By theGrio
9:57 AM on 01/03/2011
HONOLULU (AP) - President Barack Obama is quietly but strategically stepping up his outreach to Africa, using this year to increase his engagement with a continent that is personally meaningful to him and important to U.S. interests.
Expectations in Africa spiked after the election of an American president with a Kenyan father. But midway through his term, Obama's agenda for Africa has taken a backseat to other foreign policy goals, such as winding down the Iraq war, fighting the Taliban in Afghanistan and resetting relations with Russia.
Obama aides believe those issues are now on more solid footing, allowing the president to expand his international agenda. He will focus in Africa on good governance and supporting nations with strong democratic institutions.
Obama delivered that message on his only trip to Africa since taking office, an overnight stop in Ghana in 2009, where he was mobbed by cheering crowds. In a blunt speech before the Ghanaian parliament, Obama said democracy is the key to Africa's long-term development.
"That is the ingredient which has been missing in far too many places, for far too long," Obama said. "That is the change that can unlock Africa's potential. And that is a responsibility that can only be met by Africans."
The White House says Obama will travel to Africa again and the political calendar means the trip will almost certainly happen this year, before Obama has to spend more time on his re-election bid. No decision has been made on which countries Obama will visit, but deputy national security adviser Ben Rhodes said stops will reflect positive democratic models.
The administration is monitoring more than 30 elections expected across Africa this year, including critical contests in Nigeria and Zimbabwe.
"The U.S. is watching and we're weighing in," Rhodes said.
John Campbell, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and a former U.S. ambassador to Nigeria, said the different elections give the Obama administration the opportunity to establish clear policies.
The administration "should be less willing to cut slack when those elections are less than free, fair and credible," Campbell said.
The White House can send that message right now as it deals with the disputed election in Ivory Coast and an upcoming independence referendum in Sudan, which could split Africa's largest country in two.
Rhodes said the president has invested significant "diplomatic capital" on Sudan, mentioning the referendum in nearly all of his conversations with the presidents of Russia and China, two countries which could wield influence over that Sudan's government.
When Obama stopped in at a White House meeting last month of his national security advisers and United Nations ambassadors, the first topic he broached was Sudan, not Iran or North Korea. And as lawmakers on Capitol Hill neared the December vote on a new nuclear treaty with Russia, Obama called southern Sudan leader Salva Kiir by telephone to offer support for the referendum.
White House officials believe the postelection standoff in Ivory Coast could be the model for Obama's stepped-up engagement in Africa.
The president tried to call incumbent President Laurent Gbagbo twice last month, from Air Force One as Obama returned from Afghanistan and then a week later. Neither call reached Gbagbo; administration officials believe the Ivorian leader sought to avoid contact. So Obama wrote Gbagbo a letter, offering him an international role if he stopped clinging to power and stepped down.
But Obama also made clear that the longer Gbagbo holds on, and the more complicit he becomes in violence across the country, the more limited his options become, said a senior administration official. The official insisted on anonymity to speak about administration strategy.
Rhodes said the White House understands that U.S. involvement in African politics can be viewed as meddling. But he said Obama can speak to African leaders with a unique level of candor, reflecting his personal connection to Africa and that his father and other family members have been affected by the corruption that plagues many countries there.
Officials also see increased political stability in Africa as good for long-term U.S. interests -- a way to stem the growth of terrorism in east Africa and counterbalance China's growing presence on the continent.
The U.S. was caught off guard during the 2009 climate summit in Copenhagen when several African countries voted with China and not the U.S., the administration official said. The official said the administration must persuade African nations that their interests are better served by aligning with the U.S.
Monday, January 3, 2011
Ethiopia lives in L.A. hearts
By Kate Linthicum, Los Angeles Times
January 3, 2011
Fassil Abebe drives in rush-hour traffic to a bustling stretch of Fairfax Avenue, where the smells of cumin and roasting coffee carry down the street. With handshakes and cries of "Salaam!" he greets a dozen men and women who have gathered in the back room of a friend's restaurant to organize a fundraiser for Seifu Makonnen, a fellow Ethiopian immigrant who is ill.
Nearly every month in Los Angeles, Ethiopians host a benefit like this one. Last year, at events for two compatriots with cancer, Abebe's group raised more than $55,000.
It's not as if they have time or money to spare. Many Ethiopians here work as taxicab drivers or parking attendants, and most send large remittances to relatives back home. But they give because they know that if ever they need help, they will get it. They give because this is a community that takes care of its own.
You can see it at the home of a family that has just lost a loved one, where friends arrive for days of mourning, each with food, drinks or an envelope of money. You can see it at the hospital, where it's not uncommon for an Ethiopian patient to receive 300 visitors a day.
It's a way of life they learned at home, and it helps keeps them connected here.
"In Ethiopia when someone is sick, the whole town brings food," Abebe said. "When someone is having a wedding for his daughter, he doesn't do it alone. We believe we are our brother's keeper, so when our brother needs us, we are here to help."
Seeking asylum
Makonnen was once one of the most feared boxers in East Africa. A heavyweight with a fierce punch, he was called Tibo, Amharic for "knockout."
He has a clutch of gold medals from various victories across the world and a tattoo on his right shoulder of five interlocked rings — a reminder of when he represented Ethiopia at the 1972 summer Olympics in Munich.
But he hit his peak just as a hard-line military junta swept into power in his country, after the 1974 ousting of Emperor Haile Selassie I.
The communist regime put him in jail for several months. Later he was sent to train in Cuba. On a layover in Montreal on the way back to Ethiopia, he slipped a letter to airport police seeking political asylum.
He moved to Los Angeles with refugee status in 1978 and gave up boxing for another fight.
When Makonnen arrived in L.A., there were no Ethiopian restaurants or churches.
"Back then, everybody was on his own," he said.
Makonnen helped found St. Mary's Ethiopian Apostolic Church on Compton Avenue, the nation's first Ethiopian church. While living in Washington, D.C., briefly, he opened a health center where Ethiopian athletes could train and started a weekly radio program about Ethiopian sports.
He helped build the community that now is helping him.
Together to help
The fundraiser-planning dinners have the feel of school board meetings. Decisions are made by consensus. Each person takes notes. One woman jots down the minutes, which are later typed up and sent out on the group's listserv.
After three months of twice-monthly get-togethers, the event hall has been rented and the musicians' travel arranged. But there is still much to be done. The invitations must be printed and the dinner menu chosen. Someone needs to make the rounds of all the Ethiopian-owned businesses to sell ad space in the February gala's program.
The volunteers have embraced the American "do-it-yourself" ethic, with an Ethiopian flavor. Those who are hungry order food, and all eat from the same plate. They never raise their voices during two hours of sorting out event details. The meetings get heated only at the end, when the bill comes and they argue over who gets to pay it.
Beloved figure
Abebe first met Makonnen when he moved to L.A. in 1983. The former boxer was driving a taxi then, and he taught the newcomer from Addis Ababa how to find his way across a vast, unfamiliar metropolis.
Makonnen was diagnosed with diabetes in the 1980s.
The man who once skipped deftly in the boxing ring now steps slowly. He spends three days a week at a clinic undergoing dialysis. The treatments leave him exhausted and unable to work.
When Abebe heard about the fundraiser for his old mentor, he happily agreed to help. He drives to the Little Ethiopia meeting from Inglewood, where he lives with his wife and two children. Others come from the San Fernando Valley and Orange County.
"A lot of people love him and know him," Abebe said of Makonnen, who has two grown children. "He needs another chance to live."
When Makonnen heard about the gala, he was happy but not surprised.
"In Ethiopia, there is no 'individual,' " he said. "You help people, and they'll do good for you."
kate.linthicum@latimes.com
Copyright © 2010, Los Angeles Times
January 3, 2011
Fassil Abebe drives in rush-hour traffic to a bustling stretch of Fairfax Avenue, where the smells of cumin and roasting coffee carry down the street. With handshakes and cries of "Salaam!" he greets a dozen men and women who have gathered in the back room of a friend's restaurant to organize a fundraiser for Seifu Makonnen, a fellow Ethiopian immigrant who is ill.
Nearly every month in Los Angeles, Ethiopians host a benefit like this one. Last year, at events for two compatriots with cancer, Abebe's group raised more than $55,000.
It's not as if they have time or money to spare. Many Ethiopians here work as taxicab drivers or parking attendants, and most send large remittances to relatives back home. But they give because they know that if ever they need help, they will get it. They give because this is a community that takes care of its own.
You can see it at the home of a family that has just lost a loved one, where friends arrive for days of mourning, each with food, drinks or an envelope of money. You can see it at the hospital, where it's not uncommon for an Ethiopian patient to receive 300 visitors a day.
It's a way of life they learned at home, and it helps keeps them connected here.
"In Ethiopia when someone is sick, the whole town brings food," Abebe said. "When someone is having a wedding for his daughter, he doesn't do it alone. We believe we are our brother's keeper, so when our brother needs us, we are here to help."
Seeking asylum
Makonnen was once one of the most feared boxers in East Africa. A heavyweight with a fierce punch, he was called Tibo, Amharic for "knockout."
He has a clutch of gold medals from various victories across the world and a tattoo on his right shoulder of five interlocked rings — a reminder of when he represented Ethiopia at the 1972 summer Olympics in Munich.
But he hit his peak just as a hard-line military junta swept into power in his country, after the 1974 ousting of Emperor Haile Selassie I.
The communist regime put him in jail for several months. Later he was sent to train in Cuba. On a layover in Montreal on the way back to Ethiopia, he slipped a letter to airport police seeking political asylum.
He moved to Los Angeles with refugee status in 1978 and gave up boxing for another fight.
When Makonnen arrived in L.A., there were no Ethiopian restaurants or churches.
"Back then, everybody was on his own," he said.
Makonnen helped found St. Mary's Ethiopian Apostolic Church on Compton Avenue, the nation's first Ethiopian church. While living in Washington, D.C., briefly, he opened a health center where Ethiopian athletes could train and started a weekly radio program about Ethiopian sports.
He helped build the community that now is helping him.
Together to help
The fundraiser-planning dinners have the feel of school board meetings. Decisions are made by consensus. Each person takes notes. One woman jots down the minutes, which are later typed up and sent out on the group's listserv.
After three months of twice-monthly get-togethers, the event hall has been rented and the musicians' travel arranged. But there is still much to be done. The invitations must be printed and the dinner menu chosen. Someone needs to make the rounds of all the Ethiopian-owned businesses to sell ad space in the February gala's program.
The volunteers have embraced the American "do-it-yourself" ethic, with an Ethiopian flavor. Those who are hungry order food, and all eat from the same plate. They never raise their voices during two hours of sorting out event details. The meetings get heated only at the end, when the bill comes and they argue over who gets to pay it.
Beloved figure
Abebe first met Makonnen when he moved to L.A. in 1983. The former boxer was driving a taxi then, and he taught the newcomer from Addis Ababa how to find his way across a vast, unfamiliar metropolis.
Makonnen was diagnosed with diabetes in the 1980s.
The man who once skipped deftly in the boxing ring now steps slowly. He spends three days a week at a clinic undergoing dialysis. The treatments leave him exhausted and unable to work.
When Abebe heard about the fundraiser for his old mentor, he happily agreed to help. He drives to the Little Ethiopia meeting from Inglewood, where he lives with his wife and two children. Others come from the San Fernando Valley and Orange County.
"A lot of people love him and know him," Abebe said of Makonnen, who has two grown children. "He needs another chance to live."
When Makonnen heard about the gala, he was happy but not surprised.
"In Ethiopia, there is no 'individual,' " he said. "You help people, and they'll do good for you."
kate.linthicum@latimes.com
Copyright © 2010, Los Angeles Times
Monday, December 27, 2010
African Immigrants in Minnesota Urge to Seek US Citizenship
(Dec 27, 2010) By: Omari Jackson
BROOKLYN CENTER, Minn. December 27, 2010: African immigrants and refugees have been asked to seek citizenship, to avoid problems that are often tied to one’s immigration status.
At the end of a one-day immigration informational session held on Friday Dec. 10, in Brooklyn Center, Minn., the head of immigration practice at the Cundy and Martin law firm, Vincent Martin, told attendees to remember that plea agreements in any court system, “affect your immigration status in some ways.”
He told them, “instead of guessing about the laws, it’s always good to check in with immigration attorneys.”
Organized by the African Immigrant Services, also called AIS, in collaboration with the Miracle Redemption Center International, the session brought together nearly 240 African immigrants who braved the inclement weather.
Martin discussed immigration policies and laws, including how to petition for family members, how to seek asylum, as well as permanent residency status and citizenship processes and applications.
Martin represents individuals and employers, families seeking to sponsor other family members, and those facing deportation.
Also contributing, Advocates for Human Rights’ director of advocacy, Michelle Garnett-McKenzie, encouraged African immigrants to take advantage of legal resources to avoid problems in the future.
From experience, she said, some of the problems immigrants and refugees encounter could easily be resolved if they would seek appropriate resources and attend informational sessions.
Garnett-McKenzie has worked extensively with refugee and immigrant groups. She joined The Advocates in 1999 as a staff attorney representing asylum seekers and immigration detainees and, in 2003, became the Refugee and Immigrant Program Director, managing the asylum, detention, and walk-in clinic projects.
By nearly all accounts, the town-hall-style event was warmly received, as participants and beneficiaries expressed their appreciation and hoped that such a useful venture would be held often.
“The session was one of the best events I’ve seen in the African community. AIS did a great job”, said Duanna Siryon, founder of Pro-USA, an African immigrant youth sports development non-profit group in the Twin Cities.
Saran Daramy, an African immigrant business owner who came to get information to help her cousin, said, “It was educational. A wide range of topics was covered. I think we should have more of it, to help our community.”
“Some of our African folks need guidance when it comes to immigration issues. But again, they just don’t know where to get basic information”, explained Abu Massaley, an African-born immigrant. “This event was helpful, because it provided an opportunity for them to understand what was at stake regarding immigration laws. I also think there is a need for AIS to do one-on-one session, where folks will be able to ask some very personal questions.”
“We’re very pleased with the outcome,” said Cairbeh Dahn, outreach coordinator of AIS. “We exceeded our initial expectation, especially in terms of attendance and the level of participation.”
AIS Board chairman, Momodu Kemokai said, “Our goal is four sessions a year, serving about 800 African immigrants and refugees. And we are proud of the initial impact.”
AIS believes that these sessions are an important piece in a larger strategy to address a wide range of problems tied to immigration status.
“ When African immigrants and refugees face problems related to their legal or immigration status, their housing, health, job, education and other aspects of their lives are also affected”, said Abdullah Kiatamba, executive director of AIS.” That is why everybody wins when African immigrants and refugees gain greater access to a wide range of relevant legal resources.”
He said the just concluded session is the first, “of the journey,” his organization has embarked upon, and appealed to African immigrants and refugees to volunteer and participate in programs and services that are critical to their aspirations.
Noble Fahnbulleh, AIS’ volunteer and technology coordinator, said, “Linking African immigrants and refugees to resources is critical to our work at AIS.”
He meanwhile requested participants to provide AIS with feedback and suggestions on how to make future sessions more effective.
Earlier, Rev. Vandyke Noah of the Redemption Center, expressed appreciation for the session, because, “our people need this kind of opportunity to address their doubts and concerns.”
Established in 2005 and reactivated in 2009, AIS works to empower African immigrants and refugees to integrate into mainstream communities and to increase their participation in civic life.
AIS is at www.aisusa.org
BROOKLYN CENTER, Minn. December 27, 2010: African immigrants and refugees have been asked to seek citizenship, to avoid problems that are often tied to one’s immigration status.
