Tag: GreatLakesNews

{‘’If economics are not okay, the Community will be shaky,’’ he said in a special address to the National Parliament in the capital Dodoma yesterday.}

He added that politics can come after working with economics.

“We want a federation built on a firm foundation which is well-planned, otherwise its survival will be dubious,” he said.

President Kikwete was apparently reacting to recent development of meetings of Presidents of Uganda, Kenya and Rwanda on railway infrastructure, port and pipeline projects among them, distancing Tanzania and Burundi Presidents—both active members of EAC– from the sessions.

The Tanzanian leader reaffirmed his country’s commitment to the EAC but stated would follow the gradual integration processes as stipulated in the Treaty signed in 1999 –Customs Union, Common Market, Monetary Union and eventually the EA Political Federation.

Tanzania, he assured, was not contemplating leaving the 14-year-old EAC and would continue to engage the other four partner states on the sober need of integrating through agreed pillars.

The Community has so far created the Customs Union and the Common Market and an agreement to achieve the Monetary Union is expected to be signed later this month.

He considered that Tanzania’s different position on issues of land, immigration and movement of labour might not be in good taste with the Partners and possible reasons of his country’s so called ‘’ sudden isolation’’.

‘’We want a strong and progressive EAC that benefits all its citizens’’, Mr Kikwete stressed, underlining that his country would not wish to see the repeat of the 1977 when the old EAC collapsed mainly because of divergent political and ideological differences.

Kikwete had met his counterparts from Uganda and Kenya in South Africa on the sidelines of the SADC-Great Lakes Initiative meeting early this week on the Democratic Republic of Congo crisis. However, not details have been divulged of their closed-door talks.

East African News Agency

{The government of the Democratic Republic of Congo and the defeated M23 rebels will Monday sign a peace deal, Uganda said, adding that it will not send the fleeing insurgents back across the border.}

The M23 on Tuesday ended its 18-month insurgency after a resounding defeat at the hands of the armed forces of the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Since then the majority of its fighters have fled across the border into Uganda.

“The agreement is ready and we are expecting everybody to return Monday to sign it,” Ugandan government spokesman Ofwono Opondo told AFP of the deal.

“The agreement will detail how each case will be handled. There are those that are under US and UN sanctions, those who want to be reintegrated in the army, and those who simply want to go home,” Opondo said.

The peace talks, which started in December, had made little headway until the DRC army started to get the upper hand militarily in recent weeks.

One of the major stumbling blocks had been the fate of around 100 M23 officers who have taken part in a series of rebellions over the past 15 years and that Kinshasa did not want to see reincorporated into its army.

Opondo said that the United Nations and the African Union, which backed the peace process, would attend Monday’s ceremony.

He also confirmed that the military chief of the March 23 Movement, a group formed 18 months ago, and which both Rwanda and Uganda have been accused of backing, is on Ugandan terrirtory.

“Yes, Sultani Makenga is with us,” he told AFP, refusing to reveal the rebel chief’s whereabouts.

Uganda will not hand over M23 rebels who fled after being defeated, the spokesman for the army and the defence ministry said.

“They are not prisoners; they are soldiers running away from a war so we are receiving them and helping them because it is our responsibility,” Colonel Paddy Ankunda told AFP, adding that Uganda had also welcomed fleeing soldiers from the DRC’s national army earlier in the year.

AFP

{7 November 2013 – In the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), where the United Nations has been supporting efforts to end armed violence, protect civilians and spur economic investment and political stability, the Organization is also fighting an environmental battle to save great apes, the region’s iconic local totem and a key link in its rich biodiversity.}

“In years past, the fear was always that armed conflict would damage great apes and wipe out wildlife,” said Douglas Cress, Programme Coordinator at the Great Apes Survival Partnership (GRASP), led by the UN Environmental Programme (UNEP) and the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO).

Mr. Cress stressed the mixed blessing of the DRC’s rich endowment of resources. “In terms of natural resources, it is one of the most potentially lucrative regions in all of Africa,” he told the UN News Centre from Nairobi, Kenya, where he is based. DRC has rich reserves of timber, gold, tantalum – used in cell phones and computers, and now potentially also oil and other resources. In terms of natural resources, it is one of the most potentially lucrative regions in all of Africa.

