The UN standard to prevent genocide, 10 years later
It was 10 years ago last month that the concept of a ‘responsibility to protect’ (R2P) first emerged. 2011 alone saw the principle cited in some of the most defining moments of the year—a testament to growing acceptance of the international norm.
At an event last week hosted by the Stanley Foundation in New York to recognize the anniversary, U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon offered complimentary remarks about the use of R2P to justify action in Côte d’Ivoire and Libya. He highlighted partnerships with the African Union and the Economic Community of West African States in the case of Côte d’Ivoire and in Libya with the Arab League and the Organization for Islamic Cooperation that paved the way for action from the UN Security Council.
But it was the UN secretary general’s unusually candid insights about the limitations of implementing the Responsibility to Protect in South Sudan recently that stood out. Ban was speaking about the overtly ethnic clashes between the Lou Nuer and Murle people of South Sudan’s Jonglei state.
We saw [the violence] coming weeks before.
Yet we were not able to stop it - unfortunately. Nor was the government, which like others has primary responsibility for protecting its citizens.
The reason was painfully simple: we were denied the use of necessary resources ... in particular helicopters that would have given us mobility to bring all the UN peacekeepers where there are no roads except by air mobility.
At the critical moment, I was reduced to begging for replacements from neighboring countries and missions. With limited resources, we tried our best.
So, a key challenge in putting the Responsibility to Protect into practice is this: how do we do our job, how do we deliver on Security Council mandates, when the very members of the Council do not give us the support we need.
The UN’s strategy for protecting civilians in the case of Jonglei consisted primarily of instructing civilians to flee. The UN mission sent 500 combat-ready peacekeepers and around 300 supporting peacekeepers to the area, under the mission’s Chapter VII mandate that enables them to fire on would-be aggressors in defense of civilians. But up against approximately 6,000 Lou Nuer militia men with the stated aim “to wipe Murle out,”** and without the adequate equipment for transportation, urging people to flee—effectively encouraging a humanitarian emergency that has now left an estimated 120,000 people in need of assistance—became the least bad option. In the end, because of the UN’s action, the Lou Nuer offensive proved far less deadly than initially anticipated. But urging civilians to hide in the bush, where they become vulnerable to other threats, hardly seems like a sustainable long-term approach to protection.
In hindsight, far more needed to be done in Jonglei to mediate between the rival Lou Nuer and Murle, such as engaging the young men who would become implicated in the violence in reconciliation efforts. The South Sudan government should have gotten more deeply involved in addressing past grievances between the communities. In other words, key preventative efforts could have been attempted to potentially avert the explosive attacks and counter-attacks that are still ongoing.
Importantly, in his remarks at the Stanley Foundation, Ban Ki-moon highlighted the role prevention plays in the responsibility to protect in the face of brewing conflict. He called for 2012 to be the year of prevention, urging member states to be willing to take “proactive, decisive, and early action” before violence breaks out, to not look away when crisis is intensifying. “We have done that too often,” he said, adding:
For societies under stress, early warning may come too late to prevent the outbreak of mass violence. Such situations call for a dynamic assessment of how such stresses are developing over time, and how the international community can help.
It means little, however, to get the assessment right if it is not followed by targeted, measured and determined action.
The secretary general pointed to Syria as a crisis that is presently putting this point to test. But Ban Ki-moon need not have looked even beyond South Sudan and Sudan to highlight a glaring example of a ‘responsibility to protect’ failing to mobilize meaningful action. After months of bombardment and attacks on civilian populations by the Sudanese army and its allied militias, which provoked a shockingly feeble rhetorical response from the international community, the states of Southern Kordofan and Blue Nile now teeter on the verge of famine.
"It is clear that the Government of Sudan has instituted a deliberate policy to prevent humanitarian agencies from reaching vulnerable civilians impacted by the conflict,” wrote U.S. Special Representative to the United Nations Susan Rice in a letter to the Security Council just two days before the secretary general’s remarks. “[I]f the government of Sudan does not allow immediate meaningful humanitarian access to the conflict zones in Southern Kordofan and Blue Nile so life saving humanitarian assistance can be provided to civilians in need, we will likely see famine conditions in parts of Sudan,” Rice said.
