3 posts tagged “africa”
SUDAN-UGANDA: 'No child captives here,' rebels tell UN
RI-KWANGBA, 13 November (IRIN) - Joseph Kony, the Ugandan rebel leader, told the top United Nations humanitarian official that his group did not hold any children captive, insisting instead that he only had 'combatants' in rebel ranks.
"We don't have any children in our movement, there is [sic] only combatants," Kony said after a short meeting on Sunday with the UN Emergency Relief Coordinator, Jan Egeland, near the border between Sudan and the Democratic Republic of Congo.
Kony, leader of the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA), is notorious for kidnapping children to fight in his ranks or to serve as sex slaves to his commanders.
Egeland met the rebel leader under a tarpaulin at a muddy clearing in Ri-Kwangba, one of two assembly points in southern Sudan, where LRA fighters are expected to gather after a landmark cease-fire agreed with the Ugandan government in Juba, capital of southern Sudan.
Egeland said he had asked Kony: "What I should tell the mothers who have been crying and begging to see their abducted children?"
Egeland had hoped to secure the release of women, children and injured fighters but came away empty-handed after waiting more than two hours for the reclusive LRA leader.
"I think it was an important meeting because it was the first time we have been able to impress on the highest command of the LRA the whole range of humanitarian issues, such as the need for a genuine cessation of hostilities and [the] return [of] those they've abducted," Egeland said.
The rebel group signed a new truce this month with the Ugandan government, paving the way for further talks to end the war and allow the two million people who have been displaced by two decades of fighting in the region to return home.
Kony and his high command have, however, refused to attend the Juba talks, despite signing the agreement, fearing arrest on war crimes charges.
The International Criminal Court (ICC) has issued warrants for the arrest of five commanders, including Kony and his deputy Vincent Otti, accusing them of crimes against humanity.
The ICC's move has been opposed by many people in northern Ugandan, who say the court's involvement will only prolong the conflict.
The Ugandan government has promised Kony an amnesty if the talks succeed, suggesting that traditional northern Ugandan forms of justice may be adopted to end the conflict.
Kony and Otti told Egeland the ICC arrest warrants were a major obstacle to the talks. "If the warrants are lifted, then we can go to the peace talks," Otti said.
Saying he could not comment on the ICC because of its independence, Egeland noted after the meeting that the issue of justice had to be addressed. "Peace and justice have to go hand in hand," he said. "There can be no lasting peace without justice."
Few, if any, LRA fighters have gathered at Ri-Kwangba, one of two assembly points set up by the cessation of hostilities agreement. The rebels are said to prefer their own well-equipped base to the muddy assembly point, replete with flies buzzing around bags of rotting sugar.
Egeland pledged to improve conditions in the camps, saying: "We have a major stake as the international community in this working and so hopefully we will see them assemble in the next few weeks."
He also said the rehabilitation of northern Uganda would be a priority. Funding, he added, had been secured to provide UN support to the peace talks and to assist those who would gather at the assembly points under the cessation of hostilities agreement.
Before flying out to meet Kony, Egeland had met parties in Juba involved in trying to end northern Uganda's brutal 20-year civil war.
"I think we can make progress. It took time before the international community saw the potential of the process. We now realise this and are there to help," Egeland said after meeting the chief mediator of the talks, Riek Machar, the south Sudanese Vice-President.
Also see:
[<a href="http://www.irinnews.org/frontpage.asp?SelectRegion=East_Africa&SelectCountry=Uganda">Related IRIN stories on Uganda]
[IRIN film <a href="http://www.irinnews.org/film/default.asp">'The Shadows of Peace: Life after the LRA']
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IRIN Report: SWAZILAND: Growing number of children working
[This report does not necessarily reflect the views of the United Nations]
MANZINI,
10 November (IRIN) - Rights activists have demanded laws to protect
Swaziland's children, particularly its growing population of AIDS
orphans, from being exploited as cheap labour.
