Africa

Lizben Agha was held for weeks without charge after becoming caught up with the three men's arrest.

BBC Sport Africa's Celestine Karoney digs out Africa's golden moments from Tokyo 2020.

Yasmine Sherif, Director of Education Cannot Wait

By Yasmine Sherif
NEW YORK, Aug 9 2021 (IPS)

The first time I visited South Sudan in 2004 – prior to its independence – I travelled across the entire the country which was then a region devastated by man’s inhumanity to man. Although South Sudan is slightly larger than France, I could find only one concrete school building in Rumbek.

Yasmine Sherif

Millions were impacted by the twenty-year civil war and decades of marginalization, and far too many children and their families were internally displaced or had fled the country as refugees to Kenya. Conflict, extreme poverty and a near total absence of infrastructure had left virtually every girl, boy and the youth furthest behind. I will never forget this sight of unspeakable injustice.

Reading and reflecting on ECW’s interview in this month’s Newsletter with the Honourable Awut Deng Acuil, Minister of General Education and Instruction for South Sudan, both deepened my indignation against any injustice – especially against girls and the forcibly displaced – and also gave me immense hope in learning more about such a resilient, experienced and educated female leader – a veteran in education, gender and human rights.

The Honourable Awut Deng Acuil reminds us all of the importance of local ownership, leadership and knowledge, as well as our absolute moral obligation to focus on girls’ and refugees’ education. Her strength, perseverance and dedication – exemplified by her many accomplishments in life – are astonishing and inspiring.

She describes the national context, her own struggles and Education Cannot Wait’s investments in the children of South Sudan in an authentic, genuine way, fully understanding the challenges faced by girls, refugees and children and youth enduring conflict, forced displacement, climate change induced disasters, not to mention COVID-19.

Under her guidance, ECW has worked closely with the government of South Sudan to deliver a $189 million multi-year humanitarian-development-peace nexus education investment. During our first year alone, we reached 116,240 crisis-affected girls and boys in 181 schools with $20 million in seed funds. But these results do not do justice to either their needs, nor to her leadership.

We now call on all our strategic donor partners, governments, private sector and foundations to urgently help close the $169 million funding gap. Under the leadership of an inspiring female leader – the Honorable Awut Den Acuil is South Sudan’s first-ever female Minister of Education – the children and youth of South Sudan now have a chance to have a better future. We cannot afford to look the other way. Our concerted commitment to girls’ education could not be in better hands.

When learning more about the Honorable Awut Den Acuil, and after reading her profound reflection on one of her favorite books, Alice in Wonderland, my thoughts turn to Jeanne d’Arc, who once said: “I am not afraid. I was born to do this.”

Let us not be afraid. Let us learn from those we serve. Or, as the Persian poet, Omar Khayyam, once said: “Who are you to teach, and who am I to learn?” This is what localization and real empowerment is all about. This is the Grand Bargain in its essence. Let us invest now in South Sudan – the girls, children with disabilities, forcibly displaced children and all the other children and youth left furthest behind for decades.

With an overall investment of at least $400 million in Education Cannot Wait towards equitable, inclusive, quality education for crisis-affected children and youth around the world, we can help overcome the challenges already being tackled by such extraordinary female leadership in the education sector.

Together, we can drive global commitment for girls’ education and for all those left furthest behind, making a real difference in all their lives. Join us … we were born to do this!

 

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Excerpt:

Yasmine Sherif, Director of Education Cannot Wait

A 76-year-old man shows his vaccination card after receiving a COVID-19 vaccine in Kasoa, Ghana. Credit: UNICEF/Francis Kokoroko

By Jeremy Allouche
BRIGHTON, UK, Aug 9 2021 (IPS)

An article published in April 2020 by the World Economic Forum warning that Africa was facing a Covid-19 time bomb was widely shared among the humanitarian sector, with increasing alarm.

Some anticipated a perfect storm in terms of violence against children while others talked about the potential for a hunger pandemic in the Sahel. But none of these catastrophic scenarios have been borne out in either the first or second waves of the pandemic in Sub-Saharan Africa.

There are current concerns regarding an increase of third wave cases, but so far the continent has recorded a far lower fatality rate than Europe.

Yet, despite the many innovations developed by Africans during the pandemic, there has been no acknowledgment that African agency played a part in keeping the numbers of dead and dying from Covid-19 in check.

