Peace-Keepers?

On 11 July, around 80 to 100 rebel soldiers attacked a compound in Juba where they gang-raped at least five international aid workers, physically or sexually assaulted at least a dozen others. They also executed a South Sudanese journalist –apparently because of his Nuer ethnicity.

The UN mission in South Sudan (Unmiss) gave orders for peacekeepers to intervene but none “ever tried to leave their bases”, the report said, with the Chinese and Ethiopian battalions refusing to go.

The failings in July were nothing new. In an incident in February, at  the northern town of Malakal, peacekeepers from Ethiopia, India and Rwanda stood by as government soldiers attacked and killed at least 30 civilians. The UN admitted to peacekeeper “inaction, abandonment of post and refusal to engage”, but failed to hold any commanders or troops to account.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/oct/06/un-peacekeepers-refused-to-help-south-sudan-rebels-raped-aid-workers-report

Keeping the Peace?

UN peacekeepers shot dead a 16-year old boy and his father and raped a 12-year-old girl in Central African Republic according to AmnestyInternational.

The next day, after armed clashes with residents had killed a soldier from Cameroon and injured several others, peacekeepers went to the area and “began shooting indiscriminately in the street where the killings had taken place,” Amnesty alleged. Joanne Mariner, its senior crisis response adviser, said: “These allegations of rape and indiscriminate killings committed by UN troops are supported by physical evidence and multiple witness accounts.

UN peacekeepers have been in CAR since September last year. Ban Ki-moon, the UN secretary-general, was “personally dismayed and disappointed, not just by these latest reports, but by the series of allegations that have surfaced in the Central African Republic mission in recent months”, his spokesman, Stéphane Dujarric, said. Earlier this year it emerged that French peacekeeping troops had been accused of abusing children in CAR.

Protectors?

According to a leaked report French peacekeeping troops in the Central African Republic have been accused of raping and sodomizing the same “starving and homeless young boys” they were supposed to have been protecting. Children described how they were sexually exploited in return for food and money.

Paula Donovan, of the Aids Free World advocacy group, explainedto The Guardian, “The regular sex abuse by peacekeeping personnel uncovered here and the United Nations’ appalling disregard for victims are stomach-turning, but the awful truth is that this isn’t uncommon. The UN’s instinctive response to sexual violence in its ranks – ignore, deny, cover up, dissemble – must be subjected to a truly independent commission of inquiry with total access, top to bottom, and full subpoena power.”

The UN has faced several scandals in the past relating to its failure to act over paedophile rings operating in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Kosovo and Bosnia. It has also faced allegations of sexual misconduct by its troops in Haiti, Burundi and Liberia.

Bea Edwards, of the Government Accountability Project, an international charity that supports whistleblowers, condemned the UN for its witch-hunt against the aid worker, who has been involved in humanitarian work for more than 30 years, Anders Kompass, a whistleblower who had acted to stop the abuse of children. who passed the document to the French authorities because of the UN’s failure to take action to stop the abuse and now suspended from his job.

cities of slums

Regionally, today, sub-Saharan Africa has the largest slum population where 199.5 million (or 61.7%) of its urban population live in such areas. A new report by the United Nations organisation UN-HABITAT makes intersting reading , full of facts and figures , some of which are quoted below .

Three South African cities top the list of the most unequal cities in the world, when measured on income-based data gathered in a UN-HABITAT survey of cities in 109 countries from all regions.Buffalo City (East London), Johannesburg and Ekurhuleni (East Rand) as extremely unequal.Not far behind are cities with inequality well above the national average. In decreasing order, they include Addis Ababa, Ethiopia (only two-thirds of the population had access to piped water and only 44% to adequate sanitation) ; Nairobi, Kenya; Maseru, Lesotho.All feature income-based Gini values above 0.52, which ranks as “very high”.Nearly two-fifths of Lagos residents live in overcrowded housing, and a quarter have no access to adequate sanitation. The city is also unable to provide jobs for its growing population, with 40% of males and 12% of females unemployed in 2006.

