Rheumatology diseases were previously considered to be rare in Africa but that is changing, as the number of cases is on the rise. Health experts attribute the trend to changing lifestyles on the continent. Juma Majanga reports from Nairobi, Kenya. (Camera and video editing: Jimmy Makhulo)
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Category: Africa
Africa news. Africa is highly biodiverse, it is the continent with the largest number of megafauna species, as it was least affected by the extinction of the Pleistocene megafauna. However, Africa also is heavily affected by a wide range of environmental issues, including desertification, deforestation, water scarcity, and pollution
Mali’s Army Says Kidal Recaptured from Rebels
Mali’s army said Tuesday it has retaken the northern city of Kidal from rebels, after a raid that left many insurgents dead.
The reported capture, not confirmed by independent observers, would mark a symbolic victory for Mali’s army as they have been virtually absent from the city, with ethnic Tuareg rebels controlling much of the northern part of the country.
“Today, our armed and security forces have taken over Kidal. Our mission is not complete,” Mali’s junta leader, President Assimi Goita, said on X. “I recall it consists of recovering and securing the integrity of the territory, without any exclusion, in accordance with the resolution of the [U.N.] security council.”
Mali’s army said it called for peace in the town of about 25,000 and told its residents to obey soldiers.
Rebel leaders expecting a military offensive cut phone lines in Kidal, and there has been difficulty in contacting the remote town. Insurgents have not commented on the reported takeover.
The Kidal region has long frustrated the Mali government, after the army suffered several defeats there from 2012 to 2014, and has been unable to regain much of a foothold in the region since.
Mali has faced much violence since 2012 when a coup in Bamako allowed insurgents to seized the northern half of the country.
The U.N. brokered a peace deal between the rebels and Mali’s government in 2015, though Islamist militants connected al-Qaida and Islamic State went on to kill thousands of civilians.
Mali’s military seized power in a 2020 coup, ordering the U.N. peacekeepers to leave the country, leading to fighting between the rebels and military over territories vacated by the U.N.
Some information in this report was taken from Agence France Presse and Reuters
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Young Africans Hope to Address Climate Challenges Through Training Program
Fifty young innovators and leaders from 19 African countries attended a three-week leadership and professional development training program in Ghana’s capital, Accra. Sponsored by the U.S. government, the Young African Leaders Initiative, or YALI, program challenges them to find technology-focused social and business solutions to climate challenges. Isaac Kaledzi has more from Accra.
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Increase in Use of Land Mines Triggers Rise in Civilian Casualties in Ukraine, Myanmar
The use of anti-personnel land mines by Russia and Myanmar triggered a surge in the number of civilian casualties in Ukraine and Myanmar last year, according to a new report by a land-mine monitor.
The report, published by the International Campaign to Ban Landmines, found that Russia, which is not party to the Mine Ban Treaty, “used antipersonnel mines extensively in Ukraine since its all-out invasion of the country in February 2022.”
The report also found evidence that Ukraine, which is a party to the Mine Ban Treaty, used anti-personnel mines in and around the city of Izium, in Kharkiv oblast, in 2022 when the city was under Russian control.
“This has created an unprecedented situation in which a country that is not party to the Mine Ban Treaty is using the weapon on the territory of a [treaty member],” said Mark Hiznay, associate arms director at Human Rights Watch and an editor of Landmine Monitor 2023. “In the 20-plus years [since the Mine Ban Treaty was adopted], this has never occurred before.”
Ukraine has previously said it would look into allegations in a Human Rights Watch report earlier this year detailing “numerous cases” in which Ukrainian forces deployed banned anti-personnel mines.
The International Campaign to Ban Landmines, which is a global coalition of nongovernmental organizations chaired by Human Rights Watch, recorded 4,710 injuries and deaths in 2022, down from 5,544 casualties in the previous year.
“But there were significant increases in some countries, primarily Ukraine,” said Loren Persi, Landmine Monitor 2023 impact team lead. “In Ukraine, the number of civilian casualties recorded increased 10-fold from around 60 in 2021 to around 600 in 2022.”
The Monitor report says civilians accounted for 85% of casualties from land mines and exploded remnants of war last year, roughly half of them children. The highest number of casualties, 834, was recorded in Syria, followed by Ukraine with 608 casualties, and Yemen and Myanmar, each of which recorded more than 500 casualties in 2022.
Hiznay said that Russia began using landmines in 2014 in support of pro-Russian separatist forces in the contested Donbas region of eastern Ukraine.
“Russia has made extensive use of land mines in places like Afghanistan and Chechnya,” he said. “I think they have supplied land mines to 35, 38 different countries over the years.
“Another factor we are noticing is wherever Wagner goes, land mines go,” he said, referring to the Moscow-financed Wagner Group militia. “We do not think that is a coincidence, particularly in Libya, where several new types of land mines were found and documented.”
Myanmar, he said, has been using anti-personnel land mines since 1999, but the magnitude and scope of the contamination is now different.
“It is just bigger,” he said. “You have more use by the government forces and more use by various nonstate armed groups. So, it is a lingering, festering problem that has just got worse in the past reporting period.”
The Monitor report indicates land mines were also used during the reporting period by nonstate armed groups in Colombia, India, Myanmar, Thailand and Tunisia, as well as in eight treaty members in the Sahel region.
Currently 164 countries have signed onto the Mine Ban Treaty, which prohibits the use, stockpiling, production and transfer of anti-personnel mines.
The Monitor says that 30 states who are parties to the treaty have cleared all mined areas from their territory since the treaty came into force in 1999, leaving 60 countries and other areas contaminated. In addition, it notes that 22 states that are not party to the treaty and five other areas remain infested with these lethal weapons.
De-mining activists warn that the number of victims will continue to grow for as long as land mines remain in the ground. They say health care and physical rehabilitation services are seriously underfunded and unable to assist the many people who are disabled by these weapons, including in countries such as Afghanistan, Sudan, Ukraine and Yemen.
“Alarming increases in the number of civilians killed and injured by recently placed mines in several countries further demonstrate the dire need for increased resources to ensure all the rights of the victims are addressed,” said Persi.
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Don’t ‘Listen to Naysayers’ Says Only Female Ambulance Driver in Kenya’s Refugee Camp
Batula Ali has defied gender norms and societal expectations to become the only woman ambulance driver in Kenya’s largest refugee camp, Dadaab. Ahmed Hussein met Ali and has this report from Garissa County, Kenya
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Internal Documents Show the World Health Organization Paid Sexual Abuse Victims in Congo $250 Each
Earlier this year, the doctor who leads the World Health Organization’s efforts to prevent sexual abuse traveled to Congo to address the biggest known sex scandal in the U.N. health agency’s history, the abuse of well over 100 local women by staffers and others during a deadly Ebola outbreak.
According to an internal WHO report from Dr. Gaya Gamhewage’s trip in March, one of the abused women she met gave birth to a baby with “a malformation that required special medical treatment,” meaning even more costs for the young mother in one of the world’s poorest countries.
