severely restrict the economic policy choices available to developing countries. Specifically, the Fund needs to provide far greater fiscal flexibility, allowing countries to scale-up their spending in order to meet the internationally agreed Millennium Development Goals. The Fund also needs to stop imposing trade liberalization and privatization as a condition of their lending. These are clearly beyond the Fund’s mandate, are highly political and have unproven poverty impacts.

Secondly, the Fund needs to realize process matters and radically transform the way it goes about devising and negotiating its lending programs. The Fund should move from imposing a one-size-fits-all approach to macro-economic stability and growth and instead provide developing countries with a set of different policy scenarios, giving countries the final choice. Negotiations should also be far more transparent, participative and subject to democratic oversight.

Thirdly, and finally, the Fund needs to rapidly change its own institutional set up. Not only is it unrepresentative of developing countries, despite these countries comprising of 40% of its members, but it is also inadequately structured and ill-equipped to deal with developing countries needs. The Fund needs to decentralize further and employ more staff with social science backgrounds.

The case for radical reform of IMF conditionality

What is wrong with the type of policy conditions the Fund is imposing on developing countries? International policy makers, civil society organizations (CSOs) and academics from both the North and the South are extremely concerned that the Fund’s insistence on setting very low inflation rates and stringent fiscal deficit targets as a means to achieving macroeconomic stability are undermining the ability of countries to grow, hindering their ability to reach the internationally agreed Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and, in some cases, causing countries to refuse increases of much-needed aid.

No one, least of all civil society, is arguing that macroeconomic stability does not matter, but there is a significant degree of latitude in academic and policy circles as to what levels of inflation, budget deficit and reserves are needed to achieve ‘stability’, particularly in relation to achieving growth. Take inflation, for example, the Fund almost consistently imposes inflation targets of 5% or below in developing countries, arguing that any higher than this is harmful to growth. However, a recent United Nations Development Program (UNDP) study argues that inflation rates anywhere between 5 – 10%, if not higher, correlate well with growth, with lower than 5% inflation rates often having a harmful impact (UNDP 2005, Mckinley, T. MDG-Based PRSPs Need More Ambitious Economic Policies. Policy Discussion Paper, United Nations). This is extremely worryingly, as according to a recent study by Oxfam International 16 out of 20 countries they looked at with an IMF program had inflation targets of less than 5% (Oxfam International, “The IMF and the Millennium Goals: Failing to deliver for low income countries” September 2003. Briefing Paper No.54).

On budget deficits, the picture is even worse. The Fund imposes a high degree of fiscal austerity, with their policy conditions targeting deficits of 3% and below. This is something even developed countries find hard to achieve, the United States being a case in point. What is the danger here? Imposing limits on the budget of developing countries is often at odds with the spending these countries desperately need to meet the MDGs.

The most recent example of the negative impact of IMF fiscal austerity can be seen in Mozambique, where an IMF cap on budget spending has resulted in Mozambique effectively turning away donor money in order to stay within the confines of IMF spending limits. In November last year, Mozambique issued its draft PARPA (Plano de Accao para a Reducao da Pobreza Absoluta 2006-9; Mozambique's PRSP) which said aid would increase from $889 million in 2006 to $1,044 million in 2008, but remain constant after that. Donors, however, were upset and said they had stressed to the government that more money was available. But the Ministry of Planning and Development appears to have based its figures on the IMF cap, rather than money actually available. The IMF has put a limit on the government's current spending, committing it to cutting its deficit from 4.5 bn new meticais ($225 million) in 2005 to 3.8 bn new meticais ($190 mn) in 2006. This is, in effect, the amount of budget support the government is allowed to spend, yet budget support is predicted to increase from $274 million to $308 million.

Another clear example of the impact of harmful IMF budget deficit caps is on healthcare in Africa. A World Health Organization study in 2004 showed that overall healthcare to Africa is falling (World Health Organisation (2004) Public Health Spending Per Capita Per Region table cited in ActionAid 2005, Rowden.R ‘Changing Course: Alternative Approaches to Achieve the Millennium Development Goals and Fight HIV/AIDs’ p28).

However, according to a recent study by the Joint Learning Initiative on Human Resources for Health and Development, in order to fight HIV/AIDs effectively, countries in Sub-Saharan Africa need to radically expand their healthcare spending, tripling the size of their current workforces ((2005) The Joint-Learning Initiative Strategy Report: Human Resources for Health Overcoming the Crisis, Harvard University Press cited in ActionAid 2005, Rowden.R ‘Changing Course: Alternative Approaches to Achieve the Millennium Development Goals and Fight HIV/AIDs’ p28). This type of increase to the wage bill is totally out of the question in many African countries due to expenditure ceilings imposed by the IMF. Zambia is a case in point. In June 2003 Zambia was disqualified from receiving the IMF’s Poverty Reduction and Growth Facility (PRGF) due to the Government breaking the Fund’s strict budget deficit ceiling, which did not allow the government to go beyond a 3% budget deficit. The budget overrun was largely a result of the Government raising the pay of public sector workers, after union negotiations and a parliamentary decision to give low paid public sector workers a pay increase. The IMF withheld US$175 million in funds, with other donors following suit; the European Commission, for example, froze US$38 million in aid.

The Zambian Government was forced to renege on its wage agreement, undermining its own democratic procedures and in November 2003 it began new negotiations with the IMF, with the condition that it must keep its budget spending in line with their conditions. After a long civil society campaign to raise awareness of the need to employ more teachers by the Global Campaign for Education, the IMF did in the end revise its deficit targets, but this is the exception to the rule.

A recent Oxfam paper looked at the trade-offs countries make in reaching severe deficit reductions of 3% or below in relation to health and education spending. They examined 20 countries and calculated how much money these countries could have channeled into health and education had it not been for the need to meet the IMFs fiscal deficit targets. The result was that current expenditure on health and education could have been doubled and in some cases even tripled.

When the Fund is challenged on the matter of budget deficits, its standard reply is that countries must live within their means. This disregards a well-tested economic policy model which allows for expansionary fiscal and monetary policies to enable growth in productive areas. Historically, periods of rapid economic growth in Continental Europe, the USA and Japan were associated with large programmes of public expenditure and even larger budget deficits. Right now the Fund denies governments the ability to borrow domestically on productive areas.

The bottom line is that the Fund needs to ensure that it is not stopping countries from scaling up their spending on development.

Another area of concern is the structural or more institutional conditions the Fund sets. In particular, imposing privatization and trade liberalization, both of which can have harmful poverty impacts and have little to do with achieving macroeconomic stability.

The UK Government in its new conditionality policy set out last year has acknowledged that privatization and trade liberalization policies have had dubious poverty impacts and should not be set as conditions, unless serious analysis of their poverty impacts has been undertaken beforehand. The Fund argues that it has dramatically reduced the number of structural conditions it sets, but progress has varied across countries according to a Eurodad study, with reductions of 50% in some and virtually none in others (Eurodad (2003) Is the IMF pro-poor? ). Numerous countries are still subject to this type of condition. Cameroon, for example, has a water privatization condition as part of its IMF PRGF. Cameroonese trade unions and NGO partners are preparing a mobilization against this, as happened in Ghana a couple of years ago around World Bank driven water privatization.

Process Matters - Ensuring Better Negotiations

The second major area in need of reform is the way the Fund negotiates its lending programs in LICs. The Fund must stop prescribing a one-size-fits-all approach in this area and move towards a scenario building approach. This would entail taking account of specific country conditions and being explicit about the trade offs of different policy approaches. This is clearly not happening right now. A recent study by AFRODAD of IMF low-income programs in seven African countries, revealed that in all but one country, the IMF had failed to provide different scenarios regarding inflation, deficit and public spending targets (Afrodad (2004) Understanding the PRGF and its implications for Development). A recent IMF review also found “little evidence that the staff advises the authorities on a range of available policy options and implementation plans during the process of program development” (2005b:40). Instead, the review noted that “process of program design… tends to be driven more by an interplay between the staff and the authorities’ initial views, with the staff exploring the room to accommodate the authorities’ preferences rather than proactively developing policy options”(IMF 2005b:40). The review calls on the staff to be more proactive in this area in the future.

Secondly, the Fund needs to carry out, in a much more systematic way then present, poverty social impact analysis (PSIA) on differing macroeconomic policy choices. The Fund did promise to start undertaking more PSIAs in 1999, but progress to date has been dismal. The unit in the Fund charged with undertaking this analysis, for example, has only four people. This is clearly not good enough. Eurodad analysis has also shown that IMF has undertaken very few PSIAs to date, particularly on fiscal policy issues (Eurodad Hayes L. (2005) Open on Impact).

Finally, the Fund has to do more to ensure that negotiations happen in an open and participative manner, with civil society groups and other government line ministries than the finance ministry present. Importantly, the Fund should do more to ensure that its program documents are subject to parliamentary oversight before being signed. All too often citizens are forced to head to the streets to be heard. Between late 1999 and the end of 2002, the World Development Movement documented 238 separate incidents of civil unrest involving millions of people across 34 countries against IMF and World Bank imposed economic policy conditions (World Development Movement (2005) Denying Democracy).

Governance – Need for an Overhaul

Thirdly, and finally, there are major problems with the IMF’s governance. Most commentators point to the lack of representation and voice of low-income countries and middle income countries at the top of the organization. This is undoubtedly true, but little is said about other aspects of organization, like the need to allocate greater administrative funding to work in LICs. Currently 75% of lending programs are in LIC, but these programs only receives 11.5 % of administrative funds. There is also a real need to decentralize the IMF further to give greater decision making power to resident representatives who operate within country. Last, but not least, there needs to be more staff recruited from social and political science backgrounds to ensure a cultural change in the way programs are designed and implemented.

Undertaking these reforms would go someway to making the Fund more development friendly. Given that developing countries cannot vote with their feet and exit the IMF, it is imperative the IMF cleans up its act and does the least harm in the developing world.

* Hetty Kovach is Policy and Advocacy Officer for the European Network on Debt and Development (www.eurodad.org)

* Please send comments to [email protected]

Anti-suppressants, treatment for diabetes, antibiotics, anti-fungals, infection fighters and vaccines - all of these are naturally occurring in Africa, and have been used for centuries, but these practices are being threatened as Western laboratories pilfer both knowledge and resources. With the release of "Out of Africa: Mysteries of Access and Benefit Sharing," some light has been shed on the increasing trend of biopiracy across the African continent. Beth Burrows of the Edmonds Institute, a non-profit public interest group which focuses on environmental education, answered some questions from Pambazuka News about this report.

Pambazuka News: Can you define biopiracy?

Beth Burrows: As was noted in the introduction to Out of Africa, the agreed to definition for the purposes of the Out of Africa work was: "Where there is access to or acquisition of biodiversity (and/or related traditional knowledge) without prior informed consent, including prior informed consent about benefit sharing, on the part(s) of those whose biodiversity (or traditional knowledge) has been ‘accessed’ or ‘acquired’, there is biopiracy - i.e., theft."

PZN: How are the development of Africa and biopiracy related? What does sustainability have to do with protecting biodiversity?

