CELEBRITIES SET OFF FOR KILIMANJARO TO SPOTLIGHT WATER CRISIS, RAISE FUNDS
– UN, January 8, 2010

Actors, rappers and environmentalists are scaling Mount Kilimanjaro in
Tanzania to spotlight the global clean water crisis, which affects more
than 1 billion people worldwide, and to raise funds for the United Nations
refugee agency and other humanitarian organizations.

Participants in the “Summit on the Summit” set off yesterday on the Lemosho
route and reached the Shira Camp, where they spent their first night at
more than 11,000 feet on Africa’s highest mountain.

After passing through savannah, tropical jungle, alpine pasture, moorland,
desert, snowfields and glacial landscapes, the party is expected to reach
the summit at Uhuru Peak next Tuesday before heading back down the
19,340-foot mountain, according to information provided by the UN High
Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR).

The party includes actors Jessica Biel and Emile Hirsch, rapper Lupe
Fiasco, conservationist and explorer Alexandra Cousteau, environmentalist
Kick Kennedy, award-winning photographers Michael Muller and Jimmy Chin,
singer Santi White, actress Isabel Lucas, and Elizabeth Gore, executive
director of global partnerships at the UN Foundation.

“The climb isn’t easy,” the official expedition web site points out, noting
that after 10,000 feet the risk of altitude sickness increases and fatigue
sets in.

“The symptoms vary from headache, dizziness and nausea to lethargy and
euphoria, keeping many from reaching the summit. The last day [on the way
up], in sub-zero temperatures and at the highest elevation, will be the
toughest.”

Leading the climb is American musician Kenna, whose father suffered badly
from a water-borne disease while a child in his native Ethiopia.

In addition to raising public awareness about the global clean water
crisis, the climb will also raise funds to be distributed through the UN
Foundation to several groups, including UNHCR, the Children’s Safe Drinking
Water Programme and Water For People and Playpumps International.

The climbers will post blogs, status updates, tweets, photographs and
videos at regular intervals as they progress up the mountain. The public
can also make donations through the web site, sponsoring every foot of
Kilimanjaro.

We had the following as a posting on our future events button. Now we update after the events.

——————

Posted on October 12, 2009:

Dr. Perkins, a student of leadership, to speak October 15th at the Explorers Club annual Dinner.

Dr. Dennis Perkins is Keynote Speaker at the Explorers’ Club,
Lowell Thomas Annual Awards Dinner,
October 15th, 2009 Cipriani Wall Street, NY, NY

Dr. Perkins is a graduate of the United States Naval Academy at Annapolis, served as a Marine infantry officer in Vietnam and subsequently received an MBA from Harvard University, and a Ph.D. in psychology at the University of Michigan.

Dr. Perkins has spent his lifetime evaluating and analyzing leadership and teamwork of successful and doomed expeditions, first as a front line military leader and subsequently in the field and as faculty at our nation’s top universities. Dr. Perkins’ passion to experience and understand risk has taken him to disparate places including Antarctica, where he retraced the footsteps of famed explorer, Ernest Shackleton; and to Australia, where he sailed the Midnight Rambler, winning the challenging Sydney to Hobart Race, a 628 nautical mile race — often called “the Everest” of offshore racing – using a Volvo 60 racing boat.

Dr. Perkins has written extensively on leadership and organizational effectiveness all in the context of risk assessment and optimization.

——————–

I was intrigued by the interest in risk as described in the Explorers Club info material. Indeed, now I can report that both events did indeed stand in the shadow of the RISK idea – but please mind – this was not in the sense of getting involved in adventures for the sake of adventure, but rather the cold assessment of risk, and the intelligent process of learning how to get out from under dangerous conditions. You get to risks at the edge and might look at the brink – said one speaker.

The speakers were all old style explorers and by nature of this concept – risk takers. Those that were honored at the dinner were obviously members of the older generation, but at the Saturday “Mountain Stories” event we saw also younger people – so there is still a future for those that want to allow for risk taking. Now the problem is to find places to explore – but I learned that there is no shortage of such possibilities. Climbing new peaks in areas that were less accessible in the past is just one possibility, but going back to mountain peaks that have been explored many times in the past, but using new equipment, it is possible to open up new roots and even get a minor peak called by your name.

Going in the foots of Shackleton in the Antarctica, Dr. Perkins said that the good news was that we have been there before and we know how to do it.

Perkins speaks of “Balanced optimism grounded in reality – you damn well got to be optimistic to go on such a trip.” You must be wiling to take the big risk – not the unnecessary risk.”

What the explorer must do is to look calmly at the situation and step up to the risk worth taking. The challenge is to find innovative solutions to problems under least favorable conditions.

Dr. Perkins, when he speaks, he peppers his mental pictures with ideas from the world of business and policy – such as: “The IMF says global recovery has begun – but does not say when things will get better – so may be we cannot predict the future.”

We know we will have bad days, but we must be ready to take the worthwhile risk, and ended by saying “Thank you very much – go for the edge.”

Yvon Choinard, a Patagonian man, climed mountains on every continent. Long time ago, he looked for the true source of the Nile at Mt. Stanley in Uganda. He said that he never goes on an adventure trip – it just happens when you take small risks on the way.

Richard Wilson, told about racing a boat for 120 days and 28,000 miles, from Port la Foret, Brittany. 

Eventually someone defined the topic of risk as – “Risk is to take new exploration and the unknown, and this without knowing about success.”

—————

The Saturday event was set up to honor further six outstanding explorers and mountain climbers. I was there for three of the six.

The last presenter was Jennifer Loew-Anker - born in Montana to the outdoors from birth – she sounded like a proof that genetics, or call it upbringing – have something to do with it. When you ride a horse at two years of age, and horse-riding is in effect more dangerous then mountain climbing … you get my point.

Jennifer is an artist with wildlife her major topic. She presented to us her book “Forget Me Not” about her first husband – her childhood friend from Montana – Alex Lowe, who died in 1999, in an avalanche on the Himalayan mountain Shishapangma. Alex was considered one of the greatest modern climbers. Jennifer showed us a movie about their lives – she herself also a great climber. After 18 years of marriage, she was left with three children. Eventually, two years later she remarried another climber who worked with Alex.

Jennifer told us about climbing done in the Pinar del Rio region of Cuba, and of philanthropic work she does now with the Alex foundation. They built a climbing wall in Mongolia and established a school for sherpas when they realized that the sherpas actually never learned to take care for themselves, and the number of casualties among the sherpas is so much higher then among the foreign climbers.

The other two – actually three speakers – were the pair Freddie Wilkenson & Janet Bergman, and Kevin Mahoney. All of them from the Mt. Washington, New Hampshire, Mountain Climber community.  All of them connected to the Dartmouth Club and to “Mountain Hardware,” and from their base they work as guides and climbers all over the world.

Kevin Mahoney sees his job as a “mitigator of risk – so people discover their own worth.” He defined himself as a winter person – he climbs ice. He said that skying has many more accidents then ice climbing.

Freddie Wilkinson and Janet Bergman are young people from Kevin Mahoney’s group. They gave us a run down on today’s ice climbing – mentioning that 95% of climbing is done in a handful of peaks in the Himalayas. They described themselves as a great team as Freddie looks for opportunities and Janet for barriers – this when trying to identify new targets for climbing or new ways of climbing in areas that have been covered earlier.

——-

Now I come to the real reason why I looked at these two fascinating programs at the Explorers Club – this because of an obsession I developed at the UN when I realized that the New York based Explorers Club is an NGO affiliated to the UN, but not part of the environmental NGOs active at the UN. I realized at the time that the Club was dominated by people that would rather shoot an elephant and turn it over to a taxidermist so it be a trophy for them. Could they find the last dinosaur, they would have stuffed him also. That might have been right for the days of President Theodore Roosevelt, but I thought that today you ought  not love the outdoors in order to kill them. Also climate change is a rather important issue and I saw tremendous potential here to get the Explorers involved. Eventually I approached a young new President of the Club, we met but nothing happened.

Now, at the Saturday event I spoke with some of those that were honored at the event. These were young people and clearly not of the riffle kind, but still did not find a feel for activism present on our kind of issues. Nevertheless, I found hope for change.

When I asked Kevin Mahoney if he found signs of climate change in Nepal, he started to tell me about the farmer who complained that he has to go higher uphill with the sheep he owns, because there is no grass for them as there is a lack of water. So he goes up higher to areas that used to be covered snow! This clearly gave me the opening to talk a little about the melting glaciers, and I found real interest among the young climbers. So there may be hope that someday the Explorers might indeed become Environmentalists as well – provided by that time there will still be left some  environment to explore. Just think of the snow caps of Kenya and Tanzania and my statement above might not sound absurd at all. 

Is this a different meaning for RISK?

The following are the top 28 finalists in the Official 2009 New 7 Wonders of Nature competition – nominated from among hundreds of sites around the world that have been proposed.

The US Chamber of Commerce has commissioned from Baird’s Communications Management Consultants (Baird’s CMC) in partnership with the Africa Business Initiative, an “inside-the-boardroom survey of attitudes toward corporate investment in Africa among leading U.S. corporations.” The information was gathered between January and November 2008 in a series of closed door interviews with senior officers of 30 American Fortune 100 corporations.

The report can be found at:   http://www.usafricainvestment.com

Among the conclusions I found:

“USA Inc. is more interested in Africa than before, because the African market appears increasingly attractive, but Africa has tough competition and high hurdles for US investment. Education is at the top of the US corporate wish list for Africa; ‘educate your people so that we can employ them.’

The African countries that hold most interest are South Africa and some countries in the North, like Egypt; there are also some pockets of interest in West Africa, most notably Ghana, Nigeria and to some extent Angola; while some in the South (Botswana and Mozambique) and East (Uganda and Kenya), are also being watched.”

——-

The report is in two parts:

Part One: Understand how US corporations view Africa as an investment destination and what their requirements are for investing in Africa on the same scale as their investments in the rest of the developing world.

Part Two: The response of African political and government leaders to these private sector views will be telling; what is the conversation about FDI behind government’s closed doors, when policy is made?

——-

Why has Africa not attracted more interest from the U.S. business community?

Rule of law – The rule of law does not prevail to the degree required to make Africa an attractive investment destination. This applies to corporate, societal, and criminal law

Attraction — While the enormous natural resources are an attraction, Africa does not offer a sufficiently large middle class of consumers or show consistent economic growth that could promise a future market. Most African countries are small and have poor markets, and there are barriers to regional markets–such as taxes and the freedom of movement of people and goods

Risks versus rewards– Given the currently perceived risks in Africa, the rewards have to be very high to make it worthwhile to invest. Presently, U.S. corporations say that there are very few visible promises of future returns high enough to justify significant interest in investing

Supportive business framework–Transportation and communications infrastructure, trained or trainable human resources, and equitable trade and employment practices are insufficient to support corporate investment

A welcoming environment– African countries are not doing a sufficient job of providing education and health services to the potential workforce, which makes the potential hire-able local insufficient to support investment.

———

From the www.SustainabiliTank.info   angle we found the most important comment to be:  

“Africa may want to consider the benefits of encouraging US Corporations whose stated desire is to employ Africans, unlike others who merely exploit African mineral resources without contributing to local employment. Africa may also benefit in the long term from the US approach of skills transfer and technology development, provided that its intellectual property is protected.” This obviously requires African leaders to help educate their people which might then also lead to the obvious requirement to allow in new spirits such as more democratic stiles of government and distribution of wealth produced from this more intimate interaction with the outside world and we hope that this can be agreed upon for a true benefit of Africa.

If this study could open African eyes to such potentialities, then the study might indeed provide the positive basis for moving Africa away from the present dead point where the export of commodities such as oil, minerals, and diamonds, are the one way connections that masquerades as business relations between African governments and US corporations. On the other hand, the US public will have to allow also the opening of the US market to goods manufactured in Africa.All of this while US corporations become also investors in the creation of a more developed African internal market.

The report was brought to our attention by   Fabiane Dal-Ri   –  fabianedalri at usafricainvestment.com

January 29, 2009

Contact: ATA Communications
Tel: (212) 447-1357
 info at africatravelassociation.org
www.africatravelassociation.org

PRESIDENT OBAMA’S ELECTION SPARKS INTEREST IN TOURISM TO AFRICA

Africa Travel Association (ATA) Opens Registration for its Second Annual
U.S.-Africa Tourism Seminar in Washington, D.C. from February 19-20, 2009

WASHINGTON, D.C., January 29, 2009 – The recent inauguration of President Barack Obama is more than a landmark in America’s political history, it is also an opportunity for the travel and tourism industry to take a more focused approach to increasing visitors and investment in Africa from the U.S.

“All over Africa, we can see how excited everyone is about President Obama’s connection to the continent,” said Edward Bergman, ATA Executive Director. “We have already seen a surge in interest about travel specials to Africa not only to Kenya, where President Obama traces his roots, but also throughout East Africa.”

