Rwanda's Gorilla Guardian

Eugene Rutagarama tracking gorillas early morning to locate them before tourists visit them in the Volcanoes National Park in Rwanda. This is what is done everyday to check on the health of each individual gorilla, but also to ensure that tourists visiting them are able to watch them. Photo: courtesy of Eugene Rutagarama.

Last month, the world remembered the Rwandan genocide. We all marvelled at how the country seemed to have healed and moved on, how the economy was blooming - and we talked about lessons to be learned (in the meantime, there are fears that the conflic in the Central African Republic could lead to another genocide...)

 

The Rwandan genocide was still in full swing this month 20 years ago - in just 100 days, nearly one million Tutsis and moderate Hutus were killed. I wanted to speak with a man who worked for peace in a different way: Eugene Rutagarama. He is the man who made sure the genocide didn't include a group of humanity's most endangered relatives – the mountain gorillas.  The gorilla population is now rising and contributing to the nation’s economic growth (an important factor of peace). It is also a rare unifying factor in a region still ravaged by conflicts. Here is my interview with him in The Ecologist.

Rwanda's 'gorilla guardian' - Eugene Rutagarama

Veronique Mistiaen

The 1994 genocide in Rwanda could easily have finished off the mountain gorillas of the Virunga mountains. The fact that they survived is in large part thanks to Eugene Rutagarama. He spoke with Veronique Mistiaen about the primates' future prospects ...

Rwandan biologist Eugene Rutagarama is widely credited for making sure that the victims of the genocide and subsequent wars didn't include the critically endangered mountain gorillas.

The gorillas have and are still contributing to the economic growth of the country - and this in turn is contributing to peace.

Today, nearly half of the world's 800-some remaining mountain gorillas live in the lush tropical forests covering the Virunga Mountains, the chain of volcanoes straddling Rwanda, Uganda and the Democratic Republic of Congo.
Rutagarama's conservation achievements won him the Goldman Environmental Prize - a kind of Nobel Prize for environmental activists - in 2001.

As people all over the world remember Rwanda's 1994 genocide - which was in full swing this month 20 years ago - I wanted to talk to Rutagarama about the remarkable recovery not only of the nation, but of the gorilla population, and his role in it.

The 1994 genocide - today and back then
"April is for me the month when I take time to think of the meaning of the genocide and its implication on the Rwandan society and on me in particular.
"How would I and my relatives be if the genocide didn't occur? What would have been the course of my life? Then I spend time thinking of each of the relatives and friends I lost during the genocide. 

"Almost each Rwandan from all ethnic groups has lost dear relatives and friends or suffered some pain as result of the genocide. The majority of youth is now enjoying the country economic growth and opportunities.
"The coexistence is of course far from being ideal, but tremendous progresses have been made. But the roots of hatred will take long to be completely removed. In this respect, the political leadership matters a lot."

Peaceful giants, and murderous people
Rutagarama is now advisor to the Greater Virunga Transboundary Collaboration - a wildlife conservation cooperation between the Democratic Republic of Congo, Rwanda and Uganda.

He first looked into the liquid brown eyes of a large silverback during a trip to the Virunga National Park with his brother in 1990. The encounter was so moving and thrilling that he decided to dedicate his life to preserving these peaceful giants.

As he was leaving the park with his brother, another encounter was also going to mark his life. A group of youth blocked their way, sneering: "Have you seen these snakes?" Then they addressed their guide: "Hey guide! Why don't you bash these snakes on the head?"

Four years later, nearly one million "snakes" - or "cockroaches" as the Tutsis were also called - and moderate Hutus were slaughtered by Hutus gone mad. Rutagarama's father, mother and three of his brothers were amongst the victims.

A life's mission: protecting the endangered gorillas
Protecting the gorillas in the aftermath of the genocide became the young biologist's single focus. Above all their habitats were at acute risk as the government tried to resettle more than two million people. And that effort also helped him go beyond hatred and despair.

"After the genocide in 1994, the need for protecting gorillas was urgent. It was for me a priority to make sure that they were protected. I put in my focus and my full soul. There was no more space for anything else."

Gorilla conservation, in fact, played a role in healing not just Rutagarama, but the surviving wildlife staff, many of whose former colleagues had been killed or forced to flee. Indeed the gorillas have helped to bring healing to the whole devastated country.

"After a humanitarian disaster as horrific as the genocide, the common struggle to preserve something of shared value allowed people to transcend the conflict and create links."

