UN Orders Immediate Evacuation of Remaining International Staff From Libya (BREAKING NEWS)

(HN, February 28, 2011) - All remaining international staff have been ordered to leave Libya immediately, HUMNEWS has learned.

UN agencies operating in the country were advised yesterday that the evacuation of "all remaining international staff" had been authorized.

The UN's Department of Safety and Security has also ordered the suspension of any travel to Tripoli.

The decision is a clear sign of the rapidly-deteriorating situation in Libya and comes after several major powers - including the US and UK - have shuttered their embassies.

According to UN rules, locally-engaged staff do not qualify for evacuation without special authorization from the Secretary General. Although internal evacuation is sometimes granted earlier.

Among the UN agencies active in Libya are: the United Nations Development Program (UNDP), the Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO), the World Health Organization (WHO), the UN Children's Fund (UNICEF), the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), the World Meteorological Organization (WMO), the UN Information Service (UNIC) and the International Organization for Migration (IOM).

A UN mission has had a presence in the country since its independence in 1951.

Last week, UNDP announced the firing of Aisha Gaddafi - Colonel Gaddafi's daughter - as its Goodwill Ambassador in Libya.

UN spokesperson Martin Nesirky said the agreement with Aisha al-Gaddafi was terminated under Article 30 of the UN Guidelines for the Designation of Goodwill Ambassadors and Messengers of Peace.

The article says that the designation will be terminated if the "messenger of peace or goodwill ambassador engages in any activity incompatible with his/her status or with the purposes and principles of the United Nations, or if the termination is in the interest of the Organisation."

Aisha al-Gaddafi. Daughter of Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi. Aisha al-Gaddafi was appointed as the goodwill ambassador of Libya on July 24, 2009 to address the issues of HIV/AIDS and violence against women in Libya, both culturally sensitive topics in the country.

It appears that all references to Aisha Gaddafi have been removed from the UNDP's country website for Libya.

- HUMNEWS staff

Developing Nations Feel Powerless as Danger to Their Nationals Escalates in Libya (Report)

African migrants often use Libya as a transit point for destinations in Europe. They are among the thousands of Africans stranded in chaotic Libya. CREDIT: Human Rights Watch(HN, February 27, 2011) UPDATED 1100GMT--- As the increasingly isolated Colonel Gaddafi threatens to crackdown on dissent "to the last bullet," tens of thousands of expatriates from developing countries - mostly sub-Sahara Africa - remain stranded in Libya as their governments scramble to implement evacuation plans.

In recent hours and days, the situation has been exacerbated with a rapidly-deteriorating security situation. Some evacuees landing back in the UK last night described the violence as a "living hell," and some African migrants say they have faced open hostility in Libya because many people associate them with brutal mercenaries hired by the Qaddafi regime.

Libya is also a major transit point for sub-Saharan Africans fleeing to Europe (see map below).

One international observer describes the situation for African migrant workers as utterly dire.

"I tell you, these people, because of their scheme, they will be slaughtered in Libya. There is so much anger there against those mercenaries, which suddenly sprung up. I think it is urgent to do something about it now, otherwise, a genocide against anyone who has black skin and who doesn't speak perfect Arabic," Saad Jabbar, Deputy Director, North Africa Center at Cambridge University, told NPR.

Indeed, one Turkish evacuee told western journalists that he personally saw the bodies of as many as 80 Sudanese and Chadian nationals working for his oil company. "They cut them dead with pruning shears and axes, attacking them, saying you're providing troops for Gadhafi. The Sudanese, the Chadians were massacred. We saw it ourselves," said the unidentified oil worker.

Options even for wealthy nations with expatriates in Libya are limited. The international airport in Tripoli is reported to be in a state of chaos and, according to published reports, the British Foreign Office was forced to pay airport operators astronomical fees for aircraft and passenger handling.

Tens of thousands of sub-Saharan Africans are employed in Libya's oil industry and in other sectors. Countries with large number of migrant workers in the country include: Nigeria, Chad, Ghana, Egypt, Sudan, Turkey, Sri Lanka, the Philippines, Bangladesh, Ukraine and Vietnam.

The chaotic scene at Tripoli Airport CREDIT: CTVEgypt alone has more than one million migrant workers in Libya. With its proximity next to the country, it's been able to receive many evacuees by land and then transport them by bus to Cairo and other inland points. Egypt is also benefiting from relatively good relations with Tripoli as well as plenty of spare aircraft owned by Egypt Air that have been grounded by the sharp downturn of business and tourist travel to Egypt.

Though Egypt is also trying to figure out how to repatriate 10,000 Egyptians who have crossed over Libya's western border with Tunisia. A BBC correspondent on the border reported Sunday that at least 20,000 refugees from Libya are stranded at the border, and suggested they could be stuck for days - perhaps even weeks, raising the possibility of a humanitarian crisis.

World superpowers India and China have 18,000 and 30,000 workers respectively in Libya, and Beijing has also come in for criticism for a slow response. (Though in the past few hours, Chinese state media has been reporting that 3,000 stranded Chinese nationals have been moved from Benghazi to Crete via two chartered Greek ferries).

One of the countries in the worst situation is Nigeria - the regional power in West Africa which admits it is virtually powerless to extricate at least 2,000 Nigerians from Libya. The two countries have had strained relations for the last decade, with Tripoli having closed its embassy in Abuja several years ago.

On Wednesday Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan ordered the immediate evacuation of Nigerians stranded in the troubled country. However the Gaddafi regime has so far refused to grant landing rights to Nigerian aircraft. Libya still controls its own airspace, so if any government wants to land in the country then permission must be sought from Libyan officials.

The Jonathan Administration came under intense pressure earlier this month when it ignored the pleas of thousands of Nigerians stranded for days at Cairo International Airport amid chaos in that city. Faced with a similar situation in Libya, officials in Abuja even considered asking stranded Nigerians to cross the border into neighbouring Niger or Egypt - but that plan was shelved when it became clear the evacuees would be exposed to fighting and that moving them from border areas would be a logistical nightmare.

As the days drag on, a fuelled aircraft has been waiting for clearance in Nigeria since Thursday - with a large team of immigration officials, foreign affairs and medical personnel. A spokesman for the National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA), Yushau Shuaib, said Nigeria will keep on trying for clearance.

Ukraine says its has about 2,500 of its nationals in Libya. (Among them are at least five Ukrainian "nurses" are reported to be working for Gaddafi - including his personal nurse, Galyna Kolotnytska (Галина Колотницкая), who has decided to abandon the eccentric leader and return to Kyiv, according to Segodnya (Сегодня) newspaper in Ukraine).

Nepal has asked the International Organization for Migration (IOM) to help repatriate about 600 of their nationals who had been working in the Libyan town of Derna and who are now waiting to cross at Salum border crossing. It also reports that 900 of their nationals currently stranded in Tripoli and Benghazi would need assistance if the situation deteriorates further. 

In Tripoli, about 350 Sri Lankans are taking shelter at the Sri Lankan Embassy with several hundred other Sri Lankans spread around the country, the IOM says. Meanwhile, about 750 Bangladeshis out of an estimated population of 50,000 are also now heading for the Egyptian border and who will also need food, water and shelter assistance upon arrival.

