Reporting and musing on events and culture in DR Congo since 2004

Tuesday, January 31, 2006

(Product) RED

Have you heard about this initiative yet?

Bono, yes, of U2, has started this project called (Product) RED, which is a mechanism for some of your commerical dollars to be contributed to The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria.

So far, the (Product) RED line includes:
1. An American Express RED card that donates 1% of your annual purchase balance to the Global Fund
2. A vintage-style RED T-shirt produced in Africa by GAP with 'proceeds' going to the Global Fund
3. Emporio Armani RED Wraparound Sunglasses worn by Bono -- no mention of 'proceeds'
4. And get this, Chuck Taylor All Star mudcloth shoes:



So, while the website does not explicitly indicate that Armani and Converse will be contributing proceeds to the Global Fund, one can assume that by buying GAP with your AmEx card, you are doing good in the world.

I already have an AmEx card, and I would be inclined to replace it with a RED card, and even stop by the GAP and buy a new RED t-shirt with it. Though on principle I do not support Corporate Evils like the GAP, in reality, well, it happens. So I might as well appease my troubled soul by knowing that a percentage goes to the Global Fund, right?

But these items are available starting in March IN THE UK ONLY. GAP/US will be releasing an expanded RED line of clothing in the fall (no mention on their site now), and it seems that some of the Converse 'mud cloth' Chucks will be available online (again, no mention currently; same with Armani, but their site is very difficult to navigate so it's possible that I missed it, although this should be a sign).

So far, AmEx RED is requiring that you have a UK bank account and address to sign up, though.

The campaign site is very attractive with its little intro and catchy logo of flashing words encompassing RED in them: admiRED, inspiRED, desiRED, incREDible, requiRED, you get the point.

And I certainly understand that because Bono's frame of reference is Ireland and the UK that he worked to garner support from those companies first.

However, it's not a successful global campaign to support the Global Fund if we can't participate. Think about it. The UK has 60 million people, only 20% of the US's 300 million. If (arbitrarily) 1 million UK residents signed up for the AmEx RED card and spent on average $500 a month, or $6,000 a year, then $60 from each person would go to the Global Fund, for a total of $60 million. That means that the US could raise $300 million for the Global Fund if the same proportion of people signed up (5 million people).

I would give up some of my miles/points to contribute to a goal like that, wouldn't you?

If anyone has any recommendations as to how to find out more information about WHY the American part of American Express is not on board, or how to change that, please leave me a comment.

In the mean time, if you would like to donate 100% of whatever you feel that you can afford directly to the Global Fund, rather than taking the backdoor commercial non-user-friendly route, here is the link. Donations are accepted in multiple currencies and can be made by credit card or check/money order.

Wednesday, January 25, 2006

President of the Republic of Congo named new chairperson of the AU

Contrary to traditional practice, which dictates that the host country of the AU will become the new head, the AU has picked Congo as its next head, not Sudan.

Seven countries voted on the committee, which elected President Denis Sassou-Nguesso of Congo its new chairperson, following Olusegon Obasanjo, president of Nigeria.

Concerns remain regarding the assumption that Sudan will become head of the AU in 2007. Human Rights Watch, among others, objects to their consideration for this position, unless the humanitarian crisis in Darfur is solved.

The Sudanese government supports the election of Sassou-Nguesso:

"It is not a matter of presidency that concerns Sudan. It is the success of the summit...and the success of the African Union leaders," Eljahwi Ibrahim Malik, spokesman for the Sudanese government, said.

Former chairperson Olusegon Obasanjo urged attention to insecurity in the Central African Republic, Somalia and the Ethiopia-Eritrea border issue as impediments to the goals of peace and development.

Find a profile of President Denis Sassou-Nguesso here.

Sassou-Nguesso has faced criticism during his time in power, which ranged from 1979-1992, and again since 1997, when he seized power in a military coup. Remnants of his militia, known as the Ninjas, are still causing problems in parts of the Republic of Congo.

