Kenya: Offensive conduct lands a middle-aged woman in court

BY JACK MARWA

A middle-aged woman was arraigned before a Naivasha court and charged with offensive conduct.

Appearing before Naivasha Resident Magistrate Salina Muchungi the accused Alice Mumbi Mwangi was charged with using abusive language.

According to the prosecution, on February 17 this year at Karagita market, Mumbi approached Rosemary Muthoni Mwangi and started using abusive language against her.

The court was told that Mumbi started calling Muthoni a ‘prostitute’, ‘uncircumcised woman’, ‘buttocks’ among other words at the market.

Muthoni went and reported the matter to the Karagita Police Base and afterwards the accused was arrested.

The accused admitted committing the offence at the market and asked the court for forgiveness saying she never meant to hurt her but was the work of the devil.

The court directed the probation officer to bring his medical report on 26^th this month as to make the ruling.

Ends 

Use and abuse of humanitarian principle

Photo: Kate Holt/IRIN

There has been a long history of aid manipulation

DAKAR,  – Following the 9/11 attacks and the launch of the Global War on Terror, many humanitarian policy wonks spoke of a new era of heightened aid instrumentalization – that is the use of humanitarian action or rhetoric as a tool to pursue political, security, development, economic, or other non-humanitarian goals, which would muddy humanitarian principles and constrain access to those in need.

But a new book, The Golden Fleece, argues that instrumentalization goes back centuries. The only thing that has changed is the “centrality and sheer size” of the humanitarian enterprise, says its editor Antonio Donini, senior researcher at Tufts University’s Feinstein International Center. “There never was a golden age of humanitarianism,” he says.

While aid agencies balked at Colin Powell’s description of them as “force multipliers” in the US “war on terror”, he was not far from wrong, says Lt-Gen (rtd) the Honorable Roméo Dallaire, head of the UN assistance mission in Rwanda during the genocide and author of Shake Hands with the Devil: The Failure of Humanity in Rwanda.

US aid agencies, for instance, were used as “force multipliers” in the Vietnam war and in the Central American civil wars of the 1970s and 1980s, to give but two examples.

“Humanitarians have been used… as fig leaves to veil government action and inaction in the face of war crimes and genocide. Humanitarians have been paid, manipulated, and `embedded’ with singular disregard for humanitarian principles. They have been routinely ignored, even in cases of obvious humanitarian need and enormous public outcry. They have been silent when they should have spoken out, and they have spoken out when they should have remained silent. They have called for military intervention… and on the few occasions when they got their wish, they mostly lived to regret it,” says co-author Ian Smillie, a long-time aid critic and founder of Canadian NGO Inter Pares.

The Golden Fleece explores different forms of aid manipulation starting in the 19th century, and progressing to the 20th and 21st centuries, presenting a series of case studies in Sudan, the Occupied Palestinian Territory, Pakistan, Somalia and Haiti, among others.

Instrumentalization can also be more subtle – for instance when humanitarian emergencies are largely ignored by aid agencies and governments alike – or, in the case of food aid, when it is used to dispose of surplus stocks, to create new markets and to win over governments, as opposed to more blatant manipulation involving say, the diversion of stocks by warring parties.

“Dunanist” versus not

An increase in the number and severity of crises, the vast growth of the humanitarian sector, the increased ability of governments to dictate the shape of agency programming, the more intense real-time scrutiny, and the impact this has had on funding, have made agencies more aware of aid instrumentalization.

Some agencies stick to the humanitarian principles of independence, impartiality and neutrality more strictly – notably the “Dunanist” agencies International Committee of the Red Cross and NGOs such as Médecins sans Frontières (Henri Dunant inspired the creation of the Red Cross movement at the battle of Solferino).

However, even the ICRC has struggled to uphold its principles at times: for instance, by failing to step up its protection response to victims of concentration camps in 1930s Germany; or in keeping silent about British-run concentration camps during the 1890s Boer war.