In Namibia and Niger, lack of sanitation and durable housing are also responsible for high rates of diarrhoeal diseases among children, with a prevalence of 17.6% in Namibia and 29.9% in Niger, compared with 11.6% and 16.7%, respectively, among children from non-slum households

Although they can boast some of the highest urban growth rates, East African countries remain the least urbanized in the world and will only begin to experience an urban transition by the middle of this century. Only 22.7 per cent of the region’s population was classified as “urban” in 2007,However, high urban growth rates in East Africa are not anywhere near the “tipping point” where a national population becomes predominantly urban. United Nations projections indicate that by 2030, only 33.7 per cent of the region’s total population will be urban. For most countries – except those already highly urbanized, such as Djibouti, Mauritius, Reunion and Seychelles – the transition will only occur after 2040, with the exception of Mozambique, Somalia and Zimbabwe, where it is expected by 2030.
The low rates of urbanization in East Africa result from a variety of factors, including low industrialization, overdependence on subsistence agriculture, inadequate or outdated land policies, lack of prourban development strategies, insufficient investment in secondary and small cities, past colonial policies that discouraged rural-to-urban migration, and apparent lack of political will to address the “urban question” and turn cities and towns into engines of national growth. Another particular aspect of the urbanization process in the least urbanized East African countries is that of “divided loyalties” – conflicts between communal loyalty and obligations to ancestral rural land, or to clan and family ties, on the one hand, and the need to adapt to and participate in a modern, urbanizing world, on the other hand. This phenomenon prevents many rural migrants from fully embracing the city as their home or engaging with local authorities to demand better services and rights. Consequently, many cities in the region can be described as hosting “transplanted villagers” who are yet to be turned into truly urban citizens whose loyalties, investments, livelihoods and future prospects are intimately linked with the cities where they live.

There are no nice capitalists. Capitalists in Africa are just as ruthless and just as exploitative as their First World brethren. The debate over globalisation is a ruling class debate over how they divide the spoils from their collective exploitation of us. A peasant gets peanuts for growing peanuts because that is the going rate for peanuts in the world economy. If the price of peanuts is raised, the local exploiter will gain at the expense of the First World importer, and the peasant still gets peanuts. The only way to ensure that every single human being on the planet has an equal chance to enjoy a life free from material deprivation is a world where all the resources of the planet have become the common heritage of all humanity. On this basis, these can be used to provide enough for all without plundering the Earth's resources or polluting the biosphere. We are not claiming that this would be an easy task – there will be problems of co-ordination and co-operation to solve, not to speak of having to clear up the mess left by the profit system – but it is technologically possible as well as socially desirable.

Another world is possible but it has to be a non-capitalist – a socialist – world.

congo and the un

A U.N.-backed Congolese military operation to oust rebels from eastern Congo has caused more civilian casualties than damage to rebels, with more than 1,400 people deliberately killed over a nine-month period, human rights groups said

Human Rights Watch said it had documented "vicious and widespread" attacks against civilians by soldiers and rebels between January and September. Soldiers being fed and supplied with ammunition by the United Nations have killed civilians, gang-raped girls and cut the heads off some young men they accuse of being rebels or supporting the enemy.

"For every rebel combatant disarmed, one civilian has been killed, seven women and girls have been raped, six houses have been burned and destroyed and 900 people have been forced to flee their homes," Oxfam said.

Human Rights Watch said it documented the killings of 732 civilians between January and September by the Congolese army and troops from neighboring Rwanda fighting alongside it. In the same period, it counted 701 civilians killed by the rebels they are fighting.

"Some victims were tied together before their throats were, according to one witness, 'slit like chickens.' The majority of the victims were women, children, and the elderly,"

More than 7,500 cases of sexual violence against women and girls were registered at health centers during that nine-month period, nearly double that of 2008 and likely representing only a fraction of the total.

Crops for Food - Or Food for Fuel

Jean Ziegler, the UN Special Rapporteur on The Right to Food, said in a press briefing in New York on 26 October, "It is a crime against humanity to convert agriculturally productive soil into soil which produces foodstuffs that will be burned into biofuel."

He called for a five-year moratorium on biofuel production because the conversion of maize, wheat and sugar into fuels was driving up the prices of food, land and water.

Speaking from Cuba on 1 November, Ziegler told IRIN, "I stand by what I said: biofuel production is a violation of the right to food."