Additionally, he has been criticized for the lack of transparency regarding use of funds from the oil industry, about which Catholic Relief Services has included in their report, Bottom of the Barrel: Africa's Oil Boom and the Poor. Congo-Brazzaville's powerful conference of Catholic Bishops has been a collaborator with the Congo branch of the Publish What You Pay effort, putting pressure on Sassou-Nguesso's government and oil companies with which they work to make public the uses of oil profits and what kind of incentives the companies are paying to the government.

Monday, January 23, 2006

8 UN Peacekeepers Killed

Everybody is reporting about eight Guatemalan UN soldiers that were killed in northeast DRC today.

IRIN: DRC: Armed group kills 8 UN peacekeepers in Garamba park
BBC: Peacekeepers killed in DR Congo
Bloomberg.com: Congo Firefight Kills 8 Guatemalan UN Troops Near Uganda, Sudan
iAfrica.com: Eight UN peacekeepers slain in DRC
AllAfrica.com: DRC: Armed Group Kills 8 UN Peacekeepers in Garamba Park
Mail and Guardian: Eight UN troops die in DRC ambush
CNN: U.N.: 8 peacekeepers killed in Congo
MONUC: Eight MONUC Peacekeepers killed in Garamba Park, five other injured

Interestingly, the Bloomberg.com article fell under Latin American news and pointed out that the Guatemalan contingent of MONUC, the UN Observation Mission in Congo, is comprised of 105 soldiers (though the CNN article cited 80 as the number).


Also, Ugandan military officials have handed over to Congolese authorities 36 armed men, including government soldiers and the police, and 48 family members, who had been found amongst some 7,000 refugees crossing over into Uganda.

Additionally, in another region that has seen violence recently, Mayi Mayi fighters have destroyed a town in fighting that broke out against army soldiers in a new area of Katanga.

"They appear to be a Mayi-Mayi group made up of civilians who have taken up arms against the army to stop them stealing and raping," said Phillip Havet, a Medècines Sans Frontiéres (MSF) logistics expert who was in the area last week.

Sunday, January 22, 2006

Unrest in Congo-Brazzaville

Both the BBC and IRIN have reported on increasing security in the Republic of Congo's Department of Pool. Recent upsurgence in violence perpetrated by former rebels known as the Ninjas has led to the decision.


The Ninjas pledged to disarm in 2003

BBC - Red Cross staff leave Congo Pool: The International Committee of the Red Cross has indefinitely suspended its activities in Congo's Pool region after a spate of violence.

IRIN - CONGO: ICRC suspends aid in Pool region: Worsening insecurity has forced the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) to pull out of Pool, a troubled region in the Republic of the Congo (RoC).

To read more about the conflict in the Republic of Congo and the resulting humanitarian crisis, click on this link for a summary of a study conducted by Catholic Relief Services. From here you can find links to key findings, recommendations, and the full report, in .pdf format: Post-Conflict Communities at Risk: The Continuing Crisis in Congo's Department of Pool.

Double Whammy

I think the contrast between the first two articles below is interesting: the first, via IRIN, is concerned with the fact that civilians continue to be displaced by the conflict in eastern DR Congo. While details are provided as to what groups are implicated in the current clash, the primary concern appears to be the fact that people living in the villages near the fighting had to leave, and that it has not yet been safe for aid workers to help them.

The second article, via BBC News, is interested in the drama of the Congolese army fighting rebel soldiers, how many people have been killed, and that refugees have had to flee.

Perhaps it is simply the wording in the BBC article that bothers me, because having been in the field of public health/development/humanitarian aid for a little while now, and in reading reports and news briefs and essays and memoirs and novels, the language obviously differs.

When you read civilian and displaced, the feel is very different from refugees fleeing. Somehow, refugees are now this romanticized disenfranchised group.

