Tag: GreatLakesNews

{{Mary Robinson,The new UN special envoy for Africa’s Great Lakes region, expressed her “shock” Tuesday over human rights abuses in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo.}}

“I’m shocked to see thousands of people displaced, women raped, in sum the massive violations of human rights in North Kivu which are continuing,” Robinson said on her first visit to the volatile, mineral-rich region since taking up the post last month.

“I am committed,” the renowned rights activist told reporters at the airport of North Kivu’s capital Goma.

Speaking alongside Roger Meece, the head of the UN peacekeeping mission in the country (MONUSCO), she said: “We want a political, diplomatic solution, but also to strengthen protection for civilians.”

Robinson is leading political efforts to bring an end to more than two decades of conflict in the region, and has vowed to help build the trust needed for a recent regional peace agreement to work.

“This framework must work,” she said of the UN-brokered accord signed by 11 African heads of state on February 24. “It gives hope to the population.”

Under the accord, the 11 states vowed not to interfere in the affairs of their neighbours, and DR Congo President Joseph Kabila promised democratic advances and improved security.

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{{South Sudanese president Salva Kiir Mayardit says he will no longer tolerate members of his cabinet accusing the government they serve in of corruption, arbitrary arrest and human rights issues.}}

Those caught doing so will be dealt with accordingly, Kiir said, during a speech at an official function marking the completion and opening of a new building belonging to the ministry of parliamentary affairs on Tuesday.

“We are a new country. This is why the whole world has turned to us and [is] watching closely to see what we are doing. It is not because what is happening in this country is not happening in other countries. It is because we are [a] new nation and people want to know how we are governing ourselves.

They want to know how we are managing our wealth, our resources”, Kiir told the audience, which predominantly consisted of members of his cabinet, ministers and senior civil servants.

He warned that he will no longer turn a blind eye to those in the cabinet who go outside the country to accuse his government of mismanaging the affairs of the nation while serving the same system.

“There is no problem with the world watching and telling us to improve where we are going wrong. It is true there are some things we are not going well. We will work to improve.

The problem is that we have our own people, some of them are part of the same system working in the same government but go out [of South Sudan] to talk about corruption and arbitrary arrest carried out by the government.

They talk as if they are not part of it but if you follow them, you find they are the same people who are the ones involved in corruption.

They are the ones involved in arbitrary arrest, but they come out in the day and say they are not part of it”, he said.

The former rebel commander turned politician became president of an independent South Sudan in 2011, having become leader of the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement (SPLM) in 2005.

Kiir said that from now on he will be tracking what cabinet ministers do and say when they leave the capital, Juba.

The president appears to have been reacting to the annual human rights report of the United States, which highlighted areas of concern in South Sudan, most notably corruption and human rights abuses, often committed by the country’s security forces.

It is believed that most arbitrary arrests in South Sudan are carried out at the instructions of more senior government officials both at federal and state levels.

Some observers claim that many officials use it as an alternative method for silencing political opponents and critics of their performance.

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{{East Africa Community member states are making steps in the right direction towards improving environment for investors.}}

According to a joint report by International Finance Corporation ( IFC) and World Bank for 2011/12, all five economies of the East African Community implemented at least one institutional or business regulatory reform improving the business climate for local entrepreneurs.

Released on Thursday, Doing Business in the East African Community 2013 compares business regulations and identifies good practices across the EAC in ten areas covered by the joint World Bank and IFC annual global Doing Business report.

From June 2011 to June 2012, the five EAC economies implemented a combined nine regulatory reforms across eight areas measured by Doing Business.

The report finds that the EAC ranks on average 117th (among 185 economies) on the ease of doing business. But if all EAC countries adopted the best practices in the region across all areas of regulation covered, the EAC would rank 26th, equal to the United Arab Emirates.

This is evidence that the ingredients of reform already reside in the EAC; what remains is for a stronger culture of peer learning to grow within the community.

Burundi is among the global top 10 improvers for the second consecutive year, with four regulatory reforms—in starting a business, dealing with construction permits, registering property, and trading across borders.

Rwanda, the top performer in the EAC, stands out as having consistently improved since 2005.

“Drawing on the global Doing Business report, Doing Business in the East African Community 2013 provides policy makers with key measurements of business regulations in the EAC,” said David Bridgman, Manager, Investment Climate Africa, IFC/ World Bank Group.

“The report’s findings can be used to identify areas to improve the business environment in the EAC along with enabling the expansion of the private sector, the main driver of growth and job creation.”

Over the past eight years, the five EAC economies implemented a total of 74 business regulatory reforms.

The majority of the reforms focused on simplifying regulatory processes—such as registering property and starting a business. The average time to register property fell from 140 days in 2005 to 56 in 2012.

