Category: General

The U.N. Children’s Fund reports that Islamist insurgents are recruiting young children to fight in northern Mozambique’s volatile, oil-rich province of Cabo Delgado.

UNICEF says it has received numerous reports of children being forcefully recruited by the Mozambican militant group al-Shabab. It says the group — not affiliated with the Somali insurgency of the same name — has reportedly taken boys and girls from their families and villages.

UNICEF notes there is evidence of sexual violence against girls and of young girls being forced into marriage with their abductors.

Human Rights Watch recently said the boys, some as young as 12, are being trained in bases across Cabo Delgado and forced to fight alongside adults against government forces.

UNICEF spokesman James Elder says there is no accurate count of the number of children that have been recruited, but it is believed to be in the thousands. He says some of the children have been rescued, but none have been released by their militant captors.

“The recruitment and use of children by armed groups destroys families and communities,” Elder said. “Children are exposed to incomprehensible levels of violence, they lose their families, they lose their safety, they lose their ability to go to school. And, of course, the recruitment and use of children is a grave violation of international law.”

Elder says the recruitment of child soldiers has been going on since al-Shabab and other armed groups attacked Cabo Delgado in March. The United Nations reports dozens of people were killed and nearly 40,000 people fled to safer areas in the region.

Two weeks ago, Elder says, UNICEF signed an important Memorandum of Understanding with the Mozambican defense forces which spelled out what government forces should do when they encounter children with armed groups.

“So that training is very, very important so that they know to treat children as children and as victims and then immediately get the support of organizations like UNICEF,” Elder said. “And that can be everything from help to psychosocial support. Those early stages of support for a child who is being recruited, whether as a helper, whether as someone armed, are absolutely critical.”

International law states any child associated with an armed group is to be considered a child and a survivor of violations. Elder says children who have been associated with armed groups are double victims and must be treated as such.

Source: Voice of America

Journalist Tesfalem Waldyes, the founder and editor-in-chief of Ethiopia Insider, an Ethiopian news and analysis website, is in police custody, according to media reports.

Tesfalem’s colleagues and friends said his whereabouts hadn’t been known since Saturday, but federal police confirmed his detention to the BBC, saying there is nothing to be concerned about.

Police didn’t give additional details. Shortly after the detention, Befeqadu Hailu, the executive director of the Center for Advancement of Rights and Democracy, said Tesfalem went missing after covering the Irreecha festival in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia’s capital. Irreecha is a cultural event celebrated by Ethiopia’s ethnic Oromo community.

Befeqadu also said via Twitter that Tesfalem’s plan for Sunday was to report on the festival, which also took place at a second location, Bishoftu.

The annual event is traditionally held in Bishoftu, a town located in the Oromia region, about 40 kilometers south of Addis Ababa.

After covering the event in Addis Ababa, Tesfalem posted a video on Ethiopia Insider’s Facebook page that showed attendees expressing their criticism of Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed’s administration.

Attendees also demanded the release of political prisoners, chanting, “Jawar, Jawar!”

Jawar Mohammed, an Oromo activist and opposition leader, has been imprisoned, charged with terrorism and other crimes alongside other prominent Oromo politicians.

In 2014, Tesfalem was among three journalists and six bloggers, who became known as the “Zone 9 Bloggers” and were arrested for inciting violence among other charges, including terrorism. He spent more than one year in prison and was later released. Zone 9 Bloggers were recipients of the Committee to Protect Journalists’ International Press Freedom Award in 2015.

The U.S.-based Committee to Protect Journalists says at least seven journalists are imprisoned in the country.

Separately, Prime Minister Abiy was sworn in for a second term on Monday.

The event comes as the national government remains engaged in a nearly year-old armed conflict with rebels in Ethiopia’s northern Tigray region.

Source: Voice of America

As Desmond Tutu turns 90 on Thursday, he remains indisputably the moral voice of South Africa. But age is catching up with him.

The jovial emeritus archbishop retired in 2010 and rarely speaks in public, in a country that sometimes feels adrift without the leadership of its anti-apartheid liberation icons.

Even though South Africa has eased its COVID-19 precautions, the birthday festivities will be muted and largely online.

Renowned for his radiating energy and infectious laughter, Tutu is expected to attend a special service Thursday at St George’s Cathedral, where he once held the pulpit as South Africa’s first black Anglican archbishop.

Later that day, the Desmond and Leah Tutu Legacy Foundation will host an online lecture by the Dalai Lama, Ireland’s former president Mary Robinson, rights activist Graca Machel and South Africa’s ex-ombudswoman Thuli Madonsela, respected for her courageous exposure of corruption.