BB: Africa has a great wealth of biodiversity. It should be able to control how that "wealth" is used and to ensure that it is always used for the benefit of the (current and future) peoples and other biodiversity of the continent. Exactly how each country and group of people envisions its own development is beyond my competence (or audacity) to say; each group would have to be asked that question for itself.

If biodiversity cannot be sustained, then clearly it will not be "protected" or available to future generations. It is likely that those who have stewarded biodiversity for centuries - the people who live with it - are the best judges of how to sustain and protect their own biodiversity.

Merely consuming biodiversity to facilitate short-term development schemes would not seem wise in terms of conservation (and future use). This was the understanding of those who created the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD). The treaty was meant to stand on three legs - conservation, sustainable use, and equitable sharing of benefits derived from sustainable use. As Hamdallah Zedan, former Secretary of the CBD once wrote referring to equitable sharing of benefits: "The latter objective is of particular importance to developing countries, as they hold most of the world's biological diversity but feel that, in general, they do not obtain a fair share of benefits derived from the use of their resources for the development of products such as high-yielding varieties, pharmaceuticals and cosmetics. Such a system reduces the incentive for the world's biologically richer but economically poorer countries to conserve and sustainable use their resources for the ultimate benefit of everyone on Earth."

PZN: What are the ethical considerations behind biopiracy, and what sort of protection is currently in place for biodiversity in Africa?

BB: The ethical considerations behind biopiracy - or, more correctly, behind the objection to biopiracy - are the same as those behind the objection to theft and disrespect and colonialism.

Whatever "protection" against biopiracy that exists in Africa would have to exist on the national level (although in some places in other parts of the world, some local communities have set their own rules of access and refused access to biodiversity for anyone not abiding by those rules). National protection would be reflected in laws on access to and benefit sharing (ABS) from biodiversity in each country. There would also have to be rules governing the recognition of the rights of indigenous and local communities to their biodiversity.

Although many countries have signed the Convention on Biological Diversity, many still do not have such ABS rules or have not implemented those they may have. Further, the CBD itself has still not agreed to binding international requirements for access and benefit sharing. (The CBD parties are in the process of negotiating such requirements right now.) Unfortunately, many of the signatories have not yet passed national laws to govern access and benefit sharing in relation to the genetic resources of the country (and that of various indigenous peoples within their countries).

PZN: What are the repercussions, both environmental and social, that occur as a result of biopiracy? How are indigenous cultures and communities denigrated when biopiracy occurs?

BB: This is a question you would have to ask each group from whom material or traditional knowledge has been taken (with permission, recognition, and/or remuneration). Not all groups would necessarily feel or think the same. Not all loss of biodiversity (or degradation or overconsumption of biodiversity) would have the same effect in every place.

In general, the human repercussions may range from a sense of having been robbed, to a sense of having been disrespected, to a sense of having been neglected altogether. Each people must decide for themselves what is the repercussion. It is not for a "non-member" to make this decision.

On the environmental level, it is also difficult to give a general answer to the question of repercussions from biopiracy. This is a subject for investigation on the national (and local level). At its worst, it is possible that biopiracy may put so much pressure on a genetic resource that it may disappear altogether from the place in which it originated. Biodiversity can become rare and expensive and finally entirely unavailable to those for whom it was once abundant and freely used.

PZN: Can you estimate, in financial terms, how much profit has been made as a result of biopiracy in Africa?

BB: No. You would have to do this research on a theft-by-theft basis. While some "thefts" may have turned out to be entirely unprofitable, others may have resulted in profits of billions. And then, of course, there is the whole problem of deciding what is "profit" and who keeps the books.

PZN: What needs to happen, at both an international and local level, to ensure that biopiracy doesn't occur? What policies need to be in place, and what do communities need to do to protect the biodiversity of their areas?

BB: At all levels, communities need to decide under what conditions they will allow access to their biodiversity and traditional knowledge. They need to have a system in place to deal with those who may come to access their biodiversity. The system should be known to everyone.

On the national level, this system must be enfolded in law, as it must on the international level where, it is hoped, a floor on ABS (access and benefit sharing) will be set (below which it is not acceptable to go). There may need to be capacity building in some places to ensure that effective laws are created and obeyed. In some parts of the world, this might mean capacity building in law. In other places, it might mean capacity building in ethics. For the system to work, academic researchers would have to understand that times have changed and the conditions under which they access biodiversity have changed as well.

Further, there would also need to be concurrent changes in patent law on the national and international level to ensure that no one gets a patent on any invention without revealing the source of any biological material used in the "invention" and without attaching a copy of the relevant access and benefit sharing agreement to the patent application. Here, I must note that it is even more complicated than I have stated. For example, many peoples find patents granted on biological materials to be unethical and undesirable; for them any ABS agreement would involve agreements not to patent the material, knowledge, or any derivatives from either.

The necessity of resolving all these many difficult issues is why the nations of the world, with a few exceptions, see the benefit of negotiating an ABS treaty in the context of the CBD.

* Interview conducted via email by Karoline Kemp, a Commonwealth of Learning Young Professional with Fahamu.

* Please send comments to

South Africa will host a high-profile conference next week that aims to unlock the “hydropower potential of Africa as a major energy option to promote sustainable development, regional integration and poverty eradication in Africa in support of NEPAD.” But as Frank Muramuzi of the African Rivers Network points out, civil society participation - and the voice it gives to communities who have been devastated by the big dams needed for hydro power – has not been a given. Meanwhile, the World Commission on Dams (WCD), which provides a tool for dam projects to better meet needs, for greater transparency and for equitable sharing of benefits, is still largely standing by.

Next Monday, 6 March, African governments and the hydropower industry will gather for an event that will weigh heavily on the future of dams in Africa. ‘The African Ministerial Conference on Hydropower and Sustainable Development’, hosted by the South African government and planned in close collaboration with the International Hydropower Association, has a single objective: "to unlock the hydropower potential of Africa as a major, renewable energy option to promote the sustainable development, regional integration and poverty eradication in Africa in support of NEPAD." Conference organisers have a clear plan to present an African declaration on hydropower mid-March at the World Water Forum in Mexico.

The conference planning process has been fraught with resistance to civil society participation. But things are looking brighter as a shift in the planning has opened up, albeit late in the process, to civil society inclusion. What space will be given for the voice of civil society at the conference remains to be seen.

However, the conference may serve as a gateway for the significant funding earmarked for African development which received high priority by financial institutions and northern governments in 2005. But without critical analyses of projects, this support may deliver ill-chosen infrastructure selected without fair consideration for more equitable and sustainable options. Large dams rank among the most notoriously flawed development projects. In Africa, as elsewhere around the world, large dams have too often failed to deliver promised benefits while impoverishing rural communities in their wake.

The story may sound like a broken record to many Africans, but it does not have to be played into the future. A tool for planning energy and water development including large dams, the World Commission on Dams (WCD), has been standing by for five years; it could result in projects that better meet local needs, while also leading to more transparent planning processes, less corruption, and more equitable sharing of benefits.

On November 16, 2000, Nelson Mandela and other notables including the president of the World Bank launched the report of the WCD report at a glitzy ceremony in London. The report, “Dams and Development: A New Framework for Decision-Making”, was the result of two years of intense research and analysis. Initiated by the World Bank and the World Conservation Union (IUCN), and run by a team of commissioners from all sides of the big-dams debate, the report was the first independent evaluation of the performance of the world’s large dams.

The WCD found that large dams provide important water and power supply services, but that their social, environmental and economic costs are often unacceptable. The Commission estimated that large dams have displaced a total of 40 to 80 million people, and that many of these people were impoverished in the process. The WCD managed to find consensus through a process that brought conflicting interests -- the dam industry, governments, affected communities, and civil society organizations - to the table. It was hailed as a new model for resolving international conflicts. Its lessons could readily apply to much of Africa’s resource conflicts.

Dam projects such as the Kariba (Zambezi River) and Manantali (Senegal River) have shown that the environmental, social and economic costs of large dams are often higher than predicted, while benefits to everyday Africans have been overstated. The World Bank-financed Kariba Dam, the largest man-made reservoir in the world at the time of its construction, neglected the 57,000 Tonga people forced to move for the project. Their lives and livelihoods, and those of their children, have been diminished by the project, and today they are poorer than they were before the dam. Two more large African dams, High Aswan (Egypt) and Akosombo (Ghana), were similarly constructed at the expense of displacing tens of thousands of Africans.

Akosombo was built for an energy-intensive aluminum smelter, yet a great majority of Ghanaians still lack access to electricity. Today, Cameroon wants to build the Lom Pangar and Nachtigal dams for the Canadian aluminum company Alcan, but Cameroonians who are not yet on the grid will continue to wait in the dark for modern energy services. The livelihoods of those downstream of such dams as Cahora Bassa (Mozambique), Tiga and Challawa (Nigeria), Lesotho Highlands Water Project (Lesotho) and Manatali have seen their economic livelihoods squeezed as the river ecosystem on which they depend is degraded, their health impacted as water quality is reduced, and their communities broken apart by the flooding from large reservoirs. Across most of Africa, the lessons of these projects - which informed the WCD report and its recommendations - have not yet been translated into African water and energy planning processes.

But the picture has changed from 50 years ago, and civil society is speaking out against bad development projects with an ever-louder voice. Today, communities in Sudan are struggling to obtain proper compensation and rehabilitation for the 50,000 people now being resettled for the Merowe Dam. In Mozambique, Uganda, and Cameroon, communities and NGOs are fighting for access to project information and to have public concerns addressed. In South Africa, Zimbabwe, Nigeria and Ghana, communities are working to get reparations for the past injustices they have suffered because of dam projects.

The WCD offers a people-centred approach that will avoid yesterday’s impacts and fulfill the water and energy needs of Africans without sacrificing communities and the environment. The report’s recommendations are a blueprint for international best practice against which all new projects are being measured. Key to better projects is to first assess the needs -be it energy, water supply, or irrigation needs - and assess all available options in a balanced, transparent and participatory manner. Policy, regulatory, and new project options should all be considered to find the most effective solutions. New projects, such as dams, should only go ahead if they find demonstrable public acceptance, and if the rights of affected people are guaranteed. By creating a level playing field and involving all legitimate interest groups, the recommendations of the WCD offer the best way to select water and energy development solutions.

The WCD report did not fade away after its launch. Today, it influences the decision-making of many institutions. Governments (including those from South Africa, Germany, Sweden and Nepal) initiated national processes to translate the report’s recommendations into policies. Multi-stakeholder dialogues are now being launched in more countries, including Ghana, Mozambique, Nigeria, and Uganda. Many financial institutions are committed to considering the report’s recommendations in their future water sector lending. Communities affected by large dams have started to insist on respect of their rights as recognized by the WCD. A conference to commemorate the 5th anniversary was held in Berlin on November 16, 2005. Its focus: implementing the recommendations of the WCD.