At the end of a one-day immigration informational session held on Friday Dec. 10, in Brooklyn Center, Minn., the head of immigration practice at the Cundy and Martin law firm, Vincent Martin, told attendees to remember that plea agreements in any court system, “affect your immigration status in some ways.”
He told them, “instead of guessing about the laws, it’s always good to check in with immigration attorneys.”
Organized by the African Immigrant Services, also called AIS, in collaboration with the Miracle Redemption Center International, the session brought together nearly 240 African immigrants who braved the inclement weather.
Martin discussed immigration policies and laws, including how to petition for family members, how to seek asylum, as well as permanent residency status and citizenship processes and applications.
Martin represents individuals and employers, families seeking to sponsor other family members, and those facing deportation.
Also contributing, Advocates for Human Rights’ director of advocacy, Michelle Garnett-McKenzie, encouraged African immigrants to take advantage of legal resources to avoid problems in the future.
From experience, she said, some of the problems immigrants and refugees encounter could easily be resolved if they would seek appropriate resources and attend informational sessions.
Garnett-McKenzie has worked extensively with refugee and immigrant groups. She joined The Advocates in 1999 as a staff attorney representing asylum seekers and immigration detainees and, in 2003, became the Refugee and Immigrant Program Director, managing the asylum, detention, and walk-in clinic projects.
By nearly all accounts, the town-hall-style event was warmly received, as participants and beneficiaries expressed their appreciation and hoped that such a useful venture would be held often.
“The session was one of the best events I’ve seen in the African community. AIS did a great job”, said Duanna Siryon, founder of Pro-USA, an African immigrant youth sports development non-profit group in the Twin Cities.
Saran Daramy, an African immigrant business owner who came to get information to help her cousin, said, “It was educational. A wide range of topics was covered. I think we should have more of it, to help our community.”
“Some of our African folks need guidance when it comes to immigration issues. But again, they just don’t know where to get basic information”, explained Abu Massaley, an African-born immigrant. “This event was helpful, because it provided an opportunity for them to understand what was at stake regarding immigration laws. I also think there is a need for AIS to do one-on-one session, where folks will be able to ask some very personal questions.”
“We’re very pleased with the outcome,” said Cairbeh Dahn, outreach coordinator of AIS. “We exceeded our initial expectation, especially in terms of attendance and the level of participation.”
AIS Board chairman, Momodu Kemokai said, “Our goal is four sessions a year, serving about 800 African immigrants and refugees. And we are proud of the initial impact.”
AIS believes that these sessions are an important piece in a larger strategy to address a wide range of problems tied to immigration status.
“ When African immigrants and refugees face problems related to their legal or immigration status, their housing, health, job, education and other aspects of their lives are also affected”, said Abdullah Kiatamba, executive director of AIS.” That is why everybody wins when African immigrants and refugees gain greater access to a wide range of relevant legal resources.”
He said the just concluded session is the first, “of the journey,” his organization has embarked upon, and appealed to African immigrants and refugees to volunteer and participate in programs and services that are critical to their aspirations.
Noble Fahnbulleh, AIS’ volunteer and technology coordinator, said, “Linking African immigrants and refugees to resources is critical to our work at AIS.”
He meanwhile requested participants to provide AIS with feedback and suggestions on how to make future sessions more effective.
Earlier, Rev. Vandyke Noah of the Redemption Center, expressed appreciation for the session, because, “our people need this kind of opportunity to address their doubts and concerns.”
Established in 2005 and reactivated in 2009, AIS works to empower African immigrants and refugees to integrate into mainstream communities and to increase their participation in civic life.
AIS is at www.aisusa.org
Wednesday, December 22, 2010
African Farmers Displaced as Investors Move In
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/22/world/africa/22mali.html?_r=1&emc=tnt&tntemail1=y
By NEIL MacFARQUHAR
Published: December 21, 2010
SOUMOUNI, Mali — The half-dozen strangers who descended on this remote West African village brought its hand-to-mouth farmers alarming news: their humble fields, tilled from one generation to the next, were now controlled by Libya's leader, Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi, and the farmers would all have to leave.
"They told us this would be the last rainy season for us to cultivate our fields; after that, they will level all the houses and take the land," said Mama Keita, 73, the leader of this village veiled behind dense, thorny scrubland. "We were told that Qaddafi owns this land."
Across Africa and the developing world, a new global land rush is gobbling up large expanses of arable land. Despite their ageless traditions, stunned villagers are discovering that African governments typically own their land and have been leasing it, often at bargain prices, to private investors and foreign governments for decades to come.
Organizations like the United Nations and the World Bank say the practice, if done equitably, could help feed the growing global population by introducing large-scale commercial farming to places without it.
But others condemn the deals as neocolonial land grabs that destroy villages, uproot tens of thousands of farmers and create a volatile mass of landless poor. Making matters worse, they contend, much of the food is bound for wealthier nations.
"The food security of the country concerned must be first and foremost in everybody's mind," said Kofi Annan, the former United Nations secretary general, now working on the issue of African agriculture. "Otherwise it is straightforward exploitation and it won't work. We have seen a scramble for Africa before. I don't think we want to see a second scramble of that kind."
A World Bank study released in September tallied farmland deals covering at least 110 million acres — the size of California and West Virginia combined — announced during the first 11 months of 2009 alone. More than 70 percent of those deals were for land in Africa, with Sudan, Mozambique and Ethiopia among those nations transferring millions of acres to investors.
Before 2008, the global average for such deals was less than 10 million acres per year, the report said. But the food crisis that spring, which set off riots in at least a dozen countries, prompted the spree. The prospect of future scarcity attracted both wealthy governments lacking the arable land needed to feed their own people and hedge funds drawn to a dwindling commodity.
"You see interest in land acquisition continuing at a very high level," said Klaus Deininger, the World Bank economist who wrote the report, taking many figures from a Web site run by Grain, an advocacy organization, because governments would not reveal the agreements. "Clearly, this is not over."
The report, while generally supportive of the investments, detailed mixed results. Foreign aid for agriculture has dwindled from about 20 percent of all aid in 1980 to about 5 percent now, creating a need for other investment to bolster production.
But many investments appear to be pure speculation that leaves land fallow, the report found. Farmers have been displaced without compensation, land has been leased well below value, those evicted end up encroaching on parkland and the new ventures have created far fewer jobs than promised, it said.
The breathtaking scope of some deals galvanizes opponents. In Madagascar, a deal that would have handed over almost half the country's arable land to a South Korean conglomerate helped crystallize opposition to an already unpopular president and contributed to his overthrow in 2009.
People have been pushed off land in countries like Ethiopia, Uganda, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Liberia and Zambia. It is not even uncommon for investors to arrive on land that was supposedly empty. In Mozambique, one investment company discovered an entire village with its own post office on what had been described as vacant land, said Olivier De Schutter, the United Nations food rapporteur.
In Mali, about three million acres along the Niger River and its inland delta are controlled by a state-run trust called the Office du Niger. In nearly 80 years, only 200,000 acres of the land have been irrigated, so the government considers new investors a boon.
"Even if you gave the population there the land, they do not have the means to develop it, nor does the state," said Abou Sow, the executive director of Office du Niger.
He listed countries whose governments or private sectors have already made investments or expressed interest: China and South Africa in sugar cane; Libya and Saudi Arabia in rice; and Canada, Belgium, France, South Korea, India, the Netherlands and multinational organizations like the West African Development Bank.
In all, Mr. Sow said about 60 deals covered at least 600,000 acres in Mali, although some organizations said more than 1.5 million acres had been committed. He argued that the bulk of the investors were Malians growing food for the domestic market. But he acknowledged that outside investors like the Libyans, who are leasing 250,000 acres here, are expected to ship their rice, beef and other agricultural products home.
"What advantage would they gain by investing in Mali if they could not even take their own production?" Mr. Sow said.
As with many of the deals, the money Mali might earn from the leases remains murky. The agreement signed with the Libyans grants them the land for at least 50 years simply in exchange for developing it.
"The Libyans want to produce rice for Libyans, not for Malians," said Mamadou Goita, the director of a nonprofit research organization in Mali. He and other opponents contend that the government is privatizing a scarce national resource without improving the domestic food supply, and that politics, not economics, are driving events because Mali wants to improve ties with Libya and others.
The huge tracts granted to private investors are many years from production. But officials noted that Libya already spent more than $50 million building a 24-mile canal and road, constructed by a Chinese company, benefiting local villages.
Every farmer affected, Mr. Sow added, including as many as 20,000 affected by the Libyan project, will receive compensation. "If they lose a single tree, we will pay them the value of that tree," he said.
But anger and distrust run high. In a rally last month, hundreds of farmers demanded that the government halt such deals until they get a voice. Several said that they had been beaten and jailed by soldiers, but that they were ready to die to keep their land.
"The famine will start very soon," shouted Ibrahima Coulibaly, the head of the coordinating committee for farmer organizations in Mali. "If people do not stand up for their rights, they will lose everything!"
"Ante!" members of the crowd shouted in Bamanankan, the local language. "We refuse!"
Kassoum Denon, the regional head for the Office du Niger, accused the Malian opponents of being paid by Western groups that are ideologically opposed to large-scale farming.
"We are responsible for developing Mali," he said. "If the civil society does not agree with the way we are doing it, they can go jump in a lake."
The looming problem, experts noted, is that Mali remains an agrarian society. Kicking farmers off the land with no alternative livelihood risks flooding the capital, Bamako, with unemployed, rootless people who could become a political problem.
"The land is a natural resource that 70 percent of the population uses to survive," said Kalfa Sanogo, an economist at the United Nations Development Program in Mali. "You cannot just push 70 percent of the population off the land, nor can you say they can just become agriculture workers." In a different approach, a $224 million American project will help about 800 Malian farmers each acquire title to 12 acres of newly cleared land, protecting them against being kicked off.
Jon C. Anderson, the project director, argued that no country has developed economically with a large percentage of its population on farms. Small farmers with titles will either succeed or have to sell the land to finance another life, he said, though critics have said villagers will still be displaced.
"We want a revolutionized relationship between the farmer and the state, one where the farmer is more in charge," Mr. Anderson said.
Soumouni sits about 20 miles from the nearest road, with wandering cattle herders in their distinctive pointed straw hats offering directions like, "Bear right at the termite mound with the hole in it."
Sekou Traoré, 69, a village elder, was dumbfounded when government officials said last year that Libya now controlled his land and began measuring the fields. He had always considered it his own, passed down from grandfather to father to son.
"All we want before they break our houses and take our fields is for them to show us the new houses where we will live, and the new fields where we will work," he said at the rally last month.
"We are all so afraid," he said of the village's 2,229 residents. "We will be the victims of this situation, we are sure of that."
Monday, December 20, 2010
Haitians in U.S. Brace for Deportations to Resume
By KIRK SEMPLE
December 19, 2010
December 19, 2010
he Obama administration has been quietly moving to resume deportations of Haitians for the first time since the earthquake last January. But in New York's Haitian diaspora, the reaction has been far from muted, including frustration and fear among immigrants and anger from their advocates, who say that an influx of deportees will only add to the country's woes.
Haiti is racked today by a cholera epidemic and political turmoil, as well as the tortuously slow reconstruction.
"I don't think Haiti can handle more challenges than what it has right now," said Mathieu Eugene, a Haitian-American member of the New York City Council. "The earthquake, the cholera, the election — everything's upside down in Haiti."
Federal officials suspended deportations to Haiti immediately after the Jan. 12 earthquake. In addition, a special immigration status, sometimes granted to foreigners who are unable to return safely to their home countries because of armed conflict or natural disasters, was extended to Haitians in the United States, allowing them to remain temporarily and work. Many Haitians, including some with criminal convictions, were also released from detention centers across the country.
But in recent weeks, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, an arm of the Department of Homeland Security, has begun rounding up Haitian immigrants again, including some who had been released earlier this year, immigration lawyers said. On Dec. 10, the agency disclosed, in response to questions from The Associated Press, that it would resume deportations by mid-January.
Immigration officials said they would deport only Haitians who had been convicted of crimes and had finished serving their sentences.
Barbara Gonzalez, a spokeswoman for Immigration and Customs Enforcement, said in a statement last week that the agency was deciding whom to deport in a manner "consistent with our domestic immigration enforcement priorities," but did not elaborate. The Obama administration has said it is focusing immigration enforcement efforts on catching and deporting immigrants who have been convicted of the most serious crimes or who pose a threat to national security.
Haitians who have been granted the special immigration status, known as temporary protected status, will continue to be shielded from deportation, officials said. The protection was granted for 18 months and is set to expire in mid-July; Haitians who have committed felonies or at least two misdemeanors were not eligible for the program.
Immigration officials did not say how many people they planned to send back to Haiti when deportations resume next month, but they revealed last week that 351 Haitians were in detention.
Mr. Eugene and other Haitian community leaders in New York said that despite the limits of the government's plan, the city's Haitians were bracing for a resumption of wider deportations.
"The people in the community are worried because they don't know what the next target population is going to be," Mr. Eugene said.
Ricot Dupuy, the manager of Radio Soleil, a Creole-language station in Flatbush, Brooklyn, said he had been "flooded with calls" about the plans for deportations.
Immigration officials would not say when they planned to resume deportations of noncriminals. The Haitian government has apparently not commented on Washington's decision to resume deportations. The consul general in New York did not respond to phone messages, and the Haitian Embassy did not respond to calls and e-mails.
Nearly a year after the quake, an estimated 1.3 million Haitians are still displaced from their homes. The cholera outbreak has killed more than 2,500 people and hospitalized 58,000 more, according to the Haitian government. And disputes over the preliminary results of the presidential election last month have escalated into violence.
Advocacy groups have been lobbying the Obama administration to postpone the deportations. The Center for Constitutional Rights, based in New York, wrote President Obama to say that their resumption would endanger the deportees' lives. The Haitian government often detains criminals deported from abroad, the organization said; because cholera is quickly spreading through that country's detention system, the policy "would end up being a death sentence for many," it said.
An official of Immigration and Customs Enforcement said the State Department had been working with Haitian officials "to ensure that the resumption of removals is conducted in a safe, humane manner with minimal disruption to ongoing rebuilding efforts."
Among those who have been rounded up in the past several weeks is a 42-year-old odd-jobs man who was detained last week by immigration officials in Manhattan and was being held on Friday in a jail in Hudson County, N.J., said his lawyer, Rachel Salazar, who asked that her client's name be withheld because she did not want to jeopardize his case.
The man, who immigrated to the United States as a legal permanent resident in 1990 and has a 5-year-old child, was last detained in February because of three past felony convictions, including for assault, petty larceny and attempted robbery, for which he had served time. But he was released in May, during the moratorium on deportations, Ms. Salazar said.
The detainee said he was being held with about 40 other Haitians, the lawyer said, and he had not been told when the government planned to deport him.
Julia Preston and Deborah Sontag contributed reporting. (http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/20/nyregion/20haitians.html?tntemail1=y&_r=1&emc=tnt&pagewanted=print)
Wednesday, December 15, 2010
Census Bureau reports 1 in 3 people with Somali ancestry in US lives in Minnesota
http://www.newser.com/article/d9k3vuh01/census-bureau-reports-1-in-3-people-with-somali-ancestry-in-us-lives-in-minnesota.html
ASSOCIATED PRESS | Dec 14, 2010 5:35 PM CST in US
Nearly one in three people with Somali ancestry in the United States now live in the Minnesota, which has the largest concentration in the country, according to government data released Tuesday.
The latest report from the U.S. Census Bureau's American Community Survey found about 25,000 of the 85,700 Somalis in the U.S. live in Minnesota. Ohio, Washington and California also had large populations of Somalis, but the survey data found no more than 10,500 of them in any state except Minnesota.
There, the Somali population is growing, Minnesota State Demographer Tom Gillaspy said. The 2000 Census pegged it at 11,164.
