(IRIN) – Human traffickers and smugglers in Ethiopia have taken advantage of the upcoming World Cup, duping victims into believing that South Africa has created huge employment opportunities, says a government report, Illegal Migration: Causes, Consequences and Solutions to human trafficking and smuggling in Ethiopia.

Some 20,000 to 25,000 Ethiopians are trafficked to various countries annually, the January report notes. Together with smuggling from Somalia, the business is worth up to US$40 million a year, according to the International Organization for Migration (IOM). Traffickers operate in organized groups of eight to 25 in big towns.

“Human traffickers use various tricks, including the deception that South Africa has created employment opportunities,” Zenebu Tadesse, State Minister for Labour and Social Affairs, said.

Speaking at a national conference on human trafficking and smuggling, she said the government would implement measures to tackle the problem, including repatriating thousands of Ethiopians who had been trafficked out of their country and prote

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(IRIN) – Authorities in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) are appealing for funds to combat a tropical disease associated with the consumption of insufficiently processed cassava in western Bandundu province, officials said.

“Many villagers do not keep their cassava in water for five days to remove the cyanide before grinding,” Francois Mwakisenda, director of Kahemba heath zone in Bandundu, said.

Five days is the normal period that villagers soak their cassava before drying and pounding it in a mill. However, he said, “they find five days a long period because they don’t have alternative means to get food.”

Provincial health authorities said in the past 10 years the disease had killed about 11,000 people in Bandundu, prompting the governor, Richard Ndambu, to launch a campaign to curb it.

“The aim is to collect US$3 million,” Philipe Akamituna, provincial health minister, said. “We need that money to buy bikes that we will use to go around villages to sensitize people in how to avoid catching Konzo disease.

“We will also use that money to set up radio stations in rural areas that will be informing villagers about the danger,” he told IRIN. “The money will help us train nurses.”

Mwakisenda said three territories were affected. The inhabitants of these areas used to engage in robust trade with neighbouring Angola, but that had stopped.

“We are facing a situation where people don’t have income to buy food such as meat, fish and eggs to balance their diets,” he told IRIN.

Photo: DDPSC

Women process cassava roots: Local NGOs in western Bandundu Province are encouraging the growing of cassava types that do not have cyanide

Balbine Ibanda, director of the Catholic Centre in Kahemba, which is taking care of some patients, said many had come too late for treatment. Others had come after failing to be cured by traditional healers.

“You have [families where] both parents are sick with Konzo disease and no-one is able to go to the fields to get food for the family,” she said. “Many people come to our heath centre very late when their sickness worsens [yet] we only apply physiotherapy – there is no cure.”

Both Mwakisenda and Ibanda said they did not have enough physiotherapy equipment. It was also necessary to encourage growing the types of cassava that did not have cyanide, as was being done by local NGOs, with funding from the UN Food and Agriculture Organization.

“Tied legs”

Konzo disease, according to the World Health Organization, is a tropical myelopathy, characterized by the onset of spastic paraparesis, which occurs as epidemics in rural areas of Africa. Cassava is an important cash crop in Bandundu, but the sellers sometimes reduce the soaking time to one day, resulting in higher cyanogen levels.

This leads to outbreaks of the disease, according to the health agency.

The disease was named Konzo, meaning “tied legs” in local dialects, because it causes irreversible paralysis of the legs in children and women of child-bearing age, according to specialists with the Cassava Cyanide Diseases and Neurolathyrism Network (CCDNN). The network comprises experts working towards the elimination of cyanide poisoning, Konzo, tropical ataxic neuropathy and neurolathyrism.

The onset of paralysis of both legs occurs abruptly, for example, after manual work or a long walk or at night in bed. First described in DRC in 1928, an estimated 100,000 cases were reported in 2004 in four provinces of the DRC that had been affected by prolonged conflict.

Epidemics were also reported in Nampula province, northern Mozambique, during the drought in 1981-82 and war in 1992-93, according to the CCDNN.