The broad coalition that supports the WCD approach sees that its use will improve the planning processes for water and power projects. Yet critical actors are missing. After the WCD dissolved, the World Bank, a key financier of dams, walked away from the report that it had initiated, and announced that it would not follow its recommendations. Instead, the Bank embarked on a strategy to build more dams, which completely disregarded the WCD’s findings. The World Bank’s new dam strategy ignores 70 years of experience with corrupt decision-making, ruined rivers, impoverished communities, and unpayable debts. Dam builders are hoping that the Bank’s dam strategy will inject new lifeblood into their ailing industry.

The World Bank is now considering financing Bujagali Dam in Uganda, and keeping its eye on Lom Pangar Dam in Cameroon, as well as a few dams proposed under the Nile Basin Initiative. With the World Bank doling out the G8 funds for Africa, large-scale infrastructure such as dams will surely be big winners. Without applying the lessons learned from past flawed projects and the recommendations for improved planning by the WCD, the majority of Africans will once again surely be losers.

Organisations from across Africa, linked through the African Rivers Network, are anxious to work with governments and dam builders who are ready to follow the model of the WCD. African governments, NEPAD, the World Bank and the dam industry should fully embrace the approach of the WCD, which offers the best chance to avoid the costly and painful mistakes of the past. These entities should work to align their decision-making processes with the WCD recommendations, help rectify the outstanding injustices done by dams in Africa, and ensure that future dam projects in Africa comply with the WCD.

* Frank Muramuzi is coordinator of the African Rivers Network, a network of African dam-affected communities and NGOs working for justice in Africa’s energy and water development. For more information on ARN, please contact: [email protected] For the official conference website: www.hydropowerconference2006.co.za

* Please send comments to [email protected]

Last week, the South African defence minister Mosiuoa Lekota took final delivery of the SAS Amatola, a R1,5-billion, 36 000 ton, 121 metre long warship complete with biological and chemical defense mechanisms, automated damage control and armour protection. The state-of-the-art Amatola is the first of four corvettes to be fully completed and is currently docked at the military harbour in the picturesque naval town of Simon’s Town near Cape Town.

The mountain peaks above Simon’s Town provide the best view of the four warships moored in the harbour below and while this may seem like an odd place to begin a discussion about South Africa’s March 1 local government elections, the ships speak to a number of issues that are relevant to the vote for 9 000 councilors in 284 South African city, town and district councils.

Amidst much criticism that the money could have been better spent on services delivery, the purchase of the corvettes formed part of a multi-billion rand arms deal which also included a shopping list of 30 helicopters, 24 Hawk fighter trainers and 28 Gripen light fighter aircraft. It was with the corvettes that the controversy over the arms deal started, with contractor Richard Young alleging a conflict of interest involving the government's former acquisitions chief, "Chippy" Shaik. Schabir Shaik, brother of “Chippy”, was a shareholder in the Thomson Group and African Defence Systems, which were awarded the contract to provide combat technology for the four corvettes. Schabir Shaik was found guilty in 2005 on two charges of corruption and one of fraud, and sentenced to an effective 15 years' imprisonment. His appeal will be heard later this year. But it was Judge Hilary Squire’s assertion in that case that Shaik had enjoyed a “generally corrupt” relationship with former deputy president Jacob Zuma that rocked politics in South Africa to its foundations.

As a result of the outcome of the Shaik trial, Zuma was fired by president Thabo Mbeki and now faces court later in the year on corruption charges. The charges have been characterized by Zuma’s camp as an attempt to eliminate him from the race for the presidency in 2009 elections. Zuma also faces a March trial in connection with the alleged rape of a 31-year old Aids activist. The events have pitted factions in support of Zuma against those of Mbeki and further strained the relationship between the ANC and its alliance partners, the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU) and the South African Communist Party (SACP).

So when you’re looking down on the four corvettes in Simon’s Town harbour its impossible to divorce them from South Africa’s wider political reality. There’s no doubt that the arms deal has been part of a defining period that will resonate far into the future. For this reason, local government elections, taking place in an atmosphere of heightened national political tension, seem far more significant this time around than when they were last held in 2000.

Simon’s Town and the resident corvettes are linked to the rest of South Africa in other ways. The town forms part of a string of coastal villages along the False Bay coast that since 2000 have seen a doubling and in some cases even a trebling of property prices. The coastal enclaves that hug the mountains have become the home of a mix of foreign property owners, old and new money, all attracted by the beauty of the False Bay coast and the massive returns offered by a lucrative property portfolio.

Yet alongside this boom are communities that the wealth windfall has bypassed completely. Just over the hill from Simon’s Town harbour is the shack settlement of Red Hill, where high unemployment rates, poor housing and lack of services are common problems. A few valleys and mountains from Red Hill is Ocean View, where the apartheid government dumped the original inhabitants of places like Simon’s Town under its forced removals policy and where unemployment, gangsterism and drugs are rife. And a few kilometers from Ocean View is Masiphumelele, where unemployment and lack of housing are common problems.

These communities, segregated by high walls, electric fences and an enormous privatized security industry from properties literally next door to them that sell for millions of rands, mirror the broader South African picture that shows a widening gap between rich and poor, a gap already large as a result of apartheid but compounded by market friendly economic policies which have favoured those who are able to access resources.

It’s in communities like Ocean View and Masiphumelele where a new flank has opened up in the South African political story. In May last year, Ocean View erupted in protest over housing shortages and poor services. Protests in Masiphumelele over education led to clashes with the police. These small, localized protests have sprung up in towns across South Africa, peaking across the country in a 2005 “winter of discontent” and simmering ever since. Although the causes of these protests have been diverse and sometimes rooted in local politics, a common characteristic has been that they have all included an element of protest against a lack of government delivery in the area of housing, electricity, water or sanitation.

As the local government elections near, the media has sometimes used these protests as evidence that the ANC is going to be punished at the polls through low voter turn out, even if victory is assured (Only 48% turned out in 2000). This may still turn out to be the case in some areas, but there are also indications that the equation might not be so simple. A recent ACNielsen survey, for example, shows that support for the ANC does not dissipate in correlation with support of protests. Factors such as loyalty to the ANC exists together with support of protest.

This suggests that the protests could oddly assist the ANC, something a recent Markinor poll published by the Sunday Times newspaper pointed out. Protests had raised awareness in some municipalities and would increase voter turn out. In this sense the protests could assist the ANC not only by getting voters to the polls, but by pressurizing councilors to get on with the job of delivering services. This line of argument, however, only holds for so long as the ANC can maintain some kind of control over the protests. Arguably, events of the last week, where Lekota, a senior ANC figure and defence minister, was chased out of the town of Khutsong and prevented from addressing a rally, is not an example that the ANC leadership in Pretoria would want to encourage.

But what these community actions have done is to raise the profile of issues of delivery at the local government level, even though the voices of those protesting seem to have been sidelined from the mainstream political debate, characterized by reports which show the protestors as violent even when the police fired on them first, or by a lack of voices articulating the concerns of communities beyond the initial sound bites in media coverage of protest action.

Why has there been an apparent short out at local government level? The reasons advanced are many. Massive apartheid era backlogs at local government level meant that the process of service delivery started out on the back foot. The ANC top guard, typified by President Thabo Mbeki’s remote style of leadership and centralization of power, has detached itself from the hurly burly of service delivery. Bruising battles within the ANC for control of the organisation have detracted attention from grassroots delivery. Local councilors, faced with massive backlogs and little capacity, have simply buckled under the pressure. Widespread corruption based on power and patronage has permeated the local government level. The Growth Economic and Redistribution (GEAR) strategy, the unilaterally adopted market-focused growth path adopted by the ANC in 1996, limited the amount of money that could be invested in social development projects, boosting the rich to be even richer, but leaving the poor behind.

Which ever or all of those reasons you choose it’s clear that the ANC has an ever-increasing workload if it is to meet its service delivery commitments. As long as this situation is allowed to continue, the pressure from below is likely to increase rather than decrease, no matter what the result of voting next week.

* Patrick Burnett is online news editor, Pambazuka News

* Please send comments to [email protected]

The Sierra Leone Truth and Reconciliation Commission Working Group has released an initial study of the performance and impact of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in that country. The objective of the study is to open up debate that will lead to an independent evaluation of the performance and impact of the TRC in Sierra Leone. Key issues that the report addresses includes the role of the office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights in Geneva, the appointment and role of Commissioners, the issue of local ownership and participation and the role of International NGOs.

It is now over 15 months since the presentation on 5 October 2004 of the report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) to the President of Sierra Leone at a well-attended ceremony in Freetown. The presentation should have ushered in the ‘follow-up phase’ to the work of the TRC. Yet at the time of writing, the work of implementing its recommendations is not even close to beginning. First, there was a long delay in making the report of the TRC available to Sierra Leoneans. Copies of the report only arrived in August 2005. In the previous month, the Government of Sierra Leone (GoSL) published a White Paper in response to the report that was widely regarded as weak and inadequate. All this prompted many Sierra Leoneans to fear that the TRC process had fatally lost momentum.

In recent months, there has been progress. Following private interventions by the Commissioners of the TRC and civil society campaigning, there was a parliamentary debate on the TRC report in November 2005 and a Bill has been laid before the legislature which contains many of the key recommendations in the report.

This bumpy start to the ‘follow-up phase’ is only the latest of many difficult moments for the TRC. It has been a deeply flawed and problematic process from its birth in 1999, when the peace agreement was signed. The TRC aimed to help heal divisions caused by 10 years of brutal civil war. Tens of thousands of people were killed, maimed or tortured during the conflict - most by rebels of the Revolutionary United Front.

Although the story of the TRC process is not yet over, the Sierra Leone Working Group on Truth and Reconciliation (WG) has undertaken an initial assessment, based on over 30 interviews and meetings between April and August 2005 with Sierra Leonean and international stakeholders, of the performance and impact of the TRC – this with a view to identifying what lessons can be learnt for future transitional justice initiatives elsewhere and developing recommendations for action that will help ensure that the ‘follow-up phase’ in Sierra Leone is credible and effective.

We hope that this report will be seen as a constructive early contribution to what should be a much wider and deeper debate in Sierra Leone and internationally. The WG believes that an independent evaluation of the TRC should be jointly commissioned by all stakeholders to the process during 2006, with a commitment to publishing its conclusions and recommendations promptly and in full. This should include a systematic sampling of public views through focus group work. The importance of getting down to community level cannot be overstated. The sampling would also be an opportunity to discover public views about the Special Court, which ran concurrently with the TRC (We asked David Crane, the then Prosecutor of the Special Court, if it had undertaken any surveys recently of how Sierra Leoneans viewed the Court. He responded that the Court was “not in the popularity business”. However, earlier he had described the Court as “for and about the people of Sierra Leone”.)

It is particularly important that Sierra Leonean voices are heard at the international level, where criteria for assessing the successes and failures of the Sierra Leonean ‘experiment’ may be different from those locally and where different agendas may shape the conclusions reached. People have a right to know the truth about the Truth and Reconciliation Commission.

With regard to the ‘follow-up phase’, we are aware that the historical record elsewhere is not encouraging. Few TRCs have been characterized by effective follow-up. Even in the South African case, there is widespread disaffection on the part of victims’ support groups about the response of the Government to the recommendations of the TRC report, not least in the sphere of reparations. If there is not a credible and effective ‘follow-up phase’, many Sierra Leoneans will legitimately ask whether the TRC was ever more than an expensive ‘talking shop’.