An eight-month long government offensive, “indiscriminately bombing” of its own civilians, followed by acute food insecurity exacerbated by the government’s blockage of aid—it’s a scenario that exemplifies the need for the Responsibility to Protect. And yet in its conspicuous absence from Ban Ki-moon’s remarks, Sudan’s latest crisis zone also epitomizes the unequal nature by which R2P is acted upon, when the call for a meaningful international response gets stymied by what Ban himself called, “a minefield of nuance, political calculation, and competing national interests.”
**This explicit goal was cited in a letter seen by Enough.
– Laura Heaton blogs for the Enough Project at Enough Said.
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New Apple report shows efforts to avoid conflict minerals in supply chain
Apple released its 2012 Sustainability Report last Friday, which showed the company is doing some things very well in terms of conflict minerals.
Apple fully traced its supply chains for four conflict minerals—tantalum, tin, tungsten, and gold—which is steps beyond what other companies have done. They found 175 smelters in their supply chain, about 50 more than last year. Identifying smelters is important because it makes it much easier to track conflict minerals. Fully identifying the number of smelters that Apple uses is a tremendous step and should be applauded, as many companies say this level of tracing is too difficult to accomplish. Furthermore, Apple is working to train smelters to become knowledgeable about conflict minerals.
However, there is nothing in the report showing steps to create a certification system to establish which minerals are conflict-free, or to develop conflict-free mines in the Congo. The Congo is a region that needs attention in terms of conflict minerals, and there is still a lot of work to be done.
As an industry leader, Apple could help lead this work, as De Beers did for conflict diamonds through the development of the Kimberley Process certification scheme 10 years ago. Apple could work with suppliers to develop conflict-free supply chains like Motorola's "Solutions for Hope" (subsequently joined by HP and Intel), and help communities in Congo.
The Apple report can be read here in full.
– Sasha Lezhnev blogs for the Enough Project at Enough Said.
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Junior Kone, a young supporter of Laurent Gbagbo, displays specimen notes in a fictional Ivorian currency, in the Yopougon district of Abidjan, Ivory Coast, last week. (Rebecca Blackwell/AP)
Africa's single currency, the CFA Franc, in a Post-euro Future
Born only thirteen years ago, there are credible concerns that the euro won’t make it through adolescence. Just last week, the currency hit a sixteen-month low against the dollar while Standard and Poor’s downgraded the credit ratings of nine eurozone countries including France. In contrast, France’s former colonies in western and central Africa have developed a common currency that works. Indeed, the CFA franc has survived for more than sixty years.
The question now is, what will happen to the CFA zone as the euro crisis deepens?
Fourteen countries use one of two euro-pegged CFA (commonly pronounced “say-fah”) francs as their legal tender. Comprised of eight agrarian West African nations and six resource-rich central African countries, the combined monetary zone stretches from Senegal on Africa’s western coast to the Central African Republic (CAR) at the heart of the continent.
Like the European Union (EU), the CFA zone is economically, politically, and culturally diverse. It encompasses 123 million people, hundreds of languages, and a patchwork of ethnic groups. These countries also have by no means escaped the political tumult that has plagued so much of Africa. CAR alone has been hit with nine coups since it gained independence in 1960. And yet, the region’s essential monetary infrastructure remains.
Some might credit the legacy of French colonial rule for keeping the CFA together, given Paris’s backing of the currency and guaranteeing of the euro exchange rate. This peg undoubtedly garners benefits for the CFA (e.g., lower transaction costs in trading with EU countries), but its fate is not intrinsically tied to the euro.
If the euro collapses, the CFA zone wouldn’t tie itself to a resurrected French franc but likely peg to a basket of currencies. Low-growth Europe is no longer the prominent destination for CFA goods, rendering the euro peg less and less important. In 1995, approximately 49 percent of exports from the central African CFA countries were bound for Europe. By 2010, that number had dropped to an estimated 32 percent.
China’s rise as an export destination is most responsible for the turn away from Europe. It has an insatiable demand for natural resources, which makes African countries attractive trading partners. The growing strength of the Chinese renmimbi against the euro hasn’t hurt either.
A euro collapse and subsequent devaluation of the CFA could in fact boost the zone’s long-term competitiveness. When the CFA was devalued by 50 percent in 1994, an International Monetary Fund study found that the zone “experienced strong economic expansion, a more balanced macroeconomic performance, and progress in transforming the structure of their economies.” (Ironically, devaluation against the euro is precisely the policy that might help countries like Greece and Italy today, but they are politically bound to their fixed exchange rate.)