He has argued that biofuels will only lead to more hunger in a world where an estimated 854 million people - 1 out of 6 - already have too little to eat.
Citing FAO figures showing that the world already produced enough food to feed everyone, and could feed 12 billion people - double the current world population - Ziegler told journalists that the 232kg of maize needed to produce 50 litres of ethanol could feed a child in Mexico or Zambia for a year.

In another report the government of Swaziland announced this week that it would be allocating thousands of hectares to a private company to cultivate cassava for biofuel. About 40 percent of the country's one million people are facing acute food and water shortages.

"The quick answer is, 'to grow food for the people', but government's stance is that we need to develop industry and new markets so people can collect wages and buy food..." said Sipho Mthetfwa, an agriculture extension officer in Shiselweni Region

Florence Dube, a food aid worker in Manzini, the main commercial town, said, "There is a need for food today. Food prices are so high that this is an investment as worthy as ethanol. If the fields of Lavumisa can be irrigated to grow cassava, they can be irrigated to grow food for people."

The proponents of prioritising food security over revenue from biofuel cite government's efforts in the 1990s to encourage small-scale farmers to form cooperatives to grow the "cash crop", sugar cane, rather than food. When sugar prices started falling three years ago the cooperatives went bankrupt.

Meantime

The rush for biofuels could harm the world's poorest people, Oxfam has said. In a new report, the UK aid charity appears to be joining a growing chorus of concern about the side-effects of Europe's drive to get fuel from plants.

Oxfam warns poor farmers risk being forced off their land as industrial farmers cash in on the biofuel bonanza. The rush by big companies and governments in countries such as Tanzania to win a slice of the "EU biofuel pie" threatens to force poor people from their land . This could destroy their livelihoods, lead to the exploitation of workers and hit food availability and prices .

More on biofuels and Africa here

and also here

The Millenium Goals

The United Nations agreed a set of Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) in 2000, with a view to tackling global poverty. Now, half-way to that deadline, the UN has produced a report showing how progress in meeting the goals .

Sub-Saharan Africa still trails behind other regions, with only 70% of children attending school.

Sub-Saharan Africa has the highest child mortality rate at 166 per 1,000, with Aids likely to be a major contributing factor.

In sub-Saharan Africa, a woman's risk of dying from complications during childbirth in her lifetime is 1 in 16, compared with 1 in 3,800 in the developed world. Many of these deaths could be prevented by access to skilled healthcare staff.

Deaths from Aids are still increasing in sub-Saharan Africa. By the end of 2006, 39.5 million people across the world were living with HIV, many in sub-Saharan Africa. Access to Aids treatment remains patchy, particularly in Africa.

Efforts to combat malaria and tuberculosis are making progress, although sub-Saharan Africa is lagging behind in both.

In sub-Saharan Africa, the absolute number of people without access to sanitation has actually increased.

Foreign aid to the least developed countries has, in effect, stalled since 2003 - despite the G8 agreement at the 2005 Gleneagles summit to double aid to Africa by 2010.

The number of people living on less than $1 a day fell , sub-Saharan Africa having made less progress.

In Malawi , Director for the UN Millennium Campaign, Salil Shetty, addressing a press briefing in Lilongwe said Malawi is among countries with the highest maternal mortality rates in the world.Shetty also bemoaned lack of progress on issues of human rights and status of women in the country.

AFRICAN LEADERS AND THE UN

Every now and then African leaders always come up with an issue purportedly to lift the continent out of its ever present and deepening crisis. In all of these cases however the real intent, at best is nothing short of hypocritical attempts to justify their right to be in power. At worst, it is a ploy (suggested and imposed on them by their Western masters) to make it seem as if there is a magic wand that can wipe out the misery that is the lot of the African. One such hopeless attempt is the shameless efforts these leaders have been making during the last few months to get permanents seats in the UN Security Council. And foremost amongst its exponent, are the most dubious and subservient heads of state in the persons of Obasanjo, Wade and Mbeki.

