Millenium Development goals: how is your country doing?

The Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) deadline is now less than 1,000 days away. The world has officially entered the final leg of its 15-year journey to halve extreme poverty and reduce child mortality by two-thirds, reverse the tide against HIV/AIDS and malaria, and ensure that more people have access to basic services, such as primary education and safe drinking water.

How is your country doing?

No surprise, Rwanda Ethiopia and Ghana are doing well in hitting their targets by improving health conditions, agriculture and education.

Chad, Democratic Republic of Congo and Cote d’Ivoire are performing poorly, with little or no progress achieved since 2000.

What are the Millennium Development Goals?

Goal 1: Eradicate extreme poverty and hunger
Goal 2: Achieve universal primary education
Goal 3: Promote gender equality and empower women
Goal 4: Reduce child mortality rates
Goal 5: Improve maternal health
Goal 6: Combat HIV/AIDS, malaria, and other diseases
Goal 7: Ensure environmental sustainability
Goal 8: Develop a global partnership for development

The African Union’s legacy – video documentary

From Al-Jazeerah:

Why the African Union is failing – and how to fix it

In The African Union at 50: Missed opportunities and lessons for the future (from Pambazuka), Yves Niyiragira discusses 5 ways to improve the African Union :

1. The African Union has be be financed by African countries.

It is an illusion to say that we are independent countries while the institution that is supposed to foster our integration is still financed by our former colonisers and their allies. [...] It is hard to comprehend how a continent that will soon have a population of one billion people is unable to finance its integration process. Political independence is incomplete without financial independence.

2. The African Union must deal with land and resource issues.

It will be impossible for Africa to unite if there are still conflicts over land and other natural resources in many AU members.

3. The African Union has to act tougher on human rights.

The African Court on Human and People’s Rights was established in June 1998 as a continental mechanism to ensure protection of human and people’s rights in Africa. Lack of funding and political will from AU member states further prevent the continent from ending the bad culture of impunity.

4. The charters and commemorations will not bring progress, real action will.

A fourth step towards the realisation of the aspirations and hopes of the African people is to stop adopting more charters and conventions and instead recommit to concentrating on genuine implementation processes.

5. The institution must encourage free movement of people and goods.

Millions and millions of Africans wonder why an African cannot freely move from one corner of the continent to another one while some non-Africans have the freedom to do so. Ordinary Africans will not understand the real meaning of a union of African states if there are still these unsubstantiated restrictions to movement of people and goods.

 

I tend to agree with the general idea behind the statements: the African Union has to do a better job dealing with governance, human rights and economic progress. However, I quite disagree with the solutions provided. 

Because the real force behind the African Union comes from the country leaders, I do not believe the institution can be anything more than a leader’s club unless its operating is fundamentally modified to give more power to the people. 

In order to bring real changes for Africa, the Institution has to supercede individual leaders policies, and even national sovereignty. With its current modus operendi, the African Union does not have the legal, financial or even political power to really go against the leader’s will.

Unless the institution gives a voice to the African People and manages to get sustainable financial support from the member countries, we will all be expressing the same regrets in 2063.

What do you think about the blog’s new look?

The end of the “free pass” in Cote d’Ivoire?

In Côte d’Ivoire: 2 Years in, Uneven Progress, Human Rights Watch explain the stakes in the arrest of Amadé Ouérémi on May 18th, and what could be the implications for the “victor’s justice” in Cote d’Ivoire.

“People suspected of serious international crimes shouldn’t get a free pass just because they are linked to the government in power,” Wells said. “What happens next with Amadé Ouérémi will be telling. A credible investigation and, evidence permitting, prosecution would help heal the deep communal divisions in western Côte d’Ivoire and show that justice may finally be available to victims on both sides.”

[...]

members of the military have often engaged in serious human rights abuses, including widespread illegal detentions, inhuman treatment, torture, and, in at least few cases, extrajudicial killings. Some of the commanders implicated in these abuses were previously implicated by Human Rights Watch in a command role for serious crimes committed during the post-election crisis. The Ivorian government’s inadequate efforts to address ongoing rights abuses makes it more likely that some soldiers will continue resorting to such abuses during moments of tension, Human Rights Watch said.
The impunity for the security forces has also manifested itself in their involvement in criminal activity that often targets civilians. The UN Group of Experts found in its April report that, in consolidating their power in response to the security threats, military commanders had created a “military-economic network” throughout the country marked by parallel taxation, extortion, and smuggling worth millions of dollars. Since 2002, many former rebel commanders who now occupy key military positions have overseen similarly lucrative taxation and smuggling in northern Côte d’Ivoire, as documented b yHuman Rights Watch and the UN.

The men and ideology behind Boko Haram

As the conflict in Nigeria is turning into an open war, it is interesting to understand the Boko Harm movement.

Here are some extracts from the Africa in Transition website:

what is less understood about Boko Haram is the ideology that its three main leaders espoused before 2010, including late founder Muhammad Yusuf, Shekau, and the Cameroonian Muhammad (Mamman) Nur; who according to the Nigerian media and State Security Service masterminded the August 2011 bombing of the UN Headquarters in Abuja after training in Somalia.

Before 2010, they were all salafist imams preaching mostly in the Ibn Taymiyya Mosque of Boko Haram’s base state of Borno in far northeastern Nigeria. Listening to the recordings of their speeches in Hausa and Kanuri helps us understand Boko Haram ideology at a time when its leaders were speaking candidly and not issuing the type of propaganda that the group has issued since launching the insurgency in September 2010.

More details about the three leaders here:  http://blogs.cfr.org/campbell/2013/05/09/religious-roots-of-boko-haram/

 

 

Paul Kagame: Hero or Villain?

The Guardian published this weekend an interesting piece about Paul Kagame:”Is Kagame Africa’s Lincoln or a tyrant exploiting Rwanda’s tragic history?”

It provides a good overview of the praise and critics against the Rwandan leader and what he has achieved since he took power.

Nearly two decades after the leader of the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) emerged from the hills to overthrow the extremist Hutu regime trying to exterminate the Tutsi population, Kagame is still a combative and divisive figure. To some he is the Lincoln of Africa for rising above his country’s old divisions – and his own suffering after narrowly escaping as a child across the border to Uganda during an earlier bout of Tutsi killing – to preach forgiveness, reconciliation and hard work as he forges a new Rwanda out of the ashes of genocide.

To others, Kagame has exploited his country’s tragic history, and the west’s guilt over its inaction during the slaughter, to construct a new Tutsi-dominated authoritarian regime using the legacy of genocide to suppress opposition and cover up for the crimes of his own side. In doing so, critics warn, he is laying the groundwork for another bout of bloodletting down the road.

[...]

Kagame increasingly takes a “with us or against us” view of even sympathetic criticism. The sharpness of his reaction suggests he was caught unawares by those he regarded as loyal friends deciding to keep a distance. He denies this. “Nothing would catch me off guard because I understand the world I live in. I understand it very well. And the world I live in is not necessarily a fair or just world. I have dealt with these injustices for the bigger part of my life,” he says.