Instead, this lower fatality rate was attributed to fate, the natural setting or demographics. It is another example of the humanitarian sector acting as a willing accomplice to racial stereotyping.

Instead of challenging an over simplified or “single story” narrative (to use Chimamanda Adichie’s words), it opted to share on a disempowering, attention grabbing headline to describe how Covid-19 had impacted Sub Saharan Africa.

It points to the glaring gap in stories relating to African ingenuity and innovation – despite the number of examples that exist. These were highlighted in the range of responses to Covid-19 seen across the continent.

For example, an ongoing project on African resilience found that , villagers in Côte d’Ivoire dealt with the heavy impact of the pandemic on crop production and trading by borrowing money from micro-finance institutions, leveraged by trading on their personal connection and reputation.

By mobilising their social capital, villagers were able to foreground trust and hope as bankable commodities in rural agriculture.

This innovation challenges the traditional relationship between micro-finance institutions and villagers, and continues to redefine lending procedures even after lockdown. But this type of social innovation and community resilience is barely reported by the media and the humanitarian world.

For too long the humanitarian sector were part of reinforcing a vision of Africa as a rural continent plagued by civil war, state corruption, and suffering from the effects of climate change.

This narrative does not allow for any recognition of how the continent is changing driven by trends including, high population growth and urbanisation, digitisation and economic advancement.

The emergence of a middle class in countries including Côte d’Ivoire, Nigeria, South Africa, Kenya and Tanzania illustrate the continent’s potential for growth and economic innovation. The failure of the humanitarian sector in general to acknowledge such trends has significant ramifications to the type and nature of work undertaken.

The importance of recognising and dealing with African agency and diversity are fundamental questions for the humanitarian sector, especially at a time where localisation and the humanitarian-development nexus are put forward as the main paradigm and policies to address the sectors’ effectiveness and legitimacy.

The dominance of localization in humanitarian work relies on a simplified understanding of what ‘the local’ is and who ‘the locals’ are, which can result in problematic backlash.

Other research on humanitarian protection in DRC showed that many organisations working in Eastern DRC would categorise Lingala-speaking people from Kinshasa (2400km away) as locals and hire them as local experts, even when they do not speak Swahili and have little understanding of the local context.

Those that are hired have to ‘to speak in the northern way’, that is, to use the jargon and standards developed by international organisations (Sphere, Core Humanitarian Standards), or guidelines and processes (cluster mechanisms, response cycles and Humanitarian Response Plans, Humanitarian Needs Overviews).

As a result, participation of ‘affected communities’ are superficially sought as an ‘add on’ rather than essential to better understanding of local contexts.

The challenges for the sector are to go beyond creating single story narratives and prioritise instead space for African agency and diversity. Of course, funding and political barriers complicate things.

Justifying aid expenditure to domestic audiences means that donors have a low tolerance for financial and reputational risk. As such, aid continues to be provided on the basis of what agencies and donors want to give rather than on what people say they need and want.

In such a supply-driven relationship, paternalistic attitudes that donors know best, make a mockery out of any attempts to enable localisation.

We need a better way forward, focusing on transdisciplinary, decoloniality and reinforce the partnerships between humanitarians and researchers on the one hand, and the collaboration amongst Global North and practitioners and researchers on the other.

To move away from a narrow, single-story narrative of Africa, humanitarian and research relations must at their most fundamental level change from functional and ad hoc collaborations to more equitable partnerships.

 

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Excerpt:

The writer is Professorial Fellow at the Institute of Development Studies (IDS) and co-director of the Humanitarian Learning Centre, Brighton, UK.

UN Women Executive Director Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka addresses the Secretary-General's Townhall. Calling the townhall-style meeting an opportunity to build the relationship between the Organization’s leadership and civil society, she said it is “part and parcel of our movement to work with you in different parts of the world.” Credit: UN Photo/Mark Garten

By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, Aug 9 2021 (IPS)

The United Nations has long preached the wisdom of transparency and accountability to the outside world, but has failed to practice the same principles in its own backyard – or even on the 39th floor of the Secretary-General’s office in the UN Secretariat.

The opaqueness, ironically, is visible in most of the high-ranking appointments in the UN system, two of which—the posts of executive directors at UN Women and UNICEF—fall vacant soon.