Vietnamese authorities have told IOM that there are about 10,500 of their nationals in Libya. Although they say some have left, most are still in the country, many without travel documents which were probably kept by their employers.

"The situation for migrants inside Libya is extremely difficult and we are deeply concerned about their plight," says IOM Director General William Lacy Swing. 

This week, the IOM voiced concern about the large number of migrant workers from Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia stuck in Libya.

Large numbers of Sub-Saharan irregular migrants in Libya work informally in the service sector or as manual labour. Poorly paid and in irregular work, it is unlikely they have the resources to rent vehicles to get to border areas and reach safety, IOM says.

"Of the tens of thousands of Sub-Saharan Africans and South Asians working in Libya, only a handful have managed to reach the border so far. This is probably because they do not have the resources to pay for transport," says Laurence Hart, IOM's Chief of Mission for Libya.

"We are very concerned for all those migrants who may wish to leave, but cannot. Many countries without the adequate resources to evacuate their nationals are now asking IOM for help.  We are therefore urgently appealing to donors for funding to allow us to intervene," he adds.

- From HUMNEWS Africa Bureau

Adolescents Neglected and Vulnerable Group - UNICEF (Report)

(HN, February 25, 2011) - While the world has seen impressive gains for young children, there have been too few gains in areas critically affecting adolescents.'The State of the World's Children 2011,' which is dedicated to investing in the development of adolescents to help break the cycles of poverty and inequity

More than seventy million adolescents of lower secondary age are currently out of school, and on a global level girls still lag behind boys in secondary school participation.

The findings are contained in the State of the World's Children Report (SOWC) - the flagship publication of the UN Children's Fund (UNICEF) released today. There are currently 1.2-billion adolescents - which the UN defines as anyone 10-19 years old - in the world today, and most are in Africa.

The demographic group has become much more visible due to the "youth bulge" in most regions - especially the Middle East and North Africa. Many find that by the time they reach working age, there are no jobs or few opportunities for waiting for them.

In fact, the continent has the largest proportion of children, adolescents and young people in the world. Almost half its population is younger than 18 years and almost two-thirds are younger than 25 years.

In Nairobi, UNICEF's regional director for eastern and southern Africa, Elhadj As Sy, said: "As the gap between rich and poor, men and women, urban and rural keeps widening, and inequality generates a 'nothing to lose' generation, paying more attention to adolescents and young people is especially critical for the African nations. ."

The report argues that without education, adolescents cannot develop the knowledge and skills they need to navigate the risks of exploitation, abuse and violence that are at height during the second decade of life.

In Brazil for example, UNICEF says the lives of 26,000 children under one were saved between 1998 and 2008, leading to a sharp decrease in infant mortality. In the same decade 81,000 Brazilian adolescents aged 15-19 were murdered.

“We need to focus more attention now on reaching adolescents -- especially adolescent girls -- investing in education, health and other measures to engage them in the process of improving their own lives," said UNICEF Executive Director Tony Lake.

The vast majority of today’s adolescents (88 per cent) live in developing countries. Many face a unique set of challenges. Although adolescents around the world are generally healthier today than in the past, many  health risks remain significant, including injuries, eating disorders, substance abuse and mental health issues; it is estimated that around 1 in every 5 adolescents suffers from a mental health or behavioural problem, according to the SOWC.

With 81 million young people out of work globally in 2009, youth unemployment remains a concern in almost every country. An increasingly technological labour market requires skills that many young people do not possess. This not only results in a waste of young people’s talents, but also in a lost opportunity for the communities in which they live, UNICEF says. In many countries large teenage populations are a unique demographic asset that is often overlooked. By investing in adolescent education and training, countries can reap a large and productive workforce, contributing significantly to the growth of national economies.

Adolescents face numerous global challenges both today and in the future, among them the current bout of economic turmoil, climate change and environmental degradation, explosive urbanization and migration, aging societies, the rising costs of healthcare, and escalating humanitarian crises.

“Adolescence is a pivot point – an opportunity to consolidate the gains we have made in early childhood or risk seeing those gains wiped out,” said Lake.

The choice of adolescents for this year's SOWC is a departue from UNICEF's long-standing focus on child survival - child and maternal health. UNICEF argues impressive gains have been made in that phase of the life cycle. UNICEF says there has been a 33% drop in the global under-five mortality rate.

"This shows that many more young lives have been saved, in most of the world ‘s regions girls are almost as likely as boys to go to primary school, and millions of children now benefit from improved access to safe water and critical medicines such as routine vaccinations."

Adolescents face numerous global challenges both today and in the future, UNICEF says, among them the current bout of economic turmoil, climate change and environmental degradation, explosive urbanization and migration, aging societies, the rising costs of healthcare, and escalating humanitarian crises.

To enable adolescents to effectively deal with these challenges, targeted investments in the following key areas are necessary:

• Improving data collection to increase the understanding of adolescents’ situation and meet their rights;
• Investing in education and training so that adolescents have the means to lift themselves out of poverty and contribute to their national economies;
• Expanding opportunities for youth to participate and voice their opinion, for example in national youth councils, youth forums, community service initiatives, online activism and other avenues which enable adolescents to make their voices heard.
• Promoting laws, policies and programs that protect the rights of  adolescents and enable them to overcome barriers  to essential services;
• Stepping up the fight again poverty and inequity through child sensitive programs to prevent adolescents from being prematurely catapulted into adulthood.

- HUMNEWS staff, UNICEF

Are 'European Values' Being Eroded in Dealings With Libya? (PERSPECTIVE)

By Richard Pithouse

(HN, February 24, 2011) - As the first unconfirmed reports of airborne attacks on protestors in Tripoli and Benghazi reached Al Jazeera the station crossed to a spokesperson for the European Union.Colonel Qaddafi in 2009 on “visit of reconciliation” with Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi. The two countries have significant bilateral investments.

There was talk of the need to affirm ‘European values’. Moments later the programme cut away to the story of the two Libyan fighter pilots who had landed in Malta and sought political asylum rather than obey orders to attack protestors in Benghazi.

Those pilots are not the first people to have arrived in Malta after crossing the Mediterranean from Libya. But most people who make that journey don’t arrive in Mirage F1s. Migrants take many routes into Europe. Some people cross into Greece from Turkey, others from Algeria into Spain. For many, the way into Europe is through the Sahara into Libya, across the ocean and into Malta and Italy. The migrants come from Somalia, from Chad, from Senegal, from Nigeria and from all over North and West Africa.

The journey across the Mediterranean in small and usually over crowded boats is perilous and many have sunk. If they are intercepted by the Italian navy the migrants are forced off the boats, often with clubs and batons that dispense electric shocks, and taken to prisons in Tripoli. In crass violation of international law no attempt is made to ascertain whether or not the migrants are political refugees or to enquire into their health or where the parents of children may be.

