Barefoot Peace Walk - UN International Peace Day

On UN International Day of Peace, this Tuesday, walk for children, for the dispossessed, for peace. 

To mark the UN International Day of Peace on 21^st September, the International Refugee Trust (IRT) is holding a Barefoot Peace Walk in London to draw attention to a major humanitarian crisis taking place in Central East Africa in which 20-60,000 children have been abducted by the rebel group known as the  Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA).

 On that day, the charity is asking people to wear white and walk through central London to raise awareness of the grim reality affecting millions of people in Central East Africa in one of the world’s worst and most neglected humanitarian crises.

Millions of civilians have suffered over the past 24 years in the struggle between the LRA and the Ugandan government. The group originated in Northern Uganda but is now spread across the Democratic Republic of Congo, Central African Republic and South Sudan. The LRA is notorious for abducting children and forcing them to become soldiers and sexual slaves. The rebels target civilians, mutilating and killing on a horrific scale.

Campaigners are urging David Cameron’s coalition to help stop Ugandan warlord Joseph Kony, who has been abducting children to fight in his rebel army and rescue the children still in captivity. 

In support of the walk, author and comedian Jane Bussmann will perform her award-winning show ‘Bussmann’s Holiday’ (directed by Emmy winner Sally Phillips) at a special free event to be held at the Africa Centre from 7.30pm. 

A 20-year old former LRA abductee, Juliet, visited London this July with the charity War Child to share her experiences with school students, politicians and the media. Juliet hand-delivered a personal letter to Downing Street, urging the Prime Minister “to find a way to release girls and children who are still in the bush… this is an international problem and I ask you to take international leadership to stop this injustice."  An estimated 3,000 children are still held captive.

Regional governments are struggling to protect civilians and apprehend Kony and his top commanders. Campaigners are calling for the UK, which has strong ties to commonwealth nation Uganda and which contributes substantial aid to the region (£130m committed to the DRC), to demand value for money and stop Kony from destabilising the region. They urge Cameron's coalition to take a leading role in regional and international efforts to pursue peace and secure stability.

Barefoot Peace Walk participants will meet at 6pm next to St. Martin-in-the-Fields, Trafalgar Square, tomorrow and leave at 6.30pm for a 45-minute walk through London past landmarks including the Houses of Parliament. People are encouraged to dress in white and to walk barefoot, but this is not compulsory. The walk finishes at the Africa Centre, 38 King Street, near Covent Garden, where the special evening event starts at 7.30pm. All activities are free to attend. IRT’s partners in Uganda and Sudan will take part in local events on the same day.

"People are being killed for hunting a small impala" – when conservation and human rights clash.

 

                                                  John Antonelli

                                                                                                                               

I’ve always dreamt of seeing lions, elephants and giraffes in their own habitats in the wild. And I thought that wildlife reserves were saving the environment while at the same time injecting money into local communities and providing jobs – they were win-win enterprises.

But I’ve met a woman in London a few months ago who told me it is not always the case and often the survival of endangered species is pitted against the rights of some of the world’s poorest people.  Since more and more people visit wildlife parks, I thought I’d share here some of her concerns about the situation in her own country, Swaziland.

                                                             John Antonelli

The woman, Thuli Brilliance Makama, is Swaziland's only public interest environmental lawyer. She won the 2010 Goldman Environmental Prize in April for defending the rights of local communities and trying to give them a stake in protecting the environment. The $900,000 award, the world's largest prize for environmental activism, is shared between winners from six continental regions of the world.   Thuli was in London briefly, on her way to collect her award in San Francisco.

Here is what is happening in Swaziland:

Swaziland is a small landlocked country in the middle of South Africa and Mozambique, plagued by food and water shortages, overwhelming health problems and acute poverty. Yet white rhinos, elephants, lions, zebras, hippos and mamba snakes all thrive in its diverse ecosystems, and the kingdom has become a popular international destination for big game hunters and wildlife tourists.