Antonia Kirkland, the Global Lead on Equality Now’s programmes for Legal Equality and Access to Justice, told IPS: “We are concerned that the process for the selection of the third head of UN Women has been quite non-transparent”

She said the current Executive Director of UN Women has worked well with both civil society and governments “to advance our joint agenda for gender equality, culminating in over $40 billion of commitments at the Generation Equality Forum”.

“We know that to successfully achieve equality for women and girls, UN Women must be led by someone who has impeccable credentials in the field of women’s rights and significant experience in driving inter-governmental processes with excellent bridge-building and negotiating skills”.

So far, she lamented, “we have not had any transparency around the criteria used in interviews and the process being used to make the decision, which has caused apprehension and calls for accountability.”

Purnima Mane, a former UN Assistant Secretary-General and Deputy Executive Director of the UN Population Fund (UNFPA), told IPS appointments of senior leadership in UN organizations have always been an issue of interest and concern for civil society.

“The UN is seen by civil society as a key body which influences the issues it cares about deeply and in which it wants to have a larger say. Women’s rights are one such issue, making the appointment of the UN Women executive director of deep interest,” she argued.

She pointed out that the UN has always handled appointments of senior positions in a highly confidential manner and as a matter determined by Member States to a large extent.

Most partners of the UN are cognizant of the negotiations that happen behind the scenes between countries in the case of high-level UN appointments to ensure that their desired candidate is appointed.

“But civil society is now increasingly acknowledged as having a key role to play in implementing the UN’s agenda and monitoring how Member states perform on their commitments made in the UN,” she noted.

“It is not surprising, therefore that civil society is asking for more openness in senior appointments to ensure that its voice is heard. It also wants to ensure that a public vision statement makes the agenda of a potential candidate, transparent and to which he/she/they can be held accountable,” she said.

The major intention, Mane argued, is to see that the candidate with the best record and abilities is appointed and that the incoming executive director espouses a strong, rights- and evidence-based agenda of action, and respects the voice of civil society.

Last week, a coalition of some 380 civil society organizations (CSOs), along with 746 individuals, public figures and feminists, have expressed their “concerns with the process to recruit a new UN Women Executive Director.”

The joint letter to Secretary-General Antonio Guterres reads: “Because of the importance of UN Women to our work for women’s rights globally, many of us have signed two prior letters to you emphasizing the importance of a transparent process informed by civil society.”

“As this process unfolds, we have not seen those principles upheld,” says the letter.

When he introduced the report of the High-Level Panel on International Financial Accountability, Transparency and Integrity back in February 2021, Guterres said the panel provided a vision of a better system that works for all — as well as “recommendations for building more robust systems for accountability, transparency and integrity”.

Speaking of corruption as the ultimate betrayal of public trust, Guterres said back in 2017: “Together, we must create more robust systems for accountability, transparency and integrity without delay. “

But regrettably, all three elements are missing in most of the high-ranking and senior appointments at the UN.

Andreas Bummel, Executive Director, Democracy Without Borders, told IPS the legitimacy of the next Executive Director of UN Women relies on an open, transparent and competitive selection process.

He said it is necessary to see vision statements of the candidates and for civil society to participate in public hearings and interviews.

“This should be in the best interest of the UN itself as it impacts the future effectiveness of UN Women. By now this should really be a standard procedure for all top leadership positions at the UN,” Bummel declared.

Mane, who is also a former President and Chief Executive Officer of Pathfinder International, a global leader in sexual and reproductive health, said it is likely that many of the demands in the coalition letter will not be well-received by UN Member States.

The proposed process for the UN Women appointment, which is different from the UN selection process, is likely to be seen as setting a precedent for all senior appointments in future, leading to reluctance to bring in other players in the selection process.

“This is especially true in the case of civil society which some Member States regretfully see as their adversary and not ally,” she noted.

Moreover, deeper involvement of civil society and more transparency overall in appointments would in fact be the right step to take if the UN has to be respected by all its partners and stakeholders.

It would also send out a message from the UN that it acknowledges the key role which civil society plays, along with national governments, in translating the UN’s agenda into action, she added.

Mane also argued that NGO involvement in the interview panel is perhaps the most radical request included in the letter. Member States are unlikely to alter the process to include civil society more formally in the selection committee, as proposed.