For multi-mandate agencies – both NGOs and UN – neutrality, independence and impartiality “are more guidelines than principles. For them, manipulation… has been the default position, some using and some eager to be used,” says the book.

The danger for them is that in a place like Afghanistan, “some multi-mandate agencies may find themselves in a bind,” says Donini. “They want to do humanitarian aid at one point, but having been implementing partners for the government, for military-political provincial reconstruction teams, they are realizing these chickens will come home to roost.”

Instrumenalization of aid is more obvious in some crises than others. In Somalia all local groups – from local NGOs to businessmen to warlords – have sought to manipulate assistance to project their authority or enrich themselves, say the authors.

Lessons for aid agencies

The authors refrain from being prescriptive, but some lessons do emerge. A clear one is that calling for military intervention is almost always regretted later on. “Agencies call for the cavalry at their peril,” says Smillie, “This is a cautionary tale.”

Another is that aid agencies too often compartmentalize or simplify their view of a complex emergency, perpetuating a self-referential reality in which their solutions (food, tents), define the problem. This can often lead them to ignore the real problems at hand (human rights abuses, say, in Sri Lanka, or feeding genocidal killers, say, in Rwanda).

Such a vision leads Darfur to be depicted as a relatively straightforward tale of “bad” Arabs and “good” Africans rather than a more complex power struggle over land and water.

Photo: ICRC/S. Barthélémy

Even the ICRC, protector of the humanitarian principles, has struggled with them at times (file photo).

It also blinds them to their own impact: several researchers have asserted that humanitarian aid prolonged the war in Nigeria’s Biafra in the 1960s – a conflict in which an estimated one million people died, the majority as a result of malnutrition. Of course hindsight is a wonderful thing, but Smillie, who was there at the time, says several NGOs were aware of this dynamic at the time.

Perhaps one of the most useful lessons is that, in the authors’ analysis, manipulation of assistance generally does not get the manipulators what they want. “The fact that aid can be a force multiplier may be wrong,” said Smillie. Studies have shown for instance, that humanitarian aid in Iraq and Afghanistan did little to win over hearts and minds. Perhaps its very ineffectiveness should be an incentive to loosen the hold.

As Western power wanes and crisis-affected countries begin to assert their right to control crisis response, new dynamics will arise. Donini gave Sri Lanka as an example of where its leader Mahinda Rajapakse used the Global War on Terror and respect for sovereignty rhetoric to justify overwhelming force against the Tamil uprising when he came to power in 2005, out-manoeuvering and repressing humanitarians.

Long on problems and short on solutions, the book can make for depressing reading. But Donini stressed a final point: “This book focuses on the negative – we wanted to unscramble instrumentalization. But we shouldn’t deny all the positive…. there is much about the humanitarian enterprise that is really quite good.”

aj/cb source http://www.irinnews.org

 

Flood-proofing: Mozambique has dealt with years of recurrent floods

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Photo: Anna Wallenlind Nuvunga/IRIN

Several thousand displaced by floods again in Mozambique

MAPUTO,  – Mozambique has dealt with years of recurrent floods and set up an effective early warning system, yet the intensity of this year’s rains came as a surprise.

At least a 100 people have been killed and 150,000 displaced in the country’s southern Gaza Province, with the Chókwè District among the worst affected by flooding of the Limpopo River.

The numbers of people killed and displaced have dropped since 2000, when floods in Mozambique killed 700 people and displaced a quarter of a million others, but they are higher than the tolls from 2008’s floods.

Aid workers and officials in Mozambique are now discussing problems in the early warning system, and they are looking to long-term solutions, including reviving a long-standing debate on dams, to save people from future floodwaters.

Equipment needed

Although 2008 saw floodwaters along the Zambezi River Valley reach levels higher than in past flood years, increased planning, early warning and the rapid response capacity of the National Institute for Disaster Management (INGC) ensured a better-coordinated response and lower casualties, according to the UN in Mozambique.

But these measures proved less effective against this year’s torrential rains.