However, the fight for possession of these resources, as well as land and political power, is a major cause of conflict with rebels such as, most recently, the March 23rd Movement (M23) , the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) and other armed groups that have emerged from the area or entered from neighbouring countries.

That conflict, in turn, endangers the natural environment. “All natural resources suffer tremendously during conflict. But it’s not always a certainty that your wildlife would be exploited to death, often it’s just exploited,” Mr. Cress added.

It is to stave off extreme degradation of the DRC’s precious resources – so important for the future of the country and for the Earth – that the UN and its partners are working with international law enforcement, Governments and local communities to save magnificent wildlife and their habitat.

The forests of the DRC represent half of the total area of tropical rainforest in Africa, providing shelter for great apes, such as the mountain gorilla and the bonobo, as well as the okapi and elephant, among other mammals and countless species of magnificent birds and reptiles.

“You fly over the area and it’s just green for three hours,” Mr. Cress said.

The rich biodiversity led to five natural sites in the country – Garamba, Kahuzi-Biega, Okapi, Salonga, and Virunga – being designated between 1979 and 1996 to the UNESCO World Heritage List, and since then, with nearly all species of animals declining in the DRC, to the List of World Heritage in Danger.

The dangers come from traditional conservation threats – deforestation, mining and bush-meat hunting, but are also fuelled by armed conflict, leaving hundreds of thousands of people homeless, and forcing them to survive in internally displaced persons (IDP) camps and on the scarce natural resources, along with corruption and the lack of rule of law resulting from the ongoing conflict.

{{Monetizing great apes}}

The Virunga Mountains and the gorillas that migrate through them – among the great apes the UN-partnership is striving to save –fall geographically in the DRC, Rwanda, and Uganda.

The countries, each of which has had its share of violent turmoil, have worked out a tripartite agreement to share the revenues from the tourists eager to explore the primate habitat.

The DRC has wanted to imitate the multi-million ecotourism industry developed in Rwanda and to a lesser extent in Uganda, but its instability is a hindrance. There are reports of rebels acting like forest rangers and taking tourists into the mountains, but recurrent fighting makes the area inaccessible to most would-be visitors.

“That eastern DR Congo strip that passes through Goma that everyone’s been fighting over is so tricky because of the Virunga Mountains right there,” he noted, referring to intense struggle between the M23 and the national forces known by their French acronym, FARDC, on the periphery of what is Africa’s oldest park. “That’s the stronghold of mountain gorillas and yet it’s the prime territory that everyone wants a piece of.”

In addition to instability which cuts off access for tourists, it also prevents rangers and researchers from tracking families of the gorillas to check on their health and safety.

“The first time I saw a gorilla was in 1986 in the DRC, then Zaire. There’s nothing like it, just takes your breath away,” Mr. Cress recalled: “The grace of something so powerful allowing you into its world, even if just for an hour…it’s spellbinding.”

At least 100 gorillas have been killed in Africa through illegal trade since 2005, part of the more than 22,200 estimated great apes lost from the wild during that time, according to GRASP figures based on confiscation records, international trade databases, law enforcement reports and arrival rates from sanctuaries and rehabilitation centres.

These figures are just the tip of the iceberg. At least 2,972 great apes are lost from the wild each year, according to the ‘Stolen Apes: The Illicit Trade in Chimpanzees, Gorillas, Bonobos and Orangutans’ report.

Gorillas illegally sold to a zoo in Malaysia in 2002 reportedly went for $400,000 each, according to the report. Orangutans can fetch $1,000, and live chimpanzees sold at $50 can be marked up by the middleman as much as 400 per cent by the time they are resold.

African great apes – chimpanzees, gorillas and bonobos – are listed on Appendix I of the CITES convention on international trade of endangered species. Appendix I lists the highly endangered species at risk of extinction and prohibits any commercial international trade of these species.

Jane Goodall, a UN Messenger of Peace, whose eponymous institute is part of the GRASP network, has for decades advocated for conservation of the region’s habitats.