“But asking for the ideal, is the right thing to do, even if it may seem difficult. A town hall, where candidates can engage in a dialogue with civil society is definitely doable and merits serious consideration”.

Such exchanges with potential candidates have in fact, been organized informally by civil society in the past and help to root for the best candidate as seen by civil society, even if it is not formally represented in the selection process, she noted.

“The UN needs to evolve in order to be relevant to the times, and inclusion and transparency are key to this evolution,” Mane declared.

According to PassBlue, a job advertisement has been released, and the deadline of June 28 has been extended, which suggests more applications are wanted.

Although the list of applicants is not public, so far, the current UN Women deputy heads, Asa Regner of Sweden and Anita Bhatia of India, are believed to have applied for the job.

Other candidates who are rumored to have submitted their names, PassBlue reported, are former UN Under-Secretary-General Radhika Coomaraswamy of Sri Lanka, Kang Kyung-wha of South Korea and Mereseini Rakuita Vuniwaqa of Fiji.

And candidates from the Arab region include Zineb Touimi-Benjelloun of Morocco and Sima Sami Bahous of Jordan, according to PassBlue, an independent, women-led digital publication covering the United Nations.

The UN is strongly encouraging young people to apply. Of the known list, Vuniwaqa, 47, is the only one under 50 years old. All the applicants have impressive leadership experience in the UN, their governments or both.

Meanwhile, in its letter, the coalition emphasizes the importance of the following:

● The list of candidates to the UN Women Executive Director position should be made public. This selection process should follow the precedent of the selection process for other United Nations leadership roles such as the High Commissioner for Human Rights and Secretary General by releasing the names. While confidentiality is vital in ordinary recruitment, the names of candidates in this and all UN agency searches should be made public.
● Candidates should have a public motivation or vision statement. It is important that all candidates provide a motivation or vision statement so that civil society can understand what they hope to achieve as the head of UN Women.
● A virtual candidates town hall should be held for civil society. Because the Executive Director must be able to interact effectively with civil society, all stakeholders should have a vested interest in seeing the candidates in a live virtual format. The town hall should happen prior to the interview panel so that the event can feed into the information collected for the interview process.
● Civil society should be properly represented on the interview panel. Ideally, half of the members of the selection panel should consist of representatives of civil society organizations. At a minimum we must have one representative from the Global North and one representative from the Global South.

The next Executive Director of UN Women is of vital importance to feminist civil society and other stakeholders globally. It is critical that this is a transparent and inclusive process.

“As feminist civil society organizations that routinely engage with UN Women, we look forward to seeing our requests adequately reflected in the process, and we are ready and willing to work directly with the search committee or appointed representatives to meet this aim”, the letter adds.

Thalif Deen, Senior Editor and Director at the UN Bureau of Inter Press Service (IPS) news agency, is the author of a newly-released book on the United Nations titled “No Comment -– and Don’t Quote Me on That.” Peppered with scores of anecdotes-– from the serious to the hilarious-– the book is available on Amazon worldwide. The link to Amazon via the author’s website follows: https://www.rodericgrigson.com/no-comment-by-thalif-deen/

 

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How three teenagers rescued from the Mediterranean Sea ended up in Malta accused of terrorism.

Mocímboa da Praia was the Islamist militants' last stronghold in northern Mozambique, Rwanda says.

More than 270 girls were seized by Islamist militants in 2014, and many of them are still missing.

Memory Machaya's death at a church leads to calls for the government to end forced child marriage.

DJs have found themselves in the unusual position of playing music in virtually empty Olympic stadiums.

Kenya's Eliud Kipchoge claims victory in the men's marathon at Tokyo 2020 to become the first athlete since 1980 to retain an Olympic marathon title.

Highly decorated policeman Abba Kyari's reputation is under scrutiny over alleged fraud.

The Great Boat of King Khufu is more than 4,500 years old, and was found virtually intact in 1954.

Peres Jepchirchir wins the women's marathon at Tokyo 2020 as Kenya claim a one-two in sweltering 28C heat in Japan's northern city of Sapporo.

Descendants of victims of Germany's atrocities in Namibia say the money offered is not nearly enough.

American-Liberian designer Telfar Clemens created Liberian team's outfits at the Tokyo Olympics.