(IRIN) – Ethembeni Enrichment Centre, a school in a run-down part of Port Elizabeth, the largest city in Eastern Cape, South Africa’s poorest province, has achieved a remarkable 100 percent pass rate for a dozen years. But officials from the education department, sent on a fact-finding mission to learn from the school’s success, are running more than two hours late. Irritation is discernible in the voice of school principal Elbe Malherbe – punctuality is one of the few rules that must be abided by teachers and pupils alike. “When … [it's time to] start, you start,” Malherbe told IRIN in clipped replies during a telephone interview. Then, in a sudden change of tone, she said: “I wish you could see through the phone what I am seeing.” It is the first day of applications for the 2011 school year and a woman in traditional Xhosa attire is filling out a form for her child. Ethembeni only accepts pupils whose mother tongue is Xhosa, which generally translates into poor and black. The annual school fees are R3,800 (US$506), excluding stationery. Many poor parents make sacrifices to keep their children in school, but Malherbe believes in affordable – not free – education, because it is an “investment by pupils, parents and teachers [that] everyone must buy into”. The language of instruction is English. Apart from not brooking tardiness, the school’s other non-negotiables are that class attendance is compulsory, home work must be completed, pupils must clean the classrooms and grounds every day, and parents must be involved in their child’s education. “The classrooms were barely furnished. The driveway to the school was a rocky, narrow passage … The school hall was packed with a few hundred eager faces, the children virtually sitting on top of one another on the floor … I saw struggle, hunger and poverty etched into each child’s countenance,” educationist and vice-chancellor of the University of the Free State, Jonathan Jansen, recounted after a recent visit. “For any child to pass under these difficult circumstances, it would take a miracle,” he wrote. Yet nearly two-thirds of the 70 pupils in Ethembeni’s 2009 matric, or final year, class achieved a university-entrance pass, while other financially comparable schools hung on at the bottom of the academic achievement ladder. We’re not Einsteins here – we teach. It’s nice to be part of a winning team. With nothing, you can still be successful if the heart is right and the spirit is right The school has no library, no science laboratory, although there is a computer that gives the 400 pupils internet access. The government pays for 11 of the 17 teachers; the salary shortfall of the six other teachers has to come out of the school fees. The compactness of the school is part of its success. “In schools of a thousand [students], how can you know all the parents? If I have a problem with a child, or they have not done their homework, I phone their parents and they are here in five minutes,” Malherbe said. “We’re not Einsteins here – we teach. It’s nice to be part of a winning team. With nothing, you can still be successful if the heart is right and the spirit is right.” Ethembeni, which means “place of hope”, swims against the prevailing national current in education, where standards have been steadily declining – in contrast to school fees. More money, less education The government’s answer to the malaise is to throw more money into the education system; in the 2010/11 financial year it budgeted R165 billion (US$8.6 billion) for the sector, a 17 percent above inflation increase from the previous year. The matric, or final high school exam, is used as a benchmark for the state of education in South Africa. Of the 550,227 pupils who wrote their final examinations in 2009, 61 percent passed, and 19.9 percent of those achieved the required marks to qualify for tertiary education. Marius Roodt, an education analyst at the South African Institute of Race Relations, a policy and research organization, told IRIN the current teaching standard was akin to Bantu education – the system imposed by apartheid prime minister Hendrik Verwoerd, who said blacks should only be educated to be “hewers of wood and drawers of water”. In 2004 the pass rate was 71 percent, and it has been on a steady downward trend since then “It is very unlikely that there will be an increase in matric pass rates. In 2004 the pass rate was 71 percent, and it has been on a steady downward trend since then, with each year reflecting a decrease. This is a trend that is likely to continue into the future, at least in