US should provide air defense capabilities to protect civilians in Sudan

Jonathan Hutson, Enough Project

WASHINGTON — As a deterrent against escalating violence in Sudan, especially that caused by aerial bombing campaigns, the Obama administration should ramp up an array of new financial sanctions aimed at the heart of the Sudanese regime’s military-industrial complex, and immediately begin preparations to provide air defense capabilities to the Government of South Sudan when it becomes independent, said the Enough Project.

The threat to civilians across Sudan in the weeks before the South becomes independent on July 9, 2011, is increasingly dire, and in the absence of international support for robust measures to protect civilians from conflict, it is imperative that the United States and its allies uphold the international responsibility to protect, Enough said.

“War has resumed in Sudan due to the offensive military operations launched by Khartoum,” said John Prendergast, Co-founder of the Enough Project. “The current policy of offering carrots to the Sudan government has failed. President Obama should deploy immediate consequences for Khartoum’s escalation, and in the absence of international support to protect civilians, provide support to South Sudan to deter further air attacks.”

The Government of South Sudan has repeatedly asked the United States for air defense capabilities, and according to the Congressional Research Service, President George W. Bush approved this request in 2008. But it was not delivered. By fulfilling this request, the Obama administration can immediately impact the calculations of the actors in the North who have chosen to pursue military operations in violation of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement, as well as in Darfur, partly because of the military advantage afforded by their dominance of the airways, Enough said.

The United States has led diplomatic efforts in support of peace in Sudan and offered significant incentives for the Sudanese government if it chooses the path of peace, but as the situation in South Kordofan worsens, it is clear that these carrots on their own will prove insufficient, Enough said. By imposing consequences in support of diplomacy, the United States can draw a further contrast between the costs of continued conflict and the benefits of peace. In addition to expanding and multilateralizing sanctions designed to target the assets of hardliners within the regime, including President Bashir and advisor Nafie al Nafie, the administration must consider credible options to protect civilians from violence. Given the ineffectiveness of UNMIS and the reluctance at the Security Council for options including expanding the arms embargo on Sudan, the provision of air defense capabilities to the South stands out as a credible threat that could deter further violence now, one that could be implemented in short order.

The US should also make clear its commitment to continue supporting the defensive capabilities of South Sudan, on the condition that the Government take steps to improve its military’s human rights record and comply with its existing obligations under the Comprehensive Peace Agreement of 2005.

“Rigorous vetting of South Sudanese units for human rights concerns should be a precondition for this support,” said John C. Bradshaw, Executive Director of Enough. “Air defense systems, such as medium-range surface-to-air missile systems, should be closely monitored to ensure they are used for protection of civilian populations, and should exclude man-portable systems that could be used against civilians or be diverted to non-state actors. As part of a wider package of security assistance, this equipment and training should provide leverage to improve the human rights record of the southern security forces. Further support should be carefully conditioned upon progress toward the professionalization of South Sudan’s security forces and respect for human rights.”

###

Enough is a project of the Center for American Progress to end genocide and crimes against humanity. Founded in 2007, the Enough Project focuses on crises in Sudan, eastern Congo, and areas of Africa affected by the Lord’s Resistance Army. Enough’s strategy papers and briefings provide sharp field analysis and targeted policy recommendations based on a “3P” crisis response strategy: promoting durable peace, providing civilian protection, and punishing perpetrators of atrocities. Enough works with concerned citizens, advocates, and policy makers to prevent, mitigate, and resolve these crises.