ATA, the world’s leading global travel trade organization, is gearing up for its Second Annual U.S.-Africa Tourism Seminar. The two-day event takes place at the Washington Convention Center from February 19-20, immediately prior to the Adventures in Travel Expo (ATE). The seminar’s timing and location affords ATA an opportunity to build on the recent historic events, including President Obama’s commitment to service.

With travel to Africa on the rise and an emerging interest in Africa as a culture and heritage destination, Africa is garnering more and more attention from American tourists as one of the world’s premier travel destinations.

Focusing on sports, adventure and diaspora travel and tourism, the seminar will showcase Africa as a top tourism destination from the U.S., as well as a site for investment and business opportunity in one of the world’s fastest growing tourism markets.

Manute Bol, former NBA star and Ethiopian Airlines official spokesperson, will speak about different possibilities for responsible tourism and sports tourism in Africa.

Stephen Hayes, President of the Corporate Council on Africa, and Edward Bergman, among other travel professionals, will speak about tourism policy choices at the opening plenary session.

Sthu Zungu, President of South African Tourism-USA, will speak about travel trends, relating to who is traveling to Africa, why they are going, and what can be improved on the travel front to increase tourism to the continent. Alongside experts in sports tourism in Africa, she will also address how mega sporting events, such as 2010 Soccer World Cup in South Africa, can be leveraged to increase tourism to and within Africa.

The timely topic of responsible tourism and how the industry and the individual tourist can make a difference in local communities will be explored by senior representatives from the Center for Ecotourism and Sustainable Development, Africare, and the African Wildlife Foundation.

Senior representatives from the World Bank, IFC (International Finance Corporation), and US Department of Commerce’s Office of Travel and Tourism Industries, will explore entrepreneurship, finance and investment opportunities, as well as travel trends in separate workshops.

South African Airways representatives will participate in a workshop on the growth and modernization of travel to Africa and the growth and modernization of intra-Africa air service. Representatives from other airlines serving Africa and Boeing will also participate in the seminar.

Another workshop on African diaspora tourism will examine the role of the diaspora in changing perceptions of Africa in the US market and emerging African diaspora tourism products, such as cultural and heritage tours. Panelists will also explore how the African diaspora and immigrant communities can serve as Africa’s tourism ambassadors in the U.S. tourism markets.

Panelists will also speak about branding and marketing Destination Africa and Africa’s newest travel products, particularly in the areas of sports tourism, and adventure travel.

Tourism experts and industry professionals from the U.S. and Africa, particularly travel agents and tour operators who market, sell and specialize in Africa, are expected to attend the seminar, as well as ministers of tourism, representatives from Washington D.C.’s diplomatic community, and Africa’s national tourism offices.

Representatives of the Spring Bank, Virginia Quanders family (1684), referred to as – America’s oldest documented African American family’ by Ebony and Jet magazines, will attend the event. Henderson Travel Services, the first African American travel agency in the U.S. to specialize in sending visitors to Africa, will also participate.

Public relations firms specializing in marketing Africa destinations, such as the Bradford Group, will participate in the seminar, alongside faculty and students from George Washington University.

ATA welcomes travel industry professionals to participate in the ATE expo immediately following the seminar. ATA members should contact ATA for discounts to exhibit.

To register and to find more information on the seminar, as well as sponsorship opportunities, visit http://www.africatravelassociation.org/a….

About the Africa Travel Association (ATA) The Africa Travel Association, a U.S.-based non-profit, is the world’s premier travel industry trade association promoting tourism to Africa and intra-Africa travel and partnership since 1975. ATA members include ministries of tourism and culture, national tourism boards, airlines, hoteliers, travel agents, tour operators, travel trade media, public relations firms, NGOs, and SME’s. For more on ATA, visit www.africatravelassociation.org.

“INNOVATION AFRICA”

The volume (405 pages) was edited by Pascal C.Sanginga, Ann Walter-Bayer, Susan Kaaria, Jemimah Njuki, and Chesha Wetlasinha.

Earthscan, is a publishing house for a sustainable future, based in Dunstan House, 14a St. Cross st., London EC1N 8XA, UK – with a branch at 22883 Quicksilver Derive, Sterling, VA, USA.

www.earthscan.co.uk

The project, meeting and book, were sponsored jointly by the Rockefeller Foundation and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation under the roof of the “Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA). The goal is tp promote African agricultural development through capacity-building, research and pilot testing of interventions.

At the Kampala meeting participated 140 practitioners and the best 24 articles appear in the 5 parts of this volume.

The conclusions led to five observations,   and I will mention here just the fifth – that says that real innovation emerges by encouraging creativity, and that is not achieved by over-engineering a multiple level of bureaucracy that poses the risk of stifling real discovery. So, it is better to create enabling conditions and incentive structures that encourage information exchange, cooperation and policy changes that unleash bottom-up or lateral innovation.

The first article is of 26 pages on “Conceptual and Methodological Developments in Innovation,” presented by Niels Roeling.

I found interesting his use of “innovation” as a noun – denoting a technology or even a product i.e. hybrid maize. Then he talks about the “diffusion curve” of introducing this innovation for gain by the users. That was the way the subject was taught in the American Mid-West. Eventually he mentions that his thinking was affected by the observation from Landcare in Australia, that “erosion, salination, desiccation and other environmental problems” resulted from the introduction of European farming practices to a continent to which they were not suited. Thus we reach out to grassroots innovation in Sub-Saharan Africa, and the book presents many ways of organizing this sort of development of agricultural knowledge and information systems.

The book ends up presenting many conceptual and methodological developments in promoting innovation by showcasing on-the-ground experiences in Kenya, Uganda, Ethiopia, Tanzania, Rwanda, Malawi, South Africa, Nigeria.

The volume mentions the changes in global agriculture, the use of biofuels, the increase in meat consumption, droughts and extreme weather caused by climate change, and the resulting increase in the price of food, and asks if those events will make African smallholders competitive in African urban markets. The author is nevertheless not over optimistic. It is the global “treadmill” that prevents African farmers from contributing to global food security and African countries from gaining food sovereignty. The imports of food haveinterfered with the marketting of the local produce beyond the subsistence level.

The Drylands, Deserts, and Desertification – 2008 Conference. December 14-17, 2008, Sede Boqer Campus, The Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Blaustein Institutes for Desert Research, Israel.

www.desertification.co.il

THE PROGRAM As Available on November 18, 2008. There might be still Changes and Additions, as well –   further Poster Sessions.

Download this schedule: detailed_program_sessions_1611_publish.doc

Please note that the list of presentations is still not final.

The Strange, Short Tenure of UN’s Verbeke in Lebanon, Reports of Safety Threats.

UNITED NATIONS, August 1 — The UN announced Friday that Johan Verbeke, who only recently was appointed UN Special Coordinator for Lebanon, is being given a new assignment, as UN envoy to Abkhazia, Georgia. On July 24, Inner City Press asked UN spokesperson Michele Montas why Verbeke had not meaningfully deployed to Lebanon. Ms. Montas responded that “I can simply tell you that Mr. Verbeke had to go back home for personal reasons, family reasons, and that’s why he was not in Lebanon.”

    Inner City Press has been told by well-placed Beirut sources that Mr. Verbeke faced threats to his safety, to such an extent that rather than rely on UN Security, he approached the Lebanese government and even the Hariri family. Neither could offer assurances.   He stayed for a time in the Moven Pick hotel, Inner City Press is told and can now report, given his transfer to Georgia. But ultimately he left Lebanon due to lack of security, Inner City Press is told.

  At the August 1 UN noon briefing, Inner City Press asked UN spokesperson Montas why Verbeke was leaving, personal or safety?   From the transcript

 Inner City Press: “I didn’t know that there was announcement today of Mr. Verbeke.   Before I had asked, and you had said there was some personal issue.   I don’t want to get into any personal issue, but I do want to ask you, I had heard that there were some security concerns.   I know that you also don’t like to talk about them.   Specific, not to just the mission in general, but to Mr. Verbeke himself.   Either threats or that he’d sought protection from either the Lebanese Government or the Hariris, various things.   Does this transfer, what is, how does it relate to whatever the personal issue was, which I don’t want to know what it was?   But is it because of a personal issue or is because of a safety issue?   What’s the basis of the transfer?”

    Ms. Montas said, “I am not aware of the details.” Video here, from Minute 24:08.

Mr. Verbeke speaks at UN, by image of Mandela next to his Belgian flag.

    {He will be replaced by Michael Williams, returning to the UN from a stint with the UK government. Why is it safer in Lebanon for British Williams than Belgian Verbeke? And Verbeke does not go home to his family but to Abhazia.

Various theories have been advanced to Inner City Press, including some connection to an investigation of the bombing of U.S. embassies in East Africa last decade.

What is concrete is that due to this uncertainty, the UN was un- or under-represented even at the inauguration of Lebanon’s new president.  

Another part-time UN envoy, Terje Roed-Larsen, competed with the head of UN Peacekeeping Jean-Marie Guehenno to attend – The result was the UN becoming less and less of a player in the conflicts of the Middle East. This is perhaps quite good as it was clearly still unable to do something about the Hariri Family Victimized by the Syrian killings.}

South African President Thabo Mbeki, who decades ago forged ties between the exiled African National Congress and Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe, has so far failed in his bid to ease the longtime leader into retirement. He now Jeoperdizes more then his own legacy, he in effect has “low-jacked” the future of all of Africa.

Connection to Mugabe Threatens South African President’s Legacy.
By Craig Timberg, Washington Post Foreign Service , Tuesday, July 15, 2008.

JOHANNESBURG — At first glance they are nothing alike. Zimbabwe’s aging president, Robert Mugabe, is, at 84, among the last of a generation of African Big Men, clinging to power through brutal repression. South Africa’s suave President Thabo Mbeki, nearly two decades younger, rules by popular mandate as the elected leader of one of the continent’s most robust democracies.

But Mbeki’s long — and so far, failed — diplomatic bid to ease Mugabe into retirement after 28 years has tied the legacies of the two men together, and badly damaged Mbeki’s reputation as the exemplar of a new kind of African president. The leader President Bush described as “the point man” on solving the Zimbabwe crisis in 2003 now is widely regarded as an obstacle to freeing that nation from its steep descent into political and economic ruin.

“I think he’s part of the problem at the moment,” said Willie Esterhuyse, a Mbeki friend and a professor of political philosophy at the University of Stellenbosch.

Mbeki is one of a dwindling number of African leaders unwilling to publicly distance himself from Mugabe. The two men are products of strikingly similar worlds. Both are Christian-school-trained products of African liberation movements and have deep roots in communist ideology. Both have advanced degrees from British universities and rose within their parties on the strength of wits and political savvy rather than prowess on battlefields. Neither favors the traditional African dress worn by many of the continent’s leaders, appearing almost invariably in dark, tailored suits. And both enjoyed periods as favorites of Western powers, which for a time regarded each as skilled and cerebral alternatives to the populists common on much of the continent.
Mugabe’s seizure of white-owned commercial farms in 2000 also struck a profound chord in southern Africa, where much of the best land and businesses remain in the control of descendants of European settlers. At Mbeki’s second inauguration, in 2004, the crowd of friends, supporters and dignitaries loudly cheered Mugabe.

Such a reaction would be unlikely today, as rising repression in Zimbabwe chills even those sympathetic to Mugabe’s efforts to redistribute wealth and undo the legacy of colonialism. Mbeki is almost alone among southern African leaders in not publicly voicing outrage.

Biographer Mark Gevisser, in his book “Thabo Mbeki: The Dream Deferred,” tells an anecdote that suggests an almost familial bond between the two men.

In 1980, shortly after Mugabe took power in Zimbabwe, Mbeki was there as an emissary for South Africa’s exiled African National Congress. One night, he stayed out late drinking in Harare, the capital. His frantic wife reported Mbeki missing, a worrisome development at a time when South Africa’s apartheid government was attempting to assassinate its opponents.

The next time the two men saw each other, Mugabe delivered a paternalistic scolding, waving his finger as he said, “Young man, you must tell us next time you don’t sleep at home.”

The African National Congress had traditionally favored a rival of Mugabe’s in Zimbabwe’s liberation struggle. But Mbeki, in those days in exile, forged a new relationship between the party and Mugabe’s new government. That connection still has a powerful hold on Mbeki, according to Gevisser, who said Mbeki remains convinced that he is essential to keeping Mugabe from growing still more brutal.

“Whatever happens, he has got to keep the door open,” Gevisser said in an interview.

Officials in Mbeki’s administration also have expressed deep reservations about Morgan Tsvangirai, leader of the Zimbabwean opposition. The former miner and union activist, though very popular in his country, has little formal education and has tried to organize the kind of internal political resistance that Mbeki’s African National Congress used to bring down apartheid.

