Several high-level women are calling for more international support focused on helping women and girls in Africa’s Sahel region respond to the impact of conflict, terrorism and underdevelopment.

The foreign minister of Sweden, the U.N. deputy secretary-general, and the African Union’s special envoy on women, peace and security just wrapped up a joint visit to Niger and Chad where they met with women from all areas of society.

“The countries we visited and the Sahel region are located between hope and despair,” Swedish Foreign Minister Margot Wallström told a special meeting of the U.N. Security Council on Tuesday. “Hope, because the Sahel is blessed with abundant human, cultural and natural resources. … Despair, because of chronic underdevelopment, terrorism and violent extremism, a lack of respect for human rights and the negative effects of climate change.”

The delegation said women and girls in the Sahel disproportionately suffer the consequences of these negative factors, as well as harmful cultural practices such as early marriage.

Mitigating terrorism’s toll

One of the biggest obstacles to development is the battle against Islamist radical groups such as Boko Haram.

“The response to security challenges faced by the regions that we have just visited requires investment in the development of the individual human being to prevent the radicalization and violent extremism, which has become the scourge of the Sahel,” said AU envoy Bineta Diop. 

But limited resources often mean the military’s needs take precedence over the people’s.

“Security comes at a price,” said U.N. Deputy Secretary-General Amina Mohammed. “Too often, it comes at the expense of development.”

Diop urged the international community to step up assistance.

“Everything hinges on prevention — which can be achieved through sizable investment in education, management of natural resources such as water, in job creation, in the protection of women and young girls, and in the promotion of the role and leadership of women and young girls in the quest for peace,” the AU envoy said.

While women are often victims of terrorist acts, they are also increasingly being exploited to carry them out.

“The increased use of female suicide bombers — two-thirds of suicide attacks in 2017 were carried out by women or girls — illustrates the cruel way in which terrorists seek to exploit the perceived ‘goodness’ of women to maximize harm,” Wallström said.

From victims to leaders

“We heard a universal and increasingly frustrated call by women for greater inclusion, representation and participation in all areas of society,” the U.N.’s Mohammed said.

“And we were encouraged to see that in both countries, women were coming together in networks to address the challenges they face,” the Swedish foreign minister added.

They underscored the message that women are no longer just victims, but with the right support can also be effective agents of change.

“They are intelligent and smart, and have initiatives they wish to share to respond to the challenges they are faced with,” Diop said. 
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Ivory Coast President Alassane Ouattara named a new government on Tuesday, but the key positions of finance, defense and agriculture were unchanged, a presidential spokesman said.

Ouattara dissolved the administration last week because of a row between his RDR party and its ruling coalition partner, the PDCI of Henri Konan Bedie, whose support helped the president get elected in 2011 and 2015.

Few of the 36 ministerial jobs were changed in a re-jigging that was largely cosmetic. A handful of extra jobs went to the PDCI and one key post went to an ally of national assembly head Guillaume Soro.

Soro is a former rebel leader who loosely controls armed factions of the military that have staged several mutinies in the past few years.

Prime Minister Amadou Gon Coulibaly will retain the finance portfolio, Hamed Bakayoko retains defense and Mamadou Coulibaly Sangafowa remains agriculture minister, said Patrick Achi, secretary general of the presidency.

Foreign investment and a plethora of lucrative cash crops, including 40 percent of the world’s cocoa, have enabled Ivory Coast to become one of Francophone Africa’s most prosperous economies. But political squabbling, which sometimes spills over

into ethnic conflict, periodically threatens its stability.

It was divided for nearly a decade between a government-controlled south and rebel-held north, ending in a short civil war that killed 3,000 people after a disputed poll

in 2010. Many fear that old rivalries over power and land could easily flare up again at the 2020 election.

Government spokesman and Ouattara loyalist Bruno Kone was moved to construction and urbanization minister. His replacement was Claude Isaac, a senior PDCI member. Jean Claude Kouassi, also PDCI, became the new minister of energy and mines – to replace a minister who left in April.

Sidiki Konate, a close Soro aide, was made minister of arts and culture.