The proof is on the streets of the Twin Cities, said Hashi Shafi of the Somali Action Alliance in Minneapolis.
Minneapolis Public Schools reported 1,345 of the district's students spoke Somali at home during the 2008-2009 school year, and Shafi said the number is growing every year.
He remembers a time when there were only two mosques in Minneapolis _ now he can point to four on one block.
"When you come on Friday, they are all full," he said.
Shafi said Somalis often estimate their own population in Minnesota at about 70,000, but he didn't know what that was based on. He has worked with the Census Bureau to overcome cultural and language barriers to get more Somalis counted.
"People don't know why this is important," he said, noting that government funding is often based on census data.
Gillaspy said the federal estimate, which includes people born in Somalia and their descendants, was in line with the state's, although based on different sources. The information released Tuesday came from five years of surveys, and Gillaspy said it provides the best look at small population groups and small geographic areas since the 2000 Census.
The American Community Survey is sent to about one in 10 households each year. It includes questions on ancestry, national origin and many other traits that are no longer asked about in the census done every 10 years.
The exodus from Somalia began after the Horn of Africa nation fell into lawlessness in 1991. Thousands of Somalis began to settle in the U.S., usually in cities with nonprofit groups that would help them.
In many communities _including Minneapolis, Seattle, San Diego, and Columbus, Ohio _ the population has grown and prospered, with Somali-owned shops and mosques proliferating. Somali translators work in the schools, the children of refugees go on to college and community leaders become public figures.
But there have been worrying signs about the second generation, with reports out of Minnesota of Somali gangs running interstate prostitution rings and investigations of young men going to fight with al-Shabab, which seeks to establish an Islamic state in Somalia.
Ahmed Sahid, president of Somali Family Services of San Diego, said the local population there was swelling with a "second migration" driven by Somalis leaving cold parts of the United States.
The government estimates there are 5,000 Somalis in the San Diego area, but Sahid said estimates are often wrong, and he thought there were 15,000 to 20,000.
"A lot of people don't know how to report themselves," he said last week. "I don't think the Census will show a true figure of the population."
The population is growing in Seattle, too, with the survey estimating it at about 8,600.
Bernardo Ruiz, manager of community and family partnerships for the Seattle public schools, said four years ago, Somali was the fourth most common foreign language spoken at home by students in the schools. Three years ago, it was third. Now, it's second after Spanish with, by the district's count, 1,680 students.
In response to the growth, the district has created a variety of support services including bilingual tutoring and a Saturday school that teaches English, math and life skills. It also hired Mohamed Roble, a Somali elder who works with families from Somalia and other East African countries.
Roble said he sees a second wave immigration into the area from Minneapolis and other Somali communities around the United States. He said Somalis were coming to Seattle partly to escape violence in other American cities.
"We don't have a lot of gangs like Minnesota or San Diego," he said.
Tuesday, December 14, 2010
Poland swears in Nigerian Godson as first black MP
14 December 2010 Last updated at 06:18 ET
John Abraham Godson, a Polish citizen born and raised in Nigeria, has been sworn in as the first black member of Poland's parliament.
Mr Godson had served as a councillor in the city of Lodz before taking up a parliamentary seat, vacated by a party colleague after local elections.
His entry into parliament has created a media stir in the mainly white country.
He came to Poland in the 1990s, opening an English-language school and working as a pastor in a Protestant church.
He has since married a Polish woman and the couple have four children.
Beaten up twice
A member of the centre-right Civic Platform party, he was appointed to the seat vacated by party colleague Hanna Zdanowskaafter after she became mayor of Lodz.
It is still quite rare to see black people even in the Polish capital Warsaw, Poland's most cosmopolitan city, the BBC's Adam Easton reports.
Racism is still a problem in Poland, where it is not uncommon for well-educated people to make racist jokes, our correspondent says.
Mr Godson was beaten up twice in the early 1990s but he says attitudes to black people in Poland are changing for the better, particularly since the country joined the EU six years ago.
Speaking earlier to Polish radio, Mr Godson said: "I am from Lodz, I will live here, I want to die here and I want to be buried here."
John Abraham Godson, a Polish citizen born and raised in Nigeria, has been sworn in as the first black member of Poland's parliament.
Mr Godson had served as a councillor in the city of Lodz before taking up a parliamentary seat, vacated by a party colleague after local elections.
His entry into parliament has created a media stir in the mainly white country.
He came to Poland in the 1990s, opening an English-language school and working as a pastor in a Protestant church.
He has since married a Polish woman and the couple have four children.
Beaten up twice
A member of the centre-right Civic Platform party, he was appointed to the seat vacated by party colleague Hanna Zdanowskaafter after she became mayor of Lodz.
It is still quite rare to see black people even in the Polish capital Warsaw, Poland's most cosmopolitan city, the BBC's Adam Easton reports.
Racism is still a problem in Poland, where it is not uncommon for well-educated people to make racist jokes, our correspondent says.
Mr Godson was beaten up twice in the early 1990s but he says attitudes to black people in Poland are changing for the better, particularly since the country joined the EU six years ago.
Speaking earlier to Polish radio, Mr Godson said: "I am from Lodz, I will live here, I want to die here and I want to be buried here."
CARIBBEAN GROUP PUSHES FOR MORE POLITICAL INVOLVEMENT
Written by CAROLYN GUNISS
Special to South Florida Times
MIAMI GARDENS — Worried about the direction the set-to-change U.S. Congress will take on immigration and other hot-button issues, a group of professionals and retirees from English-speaking Caribbean countries recently came together and sounded a rallying cry.
There were no bullhorns, crudely painted signs and people milling in the street.
In the backyard of Evrol and Bernice Adams in Miami Gardens on a recent Sunday evening, the loosely formed group, called Caribbean Action Team (CARAT), staged its Second Caribbean Mobilization Rally. Its purpose: to advocate, agitate and activate people who hail from West Indian countries, especially when it comes to the political process.
The group said it is not motivated by the looming 2012 elections, though it showed plenty of concern about the results of the 2010 mid-term general elections which shifted the balance of power in the U.S. House of Representatives to Republican control. The Democrats barely managed to hold on to the Senate.
Rather, CARAT is more concerned with the lame-duck Congress and new policies that could arise and affect the immigrant community.
One issue in its sights is the Development, Relief and Education for Alien Minors Act -- the DREAM Act -- first introduced in 2001. The measure, supported by some Republicans and Democrats, allows certain undocumented students, who came to the US before age 16 with their parents, to obtain legal permanent status. They would be granted permanent status only if, over a number of years, they successfully complete several conditions, including graduating from college or serving in the US military.
The legislation, which would affect an untold amount of Caribbean children, is expected to be voted on by the Senate before it goes on holiday. President Barack Obama wants the bill signed by the new year.
Opponents say that Dream Act is amnesty masquerading in a different form and that the students will take resources away from law-abiding American children.
To combat an ongoing smear campaign against the act, Marlon Hill, partner in the law firm delancyhill, and a CARAT member, said information about the proposed law and its potential impact on West Indians will be given to community leaders for distribution to residents.
Hill said this is the sort of effort CARAT plans to mobilize in the future.
“The key thing is to act on issues that affect the community at large,” Hill said. “No one has a monopoly on ideas.”
CARAT held its first rally two weeks before the Nov. 2 mid-term elections. Jerry Nagee, a former journalist, said she was motivated to form the group after receiving many calls over the years to help people choose candidates for elections.
Nagee is concerned that many people from the English-speaking Caribbean come to America and blend in and become silent bystanders, especially in the political process.
A big part of the problem is the way election of candidates differs from what happens in Caribbean countries, she said. In those places, there are no judges to elect, for example, and candidates hold huge rallies to introduce themselves to voters. In America, she said, candidates present themselves to voting blocs. She said she had to beg candidates to advertise in Caribbean newspapers.
At the rally held Nov. 28, when Hill handed out the election results, Marcia Magnus, a Jamaican professor of nutrition at Florida International University, asked if he had Kleenex to go with them.
Hill discussed how some of the key Democratic races, such as Alex Sink’s bid to become governor, sank because of poor voter turnout.
“Sadly, too many of us stayed home,” Hill said. “People did not call their people. Everyone is responsible.”
Hill wants CARAT to concentrate on building a network of people to call during elections and at other times. He asked attendees to make a list of people with whom they interact and provide them with relevant information.
Hill also wants to politically educate college-age students and young people, such as Kamilah Ragoo, 27, who attended the rally with her father, Dave Francis Ragoo, the evening’s master of ceremonies.
Many impassioned speeches had the same theme: a need for people to educate their network of family and friends.
Magnus, who is a member of the Caribbean American Politically Active Citizens, publisher of the Miami-Dade and Broward Voters’ Guide, was concerned that CARAT doesn’t have an action plan. She suggested writing a letter and sending a picture to Lieutenant Governor-elect Jennifer Carroll, introducing themselves as a group of concerned citizens.
“We can talk about what is, what was and what should be, but the problem of misinformation and no information are too severe for us to just talk,” Magnus said.
For more information on the Caribbean Action Team, call Marlon Hill at 786-777-0184.
JAMES FORBES/FOR SOUTH FLORIDA TIMES. POLITICAL TALK: Attorney Marlon Hill speaks about the Nov. 2 mid-term elections during the second Caribbean Mobilization Rally held by the Caribbean Action Team at a Miami Gardens backyard on Nov. 28.
Special to South Florida Times
MIAMI GARDENS — Worried about the direction the set-to-change U.S. Congress will take on immigration and other hot-button issues, a group of professionals and retirees from English-speaking Caribbean countries recently came together and sounded a rallying cry.
There were no bullhorns, crudely painted signs and people milling in the street.
In the backyard of Evrol and Bernice Adams in Miami Gardens on a recent Sunday evening, the loosely formed group, called Caribbean Action Team (CARAT), staged its Second Caribbean Mobilization Rally. Its purpose: to advocate, agitate and activate people who hail from West Indian countries, especially when it comes to the political process.
The group said it is not motivated by the looming 2012 elections, though it showed plenty of concern about the results of the 2010 mid-term general elections which shifted the balance of power in the U.S. House of Representatives to Republican control. The Democrats barely managed to hold on to the Senate.
Rather, CARAT is more concerned with the lame-duck Congress and new policies that could arise and affect the immigrant community.
One issue in its sights is the Development, Relief and Education for Alien Minors Act -- the DREAM Act -- first introduced in 2001. The measure, supported by some Republicans and Democrats, allows certain undocumented students, who came to the US before age 16 with their parents, to obtain legal permanent status. They would be granted permanent status only if, over a number of years, they successfully complete several conditions, including graduating from college or serving in the US military.
The legislation, which would affect an untold amount of Caribbean children, is expected to be voted on by the Senate before it goes on holiday. President Barack Obama wants the bill signed by the new year.
Opponents say that Dream Act is amnesty masquerading in a different form and that the students will take resources away from law-abiding American children.
To combat an ongoing smear campaign against the act, Marlon Hill, partner in the law firm delancyhill, and a CARAT member, said information about the proposed law and its potential impact on West Indians will be given to community leaders for distribution to residents.
Hill said this is the sort of effort CARAT plans to mobilize in the future.
“The key thing is to act on issues that affect the community at large,” Hill said. “No one has a monopoly on ideas.”
CARAT held its first rally two weeks before the Nov. 2 mid-term elections. Jerry Nagee, a former journalist, said she was motivated to form the group after receiving many calls over the years to help people choose candidates for elections.
Nagee is concerned that many people from the English-speaking Caribbean come to America and blend in and become silent bystanders, especially in the political process.
A big part of the problem is the way election of candidates differs from what happens in Caribbean countries, she said. In those places, there are no judges to elect, for example, and candidates hold huge rallies to introduce themselves to voters. In America, she said, candidates present themselves to voting blocs. She said she had to beg candidates to advertise in Caribbean newspapers.
At the rally held Nov. 28, when Hill handed out the election results, Marcia Magnus, a Jamaican professor of nutrition at Florida International University, asked if he had Kleenex to go with them.
Hill discussed how some of the key Democratic races, such as Alex Sink’s bid to become governor, sank because of poor voter turnout.
“Sadly, too many of us stayed home,” Hill said. “People did not call their people. Everyone is responsible.”
Hill wants CARAT to concentrate on building a network of people to call during elections and at other times. He asked attendees to make a list of people with whom they interact and provide them with relevant information.
Hill also wants to politically educate college-age students and young people, such as Kamilah Ragoo, 27, who attended the rally with her father, Dave Francis Ragoo, the evening’s master of ceremonies.
Many impassioned speeches had the same theme: a need for people to educate their network of family and friends.
Magnus, who is a member of the Caribbean American Politically Active Citizens, publisher of the Miami-Dade and Broward Voters’ Guide, was concerned that CARAT doesn’t have an action plan. She suggested writing a letter and sending a picture to Lieutenant Governor-elect Jennifer Carroll, introducing themselves as a group of concerned citizens.
“We can talk about what is, what was and what should be, but the problem of misinformation and no information are too severe for us to just talk,” Magnus said.
For more information on the Caribbean Action Team, call Marlon Hill at 786-777-0184.
JAMES FORBES/FOR SOUTH FLORIDA TIMES. POLITICAL TALK: Attorney Marlon Hill speaks about the Nov. 2 mid-term elections during the second Caribbean Mobilization Rally held by the Caribbean Action Team at a Miami Gardens backyard on Nov. 28.
South Sudanese to vote in Arlington
Posted Dec 12, 2010 @ 04:00 PM
Last update Dec 13, 2010 @ 11:11 AM
From 1956 to 2005, with a brief hiatus in the 1970s, the people of South Sudan fought a war against Sudan’s Khartoum regime in which two million South Sudanese died and another four million were displaced.
Between now and Jan. 9 the mostly black and Christian South will be voting on whether to secede from the union with the mostly Arab and Muslim North that was imposed on them more than a century ago by the British colonial power. Most observers believe that when the votes are counted South and North Sudan will be two separate countries.
The peace agreement brokered by the Bush administration in 2005 ended the civil war and set the referendum on secession that will now be taking place. Sudanese refugees living in other countries, including the United States, are permitted to vote.
The International Organization for Migration, an intergovernmental organization that implements the world’s orderly refugee movement, is overseeing the vote here and in other diaspora countries. Arlington has been selected as one of several American registration and voting sites.
The South Sudanese Community Center, where the voting will be held, is home to The Sudanese Education Fund, which assists the Sudanese refugee community with educational stipends, tutoring, women’s programs, childhood enrichment programs and other services.
Last update Dec 13, 2010 @ 11:11 AM
From 1956 to 2005, with a brief hiatus in the 1970s, the people of South Sudan fought a war against Sudan’s Khartoum regime in which two million South Sudanese died and another four million were displaced.
Between now and Jan. 9 the mostly black and Christian South will be voting on whether to secede from the union with the mostly Arab and Muslim North that was imposed on them more than a century ago by the British colonial power. Most observers believe that when the votes are counted South and North Sudan will be two separate countries.
The peace agreement brokered by the Bush administration in 2005 ended the civil war and set the referendum on secession that will now be taking place. Sudanese refugees living in other countries, including the United States, are permitted to vote.
The International Organization for Migration, an intergovernmental organization that implements the world’s orderly refugee movement, is overseeing the vote here and in other diaspora countries. Arlington has been selected as one of several American registration and voting sites.
The South Sudanese Community Center, where the voting will be held, is home to The Sudanese Education Fund, which assists the Sudanese refugee community with educational stipends, tutoring, women’s programs, childhood enrichment programs and other services.
Israel to send 150 illegals back to Sudan: report
13 DECEMBER 2010 - 22H03
AFP - Israel on Monday was to deport 150 Sudanese who entered the country illegally in search of work, the private Channel Two television station reported.