Also, the last sentence in the BBC article just slays me:

Several neighbouring countries were drawn into DR Congo's brutal five-year conflict in which 3m people were killed.

So much so that I sent them an email railing on about the fact that 3 million people have not BEEN KILLED by the conflict. My intent is certainly not to minimize the impact of DR Congo's recent history. I know. I've seen the results.

But accuracy would be nice. If they said, "An estimated 3 million people have died due to effects of the conflict," which is what they usually say, we picture the lack of access to food markets, healthy crops, and medical care.

If they say, "3 million people WERE KILLED," we picture the Rwanda war and genocide times five.

And then there is Kalemie, which is now suffering from a triple-whammy to food security: residual displacement and crop damage due to conflict, lack of market access to fishing equipment, and recent flooding (elaborated in the last article).


DRC: Civilians displaced in renewed fighting in North Kivu
DR Congo troops fight each other
DRC: Floods in Kalemie cause food insecurity

"How to Write About Africa"

comments later, thought I'd share first.

From the current issue of Granta.

'How to write about Africa' by Binyavanga Wainaina

some tips: sunsets and starvation are good

Always use the word 'Africa' or 'Darkness' or 'Safari' in your title. Subtitles may include the words 'Zanzibar', 'Masai', 'Zulu', 'Zambezi', 'Congo', 'Nile', 'Big', 'Sky', 'Shadow', 'Drum', 'Sun' or 'Bygone'. Also useful are words such as 'Guerrillas', 'Timeless', 'Primordial' and 'Tribal'. Note that 'People' means Africans who are not black, while 'The People' means black Africans.

Never have a picture of a well-adjusted African on the cover of your book, or in it, unless that African has won the Nobel Prize. An AK-47, prominent ribs, naked breasts: use these. If you must include an African, make sure you get one in Masai or Zulu or Dogon dress.

In your text, treat Africa as if it were one country. It is hot and dusty with rolling grasslands and huge herds of animals and tall, thin people who are starving. Or it is hot and steamy with very short people who eat primates. Don't get bogged down with precise descriptions. Africa is big: fifty-four countries, 900 million people who are too busy starving and dying and warring and emigrating to read your book. The continent is full of deserts, jungles, highlands, savannahs and many other things, but your reader doesn't care about all that, so keep your descriptions romantic and evocative and unparticular.

Make sure you show how Africans have music and rhythm deep in their souls, and eat things no other humans eat. Do not mention rice and beef and wheat; monkey-brain is an African's cuisine of choice, along with goat, snake, worms and grubs and all manner of game meat. Make sure you show that you are able to eat such food without flinching, and describe how you learn to enjoy it—because you care.

Taboo subjects: ordinary domestic scenes, love between Africans (unless a death is involved), references to African writers or intellectuals, mention of school-going children who are not suffering from yaws or Ebola fever or female genital mutilation.

Throughout the book, adopt a sotto voice, in conspiracy with the reader, and a sad I-expected-so-much tone. Establish early on that your liberalism is impeccable, and mention near the beginning how much you love Africa, how you fell in love with the place and can't live without her. Africa is the only continent you can love—take advantage of this. If you are a man, thrust yourself into her warm virgin forests. If you are a woman, treat Africa as a man who wears a bush jacket and disappears off into the sunset. Africa is to be pitied, worshipped or dominated. Whichever angle you take, be sure to leave the strong impression that without your intervention and your important book, Africa is doomed.

Your African characters may include naked warriors, loyal servants, diviners and seers, ancient wise men living in hermitic splendour. Or corrupt politicians, inept polygamous travel-guides, and prostitutes you have slept with. The Loyal Servant always behaves like a seven-year-old and needs a firm hand; he is scared of snakes, good with children, and always involving you in his complex domestic dramas. The Ancient Wise Man always comes from a noble tribe (not the money-grubbing tribes like the Gikuyu, the Igbo or the Shona). He has rheumy eyes and is close to the Earth. The Modern African is a fat man who steals and works in the visa office, refusing to give work permits to qualified Westerners who really care about Africa. He is an enemy of development, always using his government job to make it difficult for pragmatic and good-hearted expats to set up NGOs or Legal Conservation Areas. Or he is an Oxford-educated intellectual turned serial-killing politician in a Savile Row suit. He is a cannibal who likes Cristal champagne, and his mother is a rich witch-doctor who really runs the country.