But, in the name of conservation, local people have increasingly been forced off of their traditional lands and persecuted for continuing the hunting and gathering practices necessary for their survival. “It is near the edges of protected areas that you find the poorest of the poor. There is so much animal life there, but so little for the people,” Thuli said. Near the lush parks, local populations eke out a meagre existence through a combination of foraging and food aid (more than 600,000 of the country's one million people depend of food aid).

 With her local NGO, Yonge Nawe, she has documented the forced evictions, violence and killings of locals living in areas around conservation parks. She is calling on the Swazi government to bring the perpetrators to trial and offer compensation to local communities for lost land.

Villagers next to a big game park.                        Hosea Jemba

In Swaziland, important game protection laws are controlled by the monarch - not the government - and the king has given the administration of these laws to a private company, Big Game Parks, which operates three parks in the country and is owned by the Reilly family. In 1997, an amendment to the Game Act (not debated in Parliament) gave BGP rangers immunity from prosecution as long as they acted while "protecting game".  Yonge Nawe claims that as many as 50 local people have been killed since then.

Ted Reilly, who turned his farm into the country's first wildlife sanctuary in the 1960s and whose conservation efforts are recognized internationally, insists that without his company, Swaziland's parks would not exist and says his rangers act within the law.  In the early 1990s, there were barely any rhinos left.  It's only because he fought back and became tough with poachers that wildlife flourished back, he told Associated Press.

But Thuli maintains that many of BGP rangers' targets are just ordinary people, struggling to survive on the fringes of the parks. "These are just hunters and gatherers who need this to survive. People are being killed for hunting a small impala.”   She says she is not condoning poaching, but wants to see the poachers prosecuted instead.

 She believes that Swazi's remaining wildlife will not survive unless local people are given a stake in preserving it and can share some of its benefits.  “It can been done. Look at Kenya and Zimbabwe.”

She has recently won a landmark case to include environmental NGO representation in conservation decisions, and is now able to call on the Swazi government to repeal Section 23 of the Game Act, which gives free reins to park rangers.

I am hoping to go to Swaziland and look at the conservation vs. human rights issue from both sides.

Out of Prison and Trying to go Straight – an ex-inmate records his attempts to put his criminal past behind him

Paul outside Wandsworth prison/photo by Caroline Irby

Can you really change after a life of crime? How easy is it to escape an addiction? And if you are trying to go straight, what help is available? These were the questions that prompted photographer Caroline Irby and I to follow Paul Johnston’s progress after his release from prison, where he had served eight years of a ten-year sentence for aggravated burglary. 

We first met Paul in September 2008 inside London’s Wandsworth prison, then at the prison's gates on his release and continued to track his journey as the weeks, months and finally years passed: in a greasy-spoon in Clapham Junction, at St Pancras, the Tate Modern - in cafes, on buses and on the street - then back in prison, in Hull, where he was in secondary rehab after his re-release, and finally now back in London. 

Now 48, Paul grew up in Fulham, London. His mother was a school dinner lady, his father a truck driver. Many members of his family and friends are involved in crime and drugs. Two of his brothers are currently in prison, one for life. Paul has been addicted to alcohol and drugs since he was 17, and has spent most of his life in prison. He is separated from his wife and has three children: a son, 27, who was in prison with him and now lives in Spain, a daughter, 18, and another son, 16.

Towards the end of his sentence, Paul decided to turn his life around and enter a rehabilitation programme run by Rapt (the Rehabilitation for Addicted Prisoners Trust). "I’ve been in jail all over the country for all these years, dealing and using drugs. At some point, I decided I had enough. I got desperate. I wanted my life to be more than this. It sounds flowery, but I want to be a better person."  In prison, Paul worked with St Giles Trust, a charity training prisoners and gained professional qualifications. He now wants to do a counseling degree, and then open a boxing/counseling centre for at risk youths with a friend, a former professional boxer.

But as with many of the 95,000 inmates released every year, Paul’s journey was not going to be easy.   Our piece (selected extracts from copious notebooks) chronicling his attempts to put his criminal past behind him over the past two years was published in the Guardian (G2) on August 5.  The piece is constructed as a diary in which Paul talks openly about his regrets, his fear of leaving behind the only life he has ever known, his worries about his lack of money and a place to stay, and his anger and frustration at all the administrative hurdles he has to jump over. Looking back at his life, he talks about his childhood, what makes him trip, what gives him hope and strength.