Goldman Environmental Prize - celebrating 25 years of environmental activism

2014 Goldman Environmental Prize winners in San Francisco/Courtesy of Goldman Environmental prize

The Goldman Environmental Prize – known as the green Nobel Prize – announced this year’s winners in San Francisco this week. Like in the previous years, the six winners, one from each of the six inhabited continents, are ordinary people fighting for the preservation of our planet.  They have been each awarded $175,000, which makes the prize the largest environmental award in the world. But more than anything else, the prize amplifies their voices, offering greater recognition for their work and inspiring other people to follow suit.

This year marks the 25^th anniversary of the prize and I am thinking of all the winners over the years and across continents: all these men and women – 150 of them in total - who campaign against fracking, forest and marine destruction, dam building, toxic and nuclear contamination and the protection of wildlife.  They challenge government and multinational corruption, sometimes risking their lives to make a difference. 

Some past winners have gone to win Nobel Prizes and other recognitions, like Wangari Maathi; others were killed like Ken Saro-Wiwa. Some have achieved resounding victories while others are still fighting.  

I have met and interviewed many of these environmental heroes over the years for various publications in the UK and the US, and have been in awe of their commitment, resourcefulness and personalities.  
 
I am thinking that so many of the issues they have fought over some 10, 20, 25 years ago are still very current today and that the Goldman Environmental Prize is more needed than ever.

Take, for example, Lois Gibbs. She was the first recipient of the Goldman Prize in 1990 (USA) and became a household name when she exposed toxic dumping  in her neighbourhood in Niagara Falls, New York. Wondering if her children’s unusual health problems and those of her neighbours were connected to exposure to leaking chemical waste, she discovered that her neighbourhood was built on top of 21,000 tons of buried chemical waste – the now infamous Love Canal.  Although Gibbs’ campaign spearheaded a government-led clean-up, 25 years on, there is a $113 million lawsuit currently pending as new residents in Niagara Falls fear that history is repeating itself.

And toxic waste dumping continues to threaten many communities around the world today. Last week, I spoke with this year’s Prize winner for Africa, Desmond D’Sa, who fought against government and multinationals to end toxic dumping in “Cancer Valley" in South Durban - one of South Africa's poorest and most polluted areas. He denounced the environmental injustice of uprooting people to force them to live in heavily polluted areas and letting the industries there do as they wish.

I  also remember Willie Corduff from Rossport in Ireland who won the Prize in 2007 (Europe).  He campaigned (and was imprisoned for it) against a $60 billion Shell project, which would run a pipeline across his land. He wanted to raise the question on a national scale about economic development versus community consent and environmental concerns. He is still fighting.

Two years later, I interviewed Marc Ona Essangui, an environmentalist who had been jailed for his fight to protect Gabon's rainforest. Ona, who has been an activist since he developed polio as a child, campaigning for disabled rights and the environment, told me: "My fight is the fight of all the people concerned with the survival of the planet. Our forest is home to the most extraordinary biodiversity. To destroy it would mean the ruin of humanity."

 

 To read more stories of past winners and find out about this year’s winners, visit the Goldman Environmental Prize website.

Iran parents halt killer's execution - the power of forgiveness

Courtesy of ABF

Yesterday, I read a great article in the Guardian about the power of forgiveness: "Iranian killer's execution halted at last minute by victim's parents" by Saeed Kamali Dehghan, a Guardian journalist based in Tehran.

Balal, a convict in his 20s was going to be publicly executed in Iran as so many are in this country. Seven years ago, he had stabbed 18-year-old Abdollah Hosseinzadeh during a street brawl in the small town of Royan, in the northern province of Mazandaran.

The mother of the victim approached, slapped him in the face, but she didn’t push the chair on which he stood as she was expected to, to participate in the punishment, according to Iran's Islamic penal code. 

Instead, what happened next marked a rarity in public executions in Iran, which puts more people to death than any other country apart from China, wrote Dehghan. She decided to forgive her son's killer. The victim's father removed the noose and Balal's life was spared.

“Balal's mother hugged the grieving mother of the man her son had killed. The two women sobbed in each other's arms – one because she had lost her son, the other because hers had been saved," Dehghan wrote.

This is significant because Iran is known for its high rate of executions and human rights abuses. The new president Hassan Rouhani has disappointed human rights activists for doing too little to improve Iran's human rights and not curbing its staggering use of capital punishment.

As of last week, 199 executions are believed to have been carried out in Iran this year, according to Amnesty International - a rate of almost two a day. Last year, Iran and Iraq were responsible for two-thirds of the world's executions, excluding China.