Mbeki long has enjoyed closer relations with other, more-polished opposition leaders in Zimbabwe, including Tsvangirai’s rival, Welshman Ncube, a law professor.

In the just-finished election season, South African support was seen as crucial to the emergence of independent candidate Simba Makoni, Mugabe’s former finance minister, who broke from the ruling party to run for president. Tsvangirai was able to maintain his position as Zimbabwe’s dominant opposition leader — Makoni ended up with only 8 percent of the vote — but relations with Mbeki deteriorated further.

Mbeki “respects Mugabe,” said Tendai Biti, secretary general of the Movement for Democratic Change, Tsvangirai’s party. “He’s personally indebted to Mugabe because he looked after him during the struggle” against apartheid.

“Whatever exists between Mbeki and Mugabe doesn’t exist between Mbeki and Tsvangirai,” Biti said.

Mbeki’s approach has produced some moments that caused even supporters to cringe.

On April 12, when southern African regional leaders gathered in neighboring Zambia for an emergency meeting on the Zimbabwean crisis, Mugabe refused to attend but Mbeki met with him anyway, in Harare. Photographers captured the two men, dressed almost identically in suits, wearing necklaces of fresh blossoms, smiling broadly as they clasped hands like old friends. In a news conference that day, Mbeki questioned whether there was a “crisis” in Zimbabwe at all.

Also damaging was Mbeki’s attempt to host a mediation session on July 5, a week after Mugabe had declared victory in a reelection campaign that left nearly 100 opposition activists dead and thousands of others injured. Tsvangirai withdrew from the election and said there could be no negotiations until the attacks on his supporters ended.

Mbeki ignored that condition and invited Tsvangirai to meet with Mugabe at his official residence, a setting that opposition leaders said would have conveyed an air of legitimacy to the election. Tsvangirai boycotted the meeting.

Swazi election observer Marwick T. Khumalo, a member of the Pan-African Parliament, said that proposing talks at Mugabe’s residence showed “bad taste” on Mbeki’s part.

Despite the failure of that meeting, negotiations of sorts have begun in Zimbabwe, under the oversight of South Africa. Though the opposition dismisses the talks as having no promise until Mugabe ends his campaign of state-sponsored violence, both sides acknowledge that in a nation with annual inflation measured in the millions of percent, there may be no other course.

Yet Mbeki’s time for brokering a solution — and removing the stain of Mugabe from his own legacy — is rapidly dwindling. Mugabe, who continues to look remarkably vigorous for his age, could easily remain in office longer than Mbeki, whose second and final term as president is due to end in mid-2009.

Mbeki’s legacy in Africa is “in tatters,” said Karima Brown, political editor of the South African newspaper Business Day. “Thabo Mbeki is really yesterday’s man. He’s done.”

—————-

African Union: Suspend Sudan genocide charge.
By Steve Bloomfield in Nairobi, for The Independent, Tuesday, July 15, 2008.

The prosecutor of the International Criminal Court charged Sudan’s President, Omar al-Bashir, with genocide yesterday, accusing him of masterminding a campaign to “destroy” three tribes in Darfur, killing 35,000 people and persecuting 2.5 million refugees.

Sudan’s state television promptly showed footage of Mr Bashir dancing at a traditional ceremony, and dismissing the charges. “Whoever has visited Darfur, met officials and discovered their ethnicities and tribes … will know that all of these things are lies,” he said.

His efforts at building up a coalition of African, Arab and Asian support against the ICC also seemed to be paying dividends. Tanzania, which is chairing the African Union, called yesterday for the ICC to suspend the move “until we sort out the primary problems in Darfur and southern Sudan”.

“If you arrest Bashir, you will create a leadership vacuum in Sudan. The outcome could be equal to that of Iraq,” Tanzania’s Foreign Minister, Bernard Membe, said.

Arab foreign ministers will hold an emergency meeting on Saturday to discuss the charges and Sudan will also seek the support of close allies on the Security Council, including China, Russia and South Africa. It is the first time the ICC, based The Hague, has sought the arrest of a sitting head of state. In his landmark case, Luis Moreno-Ocampo, the prosecutor, said a three-year investigation had proved that ultimate responsibility for crimes in Darfur rested with the President. “The decision to start the genocide was taken by Bashir personally,” he said. “Bashir is executing this genocide without gas chambers, without bullets, without machetes. It is a genocide by attrition.”

Mr Ocampo charged the Sudanese President with three counts of genocide, five counts of crimes against humanity, including murder, torture and rape, and two counts of war crimes.

Armed groups from the Fur, Masalit and Zaghawa tribes launched a rebellion in Darfur in 2003, protesting at their marginalisation. Sudan’s response was a brutal counter-insurgency, in which civilians were routinely targeted by government forces and Janjaweed militia. While President Bashir did not directly carry out attacks himself, he was the mastermind with “absolute control”, the prosecutor said.

Hours after the charges were revealed, the BBC reported that the United Nations would withdraw all of its non-essential staff from Darfur. Prior to the indictment, there had been fears of a violent backlash against aid workers following protests in Khartoum.

Human rights activists welcomed the indictment. “Charging President Bashir for the hideous crimes in Darfur shows that no one is above the law,” said Richard Dicker of the New York-based Human Rights Watch.

But some analysts felt that the prosecutor was “over-reaching”. Alex de Waal, a Sudan analyst at the Social Science Research Council in New York, said: “It will be very hard to prove he directly authorised these crimes.” Others said the formal genocide charge might give the UN additional leverage to hammer out a peace deal. “The Security Council now has the option of saying if there are substantial steps towards peace we can put the prosecutions on hold,” said Nick Grono, the deputy president of the International Crisis Group, a conflict analysis think-tank. “There is an incentive to the regime where there hasn’t been in the past.”

The onus now falls on the three pre-trial judges, from Brazil, Ghana and Lithuania, who will consider the evidence which Mr Ocampo’s team have collected and, if they agree, will issue an arrest warrant.

The charges against Bashir

*Three counts of genocide for killing members of the Fur, Masalit and Zaghawa ethnic groups.

*Five counts of crimes against humanity for murder, extermination, forcible transfer, torture and rape.

*Two counts of war crimes for attacks on civilian populations in Darfur.

—————

Mary Dejevsky: The UN fiasco over Zimbabwe is a re-run of Iraq – There was the touching faith in the miracles that can be wrought by drafting.

The Independent, Tuesday, 15 July 2008

No wonder a bit of an inquest is in progress. When Russia and China vetoed a UN Security Council resolution that would have imposed sanctions on Zimbabwe, they pitched many weeks of painstaking British diplomatic planning straight into the fetid waters of the East River. And if anything could have been worse for the British government than defeat, it was that Gordon Brown and his ministers had clearly banked on victory.

Surprise-avoidance being one of the prime objectives of diplomacy, this was a signal failure. A cardinal rule – and not only at the UN, but in parliaments everywhere – is that that if you are not confident of getting your way, you do your utmost to prevent a vote. And if a vote really cannot be forestalled, then you reword the document to make it harmless. Ministers and diplomats can spend many happy hours, days and even months in such prophylactic procrastination. This is part of their job.

So it is understandable that the search is on for culprits, and that those in the immediate firing line are busy looking for other targets. The Foreign Office minister, Lord Malloch-Brown – who, by the way, as a former deputy secretary general of the UN surely knows to the last dot and comma how the organisation works – extricated himself with particular ingenuity. The vote, he said, had exposed the real positions of Russia and China and was, therefore, not a bad outcome at all.

Now that the immediate shock of the vote has passed, two things have crystallised. The Government has – as it so often encourages the voters to do – “moved on”, and is taking its argument for sanctions to the European Union, a body for which the Prime Minister, who famously refused to be photographed signing the Lisbon Treaty, appears suddenly to have found a use. And the blame has settled – as it so often does – on the Russians as the real villains of the piece.

According to this, their new President, Dmitry Medvedev, was all too pleased to tag along with the rich world when it censured Zimbabwe at last week’s G8 summit, but when it came to the broader forum of the UN, then Moscow suddenly had other interests to consider. The Russians are therefore guilty at very least of changing their mind.

A more Machiavellian interpretation might be that they deliberately misled the British into believing that they would accept the imposition of sanctions, when, in fact, they were plotting to do the very opposite. There are several reasons why this rationalisation is unsatisfactory. The first is that, from the Russian perspective, signing up to the G8 condemnation and rejecting the UN resolution, are not actually incompatible positions. The second is that China, too, wielded its veto – and, given its interests in many African countries, including Zimbabwe, could hardly have been expected not to. But we don’t want to get on the wrong side of China, do we?

Especially not on the eve of Beijing’s showcase Olympics. And the third is that, in the matter of misreading the mood of the UN and its Security Council, Britain has rather distressing form.

Think back five years to the weeks before the invasion of Iraq and the frantic efforts applied by the British government to securing UN backing for the war. The warning resolution, 1441, was so expertly drafted – by Britain’s then UN ambassador, Sir Jeremy Greenstock – that it allowed both supporters and opponents of war to vote for it.

Squaring the circle, however, only postponed the inevitable split and made the failure of the crucial “second resolution” that much more painful for Britain when it came.

All the very same weaknesses that combined to frustrate the imposition of sanctions on Zimbabwe were there for all to see over Iraq. There was the touching faith in the miracles that can be wrought by drafting – a skill on which Britain’s civil servants pride themselves, but which, if done too well, can come back to bite the author. There was the ill-tempered vilification of one country as the author of Britain’s misfortune: five years ago, it was France. As coincidence would have it, there was also an almost identical misreading of how Russia would cast its vote.

Defeat at the UN on Zimbabwe sanctions is both less and more serious for Britain than the failure to agree on a “second resolution”. It is less serious because sanctions are almost always of questionable effectiveness, and because the lack of the “second resolution” forced Tony Blair, fatefully, to choose between the UN and the US. But it is more serious because defeat last Friday broke what had been a promising international consensus on Zimbabwe and allowed an illegitimately elected President to exult in a victory over his old enemies. We had a chance to forge a common stance on democracy in Zimbabwe, and we failed – not because of Russian perfidy or the inadequacies of the UN, but because, once again, we did not appreciate how others see the world.

 m.dejevsky at independent.co.uk

——————-

Leading article: Save the elephant from China – Britain poised to approve China ivory licence.
An Editorial – The Independent, Tuesday, 15 July 2008

If the People’s Republic of China is licensed as an official buyer of elephant ivory at a UN meeting in Geneva today, it will be one of the biggest setbacks to have occurred in international wildlife conservation, and a dire threat to the future survival of elephants in the wild both in Africa and in Asia.

China wants to be allowed to bid for ivory from four southern African countries – South Africa, Namibia, Botswana and Zimbabwe – which were given permission to trade in ivory in 1997 in a misguided decision by the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species – only eight years after Cites member states, including Britain, had agreed to ban the ivory trade completely all around the world.

The 1989 total ban was seen as the only way to choke off the demand for ivory that was sending African elephant populations plunging at the hands of poachers. And it worked, and poaching declined sharply thereafter. The partial lifting of the ban in 1997 was a worrying development but, at least in the subsequent auction of 50 tons of ivory, the sale was limited to one country – Japan – as the other potential buyer, China, was regarded as having insufficient safeguards against illegal trading. Now another auction is in prospect, and China wants to join in, claiming that it has cleaned up its act.

To allow it to do so would be disastrous. It does not matter how tight China’s enforcement procedures now are. Overnight the world market for ivory would balloon, providing myriad opportunities for illicit ivory to be laundered into the legal stock, and offering temptation to poachers right across Africa, where at least 20,000 elephants a year are currently being illegally killed.

Disturbingly, the British Government, which has a vote in the meeting, looks as though it will go along with China’s wishes. Yet ministers will not come clean about Britain’s voting intentions. Yesterday they were engaged in that shabbiest of official procedures, hiding behind officials, with the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) claiming that the matter rested on the judgement of the Defra official at the meeting, Trevor Salmon.

To pretend that the British Government’s policy on a question of major international importance is dependent solely on the view of a mid-ranking civil servant from Bristol is laughable. The Biodiversity minister, Joan Ruddock, needs to spell out what her position is, as does her boss, the Environment Secretary, Hilary Benn. Britain should vote firmly against allowing China to buy ivory. If it does not, and the bad times return for yet another threatened species, at least we will know where responsibility lies.

Global Markets – latest news

No formal greenhouse targets at G8 summit.
Bush: Call for reductions marks ’significant progress’

By William L. Watts & Chris Oliver, MarketWatch. a Wall Street Journal Blog.
July 9, 2008

LONDON (MarketWatch) — Leaders of 16 nations at a multilateral gathering in Japan agreed to back a plan for making long-term reductions in greenhouse-gas emissions, although the deal fell short of establishing formal reduction targets.