From Tripoli they are taken to European funded migrant detention centres in places like the tiny village of Al Qatran out in the dessert near the border with Chad and Niger. Al Qatran is a thousand kilometres from Tripoli and it may take three days for captured migrants to be moved across that distance in trucks. In the detention centres there may be more than fifty people in a room. They sleep on the floor. The routine sadism that always occurs in any situation in which some people are given absolute power over others is endemic. There are beatings, rapes and extortion. Suicides are a common response as are mass jailbreaks in which many migrants have been killed by the Libyan police. But some have escaped out into the vastness of the Sahara to make what they can of sudden freedom without papers or money in a desert.

Protesters in Europe call for the ouster of GaddafiIt was in the early days of the 2003 Iraq war that Tony Blair first proposed the idea that migrants trying to enter Europe should be sent to ‘transit processing centres’ outside of Europe. There is a similar logic here to the way in which the United States has outsourced torture to countries like Egypt.

Muammar Gaddafi’s early attempts to show that he would be able to take on the policing of Europe’s borders were not a huge success. In August 2004 a plane was chartered to deport 75 captured Eritrean migrants from Tripoli but the passengers seized control of the plane in mid flight and diverted it to Khartoum where the UNHCR recognised 60 of them as legitimate political refugees.

But on the same day that the European union lifted its economic sanctions and arms embargo on Libya in October 2004 it was agreed to engage with Libya on ‘immigration matters’ and a technical team was sent to Libya the following month. The United Kingdom and France both moved quickly to sell weapons to Libya and in 2008 Italy and Libya signed The Treaty of Friendship, Partnership and Cooperation between the Italian Republic and Great Socialist People’s Libyan Arab Jamahiriya in which Italy agreed to invest five billion dollars in Libya in exchange for, amongst other things, a Libyan agreement to undertake to police migration into Europe via Libya. Silvio Berlusconi declared that closer relations with Libya are about “fewer illegal immigrants and more oil.” Since then Berlusconi and Gaddafi have, through the investment arms of their respective family trusts, become co-owners of a major communications company.

This sort of personal connection between an elected politician in the West and a despot elsewhere is hardly unique. The French Foreign Minister Michele Alliot-Marie spent her Christmas holiday in Tunisia as a guest of a businessman with close ties to Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali as the protests against Ben Ali were gathering strength. The first response of the French state to the protests in Tunisia was to send arms to Ben Ali. The French Prime Minister Francois Fillon spent his Christmas holiday on the Nile as a guest of the Egyptian state.  In March 2009 US Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, commented, in a discussion about severe and routine human rights violations by the Mubarak regime, that “I really consider President and Mrs. Mubarak to be friends of my family.”

In recent years all sorts of European institutions beyond oil companies and security agencies made their own deals with the dictatorship in Tripoli. The London School of Economics accepted a £1.5m grant from the Gaddafi International Charity and Development Foundation for a ‘virtual democracy centre’. The Foundation is headed by the same Saif al-Islam Gaddafi who recently went on to Libyan television to tell protestors that his father’s government would ‘fight to the last minute, until the last bullet’.

The Europe of colonialism, slavery and genocide has no claim to moral leadership in this world. The Europe that backed the Mubarak dictatorship for thirty years and the Ben Ali dictatorship for twenty-three years has no claim to moral leadership in this world. The Europe that helped to smash Iraq in the invasion of 2003 has no claim to moral leadership in this world. The Europe that refused to allow the Haitian people to elect a leadership of its choosing by supporting a coup against that leadership in 2004 has no claim to moral leadership in this world. The Europe that has been directly responsible for the documented deaths of almost 14,000 migrants since 1993 has no claim to moral leadership in this world.

It is true enough that the modern form of democracy began in Europe with the French Revolution of 1789. But when African slaves in Haiti took the ideas of liberty, equality and fraternity seriously and won their own revolution in 1804 it immediately became clear that the French did not intend democracy to be for everyone. That has been the European position ever since.A woman and her family cross from Libya to Tunisia at the Ras Jdir border crossing today. They were among thousands of people fleeing the violence in Libya. Credit: UNHCR

To choose democracy is not to choose Europe and it is certainly not to choose the United States of America, which has overthrown democratically elected governments around the world when electorates have had the temerity to elect the ‘wrong’ leaders. In fact, any serious commitment to democracy has to reject the moral and political authority of Europe and the United States of America. Any commitment to democracy has to assert, very clearly, that all people everywhere have the right to govern themselves according to their own will.

We cannot know the trajectories of the uprisings that have swept North Africa and the Middle East. But one thing is for sure. Whatever pompous claims to the contrary come out of Washington and Brussels, these are not revolts for American or European values. On the contrary they are a direct challenge to those values. They are revolts against a global power structure that is formed by an international alliance of elites with one of its key principles being the idea, the racist idea, that Arabs are ‘not yet ready’ for democracy. This, of course, is an echo of one of the common justifications for apartheid. But the plain fact of the matter is that anyone who says that anyone else isn’t yet ready for democracy is no democrat.

Ben Ali and Mubarak were little more than co-opted Bantustan leaders in a system of global apartheid. Gadaffi’s oil funded cruelty, megalomania and opportunism has taken him in many directions in his 42-year reign but have, in recent years, been leading him in the same direction. Democratising a Bantustan is progress. But democratising a Bantustan is not enough. The whole global system needs to be democratised.

Pithouse teaches politics at Rhodes University. This article first appeared on the website of the South Africa Civil Society Information Service (SACSIS).

Pulling the Revolutionary Trigger - Via Facebook (PERSPECTIVE)

by Alina Vrejoiu

“Whatever the future may have in store for us, one thing is certain — this new revolution in human thought will never go backward.” --- Fredrick Douglas

(HN, February 21, 2011) -- As Libyan cities continue to fall into the hands of anti-Gaddafi supporters, many people are once again speculating on the root cause of the upheavals in the Middle East and Northern Africa.Ousted Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak was so terrified of social media he ordered the Internet shut for several days. CREDIT: Al-Ahram

As an educator, and having lived through the revolution in Eastern Europe, I can tell you that if you peel away all the layers one thing becomes clear: the lack of an educational foundation is at the top of the list for revolutionary triggers.

It’s no accident that in this information age, social networking is leading the North African and Middle Eastern leap to modernity. This - combined with a high population of youth and a poor economy - makes a very potent recipe for revolution.

Who would have imagined that social networking sites - such as Twitter, Facebook and others like them - once thought to be playful diversions, are now helping to thread together the fabrics of the revolution? And who would have thought that the technology embraced by so many millions could pose a threat to strongmen like Muammar al-Gadaffi, one of the nastiest in the region, Hosni Mubarak and long-standing regimes in Bahrain, Yemen, Algeria and elsewhere?

Protesters in Benghazi demonstrate against Colonel Gaddafi Photo: FLICKRYoung men and women of these long-closed societies - such as Google marketing executive Wael Ghonim in Egypt - have formed online communities of like-minded individuals who have been disenfranchised by their governments of economic dignity and freedom for so many decades.

Something had to give and the timing is no accident: food prices are sky-rocketing, joblessness is at an all-time high and promises of reform from long-serving strongmen in the region have produced nothing more than hollow results.