Whether out of crass ignorance of the real role of the UN (and its veto-wielding quintet) or out of their infantile gullibility is not reason enough to exonerate the leaders from the harm they are visiting on not just Africans but on mankind as a whole. The UN, as every right-minded person knows, was not the creation of all the people of this world. An insignificant minority of the wealthy through their governments set it up. These few owners of wealth (behind the scenes) were mostly from the US, UK, France, on the one hand and the rulers of USSR and China (who were the de facto owners of soviet and Chinese resources). No wonder, therefore, that they appointed themselves as the "veto powers". They created the UN to replace the League of Nations in order to chart a new and improved way of dominating the world economy since the business environment had considerably changed in the aftermath of World War 2. For instance, the end of the War had brought about changes in the ownership of the resources of the world. The German business community and its allies in the Axis were defeated and deprived of their wealth. This had to be shared by their victorious opponents in the US, UK, France etc. To this day the UN is being controlled by and working in the interests of these tiny business community through their governments. That is why American big business which is the most powerful today, can arrogantly brush aside the UN and attack Iraq to loot the oil resources there. That is why they are coercing other members of the UN to sign bilateral agreements government not to hand over American citizens involved in global crimes to the UN war crimes tribunal in The Hague. That is why, in the interests of their business and super profits, they turn a blind eye to the absence of "democracy" in the Gulf States and yet rant at others like Zimbabwe where there is some semblance of that capitalist democracy.

That African leaders should clamour for permanent seats in the UN Security Council with veto powers smacks of their chronic myopia and their shaky grasp of the real situation. The fact that the openly declared objective of the UN to ensure peace and prosperity in the world has continued to elude the organisation is a clear manifestation of its hypocrisy. After sixty years of its existence, global peace and prosperity keep worsening. This terrible situation is reflected in every part of the world including the countries with veto powers. In the US school children go to school with guns and shoot at colleagues and teachers; thousands of American men and women are sent to places like Iraq and Afghanistan to be killed; even a preventable disaster like the hurricane Catherine is callously allowed to destroy lives and prosperity. In France, thousands of the aged are frozen to death every winter and others are killed by heat during summer because they either didn’t have homes or can’t afford to keep their homes warm or cool (depending on the weather). The story is the same in the UK where healthcare, education, employment, etc, are in complete disarray. African Leaders are therefore wallowing in a dreamland if they think the solution to poverty and deprivation is to join the ranks so these failed veto states.

However in the unlikely event that some happen to become permanent members of the Security Council with veto powers, their influence in international affairs will not, in the least, differ from the current second fiddle role they are playing. They will continue to be used as tools by their present masters in Washington, Paris, and London. A very resent Example of this can be seen in the Nigerian debt relief farce that was announced just before the G8 summit in Gleneagles. The Paris Club of rich western capitalists granted this so-called giant of Africa a debt relief to the tune of 31 billion US dollars. But then a millennium development committee was set up by these benefactors to monitor what happened to the debt relief. This committee, chaired by Obasanjo would include Oxfam and Action Aid, two international NGOs - the unofficial errand boys of western business interests. The committee was also tasked with the responsibility of monitoring the UN Millennium Development Goals. In effect these two NGOs would be actively involved in the implementation and monitoring the budgetary policy of a "sovereign" Nigeria to the tune of 31 billion US dollars. And this, without the electoral or democratic mandate of the Nigerian people. The question then is that if Nigeria happens to sit on the UNSC and has the power of veto, in whose interest will such a veto be used?

This fanfare over representation and veto rights in the SC is nothing less than another red herring. It is aimed at diverting public attention from the real causes of poverty and underdevelopment. The problems of poverty, insecurity, hunger underdevelopment, injustice, etc emanate from the relationship between people and the resources of the world. In today’s world the resources, in the form of land, factories, transport and communication networks etc, are owned by a minority. This tiny group of owners does not in anyway engage in producing wealth. The real producers of wealth are the overwhelming majority who do not own the resources – the means of producing and distribution of wealth. The wealth they produce is appropriated by the few by virtue of their ownership of the means of production. The real producers are then paid wages just enough to keep them alive so they can continue to produce.

It is this minority of wealth owners who effectively control the world through global, regional and national institutions such as the UN, WTO, Paris Club, AU and all governments. Individuals like Kofi Annan, Bush, Blair, Obasanjo etc are mere tools in the service of the owners of big business. New permanent membership with veto rights will not solve any problem just as the existing ones have woefully failed the masses of the world’s people. The only solution is to dismantle the present economic system, which divides the world into a few unproductive owners of wealth and a toiling majority without any stake in the ownership and control of world resources.