“We, the leaders of the world’s major economies, both developed and developing, commit to combat climate change in accordance with our common but differentiated responsibilities and respective capabilities,” the nations said Wednesday in a communiqué at the Group of Eight summit in Hokkaido.

The G8 nations include the United States, Japan, Germany, France, Great Britain, Italy Canada and Russia.

Backers included Brazil, China, India, Indonesia, South Korea, Mexico and South Africa, in addition to the G8.

But the joint statement didn’t include language from Tuesday’s statement issued by the G8 leaders, in which they said they shared a vision to cut greenhouse emissions in half by 2050. See full story.

Only three of the non-G8 countries in attendance — South Korea, Australia and Indonesia — backed the 50% reduction, Reuters reported, and this prevented inclusion of the language in Wednesday’s statement.

Leaders of emerging economies have argued that developed countries should first spell out their own goals for emissions reductions.

All the same, President Bush hailed the final statement as a sign of “significant progress.”
“The G8 expressed our desire to have a significant reduction in greenhouse gases by 2050. We made it clear and the other nations agreed that they must also participate in an ambitious goal, with interim goals and interim plans to enable the world to successfully address climate change,” Bush said. “And we made progress, significant progress, toward a comprehensive approach.”

In the end, Wednesday’s statement said the leaders shared a vision for “long-term cooperative action, including a long-term global goal for emission reductions that assures growth, prosperity, and other aspects of sustainable development, including major efforts towards sustainable consumption and production, all aimed at achieving a low-carbon society.”

William L. Watts is a reporter for MarketWatch in London.
Chris Oliver is MarketWatch’s Asia bureau chief, based in Hong Kong.

So both gentlemen were not in Hokkaido – their reporting is based on material they read on the web – Did the WSJ really see it like we did – that this G8 exercize, under Japan leadership subservient to the US wishes, will not come up with real and meaningful results?

——————

If it was a G8 meeting – why not take as final decision what was decided already on Friday without the participation of the other 8?

Brazil, China, India, Mexico, and South Africa – the remaining 5 out of the additional 8 – plain and simple said that they do not participate in games when the G8 do not have the stomach for real figures put down in real time. By saying that they want first to see a real offer from the G8, before putting on the record their own participation in emissions reduction, they are actually in full rights and have done nothing worse then pointing flashlights at the meager document of the G8.

As we said already in another posting today, it was the Bush, Harper Fukuda position that doomed these 2008 G8 meetings under Japan leadership. President Bush won this battle.

Our only remaining question is – why did Fukuda invite the other 8 to participate? Had the G8 met in their own closed cocoon and come up with a final declaration, was that not expected to be better then having a bigger show with folks to be held later as responsible for this failure? What does now Fukuda frame next to his Prime Minister chair in order to say that the meeting he chaired was a success?

—————–

And the previous article – a day earlier – that was referenced in the July 9, 2008 article – The VISION thing that came to nothing a day later:

G8 leaders share ‘vision’ on emission cuts.
By MarketWatch
July 8, 2008

LONDON (MarketWatch) – Leaders of the Group of Eight wealthy nations on Tuesday said they shared a “vision” to cut global greenhouse gas emissions in half by 2050.

In a joint statement on the environment and climate change, the G8 leaders said they “seek to share” with all parties involved in U.N.-brokered talks “the vision of … the goal of achieving at least 50% reduction of global emissions by 2050, recognizing that this global challenge can only be met by a global response.”
Leaders of the G8 nations – the United States, Japan, Germany, France, Great Britain, Italy, Canada and Russia – are meeting in Toyako, Japan.

Japan and the European Union are seeking to formalized emission-reduction targets, building on last year’s general agreement among the G-8 nations to “consider seriously” the reductions.
Senior officials held a late-night session Monday to iron out the wording behind the agreement that would allow leaders to sign onto the deal without committing to a numerical target, a Reuters report said.

The U.S. and several other developed countries { read here Canada and Japan } have said they will not enter an agreement to reduce future greenhouse gas emissions which does not include binding commitments by growing industrial powers such as China and India to cut carbon.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel said she was pleased with progress made toward climate change and other issues following a morning meeting with President Bush.

“As always, we’ve had a very interesting exchange of view, very intensive exchange of view, and let me tell you that I’m very satisfied with the work that has gone on, on the G8 documents, as regards progress on the issue of climate change, cooperation in the area of food and oil,” Merkel said at a photo opportunity with Bush.

This year’s summit, held at a lakeside resort on the northern Japanese island of Hokkaido, brought together leaders from 22 nations, including the top G8 officials.

{ 8+8+5 – the last five are Africans in need and they were not even deemed a reference in the article the following day that speaks of 16 – so, our question is even more to the point – if you had no intention in bringing these other 13 into the decision making process, except for eventually blaming the first 5 from among the second group of 8 for the failure, who needed here also the second group of five that did not even get invited to dinner? All of this is part of our various postings these last few days. We predicted disaster – and here it is starring at us }

Mugabe’s War – By Jacob Laksin, FrontPageMagazine.com – Thursday, June 26, 2008.

Alongside death and taxes, count Robert Mugabe’s election this Friday among life’s more depressing certainties.
Behind Mugabe’s “victory” lies a grim reality. In recent weeks, the Zimbabwean dictator has savagely crushed internal opposition, making Friday’s vote more a coronation than an election. Dreading a repeat of March 29, when Mugabe unexpectedly lost the first round of presidential voting to his longtime rival, Morgan Tsvangirai of the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), he has sought to efface any possibility of a challenge to his hellish 28-year rule.

Thus was unleashed “Operation Makavhoterapapi?” (Operation Where Did You Put Your Vote?). The question is not rhetorical. A months-long campaign of state-backed repression and mass terror, it has targeted all who dared to vote against Mugabe in March. Thousands have been brutalized; dozens, if not hundreds, are dead. Those Zimbabweans that have not fled the country have been scared into submission. Even Tsvangirai, no stranger to intimidation and worse at the hands of Mugabe’s thugs, has withdrawn from what he calls a “violent sham of an election,” despairing that he “can’t ask the people to cast their vote on June 27 when that vote will cost their lives.”

In fact, it already has. The MDC says that at least 86 of its supporters have been killed since the March 29 vote. Human-rights watchdogs conservatively estimate that at least 10,000 Zimbabweans have been beaten and tortured by ruling-party militias. At least 2,000 have been jailed.

Bearing the brunt of Mugabe’s vengeance are Zimbabwe’s rural provinces. Deemed a hotbed sedition and MDC support by Mugabe, they have been beset by the Zimbabwe African National Union–Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF), a combination of police, army veterans and other uniformed sadists who serve, in cold-blooded fashion, as Mugabe’s henchmen.

Instances of ZANU-PF brutality are too many to enumerate, but a few stand out for their sheer depravity. In one case, a man was beaten and castrated with barbed wire, dying later that day in a what Human Rights Watch describes as a “leaning position because he couldn’t lie on his stomach due to his injuries.” The victim’s crime? He had been listening to the March 29 election results on a Voice of America radio program. In another village, a 76-year old woman was dragged before a crowd and beaten with logs until residents confessed to being MDC supporters. Whether they were in fact sympathetic to the MDC is irrelevant; fear, not facts, is the business of Mugabe’s terror squads.

So, too, with the “reeducation camps” that have sprung up across Zimbabwe. Intended to instill fear and root out alleged traitors, the camps are a testament to Mugabe’s murderous paranoia. Writing in the New York Review of Books, Joshua Hammer records this chilling scene:

On the evening of May 5, ruling-party thugs descended on three villages in Mashonaland Central province, a former Mugabe stronghold that had turned decisively against the dictator on March 29. Repeating a pattern that has been seen throughout rural Zimbabwe, villagers were summoned to a “reeducation meeting,” where they were forced to denounce the MDC and pledge their allegiance to the ZANU-PF. Then names were called, and those singled out were hustled into the darkness. “Next we heard the whips and screams,” a witness named Bernard Pungwe said, describing a night-long rampage that left six MDC supporters dead and dozens injured. “Every time someone screamed hard the chairman of the meeting would stop his lecture and say: ‘Listen to the traitors, they are dying.’”

It’s not an isolated incident. At another “reeducation” meeting, armed government soldiers dispensed live ammunition to the villagers. As they held the bullets in their hand, soldiers warned: “If you vote for MDC in the presidential runoff election, you have seen the bullets, we have enough for each one of you, so beware.”

Pre-election violence is nothing new in Zimbabwe. In the past, Mugabe’s regime has been known to ratchet up its intimidation in the run up to a vote. Never before, however, has the violence reached its current scale. “What is happening now,” Human Rights Watch observes, “eclipses the violence in any previous election.”

That Mugabe must rely on violence as an instrument of policy highlights just how miserably he has failed his country. The economy is a case in point. Independent estimates place inflation at over 165, 000 percent, with food staples especially hard hit. In the last year, the price of chicken has risen by 236,000 percent, eggs by 153,000 percent. A loaf of bread, now priced at over $30 billion Zimbabwean dollars, is unaffordable and, to most Zimbabweans, unavailable. Food shortages are frequent, the legacy of Mugabe’s disastrous seizure of white-owned farms in 2002, a move that crippled the most productive sector of the country’s fallow economy. Unemployment now tops 80 percent.

Worse, there is no relief in sight. Western countries have passed sanctions and issued the requisite condemnations, but to little effect. An “African solution” to Mugabe’s menace, meanwhile, is not forthcoming. With a few exceptions – Botswana, Tanzania, and more recently Angola – the continent has been content to look on as Mugabe wars on his own people.

Most disgraceful in this regard has been the South African government of Thabo Mbeki. As the leader of Zimbabwe’s neighbor and largest trading partner in Africa, Mbeki is ideally placed to pressure Mugabe. Instead, out of misplaced sympathy for the man he considers a hero of the struggle against apartheid, Mbeki repeatedly has given the dictator a pass. Zimbabweans have paid a terrible price for his silence.

Not only will this week’s programmed election not change that, but it will likely usher in worse torments for the country. Echoing Mugabe’s preferred presidential slogan – “The Final Battle for Total Control” – one senior ZANU-PF official recently declared, “This is not going to be an election. This is going to be a war.” Let no one say that they haven’t been warned.
Jacob Laksin is a senior editor for FrontPage Magazine. He is a 2007 Phillips Foundation Journalism Fellow. His e-mail is  jlaksin at gmail.com

 http://other-news.info/index.php?p=2520

Saving the planet will be difficult, but do not despair.
06/20/08 The Financial Times – By Philip Stephens oas per a new report of the London School of Economics – key elements to saving the planet.

The shortest distance in the discourse about climate change is that between denial and despair. The head wrested from the sand soon becomes the head in the hands. “Nothing needs doing” slides effortlessly into “nothing can be done”.

For all the accumulated evidence to the contrary, there are still a determined few who see global warming as the invention of woolly-hatted do-gooders and of scientists who want to be soothsayers. The small band of sceptics seizes on the inevitable imprecision of the effort to predict the future relationship between greenhouse gases and changes in temperature as an excuse to ignore the overwhelming weight of scientific knowledge.

The tactic is familiar, once used to grim effect by those who sought to refute the link between smoking and cancer – if you cannot prove everything, you cannot prove anything. This is a cynical thought perhaps, but I often wonder whether it is entirely coincidental that so many of the climate change sceptics are of a sufficient age to be sure they will be gone before they can be proved wrong.

Denial is a still a big problem, as demonstrated by the latest survey of global attitudes from the Pew Research Centre. The good news is that majorities in 14 of the 24 countries covered by this annual poll see global warming as a very serious problem. The bad news is that those countries with the smallest concerned majorities are the ones that are also contributing most to the stock of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.

Less than half – 42 per cent – of people in the US think the rising temperature of the planet is a serious problem. In China, the figure is a mere 24 per cent. That compares with figures of 70 per cent and above in Japan, France, Tanzania and Turkey and 92 per cent in Brazil. That for Germany, surprisingly, is only 61 per cent and for Britain, less surprisingly, 56 per cent.

The state of opinion in the world’s two worst polluters is worrying. In both the US and China, people are less concerned about climate change than they were a year ago. The proportion in China has almost halved from the previous 42 per cent.

These two nations – one the largest per capita emitter, the other now pumping out the most carbon dioxide overall – must be at the forefront of any serious global effort to slow the rate of climate change.

Just as worryingly, they each seem to blame the other. Four in 10 Americans, Pew records, think China is the villain, compared with less than a quarter who think their own gas-guzzling habits may be the main reason for the rising concentration of carbon in the atmosphere. Slightly more than a quarter of Chinese think the US is to blame, while fractionally under 10 per cent believe their own country is most at fault.

Which takes us to despair. This comes in two guises. The first is political short-termism that says there are too many immediate problems to handle. We have seen that happening since oil prices have climbed from the lower to the higher stratosphere.