In this information age everyone is connected but no one is in charge - this is what is leading to a breakdown in the dictatorships.
The rotted out governments of Tunisia, Egypt, Libya and other countries in Northern Africa and the Middle East are a clear example of how being out of touch with technology and the huge generational gap have become huge liabilities.

These are the two main propellant forces that will fuel more and more protests in countries all over region.

In the region, about 60% of people are under the age of thirty and they all want to be free and have economic stability like all human beings do.  

As a presidential contender, Barack Obama knew how to reach America’s youth like no other politician running for office. His hypnotic “Yes We Can” campaign slogan resonated not only with the youth in this country, but all over the world. He had the savvy to connect with and engage college students for the first time in the United States through the Internet.

Overthrowing a regime and making a change will require massive investment in infrastructure and social programs in order for change to be successful and sustainable.

According to the United Nations the countries in this region have not only avoided badly-needed investment in their people but they have also kept them in the dark - through tactics ranging from limiting access to Internet sites to keeping tight reigns on state-owned media outlets.

Expect this astonishing wave of change to wash across virgin territory. Iran’s regime is vulnerable to the same break down as the countries in Northern Africa are faced with. The Mullahs and the Islamic element are minor in comparison to the population of youth they must face. The regime will put up a lot of resistance but its chances of surviving are slim. I am making the bold prediction that the Iranian regime will collapse within a year’s time, at the latest, and will change the geopolitics in the Middle East.

People all across the Middle East and North Africa are willing to sacrifice their lives for a common cause. The reality is promising and - these days - the trigger seems just a click away.

---Alina Vrejoiu is a faculty member of Kingsborough Community College in Brooklyn, New York and has taught international students for the last four years.

Social Media Huge Challenge to Authoritarian Governments (UPDATED FEB 21 1740GMT)

Protesters in Cairo demanding a return of Internet access(HN, February 21, 2011) - Across the Middle East and North Africa, social media channels are being used widely to mobilize protesters, feed news to media agencies and to broadcast thoughts that were once a ticket for imprisonment.

The use of such social media channels as Facebook, Skype and Twitter - and more recently Speak2Tweet - in Tunisia and Egypt has highlighted their importance as tools for circumventing government dominance of the media sector and restrictive freedom of association laws.

As major cities in Libya appeared to fall today into opposition hands, supporters overseas Tweeted ISP phone numbers in Europe which could be used by Libyans with dial-up modems to continue broadcasting updates. (The same tactic was used by overseas supporters of protesters in Tahrir Square: an ISP dial-in number in France was passed around - complete with user names and passwords).

The ability of protesters to communicate and mobilise via social media raises questions as to whether such tools have brought about a permanent shift in the balance of power away from authoritarian governments. Activists in Tunisia and Egypt used social media to good effect as part of their efforts to challenge the reign of authoritarian throughout the Middle East and North Africa. Further protests are being organised via social media, including in Bahrain, Yemen and - most recently - Libya and Morocco.

The region has one of the most youthful populations in the world, with people under 25 making up between 35-45% of the population in each country. They make up the majority of social media users, though users over 40 are the fastest growing segment on Facebook.

Internet penetration hovers around 20-30% outside the Gulf region, whereas mobile penetration is approaching nearly 100% in many countries. Many young people are accessing the Internet and social media channels via their mobile phones and smart phones. Falling handset prices and the widespread available of prepaid credit has allowed even those from lower wealth quintiles to access mobile phone services.

In the region there are about 17 million Facebook users, 25,000 Twitter accounts and 40,000 active blogs, according to the Arab Advisors Group. However exact figures are almost impossible to calculate.

YouTube is extremely popular, with an average of 24 hours of video uploaded from the region every minute, including accounts devoted to tracking human rights abuses.

In Saudi Arabia, Internet use is spreading like wildfire, although sites deemed a threat to the regime are routinely blocked. Saudi Arabia’s Internet users spent around US$ 3 billion in 2010 on buying products and services through e-commerce, according to the Arab Advisors Group.

Egypt's shutdown of all access to the internet and pressure on mobile phone operators to block SMS services was unprecedented. The country has among the highest Internet penetration on the continent.

Although Burma and Iran attempted to do the same, the widespread nature of Egypt's blockages in such an economically important country were a wake-up call to experts and officials who thought such a possibility was off the table.

Just yesterday, a HUMNEWS correspondent in the capital of Yemen, Sana'a, reported that access to Skype had been cut again.

In Bahrain social media also played a big role in mobilizing protesters. (Kuwait Times)However, on another level, the digital blackout was a powerful reminder of the power of older technologies, and innovative solutions emerged to merge the best of both. Landlines continued to be available, people in Egypt were encouraged to leave their wireless connections unlocked, and wireless internet relays to neighbouring countries were created by stringing together access points. Protesters also shared mobile phone credit amongst each other.

In Bahrain, makeshift charging stations for mobile phones have been established in Pearl Square - underlining the importance of these devices.

Social media are not purely of benefit to activists. They also enable government surveillance. Semi-public fora such as Facebook are relatively easy for government operatives to infiltrate.

In Sudan, which has also seen some protests in the capital, activists claim that authorities have used faux protests publicised on social media to entrap and arrest them; Blackberry's maker, Research in Motion, in recent months has caved to demands by the United Arab Emirates, followed by Saudi Arabia, Egypt, India and others, to make its data streams accessible to host governments (although the data likely remains encrypted).

The UAE's request came just days after youth attempted to organise a peaceful protest against rising oil prices using Blackberry's messenger service, known as BBM.

Social media put powerful information and communication tools into the hands of individuals, but also facilitate state surveillance.

Sensing the power of social media in the region, the US State Department has opened Twitter accounts in Farsi and Arabic.

However, for the moment the scales are tipped in favour of activists because publicity and popularity can provide a level of protection to many of the more well-know digital activists, and protesters so far appear to be a step ahead of governments in terms of utilising social media and circumventing censorship.

- HUMNEWS staff, Oxford Analytica

Authorities in Bahrain, Elsewhere Intensify Crackdown on Foreign Journalists (UPDATED FEB 19 1255GMT)

(HN, February 19, 2011) --- Across the Middle East and North Africa - journalists continue to find themselves in the line of fire.

Just yesterday in the Bahraini capital, Manama, Michael Slackman and Sean Patrick Farrell of The New York Times were recording video when a helicopter began firing in their direction. The two were amoing the few foreign journalists allowed into the tiny Gulf kingdom -  more than a dozen were detained for hours upon arrival at Bahrain International Airport.

Commenting on the targeting of his colleagues in Bahrain, Times colunist Nicholas Kristof said: "It was another example of Bahrain targeting journalists, as King Hamad bin Isa al-Khalifa attempts to intimidate or keep out witnesses to his repression."

Nancy Yousseff, a journalist with McClatchy news agency has been held at least 15 hours at Bahrain's airport. Other detained journalists are said to be from Reuters, Time, BBC, France 24 and several Japanese news outlets.

