Ager [left], 15 years old, inside her hut with her mother, Alem Tesfu and her father Mashresha Bericun in Kosoamba, Ethiopia [Photo: JOSE CENDON]
Until two years ago, before the rains failed and the price of maize tripled, Alem Tesfu dreamt that her daughter Ager would one day finish her education at the village school and start work as a nurse.
KOSO AMBA, ETHIOPIA – “We used to pray to God that Ager would study hard and make something of herself so she could serve her community,” Mrs Tesfu said. “Now our animals are all dead and we eat only one meal a day. We just pray that we will not starve.”
Ager now spends her days foraging for edible weeds, while her schoolbooks hang in a plastic bag in the family’s thatched hut, a reminder of her ambitions.
This year, slums and villages across Africa have similar stories to tell of dreams ruined by hunger. With global food and fuel prices surging, children have been taken out of school and put to work by desperate parents. The future of one of the continent’s great development success stories – education – is in doubt.
Nowhere have the effects been crueller than in Ethiopia, coming at the same time as the return of the droughts that caused the notorious famine of 1984.
With healthy economic growth, more than nine out of 10 children of primary school age in education, and massive improvement in infrastructure, until two years ago Ethiopia had been an example for the rest of Africa. Lauded by Britain, the country at last had a future that looked bright.
Now, though, price rises of 250-300 per cent have threatened to wreck many of its hard-won achievements.
The cost that hunger has already exacted in Mrs Tesfu’s district of Kosoamba in the Ethiopian highlands was spelt out bleakly by the local school director, Chane Hailu. An idealistic teacher, he gave up city life to teach here, hoping to bring the benefits of education to one of Ethiopia’s most backward corners. Now he finds once-full classrooms are half-empty.
“We are trying to educate a new generation of Ethiopians, to drag these communities out of their poverty and to teach farmers how to make a decent living,” he said.
“If the children are too weak or too poor to come to school, we are losing all that. If that happens this generation will not be the one that changes Ethiopia for the better.”
So far mass starvation has been held at bay in Ethiopia’s highlands, although the government admits that 4.6 million are at risk of famine countrywide. Aid agencies believe the number is closer to 10 million, and fear the famine could soon become much worse. That fear eats away at the residents of Kosoamba, where they dread what could happen if, next February, the rains fail for the third year.
On a day of bright sunshine and scudding clouds last week, the grasslands around the village looked remarkably like the North Yorkshire moors, with dry stone walls, skylarks and bleating lambs.
But until recent years local villages, with round thatched huts and ragged men clad in patched clothes, were places of medieval poverty. Farmers toiled with crude wooden ploughs, watching the heavens and praying for rain.
New clinics and schools that have arrived in the past 15 years have transformed life, cutting mortality rates and educating the children of illiterate farmers for the first time.
Hunger threatens to undo all that, with youngsters now out foraging and working in the fields. In the past few months several dozen have died of dysentery.
The price rises, on top of drought, are having a dire effect on education across Ethiopia and forcing cruel choices on families, according to Matt Hobson, a food expert from Save the Children UK who is based in Addis Ababa.
“These rises are a massive hit for families and something has to give,” he said “It is usually schooling or health care.”
Officials in the village estimated that about 100 of the district’s 700 children show signs of serious malnourishment, a prelude, if the famine worsens, of death.
One 11-year-old, Tesmegen Worku, had pale blotches on his face, a sign of malnutrition which the villagers call “itch”.
The boy used to go to school, but now he herds skinny cows and sheep for one of the wealthier villagers in return for a daily bowl of maize porridge. He said that he felt hungry nearly all the time, and disliked the long, boring hours with the animals.
The job is dangerous because of hyenas, which have killed many animals that are too weak to escape.
The biggest fear of the child herdsmen is that one day they will themselves be eaten if they are too weak to fight off the predators. Local elders, hunched into a circle and draped in blankets, endlessly discuss the vagaries of
Ethiopia’s food market with the expertise and anxiety of Wall Street traders.
Cruelly for them, although food prices have rocketed, nobody wants to buy their scrawny livestock, most of which is too weak to survive the long journey to a city market anyway.
The village’s altitude at nearly 10,000ft is so high that the only crop they can grow is barley, which is dependent on winter rains called the belg which have failed for two years running.
Ironically, the summer rains were good this year, so the village is green and pleasant, but it is too late in the season for barley to ripen.