A year or so ago, the political conversation in most developed economies was how to reduce the amount of carbon released into the skies. Carbon-free was cool. Now the priority is to persuade Saudi Arabia to get more hydrocarbons out of the ground. How, the politicians plead, can we tell voters to make sacrifices when the prices of energy and food are so high? Greenery goes out of fashion when times are tough.

Soaring oil prices do have some upside. Concerned Americans can celebrate the demise of General Motors’ Hummer division. Britain is witnessing a slump in sales of 4×4s – the so-called Chelsea tractors beloved by London’s ostentatious rich.

It can scarcely make sense, though, that the cost of a modest fall in greenhouse gas emissions is another huge transfer of wealth to a handful of oil-producing nations. In any event, what is a few gallons saved from a switch to less vulgar modes of transport against the exponential expansion of the carbon footprint of the developing countries?

The Chinese are adding two new coal-fired generating stations every week. And what about those projections showing that within 20 years or so new car sales in China will reach 18m a year against fewer than a million at the turn of the century. This before we consider the voracious appetite for fossil fuels in that other vast, rising economy, India.

Which brings us to despair in its second guise: it is all too difficult. The climate can be stabilised only if everyone moves simultaneously towards a low-carbon economy. If the US is not ready to curb its profligacy and China is unwilling to risk its future growth, what hope is there of a global compact to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 80 per cent by 2050?

The answer is that, yes, it is difficult but, yes too, it is possible. Those who insist otherwise would do well to read a new study by a group of experts led by Nicholas Stern, the UK economist. (Key Elements of a Global Deal on Climate Change, London School of Economics.)

Written in the sober style of the original Stern review, this latest short report forsakes magic solutions. Instead it breaks down the challenge into its component parts and offers plausible responses in the form of market mechanisms, technological advances and behavioural changes. Its central conclusion is the antidote to despair: “The challenge is far-reaching, comprehensive, and global; but it is manageable”.

In particular the report maps a path to settle the argument at the heart of the present stand-off: how the burden of adjustment might be shared between rich and emerging nations.

Ceilings on the developed economies – responsible for the vast proportion of CO2 in the atmosphere – should bite immediately, it says. But a new international trading system would not impose binding targets on developing countries until 2020. In the interim, poorer nations would be able to sell emission reduction certificates to finance the eventual shrinking of their own carbon footprint.

I doubt the strategy is perfect. But alongside the technological opportunities, it demonstrates that the problem is tractable. Both candidates in the US presidential election support carbon trading. Saving the planet, an American friend tells me, could yet become a US mission, uniting entrepreneurs looking for profits with evangelical Christians demanding better stewardship of the planet.

As for China, for now it may have other priorities, but I am not sure that it wants to grow rich in a world getting unbearably warmer.

UNEP PRESS RELEASE

UNEP Announces Winners of 2008 Sasakawa Prize - Bringing Renewable Energy to Remote Communities: Projects from Peru and Lao PDR Share Prestigious Environment Award.

NAIROBI/WELLINGTON, 4 June 2008 – Two projects bringing renewable energy to
villages in Peru and the Lao People’s Democratic Republic have been awarded
the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) Sasakawa Prize for 2008.

The two winning projects are Sunlabob Rural Energy Ltd (Lao PDR) and
Practical Action (Peru). Both projects are bringing clean power – solar
and hydro – to remote rural communities that do not have access to grid
electricity, on the eastern slopes of the Andes and in the farthest-flung
regions of the Lao PDR.

The UNEP Sasakawa Prize, worth $200,000, is awarded yearly to individuals
or institutions which have made a substantial contribution to the
protection and management of the environment. The winners, who will each
receive $100,000, were chosen by a five-member jury from a shortlist of six
projects at a meeting in Tokyo.

The Prize acts as an incentive for grassroots environmental efforts that
are sustainable and replicable. It recognizes extraordinary initiatives
from around the world that make use of innovation and groundbreaking
research and ideas and empower people at the local level.

This year’s theme for the award was “Moving towards a low carbon economy”,
the theme of World Environment Day 2008. The shortlist included four other
outstanding projects bringing clean energy to thousands of people, from
families in the Philippines to rural households in south India and prisons
in Rwanda.

Achim Steiner, UN Under-Secretary-General and UNEP Executive Director,
said: “Addressing the monumental energy challenge of the 21st century
involves practical projects at ground level that bring tangible changes to
the way people live. Sunlabob and Practical Action are showing tremendous
leadership in bringing clean energy to remote communities in Peru and the
Lao PDR, and in doing so they are setting further examples of the energy
alternatives available to the developing but also the developed world.”

The Winners

Sunlabob Rural Energy Ltd., set up in 2001, is bringing energy to remote
rural communities in the Lao PDR, a country where just 48 per cent of the
population has access to grid electricity, mostly in cities and town.
Through Sunlabob, over 1,800 solar-home-systems (SHS) and 500 solar
lanterns are being rented to families in 73 different villages across the
country.

In an area where most people rely on highly polluting kerosene lamps, the
initiative rents out solar lighting at a lower price than kerosene,
providing families with a real incentive to switch to the cleaner energy.
The cheapest solar systems costs 35,000 kip per month ($3.80) to rent,
while households typically spend 36,000 to 60,000 kip per month ($4 to
$6.60) on kerosene for lighting. As well as being far less sustainable
than solar energy, kerosene lamps can be dangerous, causing burns, starting
fires and polluting the air indoors.

The equipment is rented through Village Energy Committees (VEC) selected by
the whole community; this puts the community in control of setting prices,
collecting rents and performing basic maintenance.

The potential for growth in the use of solar PV in the Lao PDR is huge.
Sunlabob is installing systems at a rate of 500 per year, and a new
investment this year will allow it to scale up to 2,500 systems per year,
and 5,000 per year after that.

The project is also highly replicable. Sunlabob is already starting work
in Cambodia and Indonesia, and is exploring possibilities with interested
potential partners in Bhutan, East Timor, Eastern Africa and Latin America.
(See http://www.sunlabob.com/en/news-2008/ind…, for more information.)

Practical Action, founded in 1966, is working in Peru’s eastern Andes where
68 per cent of the population – around 5 million people – do not have
access to electricity. The project makes use of the region’s vast
potential for hydroelectricity: to date, 47 micro-hydro schemes have been
installed in the area through Practical Action, bringing clean power to
about 30,000 people.

Through this project, Practical Action is also boosting local industry, as
most of the turbines are manufactured by small companies in Peru to
Practical Action designs – with each company making three or four turbines
a year. Practical Action says it sees local manufacture as a key step
towards widespread use of renewable energy.

The electricity supply is boosting the development of the remote
communities. Previously, people moved away to start businesses in places
where the infrastructure was better, but the electricity from the
micro-hydro schemes has brought them back. Some villages have doubled in
size, with people returning and others starting or expanding businesses
including restaurants, bakeries, furniture makers, welders and internet
cafes. (See http://www.itdg.org.pe/, for more information.)

The UNEP Sasakawa Prize was originally created in 1982 by the late Ryoichi Sasakawa.

The Prize wasre-launched in its current format in 2005, and is currently chaired by Mr.
Sasakawa’s son, Yohei Sasakawa of Japan’s Nippon Foundation.

The five members of the 2008 UNEP Sasakawa Prize jury are UNEP Executive
Director Achim Steiner, Nippon Foundation Chairman Yohei Sasakawa, 2004
Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Professor Wangari Maathai, 1995 Nobel Chemistry
Prize Laureate Professor Mario Molina, and Ms Wakako Hironaka, Member of
Japan’s House of Councillors.

As well as the two winning projects, the 2008 shortlist also included four
other projects bringing renewable energy to remote communities in Africa
and Asia.

The Kigali Institute of Science, Technology and Management has
brought biogas power to six prisons in Rwanda, halving the need for
firewood and improving sanitation for 30,000 prisoners.

The AlternativeIndigenous Development Foundation is installing hydro-powered water pumps
for poor communities in the Philippines.

The Mwanza Rural Housing Programme is training villagers in northern Tanzania to make high-quality
bricks from local clay, fired with agricultural residues rather than wood.

And SKG Sangha has set up a biogas programme in southern India to replace
fuelwood with biogas for cooking in rural households, and also to increase
household income by making a saleable fertilizer from biogas residue and
other unmanaged agricultural organic waste.

For more information, please visit the UNEP Sasakawa Prize website at:
 sasakawaprize at unep.org

Opinion

The Rich Get Hungrier.
Wednesday 28 May 2008

by: Amartya Sen, The New York Times

In January of 2007, tens of thousands of Mexicans marched in the streets to protest a leap of 50 percent in the price of corn tortillas.

Will the food crisis that is menacing the lives of millions ease up – or grow worse over time?

The answer may be both. The recent rise in food prices has largely been caused by temporary problems like drought in Australia, Ukraine and elsewhere. Though the need for huge rescue operations is urgent, the present acute crisis will eventually end. But underlying it is a basic problem that will only intensify unless we recognize it and try to remedy it.

It is a tale of two peoples. In one version of the story, a country with a lot of poor people suddenly experiences fast economic expansion, but only half of the people share in the new prosperity. The favored ones spend a lot of their new income on food, and unless supply expands very quickly, prices shoot up. The rest of the poor now face higher food prices but no greater income, and begin to starve. Tragedies like this happen repeatedly in the world.

A stark example is the Bengal famine of 1943, during the last days of the British rule in India. The poor who lived in cities experienced rapidly rising incomes, especially in Calcutta, where huge expenditures for the war against Japan caused a boom that quadrupled food prices. The rural poor faced these skyrocketing prices with little increase in income.

Misdirected government policy worsened the division. The British rulers were determined to prevent urban discontent during the war, so the government bought food in the villages and sold it, heavily subsidized, in the cities, a move that increased rural food prices even further. Low earners in the villages starved. Two million to three million people died in that famine and its aftermath.

Much discussion is rightly devoted to the division between haves and have-nots in the global economy, but the world’s poor are themselves divided between those who are experiencing high growth and those who are not. The rapid economic expansion in countries like China, India and Vietnam tends to sharply increase the demand for food. This is, of course, an excellent thing in itself, and if these countries could manage to reduce their unequal internal sharing of growth, even those left behind there would eat much better.

But the same growth also puts pressure on global food markets – sometimes through increased imports, but also through restrictions or bans on exports to moderate the rise in food prices at home, as has happened recently in countries like India, China, Vietnam and Argentina. Those hit particularly hard have been the poor, especially in Africa.

There is also a high-tech version of the tale of two peoples. Agricultural crops like corn and soybeans can be used for making ethanol for motor fuel. So the stomachs of the hungry must also compete with fuel tanks.

Misdirected government policy plays a part here, too. In 2005, the United States Congress began to require widespread use of ethanol in motor fuels. This law combined with a subsidy for this use has created a flourishing corn market in the United States, but has also diverted agricultural resources from food to fuel. This makes it even harder for the hungry stomachs to compete.

Ethanol use does little to prevent global warming and environmental deterioration, and clear-headed policy reforms could be urgently carried out, if American politics would permit it. Ethanol use could be curtailed, rather than being subsidized and enforced.

{ So – even a Nobel Peace Prize Wining Economist, of the stature of Amartia Sen, can show total ignorance yet speak up in loud voice, making public that ignorance, by not trying to analyze what he was fed as information by clearly vested interests. We said this many times, but in reverence to Professor Sen, we will repeat this once more:

Ethanol could have been made out of the corn that was NOT GROWN, rather then from the food commodity. The point is that the agricultural policy in the US and in the EU is based on “Set-Asides” that leave land out of production in a subsidization of the commodity prices policy. So there is land available to grow an extra amount of corn.}
The global food problem is not being caused by a falling trend in world production, or for that matter in food output per person (this is often asserted without much evidence). It is the result of accelerating demand. However, a demand-induced problem also calls for rapid expansion in food production, which can be done through more global cooperation.

While population growth accounts for only a modest part of the growing demand for food, it can contribute to global warming, and long-term climate change can threaten agriculture. Happily, population growth is already slowing and there is overwhelming evidence that women’s empowerment (including expansion of schooling for girls) can rapidly reduce it even further.

What is most challenging is to find effective policies to deal with the consequences of extremely asymmetric expansion of the global economy. Domestic economic reforms are badly needed in many slow-growth countries, but there is also a big need for more global cooperation and assistance. The first task is to understand the nature of the problem.

———-

Amartya Sen, who teaches economics and philosophy at Harvard, received the Nobel Prize in economics in 1998 and is the author, most recently, of “Identity and Violence: The Illusion of Destiny.”

Africa wants partners, not just handouts.

By KAHO SHIMIZU, Staff writer, The Japan Times, Tuesday, April 8, 2008.
Photo: Tanzanian Ambassador to Japan Elly Elikunda Elineema Mtango is interviewed at his mission in Tokyo,March 27.