Américo Ubisse, the general secretary of the Mozambican Red Cross, has already started thinking about lessons learned. “The early warning system worked well this time. People already understand the meaning of blue, orange and red alert [colours signifying levels of risk]. But still the problem is that we were taken by surprise by the magnitude of the rains. The forecast talked about between 75 and 150mm of rain [over two days in the south]. But in the end [we received] 400mm. Suddenly, the water was already in the city and many people were affected at the same time.”

Sergio Buque at the National Meteorological Institute in Maputo says it is difficult to forecast rain quantities over 75mm using the equipment they have.

“Our radars are not functioning,” he said. Weather radar helps locate precipitation and calculate its motion, type and intensity. “[It] helps to better predict rainfall within the coming 12 hours. But we are doing our best with the equipment available.”

Buque hopes the radar system will be renovated in the coming years; such a renovation is listed in the government’s plans.

Forecasting water levels in the Limpopo River is also crucial for the early warning system. Last year, a report of the World Meteorological Institute said information on available water resource and flood monitoring systems was inadequate. The report also noted that communication and technical cooperation between Mozambique’s national weather services and national hydrological services are limited, which prevents the sharing of hydro-meteorological data for real-time flood forecasting and warning.

Avoiding floods

Mozambicans are also discussing whether it is possible to avoid recurrent floods altogether. Dykes could protect the city of Chókwè, for example, but the dykes that existed were partially destroyed by floods in 2000 and have not been restored.

“The government has been occupied with the forming of a mitigation unit, and they have done a good job with that. The problem is that they have used a lot of energy dealing with the effects of floods, but the long-term prevention has been put aside”

Most of Mozambique’s major rivers flow from neighbouring countries into Mozambique before emptying into the Indian Ocean. Mozambique depends on its neighbours to deal with water levels in the dams on their sides of the border. But when there are heavy rains, they are forced to release water from their dams; the water then flows downstream into Mozambique.

Some believe a dam is the solution for the Chókwè area, but others believe a cheaper and more sensitive option is to move people out of high-risk areas. Resettlement is also being discussed in Maputo, where uncontrolled urbanisation is blamed for the displacement of thousands of people during floods.

Opponents of dam construction often invoke the Cahora Bassa Dam on the Zambezi River, which was constructed by the Portuguese in the 1970s and is widely viewed as an environmental catastrophe. Cahora Bassa displaced tens of thousands of people and severely degraded downstream floodplains and fisheries. It permanently altered the natural pattern of flooding, on which the local population relied for food cultivation, and has been blamed for decimating crustacean stocks along the coast.

But the administrator of Chókwè, Alberto Libombo, believes a dam in Mapai, in the district of Chicualacuala, could help prevent flooding as it would make water-level regulation possible on the Mozambican side of the Limpopo river.

”I don´t know if the government plans to build a dam, but I hope it will be included in the next five-year plan. It will, of course, cost a lot of money, and we will need to find partners to help us with the financing, but that´s the only solution.”

Mozambique’s President Armando Guebuza said in a speech on 3 February that resources must be mobilized for new infrastructure to mitigate the effects of floods. He gave as an example the dam in Mapai. Yet a 2010 study by an initiative of the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research concluded that a dam in Mapai would not prevent flooding.

Experts have cautioned authorities about relying on dams, which could actually pose risks to the population because it is difficult to construct dams able to withstand extreme weather conditions. Daniel Ribeiro, a dam expert with the NGO Environmental Justice, in Maputo, says dams can normally protect populations from small floods but not big ones. And when dams are built, settlement patterns change; people, feeling safer from floods, move closer to dangerous areas, making them more vulnerable when dams fail.

Two homes?

Ubisse of the Red Cross believes in another approach: The village of Chiaquelane in Chókwè, where approximately 70,000 people have gathered in a camp since the recent floods, was created after severe floods in 1977-1978. During that time, the government provided the affected population with plots and fields to entice them to stay in elevated areas.

