Category: Politics

The Nigerian government’s efforts to reintegrate former Boko Haram militants has seen hundreds of fighters go through rehabilitation. But it also gets pushback from the conflict’s victims, who want the militants to be held accountable. At a conference in the capital, women from the conflict-affected areas are getting support to head up reconciliation between the former terrorists and their communities.

Some 45 women from Nigeria’s northeastern states of Borno, Adamawa and Yobe file in for a two-day conference in Abuja.

They’re here to discuss a sensitive subject – the reconciliation and reintegration of ex-Boko Haram fighters into their communities.

The conference is a joint initiative by the non-profit Center for Humanitarian Dialogue in Switzerland, U.N. Women and the International Organization for Migration (IOM). It’s designed to promote women-led community peacekeeping in the northeast, said Millicent Lewis-Ojumu, director at Center for Humanitarian Dialogue.

“We know and from experience have seen that when the women are involved in the conversations, peace building, in helping to resolve issues relating to how to reintegrate and rehabilitate former combatants or person’s associated with Boko Haram, that they are very effective,” said Lewis-Ojumu.

Since launching the safe exit program, “Operation Safe Corridor” for repentant fighters in 2016, authorities say the program has met with resistance from host communities.

The scheme was launched as part of a growing awareness for the use of amnesty to persuade terrorists to lay down their guns. Nearly 1,000 ex-fighters have been rehabilitated under the government’s program.

But very few are successfully living in communities. Most of them eventually rejoin Boko Haram due to rejection.

Hamzatu Alamin is one of the participants at the conference. She started talking about reconciliation 10 years ago when her community was hit hard and young men were coerced into joining Boko Haram.

But she said her efforts attracted some unwanted attention.

“You can be arrested by state actors and accused of being an accomplice. And secondly, the boys (Boko Haram), if you make a mistake, you can be their target,” she said.

Women like Alamin here said they hope to improve their community’s acceptance of former jihadists after the conference.

But attending the conference along with other women also lifts the burden of being negatively labeled with terrorists.

“I have been communicating with them. I am now able to say it freely because I know that even the government is communicating with them. The government and security forces are using many of the boys I communicate with as outlets to get the people they’re rehabilitating,” she said.

Maria Quintero, program manager at IOM Nigeria, said women also need socioeconomic stability if the program is to succeed.

“The Nigerian women are very strong. What we have found as well is that they’re very influential in the decision of the males. Women have a role to play especially when it comes to males coming back to the communities,” said Quintero.

More than 35,000 people have been killed and millions displaced since the start of the Boko Haram insurgency in 2009. Boko Haram, which opposes Western education, has frequently targeted schools.

Source: Voice of America

U.N. aid agencies warn of a looming humanitarian catastrophe in northern Ethiopia’s battle-scarred Tigray region if they are prevented from delivering life-saving assistance to this stricken area.

The Ethiopian government’s tenuous unilateral ceasefire in Tigray after eight months of conflict has not got off to a good start. The U.N. refugee agency reports the electrical power and phone networks in its offices in the capital Mekelle are not functioning, hampering its ability to deliver humanitarian aid.

The U.N. children’s fund has condemned the pillaging of its video equipment Monday by members of the Ethiopian National Defense Forces, warning 140,000 acutely malnourished children were at risk of dying without urgent nutritional treatment.

The World Food Program is demanding full access to Tigray to deliver life-saving food assistance to millions of hungry people. Among them, it says, are half a million children, women and men who face starvation over the coming months.

The World Health Organization reports the region’s health system has collapsed. WHO spokesman, Tarik Jasarevic, says WHO can do little to help the beleaguered population because access to the area is extremely limited.

“We are obviously concerned about potential for cholera, measles, and malaria outbreaks in the region. In addition, Tigray region is also located on the meningitis belt and is at risk of yellow fever outbreaks… People are also at risk of death from lack of access to health services to treat any other diseases that may happen,” he said.

Despite the cease-fire, fighting continues in Tigray. Jasarevic says WHO is taking measures to strengthen the security and wellbeing of its staff. He says efforts to provide essential health care is ongoing where it is possible to do so. However, he adds, what WHO staff can do does not approach the enormity of the needs.

“Now, with hospitals that are barely functioning, people being displaced, and the looming famine, the risk of communicable and vaccine-preventable diseases spreading due to the lack of food, clean water, safe shelter and access to health care is very real. All these factors combined are literally a recipe for larger epidemics,” he said.

