30/May/2009 WEST AFRICA: IRIN-WA Weekly Round-up 480 for 23 - 29 May 2009

TO BE NOTED:

	humanitarian news and analysis UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs

Table of contents
1. NIGERIA: Displaced out of aid workers' reach
2. In Brief: Nigeria’s Cross River state passes child rights act
3. In Brief: Polio campaign to target ‘at-risk’ Liberia
4. CHAD: Scores of children among rebels rounded up in east
5. WEST AFRICA: Protecting children from orphan-dealers
6. WEST AFRICA: West Africa faces yellow fever vaccine shortage
7. NIGERIA: Relief workers slowly access conflict-hit Delta creeks
8. NIGERIA: Timeline of recent events in Niger Delta
9. LIBERIA: First birth registrations in Liberia for 19 years
10. BENIN: Polio vaccine drive suspended by health sector strike

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NIGERIA: Displaced out of aid workers' reach DAKAR, 25 May 2009 (IRIN) - Aid agencies are unable to access an area in the Niger Delta where more than 2,000 people are believed to be hiding in the bush after a military offensive against militants forced families to flee their homes. full report

In Brief: Nigeria’s Cross River state passes child rights act DAKAR, 26 May 2009 (IRIN) - As violence continues in Delta and Rivers states in the Niger Delta region, international community members welcomed the passing into law of the Child Rights Act on 26 May in nearby Cross River state. full report

In Brief: Polio campaign to target ‘at-risk’ Liberia MONROVIA, 26 May 2009 (IRIN) - Liberia – declared polio-free since 2006– will be among 11 West African countries covered in a vaccination campaign to be launched 29 May by the World Health Organization (WHO). full report

CHAD: Scores of children among rebels rounded up in east N'DJAMENA, 27 May 2009 (IRIN) - At least 85 minors are among 212 suspected rebels imprisoned by the Chadian government after recent clashes between rebels and the army in eastern Chad, according to UN Children’s Fund officials, who have visited the children. full report

WEST AFRICA: Protecting children from orphan-dealers ACCRA, 27 May 2009 (IRIN) - The recent rape of an eight-month-old boy in an orphanage in the Ghanaian capital Accra revealed conditions that child rights advocates say are rampant across West African orphanages. When the authorities investigated the incident they discovered 27 of the 32 children living in the home were not orphans. full report

WEST AFRICA: West Africa faces yellow fever vaccine shortage DAKAR, 27 May 2009 (IRIN) - Up to 150 million people in Côte d’Ivoire, Ghana and Nigeria could be at risk of contracting yellow fever says the World Health Organization, as the International Coordinating Group (ICG) on Yellow Fever Vaccine says it has just a quarter of the US$186 million it needs to vaccinate people in 12 at-risk countries. full report

NIGERIA: Relief workers slowly access conflict-hit Delta creeks DAKAR, 28 May 2009 (IRIN) - The Nigeria Red Cross says conflict-hit areas it has been able to access in the Niger Delta are in better condition than anticipated, but that continued restrictions on aid workers’ movement leaves many questions unanswered. full report

NIGERIA: Timeline of recent events in Niger Delta DAKAR, 28 May 2009 (IRIN) - Thousands of people are displaced in the Niger Delta region after the military stormed the area in pursuit of militants it said had attacked government troops. The move comes two months after President Umaru Yar'Adua said he would consider amnesty for some militants. Yar'Adua and his predecessors have battled for years with the local groups - perpetrators of regular violent attacks and kidnappings - who say they are fighting for the people's rights in the oil-rich region. IRIN highlights some of the events leading up to the latest clashes. full report

LIBERIA: First birth registrations in Liberia for 19 years MONROVIA, 29 May 2009 (IRIN) - The Liberian government says it has resumed registering births following a 19-year interruption due to the civil war. full report

BENIN: Polio vaccine drive suspended by health sector strike DAKAR, 29 May 2009 (IRIN) - Benin has suspended indefinitely a polio vaccination campaign because of a health workers’ strike, as polio re-emerges in several West African countries. full report

Legitimacy of conflict management and resolution mechanisms is critical, especially in situations of diversity such as in multi-ethnic societies

TO BE NOTED: From Chris Blattman's Blog:

"The best civil war study you've never read

Today I'm teaching, among other things, one of my favorite papers: Amos Sawyer's "Violent conflicts and governance challenges in West Africa" (ungated draft version here). ( NB DON )

Sawyer weaves together the history of Sierra Leone, Liberia, and Guinea--together the Mano River Basin--and their two shared decades of despotism and bloody conflict. He does several things most do not: he recognizes the regional, geopolitical nature of so-called "internal wars"; he describes intimately the institutional structures that led to breakdown; and he provides a convincing direction for change.