Next year they will be in real trouble. Nearly all the village’s seed has been eaten, and many rely on government handouts and help from a Save the Children development project.
One of the better-off villagers, Besfat Bisat, headman of the hamlet of Ataguay, had to take four of his teenage sons out of school and send them to a nearby town to work as day labourers on a new road.
With a shudder, he remembers 1984. For the first few months of the famine he
carried his neighbours’ bodies to the little church graveyard near the village, then as his own strength waned he buried them where they fell. Finally, when the survivors had no energy left, the dead were simply left.
“In 1984 those who had cash could buy food, but now it is simply too expensive,” he said.
“What is keeping us alive now is that our government is trying to help us, but we worry about what will happen if the support comes too late.
“If the spring rains come the next harvest will be in August, but only God knows if we can wait that long. If there is no rain next spring, our fates will be clear. We will die.”
Spiegel TV reports about Haile Gebrselassie’s preparation for the Berlin Marathon 2008. The video shows Haile in Addis Ababa at a training site at 3000m above sea level.
JOHANNESBURG, South Africa (AP) — President Thabo Mbeki bowed to heavy pressure from his own party to resign Saturday, tossed to the sidelines of the economic powerhouse he built up as punishment for allegedly abusing his power in trying to quash a popular rival.
The swiftness of the ouster likely will stoke fears about the political and financial direction of South Africa, particularly if key Cabinet ministers decide to quit in solidarity with Mbeki.
But the change also allows the governing African National Congress to declare its internal leadership battle over and turn its attention to next year’s elections, when key concerns will be about corruption and demands from the poor for jobs and houses.
Even as it demanded he step down, the ANC praised Mbeki for overseeing unprecedented growth. But little of the wealth created since he succeeded Nelson Mandela in 1999 has trickled down to the black majority that had hoped for more with the end of apartheid.
The result is that poor blacks have flocked to the ANC’s populist leader, Jacob Zuma, a one-time Mbeki protege who became a potent foe. He is considered front-runner for next year’s presidential election, but parliament will pick an interim leader to take over from Mbeki.
While Zuma and Mbeki espouse similar views of South Africa’s future, they differ sharply in style. Aloof and donnish, Mbeki won praise from business but never attained the public support enjoyed by the personable, energetic Zuma, particularly among leftists, union members and young people.
Many poor people lionize Zuma as a leader who understands the pain of the millions of South Africans who remain on the margins of society.
The Young Communist League said Mbeki’s departure gives the government “an opportunity to intensify the provision of quality services to our people, especially the working class and the poor.”
Mbeki came under pressure from his party to quit following a judge’s ruling last week that he may have had a role in Zuma being charged with corruption. Mbeki, who was due to leave office next year after two terms as president, denied that but gave in to the demands Saturday.
The ANC’s secretary-general, Gwede Mantashe, said Mbeki would remain president until an interim one was appointed, but Mbeki was already stepping back. He sent the foreign minister to head the delegation Mbeki had planned to take to the U.N. General Assembly.
Mantashe said parliament, which is controlled by the ANC, would meet soon to formalize the process for replacing Mbeki. Parliament elects the president in South Africa.
A major concern was threats by key Cabinet ministers to quit over Mbeki’s removal. Attention was especially focused on Finance Minister Trevor Manuel, who has shared the credit with Mbeki for South Africa’s sustained economic growth and investor-friendly policies over the past decade.
Mantashe said Zuma was meeting with Cabinet ministers hoping to persuade them to stay on, saying the top priority was “ensuring the smooth running of the country.”
Speaking to reporters, Mantashe said that after meeting all of Friday and into the early hours Saturday, a high-level ANC committee “decided to recall the president” before his term in office expires in April.
Hours later, the president’s office issued a terse statement:
“Following the decision of the National Executive Committee of the African National Congress to recall President Thabo Mbeki, the President has obliged and will step down after all constitutional requirements have been met.”
Mbeki’s spokesman said there would be no further comment Saturday.
South Africans vote for parties, not individuals. That puts a premium on party loyalty and discipline among legislators and allows political leaders to quickly make radical changes.
Although Mbeki’s removal came quicker than many people expected, South Africans had been anticipating a shift from Mbeki to Zuma at least since last December, when Zuma defeated the president in a party election for the ANC’s leadership.
Helen Zille, leader of South Africa’s main opposition party, told state television that the ANC has made its internal problems a crisis for the country. “It’s about revenge, it’s about settling political scores,” she said.