The two parties had fallen out over the PDCI’s insistence on a candidate of its choosing in the 2020 election. The party last month spurned the idea of a joint ticket if this condition was not met. It was unclear whether this will resolve the spat.

Several PDCI members, including a party spokesman, did not respond to requests for comment. Julien Kouao, a political analyst in Abidjan, doubted Ouattara’s reshuffle would appease the PDCI.

“This newly formed government could deepen divisions,” Kouao said. “We are far from achieving the political cohesion necessary to resolve this.”
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Kenya’s President Uhuru Kenyatta and his Swiss counterpart Alain Berset have signed an agreement aimed at helping Kenya recover illegally acquired assets that were stashed in Swiss banks.

Kenyatta and Berset signed the agreement Monday during the Swiss president’s two-day visit to Kenya.

The agreement, known as the Framework for the Return of Assets from Corruption and Crime in Kenya, or FRACCK, creates a mechanism for Kenya to recover money swindled from state coffers by corrupt individuals and hidden in Switzerland.

The agreement is the latest move in Kenyatta’s campaign against corruption, which he launched in his second term as president.

In June, the Kenyan leader announced that all public servants would undergo a compulsory “lifestyle audit” to account for the sources of their income and assets. He said Monday that corruption will not be tolerated.

“Corruption directly threatens Kenya’s future, as it denies our children the education they deserve, it denies Kenyans the public good that their hard work has earned them, and it also degrades the quality of our government as well as erodes investor confidence,” said Kenyatta.

In most African countries, where state looting of public coffers is rife, money stolen by powerful elites end up stashed in foreign offshore accounts. According to the U.N. Economic Commission on Africa, capital flight and illicit financial flows cost the continent up to $150 billion per year.

Other African governments with newfound democracies are attempting to recover money stored in foreign accounts. In June this year, the Swiss government repatriated to Nigeria more than $1 billion stashed by former head of state Sani Abacha.

Beret said his country is willing to return assets to Kenya as well.

“We have a history and a policy of freezing and returning stolen assets and we need partners like Kenya in all those two duties. It is also through a partnership that an agreement can be reached on how to return this assets in a way that benefits the people of the country concerned,” he said.

Some of the assets targeted by the new framework include money stolen through the Anglo Leasing scandal, a government procurement facilitated corruption scandal in Kenya that was revealed in 2004. Switzerland has blocked financial assets linked to the scandal.

According to Monday’s agreement, the two countries will name a steering committee to implement the deal.
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About a quarter of the world’s children — about 535 million — are living in a country affected by conflict or disaster, the head of the U.N. children’s agency said Monday.

Henrietta Fore told a Security Council meeting Monday on children and armed conflict that it is “almost beyond comprehension” that one of every four young people are caught in that situation.

She pointed to children and young people whose lives are being shattered by conflicts, including in Yemen, Mali and South Sudan. She also cited youngsters recruited to fight, killed by a land mine or an attack on their school, and “losing hope not only in their futures, but in the futures of their countries.”

Sweden, which holds the Security Council presidency this month, organized the open meeting on the theme “Protecting Children Today Prevents Conflict Tomorrow” and sponsored a resolution unanimously adopted by the 15 members to strengthen U.N. actions to ensure the care and safety of youngsters.

“We are not doing nearly enough to protect our children,” Swedish Prime Minister Stefan Lofven, who presided at the meeting, said, stressing that “350 million children are affected by armed conflict today.”

The resolution states for the first time that children recruited or caught up in armed conflict should be treated primarily as victims, he said.

It urges all countries “to consider non-judicial measures as alternatives to prosecution and detention that focus on the rehabilitation and reintegration for children formerly associated with armed forces and armed groups.”

Lofven said the resolution also for the first time makes the point that the needs and vulnerabilities of girls and boys are different and stresses that access for all youngsters to education and physical and mental health care is essential.

It also sets out a framework to reintegrate children associated with armed groups or armed forces into society, which “places children as part of the solution, not part of the problem,” he said.   

U.S. Ambassador Nikki Haley told the council that “more than 60 percent of people in conflict-affected countries are under the age of 25.” In countries like Afghanistan, an entire generation has never lived in peace, she said.