Sawyer, a political scientist at Indiana U-Bloomington, has a slight edge over his academic peers: he was head of state in Liberia for four years. A Liberian activist for decades, he was nominated Interim President in a period that warlord Charles Taylor controlled the hinterland.

Sawyer's work also has a little more impact than the average scholar's; today he leads the nation's Governance Commission, lobbying to rewrite the Constitution to decentralize power and neutralize opportunities for future warlords.

This is a painting in Liberia's national gallery (courtesy of Scarlett Lion):

Amos is front and center, stitching together the flag torn asunder by (correct me if I'm wrong) Samuel Doe and Charles Taylor.

The book version, if you're keen, is here.

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Posted by Chris Blattman

"If it continues for another month more than 120,000 people will face hunger," the commissioner warned. "

Bad news in Liberia. From AFP:

"Tens of thousands face hunger amid Liberian insect plague: official

Source: Agence France-Presse (AFP)

Date: 24 Jan 2009

Liberia: Insect Infestation (as of 22 Jan 2009) - Location Map

• Date: 23 Jan 2009
• Type: Natural Disaster
• Keyword(s): Insect Infestation
• Format(s):
  
  PDF *, 120 Kb
  
  GIF, 34 Kb
  
  (*)Get Adobe Acrobat Viewer (free)

Source(s):
- United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs - ReliefWeb

MONROVIA, Jan 24, 2009 (AFP) - Tens of thousands of Liberians face hunger owing to an invasion of crop-destroying caterpillars, local authorities said Saturday.

"More than 40 towns and villages have now been affected by the army worms," Joseph Urey, the commissioner of Zota district, told AFP. The previous figure was around 20.

The Zota district is in on of the three northern counties in Liberia where the army worms( I DON'T THINK I'D LIKE TO SEE THESE FELLOWS IN PERSON ), as the caterpillars are called, are causing destruction contaminating water supplies and damaging food crops in the already impoverished( NB ) country.

"We don't know how long it will take the international community to come in but we are worried. If it continues for another month more than 120,000 people will face hunger( VERY BAD )," the commissioner warned.

The Liberian government have already said they do not have the means to spray the army worms with insecticide from planes and has asked the international community for help.

Last week the UN's Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) said the invasion by tens of millions of army worms was a "national emergency" for Liberia that could spread across West Africa."

Maybe somebody could get some pesticide in Liberia before people start starving to death, or will we have to wait for that.

Logan told IRIN rape continues to be a “serious post-war challenge.” Liberia emerged in 2003 from 14 years of civil war.

An ugly but important post on IRIN:

"LIBERIA: Rape stokes HIV concerns

Photo: Prince Collins/ IRIN

A rape victim in Liberia who said an army officer raped her during the final days of the country's civil war

MONROVIA, 23 January 2009 (IRIN) - Health workers in Liberia report at least 100 people seeking care for rape and other forms of sexual violence each month, according to rights groups that compile government figures; the government is concerned that not enough survivors are receiving treatment to prevent HIV infection.

At the SGBV [sexual and gender-based violence] Duport Road Clinic in the capital Monrovia, director Joan Dalton said the situation is “still a nightmare” with the clinic treating five rape victims in January.

One of the government’s priorities is to increase the use of the antiretroviral post-exposure prophylaxis (PEP) treatment by survivors of sexual assault and rape to help avoid HIV infection, according to The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria grant coordinator David Logan.

He said he did not have estimates on how many victims of sexual violence who seek medical services start the PEP treatment.

Logan told IRIN rape continues to be a “serious post-war challenge.” Liberia emerged in 2003 from 14 years of civil war.( 5 YEARS ON )

Twenty government-run health centres across the country offer free services, including PEP, to victims of such violence, according to the Ministry of Gender and Development.

Grant coordinator Logan said part of the newly-awarded $78-million Global Fund grant will go toward counselling, PEP treatments and trainings on sexual and violence for health workers.

A nurse in the capital Monrovia’s John F. Kennedy Hospital told IRIN the hospital has had an increase in the number of rape victims seeking services in recent years. “Most the HIV-positive girls I am working with told me they were infected through rape,” said Kumbah Vincent.

A rape survivor who gave her name as Martha Flomo told IRIN she did not seek medical care after she was raped in 2003. “It was the final round of fighting in Monrovia. I was forced to go to bed with one of the generals. I am sure I contracted the [virus] from him. But HIV prevention? No, that was not on my mind.”

Flomo said that after her community learned about her HIV status, she felt she had to leave. “I had no alternative but to vacate the community and go elsewhere where people did not know I was HIV-positive.”