terms of the quality of the qualification,” Roodt said. He attributed the decline to the political influence of the 240,000-member South African Democratic Teachers Union (SADTU), the country’s largest teacher union and an affiliate of the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU), which is an alliance partner of the ruling African National Congress. “An example was when the union encouraged members to campaign for President Jacob Zuma prior to last year’s general election, instead of teaching,” he said. “Although teachers should be allowed to be unionized – like any profession in any democracy – the influence of SADTU is malignant and not benign. It is possible that SADTU has the interest of only its members at heart, and not that of the pupils in South Africa’s schools,” Roodt commented. “The reintroduction of the ’school inspectors’ system, which would greatly improve the quality of the country’s teaching, has been resisted by SADTU for some time. The union has also opposed systems to monitor teacher performance,” he said. School inspectors Zuma announced in his 2010 State of the Nation address that a system of oversight would be instituted to monitor schools and ensure that teachers were in class to teach. SADTU spokesperson Nomusa Cembi told IRIN that the union objected to the reintroduction of school inspectors, and did “not know where the president got the information that teachers are only in class for three hours, or so, a day.” Photo: IRIN Pupils at a Cape Town primary school Zuma first made the claim in a speech to school principals in KwaZulu-Natal Province, who gathered at the Durban International Convention Centre in August 2009. “We need to confront certain realities. For example, teachers in former whites-only schools teach in class for an average of 6.5 hours a day, while teachers in schools in disadvantaged communities teach for around 3.5 hours a day. The result is that the outcomes are unequal.” A recent survey published by Tokiso, an independent labour dispute resolution body, found that the teachers’ union was responsible for 42 percent of all work days lost through industrial action between 1995 and 2009. Cembi said this gave the impression that SADTU members “strike at the drop of a hat”. Tanya Venter, CEO of Tokiso, told a local newspaper, Business Day, that SADTU’s participation in the 2007 public sector strike was the main reason for the union recording such a high rate of absenteeism. A recent World Bank working paper: No More Cutting Class? Reducing Teacher Absence and Providing Incentives for Performance, found “each additional 5 percent increase in teacher absence reduces learning by 4 to 8 percent of a year’s learning for the typical student.” Cembi said responsibility for the deterioration of education should be shared among learners, teachers, the education department and the government. She was unable to provide any data on whether or not a SADTU teacher had ever been dismissed for poor performance. Zimbabwe’s loss, South Africa’s gain Government has been widely blamed for creating a critical shortage of teachers trained in science and mathematics after it closed teacher training colleges in 2000 and put the onus on universities to produce educators. The government is now considering re-opening the teacher training colleges. We are eager to recruit more foreign teachers because of the shortages One solution has been to recruit teachers from Zimbabwe. Dickson Masemola, head of education in Limpopo Province, which borders Zimbabwe, said his department had hired 600 Zimbabwean educators to teach maths, science and commercial subjects, resulting in a turnaround in academic performance. Mbali Thusi, a spokesman for the education department of KwaZulu-Natal, said a number of foreign teachers, especially in maths and science, were working in the province, and more would be hired because of the shortage of qualified teachers in these fields. “The problem is more severe in rural schools – most maths and science teachers prefer to work in urban areas,” Thusi said. “But we are eager to recruit more foreign teachers because of the shortages … We have sent requesting documents to the national department to give us a go-ahead. We want to recruit hundreds of these teachers to plug the holes in our system.” The head of the KwaZulu-Natal School Governing Bodies Association, Reginald Cheliza, told IRIN: “We would like our children to succeed in school, but it is clear that this is not happening. Some of the problems start at school level, others at provincial or even national level.”