At least 369 executions were officially acknowledged by the Iranian authorities in 2013, but Amnesty International said hundreds more people were put to death in secret, taking the actual number close to 700.  I wrote a blog post in July 2013 about the 97 executions carried out just in that month, according to a report by from The Abdorrahman Boroumand Foundation (ABF), a non-governmental independent organisation dedicated to the promotion of human rights and democracy in Iran.

Iran is particularly criticised for its public executions, which have attracted children among the crowds in the past. Iranian photographers are often allowed to document them.  Studies have shown that the death penalty doesn’t provide any special deterrent. The public displays of killing, however, perpetuate a culture of acceptance of violence.

I wonder what would happen if more victims’ relatives could do like the Hosseinzadehs and pardon the convicts, if the crowds would stop gathering to watch the executions, if people would publicly object to them…

Virgin Wives of the Fetish Gods - Slavey in Ghana

Enyonam and Forgive, both former trokosi slaves, at home in their village. They bonded due to the stigma they face from the community and say "we have become family to each other". Photo by Fjona Hill (Aletheia Collective)

 
I love Ghana, so when Magnum ice cream asked me to conduct interviews for a film on sustainable cocoa in the Ashanti region, I jumped at the chance.  It would also allow me and photographer Fjona Hill to report on a story we have wanted to do for a long time, but didn’t have the means to, as editors rarely pay for travel expenses these days.

So after the film, we stayed behind and headed north to the Volta - a beautiful region rich in history and culture, dominated by the vast Lake Volta and the River Volta. We wanted to look at the terrible trokosi tradition and try to understand why it still endures today.  Ghana is widely seen as a model for political and economic reform in Africa and lauded for its rapid development.


But away from bustling Accra, in remote countryside villages, some deep-seated traditions prevail. The trokosi practice calls for virgin girls to be sent to the shrines of fetish gods to pay for crimes committed by one of their relatives. They become living sacrifices, protecting their families from the gods’ wrath. Some stay at the shrines for a few years; others for life.

The tradition, also practised in neighbooring Benin and Togo, is deeply rooted in the beliefs and identity of the Ewe (ay-vay) people. It serves rural communities’ need for justice and meets the material and sexual needs of the fetish priests. But it's also considered a spiritual act and as such it is, along with female genital mutilation, one of the most difficult human rights violations to eradicate.

With the help of International Needs Ghana (ING), the main NGO campaigning to stop the practive, we visited isolated rural villages, speaking with women who had spent many years in fetish shrines, fetish priests, ING director and government officials.  We were aware of being Western journalists looking at a tradition we couldn’t understand and didn’t want to present another story on “dark, exotic, dangerous Africa”.

But we felt this was not a story about Western against African values – rather it was one one about modern Ghana vs. traditional Ghana. The Government outlawed the custom in 1998 and many Ghanaians are deeply embarrassed it is still enduring today. But there are powerful religious and political lobbying groups who argue the tradition is part of their cultural and religious heritage, and is misunderstood.

Here is our story for the Thomson Reuters Foundation and here is the same story on the Chime for Change site, a global campaign to convene, unite and strengthen the voices speaking out for girls and women around the world. 

The priest, Torgbi Ahiaeu at the Avevi shrine. He complains that he now has to do the farmwork himself now the women have gone. His wife, behind him, is the one remaining trokosi in the village. All the other 23 trokosi have left the village after liberation. Photo by Fjona Hill (Aletheia Collective)

International Women's Day: Equal pay? Wait 100 years or become a man

 

To protest against unequal pay, Annelie Nordström, President of Sweden’s largest trade union Kommunal, temporarily became a man 

To celebrate International Women’s Day today, I wanted to look at positive examples of gender equality, so I looked at Scandinavian countries – and Sweden in particular, which is considered one of the most equal countries in the world.

I was surprised to find out that even there, the gap between men's and women’s salaries has hardly changed at all for the past thirty years. At the current pace, it will take more than a century to reach equal pay. 

To protest against this, Annelie Nordström, President of Sweden’s largest trade union Kommunal, temporarily became a man.  She wanted to highlight the absurd fact that the easiest way for a woman to get a raise is to become a man.  She is asking women across the globe to join her in the campaign Be a Man. The international initiative aims to become the world’s largest protest against unequal pay, starting today, on The International Women’s Day (March 8^th).



You can watch a video of her transformation here.