Credit: Elena L. Pasquini

By Elena L. Pasquini
ROME, Aug 6 2021 (IPS)

“We have buried twenty-eight people. I have seen them with my own eyes. We also found three bodies in the fields and buried them too. I can show them to you. It’s not far from here. We buried them there.” The man points to the hills. He doesn’t want to show his face or say his name, but he agrees that his voice can be recorded, so that his words don’t get lost. The camera can’t shoot him; it can only look at the tall grass or at the forest towards the countryside where it is no longer possible to cultivate food. The man talks while music from Lengabo’s catholic church marks the time of truce and hope.

Voices in the villages of Ituri, a northeastern province of the Democratic Republic of Congo in the heart of Africa’s Great Lake region, often remain unnamed, like the victims. A pair of blue plastic flip-flops on the floor of an earthen house is the only possible portrait of another man who leads a group of villages between the Ugandan border and the North Kivu. He is the chief of a once-large community—over 120,000 people—that is now a land of empty houses. He still lives where men who do not wear uniforms lead ordinary lives during the day, but burn houses and slaughter other men like animals during the night.

Credit: Elena L. Pasquini

Towards Uganda is the territory of Djugu. To the South, one finds Irumu, ravaged by local militias and the ferocity of the Forces démocratiques alliée, an Islamist armed group active in Beni. Since 1998, the region has been a theater of conflict that flares up in waves, the last one in 2017. More than by mountains, rivers, and lakes, the geography of Ituri is formed by armed groups that strike terror and target civilians through their areas of influence, their fleeting alliances or fights. Their acronyms—Codeco, FPIC, Zaire, ADF, and others— give the face of reason to blind violence. It is a map of horror, of charred bodies, gutted men and women, their internal organs exposed; of mothers killed with children in their wombs, opened so that their babies can be mutilated. This is what refugees describe, what images document, and what the United Nations reports. The attacks reach up to a few kilometers from Bunia, the provincial capital, where those whom the war has displaced look for shelter.

Sometimes and in some places, the conflict holds its breath. Then, some among those who fled their homes try to return to the villages. Approximately 800,000 people went back in 2020, although 1.7 million remain internally displaced and many have left the country. Those who return know that war can break out again suddenly, in a few days, weeks or months. Yet today is Sunday and Mass is being celebrated. The music plays and the corn dries in the sun at Dele and Lengabo. And at Tchunga, not far from Bunia, the village it is not a place of horror, but a place of welcoming.

To leave Bunia in the direction of Irumu, along the road leading to North Kivu, is to leave behind a safe place—as safe as a city in the middle of a war can be. Early in the morning, the sun is pale pink and the trees are not yet green, but black. The earth is not yet red. It’s a pale pink that reflects itself in the puddles of dirt roads where one can easily get bogged down, stuck between two walls of forest.

In the small town of Dele, in front of the village chief’s house, the children work: a hoe in their hands, two chickens in their arms. A group of men chat. It is Sunday and the hypnotic rhythm of the Congolese music comes from the church square across the street. “We ask for help because life has recently become too difficult. We do some rural activities to survive,” Yoshua Businiliri explains. He looks at the red, fleshy flowers that dominate the fields, whose green hue is so intense that not even the fragile sun of dawn can soften it. Land abounds in Ituri, but it does not produce enough: It can be cultivated only near the houses; no one risks going to the hills where the road thatcrosses Dele leads.

Those hills hide Lake Albert, the seventh-largest African lake, whose name recalls the time when Europe got its hands on Africa: Albert, husband of Queen Victoria. It was the British Samuel Baker who made the lake known to the continent that would decide the future of Congo. However, until 1997, the lake—“Nyanza” in the local language—bore the name of Mobutu Sese Seko, the man who, by forming a dictatorship, destroyed the dream of democracy born from independence from Belgium. Before that, the lake was known as Mwitanzige: There is a legend that says that locusts – ezige – die when they cross the lake. Today, perhaps, oil could change its fate and maybe its name—the oil discovered beneath the lake’s surface and credited with being among the causes of the new wave of violence.