It said they would leave aboard a chartered aircraft for a third country before then being repatriated, without specifying the transit destination.
The illegal immigrants, who had agreed to leave voluntarily, would be given "a small sum of money to start a new life in their home country," the broadcaster reported.
It said the repatriation was being carried out by the foreign and interior ministries "with the support of the United Nations."
On November 38, the Israeli government approved the creation of a detention centre near its southern border with Egypt to house thousands of illegal immigrants from Africa seeking work in the Jewish state.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's office said in a statement the cabinet endorsed the plan for the camp as a matter of necessity, as economic migrants were arriving at an average rate of more than 1,200 each month.
"This wave is growing and it threatens the jobs of Israelis. It is changing the face of the state and we have to stop it," Netanyahu said before a weekly cabinet meeting.
Israel has also begun constructing a 250-kilometre (155-mile) fence along the Egyptian border aimed at stopping the influx of migrants.
The barrier is expected to cost 365 million dollars and will incorporate unspecified technological measures.
The Israel-Egypt border has become a major transit route for economic migrants and asylum-seekers, many from Sudan and Eritrea.
AFP - Israel on Monday was to deport 150 Sudanese who entered the country illegally in search of work, the private Channel Two television station reported.
It said they would leave aboard a chartered aircraft for a third country before then being repatriated, without specifying the transit destination.
The illegal immigrants, who had agreed to leave voluntarily, would be given "a small sum of money to start a new life in their home country," the broadcaster reported.
It said the repatriation was being carried out by the foreign and interior ministries "with the support of the United Nations."
On November 38, the Israeli government approved the creation of a detention centre near its southern border with Egypt to house thousands of illegal immigrants from Africa seeking work in the Jewish state.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's office said in a statement the cabinet endorsed the plan for the camp as a matter of necessity, as economic migrants were arriving at an average rate of more than 1,200 each month.
"This wave is growing and it threatens the jobs of Israelis. It is changing the face of the state and we have to stop it," Netanyahu said before a weekly cabinet meeting.
Israel has also begun constructing a 250-kilometre (155-mile) fence along the Egyptian border aimed at stopping the influx of migrants.
The barrier is expected to cost 365 million dollars and will incorporate unspecified technological measures.
The Israel-Egypt border has become a major transit route for economic migrants and asylum-seekers, many from Sudan and Eritrea.
Sunday, December 5, 2010
African Girls Held as Slaves in N.J.
---
Mosi A. Ifatunji, Ph.D. Candidate
ASA Pre-Doctoral Fellow
University of Illinois at Chicago
Department of Sociology (MC 312)
1007 West Harrison Street
Chicago, Illinois 60607-7140
Call/Text: (312) 607-2825
Email: mosi@Ifatunji.com
Twitter: @ifatunji
Monday, November 8, 2010
New South African Immigration Laws Could Cause Humanitarian ‘Catastrophe,’ say Activists
Darren Taylor | Johannesburg, South Africa
08 November 2010
Many human rights monitors are convinced the South African government is committed to expelling as many Zimbabweans as possible, as soon as possible.
“Their harsh words recently seem to prove this. The announcement that they’re going to be deporting people next year is one that gives them the opportunity to deport very large numbers of people,” says Braam Hanekom, the founder of Cape Town-based refugee rights group, People Against Suffering, Suppression, Oppression, and Poverty.
New immigration legislation says only Zimbabwean migrants who the South African authorities establish are working, studying or owning businesses in South Africa, and who apply for revised residence permits by December 31 and are granted the documents, can remain in the country legally.
“We expect everyone, whether you are a foreigner or a South African, to abide by our laws…. And anyone who flouts the law will have to face the consequences,” says Jackie McKay, chief of immigration and one of the Home Affairs officials driving the state’s “Zimbabwean Regularization Project.”
The “consequences” McKay speaks of are arrest and expulsion from South Africa of all Zimbabweans who do not have the “correct” residence papers. “If you are in the provinces you are deported through the point of entry nearest to your province. If you are arrested elsewhere you will be taken to our holding center at Lindela (near Krugersdorp in Gauteng province) and from there you will be transported back to Zimbabwe,” he explains.
Up until now, the South African authorities have allowed “illegal” Zimbabweans to remain in the country under a “special dispensation.” This policy – widely praised by international human rights advocates – took into account the intense political and economic instability in Zimbabwe.
But the revised regulations governing migrants from the country north of the border, where unemployment is more than 80 percent, have reversed this policy.
Hundreds of Zimbabweans cross into South Africa daily
“All indications so far are that the government of South Africa has completely lost patience with illegal immigrants, and Zimbabweans in particular,” says Hanekom.
McKay says South Africa indeed has a “huge problem” with illegal immigration. “Things can’t go on like this, with people just pouring over the border without consequence,” he states.
The latest United Nations Refugee Agency Global Report says South Africa continues to receive the largest number of asylum applications in the world, with 222,000 applications submitted in 2009 alone.
According to analysis by South Africa’s main opposition party, the Democratic Alliance, 300 to 400 Zimbabweans arrive in South Africa every day. The International Organization for Migration estimates there are currently up to two million illegal Zimbabwean immigrants in the country. But Gabriel Shumba, a lawyer and director of the Zimbabwe Exiles Forum, says this figure’s “far too conservative…. I’d say it’s about double that.”
Amid the clamor of hundreds of thousands of people, mostly Africans, who are trying to settle in Africa’s strongest economy, McKay says South Africa must protect its interests. “Anywhere you go in the world, deportation is a way of controlling illegal immigration. That said, this is a documentation process, not a deportation process,” he says.
Hanekom responds, “We will try our best to hold the South African government to its word that this new process is a means to document Zimbabwean immigrants, rather than to get rid of most of them.”
Into the lion’s den
Tara Polzer, of Wits University’s Forced Migration Studies Program, says South Africa’s stricter policy regarding Zimbabweans will have several “very negative” effects on some migrants.
“That does include the potential for quite a few people being arrested and deported without really having had the chance of duly getting into the systems that are being offered, just because of bureaucratic issues, because of timing issues,” she explains.
“At this stage, a lot of Zimbabweans will be deported next year….There will be mass deportations,” says Austin Moyo, the leader in South Africa of the MDC, one of the parties that shares leadership in Zimbabwe’s government.
Shumba’s convinced this will be “a human rights and humanitarian catastrophe….Some (migrants) do not even have homes or jobs to go back to.”
The lawyer says other Zimbabweans who don’t qualify for the new residence documents fled to South Africa after suffering political persecution. Deporting them, Hanekom maintains, will be their “death sentence.”
Shumba agrees, saying, “It will be like throwing them into the lion’s den because they hold political opinions that are at variance with (President Robert Mugabe’s) ZANU-PF (party) and these people will be targeted – myself, for example.”
Monitors say in advance of a proposed election next year, heightened tension between the two main players in Zimbabwe’s unity government, Mr. Mugabe and the MDC’s Morgan Tsvangirai, sets the scene for intensified violence in the near future.
“With what we have seen during the constitutional outreach process, violence is going to be on the increase. It can even be dangerously higher than 2008,” says Shumba.
“The reality is that if there’s another election in Zimbabwe there’s no guarantee for the Zimbabwean people that they won’t be beaten up, they won’t be assaulted, they won’t be killed; that they won’t suffer the same kind of violence they suffered in (election) 2008,” says well-known Zimbabwean academic, Elinor Sisulu.
New policy won’t stop illegal immigration
McKay says he can’t comment on Zimbabweans’ fears of being forced back to their unstable homeland.
“All that I will say is that we have laws in South Africa. Our mandate as the Department of Home Affairs and more specifically the Department’s immigration section is to regularize movement into South Africa, and people need to have correct documentation for that. And that is internationally accepted. And that is what we will do, and that is what we will police,” he emphasizes.
Many Zimbabweans say if they’re deported, they’ll return to South Africa illegally as soon as possible. McKay says his government will respond by “stepping up military operations” on the border. “We believe that we will be doing enough to keep out people that want to enter South Africa illegally,” he says.
But Polzer says the South African authorities “just don’t have the capacity” to fully prevent illegal immigration from Zimbabwe. “The borders are so porous; even with all these extra army patrols, Zimbabweans are entering and leaving whenever they want and relatively few get caught,” she says.
According to Sisulu, “no matter what laws are made” migration from Zimbabwe to South Africa will continue for as long as Zimbabwe’s ravaged economy relies on US dollars and South African rands. “Where do people get access to that money, unless they work outside (of Zimbabwe)?” she asks.
Sisulu adds that illegal immigration will also carry on as long as there’s political violence in Zimbabwe. “The reality is that a fresh election is going to cause an outflow of people again (because of violence). The same people the South African government will deport are going to be heading back across the border to South Africa as soon as there’s another election.”
‘Genuine’ reform in Zimbabwe before deportations
Moyo says the MDC is advocating “a managed repatriation of Zimbabweans” living illegally in South Africa, rather than “a wave” of deportations. “We need foreign direct investment into Zimbabwe, to create fresh employment, which can absorb those people that are coming back into the country,” he says. “And that sort of big investment is going to take quite a long time, because the international community still has little confidence in Zimbabwe.”
Sisulu’s convinced the “real solution to uncontrolled Zimbabwean migration in South Africa is a genuine political solution in Zimbabwe which guarantees the security of the Zimbabwean people.”
When this happens, she maintains, “the natural consequence will be re-investment in Zimbabwe, and life will begin to improve for ordinary Zimbabweans. Such improvement on the ground will naturally stem the flow of migration into South Africa.”
Moyo also calls on South Africa to wait until there’s “true political reform” in Zimbabwe before deporting Zimbabwean migrants and to therefore extend its deadline for applications for new residence permits.
“We’ve got a pending election in Zimbabwe. We’re hoping that, because the next election will be run under a new constitution and a new electoral act and there will hopefully be credible international monitors, the election will be free and fair,” he says. “So we are saying to the South African government, at least wait until that election goes through.”
Only after the polls, says Moyo, will South Africa be in a position to make a “clear judgment” about whether or not it’s stable enough for Zimbabweans to return to their homeland.
If violence mars another Zimbabwean election, says Shumba, the South African authorities should suspend immigration reforms pertaining to Zimbabweans, and should exercise “leniency” with regard to Zimbabweans in South Africa illegally, “in the interests of basic human rights.”
But in the meantime, South Africa’s head of immigration is unmoved by all the controversy and comment surrounding the implications of the new policy.
Jackie McKay says both the Zimbabwean and the South African governments have agreed that all Zimbabweans in South Africa illegally “should now return home” and he has “no intention of backtracking” on this agreement.
08 November 2010
Many human rights monitors are convinced the South African government is committed to expelling as many Zimbabweans as possible, as soon as possible.
“Their harsh words recently seem to prove this. The announcement that they’re going to be deporting people next year is one that gives them the opportunity to deport very large numbers of people,” says Braam Hanekom, the founder of Cape Town-based refugee rights group, People Against Suffering, Suppression, Oppression, and Poverty.
New immigration legislation says only Zimbabwean migrants who the South African authorities establish are working, studying or owning businesses in South Africa, and who apply for revised residence permits by December 31 and are granted the documents, can remain in the country legally.
“We expect everyone, whether you are a foreigner or a South African, to abide by our laws…. And anyone who flouts the law will have to face the consequences,” says Jackie McKay, chief of immigration and one of the Home Affairs officials driving the state’s “Zimbabwean Regularization Project.”
The “consequences” McKay speaks of are arrest and expulsion from South Africa of all Zimbabweans who do not have the “correct” residence papers. “If you are in the provinces you are deported through the point of entry nearest to your province. If you are arrested elsewhere you will be taken to our holding center at Lindela (near Krugersdorp in Gauteng province) and from there you will be transported back to Zimbabwe,” he explains.
Up until now, the South African authorities have allowed “illegal” Zimbabweans to remain in the country under a “special dispensation.” This policy – widely praised by international human rights advocates – took into account the intense political and economic instability in Zimbabwe.
But the revised regulations governing migrants from the country north of the border, where unemployment is more than 80 percent, have reversed this policy.
Hundreds of Zimbabweans cross into South Africa daily
“All indications so far are that the government of South Africa has completely lost patience with illegal immigrants, and Zimbabweans in particular,” says Hanekom.
McKay says South Africa indeed has a “huge problem” with illegal immigration. “Things can’t go on like this, with people just pouring over the border without consequence,” he states.
The latest United Nations Refugee Agency Global Report says South Africa continues to receive the largest number of asylum applications in the world, with 222,000 applications submitted in 2009 alone.
According to analysis by South Africa’s main opposition party, the Democratic Alliance, 300 to 400 Zimbabweans arrive in South Africa every day. The International Organization for Migration estimates there are currently up to two million illegal Zimbabwean immigrants in the country. But Gabriel Shumba, a lawyer and director of the Zimbabwe Exiles Forum, says this figure’s “far too conservative…. I’d say it’s about double that.”
Amid the clamor of hundreds of thousands of people, mostly Africans, who are trying to settle in Africa’s strongest economy, McKay says South Africa must protect its interests. “Anywhere you go in the world, deportation is a way of controlling illegal immigration. That said, this is a documentation process, not a deportation process,” he says.
Hanekom responds, “We will try our best to hold the South African government to its word that this new process is a means to document Zimbabwean immigrants, rather than to get rid of most of them.”
Into the lion’s den
Tara Polzer, of Wits University’s Forced Migration Studies Program, says South Africa’s stricter policy regarding Zimbabweans will have several “very negative” effects on some migrants.
“That does include the potential for quite a few people being arrested and deported without really having had the chance of duly getting into the systems that are being offered, just because of bureaucratic issues, because of timing issues,” she explains.
“At this stage, a lot of Zimbabweans will be deported next year….There will be mass deportations,” says Austin Moyo, the leader in South Africa of the MDC, one of the parties that shares leadership in Zimbabwe’s government.
Shumba’s convinced this will be “a human rights and humanitarian catastrophe….Some (migrants) do not even have homes or jobs to go back to.”
The lawyer says other Zimbabweans who don’t qualify for the new residence documents fled to South Africa after suffering political persecution. Deporting them, Hanekom maintains, will be their “death sentence.”
Shumba agrees, saying, “It will be like throwing them into the lion’s den because they hold political opinions that are at variance with (President Robert Mugabe’s) ZANU-PF (party) and these people will be targeted – myself, for example.”
Monitors say in advance of a proposed election next year, heightened tension between the two main players in Zimbabwe’s unity government, Mr. Mugabe and the MDC’s Morgan Tsvangirai, sets the scene for intensified violence in the near future.
“With what we have seen during the constitutional outreach process, violence is going to be on the increase. It can even be dangerously higher than 2008,” says Shumba.
“The reality is that if there’s another election in Zimbabwe there’s no guarantee for the Zimbabwean people that they won’t be beaten up, they won’t be assaulted, they won’t be killed; that they won’t suffer the same kind of violence they suffered in (election) 2008,” says well-known Zimbabwean academic, Elinor Sisulu.
New policy won’t stop illegal immigration
McKay says he can’t comment on Zimbabweans’ fears of being forced back to their unstable homeland.
“All that I will say is that we have laws in South Africa. Our mandate as the Department of Home Affairs and more specifically the Department’s immigration section is to regularize movement into South Africa, and people need to have correct documentation for that. And that is internationally accepted. And that is what we will do, and that is what we will police,” he emphasizes.
Many Zimbabweans say if they’re deported, they’ll return to South Africa illegally as soon as possible. McKay says his government will respond by “stepping up military operations” on the border. “We believe that we will be doing enough to keep out people that want to enter South Africa illegally,” he says.