Mantashe insisted the move to remove Mbeki was meant to restore unity and stability to party and country, not to punish him.
But many saw it as Mbeki’s defeat, and it opened the way for opponents to question the ANC over how a leader who tried to oust an allegedly corrupt aide was removed while the accused stands on the brink of becoming president.
Mbeki fired Zuma as his national deputy president in 2005, after Zuma’s financial adviser was convicted of trying to elicit a bribe to deflect investigations into a multibillion-dollar international arms deal.
Initial charges were withdrawn against Zuma, but the chief prosecutor said last December that he had enough evidence to bring new ones. That comment came within days of Zuma defeating Mbeki in voting for ANC president.
In his ruling Sept. 12, Judge Christopher Nicholson said it appeared Mbeki and his justice minister colluded with prosecutors against Zuma as part of the “titanic power struggle” within the ANC. Mbeki indignantly denied the accusation.
South Africa emerged from years of institutionalized racism in 1994 and entered an era of reconciliation embodied by anti-apartheid icon Nelson Mandela. Mbeki took over in 1999 and ushered in sustained economic growth averaging nearly 5 percent a year.
Many poor blacks disdained those achievements, complaining the benefits weren’t reaching the masses. Others criticized Mbeki for failing to fight the country’s crippling crime, and health activists were dismayed that he played down South Africa’s devastating AIDS crisis.
Mbeki is regarded by many Africans as a statesmen for promoting what he calls Africa’s renaissance and mediating conflicts ranging from Sudan to Ivory Coast to Congo.
For many years, his quiet diplomacy in troubled Zimbabwe was criticized as ineffective and biased toward Robert Mugabe, the autocratic president. But last week, he persuaded Mugabe to share power with the opposition. It was a retreat after nearly three decades of unchallenged power, although talks on the formation of a coalition Cabinet have since deadlocked.
I’ve followed the career of Nick Page for a few years. He was a member of TransGlobal Underground and is now one of the components of Temple of Sound, two of my favorite world music groups. Page uses several artistic nicknames, such as Dubulah and Count Dubulah. Dub Colossus is one of his latest projects. I was very curious about this project and Dubula, as usual, did not disappointment me.
Dubulah’s musical taste is very eclectic. He has ventured into Arabic, Jamaican, South Asian and Latin American music. In this case, however, he pursues his passion for Ethiopian music by combining his state of the art electronica expertise with the vocals and instruments of some of Ethiopia’s most talented musicians as well as ambient sounds recorded in the streets of Addis Ababa in August 2006.
For the recording sessions in the UK, Real World Records invited singer Sintayehu ‘Mimi’ Zenebe (Addis Ababa night club owner ), saxophonist Feleke Hailu, Teremag Weretow (vocals and messenqo one-string fiddle), pianist Samuel Yirga and Tsedenia Gebremarkos, winner of a Kora award as the best female singer in East Africa in 2004.
The result is a brilliant mix of rootsy Ethiopian melodies, mesmerizing African blues, and the exquisite dub and trippy global electronica enrichments provided by Dubulah. Let Dub Colossus take you to a Town Called Addis.
PARIS (AFP) – France on Friday raised the possibility of suspending international war crimes proceedings against Sudanese President Omar al-Beshir in exchange for a “gesture” of good will from Khartoum on Darfur.
“What we want is to relaunch the search for a peace settlement through dialogue,” an official at the French presidency said, asked whether Paris could back a suspension of the probe by the International Criminal Court (ICC).
“If this dialogue resumes, gets under way in good conditions, makes good progress, if the Sudanese government makes gestures towards the ICC, then it would make sense to think about how the Security Council could take account of the new situation,” he said.
ICC chief prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo asked the court in July for an arrest warrant for Beshir on charges of genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity in its western province of Darfur.
The court is expected to reach a decision in the coming weeks on whether to issue the warrant.
But the UN Security Council has the option of deferring the prosecution for one year, renewable, if backed by nine of its 15 members and all five permanent members, which include France.
Sudan has been working hard to ward off potential charges, drumming up support from the African Union (AU) and Arab League.
Both bodies have urged the Security Council to defer the probe, warning it risks stoking further unrest in Sudan, and the AU plans to raise the issue at the UN General Assembly that opened in New York this week.