To help victims like her, the WHO has paid $250 each to at least 104 women in Congo who say they were sexually abused or exploited by officials working to stop Ebola. That amount per victim is less than a single day’s expenses for some U.N. officials working in the Congolese capital — and $19 more than what Gamhewage received per day during her three-day visit — according to internal documents obtained by The Associated Press.
The amount covers typical living expenses for less than four months in a country where, the WHO documents noted, many people survive on less than $2.15 a day.
The payments to women didn’t come freely. To receive the cash, they were required to complete training courses intended to help them start “income-generating activities.”
The payments appear to try to circumvent the U.N.’s stated policy that it doesn’t pay reparations by including the money in what it calls a “complete package” of support.
Many Congolese women who were sexually abused have still received nothing. WHO said in a confidential document last month that about a third of the known victims were “impossible to locate.” The WHO said nearly a dozen women declined its offer.
The total of $26,000 that WHO has provided to the victims equals about 1% of the $2 million, WHO-created “survivor assistance fund” for victims of sexual misconduct, primarily in Congo.
In interviews, recipients told the AP the money they received was hardly enough, but they wanted justice even more.
Paula Donovan, who co-directs the Code Blue campaign to eliminate what it calls impunity for sexual misconduct in the U.N., described the WHO payments to victims of sexual abuse and exploitation as “perverse.”
“It’s not unheard of for the U.N. to give people seed money so they can boost their livelihoods, but to mesh that with compensation for a sexual assault, or a crime that results in the birth of a baby, is unthinkable,” she said.
Requiring the women to attend training before receiving the cash set uncomfortable conditions for victims of wrongdoing seeking help, Donovan added.
The two women who met with Gamhewage told her that what they most wanted was for the “perpetrators to be brought to account so they could not harm anyone else,” the WHO documents said. The women were not named.
“There is nothing we can do to make up for (sexual abuse and exploitation),” Gamhewage told the AP in an interview.
The WHO told the AP that criteria to determine its “victim survivor package” included the cost of food in Congo and “global guidance on not dispensing more cash than what would be reasonable for the community, in order to not expose recipients to further harm.” Gamhewage said the WHO was following recommendations set by experts at local charities and other U.N. agencies.
“Obviously, we haven’t done enough,” Gamhewage said. She added the WHO would ask survivors directly what further support they wanted.
The WHO has also helped defray medical costs for 17 children born as a result of sexual exploitation and abuse, she said.
At least one woman who said she was sexually exploited and impregnated by a WHO doctor negotiated compensation that agency officials signed off on, including a plot of land and health care. The doctor also agreed to pay $100 a month until the baby was born in a deal “to protect the integrity and reputation of WHO.”
But in interviews with the AP, other women who say they were sexually exploited by WHO staff asserted the agency hasn’t done enough.
Alphonsine, 34, said she was pressured into having sex with a WHO official in exchange for a job as an infection control worker with the Ebola response team in the eastern Congo city of Beni, an epicenter of the 2018-2020 outbreak. Like other women, she did not share her last name for fear of reprisals.
Alphonsine confirmed that she had received $250 from the WHO, but the agency told her she had to take a baking course to obtain it.
“The money helped at the time, but it wasn’t enough,” Alphonsine said. She said she later went bankrupt and would have preferred to receive a plot of land and enough money to start her own business.
For a visiting WHO staffer working in Congo, the standard daily allowance ranges from about $144 to $480. Gamhewage received $231 a day during her three-day trip to the Congolese capital Kinshasa, according to an internal travel claim.
The internal documents show that staff costs take up more than half of the $1.5 million the WHO allotted toward the prevention of sexual misconduct in Congo for 2022-2023, or $821,856. Another 12% goes to prevention activities and 35%, or $535,000, is for “victim support,” which Gamhewage said includes legal assistance, transportation and psychological support. That budget is separate from the $2 million survivors’ assistance fund, which assists victims globally.
The WHO’s Congo office has a total allocated budget of about $174 million, and its biggest funder is the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
The U.N. health agency continues to struggle with holding perpetrators of sexual abuse and exploitation to account in Congo. A WHO-commissioned panel found at least 83 perpetrators during the Ebola response, including at least 21 WHO staffers. The youngest known victim was 13.
In May 2021, an AP investigation revealed that senior WHO management was told of sexual exploitation during the agency’s efforts to curb Ebola even as the abuse was happening but did little to stop it. No senior managers, including some who were aware of the abuse during the outbreak, were fired.
After years of pressure from Congolese authorities, the WHO internal documents note it has shared information with them about 16 alleged perpetrators of sexual abuse and exploitation who were linked to the WHO during the Ebola outbreak.
But the WHO hasn’t done enough to discipline its people, said another Congolese woman who said she was coerced into having sex with a staffer to get a job during the outbreak. She, too, received $250 from the WHO after taking a baking course.
“They promised to show us evidence this has been taken care of, but there has been no follow-up,” said Denise, 31.
The WHO has said five staffers have been dismissed for sexual misconduct since 2021.
But in Congo, deep distrust remains.
Audia, 24, told the AP she was impregnated when a WHO official forced her to have sex to get a job during the outbreak. She now has a 5-year-old daughter as a result and received a “really insufficient” $250 from WHO after taking courses in tailoring and baking.
She worries about what might happen in a future health crisis in conflict-hit eastern Congo, where poor infrastructure and resources mean any emergency response relies heavily on outside help from the WHO and others.
“I can’t put my trust in (WHO) anymore,” she said. “When they abandon you in such difficulties and leave you without doing anything, it’s irresponsible.”
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Ethiopia’s Oromo Rebels in Tanzania for Peace Talks
Rebels from Ethiopia’s Oromiya region said Monday they were in Tanzania for a second round of talks with the Ethiopian government to try to end decades of fighting.
The negotiations come more than six months after a first round of discussions between the Oromo Liberation Army (OLA) and Ethiopia’s government ended without an agreement.
The conflict in recent years has killed hundreds of people and displaced tens of thousands in Ethiopia’s most populous region.
“We remain committed to finding a peaceful political settlement,” the OLA said in its statement.
The OLA said it had delayed announcing the negotiations to make sure its team could get safely from what it called the front lines in Oromiya to the venue.
An official close to the mediators, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said the talks started last week in Tanzania’s commercial capital, Dar es Salaam, and is being facilitated by the regional Africa group IGAD.
Ethiopia’s government did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The OLA is an outlawed splinter group of the Oromo Liberation Front, a formerly banned opposition party that returned from exile after Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed — himself an Oromo — took office in 2018.
Oromiya, which surrounds Addis Ababa, the capital, is home to Ethiopia’s largest ethnic Oromo group and more than a third of the country’s 110 million people.
The talks come as conflict rages on another fault line in Ethiopia, with fighting between the army and the Fano militia group in the medieval holy city of Lalibela last week, residents told Reuters. The government said the area was peaceful.
While Fano has no formal command structure, the part-time militia in northern Amhara region has been battling the army since late July, emerging as the biggest security challenge to Abiy since a war ended in the northern Tigray region a year ago.