The piece ends on a depressing note: Paul is pretty desperate – he has no job, no money and no idea how to live a normal life. But the article shows how important RAPt and other drug rehabilitation and reinsertion programmes are, and how without sustained help to find a job and housing, ex-offenders have little hope to succeed outside. Considering that keeping an inmate behind bars costs  about £44,000 a year, investing in good, consistent rehabilitation/resettlement programmes would be money well spent.

Read our article here.

Haiti - Bigotry and the fight for survival six months after the quake

Three years ago, photographer Caroline Irby and I went to Haiti to follow a group of poor, uneducated, but feisty and courageous HIV-positive women who were leading the fight against AIDS and its stigma in Cite Soleil and some of the other poor and volatile slums of Port-au-Prince.  (Read our piece in the Telegraph Magazine.)

Calling themselves the Delegate Mothers, the women brought medical care, material assistance, psychological support and education to some 250 families affected by HIV/AIDS – including 500 children.  They stepped in when foreign aid workers were forced to flee the country in 2004 and Haitians from outside the slums wouldn’t venture there. They volunteered for Rainbow House, a local support centre for people with HIV or AIDS, backed by Plan International, a children humanitarian charity.

Most people in Haiti, especially in the countryside, believe AIDS is caused by a curse, so they shun HIV-positive people for fear of attracting the evil eye on to themselves. If infected, they believe that only a voodoo priest can help them.

The general situation in Haiti was already pretty desperate when we were there, but now six months after the January 12 earthquake that killed more than 210,000 people and injured up to 300,000, it is a living hell. Over 1.5 million people are still surviving in tents. The infrastructure, already very poor, is still heavily damaged (including water, electricity, health services and roads), the risk of crime - looting, kidnapping and gun violence - is high and the security situation is extremely volatile.

Insecurity, overcrowding, sexual violence and lack of sanitary facilities are making life in the camps a misery, especially for women and girls. But for the Delegate Mothers and people with HIV, there is an extra challenge.  Bigotry and fear of HIV have forced the Delegate Mothers and their families and other people with HIV/AIDS out of camps and some are now sleeping in front of the rubble that was once were their homes.

                                    Delegate Mother helping with cleaning

“I avoid the camps because there is a lot of discrimination”, says Marie-Lucienne Milotes, a 40-year-old Delegate Mother whom I interviewed in 2007. “People refuse to sleep next to us.”

“Neighbours point their fingers at the children and say, they are from the AIDS family”, says Rosala Persona, a 67-year-old grandmother who looks after eight grandchildren after two of her own children died of AIDS-related causes.

Despite their circumstances, Rosala, Marie-Lucienne and the other Delegate Mothers have been working every day since the earthquake to help other families affected by AIDS in their communities.  

With 2.5 to 5% of its population infected,  Haiti has the highest number of people living with HIV and AIDS outside sub-Saharan Africa.

Coping with the aftermath of the earthquake is a huge challenge for almost everyone in Port-au-Prince.  But for those living with HIV/AIDS, every day is a struggle to survive.

Rosala and Marie Lucienne never doubt for a second that they would continue with their work after the earthquake.

“God has allowed us to survive the earthquake,” says Rosala. “To show our gratitude we will continue to visit the families in our communities.”

I am hoping to return to Haiti in the autumn to meet the Delegate Mothers again for a one-year after the earthquake story.

Save the ancient cork forests- put a cork in it

I am just back from a reporting trip looking at the beautiful Montados, the cork forests in Portugal, which produce more than 50% of all the cork consumed worldwide. These forests, which spread over 2.7 million hectares along the Mediterranean Basin in Portugal, Spain, North Africa, France and Italy, are listed amongst the world’s major biodiversity hotspots and support an economy and culture that have grown up around cork farming over thousands of years.