Tanzania currently holds the rotating presidency of the African Union, a regional organization representing 53 member states.

Poverty, hunger, infectious disease, conflict — words that readily come to mind when Japanese consider Africa. But Africa is no longer a continent just of sadness, and the fourth Tokyo International Conference on African Development in May will be a golden opportunity to promote awareness among Japanese about the true state of the continent, Tanzanian Ambassador to Japan Elly Elikunda Elineema Mtango said.

“What often appears in the media is that children are dying of hunger, HIV and conflicts,” but that does not tell the whole story of Africa, Mtango said in a recent interview with The Japan Times.

Resource-rich African states are finally getting a chance to emerge from poverty and experience high economic growth — many seeing annual GDP growth exceeding 5 percent — thanks to rising commodity prices.

At TICAD, Mtango said, African nations hope to underscore the importance of attracting foreign investment and promoting trade with other countries to ensure sustainable economic growth.

Japan has hosted TICAD every five years since 1993, and with 15 years of history, Mtango said now is the time to transform the philosophy of the conference from being aid-oriented to partnership-based.

“The TICAD process is reaching the stage of maturation. (Donors) and African countries should focus on mutual economic interest,” Mtango said.

While many countries, including China, the United States and member states of the European Union, engage in “resource diplomacy” in Africa, offering aid to secure oil and rare metals, Japan is lagging in this regard as the nation’s aid budget shrinks.

Mtango said boosting foreign investment is crucial for Africa’s development, in addition to securing enough official development assistance to improve infrastructure.

Japan, however, also lags in trade with and investment in Africa.

“The trade value between Japan and Africa is (lower than) that of the European Union and Africa and that of China and Africa,” Mtango said, noting Africa hopes to raise trade volume with Japan.

According to the International Monetary Fund, Japan accounted for only 7 percent of total trade value in Africa in 2006. The U.S., whose trade value accounted for 27 percent, was Africa’s largest trading partner. China and France both accounted for 16 percent, tying them for third as the most active.

Japanese investment in Africa in 2006 only accounted for 2.5 percent of total foreign investment there, according to figures compiled by the Foreign Ministry. Japanese businesses are concerned about the risks and costs of making inroads into the continent.

Some Western countries charge that China’s aggressive aid to Africa lacks transparency and its assistance goes to countries with flawed governance and human rights records. When asked about China’s aid policy, Mtango said it is not fair to pose that question to Africa.

“As far as African nations are concerned, we can’t be involved in the argument,” Mtango said, adding that if China is the only country that is extending financial aid, African countries will take it.

“We want to cooperate with all (donor) countries,” he said.

In emphasizing investment, Mtango pointed out that Japanese companies are reluctant to make inroads into Africa and urged Tokyo to extend the national insurance coverage for firms hoping to invest in the continent and provide them with concessional loans as incentives.

“Africa is abundant in precious metals and oil that Japan needs in order to ensure stable supply. . . . there are many business opportunities,” he said. “If we can change the way Japanese people think about Africa, I’d regard that as a success (for) TICAD.”
Q&A
Japan must put TICAD ball in play.

Japan held the first Tokyo International Conference on African Development in 1993 to get the international community to reengage with poverty-stricken Africa.

Since then, Japan has hosted the TICAD meetings every five years. The fourth will be held in Yokohama in late May amid growing international interest in Africa’s fast economic growth and abundant natural resources.

Following are answers to basic questions about TICAD:

Why hold TICAD?

In the early 1990s, the amount of foreign aid to Africa was decreasing as frequent regional conflicts outside Africa after the Cold War ended were drawing more attention from donor countries.

To get Africa under the international spotlight again, Tokyo hosted the first TICAD in 1993 together with global development institutions, including the U.N. Development Program and the World Bank.

But some observers say Japan’s true intention was to secure African votes for its bid to become a permanent member of the U.N. Security Council.

What was discussed at the past TICAD meetings?

The first TICAD aimed to get the international community’s attention, resulting in a declaration of political will to consider African development a global priority.

In the second TICAD, in 1998, participants adopted an action plan to promote human and social development, support economic development and spread democracy.

The third TICAD, in 2003, was intended to outline the basic direction of the TICAD process. Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi announced three Africa policy pillars: Consolidation of peace, human-centered development and poverty reduction through economic development.

What will be the main agenda item at the May meeting?

Many resource-rich African nations are enjoying rapid economic growth thanks to rising commodity prices, with annual GDP growth rates in 23 out of the 53 countries averaging more than 5 percent between 2005 and 2007.

As host nation, Japan wants to coordinate aid from donor countries and international organizations to develop a wide infrastructure network that connects coastal and landlocked areas.

Another item is to once again focus on supporting the least developed countries in sub-Saharan Africa and help them achieve the Millennium Development Goals established in 2000 at the U.N.

Many of these countries have little chance of achieving the goals, which include halving the number of people who live on less than $1 a day by 2015 from 1990 levels.

According to the U.N., 46.8 percent of people in sub-Saharan Africa lived on less than $1 a day in 1990. That figure only fell to 41.1 percent in 2004.

Another topic is helping Africa combat global warming, an area in which Japan can play a leading role with its environmental technologies.

What outcome are African countries expecting from TICAD this year?

The government invited all African nations except Somalia, which is in a state of anarchy. So far, about 40 African leaders will attend, the highest number ever, and nearly double the 2003 conference.

A Foreign Ministry official said this is probably because TICAD and the Group of Eight summit will both be held in Japan this year.

African countries want to use this opportunity to draw pledges for as much financial aid as possible from the G8 members and other donor countries, while also hoping to draw private investment to boost economic growth.

They also want a review of the process to monitor progress in action pledged at previous TICAD conferences, which Japan hopes to incorporate in the planned “Yokohama Declaration” to be adopted at the coming meeting.

What do Japanese businesses face in Africa?

To respond to African demands, the government has been pushing Japanese businesses to invest more in Africa. Japan’s investment in Africa only accounted for 2.5 percent of the total foreign investment there in 2006.

Japanese companies argue that they cannot suddenly boost investment in Africa because it is risky to do so.

“There are many other attractive countries as investment destinations,” said Takashi Yoshimura of the Japan Business Federation (Nippon Keidanren). “There is little information about Africa because not many Japanese firms are there, while it is too risky and costly to go there.”

What are Japan’s challenges?

The foreign aid budget has been decreasing over the last decade, given Japan’s tightening national budget.

At the strong initiative of Koizumi, however, Japan’s ODA for African countries nearly doubled to $1.14 billion in 2005 from the previous year and expanded to about $2.52 billion in 2006.

But the figures are still much lower than other donors, including the U.S., Britain and France, as they flock to Africa to secure resources amid rising commodity prices.

Foreign Ministry officials lament that it is difficult to gain public support for boosting African aid because people in Japan have little interest in a continent so geographically remote.

Izumi Ohno, a professor of development studies at the National Graduate Institute for Policy Studies, said TICAD is losing its sheen as other donors rush to host similar African aid conferences.

“When Tokyo hosted the first TICAD in 1993, it was a novel idea. But now, it’s time for Japan to think about how to differentiate TICAD and its African aid policy from that of other countries.”

Matthew Russell Lee of Inner City Press, The Investigative Journalist at the UN, reports that The Staff Union has complained that the selection of the new UN Ombudsman announced late last week, Johnston Barkat, from the US, was based on a “beefed up” resume. They say he claimed to have been ombudsman for 2000 staffers at Pace University in New York, and that school only has some 300 staffers. All of the rest are “part-time or adjuncts,” so they say the use of the number is misleading.

Then amazing the Spokesperson on Wednesday said the letter of protest from the UN Staff Union was not received by the UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon. Matthew has on his website a copy of the letter and it was sent to the Deputy UN Secretary General, Ms. Migiro, from Tanzania, who was appointed by the UNSG to deal with the appointment of the new UN Ombudsman.

We posted on www.SustainabiliTank.info on that appointment on March 15, 2008:  http://www.sustainabilitank.info/2008/03…

Because of the importance of the issues – I will actually copy above posting right here:

Johnston Barkat of the United States becomes the new Ombudsman at the UN.
Posted on Sustainabilitank.info on March 15th, 2008
by Pincas Jawetz ( PJ at SustainabiliTank.com)

Johnston Barkat of the United States becomes the new UN Ombudsman at the level of Assistant Secretary-General, with responsibility for the UN Secretariat as well as its many funds and programmes. In that post, he functions independently of any UN organ or official and has direct access to the Secretary-General as needed.

Barkat was an ombudsman at Pace University and an instructor of conflict resolution and mediation at Columbia University’s International Center for Cooperation and Conflict Resolution.

Will he be given indeed more powers then the previous appointees for the UN ombudsman job?

They say he will serve the Secretariat and the agencies – will he be approachable by someone who is not a UN employee?

Is it really of value that the post has now a higher standing – will this post also yield results?

—————–

Now let me say that I was amazed – in the last few days there were some 50 direct hits of readers to that particular article – and we wondered why?

————————–

There are several serious issues here:
“
(1) as Matthew asks – “DSG Migiro and SG Ban, do letters pass from one to the other?”

(2) is UN Spokesperson Michele Montas not responsible for the DSG as she is responsible for what is said by the UNSG?

(3) and this is our most important question. Here we have some doubts about the UN Staff Union and not just about the UN High Management.

The issue is, and we say this from our own experience, the Office of an Ombudsman that safeguards only the interests of paid members of the UN staff is nice to have – but that is really only half of the story – in effect this is the lesser half when one thinks about the function of an Ombudsman in a democracy. Though, following the Heritage Foundation Panel of Monday March 17, 2008 – we clearly think that this is nevertheless a very important part of the ethics of an organization like the UN – perhaps the only way to safeguard the future of “whistleblowers” – the people that bring a modicum of verity to an organization that is plagued by its claim to Sovereignty that can cover up literally cases of murder, robbery and plain honey-from-the-pot servings.
 http://www.sustainabilitank.info/2008/03…

You see, in a place like Pace University, the Ombudsman does not just deal with tenure issues that a disgruntled Professor brings up against the School Management. His business comes from the business of the undergraduates who are not on the University payroll at all, and from those the UN Staff Union letter defined as “part-time or adjuncts” who are not yet gilded owners of a University Union Card. The role of an Ombudsman in a democracy is to have his door open to those folks – the real “downtrodden” in the normal functioning of the institution.

Think for a moment. At the UN, a journalist is mistreated by a mid-level UN employee, under the previous anemic ombuds-lady – she simply said: “THIS OFFICE IS FOR UN EMPLOYEES – NOT FOR JOURNALIST,” and that was it.
That UN staffer could do absolutely anything he wanted to the outsider – the journalist – with complete impunity from any court of justice – inside the UN or outside the UN.

That is why I wrote in the previous article: “Will he be given indeed more powers then the previous appointees for the UN ombudsman job? They say he will serve the Secretariat and the agencies – will he be approachable by someone who is not a UN employee? Is it really of value that the post has now a higher standing – will this post also yield results?”

Now it seems the UN Staff Union brought up an argument that may show they would not want to see him expand his domain. We believe that a person with his background will actually try to expand that domain by listening also to these outsiders. I hope that Matthew Russell Lee can also look into this angle of the Staff Union Claims:

(a) it is in his personal interest in seeing the UN opens up by becoming more hospitable to non-salaried insider folks;

(b) in the name of a better handle of what goes on at the UN – a more open internal justice system could also help decrease corruption in the UN system;

(c) the introduction of a new modicum of democracy to an institution that has a great part of its staff originates from-states that have barely heard of the democracy concept.

==============================================================================================

14 March 2008

Secretary-General
SG/A/1126
BIO/3971

Department of Public Information • News and Media Division • New York
Biographical Note

SECRETARY-GENERAL APPOINTS JOHNSTON BARKAT OF UNITED STATES

AS UNITED NATIONS OMBUDSMAN

United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has appointed Johnston Barkat of the United States as the new United Nations Ombudsman, at the level of Assistant Secretary-General.   As Ombudsman, he will function independently of any United Nations organ or official, with direct access to the Secretary-General as needed.

A strengthened Ombudsman’s Office is one of the key elements of the new system of administration of justice at the United Nations, which was approved by the General Assembly last year.

Mr. Barkat will head a single, integrated and decentralized Ombudsman’s Office that will serve both the Secretariat and funds and programmes.   It will include regional branches in several other United Nations duty stations and a new Mediation Division.   As Ombudsman, Mr. Barkat and his team will facilitate informal resolution of conflict and mediation for issues involving United Nations staff around the world.   In addition to those responsibilities, the new Ombudsman will help to identify systemic problems and propose recommendations to improve policies and procedures to help the United Nations meet its goals more efficiently and effectively.

In selecting the new Ombudsman, the Secretary-General decided to draw upon the process that had been recommended by the Redesign Panel on the Administration of Justice at the United Nations.   As a result, the selection committee included a representative of the staff and two external experts, one chosen by the staff.   This procedure was subsequently endorsed by the General Assembly in December 2007.