{{Fighting environmental crimes}}

Meanwhile, in northern DRC, alleged involvement in elephant poaching and ivory smuggling of the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA), a Ugandan-based rebel group notorious for kidnapping children to fill its ranks, led the UN Security Council last December to call for an investigation.

“The historic call reinforces concerns about the links between illicit wildlife trafficking and the regional security in Africa,” John Scanlon, Secretary-General of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) said after the Council action.
In mid-May, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon told the 15-member Council that armed groups in the area are employing increasingly sophisticated weapons to execute wildlife in the area.

“Poaching and its potential linkages to other criminal, even terrorist activities, constitute a grave menace to sustainable peace and security,” Mr. Ban said at the historic meeting.

Mr. Cress said the Secretary-General raised wildlife crime to a global level with his statement to the Security Council, “That voice, that global advocacy, that platform is one of the most important things that the UN provides.”

In addition to discussing environmental concerns in conflict and post-conflict areas, the Security Council is now intent on incorporating protection of natural resources and engagement with local communities into UN peacekeeping mandates such as MONUSCO’s which was extended for a year in June.

The General Assembly might also get involved. In a meeting last week with its current President, John Ashe, Mr. Cress proposed efforts to establish a UN International Day on Great Apes by 2014.

Meanwhile, this week, UNEP and INTERPOL are holding a joint conference in Nairobi on international environmental compliance and enforcement directed at individuals, such as the rebels operating in DRC, who are decommissioned soldiers trained in military tactics with access to sophisticated weaponry.

The overriding message from the conference seems to be – there is a gap in needed resources.

“We’re underfunded,” Mr. Cress said. “The bad guys are smart and getting smarter. And we are lagging behind. Until we think the way they do, with the resources and the technology and the tools that they have, we are never going to catch up.”

Strengthening state institutions

“The number one thing is getting law and order back,” Mr. Refisch stressed when asked about the best way to safeguard natural resources.

“There are rules and legislation, but they are not enforced. There are also many beneficiaries of the corruption,” he noted, describing a circle where illegal revenues from natural resources go to buy more weapons which yield more power which yields a need for more exploitation of resources.

The DRC has one of the highest number of artisanal miners without provisions in national law for regulation and without a regulatory framework for resource extraction

Mr. Refisch stressed that people are not willing to invest in their communities out of fear that they will lose it to armed groups.

“People are not willing to invest and just wait for aid. It’s a very dangerous cycle which really undermines development,” he noted.

Along with more investment, he also highlighted the need for more national pressure from within the country to develop a proper regulatory framework for resource extraction, and greater consumer knowledge in the consumer countries of where products originate, how they got there and whether the production is sustainable or not.

“It’s not about saving that great ape, or elephant, or saving that rosewood,” Mr. Cress said. “You begin to not only lose your natural resources, you begin to strip away revenue from host country. All that illegal ivory is not coming back to the Government. It’s being stolen. It promotes instability. You have Governments which are being held up at gunpoint, really.”

{{Strengthening state institutions}}

“The number one thing is getting law and order back,” Mr. Refisch stressed when asked about the best way to safeguard natural resources.

“There are rules and legislation, but they are not enforced. There are also many beneficiaries of the corruption,” he noted, describing a circle where illegal revenues from natural resources go to buy more weapons which yield more power which yields a need for more exploitation of resources.

The DRC has one of the highest number of artisanal miners without provisions in national law for regulation and without a regulatory framework for resource extraction

Mr. Refisch stressed that people are not willing to invest in their communities out of fear that they will lose it to armed groups.

“People are not willing to invest and just wait for aid. It’s a very dangerous cycle which really undermines development,” he noted.

Along with more investment, he also highlighted the need for more national pressure from within the country to develop a proper regulatory framework for resource extraction, and greater consumer knowledge in the consumer countries of where products originate, how they got there and whether the production is sustainable or not.

“It’s not about saving that great ape, or elephant, or saving that rosewood,” Mr. Cress said. “You begin to not only lose your natural resources, you begin to strip away revenue from host country. All that illegal ivory is not coming back to the Government. It’s being stolen. It promotes instability. You have Governments which are being held up at gunpoint, really.”