With the current
AIDS orphan population of 69,000 expected to rise to 120,000 or
possibly even 150,000 by 2010, "these uneducated, unsupported children
risk not only exploitation as labour use, but child labour of the worst
kind. Today, 50 percent of children engaged in the sex trade are
orphans," said Velephi Riba, consultant to the South African NGO,
Reducing Exploitive Child Labour in Southern Africa (RECLISA), at their
second national conference, held this week in the commercial city of
Manzini, 35km southeast of the Swazi capital, Mbabane.
The
HIV/AIDS prevalence rate in Swaziland is 34.2 percent and approximately
10 percent of households are now headed by children, according to the
United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF).
"The minimum age to
work was set at 15 to 18 years - depending on the work - by the
Employment Act of 1998," said Commissioner of Labour Jino Nkhambule.
"This will be augmented by the new Child Welfare legislation when it is
passed, and will allow for an expansion of my labour inspector team
specific to child labour."
Nati Vilakazi, coordinator of the
rights NGO, Save the Children-Swaziland, said the existing law provided
limited legal and social protection for working children and exempted
agriculture and domestic labour. "A child is defined as anyone aged
below 16, against the internationally recognised age of 18."
UNICEF's
Swaziland mission has found that orphans were twice as likely to engage
in child labour, while a World Bank study pointed out that Swaziland
has the highest number of school dropouts in Southern Africa. However,
Riba cautioned that a ban on child labour had to be coupled with
programmes that enabled a family to find other avenues of support.
"We
don't want child labour - the effect on psychological and social
development are detrimental - but in our intervention we don't wish to
make the situation worse, which may only push children into the worst
type of child labour," she told IRIN.
RECLISA has targeted
2,000 vulnerable children felt to be at risk of forced labour in the
impoverished southern Shiselweni region, where agricultural production
has been hard-hit by drought and AIDS. This week's conference was meant
to jump-start child labour legislation that has been languishing with
government since 2003, awaiting final drafting and presentation to
parliament.
"Poverty is a major 'push' factor for child
labour in Swaziland. It has become worse, with 69 percent of Swazis
living in poverty today, 76 percent in rural areas," said Riba.
According to the UN Development Programme, two-thirds of Swazis live in
chronic poverty as peasant farmers under palace-appointed chiefs who
administer communal Swazi Nation Land.
She commented that
Swaziland's excessive rich-poor divide - the most affluent 20 percent
of the population consumes 56 percent of the gross domestic product,
while the poorest 20 percent consume only 4.3 percent - and the twin
problems of high unemployment and low pay for those who do find work,
create the economic necessity for child labour in some households.
The
authorities lack the capacity to monitor workplaces: sixteen labour
inspectors monitor 5,000 formal-sector workplaces, where slightly more
than 100,000 people are employed. The informal sector has many more,
and are usually not monitored.
"Children are the cheapest to hire, easiest to fire, and least likely to protest," said policy analyst Duncan Reed.
Conference
participants reported an upswing in the number of children scavenging
waste dumps in Manzini and the adjacent Matsapha Industrial Estate, and
working in illegal bars, or as sellers of home-brewed beers in urban
townships.
Swaziland's most famous exploited children
remain where they have been for at least two years - dancing in
makeshift costumes all day long for tourists along the highway in
Pigg's Peak, capital of the northern province of Hhohho.
Mumcy
Dlamini, Acting Director of Public Prosecutions and the first woman to
hold the position, told the conference that the new child labour law
stipulated penalties for violators.
"We have not seen a
docket coming to our office on child labour violation - this has never
been prosecuted in Swaziland. This could be due to a failure of
reporting. The new law will contain a fine of not more than (US$435)
for an employer violating child labour rules, or a custodial prison
sentence of not less than one year," she said.
Rights activists
have also called for a review of Swaziland's constitution, which allows
underage girls to get married. Dlamini said traditional marriage was
misused by elderly men to secure household labour.
"You ask
yourself, why do these men marry a child? Mainly, they do this because
they want to make the child work at their homes, with the ...
[justification] that they are their wives. This is a vacuum that we
need to address," she told conference delegates.
The new
constitution, which is likely to be approved next year, defines a child
as any person younger than 18 years, making a traditional marriage to a
child a violation of the girl's constitutional rights. The constitution
also forbids child labour, and calls for universal education for Swazi
children.