Rebels in Darfur have reported an upsurge in fighting over the past week, with heavy attacks on their positions by government and militia forces, and thousands of civilians are reported to have fled the fighting.
The official at the French presidency stressed it was “very premature” to talk of a UN resolution on the question.
But he suggested Khartoum could make a “gesture” concerning two other figures targeted by ICC arrest warrants, whom it it has so far refused to hand over to the court.
The French foreign ministry called Friday for Sudan to respect the decisions of the ICC concerning the pair, Sudanese humanitarian affairs minister Ahmed Haroun and militia chief Ali Kosheib.
But five non-governmental organisations including Amnesty International wrote to French President Nicolas Sarkozy on Thursday saying they feared Paris was planning a compromise that would allow Khartoum to try them in Sudan.
The NGOs warned the French president, who made tackling the Darfur conflict an election pledge, that any compromise on the war crimes probe would “deal a major blow to the credibility and dissuasive power of the international criminal justice system.”
“Khartoum certainly has the means of applying pressure, with thousands of UN soldiers deployed on its soil, but we must not give to the Sudanese government’s blackmail,” warned Clement Boursin of Acat-France, a group that campaigns against torture.
Boursin said Paris is seeking assurances on the end of fighting in Darfur, the resumption of political negotiations, the normalisation of relations between Sudan and Chad, and the deployment of the UN force in Darfur.
“It is the eternal, difficult debate that faces governments. What is our priority? Is it to stop a war, to end the killings, to save human lives. Or is it to carry out justice via the ICC?” said the Elysee official.
According to the United Nations, up to 300,000 people have died in Darfur and more than 2.2 million have fled their homes since rebels rose up against Khartoum in February 2003. Sudan says 10,000 people have been killed.
In a related development…
A press conference was held at the UN Headquarters on developments relating to International Criminal Court investigation in Darfur, role of Security Council
There would be “no peace without justice in Darfur”, and any delay by the International Criminal Court in prosecuting the President of the Sudan would be devastating to the peace process in the region, Sudanese opposition Member of Parliament Salih Mahmoud Osman said at a Headquarters press conference today.
The press conference, sponsored by the Permanent Mission of Liechtenstein to the United Nations, was held jointly by Mr. Osman; Richard Dicker, Director of the International Justice Programme at Human Rights Watch; Osman Hummaida, a Sudanese human rights researcher and campaigner; and William Pace, Convenor of the Coalition for the International Criminal Court. It was held prior to the general debate of the sixty-third General Assembly session to provide more information on the implications of an Article 16 deferral of the President’s possible prosecution by the International Criminal Court.
In July 2008, Luis Moreno-Ocampo, Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, requested an arrest warrant for President Omer Hassan Ahmad Al-Bashir. The request charged the President with 10 counts of genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity. At the time of today’s press conference, the Court’s judges had yet to issue a decision on the Prosecutor’s application.
Mr. Pace said the African Union Peace and Security Council was expected to hold a special meeting on Monday, 22 September, to discuss a resolution calling for the United Nations Security Council to “instruct the ICC to back off its consideration of the allegations by the Prosecutor”.
Mr. Dicker added that efforts by countries or regional groups to press the Security Council to suspend the accusations against the President and give him a “get out of jail free card” would thus permeate the General Assembly’s general debate, as well as behind-the-scenes ministerial consultations. “What this is all about is setting the stage and positioning for what will be round two at the Security Council to barter responsibility for genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes for impunity on behalf of Omer Al-Bashir.”
The President and Government of the Sudan were responsible for numerous war crimes and crimes against humanity, as well as the forced displacement of more than 3 million people, said Mr. Osman. “If we consider the nature of crimes that are still occurring, it is extrajudicial killings, torture and rape, which has been used as a weapon of war.” There was now a culture of impunity in the Sudan since none of the perpetrators of those crimes had been brought to justice. “Our judicial system is incompetent and unwilling to bring perpetrators to justice,” he said, adding that only the arrest and prosecution of the President could end the culture of impunity and bring lasting peace to Darfur.
However, there were many who disagreed with that opinion, Mr. Hummaida pointed out, explaining fears that an International Criminal Court case against the President might undermine the peace process in Darfur and jeopardize the Comprehensive Peace Agreement between North and South Sudan. It might also be the cause for retaliatory attacks by the Government against civilians, humanitarian workers or United Nations Peacekeepers. Backing down now would be a mistake. “The [Prosecutor’s] announcement has shifted the balance of power inside Sudan for those who are calling for reform, changes, accountability and political transformation, and it has demoralized the hardliners and the Government of Sudan.” A deferral of the prosecution would send a message to the President and his Government that they had won and those calling for change and justice in the Sudan would be at risk once again.
