IRIN-HOA Weekly Round-up 230 for 5-11 February 2005
CONTENTS:
DJIBOUTI: Government ratifies anti-FGM protocol
ETHIOPIA: Help change your continent, African youth urged
SOMALIA: Journalist's killing widely condemned
SOMALIA: Foreign troops could jeopardise peace process, ICG war
SOMALIA: Transitional government sets relocation date
SOMALIA: Human rights key to peace and stability, says expert
SUDAN: Abuses, impunity persist in Darfur - UN Special Representative
SUDAN: Security situation in Darfur deteriorating - AU
SUDAN: SPLM/A opens offices in government-controlled Juba
SUDAN: Annan recommends 10,000-troop peace mission
DJIBOUTI: Government ratifies anti-FGM protocol
The government of Djibouti has ratified the African Union's Maputo Protocol on female genital mutilation (FGM), which requires its member states to ban the practice. The protocol was ratified on Thursday by Djibouti’s prime minister, Dileita Mohamed Dileita, at a two-day subregional conference on FGM in the presence of representatives of the AU, No Peace without Justice (NPWJ), an Italian NGO, and the UN Children's Fund (UNICEF). "We are confronted with a real health problem," Dileita told the conference, held in Djibouti City on 2-3 February. "It is up to us to ensure that the ratification of this protocol does not just end up like other documents."
The Maputo Protocol - adopted by the AU in the Mozambique capital in 2003 but is yet to enter into force - covers a broad range of women’s rights. Its Article 5 requires signatories to "condemn and prohibit" all forms of FGM. Djibouti's ratification was supported by religious leaders attending the conference, who agreed to discourage FGM. Speaking on the implementation of laws against FGM, Ismael Ibrahim, Djibouti’s justice minister, noted that articles 10 and 333 of the country’s constitution were clear about the punitive measures enforceable against those carrying out the practice.
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ETHIOPIA: Help change your continent, African youth urged
UNICEF goodwill ambassador Danny Glover urged African youth on Friday to challenge the plight of their continent and transform it, while acknowledging that they had fewer opportunities than their peers elsewhere. "You have to realise that the world is often harsh and cruel," the US actor told hundreds of young people at the UN conference centre in Addis Ababa. "That does not mean only protesting life’s cruelties and resisting its oppressions. It means that your principal responsibility is to transform the world into which you are born into a new world of peace and justice."
His comments came as thousands of fans of late Reggae superstar Bob Marley and Rastafarians gathered in Ethiopia for a month of festivities to mark the 60th anniversary of the reggae icon's birth. The celebrations, organised by Marley’s widow, Rita, together with the African Union and UNICEF, have attracted stars from across the continent. Organisers said young people were the key to overcoming Africa’s marginalisation. The continent has grown poorer in the last 40 years. More than 300 million of its people live on less than $1 a day, and 200 million are underfed. Glover also noted that young people in Africa were most likely to be affected by HIV.
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SOMALIA: Journalist's killing widely condemned
The killing of an international journalist by unidentified gunmen in the Somali capital, Mogadishu, was widely condemned on Thursday. It also raised doubts about the safety of the city at a time when the new government is preparing to return there, observers said. Kate Peyton, 39, who was working for the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), was shot on Wednesday in front of her hotel as she was getting into a car. She was rushed to a local hospital and died there later, a local journalist who was at the scene at the time told IRIN.
"I don't want to speculate about who killed Kate Peyton, but there are certainly groups who have an interest in painting Mogadishu as a dangerous and unstable city," the director of the International Crisis Group's Horn of Africa Project, Matt Bryden, told IRIN. "The tragic killing of the BBC journalist, whoever is responsible, plays into the hands of those who want to portray Mogadishu as being unsafe as a seat of government and to justify military intervention," Bryden added.
Somalia's new transitional federal government (TFG) had announced on Tuesday that it planned to start relocating from the Kenyan capital, Nairobi, to Mogadishu on 21 February, and had urged donors to fund the relocation.
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SOMALIA: Foreign troops could jeopardise peace process, ICG war
A decision by African regional organisations to send peacekeepers to Somalia risks destabilising fragile transitional institutions there, a Brussels-based think-tank has warned. "Having Somalia’s neighbours lead and constitute such a force would be unnecessarily inflammatory and could jeopardise the entire peace process," Suliman Baldo, director of the Africa programme of the International Crisis Group (ICG) said on Wednesday in a press statement.
At an African Union (AU) summit in Abuja, Nigeria, in late January, the Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD) and the AU pledged to deploy peace support missions to Somalia to facilitate the peaceful relocation of the government.
An emergency session of the AU peace and security council and IGAD, held in Addis Ababa last week, agreed to send 7,500 troops in response to a request from Somalia’s interim president, Abdullahi Yusuf Ahmed. "By forcing this issue at this critical stage, IGAD’s members risk crossing the ‘Mogadishu line’ where peacekeepers become party to a conflict, as they did during the US-led intervention of the early 1990s," Matt Bryden, the director of ICG’s Horn of Africa project, said.
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SOMALIA: Transitional government sets relocation date
Somalia’s transitional federal government plans to start relocating from Nairobi, Kenya, to Mogadishu on 21 February, Prime Minister Ali Muhammad Gedi said on Wednesday. "We will begin relocating on that date depending on support from the donor community," Gedi said in Nairobi at the signing of a declaration of principles for cooperation with the international community. "A budget for relocation has been drawn up and handed over to donors."