WHO reports an estimated 3.5 million people are at risk of cholera. It says six million people are vulnerable to malaria, especially malnourished children. It says they are at particular risk of dying from this deadly vector-borne disease.

An oral cholera vaccine campaign targeting two million people, which began on June 12 was only able to reach 50% of the targeted population. WHO reports this was due to the conflict and difficulty in reaching the region’s widely spread population by road.

The agency reports attacks on health care, the looting and destruction of cold chain — the system used for storing vaccines correctly — and the general dangers posed by the warring parties has had a harmful impact on this life-saving operation.

Source: Voice of America

Burkina Faso’s President Roch Kabore has dismissed the country’s defense minister in the wake of widespread protests Saturday against insecurity.

Cherif Sy had been defense minister since the country’s conflict with domestic terror groups started in 2015. His replacement is the president himself, along with a minister delegate, Colonel Major Aimé Simpore, who has been appointed to assist.

At the beginning of June, Burkina Faso saw its worst terrorist attack on civilians since the conflict with armed groups linked to al-Qaida and Islamic State started. At least 138 people were killed in the village of Solhan.

The attack triggered a wave of protests against insecurity that swept the country last weekend. Sy’s departure was one of the protesters’ major demands.

Sy was sacked Wednesday, as was Security Minister Ousséni Compaoré, who was replaced with Maxim Kone, a foreign affairs deputy.

Will changes bring calm?

So what does this reshuffle in leadership mean for the country?Burkinabe analyst and activist Siaka Coulibally said public opinion was mixed, and even if some accepted the ministers’ departures as a concession, it’s dubious as to whether it’s enough to reverse the negative effect of terrorism across the country. Whether the reshuffle will be enough to calm the anger depends on whether there are new attacks, he said.

The fighting in Burkina Faso is at its most intense in the east of the country and in the northern province of Sahel. Izidag Tazoudine, a local official from the tri-border region of Sahel province, where Burkina Faso’s border meets with Mali and Niger, said he was hopeful that things would change after the reshuffle.

Since Sy has been in office, Tazoudine said, there have been attacks and discontent, such as that in the northern communities of Solhan, Markoye and Barsalogho, where insurgents ambushed and killed 11 police officers in late June. That’s why people wanted the president to change the ministers of defense and security. Tazoudine said that because those moves have been made, it’s believed that things will change now.

Smockey, a local hip hop artist and co-founder of Citizen’s Broom, a civil society group that played a central role in ousting the country’s former dictator in 2014 as well as in organizing last weekend’s protests, said the recent actions weren’t enough for virtuous governance. It is necessary, he said, to tackle problems at all levels of the state and not only these two key ministerial posts.

No risk of coup seen

Philippe M. Frowd, an associate professor at the University of Ottawa and an expert on security in the Sahel, was asked whether he thought the protests could escalate into a coup, as happened in neighboring Mali recently.

“I don’t sense a strong similarity with Mali in the sense of fragmentation within the armed forces or very strong inter-elite tensions that would typically be what goes into the recipe for a coup,” he said. “So I don’t think Burkina Faso is immediately in that risk zone.”

Meanwhile, opposition leader Eddie Kombiego said the reshuffle would not be enough to return security to the country. The opposition is determined to push ahead with further protests this weekend.

Source: Voice of America

Eritrean organizations in Italy conducted six months activity assessment meeting on 26 June adopting resolution to reinforce organizational capacity in line with the prevailing new era.

At the virtual meeting in which 75 members of the executive bodies participated, Mr. Fessehatsion Petros, Ambassador of Eritrea to Italy, delivered extensive briefing on the objective situation in the homeland and the region as well as on the responsibility of nationals in the prevailing new era.

Participants conducted extensive discussion on the activity reports presented by executive and national committees and agreed to organize regular meetings in accordance with the extenuation of the restrictions issued to contain the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic in Italy.

In related news, at a memorial events organized in connection with the 20 June, Martyrs Day, nationals residing in various cities of Italy contributed a total of 41 thousand 365 Euros to augment the Martyrs Trust Fund.

According to report, nationals residing in Abruzzo contributed 420 Euros, nationals in Firenze 1 thousand 370 Euros, nationals in Pisa 900 Euros, nationals in Rome 13 thousand Euros, nationals in Napoli 310 Euros, nationals in Bari 1 thousand 040 Euros, nationals in Catania 1 thousand 080 Euros, nationals in Parma 1 thousand 500 Euros, nationals in Bologna 2 thousand 875 Euros, nationals in Verona 470 Euros, nationals in Milan 17 thousand 700 Euros and in Brescia contributed 700 Euros.