Among your characters you must always include The Starving African, who wanders the refugee camp nearly naked, and waits for the benevolence of the West. Her children have flies on their eyelids and pot bellies, and her breasts are flat and empty. She must look utterly helpless. She can have no past, no history; such diversions ruin the dramatic moment. Moans are good. She must never say anything about herself in the dialogue except to speak of her (unspeakable) suffering. Also be sure to include a warm and motherly woman who has a rolling laugh and who is concerned for your well-being. Just call her Mama. Her children are all delinquent. These characters should buzz around your main hero, making him look good. Your hero can teach them, bathe them, feed them; he carries lots of babies and has seen Death. Your hero is you (if reportage), or a beautiful, tragic international celebrity/aristocrat who now cares for animals (if fiction).

Bad Western characters may include children of Tory cabinet ministers, Afrikaners, employees of the World Bank. When talking about exploitation by foreigners mention the Chinese and Indian traders. Blame the West for Africa's situation. But do not be too specific.

Broad brushstrokes throughout are good. Avoid having the African characters laugh, or struggle to educate their kids, or just make do in mundane circumstances. Have them illuminate something about Europe or America in Africa. African characters should be colourful, exotic, larger than life—but empty inside, with no dialogue, no conflicts or resolutions in their stories, no depth or quirks to confuse the cause.

Describe, in detail, naked breasts (young, old, conservative, recently raped, big, small) or mutilated genitals, or enhanced genitals. Or any kind of genitals. And dead bodies. Or, better, naked dead bodies. And especially rotting naked dead bodies. Remember, any work you submit in which people look filthy and miserable will be referred to as the 'real Africa', and you want that on your dust jacket. Do not feel queasy about this: you are trying to help them to get aid from the West. The biggest taboo in writing about Africa is to describe or show dead or suffering white people.

Animals, on the other hand, must be treated as well rounded, complex characters. They speak (or grunt while tossing their manes proudly) and have names, ambitions and desires. They also have family values: see how lions teach their children? Elephants are caring, and are good feminists or dignified patriarchs. So are gorillas. Never, ever say anything negative about an elephant or a gorilla. Elephants may attack people's property, destroy their crops, and even kill them. Always take the side of the elephant. Big cats have public-school accents. Hyenas are fair game and have vaguely Middle Eastern accents. Any short Africans who live in the jungle or desert may be portrayed with good humour (unless they are in conflict with an elephant or chimpanzee or gorilla, in which case they are pure evil).

After celebrity activists and aid workers, conservationists are Africa's most important people. Do not offend them. You need them to invite you to their 30,000-acre game ranch or 'conservation area', and this is the only way you will get to interview the celebrity activist. Often a book cover with a heroic-looking conservationist on it works magic for sales. Anybody white, tanned and wearing khaki who once had a pet antelope or a farm is a conservationist, one who is preserving Africa's rich heritage. When interviewing him or her, do not ask how much funding they have; do not ask how much money they make off their game. Never ask how much they pay their employees.

Readers will be put off if you don't mention the light in Africa. And sunsets, the African sunset is a must. It is always big and red. There is always a big sky. Wide empty spaces and game are critical—Africa is the Land of Wide Empty Spaces. When writing about the plight of flora and fauna, make sure you mention that Africa is overpopulated. When your main character is in a desert or jungle living with indigenous peoples (anybody short) it is okay to mention that Africa has been severely depopulated by Aids and War (use caps).

You'll also need a nightclub called Tropicana, where mercenaries, evil nouveau riche Africans and prostitutes and guerrillas and expats hang out.