The declaration of principles was signed by Gedi and the acting representative of the UN Secretary-General for Somalia, Babafemi Badejo. It lays out the obligations of the transitional government and the international community in their dealings with each other. "This signing today represents an important development in which the TFG met a major requirement of donor community for support," Badejo told IRIN. "The intention of the declaration is to set goalposts by which the government’s progress will be judged, and to assess the international community’s fulfilment of its own obligations to the government," Bethuel Kiplagat, Kenya’s special envoy for the Somali peace process, told IRIN.
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SOMALIA: Human rights key to peace and stability, says expert
A UN-appointed independent expert on human rights for Somalia has said that the interim government should base its agenda on human rights to guarantee long-term stability in the country. Speaking at the end of a 13-day mission to Somalia, Ghanim Alnajjar called on the Transitional Federal Government (TFG) to pursue actively the integration of international human rights norms and standards into the reconstruction of its executive, legislative and judicial branches.
"Unless human rights become a cornerstone of the TFG's agenda, the longterm stability of the country cannot be guaranteed", a press statement released by the UN Resident and Humanitarian Coordinator's Office for Somalia quoted him as saying. He agreed with the TFG prime minister, Ali Muhammad Gedi, on the importance of establishing a "Truth and Reconciliation Commission to redress the suffering of the millions of Somalis who lost either their relatives and/or livelihoods during the many years of conflict and to bring those responsible to justice", the statement said. Alnajjar visited Hargeysa, the capital of the self-declared republic of Somaliland, and Garowe and Bosasso, the capital and coastal port of the semi-autonomous region of Puntland, respectively.
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SUDAN: Abuses, impunity persist in Darfur - UN Special Representative
Sudan's government and rebels are still committing atrocities in the strife-torn western region of Darfur, Jan Pronk, the UN Secretary-General’s special representative for Sudan, said on Tuesday. "Fighting on the ground still continues and those responsible for atrocious crimes on a massive scale go unpunished," Pronk told the UN Security Council as he presented Secretary-General Kofi Annan’s progress report on the last six months of efforts to end the conflict in Darfur.
"January 2005 saw large-scale killings of civilians in villages in southern Darfur, accompanied by reports of abduction and rape," Pronk said.
"Frequent rape continues to be reported by internally displaced persons when women venture out of camps." The Darfur conflict, which the UN has described as one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises, pits the government and allied militias against rebel groups. The report concluded that the government's performance in complying with its commitments and obligations over the past six months had been "uneven". It said the number of civilians affected by the conflict had continued to grow at a rate that outpaced the ability of humanitarian agencies to provide for their basic needs.
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SUDAN: Security situation in Darfur deteriorating - AU
The security situation in the western Sudanese states of North and South Darfur has deteriorated progressively over the past four months, with unacceptable consequences for the peace and tranquility of the civilian populations, according to the African Union (AU). "While all sides to the conflict in Darfur were responsible for the situation, the worst perpetrators were the Janjawid/armed militia," Baba Gana Kingibe, the special representative of the chairperson of the AU commission in Sudan, said in a statement on Saturday.
AU monitors and humanitarian agencies last week found seven South Darfur villages burned to the ground and three others abandoned, while at least six abductions and the looting of food aid from an NGO were reported. Kingibe noted, however, that calm had been restored in the region over the past week, particularly during a two-day visit by Sudan’s first vice president, Ali Osman Mohammed Taha on Friday and Saturday. Taha's trip was intended to enable him to assess the situation on the ground first hand.
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SUDAN: SPLM/A opens offices in government-controlled Juba
The southern Sudan People's Liberation Movement/Army [SPLM/A] has opened offices in Juba barely a month after signing a comprehensive peace accord with Khartoum to end 21 years of conflict. The southern Sudanese flag flew high as jubilant crowds held banners that read: 'Welcome, Welcome new Sudan', 'Bye-Bye Old Sudan' and 'Our long awaited child "peace" is born, handle him with care'.
The southern town of Juba had, until now, been under Sudanese government control. Sources said, however, that the SPLM/A had maintained a clandestine presence in the town for many years. "It used to be very dangerous, everything had to be done with the utmost caution," Archangelo Storrs, newly appointed Finance Minister for Equatoria, said. As a token of reconciliation, Philip Koti, Vice Chairman of the Equatoria sector of SPLM/A, invited political and military leaders of the ruling National Congress Party into the Juba SPLM/A headquarters. "Don't fear, the time of fear is over, now is the time for action," he said.
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SUDAN: Annan recommends 10,000-troop peace mission
UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan has recommended the deployment of a peace support operation in Sudan, consisting of 10,130 troops and 755 civilian police. The recommendation was made in a report to the Security Council. Warning that complex, long-term tasks lay ahead, Annan said "assisting the Sudanese parties in overcoming their differences during peace implementation will require time and patience, as well as considerable resources and perseverance". His report to the Council was released on Thursday. It followed the signing on 9 January of a comprehensive peace agreement to end the 21-year civil war between the Sudanese government and the southern Sudan People's Liberation Movement/Army (SPLM/A).
The peace support mission was requested by the Sudanese parties to assist them with the numerous challenges they face, ranging from the establishment and transformation of political and civil institutions to the disarmament, demobilisation, and reintegration of large numbers of combatants. Introducing the report to the Security Council on 4 February, Jan Pronk, Special Representative of the UN Secretary-General for Sudan, warned that failure to resolve the conflicts in Darfur and elsewhere in Sudan would adversely affect any peace support operation limited to South Sudan.
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