ADDIS ABABA, ETHIOPIA (IOM) – A group 105 doctors and nurses, many of them members of the Ethiopian diaspora in North America, are this week travelling to Ethiopia to provide vital medical care in four hospitals in the capital, Addis Ababa. They will also share their knowledge with local health care professionals.
A group of 38 health care professionals, members of Operation Heart Beat, composed of Ear, Nose and Throat (ENT) specialists and including members of the Friends of Ethiopia group, have already arrived in the country with state-of-the-art medical equipment.
A second group of 67 medics, members of the Ethiopian North American Health Professionals Association (ENAHPA), will be travelling to Ethiopia later this week.
“These doctors, nurses and other medical professionals are participating in IOM’s Migration for Development in Ethiopia or MIDEth programme, a capacity-building initiative aimed at strengthening the government’s institutional capacities to address some of this country’s acute human resources constraints,” explains Charles Kwenin, IOM’s Chief of Mission in Addis Ababa.
The medics will deliver specialized health services, including cardiac surgery, pacemaker implants, oral and maxillofacial and reconstructive surgery, neurosurgery, ENT surgery and tele-ophthalmology.
The mission will not only reach hundreds of Ethiopians with state-of-the-art medical services, but will also assist the country’s health sector professionals with hands-on training that will improve the standard of health care in major Ethiopian hospitals.
IOM’s MidEth programme also extends beyond the health sector. Later this month two professors will travel to Ethiopia to teach at Addis Ababa University. One, a business professor, will remain in the country for three months. The other, an information technology specialist, will lead a one-month seminar for PhD students.
IT specialist Dr. Nega Gebreyesus, a senior manager at a US Government agency, says that he always wanted to take part in a knowledge transfer scheme between the Ethiopian diaspora and his country of origin. “The flexible and short-term nature of this programme works well with my work and family responsibilities. These short-term trips can be complemented by remote technology-based engagements,” he says.
IOM is working with the Government of Ethiopia (the Expatriates Affairs Directorate of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Ministry of Capacity Building and Ministry of Finance and Economic Development), with financial support from the UN Development Programme (UNDP), to provide travel and other assistance to the experts, who are all based in the USA and Canada.
Ethiopian Airlines is also supporting the initiative, providing discounted airfares and bigger baggage allowances to transport some of the medical equipment.
For more information please contact:
Charles Kwenin
IOM Addis Abba
Tel: +251.115511673
E-mail: [email protected]
Founding members of the Awassa Children’s Project, a gutsy Ethiopian street-orphan theater company, will give a presentation of their street theater techniques 6:30 p.m. Sunday at Project Artaud Theater. Tesfaye Biche, Migbar Kassa and Antenah Hameso, now adults, were street orphans in the war-torn, AIDS-ravaged city of Awassa in southern Ethiopia – near the Sudan border – when they formed their own street theater company, creating shows such as “The AIDS Education Circus” and “The Female Mutilation Show.” Years later, their company has grown to include an orphanage and an art school, among other projects.
Biche and former Bay Area actor Kris LeFan have also formed the Sherkole Refugee Theatre Company in the Sherkole Refugee Camp, touring border refugee camps with “The Landmine Awareness Show.”
Donations will be requested to help support the companies’ work.
More information is available at awassachildrensproject.org, and a short film of the Awassa group can be seen below:
A tense standoff has developed in waters off Somalia over an Iranian merchant ship laden with a mysterious cargo that was hijacked by pirates.
Somali pirates suffered skin burns, lost hair and fell gravely ill “within days” of boarding the MV Iran Deyanat. Some of them died.
Andrew Mwangura, the director of the East African Seafarers’ Assistance Programme, told the Sunday Times: “We don’t know exactly how many, but the information that I am getting is that some of them had died. There is something very wrong about that ship.”
The vessel’s declared cargo consists of “minerals” and “industrial products”. But officials involved in negotiations over the ship are convinced that it was sailing for Eritrea to deliver small arms and chemical weapons to Somalia’s Islamist rebels.
The drama over the Iran Deyanat comes as speculation grew this week about whether the South African Navy would send a vessel to join the growing multinational force in the region.