(IRIN) – Madagascar’s political deadlock masks an increasingly fragile humanitarian situation that will keep deteriorating if no solution to the ongoing crisis is found.

A year after former President Marc Ravalomanana was forced from power by current President Andry Rajoelina and part of the army, the country is still without an internationally recognized government.

The African Union (AU) is set to announce what action it will take against Rajoelina and his administration, known as the Higher Transitional Authority (HAT), should they fail to implement agreed power-sharing measures – signed in 2009 with the leaders of Madagascar’s three other main political parties – by March 17, exactly a year after the coup-style change of leadership.

Amid the political turmoil and economic decline, aid organizations are worried about a worsening humanitarian situation and diminishing capacity to respond to emergencies on the disaster-prone island – in the most recent calamity, tropical storm Hubert struck Madagascar’s east coast on 10 March, killing at least 36 people and leaving some 37,000 homeless.

Dramatic cuts in public spending by a government struggling to deal with the combined economic impacts of a domestic political crisis and the global financial crisis has meant that basic commitments in sectors like health and education cannot be met.

“The one thing that … [everyone] should be able to agree upon is that the longer the crisis drags on, the worse the economic situation becomes for the Malagasy people,” said John Uniack Davis, Madagascar country director of CARE International, which works to reduce poverty.

“What has been difficult over the last year is that food security issues in the south have become more severe, and we have seen tropical storms and flooding affect some areas. As a result, we are seeing signs of declining livelihoods, but it is hard for outsiders to understand these various distinct and recurrent humanitarian crises and separate them from the political situation,” he told IRIN.

Economic hardship

It’s been a tough year. The World Bank noted in its February Programme Update that “the existing political situation and the global financial crisis are exacting a heavy toll on Madagascar’s economy, leading to a decline in economic growth and job losses.”

Falling demand for Madagascar’s main export products, including vanilla, cloves, coffee and shrimps, has reflected the downturn in global trade. As a direct result of the political crisis, international donors cut non-essential humanitarian aid, which previously accounted for up 70 percent of government spending, the International Monetary Fund noted.

The World Bank put job losses at 228,000, mainly in urban areas and largely as a result of a sharp decline in tourism and the suspension of a preferential trade agreement with the US, on which Madagascar’s textile industry had relied heavily. Up to 50,000 jobs are at risk as textile factories that can no longer afford to export to the US start closing.

According to the Bank, economic growth in Madagascar collapsed to just 0.6 percent in 2009, from 7 percent in 2008. The figures suggest that public investment is down by around 30 percent, construction by 40 percent, imports by 22 percent, and energy consumption by 15 percent.

Tax collection was down about a quarter in 2009, and a February brief by the Bank’s Lead Madagascar economist concluded that “authorities need to get more out of each dollar they spend. The local economy has certainly been in recession since the second quarter of 2009 and perspectives are even more sombre for 2010.”

Social hardship

Nearly 70 percent of Malagasy live below the poverty line, according to the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF). “In this context … ensuring the basic rights of the population remains crucial,” UNICEF said in a report released in February. “The situation presents a risk of increasing vulnerability levels, particularly of children and women.” 

With social investment estimated to have shrunk by around US$200 million, the corresponding cut in the health budget has brought the provision of basic services into question, in particular common inoculations like measles, tetanus, polio and BCG (Bacillus Calmette-Guérin - a vaccine against tuberculosis), up to half of which is paid for by the government.

“Our priority now is to monitor child vulnerability and to respond accordingly, taking into consideration the erosion of essential services for children,” Bruno Maes, head of UNICEF Madagascar, told IRIN. The agency projects that expenditure on routine vaccinations will double in 2010 to plug the gap in government funding and ensure that children receive routine inoculations in 2010.

They have not abandoned the Malagasy population … who have already paid a high price for political instability in the past

Continued support

Despite some donor disengagement the international community has remained remarkably supportive said Benoit Kalasa, acting Resident Coordinator for the UN system in Madagascar. “They have not abandoned the Malagasy population … who have already paid a high price for political instability in the past.”

The World Bank, Madagascar’s largest donor, has processed no fund withdrawal requests since 17 March 2009, but “with a view to minimizing adverse impact on the lives of poor Malagasy citizens”, the Bank had resumed disbursements for critical project components with a “direct bearing on human well-being”, such as nutrition, HIV/AIDS and food security, the Bank said in its February statement.

USAID, another large donor, halted “development” aid but increased “humanitarian” aid. Richard Marcus, Director of the International Studies Programme at California State University in the US, who has just returned from Madagascar, noted that “very few donors have pulled out” completely.

Besides the money, it was also important that donors stayed “because it is relatively easy to ramp up funding if conditions allow when there is still an operating country office … it can take years before new funding initiatives can be negotiated and the infrastructure for funding can be established,” Marcus told IRIN.

Still, the reduction in project spending by donors is being felt, particularly in social sectors like education and healthcare, and “that pressure will increase dramatically in 2010,” Marcus warned.

“The current government is surely under financial pressure”, he said, and without external support from donors “It will be increasingly difficult to meet public salary demands. That is a priority in Madagascar, as civil servants are well organized and have a history of leading social action, particularly in the capital.”

Breaking the cycle

Resolving Madagascar’s political crisis is a long-term project that will take complex political reform and education. Since the beginning of the crisis the international community has taken the winding path of reconciliation between the island’s current and three former presidents. An International Contact Group has been formed to broker dialogue between the parties.