She stressed the importance of education as “a way to recover from conflict and prevent it in the future,” warning that children who grow up uneducated, unskilled and resentful “will be prime targets for recruitment by extremists and armed groups.”

Virginia Gamba, the U.N. special representative for children and armed conflict, said she is “profoundly shocked” by the more than 21,000 violations of children’s rights in 2017 recently reported by the U.N., a significant increase from 2016.

“The majority of these despicable acts were perpetrated by armed groups although government forces and unknown armed actors played an important part,” she said. “Each and every one of them led to unspeakable suffering for children, families and entire communities.”

Gamba said the level and severity of the latest violations demonstrate the need for united action “to change the tide of history,” including by focusing on prevention and reintegration “to break cycles of violence” against children.
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The seventh anniversary of South Sudan’s independence Monday was overshadowed by the latest setback in peace talks to end the country’s civil war.

Rebel groups rejected a proposed power-sharing agreement, just hours after the government announced the deal had been accepted by both sides. 

President Salva Kiir and his opponents have been unable to negotiate a lasting peace agreement despite heavy pressure from South Sudan’s neighbors and the “troika” countries of the United States, United Kingdom and Norway.

South Sudanese refugees residing in Arua, Uganda, praised the efforts of regional leaders to push the country’s warring parties toward a lasting peace deal, but some doubt their own leaders’ sincerity.

One of the doubters is Gie Rose, a refugee who is living in Arua District’s Imvepi settlement.

“They sat together, they discussed about peace. When they come together to Juba, they sit there and also they start fighting. So we cannot say they are going to have peace. We don’t think so,” Rose told VOA’s South Sudan in Focus.

Yengi Chaplain, another refugee at Imvepi, believes South Sudan’s leaders are simply caving in to pressure from the region and international community, but are not sincere about achieving peace.

“The thing should come from the heart, not being forced to do it. If it is something that is forced by other people, then even though I shake hands with you, still in my heart, I still have that pain,” Chaplain told VOA.

South Sudanese refugee Bidal Jeffers at Arua’s Rhino settlement said the previous peace talks placed too much emphasis on power sharing among the rival leaders and not enough on tending to the basic needs of citizens.

“Put the people first and what the people need. Let them forget about their differences in power struggles,” Jeffers said.

As South Sudan commemorates its independence day, some refugees at Imvepi said they have nothing to celebrate, as painful memories continue to haunt them.

“Celebration comes when we have happiness and happiness is when there is peace and you are at your home,” refugee Bidal Enoch said.

Pompeo: Stop the bloodshed

U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo released a statement Monday, saying, “This should be a day of celebration marking South Sudan’s emergence as an independent state and the beginning of a new era of greater peace.” But instead, he added, “the conflict continues to impose immense suffering on South Sudan’s diverse citizens.” 

Pompeo called on the South Sudan government “and all parties to the conflict to immediately stop the bloodshed” and resolve their differences through dialogue that includes “a broad spectrum of society.” He said only when the fighting stops “can South Sudan begin on a path towards inclusive economic growth and genuine reconciliation.”

Pompeo said the United States remains a friend of the South Sudanese people and will work with “responsible leaders willing to deliver the peace, opportunity, and justice” South Sudanese have long awaited.

Hope in negotiation

A South Sudanese political analyst sees hope in the fact that President Kiir and rebel leader Riek Machar are at least discussing a power-sharing proposal. 

“The fact that the leaders of the warring parties went to Uganda then made a breakthrough that they can form a government of national unity and that Dr. Riek can come back and be the first vice president, that is the breakthrough of Entebbe,” said James Okuk, a political science lecturer at Juba University.

Aside from reinstating Machar as “first vice president,” the proposal calls for a total of four vice presidents, including a woman, and would expand the number of ministers and members of parliament. 

SPLM-In Opposition spokesman Mabior Grang said Monday that the SPLM-IO is “not negotiating for positions, but wants to address the root cause of the conflict in South Sudan,” and that his group rejects the proposal because “it only focuses on the accommodation of politicians.”
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