This is not to say de-pegging and devaluation would be all gain and no loss. Without the backing of the French Treasury, including the mandatory reserve balances, the CFA zone would no longer have the immediate credibility and resources that keep international investors relatively at ease with investments in a highly-indebted poor country region. But the euro’s continued fall against the dollar signals that investors seem to be losing confidence in the euro itself.
And, while boosting CFA zone exports, devaluation also comes at the expense of making imports into Africa more expensive. Oil exporters will benefit while harming crude oil importers and consumers of foreign goods and services in general. For the most part, however, only a small segment of those in the CFA zone consume these goods and services given their relatively high costs. Beyond its economic role, the CFA zone has also shown to be useful in mitigating conflicts. A prime example being Ivory Coast’s 2010-11 elections crisis in which the incumbent president Laurent Gbagbo refused to step down. The West African central bank shut down Gbagbo’s access to the country’s reserves, cutting off his resources to buy the loyalty of civil servants and security forces.
Perhaps seeing the CFA’s success, the East African Community (EAC)—the regional economic body comprised of Uganda, Kenya, Rwanda, Tanzania, and Burundi—has moved toward creating its own common currency. Progress has been halting but the countries will likely soon cede customs authority to the EAC and are hammering out a deal to stand up a monetary union centered around the envisaged “East African Central Bank.”
Anglophone West Africa, for its part, also seems intent on creating a common currency. Six countries in the well-integrated regional body ECOWAS are working to establish “the Eco” by the end of the decade. It aims to merge eventually with the CFA, which would create the largest monetary zone in the world (by number of countries).
While the EAC and ECOWAS should continue their push toward monetary integration, they also must recognize that a common currency alone will not solve their economic challenges. Despite the CFA’s success, cross-border capital controls are tight, labor remains relatively immobile, and intra-zone trade growth has been minimal. In essence, having a single currency is an important piece of the economic pie, but it’s not the whole pie.
Originally, the fixed exchange rate regime was a tool of French imperial policy, providing the African colonies a stable currency with guaranteed convertibility in their largest export market. Despite coups, civil wars, devaluations, and even sovereign defaults, the CFA zone has persisted.
While the eurozone’s potential break-up threatens to end the monetary tie between France and its former colonies, the CFA zone will survive—and could very well thrive—without the euro.
Andrew C. Miller is a research associate at the Council on Foreign Relations’ (CFR) Center for Preventive Action. Neil Bouhan is an analyst at CFR’s Greenberg Center for Geoeconomic Studies.
A Gas station displays the price for fuel at a petrol station in Lagos, Nigeria, Tuesday. Labor unions ended a crippling nationwide strike Monday in Nigeria after the country's president partially restored subsidies that keep gasoline prices low, though it took soldiers deployed on the streets to stop demonstrations in Africa's most populous nation. (Sunday Alamba/AP)
President backs down on fuel price increases, but it is still winter in Nigeria
My wife, Chizo, from the Nigerian city of Port Harcourt, went to Moneygram this morning. She sent money to her brother, a front-line oil worker, who is the mainstay of the domestic economy of her extended family. Because of the strikes in Nigeria, her brother isn’t working — and isn’t earning. He does have savings, but no ATM card, and his bank isn’t open. The bank’s workers seem to be on strike. Meanwhile, prices are soaring for essentials; the rises are probably temporary, but they bite. In a country where most ordinary people live close to the edge, a few days without pay can send a person hurtling towards oblivion.
I don’t claim to understand why Nigerians are revolting over the sudden and misguided decision by the government of Goodluck Jonathan to dramatically raise the basic price of petrol. In Nigeria, as in many African nations, government sets the price of petrol. In Nigeria, petrol prices have long been set well below market prices. At first, the subsidies for fuel were intended for the wealthy. Forty years ago, only the wealthy could afford a car, only the wealthy could even use any form of transport to travel on a regular basis. Rather than a subsidy for the poor, the freeze on fuel prices was intended to help the rich.
The strange history of fuel prices highlights the difficulties of analyzing what the protests portend. In the broadest (and ideal) sense, pegging fuel prices at market levels will promote more efficient use. That’s good in the abstract. But in the real world of Nigeria, there are two problems with raising fuel prices abruptly. First, the effect on the poor — and that’s most Nigerians — is awful. A decent government would take immediate, firm, and effective steps to mitigate, if not remove, any adverse impacts of the fuel increase on poor Nigerians. No such plan or actions are in the works.