The crackdown on journalists in recent weeks in countries in the Middle East and North Africa ranging from Egypt to Lybia to Syria underscores a growing risk being faced by working journalists covering widening street protests in the region, says the New York-based watchdog group Committee to Protect Journalists (see report below).

In Yemen, where protests are also gaining momentum - according to a HUMNEWS correspondent on the scene - the CPJ says at least four photojournalists were attacked, beaten, and had their cameras confiscated.

A CBS News crew arrived in Bahrain on Friday morning but some members were held at the airport by security officials, along with as many as 15 other foreign journalists, according to the Associated Press and other sources.

(The HUMNEWS correspondent reported at 1130GMT today that snipers have been stationed in the centre of Sana'a and that Skype has been blocked).

Also this afternoon, as Bahrani authorities were moving for a second time against protesters with live fire, Al Jazeera reported a journalist for the Daily Telegraph has also been shot.

In Iraq, Hemin Latif, a journalist working for the Sulaimaniya-based Destur news website (بینیتز ) was shot and injured yesterday while covering anti-government protests against unemployment and corruption, the CPJ says.

"Governments throughout the Middle East and North Africa cannot deny their citizens coverage of these momentous events across the region," Mohamed Abdel Dayem, CPJ's Middle East and North Africa program coordinator said today. "Local and international media must be allowed to cover the news."

In the CPJ report released yesterday, Attacks on the Press 2010, street protests were identified as a growing risk for journalists.

"Deaths in combat-related crossfire and in dangerous assignments such as street protests constituted a larger portion of the 2010 toll than usual," the report said.

In the street protests in Cairo, Egypt this month at least one journalist was killed and several injured and detained.

The CPJ report cites Bahrain as a country where "authorities have used harassment, threats, and restrictions on movement to limit independent coverage on sensitive issues."

It added: "The effect has been to conceal controversial activities and flawed policies, suppress political opposition, and settle scored with critics."

The CPJ says authorities in Bahrain have used the excuse of anti-terrorism to arrest hundreds of people - including at least two journalistic bloggers "who has been critical of government policies that marginalize the country's Shiite majority."

---HUMNEWS staff

Pakistan Deadliest Country for Journalists in 2010 - CPJ (Report)

(HN, February 16, 2011) -- Amid a rash of suicide attacks, Pakistan became the world’s deadliest country for the press in 2010. Journalists covering street protests are increasingly becoming targets. Credit: M Bociurkiw/HUMNEWS

According to the annual report from the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), Attacks on the Press 2010, at least eight journalists killed in connection with their work in Pakistan last year - constituting a significant portion of the worldwide death toll of 44.

The CPJ says Iraq, Mexico, Honduras, and Indonesia also ranked high for journalism-related fatalities. And for the first time, broadcast journalists accounted for the highest proportion of fatalities, overtaking their colleagues in print.

The worldwide toll reflected a notable drop from 2009, when a massacre in the Philippine province of Maguindanao drove the number of work-related deaths to a record 72. The CPJ is investigating 31 other deaths in 2010 to determine whether they were work-related.

Not surprisingly, Internet-based journalists constitute an increasing portion of CPJ’s death toll. At least six journalists who worked primarily online were killed in 2010, a CPJ analysis found.

Murder was the leading cause of work-related deaths in 2010, as it has been in past years. But murders composed about 60 percent of deaths in 2010, lower than the rate of 72 percent seen over the past two decades, the CPJ found.

Deaths in combat-related crossfire and in dangerous assignments such as street protests constituted a larger portion of the 2010 toll than usual, says the CPJ.

(With the ongoing unrest in the Middle East and North Africa, street protests are likely to account for a higher proportion of deaths and injuries among journalists in 2011. Earlier this month, Egyptian journalist Ahmed Mahmoud, 36, of Al-Taawun newspaper died of his wounds, inflicted from gunfire while taking photographs of protests from his balcony. And only yesterday, the media community was shaken when CBS News reported that one of its star correspondents - Lara Logan of 60 Minutes - was beaten and sexually assaulted while covering protests in Cairo recently. Several other Egyptian and foreign journalists have been injured, detained and harassed in the past weeks of unrest in Egypt).

One of the most dangerous professions in the world

Suicide bombings and crossfire in Pakistan, Afghanistan, Thailand, and Somalia accounted for the unusually high proportion, the CPJ report says.

The only journalist to die in prison in 2010 was Cameroonian editor Germain Cyrille Ngota Ngota - who was jailed after he and other journalists asked a presidential aide about alleged misuse of state oil company funds. Cameroon will hold Presidential elections later this year in a race which is expected to be turbulent.

"There's a price to pay for speaking out," Al Jazeera anchor Riz Khan says in the forward to the report.

The CPJ reports that at least five journalists were reported missing during the year, three in Mexico and one apiece in Sri Lanka and Ukraine.

In the report, the CPJ also took aim at international institutions for failing to defend press freedom. It chides UNESCO for wanting to present a prize honoring one of Africa’s most notorious press freedom abusers - President Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo of Equatorial Guinea. It also cited the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) for awarding Kazakhstan, one of the region’s worst press freedom violators, chairmanship of the organization.

- HUMNEWS staff

Revolution Comes Like a Thief in the Night (Perspective)

By Richard Pithouse

(HN, February 15, 2011) - Life, ordinary life, is meant to follow certain rhythms. We grow, seasons change and we assume new positions in the world. When you have finished being a child you put away childish things and move on to the next stage of life.A protester in Cairo walks by an ad for Business Class seats. Pithouse says the widening gulf between rich and poor is a powder keg waiting to explode. Credit: M Bociurkiw/HUMNEWS

But there is a multitude of people in this world who cannot build a home, marry and care for their children and aging parents. There is a multitude of people who are growing older as they remain stuck in an exhausting limbo, perhaps just managing to scrape together the rent for a backyard shack by selling tomatoes or cell phone chargers on some street.

Mohamed Bouazizi was one person amongst that multitude. He was born in 1984 in the Tunisian city of Sidi Bouzid. His father died on a Libyan construction site when Mohamed was three. He went to a one roomed village school but had to start working from the age of ten and abandoned school altogether in his late teens.

In a city with an unemployment rate of 30% he couldn’t find work and began, like so many others, selling fruit and vegetables in the street. With the thousand rand that he made each month he looked after his mother, his uncle and his younger siblings. He was, incredibly, managing to pay for his sister, Samia, to study at university.

Since he was a child he had been harassed by the police who regularly confiscated his wheelbarrow and his wares. On the 17th of December last year he had just laid out one thousand and five hundred Rand to buy stock when a municipal official asked him for a bribe to keep his place on the street. He couldn’t pay it and so they turned his cart over, confiscated his scales, spat at him and slapped him. He went to the municipal offices to complain but no one would see him.  He went outside, bought some petrol, poured it all over his body and set himself alight outside the municipal offices. Mohammed’s mother told a journalist that he didn’t kill himself because he was poor but because he had been humiliated. "It got to him deep inside, it hurt his pride."

In 1961 Frantz Fanon wrote, from Tunisia, “The colonial world is a world cut into two....The town belonging to the colonized people, or at least the native town, the Negro village, the medina, the reservation, is a place of ill fame, peopled by men of evil repute. They are born there, it matters little where or how; they die there, it matters not how or where.”

