Leaders of around 150,000 Arabs in Niger say they will fight moves to expel them to Chad in the courts. Niger's government has ordered the Arabs, known as Mahamid, to leave the country accusing them of wrongdoing, including theft and rape. A Mahamid spokesman told the BBC the move was politically motivated and that they had been given five days to leave.

Good rainfall in recent months has boosted harvests in arid Niger and reduced the risk of more hunger for a population that has long been vulnerable to food shortages, local authorities said. Niger, a landlocked country in north-central Africa, topped international news headlines last year when failed rains and a locust invasion combined with high market prices for staple foods to create the country's worst food shortages in recent years.

Cholera has claimed 21 lives among 206 infected people in Niger following seasonal rains that have flooded communities and left them unable to cope with a health crisis. The United Nations has sent emergency aid to Niger following the flooding, which has affected 43,000 people.

Two Niger journalists have been jailed for 18 months over an article which criticised PM Hama Amadou. The publisher and editor of Le Republicain, Maman Abou and Omar Keita Lalo, were also fined $10,000 (£5,250) for spreading false news. The article said Mr Amadou preferred ties with Iran to those with the West.

As fears of its destruction mount, city authorities have taken steps to protect the forest, or the greenbelt, around Niamey and evict squatters living within its confines. The forest protects the city from encroaching desertification and the extremes of Niger's climate. Although an ultimatum to vacate the greenbelt was issued Apr. 30, IPS has verified that the forest is still being occupied by the squatters.

The head of state and his cabinet turned out Wednesday 28 June to join the mainly Muslim population of this impoverished desert country in prayers for nourishing seasonal rains to begin to fall. The people of vast Niger are mostly subsistence farmers and herders whose livelihoods are dependent on rains that fall in one short mid-year season.

Niger’s ministers for health and education were dismissed on Tuesday 27 June following allegations of corruption by donors and development partners. An audit by a coalition of technical and financial partners of Niger this year uncovered a series of invoices paid without receipt of goods and said that government money had been spent without reference to proper procedures.

Thousands of students, teachers and disgruntled citizens took to the streets of the capital Niamey on Tuesday to denounce mismanagement and lack of funding for the country’s main university, currently closed due to protests. Organisers said 4,000 people marched on the parliament buildings, although an IRIN correspondent estimated turnout to be closer to 3,000.

The Niger health authorities on Thursday launched a week-long campaign against Guinea worm as part of their commitment to eradicate the debilitating parasite by 2009. The infection is caused by a parasite that can grow to a metre-long worm that painfully exits the body through blisters, usually on the lower leg.

In early June, Niger’s parliament voted against the African Union’s Protocol on the Rights of Women in Africa by 42 votes to 31. Sibongile Ndashe urges the country to rethink it position.

African Union (AU) member states continue to deposit instruments of ratification of the Protocol on the Rights of Women in Africa and these are developments that we continue to note with renewed belief in the AU’s commitment to upholding gender equality. This is why Niger’s stance should not pass without comment.

It is a serious set back for Niger, that the country could have saved and should still save herself from. It is a set back for the women who fought and lobbied to see the Protocol come to fruition. It is a greater set back for women in Niger in particular. In a meeting that was held in Pretoria, in May, that was aimed at accelerating the speed of ratification and domestication of the Protocol, there were women present from Niger. The fact that on 18 January 2005, the Niger executive arm of government had approved the ratification of the Protocol and that the only outstanding issue was the adoption of the motion by the legislature was seen as an exciting development.

It is still not clear what went wrong. Niger is not a country that is fundamentally opposed to women’s human rights. Niger signaled its intentions to take women’s human rights seriously when it acceded to the Convention on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) on 08 October 1999. On 30 September 2004 Niger acceded to the CEDAW optional protocol. CEDAW has been referred to as the international bill of rights for women and the Protocol’s unique selling point is that it is seen as a regional bill of rights that aims to ameliorate hardships specifically focusing on the context upon which African women’s human rights violations are located.