More significantly, the Nigerian government has no moral, political, or pragmatic credibility. Critics rightly argue that the government could simply raise fuel prices and pocket the increase. There are enough examples of government officials stealing government funds to make such a scenario seem inevitable, not just probable.
(On Monday, President Jonathan announced that he would restore fuel subsidies, after a week of citizen protests and a looming oil-worker strike threatened to shut down the Nigerian economy.)
The solution to the problem is actually easy to locate. The government of Goodluck Jonathan should declare that the refinery capacity in Nigeria — the lack of which forces the government to import petrol at market prices — should be expanded before any fuel price increase occurs. The Nigerian government, in short, should function here on a “prove it to me” basis. Once petrol is being refined in Nigeria, by Nigerians, on a sustainable basis, then the fuel subsidy can be eliminated.
Even opponents of the elimination of the fuel hike know well that Nigeria, a major world producer of crude oil, ought to have the capacity to meet its own domestic needs for refined gasoline. The failure of Nigeria to meet its own needs holds up the country to ridicule. The question is not whether to remedy this failure, but how.
In implementing the fuel hike, Nigeria’s finance minister deserves special criticism. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala is an internationally respected economic thinker, a former senior official at the World Bank and a former finance minister in former President Olusegun Obasanjo’s important transitional government. She should know better than to impose, without conditions on the government’s own energy bureaucrats, a dramatic and sudden rise in fuel prices that does not also include some penalties and some incentives for the Nigerian government to expand its domestic refining capacity quickly. How she, with her past accolades, could design a program that gives the government perverse incentives is a mystery.
Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala must explain to her own people, and the international community, why the fuel increases must come before the improvements in government services. Nigerians of all persuasions are justifiably concerned that their state apparatus has failed. They are rightly suspicious that government is a mere formality in Nigeria and that any increases in government revenues will be looted.
To be sure, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala can argue that the government of Nigeria needs the funds to restructure its domestic energy economy. While true, those funds can and should come from existing crude-oil revenues. Those funds should come out of the massive existing government expenditures which are directed towards the benefit of a few.
As the most respected member of the current Nigerian government, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala cannot pretend that Nigeria is a blank slate on which to write. Resistance by the people of Nigeria does not have long roots and the year 2012 may not bring the so-called “Nigerian spring.” Yet even if the fuel-subsidy protests would end tomorrow — and even if the government makes good on suggestions that the increases may be rescinded or cancelled — they have already delivered an undeniable verdict: for the Nigerian government, it is winter.
G. Pascal Zachary is a professor of practice at Arizona State University, where he teaches a seminar on technology, development and sub-Saharan Arica. This blog first appeared on his blog site, Africa Works.
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Fear of military subversion in the Democratic Republic of Congo
There are burgeoning fears of a military split and rebellion within the Congolese army. While it is not clear how serious the threats are, the military developments are making Kinshasa’s ruling power nervous, and are worth keeping an eye on.
First, there are rumors the Congolese military is on the verge of splintering. Reportedly, some in the president’s circle suspect military factions from western Congo are allying themselves with Kinshasa’s neighbor to the north, Congo-Brazzaville. The military units are believed to be colluding with the former Democratic Republic of Congo Air Force Chief of Staff, General Faustin Munene, who is accused of masterminding a failed coup in Kinshasa more than a year ago and who is said to be hiding in Congo-Brazzaville.
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There has been long-brewing discontent within armed forces in the west due, in part, to losing out against the ex-National Congress for the Defense of the People (CNDP), a political armed militia group, during their takeover of the army and police command in eastern Congo. The ruling power's concern these days is that western elements of the armed forces might switch sides to join Munene's forces. Fears of a coup could be behind the recent army reshuffling and the strong deployment of Munene's former cronies and ex-CNDP troops from the east to Kinshasa.
There are also fears of a rebellion. General Munene left Congo in October 2010 to allegedly link up with the thousands of former officers and soldiers of the Forces Armées Zaïoises, the army that was loyal to deposed dictator Mobutu Sese Seko. Munene is also suspected of having struck an alliance with the current Congolese army Chief-of-Staff, General Didier Etumba.