But Polzer says the South African authorities “just don’t have the capacity” to fully prevent illegal immigration from Zimbabwe. “The borders are so porous; even with all these extra army patrols, Zimbabweans are entering and leaving whenever they want and relatively few get caught,” she says.
According to Sisulu, “no matter what laws are made” migration from Zimbabwe to South Africa will continue for as long as Zimbabwe’s ravaged economy relies on US dollars and South African rands. “Where do people get access to that money, unless they work outside (of Zimbabwe)?” she asks.
Sisulu adds that illegal immigration will also carry on as long as there’s political violence in Zimbabwe. “The reality is that a fresh election is going to cause an outflow of people again (because of violence). The same people the South African government will deport are going to be heading back across the border to South Africa as soon as there’s another election.”
‘Genuine’ reform in Zimbabwe before deportations
Moyo says the MDC is advocating “a managed repatriation of Zimbabweans” living illegally in South Africa, rather than “a wave” of deportations. “We need foreign direct investment into Zimbabwe, to create fresh employment, which can absorb those people that are coming back into the country,” he says. “And that sort of big investment is going to take quite a long time, because the international community still has little confidence in Zimbabwe.”
Sisulu’s convinced the “real solution to uncontrolled Zimbabwean migration in South Africa is a genuine political solution in Zimbabwe which guarantees the security of the Zimbabwean people.”
When this happens, she maintains, “the natural consequence will be re-investment in Zimbabwe, and life will begin to improve for ordinary Zimbabweans. Such improvement on the ground will naturally stem the flow of migration into South Africa.”
Moyo also calls on South Africa to wait until there’s “true political reform” in Zimbabwe before deporting Zimbabwean migrants and to therefore extend its deadline for applications for new residence permits.
“We’ve got a pending election in Zimbabwe. We’re hoping that, because the next election will be run under a new constitution and a new electoral act and there will hopefully be credible international monitors, the election will be free and fair,” he says. “So we are saying to the South African government, at least wait until that election goes through.”
Only after the polls, says Moyo, will South Africa be in a position to make a “clear judgment” about whether or not it’s stable enough for Zimbabweans to return to their homeland.
If violence mars another Zimbabwean election, says Shumba, the South African authorities should suspend immigration reforms pertaining to Zimbabweans, and should exercise “leniency” with regard to Zimbabweans in South Africa illegally, “in the interests of basic human rights.”
But in the meantime, South Africa’s head of immigration is unmoved by all the controversy and comment surrounding the implications of the new policy.
Jackie McKay says both the Zimbabwean and the South African governments have agreed that all Zimbabweans in South Africa illegally “should now return home” and he has “no intention of backtracking” on this agreement.
Wednesday, November 3, 2010
African and Caribbean students often target of bullying, activist tells city panel
Wed, Oct. 27, 2010
By Kristen A. Graham
A growing population of African and Caribbean immigrant students in Southwest Philadelphia is often the target of racial teasing and violence in city public schools, a community activist told city officials Tuesday.
As an immigrant from Sierra Leone 30 years ago, Carol Bangura was teased and targeted, labeled a behavior problem, and kicked out of several schools.
"A lot of what the kids are experiencing now, I experienced years ago," Bangura said in testimony before the Philadelphia Commission on Human Relations. "It's time to stop."
The commission Tuesday held the 10th in a series of hearings on intergroup tension and violence in city schools. The meetings were prompted by racial violence at South Philadelphia High.
After the hearings, the commission will present a report to the district highlighting not just trouble spots, but also best practices.
Bangura said that while the Philadelphia School District had been cooperative and met with her on several occasions, violence against African and Caribbean students was still a problem. Students are picked on because of their accents, clothes, or even the way they smell, and little is done about it, according to Bangura.
Bullying, Bangura said, occurs every day, even in elementary school.
"There's a lot of physical violence, especially in the older kids," said Bangura, who runs the African Center for Education and Sustainability, a nonprofit that works with African students in Southwest Philadelphia.
The plight of African and Caribbean immigrant students is particularly tough because some come to the United States speaking English, and so don't qualify for special services. And because their skin is black, they get lumped in with the district's African American students, so it's tough to quantify them.
"These students, new immigrants, are left to sink or swim on their own," she said. "They're not given any services to get acclimated to a new educational system."
Still, Bangura said the district lately has been "very receptive" to the issues and is more aware of the problem.
The district recently hired a staffer who speaks multiple African dialects and French to work in the Southwest area. And Lucy Feria, deputy chief of multilingual curriculum and programs, said that the district is "much closer to looking to add" services such as tutoring, cultural sensitivity for teachers, and workshops for parents of African and Caribbean students.
Len Rieser, executive director of the nonprofit Education Law Center, said that in terms of language access services, "some schools do it well and some schools don't do it well. The struggle has been to create uniformity."
In the last few years, Rieser said, "I think they're concerned about language access, and they've taken some good steps recently."
By Kristen A. Graham
A growing population of African and Caribbean immigrant students in Southwest Philadelphia is often the target of racial teasing and violence in city public schools, a community activist told city officials Tuesday.
As an immigrant from Sierra Leone 30 years ago, Carol Bangura was teased and targeted, labeled a behavior problem, and kicked out of several schools.
"A lot of what the kids are experiencing now, I experienced years ago," Bangura said in testimony before the Philadelphia Commission on Human Relations. "It's time to stop."
The commission Tuesday held the 10th in a series of hearings on intergroup tension and violence in city schools. The meetings were prompted by racial violence at South Philadelphia High.
After the hearings, the commission will present a report to the district highlighting not just trouble spots, but also best practices.
Bangura said that while the Philadelphia School District had been cooperative and met with her on several occasions, violence against African and Caribbean students was still a problem. Students are picked on because of their accents, clothes, or even the way they smell, and little is done about it, according to Bangura.
Bullying, Bangura said, occurs every day, even in elementary school.
"There's a lot of physical violence, especially in the older kids," said Bangura, who runs the African Center for Education and Sustainability, a nonprofit that works with African students in Southwest Philadelphia.
The plight of African and Caribbean immigrant students is particularly tough because some come to the United States speaking English, and so don't qualify for special services. And because their skin is black, they get lumped in with the district's African American students, so it's tough to quantify them.
"These students, new immigrants, are left to sink or swim on their own," she said. "They're not given any services to get acclimated to a new educational system."
Still, Bangura said the district lately has been "very receptive" to the issues and is more aware of the problem.
The district recently hired a staffer who speaks multiple African dialects and French to work in the Southwest area. And Lucy Feria, deputy chief of multilingual curriculum and programs, said that the district is "much closer to looking to add" services such as tutoring, cultural sensitivity for teachers, and workshops for parents of African and Caribbean students.
Len Rieser, executive director of the nonprofit Education Law Center, said that in terms of language access services, "some schools do it well and some schools don't do it well. The struggle has been to create uniformity."
In the last few years, Rieser said, "I think they're concerned about language access, and they've taken some good steps recently."
1st Black Mayor in Slovenia Says Race Was Not a Factor
By Brittany Hutson
OCTOBER 26, 2010
t’s a flashback to 2008 when the U.S. celebrated the election of Barack Obama as its first Black president. Only this time the victory is across the Atlantic Ocean in Slovenia, a country located near Italy, Austria and Croatia with a population of 2 million. The election of Dr. Peter Bossman, a Ghana-born physician, is a recent accomplishment for the Black Diaspora.
The 54-year-old has been a resident of Slovenia since the 1970s. He came to study medicine when the country was still part of Yugoslavia. A member of the Social Democrat party, Bossman won a runoff election on Sunday in Piran, a town with a 17,000 population in southwestern Slovenia, with 51.4 percent of votes. Reports say he could be the first black mayor elected in his region of Europe.
Slovenia natives comprise 83.1% of the country. The number of Africans are said to be few. Political analyst Vlado Miheljak told the Associated Press that this election was a test to see whether Slovenia was “mature enough to elect a nonwhite political representative.” Bossman told Reuters that he felt people did not want to be around African immigrants when he first came to Slovenia. But within the last 10 to 15 years, he believes people no longer look at the color of his skin.
During the campaign, Bossman promised to introduce electric cars and boost Internet shopping. Additionally, he hopes to boost tourism—the backbone of the town’s economy—by developing an airport and golf course.
Though he is nicknamed “The Obama of Piran,” Bossman said he is ‘no Obama’ and does not plan to seek a higher office, said the Irish Times.
OCTOBER 26, 2010
t’s a flashback to 2008 when the U.S. celebrated the election of Barack Obama as its first Black president. Only this time the victory is across the Atlantic Ocean in Slovenia, a country located near Italy, Austria and Croatia with a population of 2 million. The election of Dr. Peter Bossman, a Ghana-born physician, is a recent accomplishment for the Black Diaspora.
The 54-year-old has been a resident of Slovenia since the 1970s. He came to study medicine when the country was still part of Yugoslavia. A member of the Social Democrat party, Bossman won a runoff election on Sunday in Piran, a town with a 17,000 population in southwestern Slovenia, with 51.4 percent of votes. Reports say he could be the first black mayor elected in his region of Europe.
Slovenia natives comprise 83.1% of the country. The number of Africans are said to be few. Political analyst Vlado Miheljak told the Associated Press that this election was a test to see whether Slovenia was “mature enough to elect a nonwhite political representative.” Bossman told Reuters that he felt people did not want to be around African immigrants when he first came to Slovenia. But within the last 10 to 15 years, he believes people no longer look at the color of his skin.
During the campaign, Bossman promised to introduce electric cars and boost Internet shopping. Additionally, he hopes to boost tourism—the backbone of the town’s economy—by developing an airport and golf course.
Though he is nicknamed “The Obama of Piran,” Bossman said he is ‘no Obama’ and does not plan to seek a higher office, said the Irish Times.
Trafficking of Haitian children up
BY GERARDO REYES AND JACQUELINE CHARLES - MIAMI HERALD
OCT 24, 2010 12:22 AM
BOCA CHICA, Dominican Republic After several days of going hungry, Marie said she surrendered to sexual propositions made by several men in the park where she begged in a resort town in the south of the Dominican Republic.
Marie, 12, said she had sex with "many" of those men, sometimes for a dollar, while her cousins, 13 and 10, begged European and American tourists for coins.
"I was hungry; I lost everything; we didn't know what to do," said Marie, explaining her decision to sell her body on the streets of Boca Chica.
The three children told reporters from El Nuevo Herald and The Miami Herald that they left Port-au-Prince with the help of a smuggler after the Jan. 12 earthquake devastated the city.
Today, the children sell boiled eggs for 10 cents all day, walking in the sun along Duarte Avenue, a bustling runway for juvenile prostitution in the heart of Boca Chica, where newly arrived Haitian girls sashay, offering their bodies to gray-haired tourists.
The story of Marie and her cousins has become commonplace: Since the earthquake, more than 7,300 boys and girls have been smuggled out of their homeland to the Dominican Republic by traffickers profiting on the hunger and desperation of Haitian children and their families. In 2009, the figure was 950, according to one human rights group that monitors child trafficking at 10 border points.
Several smugglers said they operate in cahoots with crooked officers in both countries - their versions verified by a U.N. Children's Fund report and child advocates on both sides of the border.
"All the officials know who the traffickers are but don't report them. It is a problem that is not going to end because the authorities' sources of income would dry up," said Regino Martínez, a Jesuit priest and director of the Border Solidarity Foundation in Dajabon, a Dominican border town.
Martínez has denounced the problem to the heads of CESFRONT, the Dominican Republic's Specialized Corps for Borderland Security.
After the earthquake, which killed an estimated 300,000 people, leaders in both nations pledged to protect children from predatory smuggling, a historic problem.
And the problem became an international scandal after members of a church group from Idaho tried to take 33 children from Haiti to an orphanage it was establishing in the Dominican Republic. For that they were charged with kidnapping and jailed. Yet one month later, without headlines, smugglers moved 1,411 Haitian out of the country, according to one child protection group in Haiti.
The newspaper found that the trafficking of children continues. Reporters witnessed smugglers carrying children across a river, handing them to other grownups, who put the kids on motorcycles and sped off to shantytowns. Border guards, charged with preventing this operation, witnessed the incidents and never reacted, reporters found.
Dominican President Leonel Fernandez did not respond to interview requests, but his office sent an e-mail saying that the government has intensified border security, prosecutions and sanctions against smugglers.
But Dominican immigration records show it has only made two convictions since 2006. And 800 children a month are brought into the Dominican Republic through different northern border crossings by a loose network of dealers, according to figures from Jano Sikse Border Network, which monitors human rights abuses along the border. The traffickers charge an average of $80 per head.
Vice Admiral Sigfrido Pared, the Dominican Republic's director of migration, called the figures plausible, even if his own agency does not track trafficking.
"It might be, but whether they are five, 10 or 20 is worrisome because we know that most of the children are [brought here] to be exploited on the streets by Dominican and Haitian adults."
The smugglers told reporters they travel unhindered hundreds of miles, through both countries, with caravans of children, with the protection of border patrols, soldiers and immigration officials.
Since February, reporters for El Nuevo Herald and The Miami Herald visited every clandestine station in the scabrous route children are forced to take.
On this journey, children and traffickers told the newspaper, kids go arm in arm through rivers and jungles; they are shoved onto motorcycles or into buses; some are forced to walk as long as three days without food. Other kids are kidnapped to pressure parents to pay the full price of the trip; some - as young as 2 - have been abandoned by the smugglers halfway through the journey.
Nelta, a slender 13-year-old Haitian, said she walked for three days with two other young girls to reach the Dominican Republic. She said a female trafficker left them at a hideout in Santiago de los Caballeros, the country's second-largest town.
"A man raped me in the shelter," said Nelta, who said she left Juanamendez, a Haitian border town, without her mother's knowledge after the earthquake.
"I can't go home empty-handed," she said softly, watching her words in front of the woman who took her to the Dominican Republic. She survived by begging on street corners under a red traffic light. In August, she returned home.
The buscones, as the smugglers are known, not only deliver children on request. They also deliver them a la carte to strangers.
Despite the horror stories, scores of Haitians of all ages - 250,000 this year, according to Pared - have long turned to the Dominican Republic because they believe there are more jobs in construction, tourist and service sectors.
The child trafficking occurs despite the governments of Haiti and the Dominican Republic signing treaties and laws to combat it.
A U.S. State Department report this year concluded that the Dominican Republic "does not fully comply with the minimum standards for the elimination of trafficking and is not making significant efforts to do so."
According to the report, since 2007 the Dominican government has not convicted any traffickers or government officials involved in trafficking.
OCT 24, 2010 12:22 AM
BOCA CHICA, Dominican Republic After several days of going hungry, Marie said she surrendered to sexual propositions made by several men in the park where she begged in a resort town in the south of the Dominican Republic.
Marie, 12, said she had sex with "many" of those men, sometimes for a dollar, while her cousins, 13 and 10, begged European and American tourists for coins.
"I was hungry; I lost everything; we didn't know what to do," said Marie, explaining her decision to sell her body on the streets of Boca Chica.
The three children told reporters from El Nuevo Herald and The Miami Herald that they left Port-au-Prince with the help of a smuggler after the Jan. 12 earthquake devastated the city.
Today, the children sell boiled eggs for 10 cents all day, walking in the sun along Duarte Avenue, a bustling runway for juvenile prostitution in the heart of Boca Chica, where newly arrived Haitian girls sashay, offering their bodies to gray-haired tourists.
The story of Marie and her cousins has become commonplace: Since the earthquake, more than 7,300 boys and girls have been smuggled out of their homeland to the Dominican Republic by traffickers profiting on the hunger and desperation of Haitian children and their families. In 2009, the figure was 950, according to one human rights group that monitors child trafficking at 10 border points.
Several smugglers said they operate in cahoots with crooked officers in both countries - their versions verified by a U.N. Children's Fund report and child advocates on both sides of the border.
