Nigeria: Boko Haram attacks cripple economy

Photo: Aminu Abubakar/IRIN

Destruction caused by Boko Haram militia at a police headquarters in Kano (file photo)

KANO, – Commercial activities in the northern trade hub of Kano are down by half since 2010 because of the campaign of violence waged by militant group Boko Haram and government efforts to curb it, says the Kano traders’ union.

“The north is losing heavily due to the violence. When you destabilize Kano, which is the commercial nerve centre of the north, you are threatening the socioeconomic well-being of the north,” Nigeria‘s Information Minister Labaran Maku told reporters in February 2012.

Danbature Abdulazeez, head of the National Harmonized Traders’ Union, estimates trade in Kano is down by half due to closed borders with Niger, Cameroon and Chad; businesses shutting down or moving south for fear of violence; forced relocations; dusk-to-dawn curfews; and a ban on motorcycle-taxis, the principal means of transport in Kano.

Boko Haram has waged a campaign of violence in northern Nigeria, killing 3,000 people since the beginning of 2009, according to Human Rights Watch. The violence has largely been concentrated in northeastern Nigeria with Maiduguri, Damaturu and Potiskum hardest hit, but on 20 January 2012 it spread to Kano when coordinated bombing and shooting attacks killed 185 people, making it Boko Haram’s deadliest attack to date.

Since then, city residents have suffered regular violent shootings and bombings linked to Boko Haram, forcing people to hunker down in their homes or abandon the city. Over the past year hundreds of businesses have closed or relocated.

“Business has been slow in the last one year and it is increasingly difficult to make ends meet,” said a textile trader at Kantin Kwari market, Yahuza Salisu. “Sometimes I spend the whole day in the market without making any sales because traders are no longer coming in due to the [Boko Haram] attacks. I use whatever little sales I make to feed my family.”

Salisu plans to pull his children out of private school and put them in a state school as he cannot afford the fees.

“People I know have been killed in Boko Haram attacks and I don’t want to be next”

Pius Uche, a furniture-maker in Kano, told IRIN: “I have moved my workshop to Abuja because I feel it is no longer safe to continue to stay and operate here. People I know have been killed in Boko Haram attacks and I don’t want to be next.”

Liti Kulkul, head of the Kwari Textile Traders’ Association, told IRIN his annual turnover had dropped by 62 percent.

Shops, factories close

For Kano’s few remaining factories – most of them processing food and beverages, animal hides or plastic goods – shifts have dropped from two per day to one because of recently introduced curfews following Boko Haram attacks, leaving production at about 30 percent of capacity, estimates Ali Madugu, vice-president of the Manufacturers’ Association of Nigeria (MAN).

Businesses near police stations were forced to shut down in January 2012 because of terrorist fears.

Ahmad Musa owned a grocery in a row of two dozen shops attached to the headquarters of Nigeria’s anti-riots police (Mobile Police) in Kano’s Hotoro neighbourhood. “I lost all my capital because I and all the other shop owners were barred from opening our shops, not even to pack up our stock,” he told IRIN.

Kano’s high production costs and power cuts were already hurting the estimated 100 factories left in the city, said Badamasi Usman, an economics professor at Kano’s Bayero University. Some US$15 billion used to flow through Kano’s markets each year, and two million traders used to arrive daily from Nigeria and neighbouring countries (Niger, Chad, Cameroon and the Central African Republic), selling goods from factories in the south or imported from Asia.

Motorbike ban

Getting around Kano is also much more difficult due to military and police checkpoints around the city, a city-wide curfew, and a dusk-to-dawn ban on taxi mopeds (`achabas’), the most popular form of inner-city transport. Borno, Yobe, Adamawa, Gombe, Plateau, Lagos and Rivers states have imposed similar bans.

The ban has cost `achaba’ drivers US$9 million a day, according to Chairman of Kano’s Amalgamated Commercial Owners and Riders Association (ACOMORAN) Muhammad Sani. Each of Kano’s 1.5 million `achaba’ drivers used to earn on average $12 per day, according to ACOMORAN.