Source: Ministry of Information Eritrea

The plea arrived from a remote area that had so far produced only rumors and residents fleeing for their lives. Help us, the letter said, stamped and signed by a local official. At least 125 people already have starved to death.

Trapped in one of the most inaccessible areas of Ethiopia’s conflict-torn Tigray region, beyond the reach of aid, people “are falling like leaves,” the official said.

The letter dated June 16, obtained by The Associated Press and confirmed by a Tigray regional health official, is a rare insight into the most urgent unknown of the war between Ethiopian forces backed by Eritrea and Tigray’s former leaders: What’s the fate of hundreds of thousands of people cut off from the world for months?

As the United States warns that up to 900,000 people in Tigray face famine conditions in the world’s worst hunger crisis in a decade, little is known about vast areas of Tigray that have been under the control of combatants from all sides since November. With blocked roads and ongoing fighting, humanitarian groups have been left without access.

A possible opening emerged this week when Ethiopia’s government announced an immediate, unilateral cease-fire after Tigray fighters re-entered the regional capital and government soldiers fled. An official for the United States Agency for International Development told U.S. lawmakers on Tuesday that some aid groups were expected to test the cease-fire immediately in an effort to reach remote areas.

However, it isn’t clear whether other parties in the conflict, including troops from neighboring Eritrea accused of some of the war’s worst atrocities, will respect the cease-fire. A Tigray spokesman rejected it as a “sick joke” and vowed to fully liberate the region.

The letter that reached the regional capital, Mekelle, this month from the cut-off central district of Mai Kinetal was just the second plea of its kind, the health official who confirmed it said. The first had been a message from Ofla district reporting 150 deaths from starvation, which the United Nations humanitarian chief shared in a closed-door session of the U.N. Security Council in April, bringing an angry response from Ethiopia’s government.

But the letter from Mai Kinetal is different, the health official said, offering badly needed, well-compiled data that lay out the devastation line by line: At least 440 people have died, and at least 558 have been victims of sexual violence. More than 5,000 homes have been looted. Thousands of livestock have been taken. Tons of crops have been burned.

“There is no access to clean water; electricity, phone communication, banking, health care, and access to humanitarian aid are blocked,” district leader Berhe Desta Gebremariam wrote. “People are unable to move around to save their lives because Eritrean troops completely put us under siege with no transportation, and people are condemned to suffer and die.”

Looted farmers in the largely agricultural district have been left without the seeds to grow food, Berhe wrote, warning that without aid 2021 and 2022 will be catastrophic. The one aid delivery to Mai Kinetal that wasn’t blocked was based on a badly outdated 1995 census, meaning half the district’s residents were left out. The aid was later looted by Eritrean troops.

Residents had been coming by foot from Mai Kinetal with word that people were starving, the Tigray regional health official said, speaking on condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation. But the letter confirms the details and extent of the crisis.

“It’s so terrible. It’s so terrible,” he said. “We know that people are dying everywhere.”

Other unreachable districts remain silent, he said, as phone services are cut in much of Tigray.

Asked about Mai Kinetal, a senior U.N. humanitarian official called it “an especially critical area for us to reach” and confirmed to the AP that aid had not made it into the district, and a number of others, since the conflict began.

Overall, the U.N. estimates that 1.6 million people remain in Tigray’s hard-to-reach areas, and the U.N. children’s agency last week warned that at least 33,000 severely malnourished children in hard-to-reach areas face the “imminent risk of death” without more aid. But humanitarian workers warn that the situation is especially fluid now amid some of the fiercest fighting yet.

Even the unilateral cease-fire announced this week is designed not to last. Ethiopia’s government says it will end once the farming season in Tigray is over, which means September. How needed seeds and other supplies will reach farmers across the region in time is not clear.

For Tigrayans with loved ones trapped inside inaccessible areas, the lack of information has meant months of fear and despair.

“Every time I get to talk to someone who managed to flee from the area, it’s like a round of pain and shock again and again,” said Teklehaymanot G. Weldemichel, a diaspora Tigrayan from Mai Kinetal. He said his family home there had been shelled at the beginning of the war, and his parents later returned to find every item in the house taken by Eritrean soldiers, even photo albums and frames.