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Nations to Negotiate Terms of Plastics Treaty in Nairobi
The latest negotiations toward a global treaty to combat plastic pollution open in Nairobi on Monday, with tensions expected as nations tussle over what should be included in the pact.
Some 175 countries agreed last year to conclude by 2024 a U.N. treaty to combat the plastic blighting oceans, floating in the atmosphere, and infiltrating the bodies of animals and humans.
While there is broad consensus that a treaty is needed, there are very different opinions about what should be in it.
Negotiators have met twice already but the Nov. 13-19 talks are the first to consider a draft text of the treaty published in September and the policy options it contains.
Around 60 so-called “high ambition” nations have called for binding rules to reduce the use and production of plastic, which is made from fossil fuels, a measure supported by many environment groups.
It is not a position shared by many plastic-producing economies, including the United States, which have long preferred to focus on recycling, innovation and better waste management.
The draft presenting the various ways forward will form the basis for the high-stakes deliberations at the U.N. Environment Program headquarters in Nairobi.
With more than 2,000 delegates registered, and advocates from environment and plastic groups also in the room, the negotiations are expected to become heated as the details are hammered out.
Hundreds of climate campaigners, waving placards reading “Plastic crisis = climate crisis,” on Saturday marched in Nairobi calling for the talks to focus on cutting the amount of plastic produced.
The meeting to debate the future of plastic comes just before crucial climate talks in the oil-rich United Arab Emirates later this month, where discussions over fossil fuels and their planet-heating emissions are due to dominate the agenda.
As in the U.N. negotiations on climate and biodiversity, financing is a key point of tension in the plastic talks.
Rich economies have historically polluted more — and for years exported trash for recycling to poorer nations, where it often winds up in the environment.
Some developing nations are concerned about rules that might place too great a burden on their economies.
Environment groups say the strength of the treaty depends on whether governments commit to capping and phasing down plastic production.
Plastic production has doubled in 20 years and in 2019, a total of 460 million tons of the stuff was made, according to the OECD.
Despite growing awareness of the problem surrounding plastic, on current trends, production could triple again by 2060 without action.
Around two-thirds of plastic waste is discarded after being used only once or a few times, and less than 10 percent is recycled, with millions of tons dumped in the environment or improperly burned.
The Nairobi meeting is the third of five sessions in a fast-tracked process aiming to conclude negotiations next year so the treaty can be adopted by mid-2025.
Campaigners say delegates in Nairobi must make considerable headway to remain on course and warned against time-consuming debates over procedural matters that caused friction at the last talks in Paris in June.
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France’s Poorest Island is Parched Due to Drought, Underinvestment
Drop by disappearing drop, water is an ever more precious resource on Mayotte, the poorest place in the European Union. Taps flow just one day out of three in this French territory off Africa’s eastern coast, because of a drawn-out drought compounded by years of underinvestment and water mismanagement.
Diseases like cholera and typhoid are on the rebound, and the French army recently intervened to distribute water and quell tensions over supplies. The crisis is a wakeup call to the French government about the challenges and cost of managing human-caused climate change across France’s far-flung territories.
Racha Mousdikoudine, a 38-year-old mother of two living in Labatoir, washes dishes with bottled water, when she can get it. When the water taps run, she says, “I have to choose between taking a shower or preserving my water supply.”
“This shortage will be global in a few years. This is an opportunity for all French people to stand in solidarity with us. To be with us, to find solutions and make visible the situation happening in Mayotte,” she said. “Because this can happen in all French departments.”
She is helping coordinate a protest movement called “Mayotte is Thirsty” that is demanding accountability for alleged embezzling, leaks and lack of investment in sustainable water supplies. At one recent protest, residents sang, shouted and banged empty plastic bottles as they marched into the Mayotte water management company.
The government is pinning its hopes on the upcoming rainy season, though residents say it won’t be enough to fix the deep-seated water problems. On a crisis visit last week, France’s minister for overseas territories thanked the people of Mayotte for “accepting the unacceptable.”
The water taps determine the rhythm of life in Mayotte, an island territory of about 350,000 people northwest of Madagascar.
Once every three days, water flows between 4 p.m. and 10 a.m. Families rush to prepare food, wash dishes, clean their homes and anything else involving water. Those living in Mayotte’s poorer neighborhoods without plumbing line up at public taps with paint buckets, plastic jerrycans, reused bottles — anything to collect water.
Then for 48 hours, they’re dry again.
“It is important to keep talking with the authorities, but we are not going to sit idly by,” said Mousdikoudine. “If we stay at home, politicians will still say that the population is resilient, that we can manage this situation. But we cannot do it, lives are at stake, our physical and mental health, as well as our children’s lives.”
The most disadvantaged communities are hit the hardest by the water crisis in Mayotte, where the population is majority Black and many are struggling migrants from neighboring Comoros facing a new government crackdown.
Previously, water was among Mayotte’s rare riches. The mountainous and forested district of Combani, in central Mayotte, is full of springs and interspersed with rivers. The reservoirs of Combani, and Dzoumogne further north, provide 80% of the water distributed on the island.
Now the bare banks of the reservoir at Combani are cracked by the sun. Its capacity is 1.75 million cubic meters, but it now stands only 10% full. The Dzoumogne reservoir is at 6.5% capacity.
Mayotte is in its sixth year of drought, and just had its driest year since 1997, according to the national weather service. Scientists say human-induced climate change has made drought more frequent and extreme in some parts of the world.
But even without drought, Mayotte’s water system wasn’t capable of fulfilling local needs.
Overseas Affairs Minister Philippe Vigier said during a visit last week that 850 leaks have been spotted since September. Residents regularly film facilities of water network management company Smae, a subsidiary of big French utility Vinci, spewing water into the void and share them online.
And only one new water borehole, delivering a few hundred cubic meters per day, has been put into service so far as part of an ambitious “Marshall Plan” for water announced in September.
The local water union blames the water rationing on lack of production capacity, not lack of water.
The central government is promising emergency work on drilling for new springs, the renovation of a desalination plant, and extending state distribution of bottled water to all residents and not just the most vulnerable.
Residents worry it won’t come fast enough, and have heard such promises before. The desalination plant has already faced years of delays, missed deadlines and allegations of pocketed subsidies. It doesn’t have to be this way.
In the neighboring Comoros, with a similar volcanic terrain and wet and dry seasons, the U.N. Development Program has a $60 million water management project aimed at better capturing rainwater and tracking usage.
While Comoros is one of the world’s poorest countries, France is one of the world’s richest and shouldn’t need U.N. aid. But Mayotte’s water crisis underlines inequalities and often awkward relationships between the central government in Paris and former colonies that remain part of France.
On Mayotte, richer residents invest in personal water tanks at a cost of 1,600 euros ($1,700) for each installation, to ensure water flows continuously.
But most of the Mayotte population lives below the French poverty line and must heed the local government’s repeated messages that “every drop counts.” With 50% living on less than 160 euros ($170) per month, according to state statistics agency Insee, 5.50-euro ($5.90) packs of bottled water imported from mainland France are not an option for most.