Fifty years later cities are still divided into separate zones for those who count and those who don't count. These days what distinguishes those who count from those who don’t is usually the possession of wealth. But the people spurned by society continue to be taken as a threat to society. Jacques Depelchin, the Congolese historian, writes, “the poor in Africa have replaced the Dark Continent as the symbolic conceptual definition of the obstacle to civilization.”

But of course Mohamed Bouzazi didn’t die the invisible death of the average poor person. When he set his own body alight he ignited the uprising that drove Zine El Abidine Ben Ali from power in Tunisia, toppled Hosni Mubarak in Egypt and then spread like a prairie fire to Algeria, Yemen, Iran and beyond. Revolt is leaping across the borders that are supposed to contain people while money is moved, dissidents rendered and intelligence exchanged.

These revolts may, like the European Revolutions of 1848 or the revolts against Stalinism in 1989, remake the world order in ways that we cannot yet predict.

Popular anger can be mobilised against innocent scapegoats like gay people in Uganda, Muslims in parts of India or migrants in South Africa. Revolutions are often rolled back, co-opted or even used to strengthen oppression by modernising it.  The future of Tunisia, Egypt and all the other countries where people are now taking to the streets against the police and party thugs has yet to be written. Local elites and imperialism will certainly aim to do more of that writing than the ordinary people that have already brought down two dictatorships.

But whatever the eventual fate of the struggles in North Africa and the Middle East something has been done that cannot be undone. That something is the fact that the refusal of a street vendor to continue to tolerate indignity and the sheer sadism of so much bureaucratic power was heard and acted on in a way that eventually brought down a brutal dictator and ally of imperialism and, for a moment at least, seized the initiative from the dictators, the officials, the experts, the police and the NGOs and put it, firmly and gloriously, in the hands of the people.

This is not the first time that the agency of people that don’t count has, like the proverbial thief in the night, suddenly appeared at the centre of the world stage without warning.

The Christian story is just one of many in which a poor man from some village in the provinces assumes a tremendous historical consequence that far outweighs that of his tormentors. And from the Haitian Revolution of 1804 to the Paris Commune of 1871 to the anti-colonial movements of the 50s and 60s that ignited a global rebellion in 1968 the modern world has periodically been remade by the intelligence and courage of the women and men it has most denigrated.

There are many lessons to be drawn from the drama unfolding in North Africa and the Middle East. One of them is that we should not assume that South Africans will continue to trudge through life without work, without homes and without dignity forever.

If we carry on as we are, the day will come when a fire will be lit in Grahamstown or Harrismith or Ermelo, or on some farm or in some school or shack settlement whose name we don’t yet know, and neither the rubber bullets, party thugs, offers of jobs and money to leaders or senior politicians arriving in helicopters with smiles and big promises will put it out.

Pithouse teaches politics at Rhodes University. This first appeared on the website of The South African Civil Society Information Service - SACSIS

“We’re Changing the Order of the Alphabet” (Report)

(HN, February 14, 2011, Las Vegas) – This was how Sebastian Kopulande, Chief Executive Officer of the Zambian International Trade and Investment Centre opened the historic first ever Africa-USA Business Executives Conference tonight in Las Vegas, Nevada.  The conference runs February 14^th-15^th.

For the first time, the city of Las Vegas, has welcomed hundreds of African business executives from countries such as Angola, Botswana, Cameroon, Ethiopia, Ghana, Nigeria, Senegal, South Africa and Zambia for two days of meetings with their counterparts from the US, for the first-annual Africa - USA Business Executives Convention and Expo.

The conference is designed to explore and create relationships and alliances between business leaders of both continents, allowing them to meet investment partners in a dynamic and vibrant environment of panels and exhibits for the purpose of forming sustainable and capacity-building agribusiness partnerships locally, regionally and internationally.

Why Africa?  

“Many global commentators agree that this is the `African Century’.  For investors, this means an understanding of the available opportunities as well as offering the chance to develop meaningful relationships among those doing business together,” says Ted Alemayhu, Executive Chairman of the event.  

Five areas have been identified as being the most attractive for growth, namely agriculture, banking and finance, energy, telecommunications and aviation, travel and tourism. All will be featured at this year’s meeting.  

Realizing the need to go beyond discussing issues, ideas and strategies for increasing  livelihoods in Africa, the organizers say they are taking bold steps to not only learn how to “fish for our own food but to create partnerships to sell the fish”. 

(Chisokone Market, Kitwe. CREDIT Wikipedia)One of the most prominent delegations at the conference are the Zambians.

Zambia is one of the most highly urbanized countries in sub-Saharan Africa with 44% of the population concentrated in a few urban areas, the largest city being the capital Lusaka with more than 1 million people. Unemployment and underemployment are serious problems, while most rural Zambians are subsistence farmers. Yet, in 2010 The World Bank named Zambia as one of the worlds fastest economically reforming countries.

The Zambian economy has historically been based on the copper mining industry, yet attendees here say they are interested in talking about issues such as solar power, farming (agriculture) and financial services.     

Over the past 30 years the infrastructure in Zambia has been crumbling and the government is seeking not only new investment from the likes of Merrill Lynch, Credit Suisse and Societe Generale - who are all here too - but also from the entrepreneurial Diaspora Zambian community here in the US to help make their homeland a star in the African growth landscape.

This element is so important in fact that the central Zambian government has set up a special office as a representative from the President’s office to the Diaspora community, and given the community a full time staff member.  

The country has sent 54 people from Zambia to the first of its kind gathering. More than 50 other people who now live in other countries around the world - such as Belgium, the UK and Canada, and the US - have also come to see how they can be a part of `making Z the first letter of the alphabet’ as Angel Mondoloka, Chief Operating Officer of the Zambian International Trade and Investment Centre, says.

(Nkana Copper Mine. CREDIT Wikipedia)“We are lucky that the previous President Levy Mwanawasa began intensive business reforms in our country before his death (in 2008),” said Mondoloka. “This is our future and we are going to make it happen with smart investment, and entrepreneurship”.   

The conference is serving as a matchmaker between small and medium sized businesses in Africa, US counterparts, and investment firms.  Participants were asked to submit proposals before the convention began so they could be matched with the most appropriate contacts.

Patrick Kolata, who had travelled from Lusaka, wanted to create a solar power business and has been matched with a solar panel manufacturer. He said, “We have had to learn as Africans to be resourceful, now we want to be cutting edge entrepreneurs. Solar power will be a big industry for us in our future.”

He finished by saying, “We’re ready!”

The formal panels and business expo begin later today.

--HUMNEWS staff

Could The Spirit of Tahrir Square Infect Cameroon, West Africa? (Report)

(HN, February 12, 2011) - Cameroonian Presidential candidate and women's rights activist Kah Walla has warned incumbent President Paul Biya that the wave of passion for democratic change that has swept through Tunisia and Egypt could travel as far as West Africa - especially Cameroon, where presidential elections are due in October.