Asked about the possibility of a deal between the International Criminal Court and the Government of the Sudan, wherein the Security Council would vote to defer the case regarding President Bashir in return for the handing over of two Sudanese officials for whom the Court had already issued arrest warrants, Mr. Hummaidi said such a deal would be difficult, if not impossible, since it would have serious implications for other members of the Sudanese Government who might themselves have been involved in war crimes.
In response to a question regarding the possibility of the Sudanese leading their own investigation into the war crimes allegations, Mr. Dicker said he would “welcome a serious effort by Sudan to prosecute its own”, but to date, the Government had done nothing to investigate or prosecute the most grave crimes. It would be up to the International Criminal Court judges to decide whether or not national efforts to investigate or prosecute were satisfactory and if it should step in.
Asked how big an impact an indictment would have on the President’s behaviour, Mr. Osman in turn asked what it would mean if there were no indictment at all. “We have a situation where a perpetrator of genocide is threatening to commit even more crimes. What’s the role of the international community if you allow that? Isn’t there any moral responsibility?”
Regarding rumours that the Prosecutor’s request for an arrest warrant was based partly on information provided by the Department of Peacekeeping Operations and the African Union-United Nations Hybrid Operation in Darfur (UNAMID), Mr. Dicker explained that the United Nations had long had a relationship agreement with the International Criminal Court that allowed for such types of cooperation between the two bodies.
When asked whether such information-sharing might put peacekeeping operations and staff at risk, Mr. Dicker said: “If the UN were to decide that it would allow a Government to bully it into silence in confining its own human rights reporting and what it did with that information, I think that would be a huge step back for the UN, its commitment to human rights, and its credibility.”
Source: United Nations Department of Public Information (DPI)
WASHINGTON – The Judges of the International Criminal Court (ICC) have officially started consideration of the application by prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo requesting an arrest warrant for Sudanese president Omer Hassan Al-Bashir.
In mid-July Ocampo announced that he is seeking an arrest warrant for Al-Bashir.
The ICC’s prosecutor filed 10 charges: three counts of genocide, five of crimes against humanity and two of murder.
There has been much speculation about when the ICC judges will make a decision on the prosecutor’s application with a widely expected date of October 15, three months following Ocampo’s announcement.
However Ocampo downplayed these speculations saying that a decision will likely not be made until the judges ask to meet with him.
Today the Judges of the Pre-Trial Chamber I issued a decision convening a closed meeting with the prosecutor “to receive additional information”.
The judges of the Pre-Trial Chamber I consist of Akua Kuenyehia from Ghana, Sylvia Steiner from Brazil and Anita Usacka from Latvia.
The closed session will take place on October 1st but the items that will be discussed was not disclosed in today’s decision.
ICC Judges routinely meet with the prosecutor following a request submitted by him for an arrest warrant or summons to appear to question aspects of the case before making a decision.
Last year the Pre-Trial Chamber I convened a similar meeting with the prosecutor to discuss the application regarding Ahmed Haroun, state minister for humanitarian affairs, and Kushayb charged in connection with Darfur war crimes.
The meeting is believed to have discussed whether or not the two suspects will surrender themselves voluntarily to the court justifying a summons to appear rather than an arrest warrant.
The Judges eventually decided to issue an arrest warrant for the two suspects which remains pending.
It is expected that Pre-Trial Chamber I will take between a few weeks to 3 months to decide on Al-Bashir’s arrest warrant but it could take longer dragging into the next year.
Many observers await whether the Judges will endorse genocide counts brought against the Sudanese president which are likely to have political consequences particularly for Khartoum’s allies in The Arab world and Africa.
European Union (EU) rules prohibit its officials from communicating with individuals indicted of war crimes.
If the judges affirm Ocampo’s application Al-Bashir will be the first sitting head of state indicted while in office of war crimes.
The ICC prosecutor has maintained a 100% success rate in all the requests for arrest warrants he previously made to the judges in the other cases handled by the court.
Sudan has not ratified the Rome Statute, but the UNSC triggered the provisions under the Statute that enables it to refer situations in non-State parties to the world court if it deems that it is a threat to international peace and security.