A naval spokesman, Lieutenant-Commander Greyling van den Berg, told the Sunday Times that the navy had not been ordered by the government to become involved in “the Somali pirate issue”.
About 22000 ships a year pass through the Suez Canal and the Gulf of Aden, where regional instability and “no-questions-asked” ransom payments have led to a dramatic rise in attacks on vessels by heavily armed Somali raiders in speedboats.
The Iran Deyanat was sailing in those waters on August 21, past the Horn of Africa and about 80 nautical miles southeast of Yemen, when it was boarded by about 40 pirates armed with AK-47s and rocket-propelled grenades. They were alleged members of a crime syndicate said to be based at Eyl, a small fishing village in northern Somalia.
The ship is owned and operated by the Islamic Republic of Iran Shipping Lines, or IRISL, a state-owned company run by the Iranian military.
According to the US Treasury Department, the IRISL regularly falsifies shipping documents to hide the identity of end users, uses generic terms to describe shipments and operates under various covers to circumvent United Nations sanctions.
The ship set sail from Nanjing, China, at the end of July. According to its manifest, it was heading for Rotterdam where it would unload 42500 tons of iron ore and “industrial products” purchased by a German client.
At Eyl, the ship was secured by more pirates — about 50 on board, and another 50 on shore.
But within days those who had boarded the ship developed mysterious health trouble.
This was also confirmed by Hassan Allore Osman, minister of minerals and oil in Puntland, an autonomous region of Somalia.
He headed a delegation sent to Eyl when news of the toxic cargo and illnesses surfaced.
He told one news publication, The Long War Journal, that during the six days he had negotiated with the pirates, a number of them had become sick and died.
“That ship is unusual,” he was quoted as saying. “It is not carrying a normal shipment.”
The pirates did reveal that they had tried to inspect the ship’s cargo containers when some of them fell sick — but the containers were locked.
Osman’s delegation spoke to the ship’s captain and its engineer by cellphone, demanding to know more about the cargo.
Initially it was claimed the cargo contained “crude oil”; later it was said to be “minerals”.
And Mwangura has added: “Our sources say it contains chemicals, dangerous chemicals.”
But IRISL has denied that — and threatened legal action against Mwangura. The company has reportedly paid the pirates 200000 — the first of several “ransom instalments”, but that, too, has been denied.
In the wake of last week’s Somali pirate raid that nabbed a Ukrainian ship laden with weapons, an international naval flotilla is assembling to protect commercial shipping. But the roughly dozen warships slated to patrol the Horn of Africa in coming months are spread thin. “We’re not always there” when pirates attack, a Navy source told Danger Room.
“We’re encouraging mariners to take necessary precautions,” the source said.
What might that include? Guns are out of the question, said maritime consultant Tim Colton, due to legal problems with arming untrained mariners. That leaves nonlethal weapons as one alternative. Some of the wealthier shipping companies fit their vessels with sonic weapons and high-powered water cannons, as I explain in my new piece for Popular Mechanics. But those devices are “too expensive” for the smaller firms, according to Colton.
Colton said one U.S. admiral floated the idea of putting mercenary teams on commercial vessels to defend against pirate boardings. But this, too, “raises more legal issues than anyone could possibly count.”
In short, there’s no easy seaborne solution to piracy. Experts stress that ending piracy requires law and order on land, where pirates have their bases. But law and order for Somalia, which has lacked a functioning central government since 1991, is no doubt years and years away.
MOGADISHU (Reuters) – Somali pirates holding a Ukrainian ship carrying 33 tanks reiterated their demands for a $20 million ransom on Tuesday and denied three of their number had died in a shootout.
A maritime group monitoring the situation had earlier said three pirates were killed in a shootout between rival gunmen on the MV Faina, seized six days ago in the most high-profile of a wave of hijackings off lawless Somalia this year.
“We want $20 million ransom from the ship and we are 53 Somalis,” said Sugule, the spokesman of the pirates onboard the Ukrainian ship, which is being shadowed by U.S. navy vessels.