Instead, they drink brackish water or nothing. Hunger, too, is worsening, as drought cuts into crop production.
Local medics cite a rise in acute gastroenteritis — 20 patients in intensive care recorded for this reason in one month — as well as typhoid and cholera.
But Ben Issa Ousseni, president of the departmental council of Mayotte, told local broadcaster Mayotte 1ère that he believes “the crisis is still ahead of us.”
He does not rule out the possibility of a total disruption of supply in homes.
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EU Condemns Darfur Violence, Warns of ‘Another Genocide’
The European Union (EU) condemned on Sunday an escalation of violence in Sudan’s Darfur region, warning of the danger of “another genocide” after conflict there between 2003-2008 killed some 300,000 people and displaced more than 2 million.
A war since April between Sudan’s regular army and Rapid Support Forces (RSF) paramilitary has destabilised the western region and reignited long-simmering feuds there.
The EU’s chief diplomat Josep Borrell cited in a statement witness reports that more than 1,000 members of the Masalit community were killed in Ardamta, West Darfur, in just over two days during attacks by the RSF and affiliated militias.
“These latest atrocities are seemingly part of a wider ethnic cleansing campaign conducted by the RSF with the aim to eradicate the non-Arab Masalit community from West Darfur, and comes on top of the first wave of large violence in June,” Borrell said.
“The international community cannot turn a blind eye on what is happening in Darfur and allow another genocide to happen in this region.”
On Thursday, the International Organization for Migration (IOM) said approximately 700 people were reportedly killed in West Darfur after clashes between the Sudanese army and RSF in El Geneina on Nov. 4 and 5.
The RSF said last week it had taken control of the army headquarters in West Darfur’s capital of El Geneina.
Reuters has reported that between April and June this year, the RSF and allied Arab militias conducted weeks of systematic attacks targeting the Masalit, El Geneina’s majority tribe, as war flared with Sudan’s army.
In public comments, Arab tribal leaders have denied engaging in ethnic cleansing in El Geneina, and the RSF has previously said it was not involved in what it called tribal conflict.
your ad hereFighting Rages in Mali Between Army and Rebels in Kidal
Fighting resumed Sunday between the Malian army and Tuareg separatist and rebel groups in the country’s northern region, military officers and elected officials said.
Since seizing power in a coup in 2020, the African country’s military rulers have made a priority of re-establishing sovereignty over all regions and Kidal could become a key battleground.
One military officer told AFP that the Mali army has “resumed operations on the ground to secure the entire national territory.”
A local elected official, also speaking under the condition of anonymity, said that “fighting has resumed near Kidal” and locals could “hear sounds of rockets.”
Army planes were seen flying towards Kidal on Sunday, another official said.
Fighting had begun a day earlier as the army closed in on the area, after announcing Thursday that it was starting “strategic movements aimed at securing and eradicating all terrorist threats in the Kidal region.”
A large military convoy stationed since early October at Anefis, some 110 kilometers (68 miles) to the south, set off towards Kidal.
Military, political and rebel sources all reported the clashes. But details such as a casualty toll or tactics involved could not be confirmed independently in the remote region.
The rebels in Kidal cut telephone links on Friday in anticipation of an army offensive following several days of airstrikes.
Some 25,000 people live in the Kidal desert area, a key site on the road to Algeria and a historic hotbed of insurrection.
Residents have been braced for a confrontation since the Tuareg rebellion took up arms again in August.
The Tuaregs previously launched an insurgency in 2012, inflicting humiliating defeats on the army before agreeing to a ceasefire in 2014 and a peace deal in 2015.
The uprising in 2012 coincided with insurgencies by radical Islamist groups who have never stopped fighting Bamako, plunging Mali into a political, security and humanitarian crisis that has spread to neighboring Burkina Faso and Niger.
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Six Killed in East DR Congo after Soldiers, Pro-State Militants Clash
At least six people have been killed after a dispute between soldiers and pro-government militants in volatile eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, several sources said on Sunday.
The incident occurred on Saturday afternoon in the village of Mugerwa, about 15 kilometers (nine miles) from the city of Goma, in circumstances that remain unclear.
One security official, who requested anonymity, said that soldiers had a quarrel with so-called Wazalendo militiamen which ended in an exchange of fire.
“They shot at each other in this misunderstanding and there are six dead and nine wounded,” the security official said.
The incident comes after clashes with M23 rebels erupted last month, breaking several months of relative calm in the region.
A Tutsi-led group, the M23 has seized swathes of territory since launching an offensive in late 2021, driving over one million people from their homes.
The current fighting pits the M23 rebels on the one hand against the Congolese army and loyal militias — known locally as ‘Wazalendo’ — on the other.
Details of the recent shoot-out between the soldiers and Wazalendo fighters are hazy.
Mambo Kawaya, a civil-society leader near Goma, told AFP that six people had been killed and ten wounded.
Adolphe Muhire, a member of the DRC’s civil protection service near Goma, said that one soldier, one policeman and four civilians had been killed.
“The toll is still provisional,” he said.
Three other sources gave similar death tolls, although they cited different figures for the number of people injured in the incident.
AFP was unable to independently confirm the details of the attack.
A spokesman for the Congolese army in Goma was not immediately available for comment.
Militias have plagued eastern DRC for decades, a legacy of regional wars that flared in the 1990s and 2000s.
Several Western countries, including the United States and France have concluded that Rwanda backs the M23. Kigali denies the claim.
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Fighting Erupts as Mali Army Closes on Tuareg Rebel Town
Mali’s army drove closer Saturday to the town of Kidal clashing with Tuareg separatist and rebel groups in what could signal the start of fighting for the strategically important northern crossroads.
Since seizing power in a coup in 2020 the African country’s military rulers have made a priority of reestablishing sovereignty over all regions and Kidal could become a key battleground.
Military, political and rebel sources all reported the clashes.
But details such as a casualty toll or tactics involved could not be confirmed independently in the remote region.
The rebels in Kidal cut telephone links Friday in anticipation of an army offensive following several days of airstrikes.
The Permanent Strategic Framework (CSP), an alliance of predominantly Tuareg armed groups said it had been involved in “vigorous combat” against a convoy of army soldiers and mercenaries from Russia’s Wagner group.
The CSP post on social media said “considerable losses” had been inflicted on the convoy which had retreated.
However, the army said on social media networks that it had “broken the defensive line” set up by the rebels near Kidal, and assured that it was continuing its advance, which “will be carried out successfully.”
Earlier, an army officer told AFP: “We are a few dozen kilometers from Kidal.
“We are continuing our progress to secure the whole territory,” he said, on the condition of anonymity.
Two local elected representatives, also speaking anonymously because of the sensitivity of the topic, said there was fighting near Kidal.
A lot of shooting
“Fighting has started — there’s a lot of shooting,” one said, adding that large numbers of Wagner fighters, which the ruling junta called in two years ago, were present.
Another local official said “civilians are fleeing the city. We have to expect a lengthy conflict.”