An expert in conflict resolution, Mr. Barkat has served as an Ombudsman at Pace University and as an instructor of conflict resolution and mediation at the International Center for Cooperation and Conflict Resolution at Columbia University.   He has worked as a mediator using alternative dispute resolution in New York State courts and has served on the board of the Westchester Mediation Center.   He has served as chair of the Ombudsman committees for both the American Bar Association and the Association for Conflict Resolution.

He is past president of the International Ombudsman Association and subsequently has served as chair of its International Committee.   Mr. Barkat was also an instructor of business management for Nyack College and the Lubin Graduate School of Business.   He is a senior fellow with the Institute for Collaborative Engagement, and a fellow of the American Bar Foundation.   Mr. Barkat has also worked with the United Nations as a negotiations instructor, as a consultant on ombudsman programmes, and adviser on reforms to the Administration of Justice.

He holds a Doctor of Philosophy from Columbia University, where his research explored strategies to create negotiation ripeness in seemingly intractable conflicts, an Master of Public Administration in government from Pace University, and a Bachelor of Arts in psychology from The King’s College.

* *** *

Message from Achim Steiner, UN Under-Secretary-General and UN Environment
Programme (UNEP) Executive Director on the Occasion of World Water Day 2008.

March 19, 2008.

At a prison on the east coast of Africa, inmates are pioneering a
sanitation project that is working with nature to neutralize human wastes.

The initiative, involving the development of a wetland to purify sewage, is
expected to cost a fraction of the price of high-tech treatments, while
also triggering scores of environmental, economic and social benefits.

Apart from wastewater management, the project is to assess using the
wetland-filtered water for irrigation and fish farming, giving prisoners a
new source of protein or selling to local markets and developing
alternative livelihoods.

Part of the so-called “black wastewater” with high concentrations of human
waste will also be used for the production of biogas.

The biogas can be used as a fuel for cooking, heating and lighting, thereby
cutting electricity bills, saving the prison service money and cutting
emissions from the 4,000-strong jail, including staff and inmates, to the
atmosphere.

News of the project, financed by the Government of Norway and the Global
Environment Facility (GEF), with support from a wide range of partners
including Kenya’s Coast Development Authority and National Environment
Management Authority supported by the University of Dar es Salaam in
Tanzania and the University of Wageningen, the Free University of Amsterdam
and the NGO “Aqua-4-All” in the Netherlands, comes as the globe marks World
Water Day 2008 in the UN International Year of Sanitation.

The Day and the Year are aimed at raising awareness and galvanizing action
to achieve the UN Millennium Development Goals by 2015. These include
halving the proportion of people with no access to sanitation from the
current 40 per cent of the global population or an estimated 2.6 billion
people.

Sewage pollution, a great deal of which ends up in coastal waters, is
estimated to cause four million lost “man-years” annually in terms of human
ill-health—equal to an economic loss of $16 billion a year.

In many developed countries, part of the answer over the past half century
has been found in ever more sophisticated, multi-million dollar water
treatment works.

But as the new project at the Shimo la Tewa jail in the Kenyan coastal city
of Mombasa highlights, there are other, less costly ways of addressing the
same problem with important spin-offs.

The sewerage collection and wetland purification system, plus labour and
construction costs and including upgrading of sanitary facilities inside
the prison, amount to some $110,000 or $25 per person served—something of a
bargain.

These do not include benefits likely to accrue as a result of diminished
economic costs to the wider environment—reductions of solids that can
choke coral reefs and nutrients that can increase risk of de-oxygenated
“dead zones”, alongside cuts in bacterial pollution that can contaminate
shellfish and ruin someone’s holiday in a locale where tourism income is
important to the local economy.

Meanwhile, the project is likely to have benefits for wildlife including
birds and marine organisms.

Thus, in its own modest way, it can play a part in assisting to achieve the
global target of reducing the rate of loss of biodiversity by 2010.

The scheme is among a raft of projects being undertaken under the
“Addressing Land-Based activities in the Western Indian Ocean (WIO-LaB)”
initiative which forms part of the UNEP-brokered Nairobi Convention —a
regional seas agreement.

It is hoped the lessons learnt can be applied to other parts of the world
so that the multiple challenges of sanitation and pollution can, in part,
be viewed through a nature-based lens.

The project is, among others, also working with the coastal Ndlame
communities in Port Alfred, South Africa, using ponds of natural algae to
treat wastewaters including sewage.

The algae, a freshwater or marine organism, assist in de-toxifying the
pollutants and is then harvested as a commercial fertilizer and
protein-rich animal feed.

The total project cost here is around $188,000 with economic benefits from
utilizing treated wastewater and fertilizer production offsetting the price
by $50,000 a year.

Similar creative and nature-based projects are being pioneered on Pemba
Island, Tanzania and in Dar es Salaam.

The sustainability challenges of the 21st century, including those that
relate to water and sanitation, demand more intelligent and creative
solutions than perhaps have been deployed in the past.

Working with nature rather than against it is part of that intelligent
decision-making that may prove a faster, more cost effective and more
economically attractive way of achieving local and international health and
poverty goals.

***********************************
Jim Sniffen
Information Officer
UN Environment Programme, New York
tel: +1-212-963-8094/8210
 info at nyo.unep.org
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Posted in Futurism, Green is Possible, Kenya, Nairobi, Netherlands, Norway, South Africa, Tanzania, UN Commission on Sustainable Development

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And we were told that the Africa trip was about African AIDS and US AID. Now THE WEEK tells us how really others thought about that trip. It was about African Oil and US Military Strategy to take possession of that oil.

Had the US wanted to do something for a sustainable development of Africa – African Jobs could have been created by helping them become independent of oil in their National development programs. After all, drilling for, and producing oil for export, has the side effect that it destroys the fabric of African Society and the environment that has allowed for communities in such places as the Niger delta. The effect of oil production was the enriching of a few, and the destruction seen by the great majority of those that live in the producing regions. China’s road building, by its military engineers, to facilitate access to the oil, and in order to open the way for exports of cheap Chinese goods, is something that will be going on, and the US simply cannot induce the African Governments to do without it. Neither will AFRICOM be able to fight this economic intrusion managed by the Chinese military.

Monday, Jan. 7, 2008

Hope and betrayal in Kenya.

By GWYNNE DYER as picked up on The Japan Times.

LONDON — More than two years ago, when Kenya’s current opposition leader, Raila Odinga, quit President Mwai Kibaki’s government, I (that is Gwynne Dwyer) wrote the following: “The trick will be to get Kibaki out without triggering a wave of violence that would do the country grave and permanent damage. . . . Bad times are coming to Kenya.”

The bad times have arrived, but the violence that has swept Kenya since the stolen election Dec. 27 is not just African “tribalism.” Kikuyus have been the main target of popular wrath and non-Kikuyu protesters have been the principal victims of the security forces, but this confrontation is about trust betrayed, hopes dashed, and patience strained to the breaking point.

Nobody wants a civil war in Kenya, but it’s easy to see why Raila Odinga rejects calls from abroad to accept the figures for the national vote that were announced last Dec. 30. If Odinga enters a “government of national unity” under Kibaki, as the African Union and the United States want, then he’s back in the untenable situation that he was in until 2005, and Kibaki will run Kenya for another five years.

If Odinga leaves it to Kenya’s courts to settle, the result will be the same: There have been no verdicts yet on disputed results that went to the courts after the 2002 election. So when the opposition leader was asked by the BBC if he would urge his supporters to calm down, he replied: “I refuse to be asked to give the Kenyan people an anesthetic so that they can be raped.”

Despite the ugly scenes of recent days, Kenya is not an ethnic tinderbox where people automatically back their own tribe and hate everyone else. For example, it is clear that more than half the people who voted Mwai Kibaki into the presidency in the 2002 election were not of his own Kikuyu tribe, because the Kikuyu, although they are the biggest tribe, only account for 22 percent of the population.

Kibaki’s appeal was the promise of honest government after 24 years of oppressive rule, rigged elections and massive corruption under the former president, Daniel arap Moi. If he had been just another thug in a suit, most Kenyans would have put up with Kibaki’s subsequent behavior in the same old cynical way, but his victory was seen as the dawn of a new Kenya where the bad old ways no longer reigned. It is his abuse of their high hopes that makes the current situation so emotional.

By 2005, Kibaki’s dependence on an inner circle of fellow Kikuyu politicians was almost total and the corruption was almost as bad as it had been under Moi.

British ambassador Sir Edward Clay accused Kibaki’s ministers of arrogance and greed that led them to “eat like gluttons” and “vomit on the shoes” of foreign donors and the Kenyan people. The biggest foreign donors, the U.S., Britain and Germany, suspended their aid to the country in protest against the corruption.

Most of the leading reformers quit Kibaki’s government in 2005, and in the weeks before last month’s election their main political vehicle, the Orange Democratic Movement, had a clear lead in the polls. That lead was confirmed in the parliamentary vote Dec. 27, which saw half of Kibaki’s Cabinet ministers lose their seats and give the opposition a clear majority in Parliament.

The presidential vote was another matter. Raila Odinga won an easy majority in six of Kenya’s eight provinces, but in Central, the Kikuyu heartland, the results were withheld until long after the vote had been announced for more remote regions. Observers were banned from the counting stations in Central and the central tallying room in Nairobi, and on Dec. 30 Samuel Kivuitu, the chairman of the electoral commission, declared that Kibaki had won the national vote by just 232,000 votes in a nation of 34 million.

It stank to high heaven. Ridiculously high turnouts were claimed for polling stations in Central — larger than the total of eligible voters, in some cases — and 97.3 percent of the votes there allegedly went to Kibaki. It was an operation designed to return Kibaki to office while preserving a facade of democratic credibility, but no foreign government except the U.S. congratulated Kibaki on his “victory” — not even African ones — and local people were not fooled.

Within two days Samuel Kivuitu retracted his declaration of a Kibaki victory, saying the electoral commission had come under unbearable pressure from the government: “I do not know who won the election. . . . We are culprits as a commission. We have to leave it to an independent group to investigate what actually went wrong.”

But Kibaki is digging in, and innocent Kikuyus — many of whom did NOT vote for Kibaki, despite the announced results — are being attacked by furious people from other tribes.

Meanwhile, the police and army obey Kibaki’s orders and attack non-Kikuyu protesters. It is not Odinga who needs to accept the “result” in order to save Kenya from calamity; it is Kibaki who needs to step down.

He probably won’t, in which case violence may claim yet another African country. But don’t blame it on mere “tribalism.” Kenyans are not fools, and they know they have been betrayed.

Gwynne Dyer is a London-based journalist.

———————

The Way The UN Reported on the Kenya Event in Its Official Daily News:

UN DAILY NEWS from the
UNITED NATIONS NEWS SERVICE
4 January, 2008 =========================================================================

250,000 KENYANS DISPLACED BY POST-ELECTORAL VIOLENCE, UN ESTIMATES.

Some 250,000 Kenyans are now estimated to have been displaced by post-electoral violence, United Nations humanitarian officials reported today, as the world body’s independent human rights experts voiced deep concern at the ethnic dimension of the conflict.

Overall, between 400,000 and 500,000 people have been affected by the conflict.

Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon spoke by telephone today with both President Mwai Kibaki and opposition leader Raila Odinga, and called on them to resolve their issues through dialogue. The violence, which has reportedly claimed more than 300 lives, erupted after Mr. Kibaki was declared the winner of last week’s poll. Mr. Ban also spoke with Ghanaian President John Kufuor, current chairman of the African Union.

Meanwhile, the UN World Food Programme (WFP) reported that virtually all movement of food for both western Kenya and the entire region, including Uganda, Sudan and the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), was frozen for days due to the insecurity.

The 14 human rights experts, covering issues ranging from racism to sexual violence to freedom of belief, deplored the growing inter-ethnic conflict, citing the deaths of dozens of civilians, including children and women, after a mob set fire to a church where they had taken sanctuary.

“We are profoundly alarmed by the reports of incitement to racial hatred and the growing frictions between the different ethnic groups,” they said in a statement calling on the authorities, political, ethnic and religious leaders to put an end “to what may become the dynamics of inter-ethnic killings… in the light of historical precedents in the region.”

Rwanda, to the west of Kenya, was the scene of genocide in 1994, when ethnic Hutu extremists massacred some 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus. Ethnic conflict between Hutus and Tutsis has also killed hundreds of thousands of people over the past four decades in Burundi, Rwanda’s southern neighbour.

In a litany of “great concern,” the experts said the massive displacement, especially in the Rift Valley, threatened the right to food, health, housing and education. They also cited reports of gang rapes and the attendant likelihood of HIV infection and reported curbs on free expression, in particular a ban on live coverage of events.