Cameroonian presidential candidate Kah Walla

In a letter to Biya sent to HUMNEWS, Kah Walla writes: "Mr. President, I am certain you are observing with great interest along with the rest of us Cameroonians, the wind of change that is gaining incredible momentum throughout Africa and in the Middle East. It is an incredible season for people who have been oppressed for decades and who have decided to take their destiny into their own hands. They are not only winning battles, but are actually coming out victorious in the struggles for independence, freedom and human dignity which they have been waging against their leaders.

"It is a very bad season for presidents who have been in power for over 20 years, maintaining their power through dubious, ritualistic elections, which have credibility neither with their own people nor with the global community."

In Cameroon the president is elected by plurality vote to serve a seven-year term. However opposition leaders say the election commission has "colossal weaknesses" and lacks the credibility to manage free and fair elections in Cameroon."

Biya came to power in the oil-producing nation in 1982. Like Nigeria, Cameroon's prospects for development were initially promising, with oil and pipeline projects generating revenue. But Biya changed the constitution in 2008, allowing him to run for president for a third time this year. Protests erupted and the opposition termed the change "a constitutional coup".

The parallels between Egypt and Cameroon are striking: both have had a president in power for about three decades, enjoy significant oil wealth, have huge populations of young people, suffer from massive unemployment and widespread corruption. Like the ousted Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, Biya is in is close to 80-years-old (he turns 78 tomorrow). It therefore comes as little surprise that Kah Walla is putting Biya on notice in the sternly-worded letter.

She says it is impossible for Cameroonians not to take notice of the popular stand against rigged elections in Egypt.

"Cameroonians are not only sitting on the edges of their seats observing this, but we are communing with these people in mind and spirit. We understand them in our very core, we admire the steps they have taken to control their own destinies, we are humbled by the courage they are showing in daring to invent their own futures, we are collecting information, analyzing it and drawing lessons from their victories."

Citing the tumultuous events in Tunisia, Kah Walla said: "We have learned from the Tunisians, that unlike us in 1992, it is necessary to maintain the pressure until the ultimate goal is attained. We have learned from the Tunisians, that unlike us in 1992, it is necessary to maintain the pressure until the ultimate goal is attained."

There are more than 15 elections across Africa this year. Many of these countries share similar traits with other countries in North Africa that have witnessed unrest - a high percentage of under 30-year-olds, high joblessness, sky-rocketing food prices and rampant corruption. In April, Africa's most populous nation, Nigeria, will see Presidential elections that have already been tainted by a troublesome voter registration process.

Richard Moncrieff, West Africa Project Director for International Crisis Group, has said Cameroon's future is blighted by the threat of conflict. "The threat really comes from the frustration of the population, both for economic reasons – high unemployment, widespread poverty – and also for political reasons."

He added: "The very poor governance, the widespread corruption, the politicization of the justice system, the politicization of the electoral system is in fact a danger for the country and could eventually lead to conflict."

In her letter, Kah Walla, emboldened by what she has seen in North Africa, appeared to be issuing an ultimatum: "A world is collapsing, the world of dictators. The wind of change which is blowing, will only gather steam and momentum as the months go by and as we hurtle towards September/October 2011. Cameroonians are determined in this year to take their destiny into their own hands...We will willingly do this through a structured transition, through an election...on condition. On condition that the minimum requirements for a free and fair election are met. On condition that the political will for a democratic transition is unambiguously demonstrated. On condition that no one, absolutely no one, stops us in any way shape or form, impedes us from exercising our free will and our voters’ rights as Cameroonian citizens."

At 45, Kah Walla is an internationally management consultant and entrepreneur. She was recognized in 2008 by the World Bank as one of seven women entrepreneurs in Africa. In 2009 she spoke at the Clinton Global Initiative summit in New York.

- HUMNEWS staff

Tajikistan and the Tyranny of Statistics (Report)

(HN, February 10, 2011) - Like most other economies in Europe and Central Asia, Tajikistan depends heavily on foreign trade. Economists who monitor the country’s import and export data—which are reported on a monthly basis by the Statistical Agency—may think they are keeping a finger on Tajikistan’s pulse.Water is become a scarce - and increasingly precious - resource in many countries surrounding Tajikistan. UNICEF

They might be wrong. Especially when it comes to exports.

Sometimes, however, these data obscure more than they illuminate. Rather than worrying about cotton and aluminum, it may be more helpful to think of Tajikistan as one of the world’s leading exporters—both directly and indirectly—of labour and water.

As per international practice, Tajikistan’s foreign trade statistics emphasize the final products that are bought and sold abroad. For Tajikistan’s exports, this boils down to aluminum and cotton, which generate three quarters of the country’s export revenues.

In one sense, this is no surprise: anyone familiar with rural life in Tajikistan knows that “cotton is still king” in the countryside. The importance of the TALCO aluminum smelter in Tursunzode just west of Dushanbe—Tajikistan’s largest industrial enterprise and leading exporter—is likewise well known.

However, both cotton and aluminum production can be seen as algorithms for reprocessing water—which is where Tajikistan’s true riches lie.

More than half of the water used by Central Asia’s 60 million inhabitants comes from rivers whose headwaters rise in Tajikistan (population 7.5 million).

It is this water that turns turbines in hydropower plants along the Vakhsh river cascade, which generate the electricity needed to derive aluminum from bauxite. Water from these rivers also feeds the canals that irrigate Tajikistan’s thirsty cotton fields. Tajikistan’s exports are really about water—embodied in aluminum ingots and cotton fiber.

When Tajikistan’s (mostly cotton and aluminum) exports are compared to its imports, they are often found wanting: the country reports a yearly trade deficit in the neighborhood of $1.5 billion. But Tajikistan’s single most important export—labour—is not captured in the trade statistics.

Every year some 800,000 to 1.5 million (no one is quite sure how many) Tajikistani citizens work abroad, chiefly in Russia. The IMF and National Bank of Tajikistan estimate that these migrants sent home $2.4 billion in remittances in 2010—roughly double the $1.2 billion earned from exporting aluminum, cotton, and other commodities and manufactured goods (see Charts 1 and 2 above).

If the country’s trade balance is recalculated as exports minus imports plus remittances, then Tajikistan consistently runs a healthy external surplus. Looked at from this perspective, Tajikistan’s reported average annual 9% GDP growth during 2000-2008 does not seem so surprising. Nor does the continuation of economic growth (albeit at a slower pace), or relative stability of the somoni (the national currency), during the global economic crisis of 2009-2010.

Many economists would argue that the balance of payments—and particularly the current account balance, which shows exports and imports of services, as well as of good and remittances—provides the fullest measure of an economy’s engagement with the rest  of the world.

But Tajikistan’s balance-of-payments data are reported with some delay: at present, the most recent BoP data available on the National Bank of Tajikistan website are from the first quarter of 2010. By contrast, data on merchandise exports and imports, and on remittances, are reported monthly. If we want to track how Tajikistan is faring in the world economy in real time, exports minus imports plus remittances may be our best shot.