The recent trend of replacing cork wine stoppers with plastic and screw caps, however, is threatening these forests and the animal and people who depend on them to survive.  Synthetic tops now account for close to 30 per cent of the some 17 billion stoppers used every year. If this trend continues, up to three quarters of the Mediterranean's cork forests could be lost within 10 years, estimates the World Wildlife Fund. 

It is harvest time in the Montado forest of Coruche in the Alentejo. Groups of men from nearby villages are skilfully stripping the thick bark off the cork oak trees with a special axe, performing the same precise, measured gestures as their fathers and grandfathers have done before them.  Women gather the bark strips into large piles, which men load onto tractors. They paint the year of the harvest on the light chocolate tree trunks, so they won’t be touched again for another nine years. The cork oak (Quercus Suber L.) lives up to 250 years and can on average be stripped 16 times during its lifetime, producing enough cork in each harvest to cover 4,000 wine bottles.

The cork forest I visited is a mosaic of cork and other oaks species, pine trees (producing pine nuts), wild olive trees, many different brackens and grassland.  Each one thousand square meter of forest contains about 135 species of plants, many with aromatic, culinary, or medicinal properties. 



The longevity of the cork forests and the diversity of the flora they harbor provide a myriad of niches for many different animals, says Nuno Oliveira, an independent conservation biologist, who guided our visit.  The forests’ open areas, shrubs and tree crowns offer escape, cover, nidification and foraging grounds to 24 species of reptiles and amphibians, 37 mammal species and 100 birds species, some of which are endangered, like the Imperial Eagle and Iberian Lynx.  The forests also host large colonies of insects of all kinds, which provide abundant food for birds nesting in the area and stopping here during migration.

These ancient forests absorb 10 million tones of CO2 every year and act as the last barrier against advancing desertification in North Africa.

Then there are the people: The Mediterranean cork forests not only support some 100,000 cork workers  (harvesting, general forestry and industrial processing), but also sustain a traditional way of life. There, farmers have practiced a low-intensity mix of agriculture and forestry for millennia - on even a small patch of cork land, they can raise a herd of goats, a few cows, goats and some pigs, which forage for acorns and graze beneath the trees. Villagers gather mushrooms, use rockrose bushes for firewood and tap local beehives for honey.

 “The Montado is not about top species like lions or elephants, but it is its communities of plants and animals – so rich, so diverse and living in perfect harmony – that make it so unique,” says Rainforest Alliance local representative Rui Simoes. In fact, he adds, the cork forests are one of the best examples of balanced conservation and development anywhere in the world. 

To help protect their endangered cork forests, cork producers in Portugal, Spain and Morocco are working with Rainforest Alliance through its Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) certification, which shows they comply with the highest social and environmental standards of the market.  Cork manufacturers in Portugal have also significantly improved the quality of their corks and launched publicity campaigns to urge consumers and retailers to value the cork in their wine bottles.

Iran - Save Sakineh

Two days ago, an Iranian woman, Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani, was saved by global protests from being stoned to death.

But she may still be hanged -- and, meanwhile, execution by stoning continues. Right now fifteen more people are on death row awaiting stoning in which victims are buried up to their necks in the ground and then large rocks are thrown at their heads.

The partial reprieve of Sakineh, triggered by the call from her children for international pressure to save her life, has shown that if enough people come together and voice their horror, we may be able to save her life, and perhaps even stop the practice of stoning.

Sakineh was convicted of adultery, like all the other 12 women and one of the men awaiting stoning. But her children and lawyer say she is innocent and that she did not get a fair trial -- they state her confession was forced from her and, speaking only Azerbaijani, she did not understand what was being asked of her in court.

Despite Iran's signing of a UN convention that requires the death penalty only be used for the "most serious crimes" and despite the Iranian Parliament passing a law banning stoning last year, stoning for adultery continues.

Sakineh's lawyer says the Iranian government "is afraid of Iranian public reaction and international attention" to the stoning cases. And after Turkey and Britain's Foreign Ministers spoke out against Sakineh's sentence, it was suspended.