Niger was party to the adoption of the AU solemn declaration on Gender Equality in July 2004. The solemn declaration has no legal force. It is a commitment by members of the AU to implement gender-specific measures related to: Economic, social and legal measures on HIV/AIDS; Gender mainstreaming of peace processes; and Systematic prohibition of the abuse of girl children as wives and sex slaves. It relates to systematic prohibition of trafficking in women and girls; Promotion of the gender parity principle; Guarantee of women’s land, property and inheritance rights; Education of girls and increasing the literacy of women, especially in rural areas; and Enforcement of the Protocol to the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights on the Rights of Women in Africa.

It also sets out in great detail the measures that will be adopted in order to give effect to the commitments. States undertook to sign and ratify the Protocol to the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights on the Rights of Women in Africa by the end of 2004 and to support the launching of public campaigns aimed at ensuring its entry into force by 2005.

There is more that has to be said about the Protocol that makes the Niger outcome even more baffling. CEDAW and the African Protocol on women’s rights are not mutually exclusive, if anything they serve to complement each other. The Protocol is not a radical document. There are conflicting opinions on whether the Protocol can even begin to call itself a feminist document. It seeks to negotiate space for women, asking that reasonable accommodation be made for women. It does not seek to dismantle patriarchal institutions, if anything it works around these institutions. Evidence of this compromise can be found on the provisions dealing with polygamy and inheritance rights. It is a compromise document and this is why it is really not clear what Niger law-makers could have found objectionable.

The proper application of democratic principles needs to be understood in its proper context. While it remains undisputed that Niger is a sovereign state and that the decisions made by its legislature have to be given full effect taking into account the powers given to the legislature in the Constitution, the understanding of the strict notions of sovereignty are increasingly showing signs of shifting. State parties, by engaging with the international community, at the very least are asking to be tested against standards that they have agreed to in international forums. Citizens of those countries also have a legitimate expectation that the instruments that its government binds itself to will see fruition at a country level.

The mere fact that the lawmakers voted against the Protocol should not be heralded as the proper application of democracy. It is not just what one votes against. If anything, the Protocol would serve to support democracy. Overemphasis on sovereignty and democratic principles on issues that pose no threat to a country’s sovereignty or democratic principles seems like an easy way out of a difficult situation.

It is hoped that Niger will be open to experiences of how other states have engaged with the Protocol. The Gambia serves as a good example in this regard. Initially the Gambia had ratified the Protocol with reservations but after careful consideration of the reasons behind the reservations by both the Gambian civil society formations and the state the reservations were lifted.

Niger owes it to herself and its citizens to reconsider why it did not pass the Protocol. If after engagement with the document it is still convinced that what is envisioned is not a society that Niger aspires towards then at the very least they could ratify with reservations. But it is unacceptable that the proper application of democratic principles and the rejection of the Protocol could be found next to each other.

* Sibongile Ndashe is an attorney with the Women’s Legal Centre, Cape Town, SA

* Please send comments to or comment online at www.pambazuka.org

Niger's parliament has voted down Africa's Maputo Protocol on women's rights in a setback for the accord aiming to guarantee women equality in all spheres of life and end the practice of female circumcision. The protocol, adopted by African heads of state in 2003 at a summit in Mozambique, came into force last November after being ratified by the threshold 15 nations. The government of Niger, one of the world's poorest nations, approved the protocol back in January, but lawmakers voted against it at the weekend by 42 votes to 31, with four abstentions, official media said on Monday (June 5).

The Niger Delta has been described as "exploited, misused, abused, polluted, underdeveloped, and almost completely dead; like a cherry fruit sucked and discarded". [1] Nnimmo Bassey looks at the crude oil trade in the Niger Delta and finds it's anything but sweet for local communities.

The Niger Delta of Nigeria has been in the news so repeatedly that the issues merit little introduction. In one sense the issues are a mesh of politics, trade and resource exploitation. All these work to gravely undermine the rights of people in terms of the exploitation of their natural environment.