"All the officials know who the traffickers are but don't report them. It is a problem that is not going to end because the authorities' sources of income would dry up," said Regino Martínez, a Jesuit priest and director of the Border Solidarity Foundation in Dajabon, a Dominican border town.
Martínez has denounced the problem to the heads of CESFRONT, the Dominican Republic's Specialized Corps for Borderland Security.
After the earthquake, which killed an estimated 300,000 people, leaders in both nations pledged to protect children from predatory smuggling, a historic problem.
And the problem became an international scandal after members of a church group from Idaho tried to take 33 children from Haiti to an orphanage it was establishing in the Dominican Republic. For that they were charged with kidnapping and jailed. Yet one month later, without headlines, smugglers moved 1,411 Haitian out of the country, according to one child protection group in Haiti.
The newspaper found that the trafficking of children continues. Reporters witnessed smugglers carrying children across a river, handing them to other grownups, who put the kids on motorcycles and sped off to shantytowns. Border guards, charged with preventing this operation, witnessed the incidents and never reacted, reporters found.
Dominican President Leonel Fernandez did not respond to interview requests, but his office sent an e-mail saying that the government has intensified border security, prosecutions and sanctions against smugglers.
But Dominican immigration records show it has only made two convictions since 2006. And 800 children a month are brought into the Dominican Republic through different northern border crossings by a loose network of dealers, according to figures from Jano Sikse Border Network, which monitors human rights abuses along the border. The traffickers charge an average of $80 per head.
Vice Admiral Sigfrido Pared, the Dominican Republic's director of migration, called the figures plausible, even if his own agency does not track trafficking.
"It might be, but whether they are five, 10 or 20 is worrisome because we know that most of the children are [brought here] to be exploited on the streets by Dominican and Haitian adults."
The smugglers told reporters they travel unhindered hundreds of miles, through both countries, with caravans of children, with the protection of border patrols, soldiers and immigration officials.
Since February, reporters for El Nuevo Herald and The Miami Herald visited every clandestine station in the scabrous route children are forced to take.
On this journey, children and traffickers told the newspaper, kids go arm in arm through rivers and jungles; they are shoved onto motorcycles or into buses; some are forced to walk as long as three days without food. Other kids are kidnapped to pressure parents to pay the full price of the trip; some - as young as 2 - have been abandoned by the smugglers halfway through the journey.
Nelta, a slender 13-year-old Haitian, said she walked for three days with two other young girls to reach the Dominican Republic. She said a female trafficker left them at a hideout in Santiago de los Caballeros, the country's second-largest town.
"A man raped me in the shelter," said Nelta, who said she left Juanamendez, a Haitian border town, without her mother's knowledge after the earthquake.
"I can't go home empty-handed," she said softly, watching her words in front of the woman who took her to the Dominican Republic. She survived by begging on street corners under a red traffic light. In August, she returned home.
The buscones, as the smugglers are known, not only deliver children on request. They also deliver them a la carte to strangers.
Despite the horror stories, scores of Haitians of all ages - 250,000 this year, according to Pared - have long turned to the Dominican Republic because they believe there are more jobs in construction, tourist and service sectors.
The child trafficking occurs despite the governments of Haiti and the Dominican Republic signing treaties and laws to combat it.
A U.S. State Department report this year concluded that the Dominican Republic "does not fully comply with the minimum standards for the elimination of trafficking and is not making significant efforts to do so."
According to the report, since 2007 the Dominican government has not convicted any traffickers or government officials involved in trafficking.
Imam Is a Shepherd to West African Immigrants in Harlem
November 2, 2010
By NADIA SUSSMAN
ong before daylight breaks in Harlem, the imam Souleimane Konaté puts on a wide embroidered robe and wakes up his wife, Assiata, so she can pray in their one-bedroom apartment while their 9-year-old daughter Fanta sleeps.
Mr. Konaté (pronounced Ko-NAH-tay) then walks four blocks in the dark to his mosque, Masjid Aqsa, on Frederick Douglass Boulevard near 116th Street. He passes the lowered grates of shops that sell African beauty products, halal meats and bolts of bright cloth. He passes stragglers headed home from late-night carousing.
At the mosque, the imam leads the first of the five daily Muslim prayers. Prayer gives a meter to each day. The rest of his work is improvisation.
As the leader of a thriving African mosque, Mr. Konaté, 55, an immigrant from Ivory Coast, straddles two worlds on the same New York map. For politicians, police officers and immigrant advocates, the imam is a bridge to the city’s growing African Muslim immigrant population. For recent arrivals, mostly French speakers from West Africa, he serves as translator and all-purpose guide to life in America.
“I’d describe it as a religious leader at the same time as a social worker,” said Mr. Konaté, a youthful-looking man with an easy smile. “A lawyer, a defender and a liaison between the community and the government of the city.”
One of his congregants, Ramatu Ahmed, a community activist from Ghana, likened the imam to a compass for new arrivals.
“You come to a country, where your father is not there, your mother is not there,” Ms. Ahmed said. “You don’t know anybody. You are like a newly born baby.”
Mr. Konaté’s cramped office on the balcony overlooking the mosque’s main prayer space is filled with boxes for donations to buy a new building, a well-used coffee pot and photographs of the imam with Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg; Gov. David A. Paterson; Abdoulaye Wade, the president of Senegal; and the Rev. Jesse Jackson.
From his silver-topped staff to his pointed slippers, the imam always likes to dress appropriately, but at times he leaves traditional solemnity behind. At an African Union celebration last year, the imam danced a bit, shocking some congregants.
“I said, ‘I’m a human being like yourself, people,’ ” Mr. Konaté said. “Let me enjoy myself.”
Immigrants seek him out for all manner of reasons: an arrest, a diagnosis of H.I.V. or a fear of being deported. His cellphone sounds at all hours — its ringtone is the Muslim call to prayer.
When Cheikh Ibrahim Fall, a Senegalese immigrant, could not pay his bills after an operation for a hernia, he asked Mr. Konaté for help. Mr. Konaté persuaded officials at Harlem Hospital Center to reduce Mr. Fall’s bill.
When people in the neighborhood have problems, Mr. Fall said, “you got to go right there and talk to him about what he can do to help.”
Mr. Konaté worked with the city and others to establish a health clinic at Harlem Hospital Center set up to cater to the needs of Muslim immigrants from West Africa. Translators who speak multiple African languages help patients leery of seeking medical care because they lack insurance or are here illegally. The clinic also accommodates patients who prefer, for religious reasons, to be seen by doctors of the same sex.
Mr. Konaté said many African immigrants were unaccustomed to having access to health care.
“We find out that many brothers and sisters in the community, they have AIDS but they didn’t know about it,” he said. Workers at the clinic now routinely ask patients if they can perform an H.I.V. test.
On Fridays, Mr. Konaté delivers impassioned sermons in French, English and Arabic, combining religious messages with calls for civic and political engagement. He reminds congregants to visit the health clinic. If they get sick, he asks, who will send money home to their families?
Mr. Konaté has steered clear of saying much about the controversy surrounding a proposed Islamic center and mosque near ground zero, even though it has been a dominant topic of conversation among many local Muslims. If it is ever built, however, he says he would like to preach there.
“I will get myself involved to educate all New Yorkers and all Americans about the goodness and nonviolence in the Koran,” Mr. Konaté said.
Africans from all over the continent have quietly transformed different corners of New York. On West 116th Street in the Little Africa of central Harlem, sentences that begin in French often flow into Wolof, Peul or Mr. Konaté’s native Mandingo language.
The number of African-born immigrants in New York has increased to nearly 125,000 in 2009 from 78,500 in 2000, according to census estimates, but immigrant advocates believe the number is far higher.
Many African immigrants arrive from countries with long histories of military rule or police corruption and must adapt to local law enforcement practices.
In the New York Police Department’s 28th Precinct, in Harlem, Mr. Konaté teaches officers basic Muslim customs, like removing one’s shoes in a mosque.
“There’s always going to be a little bit of a barrier between police officers and an immigrant community,” said Deputy Inspector Rodney Harrison, the precinct’s commanding officer. “He’s allowed us to become much more intimate with the African community.”
Mr. Konaté has also helped resolve misunderstandings of greater consequence. “In Africa, for example, if a police officer asks you to stop, you run away,” he said, because to stop when accused is considered a sign of guilt.
Becoming a religious leader was never part of the imam’s plan. He studied Islamic law in Egypt, then communications in Saudi Arabia, where he lived for 12 years and worked as a reporter, covering West Africa for Saudi news publications. In 1992, he moved to New York, hoping to get a doctoral degree in communications.
Unable to afford school, Mr. Konaté worked at McDonald’s, a grocery store and several restaurants.
Like many African immigrants at the time, Mr. Konaté prayed at African-American mosques in Harlem. He helped found Masjid Aqsa in 1996, so that new African immigrants could hear services in their native languages. He became the spiritual leader a few months later.
Now, Masjid Aqsa has outgrown its space. About 1,200 congregants show up for Friday prayers. On Sundays, hundreds of children gather to learn the Koran. They study in two shifts, filling the mosque with the cacophony of young voices.
To resolve its space needs, the congregation is working to raise $2 million to buy a larger building a few blocks away.
On Mondays, the one day off he allows himself, Mr. Konaté retreats to the home of relatives in East Orange, N.J. He needs to leave the city, he said, to catch up on his sleep. Still, his cellphone keeps him tethered to life across the Hudson River.
“But I’m good here in New York,” Mr. Konaté said. “I’m not going nowhere till I finish, my mission is complete.”
An imam’s work is lifelong, he said. There is no such thing as a former imam.
By NADIA SUSSMAN
ong before daylight breaks in Harlem, the imam Souleimane Konaté puts on a wide embroidered robe and wakes up his wife, Assiata, so she can pray in their one-bedroom apartment while their 9-year-old daughter Fanta sleeps.
Mr. Konaté (pronounced Ko-NAH-tay) then walks four blocks in the dark to his mosque, Masjid Aqsa, on Frederick Douglass Boulevard near 116th Street. He passes the lowered grates of shops that sell African beauty products, halal meats and bolts of bright cloth. He passes stragglers headed home from late-night carousing.
At the mosque, the imam leads the first of the five daily Muslim prayers. Prayer gives a meter to each day. The rest of his work is improvisation.
As the leader of a thriving African mosque, Mr. Konaté, 55, an immigrant from Ivory Coast, straddles two worlds on the same New York map. For politicians, police officers and immigrant advocates, the imam is a bridge to the city’s growing African Muslim immigrant population. For recent arrivals, mostly French speakers from West Africa, he serves as translator and all-purpose guide to life in America.
“I’d describe it as a religious leader at the same time as a social worker,” said Mr. Konaté, a youthful-looking man with an easy smile. “A lawyer, a defender and a liaison between the community and the government of the city.”
One of his congregants, Ramatu Ahmed, a community activist from Ghana, likened the imam to a compass for new arrivals.
“You come to a country, where your father is not there, your mother is not there,” Ms. Ahmed said. “You don’t know anybody. You are like a newly born baby.”
Mr. Konaté’s cramped office on the balcony overlooking the mosque’s main prayer space is filled with boxes for donations to buy a new building, a well-used coffee pot and photographs of the imam with Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg; Gov. David A. Paterson; Abdoulaye Wade, the president of Senegal; and the Rev. Jesse Jackson.
From his silver-topped staff to his pointed slippers, the imam always likes to dress appropriately, but at times he leaves traditional solemnity behind. At an African Union celebration last year, the imam danced a bit, shocking some congregants.
“I said, ‘I’m a human being like yourself, people,’ ” Mr. Konaté said. “Let me enjoy myself.”
Immigrants seek him out for all manner of reasons: an arrest, a diagnosis of H.I.V. or a fear of being deported. His cellphone sounds at all hours — its ringtone is the Muslim call to prayer.
When Cheikh Ibrahim Fall, a Senegalese immigrant, could not pay his bills after an operation for a hernia, he asked Mr. Konaté for help. Mr. Konaté persuaded officials at Harlem Hospital Center to reduce Mr. Fall’s bill.
When people in the neighborhood have problems, Mr. Fall said, “you got to go right there and talk to him about what he can do to help.”
Mr. Konaté worked with the city and others to establish a health clinic at Harlem Hospital Center set up to cater to the needs of Muslim immigrants from West Africa. Translators who speak multiple African languages help patients leery of seeking medical care because they lack insurance or are here illegally. The clinic also accommodates patients who prefer, for religious reasons, to be seen by doctors of the same sex.
Mr. Konaté said many African immigrants were unaccustomed to having access to health care.
“We find out that many brothers and sisters in the community, they have AIDS but they didn’t know about it,” he said. Workers at the clinic now routinely ask patients if they can perform an H.I.V. test.
On Fridays, Mr. Konaté delivers impassioned sermons in French, English and Arabic, combining religious messages with calls for civic and political engagement. He reminds congregants to visit the health clinic. If they get sick, he asks, who will send money home to their families?
Mr. Konaté has steered clear of saying much about the controversy surrounding a proposed Islamic center and mosque near ground zero, even though it has been a dominant topic of conversation among many local Muslims. If it is ever built, however, he says he would like to preach there.
“I will get myself involved to educate all New Yorkers and all Americans about the goodness and nonviolence in the Koran,” Mr. Konaté said.
Africans from all over the continent have quietly transformed different corners of New York. On West 116th Street in the Little Africa of central Harlem, sentences that begin in French often flow into Wolof, Peul or Mr. Konaté’s native Mandingo language.
The number of African-born immigrants in New York has increased to nearly 125,000 in 2009 from 78,500 in 2000, according to census estimates, but immigrant advocates believe the number is far higher.
Many African immigrants arrive from countries with long histories of military rule or police corruption and must adapt to local law enforcement practices.
In the New York Police Department’s 28th Precinct, in Harlem, Mr. Konaté teaches officers basic Muslim customs, like removing one’s shoes in a mosque.
“There’s always going to be a little bit of a barrier between police officers and an immigrant community,” said Deputy Inspector Rodney Harrison, the precinct’s commanding officer. “He’s allowed us to become much more intimate with the African community.”
Mr. Konaté has also helped resolve misunderstandings of greater consequence. “In Africa, for example, if a police officer asks you to stop, you run away,” he said, because to stop when accused is considered a sign of guilt.
Becoming a religious leader was never part of the imam’s plan. He studied Islamic law in Egypt, then communications in Saudi Arabia, where he lived for 12 years and worked as a reporter, covering West Africa for Saudi news publications. In 1992, he moved to New York, hoping to get a doctoral degree in communications.
Unable to afford school, Mr. Konaté worked at McDonald’s, a grocery store and several restaurants.
Like many African immigrants at the time, Mr. Konaté prayed at African-American mosques in Harlem. He helped found Masjid Aqsa in 1996, so that new African immigrants could hear services in their native languages. He became the spiritual leader a few months later.
Now, Masjid Aqsa has outgrown its space. About 1,200 congregants show up for Friday prayers. On Sundays, hundreds of children gather to learn the Koran. They study in two shifts, filling the mosque with the cacophony of young voices.
To resolve its space needs, the congregation is working to raise $2 million to buy a larger building a few blocks away.
On Mondays, the one day off he allows himself, Mr. Konaté retreats to the home of relatives in East Orange, N.J. He needs to leave the city, he said, to catch up on his sleep. Still, his cellphone keeps him tethered to life across the Hudson River.
“But I’m good here in New York,” Mr. Konaté said. “I’m not going nowhere till I finish, my mission is complete.”
An imam’s work is lifelong, he said. There is no such thing as a former imam.