Our study has identified a series of key issues in relation to which important lessons should be learnt regarding the TRC process in Sierra Leone.

Firstly, when the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) agreed in 1999 to play the leading role in organising and overseeing the implementation of the TRC process, the decision was widely welcomed. Mary Robinson, then High Commissioner, had been a signatory in June 1999 of the ‘Human Rights Manifesto for Sierra Leone’, which endorsed the idea of a TRC. However, based on the interviews we conducted, Sierra Leonean and international stakeholders were generally very disappointed by the performance of the OHCHR. There was a remarkable consensus on this issue amongst interviewees who disagreed on many other issues. The OHCHR was widely seen as having fatally combined an unhealthy obsession with micro-management with an inadequate capacity to undertake a professional oversight role. It was allegedly weak at raising funds and then very slow to release them.

Secondly, the majority of Sierra Leonean and international stakeholders that we interviewed felt that the TRC process had fallen seriously short of what had been hoped for in terms of local ownership and participation. The sensitization exercise during the preparatory phase was widely viewed as deficient. For example, there was a tendency to assume that radio messages would be enough by themselves to alert Sierra Leoneans to the existence of the TRC when what was needed was to work with civil society organizations to ensure that each chiefdom and village was visited and re-visited. Only by these means could public confidence and understanding of the TRC process – and its relationship to the Special Court - have been achieved. While this failure partly reflected lack of funds, it also reflected a reluctance to develop a genuine partnership with local civil society organizations that could have assisted.

Strong views were also expressed about the failure to use traditional reconciliation mechanisms appropriately. Particular anger was directed by some at incidents where such mechanisms were allegedly ‘customized’ to fit the time available before the Commissioners and staff had to move on to their next appointment. In general, many felt that not enough time had been given to the reconciliation aspect of the TRC’s mandate. At other points, ‘western’ models of reconciliation were reportedly employed, such as handshakes or hugs, which had little relevance to the Sierra Leonean context.

Thirdly, a number of Sierra Leonean stakeholders that we interviewed expressed the view that the role of international NGOs in the TRC process was not always as positive as it could have been. Sierra Leoneans have become aware of the international networks that exist in the sphere of transitional justice in the course of the TRC process. The time may have arrived for these international networks to be rendered more transparent and for potential conflicts of interest such as those raised by our experience in Sierra Leone to be addressed. Nobody doubts the need for professional expertise in the sphere of transitional justice; however, experience shows there will be occasions when the perspectives and interests of governments, multilateral agencies and local civil society will diverge.

The Sierra Leoneans we interviewed between April and August 2005 were deeply frustrated by the long delay that had occurred in publishing the final version of the TRC report. So too were many international stakeholders, although some felt that it had been unavoidable because of the poor quality of the report – including the omission of some conclusions and recommendations that had previously been agreed – that was presented to the President in October 2004. Whatever the reasons, between October 2004, when it was presented to the President, and August 2005, when copies of the final report arrived in Freetown, there were reportedly only ten copies of the report in the entire country. Expectations had been raised, only then to be dashed. The former Chairperson of the TRC, Bishop Joseph Humper, claimed that the reason for the long delay was that the report was being re-edited and typographical errors eliminated.

Based on its findings, the Sierra Leone Working Group on Truth on Reconciliation makes the following recommendations to those involved in the designing and implementing of future transitional justice initiatives. They should establish stronger safeguards to prevent political interference in transitional justice processes. They should ensure that international commissioners working for TRCs spend enough time in-country to discharge their roles effectively. They should ensure that local ownership and participation are more strongly reflected in sensitization work, evidence giving/collection and reconciliation initiatives. Finally, they should establish the principle that all transitional justice processes should be subject to independent evaluation and that reports arising should be published promptly and in full. Amongst other recommendations, the Working Group calls on the Government of Sierra Leone to take steps to encourage the dissemination of the final version of the TRC report; undertake a reparations programme that is open, consultative and inclusive, working closely with civil society; support the immediate establishment of an interim follow-up committee comprising all Sierra Leonean stakeholders; and support the establishment of an independent evaluation of the TRC process.

* For a copy of the full report, please contact
- From outside Sierra Leone:
John Caulker, Chairperson of the Working Group via johncaulkerfoc (at) yahoo.com
- From within Sierra Leone:
Mr. John Koroma Jr. Tel 232 76 634465 email: johnkoroma2001 (at) yahoo.com

* Please send comments to [email protected]

Netfa Freeman, director of the Social Action and Leadership School for Activists in Washington, reflects on the annual Black History Month held in the US during February, criticizing how it has become commercialized and arguing for Black History Month to evolve so that it considers a broader Pan-African historical context. “…African people need to develop institutions for coordinating our political activities internationally; to generate faith and unconditional support for these activities; take control of information about our history and current geo-political events.”

“Those who have no record of what their forebears have accomplished lose the inspiration which comes from the teaching of biography and history.” - Carter G. Woodson

“A people without the knowledge of their past history, origin and culture is like a tree without roots” -Marcus Garvey

The need to once and for all embrace a reasonable and comprehensive interpretation of African history that inspires and uplifts Black people is evident when examining how Black History Month is celebrated in US culture. Like most other historic reflections, Black History Month is sanitized with stagnate and idealistic interpretations, aimed at removing the vital elements of historical struggle and revelation. Today it is customary during the month of February for media to make superficial sound bites about "African-American" pioneers in technology, sports, scholarship and anti-slavery activism.

While schools highlight leaders like Martin Luther King Jr., Harriet Tubman, Fredrick Douglas and several others, rarely is the celebration used to thoroughly reflect on the ethics, political vision, and philosophical insights of these leaders. Rarely does the celebration clarify the socio-political milieu in which they struggled and glean relevant lessons from historical context. Further, connections to Africa are generally severed at the Middle Passage, instead of recognizing the subsequent interconnections between the economic circumstances, cultural expressions, and political movements of African people. This is expected since it isn't difficult to see how knowledge of these connections conflict with a corporate capitalist culture that has effectively commercialized Black History Month as a means to advertise commodities. Nationwide Insurance airs a touching radio commercial that doesn't even offer history, but simply appeals to insure “personal Black history” by buying life insurance.

However, a proper examination of Black History Month must also take into account the laws of change and historical development to which everything is subject. In 1926, Dr. Carter Godwin Woodson, an African historian, writer, and educator, established Negro History Week to honor the contributions of African people in North America. For "historical clarity" African is being used to refer to all people of African descent, whether they are born in North or South America, the Caribbean, Europe or any other part of the world. Born 1875 to former slaves in New Canton, Virginia the extent and scope to which the Harvard educated Dr. Woodson identified did not extend beyond North America. Woodson even chose the month of February for the observance of Negro History Week because the birthdays of abolitionist Frederick Douglass and US President Abraham Lincoln fall in this month. Regardless, Dr. Woodson contributed profoundly to our understanding that a better knowledge of history is critical for African people, at least in North America, to achieve greater pride, self-determination and collective progress. As go the laws of change, Negro History Week itself transformed. About fifty years later, near the close of the Black Power era (early 1970s), the celebration was renamed Black History Week and even later expanded to Black History Month in 1976. These changes reflected a progression in how African people throughout the world had come to identify.

Dr. Woodson insisted that history was not the mere gathering of facts or a chronology of events, but that the object of historical study is to arrive at a reasonable interpretation of the social conditions of the period being studied. Applying this objective to the social conditions in which Dr. Woodson lived reveals coexistence with the 1914 Garvey movement in the formation of the Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA) and the Black Star Line. The UNIA's movement, led by the Honorable Marcus Garvey, broadened the ideological scope for African people beyond the confines of birth-country and into the extensions of the Diaspora.

Marcus Garvey offered a more inclusive philosophy of how African people could identify, reflect and engage. Before the UNIA, the Pan-African movement found an earlier expression in 1900 at the first Pan-African Conference convened in London by Sylvester Williams. Since that first conference there have been seven subsequent Pan-African Congresses, the seventh taking place in Uganda in 1994. Consistent with the teachings of Dr. Woodson, the inspiration that comes from biography and history must necessarily include the context that connects the "American negro" to a broader African people scattered and struggling in 135 countries worldwide.

Since the founding of Negro History Week a host of positive and negative personalities, events and historical developments have transpired, affording African history instructive and dynamic lessons for humanity. More has also been learned about philosophies and methods of history. Nevertheless, the most instructive lessons are largely neglected. Black History Month must do more than emphasize the inspiring achievements of great individuals. It must also help in refining a historical philosophy and method of study that helps us understand the prevailing conditions of our time. Historical study should explain such phenomena as how young Africans from the Congo to Haiti; from urban neighborhoods in the USA to other parts of the world are armed and reaping havoc on their own communities. It should be able to explain how a people from a continent that has spawned some of the greatest contributions to world civilization are persistently plagued by apathy, disease, poverty and political disempowerment in communities around the world. Neglecting the history that connects Black experiences and struggles beyond the confines of a particular country renders Black History Month deficient and leaves room for the notion of African inferiority.

Historical context presupposes more than outstanding achievements and personalities or else is it sterilized into something incapable of explaining present global challenges and illuminating future direction. For example, it is clearly significant that in March 1978 the US National Security Council issued secret memorandum 46 in response to directives from the president that "a comprehensive review be made of current developments in Black Africa from the point of view of their possible impacts on the black movement in the United States". This memo demonstrates the attitude and multiplicity of political and economic interests influencing US policy toward Africa and African people:

"…. adverse to U.S. strategic interests, the nationalist liberation movement in black Africa can act as a catalyst with far reaching effects on the American black community by stimulating its organizational consolidation and by inducing radical actions."

Surely it is a positive thing for any African community to achieve greater organizational consolidation and radical change from adversity. Instead the memo recommends:

“1. Specific steps should be taken with the help of appropriate government agencies to inhibit coordinated activity of the Black Movement in the United States.

2. Special clandestine operations should be launched by the CIA to generate mistrust and hostility in American and world opinion against joint activity of the two forces…

3. US embassies to Black African countries specially interested in southern Africa must be highly circumspect in view of the activity … opposing the objectives and methods of U.S. policy toward South Africa…

4. The FBI should mount surveillance operations against Black African representatives and collect sensitive information on those…include facts on their links with the leaders of the Black movement in the United States, thus making possible at least partial neutralization of the adverse effects of their activity.”

This history demonstrates that African people need to develop institutions for coordinating our political activities internationally; to generate faith and unconditional support for these activities; take control of information about our history and current geo-political events.

It’s common knowledge that the continent of Africa is the most naturally rich continent on earth. It is also painfully clear that African people everywhere are among the poorest and most oppressed. A proper reflection of Black history can combat this by educating people about the forces in conflict with African progress and providing lessons from past successes and failures. To combat inferiority complexes African people need to know that profound forms of organized resistance have been and are being waged against slavery, colonialism, neo-colonialism and imperialism.