“I will not talk about mediators or negotiation because we are at risk. I will not name where we are particularly but we are on the coast of Somalia,” he told Reuters, adding the pirates would stay on board until their demands were met.
The capture of the MV Faina has sparked controversy over the destination of its cargo and thrown a spotlight on rampant piracy in one of the world’s busiest shipping areas connecting Europe to Asia and the Middle East.
The East African Seafarers’ Assistance Programme, monitoring the hijacking via relatives of the crew and contacts with pirates, had earlier said that factions had argued over whether to free the cargo and crew.
But the pirates denied there had been any fighting.
“There are two American warships near us but we have neither fought nor communicated with them,” Sugule said.
Two other pirates and a regional leader had earlier told Reuters there had been no shootout. Sugule said one of the 21 crew members had died due to illness.
The U.S. navy has said the ship, which was heading for Kenya’s Mombasa port, was carrying T-72 tanks, grenade-launchers and ammunition ultimately bound for south Sudan via Kenya.
Kenya says the weaponry was for its own military.
Taking advantage of chaos on shore, where an Islamist-led insurgency has raged for nearly two years, Somali pirates have seized more than 30 ships this year and attacked many more.
RICH PIRATES
Most attacks have been in the Gulf of Aden between Yemen and north Somalia, a major global sea artery used by about 20,000 vessels a year heading to and from the Suez Canal. The pirates have also struck in the busy Indian Ocean waters off south Somalia.
With U.S. and French military bases in the area, many are unhappy with the lack of international action.
“If civil aircraft were being hijacked on a daily basis, the response of governments would be very different,” top shipping trade bodies and transport unions said in a joint statement.
“Yet ships, which are the lifeblood of the global economy, are seemingly out of sight and out of mind.”
As well as using ransom money to build new homes and take new wives, the increasingly rich pirates have bought speedboats, satellite phones and other equipment to aid their trade.
“There is a striking similarity between the actions of these unscrupulous pirates and the activity in ‘blood diamonds’ in Liberia and Sierra Leone during the civil wars in these countries,” said U.N. envoy to Somalia, Ahmedou Ould-Abdallah.
“No ship, big or small, civil or military, is spared. With the seizure of the Ukrainian ship, a new line has been crossed.”
U.S. analyst J. Peter Pham, of Madison University, called for a united international naval response, more attention to solving Somalia’s civil conflict, and better protection equipment on board commercial vessels.
“Many have done little aside from being prepared to pay ransoms which only perpetuate the cycle of violence,” he wrote in a new report on the Somali piracy phenomenon. (Additional reporting by Stefano Ambrogi in London, Andrew Cawthorne in Nairobi and Abdiqani Hassan in Bosasso; Editing by Mark Trevelyan)
NEW YORK – Rampant piracy off the Somali coast, demonstrated by the latest hijacking of a Ukrainian ship carrying heavy weapons, can be likened to so-called ‘blood diamonds,’ the illicit trafficking in gems used to finance civil wars in West Africa in recent years, the top United Nations envoy for the strife-torn Horn of Africa country said today.
“There is a striking similarity between the actions of these unscrupulous pirates and the activity in blood diamonds in Liberia and Sierra Leone during the civil wars in these countries,” Special Representative Ahmedou Ould-Abdallah declared in a news release.
“No ship, big or small, industrial or commercial, civil or military is spared. With the seizure of the Ukrainian ship a new line has been crossed. This act should not and will not be rewarded.”
Currently some dozen ships are being held by pirates, generally for heavy ransom, and Mr. Ould-Abdallah said piracy had become a multi-million dollar business attracting many Somalis using various political or social covers.
Piracy has driven the price of insurance and subsequently retail prices higher in the whole region, adding to the sharp rise in oil and food costs to make life even harder for the poor, he added. He called on journalists not to allow themselves to be used to broadcast messages from the pirates or help glorify their actions.
“The international community is determined to stop these pirates who are undermining efforts to bring peace to Somalia and maintain stability in the region,” he declared. “This cannot and will not be allowed to continue.”
UN food operations in Somalia have been directly impaired by the pirates who have seized numerous chartered boats carrying supplies for the UN World Food Programme (WFP).