Some 25,000 people live in the Kidal desert area, a key site on the road to Algeria and a historic hotbed of insurrection.
The army had Thursday announced the start of what it termed “strategic movements aimed at securing and eradicating all terrorist threats in the Kidal region.”
A large military convoy stationed since early October at Anefis, some 110 kilometers to the south, set off toward Kidal.
Tuareg rebels took up arms again in August and the population have since braced for a confrontation.
The Tuaregs previously launched an insurgency in 2012, inflicting humiliating defeats on the army before agreeing to a cease-fire in 2014 and a peace deal in 2015.
The uprising in 2012 coincided with insurgencies by radical Islamist groups who have never stopped fighting Bamako, plunging Mali into a political, security and humanitarian crisis that has spread to neighboring Burkina Faso and Niger.
The withdrawal of a U.N. peacekeeping mission since the army took power has added to instability.
One officer spoke Saturday of fighting near to a Kidal camp which the U.N. force recently vacated.
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Morocco Debates Rebuilding From September Quake That Killed Thousands
When a historic earthquake struck Morocco in September, Ahmed Aazab tightly hugged his wife and four children as their home’s brick walls tumbled around them.
The roof collapsed, shattering clay pots in the kitchen and trapping picture frames and homework assignments beneath rubble. When the ground finally stopped shaking, the construction worker shepherded his five loved ones to a park. Then he rescued his father, mother and aunt, who were trapped in his childhood home nearby.
For centuries, families in towns like Moulay Brahim in Morocco’s High Atlas Mountains constructed their homes of stone and bricks, which they made by tightly ramming handfuls of muddy earth into molds.
Now they face the daunting task of rebuilding from the quake, and villagers and architects are debating just how.
From Mexico to Hawaii, the question of rebuilding communities without changing them for the worse arises in the aftermath of virtually all natural disasters. In Morocco, King Mohammed VI’s cabinet pledged in a statement the week after the quake to rebuild “in harmony with heritage and architectural features.”
More than 3,000 people died in September’s earthquake in Morocco, and some 1,000 villages were damaged. The country plans to spend $11.7 billion on post-earthquake reconstruction over the next five years — equivalent to roughly 8.5% of its annual GDP. Morocco plans to allocate residents cash relief for necessities, with an additional $13,600 to rebuild households that were destroyed and $7,800 for those that were partially destroyed.
Because of the number of earthquakes in Morocco, there’s widespread agreement among villagers and architects that safety should be a top priority. That’s created a drive for modern building materials and an ambivalence toward the government’s stated commitment to rebuild in line with Morocco’s cultural and architectural heritage.
In some places, local officials are awaiting word from higher authorities and have stopped those who have tried to start building. That’s sowed resentment as the weather grows colder, laid-off miner Ait Brahim said in Anerni, a pastoral mountainside village where 36 people died.
Many say they hope to build with the concrete and cinderblocks commonly used in larger Moroccan cities, rather than the traditional earthen bricks they suspect may have compounded their misfortune.
“Everyone goes for modern. The traditional ways, no one cares about it,” Ait Brahim said.
But a subset of architects and engineers is pushing back against the idea that bricks made from earth are more vulnerable to damage.
Mohammed Hamdouni Alami, a professor at Rabat’s National School of Architecture, said the idea that newer materials such as concrete are signs of higher social class has taken hold as parts of Morocco experienced rapid development.
“People see that the government is building all over the country using concrete and think it’s because it’s better and safer. They ask, ‘Why should we build with materials that are for the poor, that are unsafe and primitive?’ ” he said.
But Hamdouni Alami said that bricks of earth, often called adobe in Spain and the Americas, have long been used in wealthier earthquake-prone regions such as California. Some of Morocco’s most famous buildings constructed with them — including Marrakech’s 16th century El Badi Palace — have survived the test of time.
“It’s not an issue of materials, it’s an issue of techniques,” he said.
Kit Miyamoto, a Japanese-American structural engineer, led a team that met with masons and surveyed damage after the earthquake and reached a similar conclusion. His team’s report said it found “no significant difference in the seismic performance of either traditional or modern construction systems.” It concluded that poorly constructed homes of a combination of concrete and earthen materials fared worst in the earthquake.
“A common belief in many post-earthquake affected communities worldwide is that old traditional construction systems must be ‘bad and weak,’ while new modern techniques such as steel and concrete are inherently ‘better,’” the team wrote in its October report.
“Poor construction quality is the primary cause of failure, not modern versus traditional material systems.”
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Somalia Fears Worst Humanitarian Catastrophe in 30 Years
Somalia’s government warns that flooding which has uprooted hundreds of thousands of people may turn into the country’s worst humanitarian disaster in decades, unless Somalis and the international community act quickly.
“The situation is dire, and the extent of the human impact of the floods is rearing its ugly face. We are calling for the Somalis in the diaspora and the international community to urgently respond to the situation before it turns into bigger humanitarian catastrophe,” the head of the National Disaster Management Agency, Mohamed Mo’alim Abdulle told VOA Somali on Thursday.
He said the flooding has killed 29 people and forced more than 300,000 to flee their homes in the southern and central regions of Somalia.
Worst-hit regions
Somali authorities say the worst-hit areas are in the Southwest and Jubbaland states.
In Baidoa, about 225 kilometers southwest of Mogadishu, residents continue to stay in the open as the flooding water left their homes completely under water.
“We have been spending [our time] outside in the open for a week. We have no shelter, food and all our belongings and our house are under water,” Madey Osman, a father of seven, told VOA Somali.
“I have nowhere to go; there is no guarantee that I will receive aid if I run to another place. We have decided to wait our fate here,” said Markabo Malaq, a single mother raising eight children.
Abdulkadir Ali Mohamed, chairperson of the regional state agency for internally displaced people affairs, said the flooding has also affected IDP camps in the outskirts of the town, which was already hosting hundreds of people displaced by an Islamist insurgency and the worst drought in the country in four decades.
“We have seen traumatized families fleeing for a third time with no hope on the horizon,” said Mohamed.
Mohamed Hussien Hassan, former regional justice minister, is concerned the circumstances will lead to the spread of diseases or worse.
“When people have no shelters, and the drinking water and the entire environment is contaminated with human waste from the local poor sewage system and the latrines, you only expect the spread of diseases like cholera and malaria,” said Hassan.
“When people cannot work or harvest, you only expect hunger and malnutrition which can eventually degenerate into famine,” he added. “We fear that this situation turns into shocking humanitarian disaster.”
Baidoa was once nicknamed “the City of Death.” It earned the title in 1992 when war and famine claimed the lives of more than 220,000 people, many left dying in the streets.
The city is also known for the 1993 visit by former U.S. President George H.W. Bush, who committed the U.S. military to a mission that saved thousands of innocents from death during Operation Restore Hope.
Meanwhile, according to local officials, in the southern Somali state of Jubbaland, there is no access to tens of thousands of families trapped by flood waters.
“The flooding has destroyed bridges and roads and cut the entire access to more than 70,000 families. There is a big fear of [a] humanitarian catastrophe,” the president of the state, Ahmed Mohamed Islam, better known as “Madobe,” warned.