”We should encourage people in this area to have two houses,” said Ubisse – a permanent house in the high areas where their children can go to school, and a temporary house to live in while working on their fields. “There is enough land in the high areas to do this.”

Photo: Anna Wallenlind Nuvunga/IRIN

The displaced will now be resettled in elevated areas

Ribeiro is uncertain if enough land is available for this plan, and he believes that resettlement would have been easier in the past. Still, he says, a long-term plan is needed. “The government has been occupied with the forming of a mitigation unit, and they have done a good job with that. The problem is that they have used a lot of energy dealing with the effects of floods, but the long-term prevention has been put aside.”

The government has already begun to move ahead with its resettlement plans. Rita Almeida, spokesperson for INGC, told IRIN the government’s goal is to identify and give away 4,830 plots, the majority of them on the higher ground of Chiaquelane. This is both a short- and a long-term solution, she said.

“There are too many people living under precarious conditions in the camp in Chiaquelane, and the risk is that diseases will start spreading. This is a way to ease the pressure on the camp, but we also want the people to move permanently to their new plots.”

When IRIN visited Chiaquelane, the majority of interviewees wanted to return to their homes. When asked if people really want to stay in Chiaquelane, Almeida said, “The ones that have received plots until now have accepted them, but we need to work with the population concerning this aspect.”

Ribeiro advocates consulting with the affected communities first. He says that if the government goes through a fair, transparent process first and still identifies the need for a dam, he would accept that rather than have a decision imposed on the people.