Conference delegates cited studies showing that
the need for child labour decreased as family income rose, and endorsed
anti-poverty efforts by government and the NGO community. Compulsory
education was mooted as another insurance against child labour abuses.
The
recommendations will be presented to the Ministry of Enterprise and
Employment, to ensure that the proposed child welfare legislation
conforms to the International Labour Organisation's Convention 182 and
other child labour accords to which Swaziland is a signatory.
jh/jk/he/oa
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Reuters AlertNet put out an article about the millions of African children facing hunger and malnutrition. Click here to check it out!
But this problem is not only affecting Africa -- it affects America, too. Here's a Myspace bulletin from Support a Crazy Idea:
20% of children living in rural areas in America live in poverty! 7.5 million people in rural areas live in poverty!
The numbers are staggering. Today 37 million Americans live in a state of poverty, hunger and hardship. That's more than last year, More than ever before. But one by one, working together, we can reverse the trend. For the fourth consecutive year, the poverty rate and the number of Americans living in poverty both rose from the prior years. Since 2000, the number of poor Americans has grown by more than 6 million. The official poverty rate in 2004 (the most current year for which figures are available) was 12.7 percent, up from 12.5 percent in 2003.
Total Americans below the official poverty thresholds numbered 37 million, a figure 1.1 million higher than the 35.9 million in poverty in 2003. The U.S. Census Bureau defines poor families as those with cash incomes of less than $15,067 a year for a family of three – or $19,307 for a family of four. (U.S. Census Bureau, Income, Poverty and Health Insurance Coverage in the United States: 2004)
On average, more than one out of every three Americans - 37 percent of all people in the United States - are officially classified as living in poverty at least 2 months out of the year. (U.S. Census Bureau, Income, Poverty, and Health Insurance Coverage in the United States: 2004) The number of Americans living in severe poverty - with incomes below half of the poverty line - remained the same at 15.6 million. (U.S. Census Bureau, Income, Poverty and Health Insurance Coverage in the United States: 2004)
A single parent of two young children working full-time in a minimum wage job for a year would make $10,712 before taxes - a wage $4,355 below the poverty threshold set by the federal government. (U.S. Department of Labor; U.S. Census Bureau.) About 40 percent of poor single-parent, working mothers who paid for child care paid at least half of their income for child care; an additional 25 percent of these families paid between 40 and 50 percent of their incomes for child care. (Child Trends, 2001.)
More than two-thirds of all poor families with children included one or more individuals who worked in 2003. What’s more, family members in working-poor families with children typically worked combined totals of 46 weeks per year.
A CRAZY IDEA, INC., STOP (students together opposing povert), YOUTH AGAINST POVERTY, and other local Agencies HAVE TEAMED UP TO FORM A COALITION TO END POVERTY IN AMERICA AND WE NEED YOUR HELP! We at a crazy idea have a dream that one day poverty will be ended in AMERICA We dream that No child will go hungry with in AMERICAN BOARDERS That parent should not have to choose whether to put food on the table or pay the rent We have A CRAZY IDEA fix this but we need your help!
We here at A CRAZY IDEA, Inc have started a campaign to end poverty in America
We are working on job training programs to help teens and college students get a head in the world. We are working with groups like Youth against poverty to come up with ways that young people can join in and help their fellow Americans! From small towns to big cities Americans all over are feeling the pain of being able to put food on the table and that should not be!!! We will be setting up food donations, suit and clothes donations. Along with people to teach job skills and life skills training. As a team we can tie the world together!
Learn more by reading about successful local efforts.
Follow local politics, and tell your local elected officials that you support policies aimed at permanent solutions to poverty in your community and your nation. Time and again, letter-writing campaigns have demonstrated that, when people combine their energies in a single purpose, the results are magnified.
Write or call your senators or representatives, asking what their stance is on pending legislation affecting low-income Americans. Join A CRAZY IDEA, INC AND OTHERS TO CHANGE OUR COUNTRY AND THE WORLD!