“Several nights of heavy rainfall compounded major flooding in Bardhere and Luuq, towns in the Gedo region, leaving hundreds of thousands of people completely under water,” said Gedo Deputy Governor Mohamed Hussein Al-Qadi.
“Most of the areas are only accessible with boats, and we have no capacity to airlift aid or carry out rescue mission[s], which means the needy, trapped families will remain helpless, until the land dries and they are able to move [on] their own,” said Al-Qadi.
Large parts of both the Southwest and Jubbaland states are under control of al-Shabab militants, which makes it difficult for the government and aid agencies to reach those in need.
On Thursday, heavy floods swept the streets of the country’s capital, Mogadishu. Photos and videos shared on social media showed women, children, old people, and even motorized three-wheeled rickshaws swept away by floodwaters.
“In more than 14 years, I have lived in Mogadishu and through history; I have never seen or heard of floods of such extent in Mogadishu,” Osman Mohamud, one of the city’s residents told VOA.
The United Nations has described the flooding in Somalia and neighboring countries as a “once-in-a-century event.”
Around 1.6 million people in Somalia could be affected by the heavy seasonal downpours, which have worsened by the combined impact of two climate phenomena, El Niño and the Indian Ocean Dipole, the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said in a statement late Thursday.
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Hundreds Of Activists Demand Action on Plastics in Kenya
Hundreds of environmental activists marched in the Kenyan capital, Nairobi, Saturday demanding drastic curbs on plastic production, ahead of a meeting to negotiate a global plastics treaty.
Representatives of more than 170 nations will meet in Nairobi Monday to negotiate what concrete measures should be included in a binding worldwide treaty to end plastic pollution.
Marchers waved placards reading “Plastic crisis = climate crisis” and “End multigenerational toxic exposure.”
They chanted “let polluters pay the price” as they walked slowly behind a ceremonial band from central Nairobi to a park in the west of the capital.
Nations agreed last year to finalize by 2024 a world-first U.N. treaty to address the scourge of plastics found everywhere from mountain tops to ocean depths and within human blood and breast milk.
Negotiators have met twice already but Nairobi is the first opportunity to debate a draft treaty published in September that outlines the many pathways to tackling the plastic problem.
The Nov. 13-19 meeting is the third of five sessions in a fast-tracked process aiming to conclude negotiations next year so the treaty can be adopted by mid-2025.
At the last talks in Paris, campaigners accused large plastic-producing nations of deliberately stalling after two days were lost debating procedural points.
This time around, the sessions have been extended by two days but there are still concerns a weaker treaty could emerge if time for detailed discussion is swallowed up going in circles.
Global plastic production has more than doubled since the start of the century to reach 460 million tons and it could triple by 2060 if nothing is done. Only nine percent is currently recycled.
Microplastics have been found everywhere from clouds to the deepest sea trenches, as well as throughout the human body.
The effects of plastics on human health remain poorly understood but there is growing concern among scientists.
Plastic also contributes to global warming, accounting for 3.4% of global emissions in 2019, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.
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Sudan Violence ‘Verging on Pure Evil’ in Darfur, UN Warns
The United Nations warned Friday of soaring human rights violations in Sudan’s Darfur region and said they were “verging on pure evil,” amid escalating fighting seven months into the war between the army and paramilitaries.
“We keep saying that the situation is horrific and grim. But frankly, we are running out of words to describe the horror of what is happening in Sudan,” said Clementine Nkweta-Salami, the U.N. humanitarian coordinator for Sudan.
“We continue to receive unrelenting and appalling reports of sexual and gender-based violence, enforced disappearance, arbitrary detentions and grave violations of human and children’s rights,” she told reporters.
“What is happening is verging on pure evil,” she said, citing reports of young girls being raped in front of their mothers.
She said she was worried about the risk of a repeat of the genocide of the early 2000s in this region of western Sudan.
Since April, forces loyal to army chief Abdel Fattah Burhan, Sudan’s de facto head of state, have been at war with the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces commanded by his former deputy, Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo.
The U.N. refugee agency pointed to reports that more than 800 people had been killed by armed groups in Ardamata in West Darfur, an area that so far had been less affected by the conflict.
“We have received these reports from new arrivals in Chad, these are refugees fleeing the Darfur area, that are talking about armed militia going from house to house killing men and boys,” spokesperson William Spindler told reporters in Geneva.
“These killings reportedly have happened in the last few days,” he added.
Ardamata among other things houses a camp for people displaced inside Sudan, where UNHCR said nearly 100 shelters had been razed.
It also warned in a statement that extensive looting had taken place, including of UNHCR relief items.
UNHCR chief Filippo Grandi echoed Nkweta-Salami’s warning of the danger of a repeat of the horrors unleashed two decades ago when the government of Omar al-Bashir unleashed the Janjaweed militia in response to a rebel uprising.
“Twenty years ago, the world was shocked by the terrible atrocities and human rights violations in Darfur,” Grandi said in a statement. “We fear a similar dynamic might be developing.”
UNHCR said it was preparing for a new flood of refugees from the region into Chad, which is already hosting hundreds of thousands of Sudanese refugees.
More than 10,000 people have been killed in the Sudan conflict so far, according to a conservative estimate by the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data project.
But aid groups and medics have repeatedly warned the real toll exceeds recorded figures, with many of those wounded and killed never reaching hospitals or morgues.
The war has displaced more than 4.8 million people within Sudan and has forced a further 1.2 million to flee into neighboring countries, according to U.N. figures.
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Kenyan University Student Innovators Manufacture Flour Using Grass
Students from Kabarak University in Kenya’s Rift Valley have developed a method for turning grass into flour and then fortifying it for human consumption. This new flour will be an ingredient for ugali, a staple food normally made from cornmeal, since that grain has become too expensive for many families. Juma Majanga reports from Nairobi.
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Recent Floods in Kenya Kill 15, Displace Thousands
Recent heavy rain and flooding killed 15 people in Kenya and displaced thousands of others, the Kenya Red Cross Society says.
The heavy rainfall also killed livestock and destroyed businesses and farmland, said Peter Murgor, a disaster risk reduction and climate change adaptation manager with the Kenya Red Cross Society.
“Schools [are] being affected … and even hospital facilities in some of the places that have been marooned are also affected,” Murgor told VOA.
The situation could get worse, Murgor said.
In its forecast for this year’s last quarter, the Kenya Meteorological Department had warned the country will experience above-average rainfall, driven by warmer sea surface temperatures over the central and eastern equatorial Pacific Ocean.
“We are informed by the [weather forecaster] that November normally is the peak,” Murgor told VOA. “If November is the peak and we are just at the beginning of November, chances are … the situation is likely to worsen in the month towards the end, probably seeing a bit more people being displaced, probably seeing a bit more loss of livelihoods.”
Nearly half of the 47 counties in Kenya are at risk, he said, with the northeastern part of the country being the most affected.