The line-up of speakers is a reminder of Tutu’s values, surrounding himself with rights advocates at a time when South Africa’s current leaders are better known for lavish lifestyles and billion-dollar bank accounts.

An online auction of his memorabilia last month raised $237,000 for the foundation named after him and Leah, his wife of 66 years.

The last time Tutu himself was seen in public was in May, when he and Leah went to receive their COVID-19 vaccinations.

He smiled and waved from a wheelchair outside a hospital, but didn’t speak to journalists waiting outside — a far cry from the buoyant personality who captivated the world with his strident opposition to apartheid, which won him a Nobel Peace Prize in 1984.

‘Rainbow nation’

Knowing him now as a towering figure on the world stage, it’s hard to remember that when he returned from his studies in Britain in the 1960s, he was subjected to the same humiliations as any other black South African.

His daughter Mpho Tutu-van Furth, with whom he has authored two books, remembers driving cross-country with her family to bring her siblings to boarding school.

“I have a memory of stopping at a place along the way, and my dad going into the store to go and buy ice cream for us, because it was just sticky hot,” Tutu-van Furth told AFP.

“And the person saying to him that they don’t serve kaffirs inside the shop, that you have to go around to the window. And my dad just kind of slammed out of there.

“We weren’t going to get ice cream that day.”

Kaffir is South Africa’s worst racial slur, and the utterance today can lead to criminal charges.

He eventually grew his leadership in the Anglican Church, creating a path towards reconciliation. He coined the term “rainbow nation”, and deeply believed that the South African experiment could show the world a new way to overcome conflicts.

His ideas of forgiveness have fallen out of favor with some younger South Africans, who feel that black people surrendered too much in the transition to democracy, without holding apartheid criminals to account.

What endeared Tutu to the nation was that he didn’t stop speaking out after democracy arrived.

He confronted homophobia in the Anglican Church, challenged Nelson Mandela over generous salaries for Cabinet ministers and stridently criticized the endemic corruption that mushroomed under ex-president Jacob Zuma.

“He played such a unique role,” said William Gumede, of the Democracy Works Foundation. “We were fortunate during the transition that we had him and we had Mandela, these two statesmen who were moral leaders.”

But that era is over.

“We’re entering a period where we’re not going to have those really big moral leaders,” Gumede said. “So how do we build the society that we want?”

Source: Voice of America

Thousands of supporters of Tunisian President Kais Saied rallied in the capital on Sunday to show their backing for his suspension of parliament and promises to change the political system, acts his critics call a coup.

The demonstration in central Tunis was called in response to protests over the previous two weekends in the same location against Saied’s actions. It is expected to far outnumber those gatherings.

Demonstrators waved Tunisian flags and carried placards railing against Ennahda, the moderate Islamist party that is the biggest in parliament and has acted as Saied’s main antagonist.

“We ask the president to dissolve parliament and hold accountable those who made the people suffer for a decade,” Salem Ajoudi, one of the demonstrators, said.

The president plunged Tunisia into a constitutional crisis in July by suspending the elected parliament, dismissing the prime minister and assuming executive authority.

Last month he brushed aside much of the constitution to say he could pass legislation by decree, casting into doubt Tunisia’s democratic gains since its 2011 revolution that triggered the “Arab spring” revolts across the Muslim world.

Saied’s intervention followed years of economic stagnation and political paralysis, aggravated by an impoverishing lockdown last year, a slow-starting vaccination campaign and street protests.

Many Tunisians blame those ills on a corrupt, self-interested political elite, and they see Saied, an independent elected in 2019, as a champion for ordinary people.

Among his supporters, Saied’s intervention is widely regarded as a long-overdue reset of a democratic experiment that established interests pulled off course.

“Saied is a clean president who has come to restore real democracy,” said Mongi Abdullah, a teacher from Mahdia who had come to join the rally.

While opinion polls show Saied’s moves have widespread support, his long delay in declaring a timeline out of the crisis has started to cement opposition to him.

Most of the political elite and the powerful labor union UGTT say he must start consulting more widely if he plans to amend the constitution, as he has indicated he will.

Tunisian police on Sunday arrested a member of parliament and a television presenter who have been prominent critics of Saied since July, their lawyer said. Neither the police nor army were immediately available for comment.

Source: Voice of America

Algeria on Saturday rejected “inadmissible interference” in its affairs, hours after recalling its ambassador from Paris following comments by French President Emmanuel Macron reported by the French and Algerian media.

The statement, from the Algerian presidency, said it had withdrawn its ambassador following media reports of the French leader’s comments, which had not been denied.