Credit: Elena L. Pasquini

People arrive slowly from the village center and the countryside as the sun rises and makes the tin roofs on the damp hills iridescent. The church is small for everyone; worshippers sit outdoors on wooden benches or low, three-legged stools in front of the stone-decorated facade. The children wait silently, leaning on three poles: a football goal on a huge field of wild grass crossed by a small path. The women wear colored dresses and fabrics, almost starched, and their hair is wrapped in scarfs or skillfully styled. It is a feast day, like a summer Sunday in any small town of rural Italy, and perhaps more.

The priests wear the bright green that is worn at this time of the year. The little dancers are dressed in white. A cross is carried in the procession; hands move and hips swing. Today, the Gospel tells of the miracle of the healing of a leper. Here, where the Covid pandemic finds almost nothing to contain it and where Ebola, with its deaths and the stigma that weighs on survivors, is not yet a memory, people know that it is not only war that kills: “Children suffer from diseases but lack medicines. Especially malaria affects them the most. For this reason, we ask for help: a mosquito net because mosquitoes are too many in the villages of the territory of Dele. We need money for medical treatments,” Yoshua explains.

There is calm in Dele. The war seems far away. Here, too, those fleeing home take refuge. “The displaced need help because they sleep in the bush due to lack of security and shelter. Others stay in the schools, in the church, and elsewhere. They have lost almost everything,” he adds.

Credit: Elena L. Pasquini

It is a moment for the sun to rise, as well as a moment for it to set: The equator passes less than two hundred kilometers from here. In Lengabo, along the road that leads from Bunia to Irumu and then to Beni, the Mass is ceelbrated by the White Fathers, the Missionaries of Africa, a religious order established in Algeria at the end of the nineteenth century and that moved to the heart of the continent. Today, they have a center for vulnerable children, the School of Peace, in Bunia. Every Sunday, the fathers join the devotees in the villages.

The altar with its simple white cloth, the light of an incandescent bulb hanging from a wire above it, high wooden vaults: The church is packed here, too. People dance while the choirmaster, wearing a long green cassock edged in white, guides voices and drums. Outside, the empty and dilapidated houses offer a reminder that a fierce conflict is going on and that Lengabo has counted its deaths.

“Most of them were innocent people,” the man who hides his name and face says. “They were among the displaced. We had welcomed them here. We didn’t know they were militiamen. They had hidden their intentions. They were the ones who started fighting the loyalist army.”

He adds: “Some bodies were armed and others were tied up … We could not distinguish who they were. Even the militiamen were in civilian clothes. Most of them were civilians. There were also soldiers among the deaths, and they were buried somewhere here. Because when there is war, there are deaths on both sides.”

Even in the village led by the man in blue sandals, there is a respite, yet there are areas where he no longer dares to go or where he stops for only a few hours. “The militia has changed strategy, it is not in the bush. It is scattered among the population. Here is where it operates: It operates and then returns among the people. This is the danger,” he explains.

The same is likely to have happened in Lengabo when the village was “sealed off” by a police cordon at the beginning of the year to hunt down militiamen. The arrests were followed by violence and deaths. Esperance Mujaganyi, a thirty-eight-year-old farmer, fled. She produces corn, which becomes flour or mandro, a fermented drink.

Credit: Elena L. Pasquini

A child walks to the church alone. He is five or six years old: long, brown pants and a T-shirt resembling those of English schools, with blue, white, and red bands, and a small crest. Not far away, Esperance sits in front of her house and of what is still just the reed skeleton of a building. Her long brown skirt blends into the ground and into the walls made of earth. Her ears bear two points of gold. “We are slowly resuming the life we had before the war,” she says. But she doesn’t want to talk about that day. She jumps up when asked about the fights.

Every time there is an attack, people leave the villages “because when there is war, the bullets fall and the metal sheets get punctured,” the man explains. They know that everything will be destroyed and stolen, and they will have to start over, every time, once they return. Death can knock on the door any day and militiamen do not even need an AK-47: A match is enough to set a house of dry grass on fire. “You leave your home and all your belongings, and life gets harder and harder on the move to save yourself from war. If you have money with you, you spend that money with no other input and it’s very complicated,”Esperance says.