Heavy rains also have affected neighboring Uganda, Ethiopia and Somalia, where the government declared a state of emergency after 29 people died and hundreds of thousands were displaced as a result of the extreme weather.
Meanwhile, in Kenya, Murgor said flash floods would likely cause more problems.
“We are likely to see a rise in disease outbreak as a secondary impact of the flooding,” he said. “But from the Kenya Red Cross prospect, we are working together with the ministry of health, with the government, with stakeholders, trying to see how to mitigate against the effect, how to anticipate and then try to act early [and] work with farmers to do post-harvest loss management.”
He also said that in cases in which early warnings are possible, communities would be alerted about possible floods so people can move to safer ground.
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Businesses in Ethiopian Traditional Clothing Market Say Chinese Competition Is Unfair
Businesses in the Ethiopian traditional clothing market say cheaper garments made by Chinese manufacturers is driving them out of work. Kennedy Abate has this report from the capital Addis Ababa, narrated by Vincent Makori.
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Journalist’s Trial Renews Concern About Nigeria’s Cybercrime Law
It’s been nearly a month since Nigerian authorities detained journalist Saint Mienpamo Onitsha.
On October 10, Matthew Perekebuna was preparing for an outing with Mienpamo, his friend, when he heard of the arrest. Perekebuna said officers arrived at the house of a mutual friend in southern Nigeria’s Bayelsa state and forced him at gunpoint to summon Mienpamo, founder of online broadcaster Naija Live TV.
The officers detained Mienpamo overnight before flying him out of his hometown to Abuja and charged him with cyberstalking and defamation. Perekebuna said he hadn’t spoken to his friend since then.
“I know Saint Mienpamo very well. We all belong to the same community,” he said. “It has to do with politics.”
Perekebuna said Mienpamo had spoken out against the Presidential Amnesty Program, or PAP, a government-sponsored program that offers monthly stipends to former oil militants as part of efforts to end violence in the Niger Delta.
Authorities said the journalist in September deliberately published a false and unverified report on Facebook, accusing PAP officials of beating a beneficiary to death.
Officials deny that anyone was killed. They say that when a beneficiary tried to force his way into the office, security resisted him. The person went to a hospital and was later discharged.
At Nigeria’s federal high court in Abuja, hearings in the case of the journalist are underway.
Anande Terungwa, Mienpamo’s attorney, said that the journalist had pleaded not guilty, pulled down his report, published a corrected story and issued an apology.
Terungwa, who visited Mienpamo in jail this week, told VOA he suspected the case might be politically motivated.
The journalist covers the amnesty program, plus unrest in the Niger Delta region. In 2020, he faced legal action over his coronavirus coverage.
“They have been turning us around, playing politics. … Many people have published something related to [PAP]. How many have they arrested? How many have they tried? They just singled him out,” Terungwa said.
Nigeria’s Justice Ministry did not respond to VOA’s requests for comment.
Nigerian lawmakers enacted the cybercrime law in 2015 to protect the nation’s economy and prevent fraud and cyberattacks.
But analysts say the legislation is used too often by authorities to prosecute journalists and citizens who often criticize the government or politicians.
Analysts say Nigerian media are often targeted with arrest or lawsuits over their work.
The Committee to Protect Journalists, or CPJ, has repeatedly documented the use of Nigeria’s Cybercrimes Act to prosecute journalists.
Jonathan Rozen, a senior researcher at CPJ, a New York-based nonprofit, said, “We’re constantly keeping track of attacks on the press, jailing of journalists, killing of journalists, surveillance, laws that are going to inhibit the press, to provide evidence for our advocacy with governments.”
The Cybercrime Act has been used repeatedly to arrest journalists in connection with their work in Nigeria, Rozen told VOA.
CPJ is calling for the swift release of the journalist and for reform, Rozen said. “We have repeatedly called for Nigerian lawmakers, leadership in Nigeria, to reform these laws to ensure that these tools that are used to criminalize journalism are not available in Nigeria,” he said.
Mienpamo is due back in court on December 4. If convicted, he faces up to 10 years in prison and a fine of more than $32,000.
For now, his lawyer said, the priority is to get Mienpamo out of jail.
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Former Somali Refugee Elected Mayor of Minnesota City, Making History
Voters in the Minnesota city of St. Louis Park elected Nadia Mohamed, a 27-year-old Somali-American, as the city’s first Black, first Somali, and first Muslim mayor Tuesday night.
The election results show that Mohamed easily defeated Dale Anderson, a former banker and continuing education teacher, by a margin of 58% to 41%.
“I am very happy to win as Somali-American, Muslim, migrant and Black,” she told VOA’s Somali Service. “I would say thank you to all of those who supported me in this. It is our victory.”
Maine State Rep. Deqa Dhalac was the first Somali American to serve as mayor of an American city in 2021, when South Portland’s six-member council selected Dhalac for the role. Mohamed becomes the first Somali mayor in American history elected directly by voters.
“I have lived in this city for 18 years,” said Mohamed. “I grew up and finished my school here, so it was easy for me to get elected because people know me.”
An early start
As refugees, Mohamed’s family moved to St. Louis Park when she was 10 years old.
Mohamed says her aspirations for elected office started with routine recreational walks when she was young.
“I would walk around the city hall and could only see the portraits of city’s former mayors on the walls. All of them were white men. I only saw two women. None of them looked like me,” she said. “But now, I am very happy, and it is amazing to see my photo among these mayors, knowing that — let us say, 50 years from now — it will be still here.
“Muslim, black and migrant girls will have a better opportunity to see one of them among these mayors,” she said.
Mohamed in 2019 was elected to the St. Louis Park City Council at the age of 23, making her the youngest individual to hold the position in the 170-year history of the Minneapolis suburb.
Before public office, she also held a position at the Minnesota Department of Human Services as a diversity, equity and inclusion specialist.
Predominantly white St. Louis Park, a city of roughly 50,000, has seen the number of people of color more than double over the past two decades, reaching 20% of the population. Some 10% of residents are foreign-born, and the average household income is $87,639.
The city’s mayor is also its manager, responsible for executive-level operations. The mayor also chairs the City Council.
Mohamed will succeed Jake Spano, who announced in March that he would not seek reelection and endorsed Mohamed.
Other Somali-American successes
In nearby Minneapolis on Tuesday, another Somali-American, Ward 6 City Councilman Jamal Osman, defended his seat, receiving 44.6% of the vote, followed by Kayseh Magan with 30.1% and Tiger Worku with 21.8%.
Speaking to his supporters after the election results were in, Osman said he was happy and felt grateful to be trusted by Ward 6 residents for three consecutive years.
“I’m super excited,” Osman said. “We have a lot of work going on. We have a lot of work to do.”
In 2022, at least eight Somali-American women won races in U.S. midterm elections.
The success of Somali-American female candidates in the U.S. eclipses that of female aspirants for elected office in Somalia.
Female politicians in Somalia are so disenfranchised that in 2016, Somalia’s federal and regional leaders had to start allocating a specific quota of seats in parliament. But women still were never given the opportunity to get the 30% quota promised.