A 2008 government report identified stigma( NB ) as a “main obstacle" to victims' turning to PEP and SGBV services.

Flomo told IRIN her only friends are other HIV survivors. “We all meet and talk about whether we can still contribute to society. We are confident that we can play our part in helping to rebuild Liberia – if only we are accepted and allowed.”

The creation of a governmental commission in recent years to fight sexual violence and a soon-to-open court devoted to such crimes has encouraged survivors to step forward, said Deweh Gray, president of the Association of Female Lawyers of Liberia, known as AFELL. “But for all those who are reporting these crimes, there are others being treated in clinics and hospitals who do not want to file criminal charges. They prefer to stay silent.”

"America and its leaders are entitled to a different set of standards and better treatment"

Glenn Greenwald:

"Torture prosecutions finally begin in the U.S.

(updated below - Update II)

While fiercely loyal establishment spokespeople such as The Washington Post's Ruth Marcus continue to insist that prosecutions are only appropriate for common criminals ("someone breaking into your house") but not our glorious political leaders when they break the law (by, say, systematically torturing people), the Bush administration has righteously decided that torture is such a grotesque and intolerable crime that political leaders who order it simply must be punished in American courts to the fullest extent of the law . . . . if they're from Liberia:

MIAMI (AP) -- U.S. prosecutors want a Miami judge to sentence the son of former Liberian President Charles Taylor to 147 years in prison for torturing people when he was chief of a brutal paramilitary unit during his father's reign.

Charles McArthur Emmanuel, also known as Charles "Chuckie" Taylor Jr. is scheduled to be sentenced Jan. 9 by U.S. District Judge Cecilia M. Altonaga. His conviction was the first use of a 1994 law allowing prosecution in the U.S. for acts of torture committed overseas.

Even in the U.S., it's hard to believe that federal prosecutors who work for the Bush DOJ were able to convey the following words with a straight face:

A recent Justice Department court filing describes torture - which the U.S. has been accused of in the war on terror - as a "flagrant and pernicious abuse of power and authority" that warrants severe punishment of Taylor.

"It undermines respect for and trust in authority, government and a rule of law," wrote Assistant U.S. Attorney Caroline Heck Miller in last week's filing. "The gravity of the offense of torture is beyond dispute."

The AP article which reported on these proceedings, by Curt Anderson, is almost as illustrative an exhibit of how our country operates as the trial itself is. Marvel at this passage:

Emmanuel had argued in previous court papers that he was being unfairly prosecuted for acts similar to those committed by U.S. personnel in Iraq and elsewhere.

The administration of President George W. Bush has been criticized by some around the world and in Congress for using aggressive interrogation techniques. Justice Department memos were seen as providing legal underpinnings for some of the techniques.

However, administration officials have blamed abuses at places such as Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison on a small number of soldiers or agents and insisted there has been no systematic mistreatment of detainees in Iraq, Afghanistan or the prison camp at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

Acts which, when ordered by Liberians, are "criminal torture" meriting life imprisonment magically become, when ordered by Americans, mere "aggressive interrogation techniques." And while not all of the "techniques" used by the Liberians were authorized by Bush officials ("hot clothes irons" and "biting ants shoveled onto people's bodies"), many of the authorized American techniques are classic torture tactics and resulted in the deaths of many detainees and the total insanity of many more.

Worse, AP -- with canine-like subservience -- mindlessly recites the Bush administration's excuses (Abu Ghraib was due to low-level rogue bad apples and "there has been no systematic mistreatment of detainees") without even mentioning the ample evidence proving how false those government claims are. That's standard American "journalism" for you: "Our Government says X, and even if it's false and even if it's intensely disputed, we'll just leave it at that." Doing anything more -- as NBC News' David Gregory pointed out -- is "not their role."

There's something beautifully illustrative about this torture prosecution. Apparently, it's not just appropriate, but necessary and urgent, for American courts to be used to prosecute the leaders of small African nations who order torture exclusively in their own land. Doing that is necessary to uphold what the Bush DOJ calls "respect for and trust in authority, government and a rule of law."

But -- say Bush loyalists and our pliant political class in unison -- the one thing that we cannot tolerate is for American courts to be used to impose accountability on American leaders who authorized illegal torture. And, of course, the only thing worse than doing that would be to subject them to prosecution by another country or, creepier still, an international tribunal. That would be an intolerable infringement of our sovereignty, we say as we prosecute the son of Liberia's President for acts he undertook exclusively inside Liberia.

In Liberia, the Taylor regime, for many years, was genuinely threatened by numerous rebels and revolutionary factions -- ones supported by other countries -- seeking to overthrow the Liberian government. The torture which Taylor, Jr. was accused of ordering occurred during a brutal civil war.