Tajikistan is a low-income country where some 3 million people struggle to get by on $2.15/day or less. Poverty reduction, providing access to clean water and sanitation services, creating decent jobs at home, and addressing gender inequalities are major challenges. Migration may be a cash cow, but it can also be a hardship for divided families.

Understanding these challenges and helping the country to attain the Millennium Development Goals requires a deep knowledge of Tajikistan’s economy, and its official economic data.

Sometimes, however, these data obscure more than they illuminate. Rather than worrying about cotton and aluminum, it may be more helpful to think of Tajikistan as one of the world’s leading exporters—both directly and indirectly—of labour and water.

- UNDP, HUMNEWS staff

Second Tsunami of Floods Hits Already-Drenched Sri Lanka (Report)

(HN, February 9, 2011) - A devastating second wave of floods that has hit Sri Lanka are much worse and more serious than those that had hit the country some weeks ago, says the UN.

According to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) official figures indicate more than 1-million people are affected by the floods, including almost 200,000 persons in 703 temporary evacuation centres in 15 districts. There has been fourteen deaths and it's estimated that more than 7,700 houses in 13 districts have been damaged or destroyed, Elisabeth Byrs of OCHA has told a media briefing in Geneva monitored by HUMNEWS.

While the Sri Lankan Disaster Management Center is doing its best, resources are becoming increasingly limited, the UN says.

Another challenge is that some measures taken by the authorities, the United Nations and the International Committee of the Red Cross in response to the first wave of floods had been almost erased, including the re-contamination of wells in the water and sanitation sector. The work is further being further complicated by flooded roads and the insufficient availability of boats and helicopters.

The $50 million Sri Lanka Floods Flash Appeal, launched in early January, is currently funded to only 15 per cent, with $7.7 million received, but would be revised upwards at the end of this month, given the current situation of unforeseeable rains which meant that the overfilled reservoirs could lead to new population displacement.

Emilia Casella of the World Food Programme (WFP) says the Rome-based agency is scaling up its food assistance to flood-affected people.

In January, the WFP provided rations to 500,000 people in five districts in response to the first wave of flooding. Now, with the second wave, WFP has dispatched food assistance for 326,000 people over the past weekend and continued to move towards 500,000 people in this ongoing emergency.

The Ministry of Agriculture says that in January 450,000 metric tons of rice paddies had already been damaged and now there was even more damage to the rice harvest, which was a particular problem for the most vulnerable people.

Initial estimations suggested that at least 87,000 farming households would be affected by the damage to the rice crops, having a knock-on effect on the wider community of people who would be receiving that harvest food.

WFP was facing a number of challenges, Casella underscored. Not only had WFP been using the stocks for its conflict returnee programmes to assist flood-affected people, its rice suppliers also faced difficulties in meeting their deadlines to deliver to the WFP as they had themselves been affected by the floods.

(News Brief) Bashir Accepts South Sudan's Secession Vote

Bashir, HUMNEWS file photo(HN, February 7, 2011) Sudan’s president Omar al-Bashir says he is backing the results from Southern Sudan’s freedom referendum that have indicated a landslide vote for independence.

Bashir said he wanted to be the first to congratulate the south on their new state and said Sudan would aid the south in any way possible.

Final results of the votes are expected later today – the voting took place last month and preliminary results indicate that 98 percent of ballots were cast for independence, in favor of dividing Africa’s biggest country.

Southern Sudan will be Africa’s newest country, officially in July of this year.

There have been tensions between the two sides for several decades.  A war that lasted over two decades between Northern and Southern Sudan ended in 2005 leaving 2 million dead.

It remains to be seen how tensions between the two will work out - the two will remain economically dependent on one another as Southern Sudan cannot export its oil resources without using a pipeline that runs though the northern territory.

- HUMNEWS Staff

Over 6,000 Communities Across Africa Abandon Female Genital Mutilation/Cutting (Report)

(HN, February 7, 2011) - Over 6,000 communities have chosen to abandon the practice of female genital mutilation/cutting (FGM/C), according to a joint United Nations programme designed to eliminate this practice, and the number is growing.Youth Federation representative Asiya Oumer speaks at a declaration ceremony on abandonment of FGM/C in northern Ethiopia's Awash-Fentale District. UNICEF
  
“We are working in 12 out of 17 priority African countries and have seen real results - the years of hard work are paying off with FGM/C prevalence rates decreasing,” said Nafissatou Diop, Coordinator of the joint programme run by UNFPA, the United Nations Population Fund, and UNICEF, the United Nations Children’s Fund.
 
“In Ethiopia, the prevalence rate has fallen from 80 per cent to 74 per cent, in Kenya from 32 per cent to 27 per cent, and in Egypt from 97 per cent to 91 per cent. There is still a lot of work to do.”
 
Three million girls face FGM/C every year in Africa and worldwide, and up to 140 million women and girls have already undergone the practice. Research indicates that mothers and grandmothers of women have enormous influence over their decisions on whether to put their daughters through the dangerous procedure. In countries such as Egypt, the procedure is often administered by women with no medical credentials.

It is little wonder then that experts have concluded that FGM/C is a practice with serious immediate and long-term health effects.

In some countries, the influence of religious and clan leaders, local government officials and former circumcisers has brought a remarkable reduction in female cutting. Some Muslim scholars have called for banning FGM and for legislation criminalizing the practice.

Last year, a 13-year-old girl died after undergoing FGM in a public hospital in Egypt - even though the procedure had been made illegal since 2008.

“We must break the wall of silence that surrounds this issue and step up our national campaign to prevent the practice being passed on to the next generation”, Egyptian Minister of Family and Population Mushira Khattab said last year. “Our target is to make it clear that the practice will not be tolerated in Egypt.”

The UNFPA-UNICEF joint programme, set up in 2008, encourages communities to collectively abandon FGM/C - it is also known as positive deviance. It uses a culturally sensitive approach, including dialogue and social networking, leading to abandonment within one generation. The programme is anchored in human rights and involves all groups within a community, including religious leaders and young girls themselves. Rather than condemn FGM/C, it encourages collective abandonment to avoid alienating those that practice it and instead bring about their voluntary renunciation.
 
To mark the International Day Against Female Genital Mutilation/Cutting, UNFPA and UNICEF are renewing their commitment to put an end to the practice, and call on the global community to join in this critical effort. They also believe that FGM/C can be abandoned in one generation, which would help millions of girls and women to live healthier, fuller lives.
 
“Three years into the programme, more than 6,000 communities in Ethiopia, Egypt, Senegal, Burkina Faso, Kenya, Gambia, Guinea and Somalia have already abandoned FGM/C,” according to a joint statement.

“Social norms and cultural practices are changing, and women and men in communities are uniting to protect the rights of girls. UNFPA and UNICEF are working with partners to end this harmful practice in one generation and we believe that reaching this goal is possible.”

FGM/C refers to the removal of all or part of the female genitalia. Despite global efforts to promote abandonment of the practice, FGM/C remains widespread in many developing countries, and has spread to other parts of the world, such as Europe and North America, where some immigrant families have now settled. The majority of girls who have undergone the practice live in 28 countries in Africa and Western Asia. 

- UN, HUMNEWS staff