When it comes to wages, Sweden is among the world’s most equal countries. According to The Global Gender Gap Report, published by the World Economic Forum, the country is placed fourth, globally.  However, Swedish women earn only 82 % of what the nation’s men do.  Measured in time, men only need to work until 3:52 PM, whilst a woman has to work until 5 PM to earn the same amount. At the current pace, it will take more than a century before men and women earn the same amount of money for the same work.

 ”It’s sad that Sweden is considered to be a global example of equal pay, given how far we have left to go,” says Nordström.

 

And if that is the situation in equal Sweden, how much further women in less equal countries will have to go…
 

By using either a smartphone app or visiting the Be a Man website,  women from around the globe can create a male version of any photo of themselves. The image is then shared in social media on The International Women’s Day, creating the largest protest against inequality ever.


Come on, have a go!

Did Five Years of Drought Lead to Two Years of Revolution in Syria?

Syria drought/World Preservation Foundation 

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There are obviously many reasons why civil war erupted in Syria, but one neglected factor has been the severe drought of 2006-2010 and water shortage, some argue. 

Over the past year, I have read a few newspapers articles making the connection between climate change and the war in Syria. In 2010, the UN warned that Syria's drought was affecting food security and had pushed 2-3 million people into “extreme poverty”.

Today, I have stumbled upon an interesting academic paper titled “The Role of Drought and Climate Change in the Syrian Uprising: Untangling the Triggers of the Revolution” by Francesca de Châtel of Radboud University in the Netherlands.

 It was not the drought per se that caused the revolution, she wrote, “but rather the government’s failure to respond to the ensuing humanitarian crisis that formed one of the triggers of the uprising, feeding a discontent that had long been simmering in rural areas,” states.

Writing in Middle Eastern Studies, (published by Taylor & Francis), she says that the situation now facing Syria is “the culmination of 50 years of sustained mismanagement of water and land resources”. The “relentless drive to increase agricultural output and expand irrigated agriculture” blinded policy makers to the limits of the country’s resources; overgrazing caused rapid desertification; the cancellation of subsidies for diesel and fertiliser as part of a botched transition to a social-market economy increased rural poverty; and countless families abandoned their farms for the cities in search of work.

In short, the “ongoing failure to rationalize water use and enforce environmental and water use laws” has depleted resources and caused “growing disenfranchisement and discontent in Syria’s rural communities”.

The obvious question now is: If drought helped cause Syria’s war, will climate change bring more like it?  And the response is likely to be a resounding “yes”.  I had asked this very question to Andreas Kamm, secretary general of the Danish Refugee Council, a while ago and he had answered: “There might be as many as 200 million people displaced in 2050 because of climate change, and that will create more conflict.”

National security, conflicts threaten press freedom - 2014 Press Freedom Index

The 2014 Reporters Without Borders (RWB) World Press Freedom Index highlights the negative impact of conflicts and abusive interpretation of national security on freedom of information and its protagonists.  This trend constitutes a growing threat worldwide and is even endangering freedom of information in countries regarded as democracies, such as the US. 

“Freedom of information is too often sacrificed to an overly broad and abusive interpretation of national security needs, marking a disturbing retreat from democratic practices. Investigative journalism often suffers as a result,” says RWB report. 

Press freedom in the United States has suffered “one of the most significant declines” in the last year with the NSA surveillance scandal topping the list of wrongdoings. The US is now placed in 46th place out of 180 countries, a 13-place drop from last year. 

The United Kingdom ranks 33^rd, losing three places from last year, because of “the disgraceful pressure it puton The Guardian newspaper and its detention of David Miranda, journalist Glenn Greenwald’s partner and assistant, for nine hours. 

“Both the US and UK authorities seem obsessed with hunting down whistleblowers instead of adopting legislation to rein in abusive surveillance practices that negate privacy, a democratic value cherished in both countries,” the report states.

The index also reflects the negative impact of armed conflicts on freedom of information and its actors. The world’s most dangerous country for journalists, Syria, is ranked 177th out of 180 countries, rubbing shoulders with the bottom three: Turkmenistan, North Korea and Eritrea, where freedom of information is non-existent.

 

At the top of the index is Finland (for the fourth year running), closely followed by Netherlands and Norway, like last year. 

The World Press Freedom Index is a reference tool based on seven criteria:

-the level of abuses,

-the extent of pluralism,

-media independence,

-the environment and self-censorship,

-the legislative framework,

-transparency

-infrastructure

For more information and to see the 3D map "freedom of the press worldwide", click http://rsf.org/index2014/en-index2014.php