Always end your book with Nelson Mandela saying something about rainbows or renaissances. Because you care.

Monday, January 16, 2006

Hotel Rwanda

Recently, a friend mentioned watching this film, which prompted this post.



I saw Hotel Rwanda last year while I was in Kinshasa, after our IT geek friend obligingly pirated it -- a bunch of us sat around in the living room of a huge USAID house, which overlooked a veranda and an in-ground pool, and watched it with a glass of expensive scotch or a bottle of local Skol or Primus in hand.

It was odd to be in Kinshasa, close enough to the action, or the idea or representation of it based on the constant threat of riots and violence there, and to see the film after I had already lived in Rwanda myself and visited a church or two that were massacre sites. I have a photo in storage somewhere of a table full of skulls, all lined up in rows by surviving family members who care for the church property now.

This church was not the site where the government had preserved the bodies with lime, but they were still involved in a struggle to legally access the remains of their family members.

Everywhere, there was plenty of evidence of what had transpired to feed the imagination -- holes in the church walls from grenades, piles of possessions that people had brought when they sought refuge there, bones sorted and categorized, identity cards laying in dust on benches. Some of the skulls wore scarves on their head or were small enough to be identified as infants, and in many you could determine the cause of death -- some were crushed, some had a crack caused by a machete, and some had a weapon still protruding from them.

At the time, I thought: Hotel Rwanda is a good movie for those who don't know anything about what happened there. It was well done, but for the unrealistic but requisite Happy Ending. It starred both actors recognizable to Westerners and Rwandans. There was a tight story line and all of the important factors were there: ethnic strife, UN presence, radio communications exacerbating the murderous fervor, inadequate outside intervention, the dread that accompanied each realization that slowly people were becoming trapped, footage of Interahamwe parading through the streets with machetes shouting slogans, neighbors disappearing.

Somehow, though, it didn't adequately convey the horror. There were enough hints to let the viewer know what was happening, but just barely. I do not support gratuitous violent imagery. But the gravity of the event -- I don't know, somehow I thought there should have been more. I wanted the realism, I wanted everyone else to see what I had seen and imagined and heard about from colleagues and read about in my feverish consumption of available literature (We wish to inform you...; Season of Blood; Speak, Rwanda. I wanted people to be more horrified, perhaps to make up for the fact that many of them had been ignorant of all these events for ten years.

Then I figured that I would just wait for Sometimes in April to come out, because surely that would be more of a documentary and less romantic, not being based on the story of one Hero. One day, my friend's husband brought it home from Blockbuster.

We had that thing sitting in the DVD player till it was overdue, and none of us could bear to press PLAY.

Sunday, January 15, 2006

Congolese ravaged by war and disease

I wish that I could see this in action, the registering of Congolese for elections and the attempt to disseminate information about the constitution and the voting process, which is possible in stable urban locations, but must also take place in the unreachable jungle, where villages have become islands and citizens have become Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs). I wish I were in touch with the person I knew who was working for the Independent Electoral Commission so I had a better idea of how this process, which is getting some international press, is linked to the ongoing themes of conflict and lack of access to education and health care.

What has happened in Maniema Province, Ituri and the Kivus in the eastern part of DR Congo is now happening in Katanga, a province that is known for its mineral resources and which has tried to secede from the country in the past. As stated below, in Katanga, part of the violence transpired at a camp for IDPs. Imagine having fled from your home and been put in a camp, grouped with a crowd of people that maybe you know and maybe you don't, having no idea when you might return home or when the resources that support your current unsustainable lifestyle might run out. And then imagine being attacked and having to flee again. Can you imagine? I cannot.

And when you are forced to flee, you have malaria and are feverish and dizzy and weak, or you have cholera and thus are dehydrated and can't control your bowels, and you know that if you just had access to a health center and some meager funds to pay the fees that the doctor would prescribe something and you'd be cured, but you don't have the money so you suffer. You have stomach cramps because of malnutrition and your clothes are threadbare and dirty. Can you imagine? [I've had malaria, in a US hospital, and I thought that was bad.]