Thursday, October 21, 2010
More than 100 dead in suspected cholera outbreak in Haiti
---
Mosi A. Ifatunji, Ph.D. Candidate
ASA Pre-Doctoral Fellow
University of Illinois at Chicago
Department of Sociology (MC 312)
1007 West Harrison Street
Chicago, Illinois 60607-7140
Call/Text: (312) 607-2825
Email: mosi@Ifatunji.com
Twitter: @ifatunji
Tuesday, October 12, 2010
In Haiti, Rising Call for Displaced to Go Away
By DEBORAH SONTAG
October 4, 2010
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti — As tent camps go, the one on the 28-acre Church of God property overlooking the Valley of Bourdon is almost bucolic, with hundreds of canvas-draped shelters under leafy shade trees and a cohesiveness among residents. But panic is building there.
The Church of God is planning to evict the encampment in the near future. While the church relented on a Sept. 30 deadline under pressure from humanitarian officials, it still wants its Haitian headquarters rid of a population that church officials have come to see as a freeloading nuisance.
“This used to be a beautiful place, but these people are tearing up the property,” said Jim Hudson, a Church of God missionary living at the site. “They’re urinating on it. They’re bathing out in public. They’re stealing electricity. And they don’t work. They sit around all day, waiting for handouts.”
Increasingly, property owners here are seeking to dislodge tent camps, saying they are tired of waiting for the government to resettle the people or for the people to resettle themselves.
Almost nine months after the earthquake that devastated Haiti, eviction threats have increased markedly and have become an urgent humanitarian concern, international groups say. Some 144,175 individuals have been subject to threats of eviction since March, and 28,065 have been actually evicted, according to data collected by shelter experts here.
Humanitarian officials have asked the government to consider a moratorium on evictions and to address the issue publicly, urging compassion. They worry that the evictions could increase conflict, lead to the mushrooming of smaller sites without services and force people into locations that are unsafe.
“It’s a huge problem that could exacerbate lots of other problems,” said Lilianne Fan, the housing, land and property coordinator for the multiagency shelter cluster. “The bottom line is that the vulnerable become more vulnerable, and you get into a situation of continual displacement without a long-term solution.”
Many landowners, fearing that the tent cities will become entrenched slums, say that they need to reclaim their properties sooner rather than later for their intended uses.
Their eviction practices vary, from sudden and violent to mediated and planned. In some cases, landowners have sent thugs to slash or burn tents; in others they have offered cash payoffs to expedite expulsions.
But whatever the method, the evictions increase the instability of the displaced population for whom few alternatives exist, given the slow pace of the cleanup and reconstruction effort.
Humanitarian officials are working with the government to develop a comprehensive strategy for handling camp closings based on the now scattershot efforts to help people clean up and move back into their neighborhoods.
At the same time, they are mediating these tense situations case by case, seeking to buy time from landowners while they look for solutions for each family. Sometimes an inducement works — for example, the construction of permanent latrines on a property. Other times, a multipronged approach is needed — negotiations, cash and peacekeeping troops.
That was the case at the Palais de l’Art compound in the Delmas municipality this summer after a conflict between the landowner and a leader of the tent camp there built to a peak with mutual threats and reports to the police.
The owner, Joseph St. Fort, said hundreds of families had fled to his land on the day of the earthquake: “I said to myself right then, ‘Uh-oh. You’re in trouble.’ I started feeling panic because I knew it would be very difficult to get rid of them.”
Before the earthquake, Mr. St. Fort had rented out his large property for events. After, he himself moved into a tent inside the compound with the other displaced people. But by March, it was time to restart his business, he said, so he wrote the first of many letters to the government.
“Mr. Minister,” he wrote to the interior minister, “the leadership of the Palais has to notify you that we will be obliged to evict the 320 families who have occupied this terrain since Jan. 12. The leadership regrets that it will not have the assistance of state authorities in evacuating the disaster victims.”
The minister, writing back, requested Mr. St. Fort’s patience — “knowing you are aware of the risks to public security of a premature expulsion.”
Mr. St. Fort waited months, but tensions built with camp residents, who knew he wanted them gone, and especially with one man, a camp leader. In June, Mr. St. Fort ordered the man to leave, and the man refused. So Mr. St. Fort cut off water and sanitation services for the camp and locked the gates, shutting in — or out — the hundreds living there, including amputees and elderly people.
“We feel like prisoners,” Jean Robenson, 17, said at the time as he tended to his grandmother in her wheelchair.
For weeks, AMI, a Portuguese humanitarian group, struggled to mediate. Finally, with the help of Haitian officials, the International Organization for Migration and United Nations troops, they persuaded Mr. St. Fort to let the tent camp remain if the leader was escorted to another site. In a tense meeting, a Haitian humanitarian official urged the camp residents to reject the leader, Reynald.
“Raise your hand if you don’t want Reynald,” the official said.
The crisis was averted, or deferred.
Interviewed in September, Mr. St. Fort said that the Haitian government had paid him $25,000 to let the people stay until December. But, he said, that was not enough. He maintained that he could have earned $150,000 over the same period from evangelical conventions and political party assemblies. “I don’t intend to keep this arrangement going at the price the government is offering,” he said.
At the Church of God site, church officials are also impatient. Where the people go next should be the government’s concern, they say. The church’s land — with a school, Bible college and air-conditioned houses under construction for the missionaries rebuilding churches in the disaster zone — is private property. The homeless are in the way.
Edner Villard, 33, a camp leader, knows that church officials feel that way, and he resents it. He said that he was shocked when he overheard a pastor, his voice raised in anger, tell United Nations officials about the camp residents: “They give me nothing but trouble!” Mr. Villard said his heart starting beating quickly. “We are so peaceful here!” he said. “I didn’t challenge him, and say, ‘You lie,’ because he is the national representative of the Church of God in Haiti. Who am I? But he should have more compassion. He’s a man of God, and a Haitian.”
After the disaster, the church was providing meals to its neighbors, which drew thousands of people to the site. When the rainy season began, humanitarian officials moved those camping on the church site’s steep slopes where landslides were a risk. Other families left of their own accord, renting new homes if they could afford it, or migrating to the countryside. “The people who are left here now are those who have no options,” Mr. Villard said.
Mr. Villard, a former supermarket supervisor, was the only person to survive when the market collapsed in the earthquake, killing dozens. The two-story house he owns in the Valley of Bourdon crumbled, too, and he moved his family to a grassy hillock on the church estate because it was “the closest and most logical place.” He would love to move back home, he said, but his house has been stamped red by government inspectors, meaning it is unsafe. He has no means to demolish it himself, and no materials with which to rebuild it.
“Can’t they provide tools or some kind of assistance?” he asked. “What are we supposed to do? Move into the debris with our raggedy tents?”
October 4, 2010
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti — As tent camps go, the one on the 28-acre Church of God property overlooking the Valley of Bourdon is almost bucolic, with hundreds of canvas-draped shelters under leafy shade trees and a cohesiveness among residents. But panic is building there.
The Church of God is planning to evict the encampment in the near future. While the church relented on a Sept. 30 deadline under pressure from humanitarian officials, it still wants its Haitian headquarters rid of a population that church officials have come to see as a freeloading nuisance.
“This used to be a beautiful place, but these people are tearing up the property,” said Jim Hudson, a Church of God missionary living at the site. “They’re urinating on it. They’re bathing out in public. They’re stealing electricity. And they don’t work. They sit around all day, waiting for handouts.”
Increasingly, property owners here are seeking to dislodge tent camps, saying they are tired of waiting for the government to resettle the people or for the people to resettle themselves.
Almost nine months after the earthquake that devastated Haiti, eviction threats have increased markedly and have become an urgent humanitarian concern, international groups say. Some 144,175 individuals have been subject to threats of eviction since March, and 28,065 have been actually evicted, according to data collected by shelter experts here.
Humanitarian officials have asked the government to consider a moratorium on evictions and to address the issue publicly, urging compassion. They worry that the evictions could increase conflict, lead to the mushrooming of smaller sites without services and force people into locations that are unsafe.
“It’s a huge problem that could exacerbate lots of other problems,” said Lilianne Fan, the housing, land and property coordinator for the multiagency shelter cluster. “The bottom line is that the vulnerable become more vulnerable, and you get into a situation of continual displacement without a long-term solution.”
Many landowners, fearing that the tent cities will become entrenched slums, say that they need to reclaim their properties sooner rather than later for their intended uses.
Their eviction practices vary, from sudden and violent to mediated and planned. In some cases, landowners have sent thugs to slash or burn tents; in others they have offered cash payoffs to expedite expulsions.
But whatever the method, the evictions increase the instability of the displaced population for whom few alternatives exist, given the slow pace of the cleanup and reconstruction effort.
Humanitarian officials are working with the government to develop a comprehensive strategy for handling camp closings based on the now scattershot efforts to help people clean up and move back into their neighborhoods.
At the same time, they are mediating these tense situations case by case, seeking to buy time from landowners while they look for solutions for each family. Sometimes an inducement works — for example, the construction of permanent latrines on a property. Other times, a multipronged approach is needed — negotiations, cash and peacekeeping troops.
That was the case at the Palais de l’Art compound in the Delmas municipality this summer after a conflict between the landowner and a leader of the tent camp there built to a peak with mutual threats and reports to the police.
The owner, Joseph St. Fort, said hundreds of families had fled to his land on the day of the earthquake: “I said to myself right then, ‘Uh-oh. You’re in trouble.’ I started feeling panic because I knew it would be very difficult to get rid of them.”
Before the earthquake, Mr. St. Fort had rented out his large property for events. After, he himself moved into a tent inside the compound with the other displaced people. But by March, it was time to restart his business, he said, so he wrote the first of many letters to the government.
“Mr. Minister,” he wrote to the interior minister, “the leadership of the Palais has to notify you that we will be obliged to evict the 320 families who have occupied this terrain since Jan. 12. The leadership regrets that it will not have the assistance of state authorities in evacuating the disaster victims.”
The minister, writing back, requested Mr. St. Fort’s patience — “knowing you are aware of the risks to public security of a premature expulsion.”
Mr. St. Fort waited months, but tensions built with camp residents, who knew he wanted them gone, and especially with one man, a camp leader. In June, Mr. St. Fort ordered the man to leave, and the man refused. So Mr. St. Fort cut off water and sanitation services for the camp and locked the gates, shutting in — or out — the hundreds living there, including amputees and elderly people.
“We feel like prisoners,” Jean Robenson, 17, said at the time as he tended to his grandmother in her wheelchair.
For weeks, AMI, a Portuguese humanitarian group, struggled to mediate. Finally, with the help of Haitian officials, the International Organization for Migration and United Nations troops, they persuaded Mr. St. Fort to let the tent camp remain if the leader was escorted to another site. In a tense meeting, a Haitian humanitarian official urged the camp residents to reject the leader, Reynald.
“Raise your hand if you don’t want Reynald,” the official said.
The crisis was averted, or deferred.
Interviewed in September, Mr. St. Fort said that the Haitian government had paid him $25,000 to let the people stay until December. But, he said, that was not enough. He maintained that he could have earned $150,000 over the same period from evangelical conventions and political party assemblies. “I don’t intend to keep this arrangement going at the price the government is offering,” he said.
At the Church of God site, church officials are also impatient. Where the people go next should be the government’s concern, they say. The church’s land — with a school, Bible college and air-conditioned houses under construction for the missionaries rebuilding churches in the disaster zone — is private property. The homeless are in the way.
Edner Villard, 33, a camp leader, knows that church officials feel that way, and he resents it. He said that he was shocked when he overheard a pastor, his voice raised in anger, tell United Nations officials about the camp residents: “They give me nothing but trouble!” Mr. Villard said his heart starting beating quickly. “We are so peaceful here!” he said. “I didn’t challenge him, and say, ‘You lie,’ because he is the national representative of the Church of God in Haiti. Who am I? But he should have more compassion. He’s a man of God, and a Haitian.”
After the disaster, the church was providing meals to its neighbors, which drew thousands of people to the site. When the rainy season began, humanitarian officials moved those camping on the church site’s steep slopes where landslides were a risk. Other families left of their own accord, renting new homes if they could afford it, or migrating to the countryside. “The people who are left here now are those who have no options,” Mr. Villard said.
Mr. Villard, a former supermarket supervisor, was the only person to survive when the market collapsed in the earthquake, killing dozens. The two-story house he owns in the Valley of Bourdon crumbled, too, and he moved his family to a grassy hillock on the church estate because it was “the closest and most logical place.” He would love to move back home, he said, but his house has been stamped red by government inspectors, meaning it is unsafe. He has no means to demolish it himself, and no materials with which to rebuild it.
“Can’t they provide tools or some kind of assistance?” he asked. “What are we supposed to do? Move into the debris with our raggedy tents?”
Thursday, September 23, 2010
African immigrants make mark on Brooks election
By Tony Seskus
Calgary Herald September 22
BROOKS - Brooks is a pioneer city steeped in cowboy history, but shaped more recently by the thousands of new Canadians who have come to build a life for themselves on the prairies.
This fall, two African-Canadian immigrants each hope to take the next step by making a bid to sit on city council, a significant moment for the century-old community two hours southeast of Calgary.
Born in East Africa, Ahmed Kassem arrived in Canada more than 20 years ago. Today, he's an assistant safety manager at Lakeside Packers and co-founder of an organization that strives to build bridges between new arrivals and the community.
"I am running because I want to make a difference in society," says Kassem, who wants to help grow the city and hopes his efforts will inspire others. "I am very confident my message will relate to all."
Michael Nuul Mayen was a refugee of Sudan's bloody civil war, which claimed nearly two million lives. He arrived in Canada with little more than a bag in 1998. Today, he's executive director of a local language centre.
"I came with nothing, but I got something," Mayen says. "It's time to give it back to the country that nurtured and gave me something."
By all accounts, this is the first time African-Canadian immigrants have made a bid for Brooks council.
Their candidacies are an exciting development for Maureen Chelemu, a pastor at Brooks International Gospel Church and an immigrant from Zambia.
Her hope is that as councillors, Kassem and Mayen would help improve understanding, give new Canadians a greater sense of ownership in their community and bring fresh a perspective to council.
"That's exactly what a community is all about, right? To make a better community," she says. "You bring an idea, I bring an idea and then all of us must have that ownership."
If elected, Kassem and Mayen would add another chapter in the community's history, in which immigration has played a huge part.
More than a century ago, the Brooks area was a hunting ground for First Nations people.
In the late 1880s, European immigrants began to move to the area to farm. More homesteaders arrived as the railroad pushed westward.
A more recent wave of newcomers - mostly refugees from Africa - came about 10 or 15 years ago with a number taking hard-to-fill jobs in the beef-processing industry.
Today, roughly 20 per cent of Brooks' 13,500 residents are new immigrants, with a mother tongue other than English or French.
A visitor these days might hear Filipino, Spanish or Arabic. Indeed, the multicultural community is very much like Canada in miniature.
Yet, local politics - like so many other Alberta communities, including Calgary - has not exactly mirrored that same diversity.
That could change when the ballots are counted on Oct. 18.
Lloyd Wong, a sociologist who studies immigration at the University of Calgary, believes news of two African-Canadian immigrant candidates in Brooks is significant.
"When you run for office, that's a sign of what I would call active citizenship," Wong says.
"That's what democracy is about. So, to me, that's a success story that they would want to run and see that they can potentially help make Brooks a better place to live."
Wong also believes it speaks well of the entire Brooks community, "in the sense that there's encouragement for immigrants to be active."
Brooks Mayor Martin Shields applauds anyone willing to stand for public office, whether "you've been in the community all your life, whether you're new or (been here) 20 years from a different culture."
A total of 13 candidates are vying for six councillor spots. Kassem and Mayen are distinct candidates with their own platforms.
Kassem says it would be an honour to be elected and serve the community. And there's little question that he's passionate about Brooks.