The Niger Delta is the treasure base of Nigeria, since successive governments have decided to ignore other sustainable income sources that had sustained the nation before the discovery of oil in commercial quantities in the country. Today, by official count, oil contributes about 95% of the country's foreign exchange earnings from a production of 2.2 million barrels of crude per day. An additional chunk is extracted illegally into private and corporate pockets through crude oil bunkering. These all lead to the milking of the Niger Delta to the point of near death. The area suffers a dearth of social amenities, high unemployment, environmental degradation, and other social malaise.

Oil corporations such as Shell and Chevron, who are major players in the Niger Delta, have admitted to contributing to corruption and violence/civil unrest in the Niger Delta. In Shell's Peace and Security report (published in 2003) as well as Chevron's double page ads in Nigerian newspapers in May 2005, the corporations admit that by their actions they have contributed to the state of conflict, corruption and distortion in both the Niger Delta environment and by extension the Nigerian state.

According to the Shell report: "Annual casualties from fighting already place the Niger Delta in the 'high intensity conflict' category (over 1,000 fatalities a year), alongside more known cases such as Chechnya and Colombia. The criminalisation and political economy of conflicts in the region mean that the basis for escalated, protracted and entrenched violence is rapidly being established. This not only threatens SCIN's (Shell Companies in Nigeria) future ability to operate, but also Nigerian national security." [2]

Trade has remained the major precursor of destruction in the Niger Delta. We can go right back to trade practices where highly valuable goods were exchanged for bottles of whisky, beads and mirrors, or to the days during which the Niger Delta lost human resources through the slave trade. Before the advent of the crude oil trade in the Niger Delta, we have it on record that on 22 February 1895 the trading city, Brass, located here, was attacked and levelled by British naval forces at the behest of the Royal Niger Company to ensure that the company had a monopoly over the palm oil trade for which the town was famous. Over 2,000 persons, mostly women and children, lost their lives in that attack.

In modern day times, it has been said that since Shell arrived in the Niger Delta it has been a tale of desolation. Much of the activities in the Niger Delta with regard to crude oil and its exploitation are shrouded in rights abuses, as the world came to learn from the struggles of Ken Saro-Wiwa and the Ogoni people and the subsequent hanging of Saro-Wiwa.

There is an unending story of horrors coming out of the Niger Delta. Oil spills and pipeline fires are regular features and official estimates are that there are at least 300 incidents each year. Clean up exercises are spade and shovel events. They are often capped off by the setting of remaining crude oil on fire. This way forests and even rivers have been set ablaze. These crude oil spills poison the land, pollute water bodies and expose the people to untold hardship. Consider also the response to communities attempting to protect their rights:

- In 1990, the Umuechem community was visited by contingents of Nigerian police. Eighty community members were murdered in the unprovoked attack. Houses in the community were either burnt down or looted. The people of Umuechem were engaged in peaceful protests at the gates of the Shell's flow station located in their community. [3]

- On November 10, 1995, the Nigerian military regime of General Sani Abacha murdered Ken Saro-Wiwa and eight other leaders of the Ogoni people of the Niger Delta after a kangaroo tribunal set up by the regime convicted them for trumped up charges of murder. The world responded with outrage. This followed the commencement of peaceful protests in1993 by the Ogoni against the destruction of their natural environment and livelihoods.

- For the people of Ilaje community, Ondo State of Nigeria, May 28, 1998 is a day they cannot forget in a hurry. Ilaje youths had occupied Chevron's oil platform in order to induce Chevron to have a dialogue with them. The Nigerian military and police swooped down in helicopters on the protesting youths. Reports have it that the attackers landed shooting, Rambo style, killing two youths on the spot. [4] A lawsuit is currently being heard on this in San Francisco, USA.