I suppose some of those 10 million eligible voters who did not cast a ballot might have been busy with malaria or cholera or fleeing conflict or fleeing the camp where they had sought refuge, so maybe they didn't have a chance to read through the constitution or go to the polls.

The following is taken from Medecins Sans Frontiers' Top ten under-reported humanitarian stories of 2005


© Petterik Wiggers/HH
A man suffering from malaria at a camp form internally displaced in Lukona. The level of health care in Congo is very low, while the demand is high and many families flee from their compounds after clashes between army troops and Mai Mai.


"The extreme deprivation and violence endured by millions of Congolese goes virtually unnoticed to the rest of the world.

"Since mid-November, renewed fighting between the Congolese Army (FARDC) and the Mai-Mai rebels has caused the displacement of tens of thousands of people throughout Katanga province, in southeast Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). In one instance in early December, armed men attacked a camp for displaced people in Katanga, forcing some 3,000 people to once again flee for their lives.

"This spate of violence is just the most recent endured by people in the DRC.

"More than a decade of war and devastation has collapsed an already weak public health system and caused widespread misery for people throughout the country. During the past year, the northeastern regions of Ituri, North Kivu, and South Kivu were again the epicenter of violence, with multiple factions fighting for the control of the area's resources, preying on civilians, and committing appalling sexual violence against women.

"Between January and May, MSF assisted many of the 80,000 civilians who had fled their homes in Ituri because of fear and insecurity. Emergency relief programs in the DRC represent MSF's largest mobilization of aid in the world today, and recent MSF surveys found staggeringly high child mortality rates in several regions - more than six times the emergency threshold in the violence-plagued town of Lubutu and more than five times in the relatively stable town of Inongo.

"The surveys also revealed that few people have access to health facilities let alone treatment, even in areas not ravaged by violence, in part because they cannot afford the fees, leading to an even greater human toll taken by easily treated diseases like malaria and cholera. While the war officially ended in 2003, peacekeeping and political efforts have not translated into better living conditions for most Congolese and the situation remains dire in many parts of the country."


Also covered in the report: Chechnya | Haiti | R&D For HIV/AIDS | Northeastern India | Southern Sudan | Somalia | Colombia | Northern Uganda | Ivory Coast

Saturday, January 14, 2006

Voting in DR Congo

According to the Population Reference Bureau's DR Congo Country Profile, the mid-2005 estimated population is 60,764,000 people. Of this, 48% are under the age of 15, so we can probably assume that at least 50% and probably a bit more are under the age of majority (18 years).

Thus, some 25-30 million people are eligible to vote. According to a number of news articles, 25 million people were registered to vote, which is pretty amazing considering the logistics of registering voters in a country with little to no history of and experience with polls, and difficult access and logistics to register voters. 15.5 million people actually cast votes in the constitutional referendum that was held last month.

Though the Independent Electoral Commission reported in the article that there were some irregularities in the polls, they have stated that these results have been annulled. The 61.97% of registered voters who cast ballots approved the constitution with an 84.31% majority.

Part of the reason that the remaining 15.69% of voters did not affirm the constitution may have been that veteran politicion Etienne Tshisekedi, who had served as prime minister for decades under the former dictator Mobutu Sese Seko prior to 1997, had called for a boycott of the proceedings, partially due to the fact that the constitution called for granting citizenship to all people who had been living in DR Congo prior to independence in 1960. He felt that the constitution was "selling the country to foreigners."


Copyright Eddy Isangoro/IRIN

Tshisekedi, leader of the Union pour la democratie et le progres social (UDPS), eventually rescinded his boycott, and has decided to join the presidential race, set for March of this year.

InsideJustice has an excellent post that summarizes the referendum process and DR Congo voting information.