“While we recognize the prerogative and duty of the Kenyan authorities to maintain public order, we are, however, alarmed by reported instances of use of excessive force by Kenyan security forces against demonstrators and other civilians,” they added.

“We urge the incumbent Kenyan authorities to take all necessary steps and measures to bring an end to the present situation, including by addressing appropriately questions raised with regard to the latest election results. We also call upon the leaders of political parties to show restraint and control over their followers and supporters.”

WFP will shortly provide food through the Kenya Red Cross for 100,000 people displaced in the Northern Rift Valley, but it said: “The biggest problem is the difficulty for trucks carrying WFP food to reach areas in western Kenya.”

Some 200 trucks were loaded with WFP food in the Kenyan port of Mombasa from a ship that arrived over Christmas carrying 30,000 metric tons – enough to feed 1.5 million people for a month – for Uganda, southern Sudan, Somalia and the eastern DRC. The food for Somalia will be sent by sea, but the rest has to go by land, WFP said.

Some trucks left Mombasa but then were stranded due to insecurity on main roads and checkpoints set up by vigilantes in western Kenya. Fifteen trucks are stranded in or near Nairobi, 60 in Mombasa and others in Eldoret, near the site of the church massacre. Each truck carries 34 tons of food. “WFP is holding urgent talks to resolve this issue and get food to those who need it in Kenya and elsewhere,” the agency said.

Kenyan security forces recently escorted 20 WFP trucks carrying food for north-western Kenya, southern Sudan, Uganda and the DRC, but the insecurity and roadblocks are still hampering humanitarian access.

The UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) is trying to establish so-called “safe spaces” for displaced mothers and children, provide water and sanitation to over 100,000 people, and distribute family kits to supply up to 100,000 people with blankets, plastic sheeting, cooking sets, soap and jerry cans.

_______________

The Dwyer article just validates our previous posting on the Kenya and of the UN problems.

Kenya will not be helped from the outside as long as the UN does not recognize the fact that the Head of State they deal with – Kenya’s President is the culprit. People will get killed because of this UN lack of honesty. Saying that this is like Rwanda, as we already wrote, is simply dodging the reality that Kibaki must be told he has to go – like Musharraf must be told he has to go. The UN was never able to take such positions and to make such statements – so it will be unfair to claim that it is because of the Libyan Presidency of the Security Council. Will Mr. Ban Ki-moon take steps in private that can be helpful, or his private contacts are no different from those stated words.

Time will tell – but according to other news we picked up in the media, the Western town of Kisumu, a town of 500,000, third largest in Kenya, is being ravaged. This is a town where the main Street is called after Mr Odinga’s father – Oginga Odinga – and people here got furious when they realized that the election was stolen by the President.

In effect the platform of Raila   Odinga’s “Orange Democratic Movement” is nothing else then a revival of the party that won the 2002 elections for Mr. Kibaki – only to see that once elected he forgot its multi-tribal composition that was intended to create a Kenyan National image, and for all practical purpose turned the country over to his Kikuyu tribe.

Odinga, and others, left the government in 2005 and prepared for the new elections in 2007. They thought they won on the basis of returns from all regions except the Central region where the Kikuyus live. Kibaki delayed the release of the votes from that region, and furtively swore himself in for another 5 years. Hell broke lose, and most probably now, besides having to get Mr. Kibaki to let in foreign observers to supervise new elections, it will also be needed to write a new Constitution that gives more power to the tribes and the regions – this in order to answer some of the needs created by the last 5 years of Kibaki’s rule in Kenya. Kenya attempted to become a real State that was going to be above tribalism, but the Kikuyus destroyed this by the attempt to rule alone – think of the Sunnis in Iraq! This sort of behavior does not succeed when you are an absolute minority, and now there will have to be made an attempt to go back to some sort of Federal System that can take away the thorns that Kibaki will leave behind.

And the UN? As long as the UN presence continues in Nairobi, there will be the need for the UN to voice suggestions for a   positive approach to move the country from the present rot. Actually, December 2006 people at the UN in Nairobi saw things coming – so why was no attempt made to Show Kibaki that he is mounting a hill of problems by giving all to just those that belong to his tribe, the main tribe that resides in the area of the Capital. The UN could have informed him that similar situations caused disaster in other post-colonial States in Africa. The US sent to Kenya Ms. Jendayi E. Frazer, the US Assistant Secretary of State for Africa, that will have to bring the two contenders for leadership into the same room and have them negotiate a settlement. To shuttle between them will just prolong the killings. It is important to realize that the problem is still political, and yet not really a full blown ethnic conflict and it better be tackled before it gets worse.

Looking at the following cut-out we see that the Kikuyu, who are only about 22% of Kenya’s population, live mainly in Nairobi, and in a rather small part of Kenya located in the Central area west of Nairobi.
The remaining parts of the Central area   are occupied by a mix of tribes with the further out West part occupied by the main opposition leader Raila Odinga’s Luo. In between we see the large region of the Rift Valley with a Kalenjin majority – and that is the tribe of Kenya’s previous strongman – President   Daniel arap Moi, whose dislogement after years of corruption, is major part of Kenya’s independence history. All that part of rural and small town Kenya, including the town of Kisumu, up to the corner of borders with Uganda and Tanzania at Lake Victoria are now basically Odinga territory. This is the area that was once occupied by Indian tea plantations that were expropriated at independence, and taken over by the Kenya Government. The area marked with the number 7 (mixed) on the map, close to the Tanzanian border, is occupied mainly by the Massai, their cattle herds, and game parks. This is usually a quiet area, but they were Freedom fighters against the British.

The North-West corner of Kenya, west in the Rift Valley, borders with South Sudan and Ethiopia, and is occupied by the same people as South Sudan, mainly Christian and animists – so there was always a chance of spillover of problems from those regions. But if one looks at the map, it is easy to see that all of the above takes only less then half of the Kenya territory. The larger part is actually Muslim – with better to do people on the coast, and basically Somali Muslims in the areas marked on the map two times with the number 4, or the Eastern and North-Eastern regions towards Somalia and the Ogaden region in Ethiopia, that is also inhabited basically by Somalis. It is just inconceivable that all of the Horn of Africa region is in turmoil, and that this North-Eastern corner of Kenya, and its rich South-Eastern Coastal Area, are spared and will not become part of the same game. In effect, when I was in Nairobi for COP 12 of the UNFCCC, December 2006, at a time of strong rains and murderous floods in the Somali part of Kenya, I was told by people from UNEP that the region there was dangerous because of the closeness to Somalia. There is no tourism in that part of Kenya. Also the Government of President Mwai Kibaki was not highly appreciated in those circles, troubles were already foreseen.

For a while Kenya was a prospering set-aside with its status of a UN Center, but once things start unraveling, it might be pulled in as next area, after Ethiopia, as a place of confrontation that may get on the fault line between Arabized Africa and Christian, more-or-less secular Africa. As a sign of the times, Israel’s El Al Airlines were not flying the last two years to Nairobi, and the only available connection in Sub-Sahara Africa was via Addis Ababa. This becomes specially interesting with Israel joining now the UN UNEP and Habitat Headquarters on the outskirts of Nairobi.

And the UN   Does What It Usually Does: Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon communicates with the Member State Government and asks the President Kibaki, in diplomatic language, to be less violent to his own people. Then the whole UN affiliates’ mechanism start talking of aid to the refugees. But the reality is also that we heard from the Libyan Presidency of the Security Council that nothing more then the above will be discussed at his Council – the only UN body designed to show a tooth-rich stand.

In the meantime we learn from the new UN News Service that the situation looks like it did in Rwanda – “Rwanda, to the west of Kenya, was the scene of genocide in 1994, when ethnic Hutu extremists massacred some 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus. Ethnic conflict between Hutus and Tutsis has also killed hundreds of thousands of people over the past four decades in Burundi, Rwanda’s southern neighbour.”
In Kenya there are no Hutu and Tutsi’s, but – yes – it could evolve to a similar   high level of human disaster ending in plain genocide. Good comment, but why did the writer say “Rwanda, to the west of Kenya?” Actually Rwanda does not border with Kenya and though there are similar inter tribal problems that date before the British or the Belgians run those places, but were exacerbated by the colonial powers – then used by the new African governments to buttress their own positions – “favor some and exploit the rest.” Rwanda is on the other shore of Lake Victoria, but has no access to the Lake. That is because the British wanted to have the whole lake under their East Asia Colonial structure – s o now it is only Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania that share lake Victoria. Rwanda is not to the West of Kenya, but actually rather to the Southwest, after crossing via Tanzania. This is just a small comment to help the UN folks with their Geography.

Further, we have been to Lake Victoria, and without enlarging on what we said in the introduction, we will just say that the British and the Belgians had different goals for their colonies. That area of the Lake Victoria region was rather intended for the production of tea and the British brought in people from India to establish the plantations. There were here also British settlers and we could find some similarities here rather with Zimbabwe (to what the UN News Service could also have referred as “West of Kenya” – all right – Southwest).
Rwanda was run by the Belgians like Congo – that is for mining purpose. This was a much harsher destructive destiny and it showed in the results.

UN DAILY NEWS from the
UNITED NATIONS NEWS SERVICE
4 January, 2008 =========================================================================

250,000 KENYANS DISPLACED BY POST-ELECTORAL VIOLENCE, UN ESTIMATES

Some 250,000 Kenyans are now estimated to have been displaced by post-electoral violence, United Nations humanitarian officials reported today, as the world body’s independent human rights experts voiced deep concern at the ethnic dimension of the conflict.

Overall, between 400,000 and 500,000 people have been affected by the conflict.

Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon spoke by telephone today with both President Mwai Kibaki and opposition leader Raila Odinga, and called on them to resolve their issues through dialogue. The violence, which has reportedly claimed more than 300 lives, erupted after Mr. Kibaki was declared the winner of last week’s poll. Mr. Ban also spoke with Ghanaian President John Kufuor, current chairman of the African Union.

Meanwhile, the UN World Food Programme (WFP) reported that virtually all movement of food for both western Kenya and the entire region, including Uganda, Sudan and the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), was frozen for days due to the insecurity.

The 14 human rights experts, covering issues ranging from racism to sexual violence to freedom of belief, deplored the growing inter-ethnic conflict, citing the deaths of dozens of civilians, including children and women, after a mob set fire to a church where they had taken sanctuary.

“We are profoundly alarmed by the reports of incitement to racial hatred and the growing frictions between the different ethnic groups,” they said in a statement calling on the authorities, political, ethnic and religious leaders to put an end “to what may become the dynamics of inter-ethnic killings… in the light of historical precedents in the region.”

Rwanda, to the west of Kenya, was the scene of genocide in 1994, when ethnic Hutu extremists massacred some 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus. Ethnic conflict between Hutus and Tutsis has also killed hundreds of thousands of people over the past four decades in Burundi, Rwanda’s southern neighbour.

In a litany of “great concern,” the experts said the massive displacement, especially in the Rift Valley, threatened the right to food, health, housing and education. They also cited reports of gang rapes and the attendant likelihood of HIV infection and reported curbs on free expression, in particular a ban on live coverage of events.

“While we recognize the prerogative and duty of the Kenyan authorities to maintain public order, we are, however, alarmed by reported instances of use of excessive force by Kenyan security forces against demonstrators and other civilians,” they added.

“We urge the incumbent Kenyan authorities to take all necessary steps and measures to bring an end to the present situation, including by addressing appropriately questions raised with regard to the latest election results. We also call upon the leaders of political parties to show restraint and control over their followers and supporters.”

WFP will shortly provide food through the Kenya Red Cross for 100,000 people displaced in the Northern Rift Valley, but it said: “The biggest problem is the difficulty for trucks carrying WFP food to reach areas in western Kenya.”

Some 200 trucks were loaded with WFP food in the Kenyan port of Mombasa from a ship that arrived over Christmas carrying 30,000 metric tons – enough to feed 1.5 million people for a month – for Uganda, southern Sudan, Somalia and the eastern DRC. The food for Somalia will be sent by sea, but the rest has to go by land, WFP said.

Some trucks left Mombasa but then were stranded due to insecurity on main roads and checkpoints set up by vigilantes in western Kenya. Fifteen trucks are stranded in or near Nairobi, 60 in Mombasa and others in Eldoret, near the site of the church massacre. Each truck carries 34 tons of food. “WFP is holding urgent talks to resolve this issue and get food to those who need it in Kenya and elsewhere,” the agency said.

Kenyan security forces recently escorted 20 WFP trucks carrying food for north-western Kenya, southern Sudan, Uganda and the DRC, but the insecurity and roadblocks are still hampering humanitarian access.

The UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) is trying to establish so-called “safe spaces” for displaced mothers and children, provide water and sanitation to over 100,000 people, and distribute family kits to supply up to 100,000 people with blankets, plastic sheeting, cooking sets, soap and jerry cans.