“There were several factors that sparked the current crisis: first among them was poor governance, characterized by a collision between public and private interests [under former president Ravalomanana],” said Guy Ratrimoarivony, director of the Centre for Diplomatic and Strategic Studies, based in the capital, Antananarivo.

“This helped spark popular discontent at a time when Madagascar was also suffering from the global economic crisis. Rajoelina was a catalyst, the person that came to represent the opposition.” He suggested that political dialogue should include national discussion of issues as complex as federalism and decentralisation.

Photo: Christina Corbett/IRIN

2009 was marked by political demonstrations

“To avoid a repeat crisis, I believe the civil society should play a role, and that it is necessary to completely restructure the republic. We need to start from the base, to see what people want and what they attach value to,” said Ratrimoarivony, who believes that Madagascar needs a new constitution to lay the foundation of a more stable state.

However, some observers say the strength of the civil society movement in Madagascar has historically been weakened by political bias. “Civil society is not independent, and successive governments have worked only with those groups that support them,” Hanitra Rafolisy, president of the National Union of Human Rights, a platform for rights groups, told IRIN.

“The number of people out of work rises every day, the number of children not in school rises every day, and every day the security situation deteriorates,” she commented.

Ratrimoarivony said finding a sustainable solution to Madagascar’s seemingly chronic political instability could take many years. “Education is fundamental; we need education and time. This may take one or two generations, but we must start now to change the mentality of young people.”

Marcus pointed out that “Every president since independence has manipulated the constitution to suit his needs. The populace appears, if anything, sickened by leadership, and perceive the problem as a battle between leaders from which they suffer, but of which they are not a part.”

ZimEye -If ZANU-PF  insists on its demand for the Movement for Democratic Change(MDC) to denounce sanctions imposed on its officials by the international community, MDC will call for their (sanctions) replacement with international arrest warrants  for all perpetrators of political violence, an MDC official has said.

In an exclusive interview with ZimEye on Sunday MDC Director of Security Kisimusi Ndhlamini said his party was going to call for the arrests of perpetrators of political violence if ZANU-PF continues to pressure his party to denounce sanctions.

ZANU-PF youths early this month marched in the city centre and gave MDC up to 24 March as an ultimatum for the party to engage the west in the lifting of sanctions which were imposed on its senior officials.

“As a response to that call we have decided to embark on a world-wide campaign demanding that those who committed crimes against human rights be given warrants of arrest and tried in the international court of justice.

“Sanctions were put as a result of human rights abuses. We have complained that those who committed such crimes be arrested and nothing has happened.

“We are saying ZANU-PF should respect the laws of the land in dealing with issues. The issue of sanctions is in the GPA and will be dealt with by the principals in the government not by supporters of MDC, whom ZANU-PF is threatening. We are worried because they are moving around threatening our party members with the June 27 2008 atrocities if sanctions are not lifted by 24 March.

“We know that they want to lure us into their traps of violence and I want to say we won’t fall into that trap. Instead we go legal if they want to do anything that threatens us,”said Ndhlamini

More than 200 MDC supporters were killed in 2008 by state sponsored terrorists. The perpetrators who include soldiers and state security agents are still freely walking in the streets despite the MDC’s calls for their arrests.

Civic organizations who were the most victims of the 2008 terror have produced a number of documents exposing human rights abuses that occurred during that time.

A recent report of that nature was launched last week by Crisis in Zimbabwe Coalition titled ‘Cries from Goromonzi: Inside Zimbabwe’s Torture Chambers’.

ZANU-PF accuses MDC of calling for sanctions which resulted in more than 200 of its members having their international assets being frozen. MDC rejects that allegation arguing that the sanctions were a reaction by the west to human and property rights abuses that occurred in 2000.(ZimEye, Zimbabwe)

Photo: Tewodros Negash/IRIN

Amina Nuri lost two children while being delivered by a traditional birth attendant

(IRIN) – Ethiopia has made some headway towards improving maternal and child health, but more needs to be done to reduce the high number of preventable deaths, says an official.