- On November 20, 1999, barely six months into his first term as civilian president of Nigeria, President Obasanjo ordered soldiers into Odi, a town in the Niger Delta. By the time they left, the destruction of Odi was complete and 2,483 people had been slain. The dead included women, children and the aged and infirm. [5]

- About 50 members of Odioma community in Bayelsa State of Nigeria were reported massacred on Saturday, February 19, 2005 during a military raid by a Joint Task Force of the Nigerian Army and Navy. [6] The soldiers also destroyed the whole community with houses bombed and burnt in a manner reminiscent of the Odi Massacre of 1999. Again, those killed were mostly women, children and the elderly. Odioma Community, located in Brass Local Government Area of Bayelsa State, is one of the many oil-bearing communities in the Niger Delta and had been in conflict with neighbouring Bassambri community over the ownership of a fishing settlement, where Shell has some oil wells. Shell planned to build an oil flow station at Obioku and had actually mobilized its contractors to the site since January 20, 2005. Work on the project was stopped by protesting youths from Odioma community because of the lack of an Environmental Impact Assessment.

Apart from vigorous protests by communities, the struggle for human rights gained momentum on 14 November 2005 when a high court sitting in Benin City ruled that the practice of flaring gas associated with crude oil extraction was an infringement of the fundamental human rights of the people living in communities where such flaring existed. The judge subsequently ordered that the top guns of Shell and the Nigeria National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) should appear before him to show a clear step by step plan for stopping gas flaring a year from that date. This and other gas flare cases have been filed by communities with the collaboration of Environmental Rights Action (Friends of the Earth Nigeria) as well as the Climate Justice Programme.

Gas flaring has been going on in the Niger Delta for close to 50 years and has been estimated to constitute a waste of $2.5 billion annually. Besides being an economic waste, the flares release a cocktail of toxic and greenhouse gases into the atmosphere and greatly endanger the lives of people. Health problems associated with gas flares include respiratory diseases, cancer, acute nonlymphocytic leukemia and a variety of other blood-related disorders. The environmental problems, including acid rain and damage to water bodies and farms, are no less horrendous.

The government and Chevron (project executors) of the West African Gas Pipeline project (WAGP), which is planned to harvest and pipe liquefied natural gas from new gas fields in Escravos in the Niger Delta of Nigeria to industrial complexes in Benin Republic, Togo and Ghana, have been presenting it as an answer to the gas flaring problem. They also present the WAGP as a clean development mechanism project in order to claim carbon credits.

The truth however is that the project has nothing to do with ending or reducing gas flaring in the Niger Delta as a huge proportion of the gas it would convey would be harvested from purely gas fields as opposed to being associated gas. Communities affected by this project have sent a petition to the Inspection Panel of the World Bank claiming that many rules of the bank have been flouted in the project and that their rights are not respected. Indeed, the local communities in the firing lines of this project have rejected the scheme and insist that decisions have been made without first conducting the needed environmental, social and other impact assessments. The WAGP is emblematic of the rape of the Niger Delta by TNCs and collaborating governments. Projects and trade decisions are made without regard to the rights of the people.

But as the oil wells begin to run dry, the competition is getting more acute. The Chinese are making bold grabs for the oil fields of the Niger Delta. The USA sees the region as being of critical strategic interest. The World Bank and the Paris Club eye the petrodollars coming into the region as theirs for the taking. All these combine to make the future of the region more precarious. With growing resistance in the region it is anyone's guess how things will play out.

While the trade booms, having rights respected will remain illusive. The realisation of this appears to form the bedrock of the local people insisting that there should be community control over community resources. They reckon that this way they would be able to decide if they want any mineral to be exploited in their environment or not. Where the people decide to have their resources exploited they would be able to insist on certain rules that would ensure that their rights are respected and that benefits from such exploitation accrues to them.

It is conceivable that the refusal of the state to accept this proposition is the trigger to the present conflagration in the Niger Delta. Another growing demand among environmentalists such as those in the Oilwatch International network is that there should be a moratorium on new oil explorations, for say ten years. The intervening time would be used to make an audit of the pollution and abuses that have accumulated over the years, commence clean up and remediation actions and decide how the vulnerable communities would fare in a post petroleum economy when they would be left with nothing but a polluted environment.