Drylands must not be ‘deserts’ of investment, top UN official urges

Bonn, 17/06/2011. “Yesterday, the ‘First Africa Drylands Week’ ended with
a simple, yet new, message: the drylands are areas with great potential
for the development and sustainable growth of its populations and nations.
We must translate this into reality in economic terms concerning the costs
of inaction in relation to the costs and benefits of action in order to
convince treasuries that the drylands should no longer be ‘deserts’ of
investment,” Mr. Luc Gnacadja, the UN’s top advisor on land degradation,
desertification and drought matters, said this morning.
“I am certain that the discussions and field trips this week [in Senegal]
have clarified much better than I could ever do in words, that the
challenges of desertification, land degradation and drought while real,
are solvable,” he added.
Mr Gnacadja was speaking in Dakar, Senegal, at the global observance of
the World Day to Combat Desertification, which also ended today. At a
parallel event, taking place in Madrid, Spain, world football star, Mr
Carlos Marchena, was designated a Drylands Ambassador of the UN Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD).
The events in Dakar brought together over 100 participants, including
scientists, policy-makers and representatives of the international and
civil society organizations and community groups, to consider ways to
ensure the long-term sustainable management of the forests in the
drylands. The Government of Senegal hosted both events, which were
organized with the leadership of the Food and Agriculture Organization of
the United Nations in cooperation with the Collaborative Partnership on
Forests (CPF).
In its joint press release dispatched from the events, the CPF said the
First Africa Drylands Week “demonstrated renewed solidarity and unity
throughout the Circum-Saharan region. Scientific and operational
partnership, based on comprehensive consultation and inclusive approaches
and methodologies between the development and cooperation partners,
countries and civil society will reinforce governance systems, including
sustainable land management, land tenure and secure livelihoods. Under
this framework, individual countries, or groups of countries will be able
to develop their own initiatives that will together contribute to
successful land management, combat effects of climate change, prevent and
combat desertification, conserve biodiversity and mitigate the
vulnerability of rural and urban societies and ensure food security for
the tens of millions of families, across the Sahara and the Sahel.” The
CPF’s 27 partners are among the largest international organizations that
focus on forest issues.
—————————————

About UNCCD
Established in 1994, the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) is the sole legally binding international agreement linking environment and development issues to the land agenda.
It focuses on drylands, which cover 41% of the Earth and are in habited by
over 2 billion people. Drylands account for 44% of the world’s cultivated
ecosystems and have provided 30% of all the world’s cultivated plants.
However, eight of the world’s 25 biodiversity ‘hotspots’ are in the drylands and up to one fifth of the drylands have been steadily degraded
since the 1980s. The Convention’s 193 Parties are dedicated to improving
the living conditions of the world’s poorest 1.2 billion resident in the
drylands, to maintaining and restoring the land’s productivity, and to mitigating the effects of drought.

 

Wagaki Mwangi,

UN High Level Meeting on HIV/AIDS: global commitment to eliminate AIDS by 2020.

HIV/AIDS: Bold new goal for 2020 set at UN AIDS summit

Photo: UN Photo/JC McIlwaine

UN High Level Meeting on HIV/AIDS

NEW YORK, 13 June 2011 (PlusNews) – The United Nations High-Level Meeting on AIDS was nothing if not bold. UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon called for a global commitment to eliminate AIDS by 2020. “That is our goal – zero new infections, zero stigma and zero AIDS-related deaths,” Ban said to a round of applause at the UN General Assembly last week in New York.

The three-day event, attended by heads of state, civil society groups, AIDS organizations and activists from more than 30 countries, coincided with the 30th anniversary of the discovery of AIDS and was dominated by discussions on the importance of increasing access to treatment.

The summit – from 8 to 10 June – concluded with the adoption of a declaration that by 2015 seeks to double the number of people on antiretroviral (ARV) treatment to 15 million, end mother-to-child transmission of HIV, halve tuberculosis-related deaths in people living with HIV, and increase preventive measures for the “most vulnerable populations”.

“This Declaration is strong, the targets are time-bound and set a clear and workable roadmap, not only for the next five years, but beyond,” said Joseph Deiss, President of the General Assembly in a statement. “UN Member States have recognized that HIV is one of the most formidable challenges of our time and have demonstrated true leadership through this Declaration in their commitments to work towards a world without AIDS.”

The money to achieve these aims is still a major issue, but the document is vague on where it will come from – about US$10 billion is spent each year, and UNAIDS says another $6 billion will be required.

Countries agreed to increase AIDS-related spending to reach between $22 billion and $24 billion in low- and middle-income countries by 2015.