“I know that we have gaps in effectively addressing maternal health, but previous assessments are showing us that if we [make a] concerted effort, we can achieve goal number five of the MDGs [Millennium Development Goals],” Kebede Worku, State Minister for Health, said.

The ministry has just concluded a two-month campaign to promote safe motherhood but public relations officer Ahmed Emano said the campaign would continue in various forms in upcoming months.

“We are not only working to achieve the MDGs, but to have even more ambitious targets to improve maternal health in the country,” the minister told IRIN at the end of the first phase of the campaign, No woman should die while giving life.

The campaign, according to the health ministry, is being positioned as the start of a long-term mobilization initiative – ultimately to be extended through 2015 in line with the MDGs.

It aims to raise public awareness, facilitate dialogue on the importance of improving maternal health and secure commitments for accelerating reduction of maternal and neonatal mortality.

Dire situation

Ethiopia’s 2009 demographic and health survey showed that 25,000 women died every year giving birth, while 300,000 babies died annually across the country. In terms of personnel, the country had only one midwife and three doctors for every 100,000 citizens. Only 6 percent of births occurred in a health facility attended by skilled health personnel, a report by the UN Population Fund stated. As a result, many women deliver under the care of traditional birth attendants – which can be risky.

Amina Nuri, 32, for example, lost two of her children due to complications. “The traditional birth attendant was very much respected in my area,” she told IRIN in Hawassa Referral Hospital in the Southern Region. “I don’t know what went wrong with my delivery twice.”

Photo: Tewodros Negash/IRIN

Ethiopia has only only one midwife and three doctors for every 100,000 citizens

Eventually, Amina undertook a difficult three-hour journey to the hospital to deliver another child. “I had to walk some three hours to reach here [Hawassa Referral Hospital],” she said. “I am bleeding now; the nearby [medical centre] could not stop it. I am afraid that I might lose this one as well.”

Million Getachew, a gynaecologist at the hospital, however, said Amina’s case was not common because there were relatively better facilities in the Southern Region. “We are trying our level best to address maternal health,” he said. “The hospital is equipped with all the necessary equipments and the regional government has also given attention to address maternal health. We are providing the best treatment in the country.”

Improvements

Earlier this year, the Minister of Finance and Economic Development, Sofian Ahmed, told parliament that out of eight MDGs, improving maternal health was a big challenge for the government.

“We need to be able to provide modern health facilities to every district in the country,” he said. “This requires a lot of focused effort and development partners’ support.”

Despite the challenges, international partners say Ethiopia will achieve this goal. “I am confident that Ethiopia is on the right track towards achieving the Millennium Development Goals to reduce maternal and child mortality,” Ted Chaiban, representative of the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF), said.

The MDGs are eight international development goals that all 192 UN member states and at least 23 international organizations have agreed to achieve by the year 2015. They include reducing extreme poverty, reducing child mortality rates, fighting disease epidemics such as HIV/AIDS, and developing a global partnership for development.

According to Ethiopia’s ministry of finance and economic development, the country has made “astounding” progress on the goals. In the early 1990s, indicators of poverty, malnutrition, and basic health were among the worst in the world, with widespread hunger and food insecurity, a literacy rate of only 26 percent, and an infant mortality rate of 123 per 1,000. Fewer than a third of children were in school.

By 2008, primary school enrolment had topped 91 percent, infant mortality fell to 77 per 1,000, while the proportion of the population with access to clean water increased to 52.4 percent, according to a government report.

NEWZIMBABWE – Switzerland on Saturday extended travel restrictions on senior Zimbabwean officials as part of efforts by Western countries to force President Robert Mugabe’s ZANU PF party to agree to political reforms in the country.

The Swiss Foreign Ministry said it was renewing a set of sanctions slapped on senior officials of Mugabe’s previous regime in March 2002.

“The measures include a prohibition on supply of military equipment and materials which might be used for internal repression and targeted financial sanctions such as freezing of assets owned by the 160-plus individuals in Switzerland,” the ministry said in a statement.

Individuals on the sanctions list are also prohibited from entering Switzerland or transit through the country.

The EU as well as the United States, Australia and New Zealand have maintained visa and financial sanctions against Mugabe’s government since 2002.