One resident who fled to Sudan, Kibreab Fisseha, told the AP that a cousin with diabetes who stayed in Mai Kinetal had died because of lack of food. “Both my parents are still there,” Kibreab said. “They are hiding in the house and I hope they are fine until help comes.”

Another Mai Kinetal resident told the AP he has been able to speak with his mother just once since the war began, in a short conversation about a month ago before phone service disappeared again.

“I have been calling ever since the war started,” he said, giving only his first name, Tsige, to protect his family. He said his mother described fierce fighting as Eritreans took control of their village and many people fled.

Tsige’s father, in his 70s, was among those too old to leave. Eritrean soldiers one day came to the house and asked him to bring them water. He did, and the soldiers later spared him. But other residents who were found during house-to-house searches and suspected of links to the Tigray fighters were killed, Tsige said. Homes abandoned by fleeing families were burned.

When another relative refused to hand over his cattle to Eritrean soldiers, they slaughtered him in front of his grandson, Tsige said. In all, he knows at least 11 people in Mai Kinetal who have been killed, including a deaf man in his 70s.

“Every day could change the lives of my family,” said Tsige, who is studying in Japan and feels helplessly far away. “I have to prepare for the worst. Every few minutes you think about your family, are they alive?”

Tsige is too young to know the famine that ravaged Ethiopia, especially the Tigray region, amid conflict in the 1980s and shocked the world, but he grew up hearing about it from his family. He pleaded for the international community to act and for Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed to “be a human person” and end the war.

“It’s happening now again, and we’re just watching it happen,” Tsige said. “I don’t want to see a documentary filmed after my family has died. I want action now.”

Source: Voice of America

An Ethiopian government spokesman said Wednesday that the Ethiopian army could reenter Tigray’s regional capital of Mekelle within weeks, if necessary.

Redwan Hussein, spokesman for Ethiopia’s task force for Tigray, made the announcement to reporters in the government’s first public remarks since the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) seized control of Mekelle earlier this week.

“If it is required, we can easily enter to Mekelle, and we can enter in less than three weeks,” Redwan said.

The Ethiopian government announced a cease-fire on state media late Monday, saying it would take effect immediately after nearly eight months of conflict in the region and as troops of Tigray’s former governing party entered Mekelle, prompting cheers from residents.

However, Tigray forces spokesman Getachew Reda said in an interview with The Associated Press on Wednesday that the cease-fire was a “sick joke” and promised to push out Ethiopian and Eritrean forces.

Getachew said Ethiopian troops were still battling to recapture territory and that Eritrean forces continued to control a “significant part” of the area.

Getachew also told AP that the TPLF would not negotiate with Ethiopia until vital services such as communications and transportation, which were damaged or destroyed in the war, were restored.

“We have to make sure that every inch of our territory is returned to us, the rightful owners,” Getachew said.

Rebels in Ethiopia’s Tigray region warned Tuesday that their troops would seek to destroy the capabilities of Ethiopian and Eritrean forces, despite the Ethiopian government’s unilateral cease-fire.

Later Tuesday, a senior member of Tigray’s regional government told The New York Times that Tigray’s leadership was committed to “weaken or destroy” the capabilities of the Ethiopian and Eritrean armies “wherever they are.”

But during the Ethiopian government’s news conference in Addis Ababa on Wednesday, Lieutenant General Bacha Debele warned that troops could quickly return.

“If they try to provoke, our response will be huge, and it will be more than the previous one,” said Bacha, who added that the pullout was meant to “give relief” to residents.

Famine concerns

At a U.S. congressional hearing Tuesday on the conflict, Sarah Charles of the U.S. Agency for International Development told lawmakers the “U.S. believes famine is likely already occurring” in the region. She said the U.S. estimated that between 3.5 million and 4.5 million people needed “urgent humanitarian food assistance” and that up to 900,000 of them were “already experiencing catastrophic conditions.”

State Department official Robert Godec said at the hearing that Eritrea “should anticipate further actions” if the announced cease-fire did not improve the situation in the region. “We will not stand by in the face of horrors in Tigray,” Godec said.

An Ethiopian government statement carried by state media said the cease-fire would allow farmers to till their land and aid groups to operate without the presence of military troops. It said the cease-fire would last until the end of the farming season but did not give a specific date. The country’s main planting season lasts through September.

The United Nations said the nearly eight-month-old conflict in Tigray has pushed 350,000 people to the brink of famine and that 5 million others need immediate food aid. The famine is the world’s worst in a decade, the U.N. said.