He speaks of the importance of attracting and keeping Brooks residents so that the city can grow and prosper economically.
If elected, "I will be representing the whole residents of Brooks and their interests, you can be sure of that," says Kassem, who also hosts a local radio program promoting cultural understanding.
For his part, Mayen says he is running on a platform of "open, transparent and inclusive representation."
He sees his election bid as a way to contribute to his Canadian home.
Mayen was one of Sudan's thousands of "lost boys" who were displaced or orphaned during the Second Sudanese Civil War.
After arriving in Canada, he pursued his education and graduated from the University of Winnipeg in 2007 with a degree in international development studies.
"I am running as a Canadian citizen," Mayen says. "I felt this is something I should do, something to give back to the community."
The candidates are a hot topic in local coffee shops, according to former mayor Don Weisbeck.
"Municipal politics may be more talked (about) than it has been in years," he adds. "They certainly represent a substantial part of our population and it's good to see ... them running."
On the streets, the news also seems to be largely welcome.
"I don't see why (Brooks) shouldn't move ahead on something like this," says Catherine Burk, who has lived in the area since 1970.
Kashif Mushtaq, a resident of Pakistani origin, believes Kassem's candidacy "will be good for the community and for the city."
But the campaign trail will be full of challenges, especially in a competitive field for a council seat. And some minds will be difficult to change.
"You always have the diehards," adds longtime resident and cabbie Alan Skretting. "The ones who have lived here their whole lives and don't want to see change.
"I've been in the area all my life. I thought it a little early to begin with, but I find good and bad in all cultures, eh? So, I am for it."
tseskus@calgaryherald.com
Read more: http://www.calgaryherald.com/news/African+immigrants+make+mark+Brooks+election/3563634/story.html#ixzz10K5cMI6T
Calgary Herald September 22
BROOKS - Brooks is a pioneer city steeped in cowboy history, but shaped more recently by the thousands of new Canadians who have come to build a life for themselves on the prairies.
This fall, two African-Canadian immigrants each hope to take the next step by making a bid to sit on city council, a significant moment for the century-old community two hours southeast of Calgary.
Born in East Africa, Ahmed Kassem arrived in Canada more than 20 years ago. Today, he's an assistant safety manager at Lakeside Packers and co-founder of an organization that strives to build bridges between new arrivals and the community.
"I am running because I want to make a difference in society," says Kassem, who wants to help grow the city and hopes his efforts will inspire others. "I am very confident my message will relate to all."
Michael Nuul Mayen was a refugee of Sudan's bloody civil war, which claimed nearly two million lives. He arrived in Canada with little more than a bag in 1998. Today, he's executive director of a local language centre.
"I came with nothing, but I got something," Mayen says. "It's time to give it back to the country that nurtured and gave me something."
By all accounts, this is the first time African-Canadian immigrants have made a bid for Brooks council.
Their candidacies are an exciting development for Maureen Chelemu, a pastor at Brooks International Gospel Church and an immigrant from Zambia.
Her hope is that as councillors, Kassem and Mayen would help improve understanding, give new Canadians a greater sense of ownership in their community and bring fresh a perspective to council.
"That's exactly what a community is all about, right? To make a better community," she says. "You bring an idea, I bring an idea and then all of us must have that ownership."
If elected, Kassem and Mayen would add another chapter in the community's history, in which immigration has played a huge part.
More than a century ago, the Brooks area was a hunting ground for First Nations people.
In the late 1880s, European immigrants began to move to the area to farm. More homesteaders arrived as the railroad pushed westward.
A more recent wave of newcomers - mostly refugees from Africa - came about 10 or 15 years ago with a number taking hard-to-fill jobs in the beef-processing industry.
Today, roughly 20 per cent of Brooks' 13,500 residents are new immigrants, with a mother tongue other than English or French.
A visitor these days might hear Filipino, Spanish or Arabic. Indeed, the multicultural community is very much like Canada in miniature.
Yet, local politics - like so many other Alberta communities, including Calgary - has not exactly mirrored that same diversity.
That could change when the ballots are counted on Oct. 18.
Lloyd Wong, a sociologist who studies immigration at the University of Calgary, believes news of two African-Canadian immigrant candidates in Brooks is significant.
"When you run for office, that's a sign of what I would call active citizenship," Wong says.
"That's what democracy is about. So, to me, that's a success story that they would want to run and see that they can potentially help make Brooks a better place to live."
Wong also believes it speaks well of the entire Brooks community, "in the sense that there's encouragement for immigrants to be active."
Brooks Mayor Martin Shields applauds anyone willing to stand for public office, whether "you've been in the community all your life, whether you're new or (been here) 20 years from a different culture."
A total of 13 candidates are vying for six councillor spots. Kassem and Mayen are distinct candidates with their own platforms.
Kassem says it would be an honour to be elected and serve the community. And there's little question that he's passionate about Brooks.
He speaks of the importance of attracting and keeping Brooks residents so that the city can grow and prosper economically.
If elected, "I will be representing the whole residents of Brooks and their interests, you can be sure of that," says Kassem, who also hosts a local radio program promoting cultural understanding.
For his part, Mayen says he is running on a platform of "open, transparent and inclusive representation."
He sees his election bid as a way to contribute to his Canadian home.
Mayen was one of Sudan's thousands of "lost boys" who were displaced or orphaned during the Second Sudanese Civil War.
After arriving in Canada, he pursued his education and graduated from the University of Winnipeg in 2007 with a degree in international development studies.
"I am running as a Canadian citizen," Mayen says. "I felt this is something I should do, something to give back to the community."
The candidates are a hot topic in local coffee shops, according to former mayor Don Weisbeck.
"Municipal politics may be more talked (about) than it has been in years," he adds. "They certainly represent a substantial part of our population and it's good to see ... them running."
On the streets, the news also seems to be largely welcome.
"I don't see why (Brooks) shouldn't move ahead on something like this," says Catherine Burk, who has lived in the area since 1970.
Kashif Mushtaq, a resident of Pakistani origin, believes Kassem's candidacy "will be good for the community and for the city."
But the campaign trail will be full of challenges, especially in a competitive field for a council seat. And some minds will be difficult to change.
"You always have the diehards," adds longtime resident and cabbie Alan Skretting. "The ones who have lived here their whole lives and don't want to see change.
"I've been in the area all my life. I thought it a little early to begin with, but I find good and bad in all cultures, eh? So, I am for it."
tseskus@calgaryherald.com
Read more: http://www.calgaryherald.com/news/African+immigrants+make+mark+Brooks+election/3563634/story.html#ixzz10K5cMI6T
Sunday, September 19, 2010
Russia's first black elected official: "I'm not Obama."
SEPTEMBER 14, 2010 4:50PM
NOVOZAVIDOVO, Russia--A small town with a population of 10,000, has elected Russia's first-ever black public official. Last month, Jean Gregoire Sagbo, an African immigrant from Benin, was elected as one of the town's ten municipal councilors, and by all accounts, the townspeople are happy with their choice. The Mayor of Novozavidovo describes him thusly, "his skin is black but he is Russian inside… the way he cares about this place, only a Russian can care."
What do the people say? "We already knew him as a man of strong civic impulse. He had cleaned the entrance to his apartment building, planted flowers and spent his own money on street improvements. Ten years ago he organized volunteers and started what became an annual day of collecting garbage."
When Sagbo first came to Russia in 1982, he and his family faced racial discrimination. The first black person many in the community had ever seen, he had to overcome a great deal to make Russia his home. Over the years he earned the respect of his community and became a prominent, Russian citizen. The people in this little corner of Russia say they don't see him as black, but only as an honest politician.
This election is a significant milestone for Russia, which has long been known for its racist sub-culture. Russia has an estimated 40,000 "Afro-Russians" in the country today. These African immigrants face systemic racism and are often the victims of hate-crimes, which are rarely prosecuted in the Russian legal system.
Russia has the highest rate of race motivated crimes in the world, so it's unlikely that the racial slurs and violence will abate anytime soon, but Sagbo is hopeful. Pleased to be the historic first for his beloved Russia, he has rolled up his sleeves and settled in for the job of reviving his town. Mr. Sagbo is known to be a congenial fellow, but don't call him Russia's Obama; he scoffs at the oversimplification.
“My name is not Obama…it’s sensationalism, he is black and I am black, but it’s a totally different situation.”
NOVOZAVIDOVO, Russia--A small town with a population of 10,000, has elected Russia's first-ever black public official. Last month, Jean Gregoire Sagbo, an African immigrant from Benin, was elected as one of the town's ten municipal councilors, and by all accounts, the townspeople are happy with their choice. The Mayor of Novozavidovo describes him thusly, "his skin is black but he is Russian inside… the way he cares about this place, only a Russian can care."
What do the people say? "We already knew him as a man of strong civic impulse. He had cleaned the entrance to his apartment building, planted flowers and spent his own money on street improvements. Ten years ago he organized volunteers and started what became an annual day of collecting garbage."
When Sagbo first came to Russia in 1982, he and his family faced racial discrimination. The first black person many in the community had ever seen, he had to overcome a great deal to make Russia his home. Over the years he earned the respect of his community and became a prominent, Russian citizen. The people in this little corner of Russia say they don't see him as black, but only as an honest politician.
This election is a significant milestone for Russia, which has long been known for its racist sub-culture. Russia has an estimated 40,000 "Afro-Russians" in the country today. These African immigrants face systemic racism and are often the victims of hate-crimes, which are rarely prosecuted in the Russian legal system.
Russia has the highest rate of race motivated crimes in the world, so it's unlikely that the racial slurs and violence will abate anytime soon, but Sagbo is hopeful. Pleased to be the historic first for his beloved Russia, he has rolled up his sleeves and settled in for the job of reviving his town. Mr. Sagbo is known to be a congenial fellow, but don't call him Russia's Obama; he scoffs at the oversimplification.
“My name is not Obama…it’s sensationalism, he is black and I am black, but it’s a totally different situation.”
Thursday, September 2, 2010
Uganda: Businessman in Chicago Launches Solar Ovens
Phillip Kurata
31 August 2010
An immigrant from Uganda now residing in Chicago has used the first portion of a $100,000 business competition prize he won in January to begin setting up an operation in his homeland to produce and distribute ovens that cook with the heat of the sun.
Ron Mutebi won his $100,000 prize at the African Diaspora Marketplace competition in Washington in January. The competition, sponsored by Western Union Company and the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), provided awards of $50,000 to $100,000 to 14 winners. All of them are Africans residing in the United States who had submitted proposals to establish or expand businesses in their home countries with local partners.
After Western Union disbursed $60,000 of the prize money in May, Mutebi arranged to ship from Chicago the components for 365 solar ovens and tools to assemble them in July. The shipment is scheduled to arrive in Uganda in October. In November, Mutebi will travel to Uganda to oversee the completion of an assembly plant and the training of staff to produce, distribute and service the cookers, made by Sun Ovens International in Elgin, Illinois. The ovens will appear in Ugandan markets in January 2011, according to Mutebi.
Mutebi has already compiled a list of nearly 1,000 people who want to buy one of the ovens, which he said will be sold for $170 each.
"We know the payoff is going to be there. It will be big when it happens," Mutebi said. "There is no other technology that can have such an impact on environmental degradation and global warming in a practical sense."
After acquiring solar ovens, villagers will not have to spend their meager incomes to buy firewood or charcoal, the prime sources of cooking fuel in Uganda, Mutebi said. The use of firewood and charcoal has caused widespread deforestation in Uganda.
Mutebi will arrange a second shipment of oven parts when he receives the rest of the prize money, which he expects to be in November.
The Chicago-based businessman said that as Ugandan companies start to provide locally made components over the next two years, he expects the cost of the ovens to come down to about $100, a 41 percent drop in price but still a substantial sum for many Ugandans, whose per capita income is $1,200 per year.
His biggest challenge to growing the business, he said, is the high interest rates that Ugandan banks charge for consumer loans -- around 24 percent. Mutebi said he is looking for ways to allow oven purchasers to buy on installment. "We can't run a business sustainably the way we want to because of the lack of support from financial institutions," he said.
Mutebi also is looking at nonmonetary methods for villagers to buy an oven.
For example, as Mutebi explains it, a Ugandan farmer may plant fruit trees on his land in exchange for an oven. The trees would be Mutebi's property. The farmer and his family would be free to consume the fruit, but Mutebi would have rights to harvest and sell the surplus. This way, he said, "the ovens not only will stop deforestation but also will promote planting of new trees. Farmers will have an economic incentive to do this."
Since winning the prize, Mutebi has spoken on frequent occasions about entrepreneurship in Africa. He was a featured speaker at the Africa Infrastructure Conference, sponsored by the Corporate Council on Africa in April in Washington, and at President Obama's Forum with Young African Leaders in August.
"I am blessed to have this opportunity to bring solar ovens to my people. I'm helping alleviate poverty and global warming and make a profit at the same time," Mutebi said.
31 August 2010
An immigrant from Uganda now residing in Chicago has used the first portion of a $100,000 business competition prize he won in January to begin setting up an operation in his homeland to produce and distribute ovens that cook with the heat of the sun.
Ron Mutebi won his $100,000 prize at the African Diaspora Marketplace competition in Washington in January. The competition, sponsored by Western Union Company and the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), provided awards of $50,000 to $100,000 to 14 winners. All of them are Africans residing in the United States who had submitted proposals to establish or expand businesses in their home countries with local partners.
After Western Union disbursed $60,000 of the prize money in May, Mutebi arranged to ship from Chicago the components for 365 solar ovens and tools to assemble them in July. The shipment is scheduled to arrive in Uganda in October. In November, Mutebi will travel to Uganda to oversee the completion of an assembly plant and the training of staff to produce, distribute and service the cookers, made by Sun Ovens International in Elgin, Illinois. The ovens will appear in Ugandan markets in January 2011, according to Mutebi.
Mutebi has already compiled a list of nearly 1,000 people who want to buy one of the ovens, which he said will be sold for $170 each.
"We know the payoff is going to be there. It will be big when it happens," Mutebi said. "There is no other technology that can have such an impact on environmental degradation and global warming in a practical sense."
After acquiring solar ovens, villagers will not have to spend their meager incomes to buy firewood or charcoal, the prime sources of cooking fuel in Uganda, Mutebi said. The use of firewood and charcoal has caused widespread deforestation in Uganda.
Mutebi will arrange a second shipment of oven parts when he receives the rest of the prize money, which he expects to be in November.
The Chicago-based businessman said that as Ugandan companies start to provide locally made components over the next two years, he expects the cost of the ovens to come down to about $100, a 41 percent drop in price but still a substantial sum for many Ugandans, whose per capita income is $1,200 per year.
His biggest challenge to growing the business, he said, is the high interest rates that Ugandan banks charge for consumer loans -- around 24 percent. Mutebi said he is looking for ways to allow oven purchasers to buy on installment. "We can't run a business sustainably the way we want to because of the lack of support from financial institutions," he said.
Mutebi also is looking at nonmonetary methods for villagers to buy an oven.
For example, as Mutebi explains it, a Ugandan farmer may plant fruit trees on his land in exchange for an oven. The trees would be Mutebi's property. The farmer and his family would be free to consume the fruit, but Mutebi would have rights to harvest and sell the surplus. This way, he said, "the ovens not only will stop deforestation but also will promote planting of new trees. Farmers will have an economic incentive to do this."
Since winning the prize, Mutebi has spoken on frequent occasions about entrepreneurship in Africa. He was a featured speaker at the Africa Infrastructure Conference, sponsored by the Corporate Council on Africa in April in Washington, and at President Obama's Forum with Young African Leaders in August.
"I am blessed to have this opportunity to bring solar ovens to my people. I'm helping alleviate poverty and global warming and make a profit at the same time," Mutebi said.
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