Both the EU and the US last month renewed the sanctions against the ZANU PF officials and some companies linked to the party insisting more needed to be done to facilitate reforms in the country.

Mugabe has demanded the complete removal of the sanctions, blaming them for the country’s near-economic collapse over the last decade.

The veteran leader has also used the sanctions to slow down implementation of a power-sharing pact he signed with Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai and Deputy Prime Minister Arthur Mutambara in 2008.

Mugabe accuses Tsvangirai and his MDC-T party of not doing enough to get their Western allies to remove the sanctions.

His Zanu PF party has since vowed not to make any further concessions to its coalition partners in ongoing inter-party talks until the sanctions are removed.

(IRIN) – In an attempt to deal with a growing influx of migrants, authorities in Somalia’s autonomous region of Puntland are adopting new measures to stop people from undertaking the hazardous journey to Yemen, officials said.

“The problem of migrants is not going away and the Puntland authorities, particularly in the Bari region [Bosasso area], had to come up with a new strategy to deal with this problem,” said Mohamud Jama Muse, director of the Migration Response Centre (MRC) in the regional capital, Bosasso.

MRC was created in April 2009, under the office of the Bari governor, to “register and provide counselling and assist” the migrants. Between April and December 2009, it registered 7,223 persons.

“This number is smaller than the actual number,” Muse told IRIN on 1 March. “You have to understand, a lot of these people are not very trusting of authorities, so they never bother registering.”

According to the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR), 78,487 Ethiopians and Somalis crossed into Yemen from Somalia and Djibouti in 2009, of whom 685 died.

So far in 2010, 5,032 have crossed and four have died, said Roberta Russo, spokeswoman for UNHCR Somalia.

Learning to fish

Muse said the government had adopted a two-track approach. Apart from the MRC, security forces had cracked down on smugglers and closed the ports from which they operate.

“With the help of IOM [International Organization for Migration] we started a pilot project with a local NGO, Red Sea Fishing Organization [RESFO], in skills training and income generation, for 100 migrants and locals to teach them skills to make a living,” he explained.

The group is taught how to fish, process the catch, repair nets and keep books.

“We are even teaching some of them to swim,” said Mohamed Said of RESFO. “The aim is to provide an alternative to boarding those boats [to Yemen].”

Photo: Abdi Hassan/IRIN

Mohammed Hassan, a migrant from Kismayu

The project aims to integrate the migrants into the community, said Ahmed Muse Mohamed, IOM officer-in-charge in Bosasso. “We want to create opportunities here for them so they don’t have to go on these dangerous journeys,” he added.

Too weak to walk

“By the time they reach us they have walked over 1,000km and are dehydrated and almost starving,” said Muse, and reports indicated some died on the way to Bosasso.

Abdi, not his real name, came from Ethiopia four months ago. He walked 760km to reach Bosasso, with the aim of going to Yemen.

He and six others had to avoid being stopped by security forces or attacked by bandits. “It is not a trip I would want to make again,” he said. “It was too difficult and dangerous. By the time I arrived I was so weak I could barely walk.”

He has registered with MRC but has not started the training yet.

Addis Tolosa, 30, an Ethiopian migrant who has been in Bosasso for a couple of years, went to Yemen but was intercepted by the Yemeni coastguard and returned to Bosasso.

He is now being trained by RESFO. “I don’t have the means to go back [to Yemen] so I am now in this training to learn how to earn a living,” said. “As soon we finish the training I will get fishing gear and go to work.”

Some locals, however, insisted they would still like to go to Yemen.

Mohamed Hassan Shire, 23, from the coastal town of Kismayo, 2,000km south, arrived in Bosasso six months ago. He said he left out of fear he would be forcibly recruited into a militia.

“I came here because I was not safe in Kismayo,” he said. “People I knew died trying to get there [Yemen]. I know also that what I am doing is like flipping a coin, but I will try it. I have no other option.”

More help needed

The former Puntland Bari Governor Muse Ghelle (replaced on 6 March) told IRIN he was determined to help the potential migrants. “With the very little resources we have we are trying but we need help,” he added.

He called on the international community to increase its support to Puntland to help it deal with the growing influx of migrants.

Puntland would not be able to cope on its own. “We need more meaningful help from the donor community,” he said.