Local authorities in Kano imposed the ban following a 19 January 2013 attack on traditional and spiritual leader Ado Bayero, emir of Kano, by a group of gunmen on motorbikes. Five people were killed, including the emir’s driver and two guards, but not the emir.

Growing unemployment among traders, taxi drivers and others will only fuel more violence, warns Usman. “These frustrated youth can turn to crime and add to the security nightmare we are facing.”

Ceasefire?

On 28 January self-professed Boko Haram commander Mohammed Abudlazeez Ibn Idriss announced the group would cease attacks because of the difficult humanitarian situation the violence had caused.

He called on the Nigerian government to release all detained sect members to give room for dialogue and lasting peace. Some Kano residents welcomed the announcement, while others say they do not trust it.

The Nigerian military said it needed a one month’s peace guarantee before it takes the ceasefire seriously.

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source http://www.irinnews.org

 

Kenya: Rockfalls a threat

Photo: Hezron Ochiel/IRIN

At risk of boulders

KISUMU,  – Thousands of people living along the slopes of the Nyabondo Plateau, in the western province of Nyanza, are at risk of rockfalls, say experts.

“Massive earth movement, triggered by earth tremors, weathering and erosion could cause rockfalls and landslides that could displace thousands and destroy huge chunks of farmland,” John Lugalia, a government geologist in the region, told IRIN.

At least 4,000 homes along the slopes of the Nyabondo Plateau are currently vulnerable to destruction from rockfalls, according to the government’s geological department.

The issue has affected residents for years.

In the early 1980s for example, a huge boulder broke loose near Kandaria Primary School, threatening hundreds of schoolchildren. More recently, several homesteads in Nyabondo have been flattened by rockfalls.

“Two years ago, our house was crushed by heavy boulders. I heard [a] loud bang, then [saw a] cloud of dust which engulfed the building. When I woke up, I realized that part of the wall had collapsed. My wife screamed for help as heavy stones landed on her,” John Otieno, a Nyabondo resident, told IRIN.

But lack of alternative land for resettlement has meant that whenever a rockfall occurs, residents can only temporarily move to safety.

“Normally, we tell them to settle far away from those areas, [but] these residents lack alternative settlements, and the government should look into this,” said geologist Lugalia.

There are also few resources for raising awareness among residents about the risks they face. “The region is very vast and relies on meagre funding. We only have two vehicles that are constantly prone to breakdowns. This hinders our efforts to effectively tour and sensitize the locals,” added Lugalia.

A poor road network, coupled with a lack of appropriate rescue operation equipment, also hampers rescue efforts whenever disaster strikes.

Some action

In a bid to protect their homes, Nyabondo residents are erecting stone-walled fences and planting fast-growing tree species.

“In desperate attempts to reduce the risks, we thought of planting eucalyptus trees around our homesteads. But oftentimes, the huge boulders have crushed even the trees,” said Joseph Orege, a political activist there.

“The slopes of plateaus are normally rocky, thus making it hard for eucalyptus trees to adequately send [their] roots deep into the ground. This subsequently makes them weak and vulnerable to destruction by even smaller rolling rocks,” added Alex Omino, a local conservationist.

Experts recommend deep-rooted tree species with sufficient spacing left between them to allow for optimal root system growth in such areas.

According to Paul Akumu, an economist with the Masinde Muliro University of Science and Technology, the rocks in Nyabondo should be exploited for ballast production.

“The booming construction industry that has sparked the country’s growth could get a boost if the rocks were to be exploited. This will create jobs [for] locals and hence increase their purchasing power,” said Akumu.

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source http://www.irinnews.org

Civilian life: Girl child soldiers face new battles

Photo: Rebecca Murray/IRIN

A billboard campaign in Sri Lanka highlighting the plight of girl child soldiers

JOHANNESBURG,  – Girl child soldiers are often thought of only as “sex slaves”, a term that glosses over the complex roles many play within armed groups and in some national armies. This thinking contributes to their subsequent invisibility in the demobilization processes – in fact, girls are frequently the most challenging child soldiers to rehabilitate.