* Nnimmo Bassey is Executive Director of Environmental Rights Action and Friends of the Earth Africa campaign co-ordinator.

* Please send comments to or comment online at www.pambazuka.org

References

[1] Quoted in Terisa E. Turner and Leigh S. Brownhill, “Why women are at war with Chevron” Nigerian Subsistence Struggles Against the International Oil Industry, New York: International Oil Working Group, 2003. Accessed at http://www.uoguelph.ca/~terisatu/un.htm on 29 May 2006.

[2] Peace and Security in the Niger Delta: Conflict Expert Group Baseline Report, SPDC, December 2003

[3] See The Shell Report by Environmental Rights Action (ERA) at www.eraction.org/modules/publications/docs/shellreport.pdf

[4] ERA The Wicked Activities of Chevron in Ilaje Land, Environmental Testimonies # 3 published in Environmental Testimonies, ERA, Benin City Nigeria, 1999. See Also Environmental Testimonies #5 in same publication.

[5] See ERA: A Blanket of Silence. The publication catalogues names of victims.

[6] See Nigerian Soldiers Destroy Odioma Community, 50 local people killed.

Five small European countries are pooling their resources to help girls and women living in villages belonging to the Youri community in Niger. Andorra, Cyprus, Luxembourg, Monaco and San Marino signed an agreement with UNESCO on 26 April to contribute to a joint fund totaling $200,000 that will finance the project. The project focuses on reinforcing the capacities of girls and women through increased enrollment in schooling, literacy training, empowerment of women through income-generating activities and sensitization to human rights.

Niger has withdrawn permission for a BBC team which found evidence of hunger in the country to continue to report on the humanitarian situation there. Officials said international and local media would not be allowed to do stories about the food situation as they did not want that subject touched.

This publication analyses the institutional capacity to implement a 10-year education programme in Niger. It is an abridged version of a fuller evaluation report entitled “Analysis of institutional capacity to implement the 10-year Education Development Programme (PDDE) in the new context of international cooperation” in Niger.

The Committee to Protect Journalists has welcomed the release of newspaper director Ibrahim Manzo, who spent 18 days in preventive detention awaiting the outcome of a defamation case. A court in Niamey, capital of Niger, handed Manzo a suspended one-month prison sentence on Monday and ordered his release, local journalists told CPJ.

The Committee to Protect Journalists has condemned the continued detention of the managing editor of a private weekly newspaper in Niger on a defamation charge. Ibrahim Manzo, director of L'Autre Observateur, was placed in "preventive detention" on February 2 in the capital, Niamey, local journalists told CPJ. He faces a criminal charge of defaming a local businessman. The prosecutor has asked for a two-month prison sentence and 50,000 CFA franc fine (US$91).

The ICFTU and the WCL welcomed the news on 7 February of the positive verdict in the dispute between Diamyo El Hadj Yacouba, General Secretary of the energy workers' union (Syndicat des Travailleurs de l'Energie du Niger) and representative of the CNT (Confédération nationale des travailleurs) on the National Commission on Human Rights and Labour Standards, and his employer, the company NIGELEC. If the company respects the decision of the Appeals Court, the union leader will be reinstated and will receive back pay, bonuses and benefits dating back to the time of his dismissal.

In this article, Kady Souley Boncano shares her experience of how radio made her a star in her country. She describes the changes Niger has undergone in the last few years and the way radio has affected the life of women in Niger.

The Committee to Protect Journalists says it is deeply troubled by the continued imprisonment of Salifou Soumaila Abdoulkarim, director of the private weekly Le Visionnaire. Abdoulkarim was sentenced on Friday to two months in jail and a symbolic one-franc CFA fine for allegedly defaming State Treasurer Siddo Elhadj. "Jailing journalists for critical reporting is totally unacceptable," said CPJ Executive Director Ann Cooper. "We call on the government of Niger to release Abdoulkarim, and work toward the elimination of criminal libel."