awn/jk/rz source http://www.irinnews.org

Disabled: Scant help for South Sudan

JUBA,  – Tens of thousands of people disabled by shrapnel and landmines during South Sudan’s two-decade-long war with Sudan and thousands more disabled through dise ase and accidents are struggling to find support in Africa’s newest country, where proper healthcare and funding are in short supply. An estimated 50,000 people in South Sudan are physically disabled, according to the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC). Aside from the Sudan People’s Liberation Army’s (SPLA) “wounded heroes” programme, which provides a small stipend to ex-combatants, there are scant services for South Sudan’s disabled, say staff at the Sudan Disabled Rehabilitation and Development Agency (SDRDA) in Rumbek, capital of Lakes State. “People with disabilities are being discriminated [against at all stages] of life, at household decision-making levels and with public services… They are left behind, actually, like for clothing, even food,” said SDRDA Director Hakim Cipuonyuc. Discrimination “If she has grown up, sometimes you see few people have the desire to have social relations [with her]. And when she gets pregnant, no one has the desire to marry her,” Cipuonyuc said. “She is just left that with that kid and no one takes responsibility [or] care of that child.” Cipuonyuc’s colleague John Maker said, “Most of the disabled are illiterate. They are not educated. They don’t know their rights even, so they don’t have a voice to raise their concerns in the community.” “Some of them end up [committing] suicide… as they are not considered in the family, in the community,” he added. SDRDA’s awareness officer, David Kuac, himself disabled by polio, says that in the culture of the Dinka people – South Sudan’s dominant ethnic group – there are often “bad attitudes towards people with disabilities”. “First, when a child with a disability is in the family, that family calls that child a curse from God, maybe as something that has been done wrong by the parents,” he said. “The child is kept indoors so that he or she is not seen, and stays there until dying or just suffering there without the notice of the government or the entire community.” “I used to go and defecate at a nearby place [where] people would [be able to] look at me – like children and my wife [could see], as I couldn’t get anywhere else,” said Manyang Ader, describing the conditions faced by those with disabilities. Adler’s leg had to be amputated following a buffalo attack. “I’d just stay in one place as I couldn’t get around, and I wouldn’t be able to do any kind of job – I just crawled around and didn’t bring anything to the family,” he said. Even those few disabled people with good educations or vocational training are reportedly passed over for jobs. There is discrimination within the disabled community, as well. “Those who were wounded in the war, they discriminate against the ‘natural’ disabilities [of those] who have acquired disabilities through diseases,” Kuac said. “They discriminate against us, the naturally disabled, saying we did not do anything to liberate South Sudan. “That was even the reason we formed SDRDA, so that we can work for the naturally disabled, and the government can work for those hurt during the war,” he added. SDRDA was founded 10 years ago as the only charity aiming to help disabled civilians. Disabled ex-combatants received educations and small salaries. The SPLA also took advantage of the first phase of South Sudan’s disarmament, demobilization and rehabilitation (DDR) programme to provide some 12,000 disabled veterans with support. But former soldiers say the army’s programme still has a long way to go. “The salary is not enough for their children, most of whom are not even in education,” said SDRDA’s Cipuonyuc. Nathan Wojia Pitia, director general of the Ministry of Social Welfare, says that there is a commission for war widows and orphans and wounded heroes, providing “low [cost] housing estates for the survivors”, as well as a DDR Commission that deals with disabled veterans. “DDR is also training the people with disabilities, especially the war wounded. And they are training them in economic as well as income generation skills, so that they are ready to do their own business after demobilization.”  Getting started Pitia said his ministry’s strategic plan for 2013 aims to cater to all disabled people, not just veterans: “Previously there was nothing like that… We thought we needed to mainstream it.” In mid-February, the government laid the foundation for a school outside Juba for deaf and blind students. It is calling on international NGOs to help with teachers and materials such as Braille books and abacuses. Pitia stressed the need for a broad policy covering disability issues. “You can’t do anything unless you have legislation – the policy for legislation must come on board… Just like women and children, disabled people are fighting for their rights,” he said. Currently the only official documents refer to people “with special needs”, which is not sufficient, Pitia said. He added that there is need for services to move from urban centres like Juba to the rest of the country. “The place is so vast – you can’t afford every time to bring people from places like Upper Nile [State, along the border with Sudan] to Juba,” he said. But the government is strapped for cash; in January 2012, following a dispute with Sudan over oil transit fees, South Sudan shut down oil production – which accounted for 98 percent of its revenues. Without this income, no one believes the government will be able to provide services to the disabled, let alone basic health or education services to the rest of the population. Until its programmes are up and running, the government will continue to rely on aid from organizations like the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), which treated people throughout the war and opened up a centre for amputees in Juba in 2008. The ICRC has treated over 2,000 physically disabled people in South Sudan and provided 1,000 people with physiotherapy. It has also fitted more than 400 artificial limbs for amputees, along with hundreds of orthotic devices such as back and leg braces, crutches, sticks and wheelchairs. Another NGO, Medical Care Development International (MCDI), with funding from the US Agency for International Development (USAID), ran a centre in Rumbek from 2005 to 2009, registering over 2,000 people. But when MCDI pulled out and handed services to the government, the clinic fell into disrepair. Now, ICRC is trying to rebuild the centre and wade through the case notes of those who have waited years for artificial limbs. ICRC prosthetist Gerald Fitzpatrick said, “2,262, that’s a lot of people that were serviced before [people who had been MCDI patients, some of whom will need prosthetic limbs] – that’s enormous. Hopefully, with a slow start, we can start addressing all these patient files.” More victims ICRC’s centres and surgical teams will also have to keep up with the flow of newly wounded. In South Sudan’s first year of statehood, “109 casualties from landmines and ERW were recorded, with the actual number likely to be higher due to underreporting”, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said in its 2013 appeal. Around a third of ICRC’s clients who have received an artificial limb over the past four years were landmine victims. Tensions with Sudan over oil and borders remain high, and demining agencies say militias – which South Sudan alleges are backed by Sudan – are laying new mines as quickly as old ones are being removed. Still, those lucky enough to receive treatment say their lives are vastly improved. “I spent a long time not using my legs. I’m very happy now that people have come up with this artificial limb,” said Ader, who now works as the amputee centre’s night watchman and tends to his farm during the day. “Those without legs, their lives are not good at all. People like me who have a new leg – their lives are complete, they are free,” he said. hm/kr/rz source http://www.irinnews.org