It is inspiring to know that the Civil Rights and Black Power Movements in the US were taking place simultaneously with similar struggles for independence and self-determination in Africa and the Diaspora. Leaders like Malcolm X, Kwame Nkrumah, Shirley Dubois, Sekou Ture and others were meeting, making plans and concretizing the Pan-African agenda. Knowledge of such things has proven to resolve notions of inferiority and to imbue African people with a greater sense of social obligation. The social movements in African history intersect across geographical boundaries and are energized by class struggle. The context in which we consider ourselves must be commensurate with the exigencies before us that exist within an increasingly globalized yet more polarized world. Just as Negro History Week has evolved into Black or African-American History Month, to continue having value it must evolve into a Pan-African Historical Context.

* Netfa Freeman is director of the Social Action & Leadership School for Activists (SALSA), a program of the Washington DC based Institute for Policy Studies (IPS). He can be emailed at netfa (at) hotsalsa.org.

* Please send comments to [email protected]

On paper, negotiations for Economic Partnership Agreements (EPAs) allow for the involvement of a range of organisations that should to some extent ensure the voice of the poor are heard in the construction of the agreements. Richard Kamidza outlines how in Eastern and Southern Africa (ESA) the reality is far different. The process of negotiations has deliberately excluded the poorest in Africa though their structure, complexity and a general lack of political will to be inclusive. “Surely poor constituencies cannot dream for a positive EPA when the process totally excludes them,” writes Kamidza.

There are sixteen countries in the Eastern and Southern Africa (ESA) configuration that are preparing negotiations on the economic partnership agreements (EPAs) with the European Union (EU). The negotiations are focusing on six clusters: agriculture, development issues, fisheries, market access, services and trade-related issues. All EPA-related work at regional level is being coordinated by the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (COMESA), to which all ESA member-states are signatories. Other regional secretariats attend as observers. To facilitate preparations in the process, several structures were established but only the National Development Trade Policy Forum (NDTPF) and the Regional Negotiating Forum (RNF) are analyzed for the purpose of this discussion.

Who represents the poor constituencies?

In line with the Cotonou agreement, the ESA-EPA road map allows non-state actors (including the private sector, non-governmental organisations, the media, community based organisations, religious organisations and trade unions) to participate in the on-going EPA negotiations both at the national and regional levels. Civic bodies, since their work involves interacting with both policy-makers and grassroots communities, are assumed to represent the poor constituencies. Thus, engaging civic bodies implies involving and consulting poor-constituencies in the EPA process, a development that enables them to appreciate the dynamics associated with the process. Impliedly, the structures facilitate the participation of the poor in the on-going EPA negotiations. But, are the poor constituencies’ voices already influencing the structures?

What is the extent of the poor constituencies?

The ESA configuration is the poorest in Africa with some countries having between 60-80% of the people living below the poverty datum line and up to 80% unemployment. Twelve member-states are classified as least developing countries (LDCs), which also suffer from serious supply-side bottlenecks that impose equally serious limitations for locally produced commodities to compete favouably with the EU market despite the provision of duty free access under the “everything else but arms” (EBA) initiatives. Anecdotal evidence shows that the existence of EBA initiatives has nothing positive to show in terms of benefits accruing to countries. Even countries categorized as non-LDCs such as Zimbabwe are not only facing similar production constraints, but also massive de-industrialization and de-agriculturalisation as a result of both neo-liberal policy frameworks and irrational nationalistic policy agendas. Indeed, the rates of socio-economic and political indicators prevailing in some ESA member-states are at variant with the zeal to “fast-track” the EPAs process.

A significant number of countries are also classified as highly indebted poor countries (HIPC) meaning that the huge but growing external debt overhang is not only retarding economic growth and development of respective member-states, but has also become economically exhausting and unsustainable; politically destabilizing; and ethically unacceptable. The debt is denying member-states resources to improve the supply-side constraints, particularly human resources development at a time when poor socio-economic conditions and political instability in many states is causing massive brain drain to developed economies. Both EBA and HIPC initiatives assume the existence of a higher proportion of poor constituencies, which are also finding it difficult to cope with any emerging trade regime. Also, lack of political will by institutions and individuals coordinating the process to include poor constituencies has remained a challenge that seems to be allowed to continue - albeit some few months before the deadline for the conclusion of an EPA between the ESA configuration and EU.

ESA negotiating Structures and the State of Play

National Development Trade Policy Forum

Each ESA member-state has established the National Development Trade Policy Forum (NDTPF) whose main function is to develop national positions that will be subsequently tabled at the Regional Negotiating Forum (RNF). NDTPFs are all cluster-inclusive and/or multi-sectoral, and cut across all stakeholders in the country. They are supposed to ensure wider and deeper consultations or involvement of key stakeholders and citizens, including the poor constituencies in this process. Stakeholders at the national level are supposed to collectively come up with strategies, synergies and options leading to just and fair EPA outcomes for respective member-states. In this respect, stakeholders are supposed to participate in EPA-related national conferences, seminars and workshops organized to discuss proceedings, processes and findings of commissioned sustainable impact assessment (SIA) studies and cluster studies. Each NDTPF is expected to produce written progress reports for onward presentation to RNF meetings and submission to the COMESA secretariat for future references. Lastly, NDTPFs are expected to come up with both offensive and defensive cluster interests and positions which feed into regional preparation agendas.

However, the events to date indicate that NDTPFs lack wide and deep consultations or involvement of all stakeholders. It has been observed that participation in NDTPFs of some countries excludes those stakeholders who are perceived as critical of the prevailing governance and political systems and socio-economic conditions. This means that the limited democratic space constrains free participation of civic bodies in the process.

For instance in Zimbabwe, a sour relationship between civic bodies and government means that mostly regional civic bodies have been participating in this process. To date, no members of nationally-based civic bodies have been part of the government delegation attending RNF meetings. In other countries, the civic bodies are largely inactive and very weak, therefore unable to mount a serious engagement in NDTPFs activities. This means that wide and deep involvement of all stakeholders, particularly the poor constituencies, still remains one of the biggest challenges facing NDTPFs in their engagement in EPA negotiations. This also means the low mobilization of citizens and/or exclusion of the poor in this process. Further, this means weak networking and synergies of strategies among stakeholders. Ultimately, this leads to relatively weaker negotiable positions vis-à-vis the EC, and dangerous and unviable EPA outcomes that are incapable of assisting in transforming economies to the benefit of poor constituencies.

Due to deliberate exclusion of civic bodies from the process, the publicity of EPAs has remained largely unsatisfactory. Most EPA-related events and activities have gone without notice by the media at the level of both the NDTPFs and RNF. Chances are therefore that the citizenry, let alone poor constituencies, may fail to follow the process with the view to how to deal with the pitfalls of any agreement.

In addition, the COMESA secretariat seems to have failed to monitor and ensure that countries comply with their own rules and procedures of engagement in the EPA process. Indeed, failure to deposit reports make it impossible for interested stakeholders in the ESA configuration and beyond to review the process with the view to understand the dynamics at each NDTPF, and subsequently RNF negotiation process. Without publicity and close scrutiny, it becomes difficult to assess the level of NDTPFs’ accountability, transparency and the democratic process, let alone encompassing poor constituencies in the process.

Regional Negotiation Forum

The Regional Negotiating Forum (RNF) is a structure that brings together representatives from NDTPFs, four regional secretariats and a regional civic body; Brussels-based ambassadors, especially cluster lead spokespersons; and selected observers and consultants to deliberate progress and ultimately prepare EPA positions for the ESA configuration. Participation support at the RNF is given to two government negotiators, a representative of non-state actor in each ESA country, representative of the regional civic body, regional secretariat officials and invited observers, experts and consultants. All supported participants have speaking rights and status during the meeting.

However, given the complexity of the negotiations coupled with deficiencies in both technical and financial capacities to undertake EPA negotiations in most ESA member-states, the coordination becomes equally complex and technical, requiring an equally broad-based and sound technical depth. This unfortunately, has not been satisfactory, leading to instances where crucial documents ended-up being distributed during the onset of the meetings and deliberate omission of items from the programme that had earlier on been circulated. This has a negative impact on member-states contribution at the regional meetings. However, this is not entirely of COMESA’s making but also a function of too much congestion on the EPA calendar and limited technical advisory (It is only this year that the Chief Technical Advisor has been hired to assist in the process) coupled with other regional mandates requiring similar attention.

Some countries have been sending only two participants to the RNF meetings in spite the availability of resources which end-up being returned to the EU – the sponsor of the process. This raises the question, “whose problem is it?” as well as pointing to the state of governance systems that are guiding the process in respective member-states. This development further indicates weak status of NDTPFs in terms of consulting and involving widely and deeply all stakeholders. Other countries have failed to establish viable NDTPFs that are capable of generating offensive and defensive positions to be subsequently tabled at the RNF meetings. In this respect, a few countries have been bringing more delegates using their own resources to support the process, a development that is encouraging in terms of providing the necessary moral support to negotiators.

It is thus fair and just to allow more civic bodies, especially the social movements, to become part of governments’ delegations to RNF and other meetings. Only when this happens, will the crying voice still at the periphery of defining a long-term trade regime with the EU, become louder. This is more so given that the invitation extended to regional civic bodies in 2004 meant to bring the voice of poor constituencies into the process has been withdrawn. The purging means no invitations to future RNF meetings and no accessing of sustainable impact assessment (SIA) studies of member-states that are deposed at the regional secretariat. But, the major casualty of COMESA’s reaction remains the “crying voice” that is watching the unbalanced and heavily biased match from outside the pitch.

Given the above, it seems as though COMESA lacks the political will to assist in widening and deepening the level of involvement and consultations. It also suggests that the organization has assumed the role of monitoring intervention of critical voices in this process with the view to purge all those who happen to be critical of them.

From the table, many countries’ delegations consist mainly of government officials and to some extent private sector representatives. Only Kenya, Malawi, Uganda, Zambia and Zimbabwe have widened the size of their delegation to RNF by including officials from relevant ministries and departments. From the table Kenya too has brought more participants to all the RNF meetings including a member of parliament.

The Secretariat as at the beginning of 2005 reported that it had not received any written reports on the activities of NDTPFs. This means that all past presentations by delegations on the progress and constraints were/are verbal, a development that often mislead the process aiming at achieving positive EPA outcomes. As expected, no criticism has arisen from country presentations, and as it stands, it is difficult to review the process in future.

Conclusion

The above discussion clearly shows limitations to including poor constituencies in the process of negotiating an EPA with the EU. There is generally lack of political will to centrally involve and consult civic bodies regarding the on-going process. There is no political will to ensure availability of resources for mobilizing poor constituencies.

At the beginning of 2005, only five studies out of 16 countries were deposited with the regional secretariat. While the studies have been produced, no rigorous engagement of the findings has taken place with the view to translating the pitfalls to poor constituencies. This position is further worsened by limited space for civic bodies to participate in the process. It therefore tends to reason that the participation of civic bodies are constrained by imperatives on the ground such as limited democratic space, poor state-civic relationships and outright exclusion by coordinating institutions in the capitals and beyond. The “poor’s voice” continues to cry out, pleading with the technocrats that “ESA is not for sale”. Surely poor constituencies cannot dream for a positive EPA when the process totally excludes them.