Liberia undoubtedly has its own Jack Goldsmiths and Stuart Taylors who insist that the torture which the Taylors ordered -- though perhaps "crossing a line or two" -- was done for the Good and Safety of the Liberian People and to defend the Government against these foreign and domestic threats. The Taylors undoubtedly have their loyalists who echo our own Cass Sunsteins and Ruth Marcuses, urging that it would be so much better for the country if everyone just let bygones be bygones and looked to the pretty future and the challenges Liberians face and not get distracted by litigating the unpleasant and partisan fights of the past.

But, like most of the alleged principles to which our political elite professes allegiance, America and its leaders are entitled to a different set of standards and better treatment( THERE'S ONLY ONE ). Thus, Charles Taylor belongs at the Hague, being prosecuted as a war criminal. His son belongs in an American criminal court being prosecuted by the Bush DOJ for torture. And George Bush and Dick Cheney belong on their "ranches," enjoying full-scale immunity for the crimes they committed and a rich and comfortable retirement, treated as the esteemed and well-intentioned (even if sometimes misguided) dignitaries that they are. Virtually the only people in the world who fail to recognize this self-evident, ludicrous and disgusting hypocrisy are America's political and media elites and those who are misled by them.( WELL SAID )

UPDATE: Michael Mukasey, who refuses even to say whether waterboarding is torture and has repeatedly acted to protect Bush officials from prosecution, appeared two weeks ago at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum and actually spoke these words (h/t sysprog):

It serves as a daily reminder to the leaders of the free world, and to the many visitors to our nation’s capital, that law without conscience is no guarantee of freedom; that even the seemingly most advanced of nations can be led down the path of evil; and that we must confront horror with action and vigilance, not lethargy and cowardice. . . .

Just as the Museum has focused on present-day mass killings such as those in Rwanda or Darfur, we at the Department are doing what we can to ensure that those responsible for such atrocities are brought to justice. We have provided support to the International Criminal Tribunals for Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia; to the Special Court for Sierra Leone, and to the Iraqi High Tribunal. And where we can, we are bringing our own cases. Both the Office of Special Investigations and the Domestic Security Section – parts of the Department’s Criminal Division – are pursuing cases against perpetrators of those international atrocities who find their way into our country.

The most prominent example of those efforts is the recent conviction of Chuckie Taylor Jr., the son of the former President of Liberia, who was convicted of torturing his countrymen. His conviction – the first in history under our criminal anti-torture statute – provides a measure of justice to those who were victimized by his reprehensible acts, and it sends a powerful message to human rights violators around the world that, when we can, we will hold them accountable for their crimes.

Mukasey actually had the audacity to approvingly quote from Robert Jackson's addresses to the Nuremberg Trials, at which this central proposition of Western justice -- now explicitly renounced by America's political and media establishment -- was ostensibly established:

The common sense of mankind demands that law shall not stop with the punishment of petty crimes by little people. It must also reach men who possess themselves of great power . . . .

Unsurprisingly, Mukasey neglected to mention that Jackson, in his opening remarks to the tribunal, called "aggressive war" the "greatest menace of our times," and in his summation, Jackson observed that "the plot for aggressive wars" is "the central crime in this pattern of crimes, the kingpin which holds them all together."

The glaring contradictions in Mukasey's words are too self-evident to warrant explanation. Ponder, instead, the opinion which Mukasey -- by uttering such brazen statements in public and knowing he can do with impunity -- is implicitly expressing about how broken is our establishment media and how distorted is our political discourse.( IT'S A DISGRACE )

UPDATE II: Alberto Gonzales gave a painfully self-pitying interview to The Wall St. Journal this week and announced that the real victims aren't the detainees who were tortured in our secret and not-so-secret prison camps, nor the millions of dead or displaced Iraqis, nor the Americans whose communications were illegally spied upon without warrants. No, the Real Victims of the last eight years are Bush officials like him who face criticism for what they did:

I am portrayed as the one who is evil in formulating policies that people disagree with. I consider myself a casualty, one of the many casualties of the war on terror.

Here we find the predominant -- virtually unanimous -- Beltway mentality: when high American officials break our laws, it's nothing more than "formulating policies that people disagree with." Gonzales cried out: "What is it that I did that is so fundamentally wrong, that deserves this kind of response to my service?" The answers are obvious to anyone paying even minimal attention. Steve Benen points out just some of them here."

We have serious problems when we condone torture on the pretext of safety. Safety can justify just about any war crime. That's why we have the Geneva Conventions in the first place: In order that criminals not plead that they were simply protecting their country. What happened to the anti-relativists, by the way?