Thursday, January 12, 2006

News from DR Congo, Zambia and Nigeria

In DR Congo, the training of 20 civilian and military personnel is in progress in France, to show that that country is dedicated to enforcing the rule of law. This training is an important step in light of recent events in Katanga province: 49,000 people have fled fighting there between the Congolese army and the Mayi-Mayi rebel militia.

Humanitarian groups such as Medecins Sans Frontiers are having difficulty accessing those regions to provide aid. The International Crisis Group says that the situation is as bad as in Ituri and the Kivus but is not garnering comparable attention.

"'The number of displaced in central and northern Katanga now exceeds 100,000,' said Anne Edgerton, head of the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA)....'Their most immediate need is clothing,' she said. 'Many arrived with clothes rotting off their bodies.'"

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The Kaiser Foundation Daily HIV/AIDS Report cites a Guardian article examining the spread of HIV/AIDS in Zambia's Lake Mweru region. The estimated 25% prevalence rate is credited to a population increase over the past 30 years due to mining activities in that area and an influx of people to that region, coming from DR Congo, Nigeria, Malawi, Zimbabwe and South Africa.

For the sake of comparison, here are respective HIV prevalence rates for those countries according to data accrued by Global Health Facts.Org:

DR Congo: 4.2%
Malawi: 14.2%
Nigeria: 5.4%
South Africa: 21.5%
Zambia (entire country): 16.5%
Zimbabwe: 24.6%


As a counterpoint to these facts, Kaiser also mentions a segment of The World that talks about the changing attitudes of Zambians toward HIV testing: as anti-retroviral therapy (ART) becomes more available, people's optimism toward survival increases and they are more likely to get tested.

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As reported by IRIN, Zambia faces funding shortages for food rations in refugee camps. The World Food Program (WFP) and the United Nations High Commission for Refugess(UNHCR) are both concerned that, following three months of reduced food rations due to rising prices of maize and a lack of funding commitment for 2006, that the situation both in refugee camps and in other regions where refugees in settlements had been cultivating crops prior to drought, is dire.

According to the report in the first link above, "Ahmed Said Farah, UNHCR regional representative in Zambia, warned that there 'will be increased morbidity, mortality and stunted growth' among refugees should further funding not be forthcoming. 'Social problems, such as prostitution and child labour, will increase and refugees may become uncontrollable as a result of the food cuts.'"

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In Nigeria, the National Action Committee on AIDS announced that it would double the number of government centers providing ART, increasing recipients from 40,000 to 250,000. Nigeria has approximately 3.5 million people living with HIV/AIDS. The plan will be funded primarily by the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria and the US government (PEPFAR).


I also read somewhere that Nigeria plans to free some 25,000 detainees, and this IRIN article says that some of those detainees have been waiting 10 years to go to trial. This report includes details of the deplorable state of prisons there, particularly for death row inmates.

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I am reminded of my stay in Rwanda in 2001, seven years after the war and genocide there, and a conversation with a woman who was conducting dissertation research through interviews with female detainees in prisons. Most women there were in prison not for crimes related to the genocide but rather because they had sought abortions.

There were programs to distribute towels to the inmates because the prisons leaked and in the overcrowding, they stood for long periods in pools of water and were developing foot rot. Most had been in prison for seven years, since the war and genocide in 1994, and were awaiting trial. Because the incredible number of prisoners overwhelmed the national court system, the gacaca (ga-cha-cha) system was developed, a "new system of participatory justice (a reworking of the traditional community conflict resolution system)," such that prisoners' fates could be decided more quickly. In most cases, this meant that many were let off with time served plus some years of community service.

Additionally, the female prisoners told the researcher that their single biggest need was for underwear to hold their sanitary napkins, and the researcher's mother appealed to her church to raise funds for that purchase. In the link above, this need is mentioned by a Nigerian female detainee, who says, "we have to share one [sanitary napkin] between two women every month, or even every two months."