* Richard Kamidza is Senior Researcher at the African Centre for Constructive of Resolution of Disputes (ACCORD).

* Please send comments to [email protected]

It has been four years of peace in Angola since the end of a decades-long civil war, but for the majority of Angolans the absence of fighting is the only benefit they enjoy, writes human rights activist Rafael Marques. Scheduled elections have been endlessly postponed, allowing the ruling elite to remain unaccountable to the population of the country while they maintain international legitimacy through corrupt use of Angola’s vast oil wealth.

For more than a decade, while the ruling class has focused on its own transformation into a bourgeois class by plundering the country’s riches, the majority of Angolans have been reviving their hopes for the future on empty promises in a vacuum.

Those in power are managing such a vacuum and selling it as a kind of stability pact. It is a pact similar to that established between a robber who points a gun at a citizen in broad daylight and in public, strips the victim of his belongings and then, civilly, requests the understanding, silence and quietness of the victim. The robbed person, in turn, thanks the perpetrator for the common sense shown in sparing his life. It is in this sense that Angolans are grateful for peace.

Four years have passed since the achievement of peace in 2002 after decades of civil war. Another legislative mandate has come to an end, since the first and last elections of 1992, without people casting their ballot – and, therefore, without the opportunity for them to hold to account and choose their political leaders as well as legitimize the rule of power.

Once again, the President of the Republic, in his much awaited state of the union address, disappointed people’s hopes for elections in 2006. Showing his normal political expediency, he now suggests voting might take place in 2007. In 2000 he announced the possibility of elections for 2001, whether the war stopped or not, and that he would retire. However, he has been pushing the prospect further into the future ever since.

Apart from the question of elections, the speech by President Dos Santos to the nation had two more key points, the setting up of the Bank for the Development of Angola (BDA) and the construction of housing for those in need.

For the President, the bank will be the catalyst for the reconstruction of the country. However, it is little more than another expedient for the redistribution of windfall profits from oil among the ruling families and their particular interests. Similar initiatives in the past, particularly the now defunct Caixa Agro-Pecuária (CAP), have suggested the final end of government-funded commercial banks. Once the ruling families and their associates borrow all the funds at a bank’s disposal, it is declared bankrupt, dismantled and privatized. As for the money lent, the trick is to write it off as bad loans and let the matter rest for good. The oil funds in question stem from rocketing prices in the international markets. This has generated a windfall, over and above the budgeted oil income, of a magnitude of which Angolans have no idea. Due to a lack of transparency and to the creative accounting practices in the Angolan public sector, the real sums the government has amassed are, at this point, anybody’s guess (The Angolan Ambassador to Brazil, General Alberto Neto, reaffirmed in an interview to the daily O Globo (21.11.2005) that “the country’s oil income does not pass through the Angolan financial institutions”, and such a procedure makes it even more difficult to track the real sums derived from the oil revenues, which officially account for more than 80% of the country’s income.)

Secondly, as far as building houses is concerned, the government should promote job creation, ensure the payment of real salaries and introduce policies for housing development that provide the incentives for the private sector to take up the task and for citizens to afford access to credit and to be able to pay for their accommodation out of their own salaries. Angolans need decent wages for decent jobs, not permanent government or international charity.

Electoral patriotism

As for the need for people to legitimize the exercise of power, society has been taking notice of the electoral mobilization the ruling Movement for the Popular Liberation of Angola (MPLA) has set in motion even though it remains silent on the setting of a date for elections. People have also been ready for elections to be called at three months’ notice (within the legal deadline). Nevertheless, Angolans still need to be registered to vote and there is no hint of when this will happen, along with other essential tasks to ensure a free and fair electoral process. These tactics could make it impossible for the opposition and public opinion to make any impression on the regime’s hold on power.

However, one fundamental question arises from this scenario of doubt and deceitfulness. What’s behind the regime’s postponement of elections for as long as it can? It has absolute control over the country’s riches, the media with a national outreach and the public administration. Furthermore, it uses the army and the national police as it pleases and as a means to achieve whatever ends it may pursue. It has support from the Western powerhouses in exchange for a large chunk of Angolan natural resources (oil and diamonds). There is also a Chinese bid for another slice of the country’s lucrative market with expensive loans, billions worth of construction contracts and so forth.

The factors mentioned above have been conspiring to eliminate the people as a fundamental factor for pressure and change. So the regime is afraid to hold elections because it is not sure whether it can control the emotions, anger and frustrations of the people. It is afraid of people’s reactions during an election campaign amid increased publicity.

Another element to take into account is the MPLA’s ideological problem or, more precisely, the lack of it. The end of socialism, or of the Marxism-Leninism it used to profess, led the MPLA to import, for its own survival, Western consumerism to provide a set of values required to regulate the dynamics of society.

Hence, the President’s appeal in his speech to patriotism is a mockery for he himself provides no example of it. Patriotism must be the sharing of a set of moral and national values which unite the citizens in the defence of their common interests, the country, and the dignity and the equality it reserves to each one of its children.

For its part, the government is hooked on corruption. It is unable to come up with a set of polices and the right course of action to effectively improve people’s lives and to develop the country. It is a regime with neither an ideology nor a nation-building project.

Corruption in Angola has taken on a life of its own. It serves the regime well to annihilate any signs of opposition, dissenting voices or alternative leaderships as well as to sabotage any action by the regime to deliver welfare to the people.

The absence of morals in the conduct of government officials and the gradual deletion of references to the people in public statements provides the necessary peace of mind for the very same government officials to pocket as they please the public funds assigned to them. The current Minister of Finances, Jose Pedro de Morais, and the Governor of the Central Bank, Amadeu Mauricio, are just the latest officials to present the country in recent months with financial scandals of an international dimension. The Brazilian daily O Globo (13.11.2005), in its coverage of a national corruption scandal (O Mensalao) that has shaken the presidency of Lula da Silva, exposed the Angolan connexion. A Brazilian businessman, Marcos V. de Souse, wire transferred around US$ 2.7 million to the personal bank accounts of the abovementioned Angolan officials. Days later, the newspaper, as a follow up to the same case, unearthed other remittances worth US$ 1,6 million to the personal account of the President of the Angolan Central Bank. In their defence, the Angolan ambassador to Brazil, Alberto Neto, told O Globo (21.11.2005), that “every man has a price, what matters is to know how much” The spokesperson for the Angolan Ministry of Finances stated that it was a duty for government officials to take 15% in commissions for the deals they close.

The Chinese Godfather

Once again the government, in its bid to re-legitimize itself, has turned abroad to seek credit and political protection. This time its port of call is China, after earlier docking at the White House (and its satellite Western allies) and, before that, mooring for a long time at the Kremlin and in Havana. In essence the government knows how to cuddle up to the permanent members of the UN Security Council, those with the power of veto.

The Dos Santos regime needs international legitimacy to keep in check its own people, its internal critics and its adversaries. The consequences of this extreme dependency upon foreign forces for the legitimization of power may be accounted for in terms of years of war, the slaughter of many Angolans and the never ending onslaught upon the country’s wealth. No less serious is the people’s feeling of a loss of dignity and self respect in its own household, humiliated and despised by the government’s friends of the hour. The example of the diamond rich territory of the Lundas is a point in case. The report ‘Lundas: The Stones of Death’ provides a detailed account of the complicity between the government, international diamond mining companies and dealers in spreading terror, destitution and misery in the region. The report is available at

For a long time shrewd foreigners have explored for their own benefit the political, economic, social and intellectual shortcomings of the ruling class and the vanity of its desire to mutate into an assimilated bourgeoisie – the elite. As a consequence, the MPLA is adrift. Its government has no influence over the Presidency. The President rules alone, under the influence of foreign interests. This tightens his grip on power, as well as being his major weakness, his Achilles, in his dealings with the society. Thus, in today’s Angola, the American lobbies, some Portuguese interests, the Chinese, and so on hold more true and meaningful power over the government than that collegial body holds itself, not to mention its forlorn individual members.

There is a power vacuum. The government, and especially the President, are held hostage by interests foreign to Angolan society. Individual members of the ruling class generally ponder that they are getting richer by the day and busy themselves with shopping sprees.

The Western government partners in these ransacking ventures settle their accounts among themselves. They only make a pretence of demanding some measure of respect for human rights, transparency and democracy whenever specific business projects with the government turn sour, or periodically, when their code of honour among thieves is violated. Only then do these Western governments choose to denounce the Angolan regime in international corridors as corrupt, incompetent and despicable. At the same time, their own countries welcome without any reservations the bank deposits, investments and profits from the looting of Angola.

The regime, represented by the MPLA, should reduce its propaganda efforts and goodwill-bolstering operations, like building dubious, cheap and short-lived housing projects. It must opt for a policy based on being near to the people and their problems. It must replace propaganda by respect for freedom of expression in the state media, which are the only ones with nationwide coverage. This would allow public debate to flourish and produce solutions as well as establishing a culture of checks and balances.

Freedom of expression and of the press is fundamental to curb corruption and create a public mindset to generate enough pressure on the government to punish corrupt officials. Corruption is the institution holding the government together. Reassuring initiatives to fight it might enable the authorities to postpone the holding of elections without causing public anger. By taking on corruption, President Dos Santos could find the peace and rest that he wants and the MPLA could find its way back to being a popular movement.

As for the patriotism called for by Dos Santos, his regime must be capable of defending Angolans from many an international partner which finds in Angola a land of promise in which to sow discord under official patronage and treat Angolans as replaceable, unserviceable, undignified and undeserving objects. The logic is simple: if the government does not treat its own citizens with respect and in a dignified way, who else will?

By preserving the interests, dignity and respect of the Angolan people, Angola could evolve towards an open market, a safe haven for foreign investment, a hospitable destiny for tourists from all over the world and a second home for those who may choose it in their quest for sun and prosperity. Otherwise, direct confrontation between the people and power (in the sense of a privileged minority aided and abetted by foreign interests) will only be a matter of time. In the showdown of what will be a class struggle between the very rich and the totally destitute, due to the lack of intermediate social structures, all will end up as losers. The MPLA’s battle cry used to be “Hail the People’s Power”. Many still recall this power and keep it inside themselves, for the benefit of the majority.

* Rafael Marques is an Angolan Human Rights Activist ([email protected])

* Please send comments to [email protected]

In Somalia, national laws, policies and procedures are not favourable to the rights of women and there is no framework to address widespread Violence Against Women (VAW). This article, from Strategic Initiatives for Women in the Horn of Africa (SIHA) Network, which comprises 28 member organisations and advocates for social change and gender equality for women in the Horn of Africa, assesses the extent of the problem and suggests solutions.

Ravaged by 15 years of war and periods of anarchy, Somalia is a prime example of how women become the main victims of violence in conflict-ridden areas. Violence against women in the form of rape, torture, looting and forced displacement are tools of war for the humiliation and control of communities living in certain areas.

The governmental instability has ensured that Somalia continually fails to interact with the African Commission regarding political, social or economical affairs. To date, Somalia remains one of the countries refusing to sign the International Convention on the Elimination of all forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW).