Sakineh's brave children are leading the international campaign to save their mother and stop stoning.  Massive international condemnation now could finally stop this barbaric punishment. Avaaz, the global online advocacy community,  is calling people across the world to join in and sign their petition to save Sakineh and end stoning. Sign the petition here.

For more information, read: "Iranians still facing death by stoning despite 'reprieve' " in The Guardian and the AFP report

"Britain condemns planned Iran stoning as 'medieval'

No independence for women of the Congo

                                                                                                                                         WfWI

This entry is again on the Congo as the nation has just celebrated 50 years of independence from Belgium (my own country!) and I am trying to imagine the future of a state where 1200 women, men and children are dying every day because of the conflict and humanitarian crisis, which rage in the eastern provinces.

The scale of violence in DRC is well documented. More than 5.4 million have died since the conflict began in 1998. The death toll is equivalent to an Asian Tsunami every six months or so and a September 11th every 2.5 days. And yet, the world is still largely ignoring it.

Women have been specifically targeted: in the first 9 months of 2009 alone, there were 7,500 reported cases of rape in eastern DRC. Girls as young as two and women as old as 80 have been victims of rape and sexual violence (Human Rights Watch). In the eastern province of South Kivu, one woman is being raped every two hours. (OCHA, 2010)

 But despite this backdrop of war, poverty and sexual violence, women in DRC are holding families together and rebuilding their communities, according to a new report by Women for Women International, an international charity working with women in areas of conflict around the world. “Their resilience and strength shines through,” says Christine Karumba, WfWI Programme Director for the DRC. “One woman can change anything. Many women can change everything.”

 “DRC 2010 Stronger Women, Stronger Nations”, based on interviews with 1800 women and 200 men in rural and urban areas in the eastern provinces,  shows that:

Out of every 100 women in DRC:

40 have lost their home

80 do not own a mattresses

40 never attended school

50 eat only one meal a day

80 earn US $1 or less per day

80 are from villages that have been attacked

80 think their current village will be attacked

50 have spouses who left because of war

50 are afraid to work outside of their home

80 are unhappy with their lives today

70 think about hurting themselves

75 have lost family members due to the war

80 have lost family due to illness. 

Yet, 93% are working and continue to support their families

And 63 believe there can be peace in the DRC

The WfWI report founds that:

1.      Health and emotional well-being are severely degraded by violence. The war is taking its toll on family structures.  The constant atmosphere of violence and insecurity and the breakdown of the family due to war is leading to a near mental health epidemic in the eastern province of Kivu.  

2.      Health and wealth go hand in hand. Almost all (93%) of women are working. Despite the number of women working, 95% are living in absolute poverty, and women in our sample are well below accepted average income levels.

3.      Women with higher income levels have better physical health and well-being. They save more money to support their families and eat more meals per day. They are respected by their families and communities, think less about hurting themselves, and know where to seek help and information.

4.      The war burdens women with increased responsibilities. Only 2.4% of women reported that their husbands remain at home. This separation inflicted by the war leaves women to shoulder enormous burdens as they take over tasks formerly carried out by men in addition to those for which they are traditionally responsible. Lack of security makes these tasks even harder.

5.      Men suffer along with women. Men have been affected by sexual violence at a higher level than previously understood, with similar emotional effects as women. Male abuse victims suffer from extremely high rates of unemployment.

6.      Group participation offers enormous recovery benefits.

Overall 80% of women surveyed agreed or strongly agreed that being part of a group helps them make friends, express themselves, increase their incomes, and be part of their community.

Women for Women International is calling on the international community, the UK government and the UN to work with the Congolese government to:

• Improve the security situation

• Address mental health  

• Invest in women

•Involve men in solutions for women

• Channel local momentum for peace

Women for Women International is part of the Congo Now campaign (see previous entry). 

 Since 2004, WfWI has provided support to 31,195 women in the DRC. 11,811 women are currently in the DRC programme.  The year-long programme offers women rights awareness and life-skills training,  development of vocational and business skills and opportunities for micro-finance and help in identifying potential markets for self employment.

Watch WfWI video on women in the Congo and their work there (as seen on 60 minutes).