The introduction of new information and communication technology has been a common feature of reforms making it easier to start a business.

Both Kenya and Tanzania now offer online name search for companies, reducing time and cost. On average, the EAC countries reduced the time to start a business by 31 percent.

More and broader regulatory reforms, however, will be required for the EAC to significantly increase its share of trade and investment, including strengthening cooperation between business regulators across the five countries and adopting common and improved standards for business laws and regulation to be implemented at the country level.

This is the fourth report in this series analyzing business regulations in the EAC. The regional report draws on the global Doing Business project and its database as well as the findings of Doing Business 2013, the 10th in a series of annual reports investigating the regulations that enhance and constrain business activity globally.

{{The sole Kenyan detainee at the Guantanamo Bay detention facility in Cuba has joined the hunger strike by over 100 prisoners protesting their indefinite incarceration, his family in Nairobi and Mombasa claimed on Wednesday.}}

According to Abdulmalik’s foster mother, Ms Mwajuma Rajab, his son called him on Tuesday and told her that he was on hunger strike and has been boycotting full meals for 83 days.

Family members who live in these towns told media that they have spoken with the prisoner who has been detained by the Americans since February 2007 about the hunger strike and other conditions in Guantanamo through the assistance of the Red Cross Society.

The relatives said the Kenyan detainee renewed in a telephone conversation urged the Kenyan government to secure his return to Kenya.

Some of the striking detainees are being fed through nasal tubes, according to media reports.

American authorities have sent extra medical staff to the Guantanamo detention camp to help deal with a growing hunger strike by its inmates which began in February.

Like the Kenyan detainee most of the inmates at Guantanamo are being held and have not been charged with any crime.

{{ Abdel Aziz Adam El-Hilu, the General Chief of Staff of the Sudan Revolutionary Front (SRF) denied on Tuesday reports that he has been killed by the Sudanese military following the rebel alliance’s attack on Um Rawaba town in Northern Kordofan state on April 27.}}

“I am alive. Nothing has happened to me”, he told a local tabloid in an exclusive interview via phone on Tuesday from an undisclosed location.

“The Sudan Armed Forces know where we are and we know where they are”, he said before adding that wishing on the part of Khartoum that he was dead would not mean he would “vanish into the thin air”.

While other rebel officials dismissed reports of his demise, they declined to offer specifics on his location or address rumors that he might have been seriously injured.

On Monday the Sudanese minister of information Ahmed Bilal Osman claimed that el-Hilu was likely killed by a rocket that targeted a convoy of six vehicles he was in during SRF’s recent offensive in North and South Kordofan.

El-Hilu said that the ruling National Congress Party (NCP) in Sudan was trying to stir anxiety among Sudanese people and discourage them from supporting the SRF rebel alliance.

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{{Al Qaeda-linked Somali militants who have dug into parts of the northern Puntland province pledged vengeance after authorities in the autonomous region executed 13 suspected Islamist rebels.}}

Puntland long avoided being caught up in successive Islamist insurgencies that have shattered Somalia but has slowly been infiltrated by al Shabaab rebels squeezed out of former south-central urban redoubts in the Horn of Africa state.

Puntland officials say many of the insurgents have taken up positions in the mountains west of the port city of Bosasso.

“Puntland massacred innocent Muslims,” al Shabaab spokesman Sheikh Ali Mohamud Rage said in an audio recording posted late on Tuesday on www.somalimemo.net, a website linked to the rebel group.

“We shall avenge them. All those who spied, bore false witness, judged, and shot them will face a tough punishment.”

Wary of a reprisal attack, Puntland security forces later deployed heavily in Bosasso’s dusty streets. The suspected insurgents were shot dead early on Tuesday outside Bosasso.

A military court official in Puntland said they had confessed to being militants. Al Shabaab denied that any of its fighters were in detention in Puntland.

Rage said the deaths resembled a string of apparent extrajudicial killings in Mogadishu in March, when residents said government security forces had killed at least 10 pardoned al Shabaab fighters and dumped their bodies in the streets.

The Mogadishu government has promised to investigate those killings. They followed the murder of two senior security officials, for which al Shabaab claimed responsibility.

Somalia is trying to emerge from two decades of civil war that has left it without an effective central administration.

Security has improved in Mogadishu and the government sees bolstering the rule of law and reforming the judiciary as crucial to restoring normality.

African Union military intervention has done much to dislodge al Shabaab from its southern and central strongholds, setting back their bid to impose their strict brand of sharia (Islamic law) on Somalia.

But an attack on Mogadishu’s law courts in April that killed 30 people showed al Shabaab can still launch strikes in government-held areas despite its decline as a fighting force.

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