Source: UN

{Fighters from the Democratic Republic of Congo’s M23 group, including their commander Sultani Makenga, have surrendered in Uganda, officers have said, signalling the end of an 18-month armed conflict.}

The rebel surrender follows a crushing defeat at the hands of the UN-backed Congolese armed forces.

“He is with our forces, yes, Makenga has crossed into Uganda,” a senior Ugandan military officer told AFP news agency, although he declined to clarify if he had formally surrendered or was under arrest.

Paddy Ankunda, a colonel in the Ugandan army, told AFP news agency on Thursday that 1,500 men from the M23 – a number thought to account for almost the entire force – had crossed into Uganda and given themselves up, and were now being held in the Kisoro border district.

“About 1,500 fighters surrendered today,” said Ankunda, the spokesman for the Ugandan defence minister Crispus Kiyonga, a mediator in stalled peace talks between M23 and Kinshasa.

However, Ankunda said he was “not aware” if Makenga was among those to have surrendered.

Uganda has been accused by United Nations experts of backing the M23. Those claims are strongly denied by Kampala.

{{Superior firepower}}

The rebels’ surrender puts paid to fears that they might try to fight on despite having been outweighed by superior firepower, notably helicopter gunships.

Makenga, 39, a former colonel in the DR Congo army, is accused of masterminding killings, abductions, using rape as a weapon of war and recruiting child soldiers, and is on both UN and US sanctions lists.

His prescence in Uganda, arrested or not, poses a diplomatic headache for Kampala.

Congolese troops backed by a special UN intervention brigade with an offensive mandate launched a major assault late last month against the M23 force of army mutineers in turbulent North Kivu.

After briefly seizing the regional capital and mining hub of Goma last November, the M23 entered into fresh peace talks which fell apart last month, leading the Congolese army to go on the attack in a bid to end the rebellion.

Makenga was born to parents from the Masisi area north of Goma, but grew up in the neighbouring Rutshuru district.

Makenga eventually joined the former DRC rebel leader Laurent Nkunda’s National Congress for the Defence of the People. Ever since he has been seen as loyal to Nkunda.

Source: Al Jazeera

{Journalist in Danger (JED) is relieved to learn that Sagesse Kamwira – a journalist for Canal Congo Télévision-Radio Liberté Kinshasa – has been found, after having been kidnapped for three days.
}

According to testimonies gathered by JED, Kamwira was found on 31 October at around 7pm in the Visika Mabuku forest, approximately 60 km from Beni, by the Armed Forces of the Democratic Republic of Congo (FARDC) and the National Congolese Police. The FARDC and the police had been deployed to search for Kamwira, shortly after Jinnah Ivogha, director of Radio Liberté/Beni received a phone call from the journalist, saying that she was abandoned in the forest.

Kamwira was kidnapped by a group of six unidentified armed individuals. Two women tied the journalist up before throwing her into Loulo river. Kamwira was able to save herself, and shortly afterwards was noticed by a farmer, who helped put her in contact with the radio station.

“After having found her, the FARDC and the police immediately took her to a hospital, where she is currently under medical supervision. Sagesse Kamwira was accused by her abductors of possessing photos and sound recordings of a group of criminals – now under arrest – who were associated with the murder of a merchant in Beni. Kamwira was also accused of having denounced the presence of a group of criminals in Beni, several days before she was kidnapped”, the director of Radio Liberté de Beni told JED.

Background:

Kamwira had been phoned on 29 October 2013 by an unknown individual, asking her to report on an event regarding the Tax Inspector of Beni. After informing her colleagues, Kamwira went to go report on the event. Later that evening, the journalist sent a text message to her radio station, saying that she was in the hands of her abductors.

{Egyptian objections are delaying formation of a committee to implement expert recommendations on an Ethiopian dam project, Ethiopia’s water minister says}.

Egypt fears the 6,000 MW Grand Renaissance Dam, which will be Africa’s largest when completed in 2017, could diminish its water supply,

At a one-day meeting in Khartoum, the water ministers of Egypt, Sudan and Ethiopia agreed to form the panel, Alemayehu Tegenu said on Tuesday.