At least one thousand sixty-seven summary executions and arbitrary killings were committed in Ituri in 2021, as well as all kinds of human rights violations from rape to torture, according to the United Nations Joint Human Rights Office. And this is just one corner of Congo, where the most underreported crisis across the world takes place. Data probably underestimate the scale of the tragedy because the victims often remain silent for fear of being stigmatized. Verifying the facts and documenting what happens in the villages is difficult even for international organizations that often do not reach the most remote areas of the province. Congolese soldiers have been deployed in Dele and Lengabo but people don’t trust them. The soldiers ask for money at checkpoints, like bandits, they say. They are responsible for abuses and violence too, according to the United Nations.

However, villages are more than just places to flee; they can also be safe places to live. Tchunga is not far from Bunia. A rough but busy road leads there. Things are going well now, explains the village chief, Jean-Paul Risisa. Wearing a gray suit and immaculate shirt while standing with his deputy and secretary, he says that welcoming those who have been displaced is not always easy: “There are almost three thousand people just in our locality, and they are many. We welcome the displaced very well, but we do not have the means to build (enough houses) for them.” Behind him, Tchunga is an open-air construction site. “There are many people here and many are starting to build: Tchunga has become like a city,” he adds.

Life centers on a well. Yellow, pink, and blue plastic cans wait in an orderly row to be filled amid the laughter and splashes of children. The well was built by humanitarian organizations—the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees and AIDES—because water, in this country that seems to float on it, is as precious as the gold in which the subsoil is rich. However, it breaks backs, especially those of women and children. Until the well was dug, the people of Tchunga had to walk at least five kilometers to get water, and they washed their clothes in the river. Today, water is essential for a community that is growing under the pressure of a humanitarian emergency. Protecting the well is key, as it, too, can become a target of violence. The community takes care of it, just as it takes care of the displaced.

“When your neighbor has a problem, you can’t deny him (help). We help them by giving space in our homes to some people,” Daniel Bakanoba, secretary of Tchunga, explains. “Others live for free in our courtyards and there is a minority who rent a house. But we are not able to respond to every need because when you leave your home, your field, your possessions or when you have children, your needs are enormous.” The houses, he says, are not all “beautiful.” “We’re doing our best.” As is Didi, a local driver. Two women live in his house; each has seven children. They arrived on foot from Bokela a few days ago, their clothes torn and their lives needing to be rebuilt. A pagne—the fabric that women wear around their waists—is always around their hips. Their beds are covered by mosquito nets attached to the walls. The semi-darkness keeps the rooms cool; a little light filters through an antique pink metal window. They were farmers and are now on the brink of starving.

Credit: Elena L. Pasquini

It is a dejavù that seems destined to be lived a thousand times in the villages of Ituri. Rumors, still without evidence, say that it all started in Djugu in 2017 with the mysterious death of a priest—a murder, according to some voices, never proved. It would have rekindled ancient hatred between the Lendu and Hema tribes. But the truth is much more complex: It is hidden in the folds of Ituri’s recent history and in the heart of a land that seems to be too rich to live in peace.

This feature was first published by Degrees of Latitude
Akilimali Saleh Chomachoma as producer and Sahwili interpreter

 

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By External Source
Aug 6 2021 (IPS-Partners)

Indigenous peoples live in all regions of the world.

They are distinct social and cultural groups and share collective ancestral ties to the land they live on.

They own, occupy or use some 22% of global land area.

But they safeguard 80 percent of the world’s remaining biodiversity.

There are at least 370-500 million indigenous peoples in the world.

They represent the greater part of the world’s cultural diversity.

And they have created and speak the major share of the world’s almost 7000 languages.

Although they make up just 5 percent of the global population, they account for about 15 percent of the extreme poor.

Indigenous Peoples’ life expectancy is up to 20 years lower than that of non-indigenous people.

Much of the land occupied by Indigenous Peoples is under customary ownership.

Yet many governments recognize only a fraction of this land as belonging to Indigenous peoples.

The right to participate in decision-making is a key component in achieving reconciliation between Indigenous Peoples and States.

A new social contract must combat the legacy of marginalization affecting indigenous peoples.

One organization working towards this is NEFAS: the North East Slow Food and Agrobiodiversity Society.

NESFAS and its indigenous communities aim to defend, revive, and promote Indigenous Food Systems.

It values traditional and local knowledge holders for their ingenuity.

And it empowers indigenous youth to become beacons of hope.

International Day of the World’s Indigenous Peoples 2021: “Leaving no one behind: Indigenous peoples and the call for a new social contract.”

 

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