Muse of MRC said the migrants needed emergency food upon arrival, temporary shelter, a health centre and a reception centre to receive them.

“Most of these people are economic migrants and when they come here they have exhausted what little they had, so it is important to at least have somewhere where they can get some help immediately.”

Photo: Eddy Isango/IRIN

Many of the FARDC troops include rebels integrated into the army. The UN and US reports accuse all groups of possible crimes against humanity (file photo)

NAIROBI, 12 March 2010 (IRIN) – Government troops – the FARDC – in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) are to blame for much of the epidemic of sexual violence in the east of the country, according to US and UN reports detailing war crimes and possible crimes against humanity by various groups there.

FARDC is trying to rout the Forces démocratiques de libération du Rwanda (FDLR) and the Ugandan Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) from the Kivu region and Oriental province in eastern Congo, but operations have been criticized for their impact on civilians.

“Armed groups such as the LRA and FDLR commit atrocities that amount to grave breaches of international humanitarian law and, in some instances, may also constitute crimes against humanity,” according to the UN experts.

“In North Kivu, an assistance provider for victims of sexual violence recorded 3,106 cases between January and July 2009; half of these cases were perpetrated by FARDC members,” a group of seven UN experts said in their second report on the situation in DRC, submitted to the Security Council on 8 March.

Many of the FARDC troops used to be members of rebel groups who joined the army as part of peace initiatives.

In 2009, groups still under arms “continued to commit numerous, serious abuses – some of which may have constituted war crimes – including unlawful killings, disappearances, and torture”, according to the US government’s annual global human rights report, released on 11 March.

The UN experts added arbitrary arrest, forced labour and extortion to this litany of abuses.

In Dungu territory of Oriental Province, according to the US-based Enough Project, soldiers committed 116 rapes in a single neighbourhood last October.

“A particularly egregious case involved the gang rape of a pregnant woman by five Congolese soldiers near the market of Bangadi on 8 October, 2009,” it said.

FARDC commander General Leon Mushale told Enough the problem was isolated: “It is the fault of the man, not of the organization … we are dealing with the problems on a case–by-case basis,” he said.

“There is a correlation between peace and rape,” Bora Kawende, acting head of the UN Population Fund (UNFPA) office in North Kivu, recently told IRIN. “During war, soldiers here commit collective, massive rape.”

Legal gaps

The UN experts’ report said impunity, absence of the rule of law and women’s subordinate social and legal position reinforced a climate of general acceptance and tolerance for violence against women and girls in increasingly militarized societies, such as eastern DRC.

Photo: Aubrey Graham/IRIN

Thousands are still fleeing the violence in South Kivu and living in camps (file photo)

“The application of the law is weak,” Kawende said. “And if a perpetrator is sentenced, the government must have a good jail where he can stay,” she added. In Mbandaka, a soldier was sent to jail for rape, but could not be locked up because the prison had been destroyed during the war.

Congo’s military justice system, the experts said, had retained jurisdiction over most cases involving serious violations of human rights and international humanitarian law, but was weak and susceptible to executive interference by military or political decision-makers.

“The solution is justice, justice, justice,” said Esteban Sacco, head of the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian affairs (OCHA) in North Kivu. “There has to be a system that brings to justice those who commit the crime of rape.”

Speaking at a seminar in Goma, North Kivu prosecutor-general Mulumba Kifulya said arrests and prosecutions took too long, and many victims were too poor to pursue cases or preferred to keep quiet.

Involving men

The charity, Women for Women, called on men to help reduce sexual abuse. “In December, we held a seminar for 550 trainers of trainers, including soldiers, clergy, traditional rulers and local administrators,” Clovis Mulungula, sponsorship assistant, told IRIN. “In the seminars, we noticed that some men did not know the consequences.”

At least 1.36 million are displaced by violence in the Kivus, according to OCHA. In Hauts Plateaux, Uvira region of South Kivu, thousands of civilians have been trapped by conflict since February, Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) said.

“We heard from people who have reached our medical structure that there are many civilians who are afraid to come to the hospital,” Philippe Havet, MSF’s head in DRC noted on 11 March. “They are in constant fear of being attacked.”