In 2016, Somali women occupied 24% of the 329 seats in the two houses of parliament. In 2022, female candidates secured 20%, well short of the 30% quota.
Mohamed Olad Hassan reported from Washington. This story originated in VOA’s Somali Service.
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Conflict in Sudan Growing in Scope, Brutality as World Remains Silent
A senior U.N. refugee official Tuesday warned that “an unimaginable humanitarian crisis” was unfolding in Sudan, with millions of people being forcibly displaced from their homes by an increasingly vicious conflict.
“What I saw was despair, was unimaginable humanitarian needs and fear in so many people’s eyes,” said Dominique Hyde, UNHCR Director of External Relations. “This is a war that erupted without warning and turned previously peaceful Sudanese homes into cemeteries.”
Hyde has just returned from a week-long visit to Sudan’s White Nile State as well as border and other areas in South Sudan. She said the fighting was growing in scope and brutality while the world remained “scandalously silent, though violations of international humanitarian law persist with impunity.”
Since fighting erupted April 15 between the Sudanese Armed Forces and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces, the UNHCR reports 4.5 million people have been displaced inside Sudan, while 1.2 million have fled to neighboring countries, including Chad, Egypt, South Sudan, Ethiopia, and the Central African Republic.
Recent fighting in Sudan’s Darfur region has caused even more displacement, with thousands of people struggling to find shelter and many sleeping under trees by the roadside, said Hyde, adding that most of the refugees are women and children.
“We are very concerned about them not having access to food, shelter, clean drinking water or other basic essentials,” she said.
“It is shameful the atrocities that were committed 20 years ago in Darfur can still be happening again today with such little attention,” she added, referring to shocking accounts of widespread rape and sexual violence in Darfur, Khartoum, and other parts of Sudan.
“The U.N. calls for an immediate end to all gender-based violence, including sexual violence as a tactic of war to terrorize people,” said Hyde. “There must be accountability for these crimes, as well as medical and psychosocial support for survivors. The parties must put in place mechanisms to prevent recurrence of such violence.”
But that is hard to do without money, the U.N official said, explaining that only 39% of the $1 billion needed to provide humanitarian assistance for Sudanese refugees in five countries has been received, and that only one third of a separate $2.6 billion appeal to help 18.1 million people inside Sudan has been funded.
The funding shortage is harming humanitarian operations both inside and outside Sudan. When Hyde visited Sudan’s White Nile State last week, she said she saw how the surge of people displaced by the fighting had overwhelmed essential services in the camps.
“Like in the rest of Sudan, schools have been shut for the last seven months as displaced people find temporary shelter inside the classrooms. The health situation is disastrous,” she said. “More than 1,200 children under five have died in White Nile State between mid-May and mid-September alone, due to a measles outbreak combined with high levels of malnutrition.
“Thanks to MSF, to UNICEF, to WHO, and UNHCR, we have been able to curb somewhat these deaths. We are now at five a week but still unacceptable in 2023.”
The World Food Program reports intensifying conflict in Sudan is forcing more and more people to flee, plunging the economy deeper into crisis, and “pushing hunger to record levels with over 20 million people now facing severe hunger.” Among them are some 2.5 million malnourished children, including 700,000 suffering from severe acute malnutrition, which can lead to death.
WFP warns the climate crisis is driving malnutrition to unprecedented levels in South Sudan, with more than 1.6 million children under age five expected to suffer from this condition in 2024.
Hyde said in the week she was in the border area, she saw an estimated 20,000 people crossing into South Sudan from Sudan, which was an “incredible increase” from the previous weeks. She said most of the people were Sudanese refugees, not South Sudanese returning home from years of exile in Sudan.
“In the first months what we were seeing was a large number of South Sudanese returnees going into South Sudan, but that has flipped,” she said. “And I think the week I was there, we were at 70 to 80% of Sudanese coming and crossing that border.”
Because of underfunding, she said, UNHCR and partners are not able to create a new transit center to accommodate this huge flow of people into the country, nor can they build appropriate water and sanitation centers to prevent possible outbreaks of diseases, nor provide adequate medical services.
At the end of each year, she said, U.N. officials are usually hopeful of receiving any remaining funds left over for such an emergency.
But, she added, “because of what is happening in Gaza … the funds that were intended or that could have gone to Africa or Afghanistan or to any of the many other humanitarian crises” are now being redirected to the Middle East.
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Mali Army Airstrikes Blamed for Civilian Deaths in Rebel-held Town
Mali’s army said Tuesday it carried out airstrikes on what it called terrorist targets in the rebel stronghold of Kidal, where witnesses and separatists said civilians, including children, died in the attack.
The armed forces said on social media that the strikes “neutralized several terrorist pickup trucks” at a military camp evacuated by U.N. peacekeepers last week in the strategic northern town.
The army appealed to people “not to give in to the terrorists’ propaganda intended to tarnish the reputation of the Malian armed forces.”
The Permanent Strategic Framework, an alliance of predominantly Tuareg armed groups, said 14 people died, including eight children gathered in front of a school.
It said they were killed by Turkish-made drones belonging to Mali’s army.
Residents and witnesses, speaking mostly on condition of anonymity out of safety concerns, said between six and nine people died.
“Six people, including children, were killed by airstrikes by the Malian army,” said one health worker. “In the hospital, we have injured people.”
On Saturday, the army said on social media that it had “neutralized” a certain number of targets a day earlier using air power.
The targets were operating inside the camp near Kidal that the U.N.’s stabilization mission vacated last week, it said.
Tuesday’s incident marked the first killings in Kidal since the Tuareg-dominated rebel groups resumed hostilities in August.
Fears of a confrontation in the town — long a center of defiance and a launching point for independence rebellions — have been building for some time.
The insubordination of the town and of the Kidal region, where the army suffered humiliating defeats between 2012 and 2014, poses a major sovereignty issue for the junta-led government.
Since seizing power in 2020, Mali’s military rulers have made the restoration of sovereignty their mantra.
But Kidal is controlled by separatist rebel groups.
They launched an insurgency in 2012 and agreed to a cease-fire in 2014 and a peace deal in 2015, before taking up arms again in August.
The independence uprising in 2012 coincided with insurgencies by radical Islamist groups.
Unlike the rebels, the jihadis have never stopped fighting the state, plunging Mali into a political, security and humanitarian crisis that has spread to neighboring Burkina Faso and Niger.
Violence has escalated in the north since August, with the military, rebels and jihadis vying for control as the U.N. mission evacuates its camps, triggering a race to seize territory.
The rebels do not want the peacekeepers to hand their camps back to the Malian army, saying it would contravene the cease-fire and peace deals struck with the government in 2014 and 2015.
The army on October 2 dispatched a large convoy toward Kidal in anticipation of the U.N.’s departure.
But U.N. forces, citing the “deteriorating security situation” and threats to its peacekeepers, accelerated their pull-out, upsetting the ruling junta, which wanted the departure to coincide with the army’s arrival.
Instead, when the mission left the Kidal camp last week, the rebels immediately seized control.
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