The broad categorization of girl soldiers as victims of sexual abuse obscures the fact that they are often highly valued militarily. While sexual abuse is believed to be widespread, girls’ vulnerability may vary, as attitudes toward women differ extensively across militias: In Colombia, the Marxist-leaning groups the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) and National Liberation Army (ELN) treated female soldiers as equal to males, while right-wing paramilitary groups were known to embrace gender stereotypes.

Some have argued that disarmament, demobilization and reintegration programmes (DDR) are ill-equipped to address the needs of girls. DDR was designed for adult male combatants, and over the years has incorporated female combatants, followed by boy soldiers and then girls.

A January 2013 World Bank briefing, Children in Emergency and Crisis Situations, says: “The use of girls [by armed forces] has been confirmed in Colombia, DRC [Democratic Republic of Congo], East Timor, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Uganda and West Africa. There are some 12,500 in DRC. However, girls are generally less visible and up to now have hardly benefited from demobilization and reintegration programmes for child soldiers.”

“No one knows what has happened after a DDR process to the large majority of girls associated with the armed groups,” the briefing said.

About 40 percent of the hundreds of thousands of child soldiers scattered across the world’s conflicts today are thought to be girls, but the numbers of girls enrolling in child soldier DDR programmes dwindles to five percent or less.

Girls often conceal their association with armed groups, Richard Clarke, director of Child Soldiers International, told IRIN. In traditional societies, enrolling in DDR could confirm a past that imperils their future: “In contexts of entrenched gender discrimination, and in situations where a girl’s ‘value’ is defined in terms of her purity and marriageability, the stigma attached to involvement in sexual activity, whether real or imputed, can result in exclusion and acute impoverishment,” he said.

Seeking gender equality

Then there is the uncomfortable reality that some conflicts may actually fast-track gender emancipation.

A 2012 report by Tone Bleie of the University of Tromsø’s Centre for Peace Studies (CPS) explores this issue. During Nepal’s civil war, when Maoists conscripted “one member per house”, some parents offered their daughters to spare “sons whom they considered as their life insurance.” Of the Maoists’ 23,610 combatants at the cessation of hostilities, 5,033 were female, and of them 988 were girls.

“Female combatants developed a new sense of pride and dignity due to personal sacrifices, military courage, feats in the battlefield and prospects of promotion in the ranks”

“Female combatants developed a new sense of pride and dignity due to personal sacrifices, military courage, feats in the battlefield and prospects of promotion in the ranks,” the report says.

In the wake of Nepal’s 2006 ceasefire, during the cantonment of Maoists rebels and the subsequent reintegration process, girls and women were returned “to [the] very low position of women in traditional Nepalese feudal society,” Desmond Molloy, a panellist at the International Research Group on Reintegration at the CPS, told IRIN.

“Inter-cast marriage, and marriage in general, was encouraged in the cantonment. This is taboo in Nepali society and proved a major obstacle for reintegration of young girls back into society, especially when they have children, as many do. Further there is in [Nepal’s] society a perception of a promiscuous environment in the cantonment. So many young girls were viewed with suspicion by their families, rejected by their new in-laws or ostracized by the community,” Molloy said.

Abdul Hameed Omar, programme manager for the UN Development Programme’s Interagency Rehabilitation Programme, told IRIN that acceptance of inter-cast marriages was particularly problematic. “Children have been denied birth certificates, and women have been denied their citizenship certificates. When the community knows that a woman has been part of the PLA [People’s Liberation Army], these women sometimes face a stigma,” he said.

He said attitudes of male Maoist ex-combatants “vary widely” but that “many voiced opinions that were not in line with their previous [gender equality] beliefs during the conflict. Other male ex-combatants who played traditionally female roles during the conflict, i.e., cooking or childcare, no longer feel that these are appropriate roles for men outside of the PLA.”

Loss of power

Many Colombian girl soldiers, who fought as equals to their male counterparts, struggled with the double standards of civilian life.