Male dominance is an accepted norm in Somalia, and women are consistently undermined within society. The patriarchal Somali culture regards violence against women (VAW) on a family basis to be a private matter. Research conducted by UNICEF highlights the alarming reality that the physical punishment of women within family homes is not considered to be a violation by Somali communities. Although gender based violence is condemned widely by all sectors of society, there is a misconception as to what really constitutes VAW in Somalia.

Having asked a number of citizens 'How common is violence in your family?', the results show that the majority of people believe that violence is a rare to non-existent occurrence within Somali family life, and 75% of those questioned believe that sexual assault does not happen in Somalia.

Sexual harassment is prevalent throughout all sectors of society, but women continue to hide these abuses to prevent hostility or shame. Rape is common, and fear is widespread, but due to the impunity created by male dominance, perpetrators of sexual harassment are rarely punished. To safeguard the family's honour, some girls are forced to marry the men who raped them. In other cases, 'blood compensation' is given to the family of the victim (usually in the form of livestock or money). This never reaches the girl, but instead is handed to the male elders of the family, most commonly the father.

National Laws, policies and procedures do little to protect the rights of women. During the periods in which Somalia was left stateless, clan-based Islamic courts were established as a means of keeping law and order, but they concentrated mainly on family law. Even now, the newly appointed Somali Federal Government is not operational in many sections of the country, and no specific policies regarding VAW have been addressed. Official authorities, regardless of their responsibilities, constantly abuse the rights of women, and women in detention centres are often raped by custodians.

Some civil society organisations have filled this breach in setting policies and procedures relating to VAW. Medical support and counselling services are carried out by women and human rights organisations, but there remains no shelter for abused victims.

Of a total 694 cases of violations of women's rights carried out in the past 6 months, 36 cases have been fully investigated. All the rest remain pending and no investigation has been done. Research was conducted into the victims of sexual assault in Somalia, and of those involved in the research, 60% were physically harmed, 20% died as a result of the assault, and a further 10% committed suicide. More than half of the perpetrators were never found, and of those charged, many suffered no consequences. Even though many cases of rape are confirmed, the majority of the population still deny its existence.

In some instances, Somali women can be considered as the perpetrators of violence against their own sex, with specific regard to the practice of Female Genital Mutilation (FGM). This harmful practice is known to cause severe bleeding, urine retention, and in some cases, death. The procedures of FGM cause lifelong physical suffering for many women, yet mothers continue to subject their daughters to this horrific practice.

The majority of Somali women agree that all girls should be circumcised and that female circumcision is a part of Islamic practice. Moreover, they believe that an uncircumcised girl is unfit for marriage. A shocking 98% of Somali women continue to be circumcised, with 90% of those being subjected to the Pharaonic (also called Infibulation) method. The less radical form of circumcision, known as Sunna in Somalia (also referred to as Clitoridectomy), is mainly practiced in coastal towns.

To eradicate FGM from the cultural practices of Somalia, awareness and knowledge must be widely disseminated. Heads of families, religious leaders and FGM practitioners need to be informed that FGM is a crime against women, and should not be condoned under the guise of 'cultural or Islamic practice'.

Similarly, awareness needs to be raised amongst Somali communities about VAW in general. Some media programmes have been implemented by human rights organisations to raise community awareness about VAW. In addition, articles have been published in daily papers and information has been broadcasted on local radios. However, there remains plenty to be done in terms of eradicating VAW from the cultural practices of Somalia. Support strategies need to be put in place, training of human rights activists is essential, and pressure needs to be placed on the Somali government to sign international and regional instruments, like CEDAW.

* This article was compiled by Strategic Initiatives for Women in the Horn of Africa (SIHA) Network from information from the Kalsan Organisation's 2005 Country Report on VAW. SIHA, which means 'The Outcry' in Arabic, is a network of civil society organisations from North and South Sudan, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Djibouti, Somalia and Somaliland. Founded in 1995 by a collection of women's groups with the view of strengthening their capacity, SIHA has grown over the years and is now comprised of 28 member organisations. SIHA is advocating for social change and gender equality for women in the Horn of Africa, insisting that Violence against Women (VAW) in all its forms must be stopped. We are also involved in Peace Building and in promoting women, girls' and Human Rights. More information www.sihahornofafrica.org

* Please send comments to [email protected]

Is the global row over the publication of cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad the beginning of a “clash of civilizations”? Author and scholar Paul Tiyambe Zeleza argues not, locating the controversy firmly in the realm of politics. In this context, Muslims are challenged to find ways of defending their faith in a way that advances human freedom and decency. Those in the West, he argues, must not support aggression that hides behind freedom of speech.

Over the past couple of weeks an international crisis has erupted fueled by cartoons caricaturing and condemning the Prophet Muhammad as a terrorist figure first published in a Danish newspaper last September and subsequently reprinted with indignant insensitivity in some western countries. There have been mass demonstrations in several countries around the world, trade boycotts, withdrawals of ambassadors, travel advisories, dismissals and resignations of journalists, and sporadic outbreaks of violence that have resulted in several deaths, the burning of Danish flags and embassies, and soured the already strained communal relations within Europe and between the West and the Muslim world more generally.

To some this is a harbinger of the much-trumpeted clash of civilizations, a sign of the deep chasm between the West and Islam, between a tolerant modernity and a fanatical medievalism, or between a malicious secular culture and a maligned spiritual community. The outrage and controversy over the cartoons do point to widespread anger and anguish in the Muslim world and intolerance and indifference in the western world. But the conflict is not a clash of civilizations, rather the calculated incitement behind the publication of the inflammatory cartoons and the isolated violent overreactions in some quarters represent a clash of fundamentalisms over contemporary politics, not universal principles.

The religious dimensions of the conflict have encouraged many to see it as a contestation of implacably opposed values, a battle of rights - the right to freedom of expression and the right to freedom of religion, the right to offend and the right to be offended - and the moral equivalences of provocations and responses. This forced discourse of binaries is false. Publishers of the notorious, and to Muslims sacrilegious, cartoons and their rightwing defenders invoke freedom of speech as their unassailable defense, as an absolute value, the bedrock of western democracy under threat from ‘radical Islamists’ and other purveyors of the backward and bankrupt ideologies of political correctness. Even some of their liberal and leftwing critics concede the sanctity of this value, and only blame the publishers for their poor judgment, for bad taste. In reality, the issue is neither about freedom of speech nor indiscretion. It is about political provocation, the assertion of the supremacy of white Europe at home and abroad, the attempt to put Europe’s numerous ‘others’ in their place, especially Muslims historically so close to Europe and now so intimately a part of Europe, whose growing presence challenges European fantasies of cultural purity and whose ancestral lands continue to be ravaged by Euro-American imperialism that mock claims of civilizational superiority.

Freedom of speech is an important value, but in this crisis its value is largely ideological, deliberately deployed as a weapon of cultural aggression. There can be little question that by attacking the Prophet Muhammad the cartoons were intended to inflict the most egregious offense to Muslims, to inflame not to inform. Claims that caricatures of the sacred are normal and even healthy in a secular society not only flout against Islamic prohibition of iconic representations, but ignores the fact that there are secular taboos against which journalists in the western mainstream media dare not cross at the risk of breaching the law or popular conventions. Indeed, we are told the Danish newspaper that published the scurrilous anti-Islamic cartoons turned down cartoons lampooning Jesus Christ because readers would find them offensive. And the embattled editor of the paper was reprimanded and sent on indefinite leave when he announced his intention, in an act of misplaced bravado, to republish anti-Holocaust cartoons promised by a rightwing Iranian newspaper, Hamshari, in a gratuitous effort to test western commitment to freedom of speech.

In many cases the discourse of rights tends to suspend the rights concerned from the historical, material and institutional contexts through which they are expressed, enacted, and enjoyed. No less important to remember is the fact that the western mainstream media is a business—a huge business—subject more to the imperatives profit-making than advancing informed public discourse, more attuned to the interests of the powerful and pandering to popular prejudices than to the voices of the disenfranchised and disaffected who tend to be concentrated among racial, ethnic or religious minorities and the poor. Freedom of expression in the West would indeed be a good thing if it actually existed for all regardless of corporate status, class position, national location, ethnic or racial identity, and ideological orientation.

Nowhere in the western world is the right to the freedom of expression absolute in principle, let alone in practice. It is a relative right contingent on other rights, circumscribed by context. Rights entail responsibilities: the two are interwoven in threads of mutuality that are neither eternal nor universal but constantly negotiated in ongoing and often painful conversations within and between societies. The mainstream western media routinely avoids publishing or showing overtly racist, anti-Semitic, or pornographic materials. In fact, in many of these countries there are laws against hate speech, anti-Semitism, and child pornography, as well as libel and defamation. The laws and conventions that seek to protect groups are reactions to the sordid past of racism and genocide, the barbarities of slavery, colonization, and the holocaust that are as much a part of the western heritage as all the stylized positive values the West claims exclusively for itself, and which still cast ominous shadows over the western world.

Given these realities, the publication of these obnoxious Orientalist cartoons appears to most Muslims as hypocritical. It is a reflection of the rising tide of racism and xenophobia in Europe. It is the face of a new anti-Semitism, this time directed not against Jews, but against Muslims, who in the European imaginary are often racialized as Arabs. The cartoons draw on a long and hideous history of anti-Jewish cartoons that facilitated the dehumanization of Jews that preceded the Holocaust. The connections between the old and new breed of European anti-Semitism is usually not drawn by the defenders of the Danish paper’s right to publish the Islamophobic cartoons. Nor do those who seek to respond by recycling fascist cartoons against Jews and the Holocaust seem to appreciate their collusion with a new form of European anti-Semitism that targets them. There can be little doubt that the publication and republication of the cartoons has occurred in a context of growing anti-Muslim religious and racial bigotry in Denmark and across Europe.

It started as a localized crisis in a country becoming increasingly unsure of its national identity and intolerant of its minorities that cruelly exposed the national myth of Nordic tolerance and egalitarianism. The decision by the rightwing paper, Jyllands-Posten, to publish the cartoons resonated with the increasingly conservative political climate in which a strongly anti-immigrant and anti-Islamic party, the Danish People’s Party, is part of the parliamentary coalition of the center-right government of Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen that has passed draconian laws relating to the marriage, citizenship, religious and language rights of immigrants. The initial reaction in Denmark is quite revealing. The Prime Minister refused to meet the European Committee for Honoring the Prophet representing 27 Danish Muslim organizations and a group of diplomats from 11 Islamic countries protesting the publication of the cartoons, and many Danes expressed incomprehension at what the fuss was all about as Danish Muslims took to the streets. It is only when the furor of protests broke out in the Middle East and elsewhere that the gravity of the crisis hit the Danish government. Suddenly, Denmark was faced with its worst postwar crisis, its image in the Muslim world in tatters. The Prime Minister and the newspaper offered belated apologies for causing offense but not for the original decision to publish.