“To say that adequate funding is critical to the success of our HIV and AIDS response is an understatement,” Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan said. “Many countries, including mine, can neither achieve the targets we set for ourselves ten years ago, nor the MDGs [Millennium Development Goals], without the support of our development partners. While appreciating their assistance, I would like to seize this opportunity to urge them to make every effort to redeem their promises in view of the proximity of 2015.”

During his talk at a session to launch the global plan to eliminate new HIV infections in babies, former US President Bill Clinton discussed the importance of coordination among governmental agencies and other bodies, and the overhead costs in assisting HIV-positive people. He noted that many UN conferences have failed to achieve the goals they set for themselves, but hoped this time would be different. “This is something we can do,” he said.

Outside the hall picket signs demanded urgent action. “We are at a crossroads,” said activist Larry Bryant, who has been living HIV for 25 years. “World leaders are wavering in their commitment to combat AIDS just as we are turning the tide in the fight.”

Michelle Childs, policy/advocacy director of the Access Campaign at Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), attacked what she called “double-speak” – free-trade agreements between the developed world and poor countries that “are creating further barriers to price-busting generic competition and threaten access to affordable newer medicines”, she said.

“Countries are making promises to treat AIDS in one meeting, and working hard to keep [medicine] prices out of reach behind closed doors in other meetings,” she alleged.

“The whole AIDS summit will have been a farce if we don’t see real plans to ramp up treatment so we can get ahead of the wave of new infections,” said Tido von Schoen-Angerer, executive director of the MSF’s treatment campaign.

That is our goal – zero new infections, zero stigma and zero AIDS-related deaths

Another issue was the vexing matter of sexual morality, which prevents some countries and participants from supporting access to sexual and reproductive health services, and women- and girl-centred approaches to HIV/AIDS, such as the combination intervention that includes female condoms, said Serra Sippel, president of the Centre for Health and Gender Equity in Washington.

“Have no doubt that we will lose this fight if we do not address women’s rights directly,” she said. “Women live at the intersection of disease and injustice, and as long as we’re unwilling to address that, HIV is winning.”

As a consequence of a push from the Vatican, Islamic nations and conservatives in the US, the summit largely skirted issues surrounding men who have sex with men, sex workers and drug users.

Aditi Sharma, who works with the International Treatment Preparedness Coalition in Pune, India, was quoted as saying: “It’s the same old horse-trading on human rights and sovereignty – 30 years into the epidemic, you have the key populations barely mentioned.”

ppd/kn/he source www.irinnews.org

HIV: Starting treatment late

MALAWI: Local myths stall paediatric HIV treatment

Photo: Eva-Lotta Jansson/IRIN/IFRC

Starting treatment late

JOHANNESBURG, 14 June 2011 (PlusNews) – Local understanding of children’s immune systems may be delaying access to paediatric HIV treatment, according to a study at a rural clinic in northern Malawi, where just 15 percent of children in need of antiretrovirals (ARVs) are receiving the drugs.

Research presented at the 1st International HIV Social Science and Humanities Conference in Durban, South Africa, showed that caregivers were reluctant to start sick, HIV-positive children on ARVs because they believed the children’s bodies were too weak for pills and their blood was “still raw”, but that as it “ripened” with time, HIV-related opportunistic infections would leave them.

The caregivers’ reluctance delayed access to treatment for children and, in some cases, led to poor treatment adherence, according to researcher Laura Sikstrom from the Department of Anthropology at the University of Toronto, Canada.

About 60 percent of children in the clinic’s programme started treatment after at least a year of illness, even though around 13 percent were near death at the time, and about an equal number had lost a sibling to AIDS-related illnesses, Sikstrom added.

“In some families, up to six children died previously at the same hospital,” she told IRIN/PlusNews. “In many cases, the child placed on treatment was the last surviving child in that house.”

The mistaken beliefs about immunity also contributed to non-adherence. Sikstrom cited the case of a young girl who had been taken off ARVs after the death of her mother. “The aunt decided she was so well that her blood had ripened. Within two months, [the child] could no longer walk. Without the intervention of another aunt and five months of judicious care, I’m sure [the child] would have died.”