“For some girls, belonging to an illegal armed group gives them a sense of power and control that they may not otherwise experience living in a relatively conservative, ‘machista’ [chauvinist] society,” said Overcoming Lost Childhoods, a Care International report about rehabilitating Colombian child soldiers.

By the end of Eritrea’s 30-year-long liberation war, in 1991, females comprised between 25 and 30 percent of combatants. The gender-equality ideals espoused by the Eritrean People’s Liberation Front’s (EPLF) had proved an attractive lure for female recruits, including some who were teenagers or younger.

“Many Eritrean female ex-fighters experienced the years of war as preferable to the time that came afterwards”

But “many Eritrean female ex-fighters experienced the years of war as preferable to the time that came afterwards… They had felt respected, equal and empowered, but this was all lost after the war when women were pushed towards traditional gender roles,” said the 2008 report Young Female Fighters in African Wars, Conflict and Its Consequences.

Eritrea’s DDR programmes initially tailored economic opportunities for women to traditional gender roles – basket weaving, typing and embroidery – but this did not provide a sustainable livelihood. Training women in traditionally male trades also proved fruitless because society’s norms ultimately dictated who could get which jobs.

“Furthermore, female ex-fighters had a hard time getting married after the war as men usually claimed that these women had lost their femininity during the war. Many male ex-fighters also divorced their fighter wives for this reason and married civilian women,” the report said.

Duality

Girl soldiers’ versatility – they serve as combatants, spies, domestics, porters and “bush wives” – makes them highly valued among armed groups, which can also increase their difficulty reintegrating into civilian life.

Despite this, punishments for girls in northern Uganda, such as whipping or caning, were meted out for the smallest infractions, Linda Dale, director of Children/Youth as Peacebuilders (CAP), told IRIN.

“There is a strong tendency to force a kind of passivity on girls while at the same time they are expected to be combatants. This duality, as well as the effect of sexual violence, makes their rehabilitation more complicated, in my view,” she said.

The length of captivity also differed between the sexes; average internment period for girls in northern Uganda was six to seven years, while boys faced about three years, Dale said. “Because of that, the effects of the experience, and therefore the need for more assistance in re-integration, will be higher. For example, many girl returnees are illiterate because they have been out of school so long.”

Shelly Whitman, executive director of the Roméo Dallaire Child Soldiers Initiative told IRIN that some girls can be seen as suffering from Stockholm syndrome, where captives develop a sympathetic association with their abusers.

“Girls were raped but then given to or chosen by a commander to be a ‘wife’. They are confused about their experiences, their guilt, their families’ expectations and religious beliefs. Additionally, many have children fathered by their captors. They are often rejected when they return home and viewed as non-marriageable material, damaged goods. With this kind of a homecoming, it creates confusion about your identity and your self-worth,” she said.

Invisibility

The assumptions and expectations of people operating DDR programmes may also affect girls’ reintegration.

Girl soldiers are often assumed to be “‘following along’, rather than girls who have been recruited and used, however informally, for military purposes… These assumptions have resulted in tens of thousands of girls being literally ‘invisible’ to DDR programmers, although the situation has improved somewhat in recent years,” said Clarke of Child Soldiers International.

“Boys with guns are easier to see and easier to fear”

Phillip Lancaster, former head of the DDR programme for the UN Organization Mission in DRC, told IRIN, “Boys with guns are easier to see and easier to fear.” DDR programmes might “ignore girls on the assumption that they don’t present the same threat.”

“My own experience is that girls are often invisible to DDR programmes that draw narrow categories around the notion of combat,” he said. “It’s tricky to avoid getting caught up in categories as soon as one starts trying to define parameters of qualification for DDR programmes, and most of the decisions tend to have a somewhat arbitrary flavour simply because of the complexity of the subject matter.

“Most of the Congolese armed groups… draw on local community resources… The definition of girl child soldier in this setting could, in theory, extend over all the young females in a community who were supporting, supplying, informing or directly fighting with a relevant armed group.”

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source http://www.irinnews.org