By then, the cartoons had been published in several mostly rightwing papers in various European countries ostensibly in solidarity with the Danish paper and the Danish people in their justifiable efforts to protect freedom of expression and European values that were ostensibly under assault from ‘Islamic radicalism’. Interestingly, the mainstream British media largely refrained from joining the jingoist chorus, so did the mainstream American media, another intriguing expression of the special relationship, perhaps reflecting their greater multicultural sensitivities, so some commentators claimed, or the fear of bearing the brunt of Arab and Muslim fury already inflamed by their wanton invasion of Iraq. Underlying this apparent cultural solidarity over the cartoons is the rising tide of anti-Islamic prejudice in many European countries, especially those enamored by the myths of national racial homogeneity or republican universalism.

Solidarity in the escalating crisis cut both ways. Many Muslims in Europe and in other parts of the world found common cause: the cartoons seemed to reinforce the collective vilification of their religion so central to their identity that had been escalating since the end of the Cold War and particularly following the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 in New York and Washington, DC. In effect, the cartoon controversy brought together two crises: the profound feelings of fear and insecurity among marginalized European Muslims and the simmering sense of anger and vulnerability among Muslims in the Middle East who had witnessed the invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq, the latter under blatantly false pretenses, and were hearing ominous threats against Iran. In fact, the memories of western aggression in the Middle East went much deeper to the humiliation of the colonial invasion, occupation and pillage, and in recent decades the enduring tragedy of the Palestinians. It is not surprising, therefore, that the epicenter of Muslim outrage over the abusive cartoons has been in the Middle East, which has historically been at the receiving end of western terror.

The circuits and networks of transnational communication, both old and new, facilitated the fusion of the two crises. It was after the representatives of the Danish Muslim groups were refused audience by the Danish Prime Minister that the former began lobbying, first among diplomats from Arab governments, then after the latter too were snubbed, directly to governments and organizations in the Muslim world. They made the rounds of North African and Middle Eastern capitals with a 43-page dossier of the cartoons and other documents, and before long the outrage began to build steam, fanned by the region’s new spirited media, and sanctified by key bodies such as the fifty seven-member Organization of the Islamic Conference and the Islamic Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization. The turning point came when Saudi Arabia withdrew its ambassador from Denmark, a move that was soon followed by Libya and Iran.

The besieged Muslim diaspora in Denmark and Europe was reaching out to the Islamic homelands seeking support and solace. This is of course not new—diasporas have always sought the protective mantle of homelands. But historically it is the European diasporas that could rely on their homelands to send gunboats to protect them from the restive natives. In fact, the annals of colonization in Asia and Africa are replete with wars of salvation for beleaguered settlers, although they were often characterized as crusades to save benighted ‘primitive’ souls, to spread civilization. Now, diasporas from the global South can more easily summon their homelands for support, although the structure of global power is still such that conventional military options are inconceivable. Clearly, the revolution in telecommunications and travel, which has compressed the spatial and temporal distances between home and abroad, offers these diasporas unprecedented opportunities to be transnational, to connect with each other across countries and continents, to retain ties with their old and new homelands in ways that were unimaginable a generation ago. This is what accounts for the rapidity and intensity of many global protests today, including the outbreak of the demonstrations over the cartoons. Cyberspace is the new medium of mass mobilization, a powerful mechanism to organize and express protest. The waves of demonstrations over the cartoons were driven as much by emails, blogs, cell phones and text messages as they were by satellite television, radio, coffeehouse talk, and street rumors.

As in all such conflicts, the manipulative machinations of governments are not hard to find. All governments whose populations are involved have sought to cynically exploit the conflict to their own immediate advantage, to appear resolute in the face of foreign agitation, to defend the values that their societies supposedly cherish. Authoritarian and unpopular Middle Eastern governments have sought to burnish their Islamic credentials and to contain the spread of political Islam and democratization pressures, both poignantly captured by the victory of Hamas in the recent Palestinian elections. Militarist and hypocritical western governments have tried to use the crisis to reinforce the case for the ‘war on terror’ and isolate the radical Islamic states and movements in the region that have put up the most resistance to their imperial project. This suggests that the forces most invested in the conflict over the cartoons are militants on both sides, the unrepentant ideologues of western imperialism and political Islam, who should be seen as political fundamentalists, and are committed to the clash of civilizations that the vast majority of westerners, many of whom are Muslim, and Muslims, many of whom are westerners, are fundamentally opposed to.

In so far as Islam and the West are not bounded mutually exclusive cultural and historical geographies, but social spaces where various peoples and cultures are mixed together, the conflict over the cartoons cannot be seen in grand civilizational or purely religious terms. Even if protagonists on both sides might prefer to talk in the calcified language of ancient hatreds, this is a quintessentially contemporary protest over specifically current conditions—the challenges of forging common citizenship and fostering cosmopolitan values in an increasingly globalized or transnational world. It is about how European Muslims and non-Muslims can live together in peace and equality, and by extension how the western world and the Muslim world can co-exist amicably. The two worlds have more ties that bind than separate them, going all the way back to their very foundations. Modern Europe is inconceivable without the contributions of Islam, and the modern Muslim world is inconceivable without the West, for better or worse. The webs of mutuality are so deep that even the fundamentalisms on both sides reproduce each other. Lest we forget contemporary political Islam is an utterly modern phenomenon, created out of forces constituted and reproduced through the historic and ongoing intersections of the mixed worlds of the West and Islam. Western imperialism bred political Islam, and political Islam provides a convenient scapegoat for contemporary western imperialism. In short, the histories of the two phenomena are tragically interconnected.

It is encouraging that the vast majority of Muslim leaders and organizations have encouraged peaceful and dignified protests, although the Western media ever so selective, sensational, and stereotypical has focused on the few incidents of violence in order to justify the fact that their denunciation of the violence has been louder than over the initial publication of the cartoons themselves that provoked the protests in the first place. The challenge for Muslims when confronted with the cultural assaults represented by the cartoons is to find ways of defending their religious faith and their political rights both in the West and in the Muslim world that advance the cause of human freedom and decency as well as open-ended inter-cultural and inter-religious conversation and civility based on the fact that ultimately we all share a common humanity in all our splendid diversities. For people in the West committed to similar values they must resist the easy temptation to support arrogance and aggression in their own countries and elsewhere hiding behind the veils of freedom of speech.

* Paul Tiyambe Zeleza is Professor of African Studies and History, Pennsylvania State University. He is the author of more than twenty books and winner of the 1994 Noma Award and the 1998 Special Commendation of the Noma Award for two of the books. This article appeared on his blog, which can be read at

* Please send comments to [email protected]

"Africa, which has suffered so much from human rights abuses, has the most to gain." With those words last month, Archbishop Desmond Tutu neatly encapsulated the case for African engagement on the UN's new Human Rights Council. Yet human rights campaigners are beginning to fear that current efforts to restore the UN's leadership in the human rights sector will derail, writes Akwe Amosu.

Negotiations in New York on how members of a new Council will be chosen are nearing a critical point and there's a real risk of failure if governments – and Africa’s states in particular - don't stand up to be counted.

The UN has long had a rights watchdog, the Commission on Human Rights. But its repeated failure to condemn blatant abuse, and a membership roster that sometimes looked like a dictators' club gave the Commission a bad name.

Some of the worst rights abusers cynically sought seats on the Commission in order to be in a position to block complaints about the repression they were visiting on their citizens. Prime African culprits such as Zimbabwe, Sudan, Eritrea and Swaziland were members in 2005. Libya even chaired the CHR in 2000.

So in his ‘In Larger Freedom’ report last year, UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan called for a strengthening of international human rights machinery and suggested that the Commission should be replaced by a smaller Human Rights Council whose membership should include only states with good human rights records, elected by a two-thirds majority of the General Assembly (GA).

Since October 2005, negotiations have been going on in New York between regional blocs at the UN secretariat, including the African Group. But old habits die hard. The same countries that got the old Commission a bad name have been in the thick of the horse-trading, making it difficult for moderate countries to support a forward-looking agenda without clashing with habitual abusers.

All the same, just a few weeks left before the final resolution must be agreed, much progress has been made. Although African nations had serious difficulties with some aspects of the draft text and there were some hard fought debates, compromises have been found.

- All now agree that the new Council will meet regularly throughout the year, allowing for increased dialogue and engagement with member states, and for rights violations to be tackled before they result in condemnation of individual governments or measures that challenge national sovereignty.

- The new Council will be expected to promote and protect all human rights - civil, political, social and cultural - and importantly for Africa, the right to development.

- Whereas in the past, the Commission was sometimes accused of "naming and shaming" for political reasons, the new Council will use a broader range of interventions, including human rights education, advisory services, technical assistance and capacity building, to achieve improvement.

- The HRC will also undertake a universal periodic peer review of all member states, based on objective and reliable information, and the full involvement of the country concerned, a provision that African states felt was critical to their support.

Make or break

In fact, with the US proposal to exclude candidate countries that are under Security Council sanctions now rejected, the only "bracketed" (i.e. controversial) issue in the draft resolution is the percentage of votes a country needs from the General Assembly to be elected to the new HRC.

In fact, everything hinges on this "make or break" point. Earlier in the negotiation, there were attempts to agree that each region would have to put up a slate of countries for election comprising more candidates than the seats available. This would have given the GA a real choice.

Under the compromise reached, however, each regional grouping will put up exactly the number of countries for which it has seats. Thus out of a total of 45 seats on the HRC, 12 will be granted to African countries and the Africa Group will put up 12 names for election.

Each country will be voted on separately, however, allowing the GA to reject countries if it is felt that their record disqualifies them to be HRC members.

Human Rights advocates fear, however, that if only a simple majority of votes in the GA is required, the effect might be that all 12 countries are elected, no matter what their human rights record might be. That could leave the new Council with the same problem that the old Commission had – notorious abusers having seats on the Council.

If, however, a two-thirds majority in the GA is required, the challenge of getting elected will be that much harder. Even if a Zimbabwe or a Sudan is able to embarrass other African states into supporting its candidacy, many non-African countries will be needed to secure the two-thirds majority and they may not be so easily swayed.

Campaigners and civil society groups monitoring negotiations say that this is the only way to prevent the "slate" system helping to install poorly performing states on the new Council. They fear that if the bar is set at a simple majority, governments with poor records will use the "African solidarity" argument to ensure that they get all the African votes and thus enough to win a seat.

A two-thirds requirement would, however, make it more likely that serial human rights abusers would be rejected, and force the regional groups to submit alternative candidates.

Time to act

Effort by African civil society is now urgently needed to help shift the position of individual countries within the African Group, and get those countries to speak out.

South Africa is a co-chair of the overall HRC negotiations and must remain neutral, eliminating one natural African leadership voice. But countries such as Nigeria, Kenya, Senegal, Tanzania, Mali, and others could make a real difference to the outcome if persuaded to back the "two-thirds" proposal.

It is time to press our governments to endorse a requirement of direct, individual voting for countries who wish to be members of the new Council, with a two-thirds majority required for election. Further, a candidate state’s human rights record and its pledges to cooperate with the Council must be a qualification for candidacy.

But if success is achieved here, that won’t be the end of the story. Getting the rules for election right is only the first stage. After that, we still need to focus on getting credible candidates elected – and once again, civil society leadership will be key.

* Akwe Amosu is the Senior Policy Analyst for Africa at the
Open Society Institute

* Please send comments to [email protected]