“But we didn’t agree about the composition of this committee,” he said. “We have differences with Egypt.”

Tegenu declined to elaborate on why there was disagreement over the committee’s membership but said the three sides would meet again in Khartoum on December 8.

Ethiopia began diverting the Blue Nile in May to build the dam.

An international panel has issued a report outlining the dam’s impact on water levels.

The report has not been made public, but Ethiopia has said it confirms that the impact on water levels is minimal.

Egyp, which is almost entirely dependent on the Nile, had sought more studies about the dam’s impact on its water supply.

Egypt believes its “historic rights” to the Nile are guaranteed by two treaties from 1929 and 1959 which allow it 87 percent of the Nile’s flow and give it veto power over upstream projects.

But a new deal signed in 2010 by other Nile Basin countries, including Ethiopia, allows them to work on river projects without Cairo’s prior agreement.

Sudan, along with Egypt, has not signed the new Nile Basin deal.

Sudan too relies on Nile resources but has said it does not expect to be affected by the Grand Renaissance project.

Source: Al Jazeera

{The Congolese government says it will not sign a “peace deal” with the M23 rebels now that they have been defeated.}

Information Minister and government spokesman Lambert Mende told reporters during a news conference in Kinshasa on Tuesday that there will only be a “statement.”

“We did not go to [Kampala] to negotiate and sign an agreement. We were told: come to Kampala, listen to your countrymen and answer them. We listened and our response will be in the statement that we are going to sign,” Mr. Mende said.

He added that the Congolese government “never intended to sign a peace deal with anybody” when it agreed to start peace talks with the rebels in Kampala, Uganda.

DR Congo’s government agreed to hold talks with the M23 rebels in Kampala last year after they briefly occupied Goma, the North Kivu province’s capital city.

After nearly a year of off-and-on discussions, the talks were suspended again two weeks ago after the Congolese government refused to grant a complete amnesty or integrate into the army rebels who had committed war crimes or crimes against humanity.

The fighting then resumed. But by Tuesday morning, the Congolese army had regained all territories that had been occupied by the M23 rebels for more than a year.

After losing their strongholds of Kibumba, Kiwanja, Rutshuru, and Bunagana, the rebels fled from their last hideouts on the hills of Chanzu and Runyoni overnight as government troops backed by UN peacekeepers were advancing towards their positions.

The political leader of the M23, Bertrand Bisimwa, released a statement saying that the rebel group was “ending its rebellion.” But by then, the few remaining rebels and the M23 military leader Sultani Makenga had either fled to Uganda or Rwanda.

“You all heard the news. The M23 said that it has ended its rebellion. So, there is no need to go and change this fact by recreating an M23 to sign an agreement with,” Mr. Mende said on Tuesday.

Congo Planet

{Former Prime Minister Raila Odinga on Tuesday offered to help resolve the controversy threatening to break up the East African Community.}

Mr Odinga appealed to Presidents Uhuru Kenyatta, Yoweri Museveni (Uganda), Jakaya Kikwete (Tanzania) and Paul Kagame (Rwanda) to urgently pick a panel of statesmen from the EAC to resolve the controversy that has seen Tanzania threaten to pull out of the political and economic bloc.

“I want to propose to regional Heads of State that a panel of statesmen from the EAC be put together to work out a mechanism to resolve the impasse and put the union back on track,” he told a press conference.

Asked whether he was ready to sit on the panel if picked, Mr Odinga answered in the affirmative.

“Yes, I’m ready to represent Kenya on that panel.”

Mr Odinga has previously resisted overtures from the Jubilee Government to appoint him Kenya’s envoy at large, with his supporters terming it a ploy to push him into political retirement.

The Cord leader’s concerns came in the wake of reports from Dar es Salaam that Tanzania was considering a pulling out of the EAC.

Its minister for EAC Affairs, Mr Samuel Sitta, is reported to have told a charged Parliament in Dodoma that Dar would not wait for a “divorce certificate” from Kenya, Rwanda and Uganda, but would “shoot before we are shot.”