The French daily Le Monde reported that Macron had made critical remarks about the former French colony during a meeting Thursday with descendants of figures from the war of independence.

Macron reportedly said the country was ruled by a “political-military system” and described Algeria as having an “official history” which had been “totally re-written,” the paper reported.

He said this history was “not based on truths” but “on a discourse of hatred towards France”, according to Le Monde — though he made clear that he was not referring to Algerian society as a whole but to the ruling elite.

The statement from the Algerian presidency said: “Following remarks that have not been denied, which several French sources have attributed by name to (Macron), Algeria expresses its categorical rejection of the inadmissible interference in its internal affairs.”

Macron also spoke out on current Algerian politics. His counterpart Abdelmajid Tebboune was “trapped in a system which is very tough,” the French president was quoted as saying.

“You can see that the Algerian system is tired, it has been weakened by the Hirak,” he added, referring to the pro-democracy movement which forced Tebboune’s predecessor Abdelaziz Bouteflika from power in 2019 after two decades at the helm.

Visa tensions

It is the second time that Algeria has recalled an ambassador from France.

Algiers also recalled its ambassador in May 2020 after French media broadcast a documentary about the Hirak.

Saturday’s move comes amid tension over a French decision to sharply reduce the number of visas it grants to citizens of Algeria, Morocco and Tunisia.

France said the decision, which it announced Tuesday, had been made necessary by the former colonies’ failure to do enough to allow illegal migrants to return.

The Algerian foreign ministry summoned French ambassador Francois Gouyette on Wednesday and handed him a “formal protest” note concerning the visa ruling.

It called the visa reduction an “unfortunate act” that caused “confusion and ambiguity as to its motivation and its scope.”

Morocco’s Foreign Minister Nasser Bourita has described the French move as “unjustified.”

Tunisian President Kais Saied expressed disappointment with the decision in a telephone call with Macron on Saturday, his office said, adding that the French leader had said it could be revised.

French government spokesman Gabriel Attal told Europe 1 radio on Tuesday that the visa reduction decision was “unprecedented.”

Paris made that choice, he said, because Algeria, Morocco and Tunisia “are refusing to take back nationals who we do not want or cannot keep in France.”

The radio said Macron took the decision a month ago after failed diplomatic efforts with the three North African countries.

Source: Voice of America

Burkina Faso has been making headlines for an Islamist insurgency that has created one of the world’s fastest growing humanitarian crises. But one man is showcasing what the country has to offer beyond conflict with a group he created called “Burkina Faso est Chic” (Burkina Faso is Chic).

Since conflict began six years ago, tourists in Burkina Faso have become a rare sight. The U.S. State Department advises against all travel to the country due to the risk of terrorism, kidnapping and crime.

Ben Nombre, a local web developer, is doing what he can to turn the tide on the country’s image and showcase the good the country has to offer.

“Burkina Faso est Chic” was an idea he came up with in 2019, says Nombre. When he started to notice the number of [terrorist] attacks he saw that Burkina Faso’s image was being tarnished. He points out that for a long time, Burkina Faso was a country where there were a lot of tourists coming in, before many of them were lost in recent years.

“Burkina Faso est Chic’s” Facebook page has attracted almost 24,000 followers. It posts regularly, highlighting a range of topics from lively nightspots to nature and wildlife.

The West African country has a rich equestrian heritage, but one local business that had catered to tourists wishing to ride horses is struggling, says the owner, Siaka Gnanou.

“It’s been affected a lot, it’s been affected a lot since 2016. It’s like, you see, at one time in such moments here it was full of people but since the terrorism it’s affected a lot,” Gnanou said.

The government says that as international tourist numbers have dropped, they are looking at aiding businesses in the tourism industry.

Élise Foniyama Ilboudo Thiombiano, Burkina Faso’s minister of culture, arts and tourism, says “we had a lot of money coming in from tourism, but we saw a considerable drop of more than 28% of that income. So there was a negative impact, at least at the beginning.” Now, she says, it is necessary to develop domestic tourism instead of foreign tourism.

Phillipe Yameogo, the manager of Squash Time, a recently opened club, which offers visitors the chance to play squash before drinks and dancing, says that when Nombre made a post about the club on “Burkina Faso est Chic,” it transformed their business.

He says it boosted their business to the point where they were forced to turn people away on the weekends. They are now in the process of extending the building to accommodate more people because they were so overwhelmed. “I really take my hat off to Mr. Ben,” says Yameogo.

Even in the midst of conflict, some aspects of Burkina Faso still thrive.

Source: Voice of America