Ethiopia and authorities on the scene have been accused of blocking deliveries of aid, also endangering the lives of more than 1 million Tigrayans who live in remote areas.

Significant loss, meetings urged

Several U.N. Security Council members, including the United States, Britain and Ireland, have called for an urgent public meeting to discuss the developments. Diplomats said no date had yet been fixed for the meeting, and it had not been decided whether it would be a public or private session.

On Monday, the U.N. children’s agency said Ethiopian soldiers had entered its office in Mekelle and dismantled satellite communications equipment.

UNICEF Executive Director Henrietta Fore said in a statement, “This act violates U.N. privileges and immunities. … We are not, and should never be, a target.”

Violence in the Tigray region intensified last week after a military airstrike on a town north of Mekelle killed more than 60 people.

World Health Organization chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus accused Ethiopian authorities of blocking ambulances from reaching victims of the strike.

An Ethiopian military spokesman said only combatants, not civilians, were hit in the strike.

Judd Devermont, director of the Africa program at the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies, told VOA the loss of Mekelle was one of several reasons the Ethiopian government announced the cease-fire after resisting months of global pressure.

“That was a pretty significant defeat for the Ethiopians and probably a further sign that they were not winning the war. So, I think that compelled them to ask for a pause or to call for a pause for a cease-fire,” he said.

Other factors are the loss of global financial support, sanctions from the European Union and the U.S., a weakening economy and issues with elections, Devermont said.

Marina Ottaway, a political scientist with the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars based in Washington, echoed Devermont’s assessment of Ethiopia’s economy.

“It’s still a very poor country, don’t misunderstand me. But there were clear signs of improvement, of new policies, of new directions … and now, it’s back to square one,” Ottaway said in an interview with VOA.

Fighting between the Ethiopian government and the TPLF broke out in November, leaving thousands of civilians dead and forcing more than 2 million people from their homes. Troops from Eritrea, Ethiopia’s neighbor to the north, and Amhara, a neighboring region to the south of Tigray, also entered the conflict in support of the Ethiopian government.

Source: Voice of America

A separatist leader wanted by Nigeria is in custody in Abuja, awaiting trial on terrorism and treason charges. Authorities say Nnamdi Kanu, head of the Indigenous People of Biafra or IPOB, was arrested Tuesday.

Authorities say Nnamdi Kanu’s arrest was aided by Interpol but did not say where he was intercepted. Local news sources say he was apprehended in the United Kingdom, but the British High Commission refutes the claim.

Kanu was in court for a brief hearing in Abuja Tuesday ahead of a trial set for July 26. He faces charges that include acts of terrorism, treasonable felony, possession of firearms and managing an unlawful society, according to Attorney General and Justice Minister Abubakar Malami.

“Kanu was also accused of instigating violence especially in southeastern Nigeria that resulted in the loss of lives and property of civilians, military, paramilitary, police force, and destruction of civil institutions and symbols of civil authority,” he said.

In 2014, Kanu founded the Indigenous People of Biafra, IPOB, which seeks an independent state in Nigeria’s southeast. He rebranded a movement which seceded from Nigeria in 1967, leading to a bloody civil war and the defeat of the Biafran movement.

Kanu was first arrested in late 2015 but two years later fled the country and remained at large, often promoting his separatist agenda on social media and through radio broadcasts from unknown locations.

Human rights lawyer Martin Obono questions the Nigerian government’s position on Kanu’s arrest.

“He didn’t state what extradition document was used to bring him back to Nigeria so the entire arrest to me feels like an abduction because if you’re going to move someone from a country, you need certain legal procedures. Was there mutual legal assistance that was used? So all these are kind of very vague. It raises a lot of questions,” said the lawyer.

In June, the separatists announced an alliance with Cameroon’s Anglophone rebels, who seek to create an independent, English-speaking state known as Ambazonia.

Political analyst Jibrin Ibrahim said IPOB’s demands are legitimate, provided they are pursued lawfully.

“When a political group or an identity group believes it’s significantly marginalized, it’s legitimate for them to make demands for separation,” he said.

This year, IPOB formed an armed security unit, the Eastern Security Network (ESN) in the southeast.

The government’s crackdown on the unit has led to a recent rise in tensions. More than 100 security officials reportedly have been killed. Police stations and election offices have also been attacked.

Source: Voice of America