The minister spoke on the same day Presidents Kenyatta, Kagame, Museveni and Salva Kiir of South Sudan signed a host of protocols and agreements in Kigali, including free movement of goods and persons, infrastructural development and transformation into a single Customs Union.

Daily Nation

{The rebel M23 group has announced that its military commander, Brig Sultani Makenga, is ready to oversee a comprehensive disarmament exercise within the Movement to allow a peaceful end to the rebellion. }

By Wednesday morning, Makenga was reported in Virunga Mountains where he is stationed with his closest associates Vianney Kazarama, Col Kaina and Mboneza among other field commanders.

The rebel Movement on Tuesday announced that it had decided “from this day to put an end to this rebellion” and to only use “purely political means” the search for solutions to the root causes that led to its creation.

M23 President, Bertrand Bisiimwa said the Chief of General Staff (Maeknga) and the commanders of all major units of the Movement are “requested to prepare their troops for disarmament, demobilization and reintegration whose terms are to be agreed with the Government of the Democratic Republic of Congo.”

M23 publicist, Amani Kabasha said Makenga decided not to fight a joint force comprising troops from Tanzania, South Africa, France and elements from Mai Mai and MONUSCO to avoid the escalation of the humanitarian crisis in the restive eastern region.

It remains unclear if Makenga will surrender to DRC authorities considering that he faces charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity.

However, the M23 military commander’s fate is likely to be decided by the peace agreement which will be signed before the end of this week between DRC and M23 representatives in Kampala.

Bisiimwa said the end of the rebellion would possibly lead to peace in DRC. “Let’s test this: Maybe the M23 to be aside will give to our people and our country more security, peace and development,” he said, adding, “The DRC without M23 has to deal with security issues (FDLR, FNL, ADF-NALU), return of refugees, national reconciliation, and development of Eastern DRC.”

{{Chimpreports}}

{Kenya is holding its first commercial auction of East African art in the capital, Nairobi, with 47 works going under the hammer.}

Prices are expected to range from several hundred dollars for some pieces up to more than $28,000 (£17,400).

The auction is a sign of the growing profile of the region’s art scene, as well as the growth of a a wealthy elite, experts say.

International collectors are increasingly focusing on African art.

Last month, London hosted the first international fair dedicated to modern and contemporary African art.

Earlier this year, London auction house Bonhams sold the work of eight leading Kenyan artists at a charity auction.

{{‘Hidden treasures’}}

The works of Kenyan artists will dominate the auction, but artists from Ethiopia, Sudan, Tanzania and Uganda will also be featured.The Circle Art Agency, which is organising the auction at Nairobi’s Kempinski Hotel later on Tuesday, says some of the works for sale have not been seen in public for decades.

“There are some hidden treasures that form part of Kenya’s cultural history dating from 1967 to 2013,” it said.

“Over the last few months we travelled to numerous places in search of exceptional works, many of which were buried away in artist’s studios in neighbouring towns or hanging on hidden corridors in collectors’ homes,” Danda Jaroljmek, from Circle Art Agency, told Kenya’s Star newspaper.

One of the most expensive items going up for sale is a sculpture called Dancing Warrior by the late, influential Kenyan artist Samuel Wanjau.

It is expected to fetch between $25,000 and $28,500.

“His work and career is emblematic of a time when artists were breaking away from the mass production of co-operatives and finding distinctive individual voices,” the auction notes say.

Lot 47 is entitled Auction by Kenyan artist Michael Soi, who painted it to celebrate Tuesday’s sale.

Some of his most widely collected paintings are from a recent series called China Loves Africa, The Circle Art Agency says.

He has also tackled controversial issues like the cases of Kenya’s leaders at the International Criminal Court and is currently painting a series on prostitution.

“I do not create controversy; I just create work that revolves around things that I see. So, I want to believe that society itself is creating the controversy, all I’m doing is just documenting it,” he told the AFP news agency.

It is not only those in East Africa’s growing art scene who have welcomed the Nairobi auction.

“I think it’s very exciting, and I think from an investor’s point of view, and someone who appreciates art, I think it’s only going one way, and that’s going higher,” Aly-Khan Satchu, an investment adviser in Nairobi, told AFP.

Source: BBC