High child mortality

Sikstrom also found that most HIV-positive children surveyed only received treatment once they were visibly ill. “My daughter was so thin [that] you could easily see … [she was] sick,” said one mother quoted in Sikstrom’s research. “People passing by would tell me to go to the hospital, so I came.”

Just 10 percent of child HIV patients were given ARVs after caregivers sought treatment for severe bouts of diarrhoea that often lasted for months – a leading cause of death among young Malawian children.

Sikstrom said the local view of the immune system, although incorrect, was understandable in a country where almost 18 percent of children die before their fifth birthday.

“It’s a realistic interpretation of children’s immunity,” she told IRIN/PlusNews. “We often understand that children are quick to heal, that they bounce back [from illness], but that’s not the reality in Malawi -children die all the time.”

According to Malawi’s national HIV guidelines, children under the age of 14 years should be initiated on ARVs when they are sick enough to be classified as stage 3 or 4 in terms of the World Health Organization (WHO) staging criteria, which are used in many countries to gauge treatment need among people in the absence of CD4 count testing to measure the immune system’s strength.

Sikstrom added that the recent rejection of a grant application by the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria has derailed plans for Malawi to begin treating HIV-positive children before they fall ill, in line with current WHO paediatric HIV treatment recommendations.

Without treatment, 50 percent of HIV-positive children will die before the age of two years, according to the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF).

Addressing local misperceptions of immunity may be critical to facilitating access and adherence to ARVs for children, especially in northern Malawi, where Sikstrom alleged that the members of local therapy management groups, comprised of lay therapy counsellors, often play a larger role than nurses in starting children on treatment.

llg/he source www.irinnews.org

EEA grants for health and research in the Czech Republic

An agreement on the use of new EEA grants in the Czech Republic has now been concluded. The environment, health, research and children are among the priority areas.

An agreement on the use of new EEA grants in the Czech Republic has now been concluded. The environment, health, research and children are among the priority areas.

“Norway wishes to boost its cooperation with the Czech Republic by means of the EEA Financial Mechanisms. This wish is reciprocal, as is demonstrated by a number of new cooperation programmes involving Norwegian partners,” said Foreign Minister Jonas Gahr Støre.

The agreement, which was signed in Prague today, covers the period up to 2014. In total, the contributions of the three donor countries (Norway, Iceland and Liechtenstein) amount to EUR 131.8 million (just over NOK one billion), of which Norway’s contribution accounts for 97%. Norwegian and Czech partners will cooperate in areas that are of particularly importance to Norway.

The Research Council of Norway has been designated as the programme partner for research cooperation between Norway and the Czech Republic, and EUR 12.5 million will be used for this purpose. The cooperation is intended to increase scientific production and help the Czech Republic to move towards the EU goal of allocating 3% GDP to research and development.

The Norwegian Centre for International Cooperation in Higher Education in Bergen will arrange exchanges of students and employees at education institutions in the Czech Republic and the donor countries.

The environment is another priority area. The Norwegian Directorate for Nature Management has been tasked with helping the Czech Republic to conserve biological diversity in particularly important protected areas, and EUR 18.42 million will be used to this end. In addition, EUR 7 million will be earmarked for research and development in the field of carbon capture and storage.

Significant funding, amounting to EUR 19.1 million, has been dedicated to health. The Norwegian Institute of Public Health will be the programme partner at the Norwegian end. One of the specified goals is to secure equal access to health services. At least 40% of the funding is to be used for projects in the field of mental health.

High priority will be given to projects targeted at children and young people in a range of sectors. EUR 4.3 million will be used to fund a specific programme to improve quality of life for children and young adults at risk. A dedicated NGO fund will also give priority to projects that benefit children and young people. EUR 9.8 million has been set aside for this fund, making it one of the largest NGO funds under the EEA Financial Mechanisms.

The Arts Council Norway will be the Norwegian programme partner for projects aimed at fostering cultural diversity. One of the challenges is to increase awareness in the Czech Republic as regards multicultural society and integration of the Roma people. This will therefore be given particular priority in several programme areas.

 
By the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Norway
Duty Press Officer:June 16 2011