Etumba has reportedly resisted President Kabila's calls for resignation after Kabila accused him of siding with subversive groups. Before electoral campaigns began on Oct. 28, Etumba reportedly posed in photos with people later suspected of beating the Senate president Léon Kengo Wa Dondo on New Year’s Eve in Paris, according to sources in the president's intelligence service. The assailants are believed to be led by a longtime opponent of Kabila’s regime, Honoré Ngbanda, who fled to France after Mobutu’s regime was toppled in 1997.
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Lastly, since the beginning of the year, self-proclaimed president Etienne Tshisekedi has reportedly started promising to soon pay $150 to all military members, no matter their rank. The lack of salary for soldiers is a serious problem in the Congo. As recently as January 9, two army brigades in Bukavu, South Kivu Province protested a more than a three-month delay in pay. Three soldiers and two civilians were injured in the protest. Given the destitution of many soldiers, it is possible some could be motivated to shift their loyalty to Mr. Tshisekedi with the promise of pay – a scenario certainly worrisome to President Kabila as he begins his new five-year term.
-Fidel Bafilemba blogs for the Enough Project at Enough Said. Sarah Zingg Wimmer contributed to this post.
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A Kenyan army soldier sits on top of an armored personnel carrier and drinks from a hydration pack in Ras Kamboni, southern Somalia, Dec. 13, 2011. Kenya's military concentration on Somalia may be causing backlash at home as issues of poverty and security go unaddressed. (Ben Curtis/AP/File)
Kenya’s foray into Somalia sows seeds of backlash at home
By most accounts, Kenya’s incursion into Somalia has succeeded militarily, as measured by Kenya’s goals of taking territory and inflicting casualties on the Muslim rebel movement Al Shabab. In a sense, the Kenyan advance has also succeeded politically: Kenya has gained some international legitimacy for its mission by moving to join the African Union forces there, a step the United Nations seems to be endorsing.
But on other political fronts, seeds of a backlash are being sown.
For one thing, there is the question of radicalization inside Kenya. A wave of minor attacks have occurred in Kenya this winter, and Britain warned earlier this month that more attacks are on the way. A Kenyan Muslim organization now says it is officially representing Al Shabab in Kenya, reports the Associated Press:
The statement by the Kenya-based Muslim Youth Center came amid a flurry of warnings from embassies about planned terror attacks in Kenya. The Somali militant group al-Shabab has promised to attack Kenya for its decision to send troops to Somalia in October.
The Muslim Youth Center was named in a United Nations report last year for recruiting, fundraising, and running training and orientation events for al-Shabab. An official al-Shabab spokesman did not answer questions about whether the center now represents al-Shabab in Kenya, but a statement published on the center’s blog on Wednesday was unequivocal.
“There can be no doubt that Amiir Ahmad Iman Ali’s elevation to become the supreme Amiir of Kenya for al Shabaab is recognition from our Somali brothers who have fought tirelessly against the kuffar on the importance of the Kenyan mujahideen in Somalia,” the statement said.
The UN Monitoring Group report that the AP mentions can be found here.
Announcements of open support for al Shabab in Kenya not only increase fears of upcoming attacks, they also threaten to increase political tensions in Kenya. The large Somali community in Kenya has become a target of violence and repression by other groups and by authorities in the past. In a year when Kenya will hold a potentially tense election, where ethnic hatreds could flare up, increased religious tension will only make the situation more precarious.
Another potential area of fallout stemming from Kenya’s operations in Somalia concerns the quality of life in northern Kenya. This region has long suffered from crippling drought and poverty, and is home to hundreds of thousands of refugees from Somalia. Human Rights Watch reported this month on the abuse of civilians by security forces currently going on in parts of the region:
The Kenyan police and military have been responsible for a growing number of serious abuses against civilians since the Kenya Defence Forces entered southern Somalia in October, with the stated aim of eliminating al-Shabaab, an Islamist militia. The same month, suspected al-Shabaab sympathizers initiated a series of attacks against police, military, and civilian targets in Kenya.
In response, members of the security forces have been responsible for rape, beatings, looting, and arbitrary arrests of civilians. The crackdown has largely targeted Somali refugees and Kenyan ethnic Somalis, but residents of other ethnic backgrounds in North Eastern province have also been victimized.
This kind of treatment of civilians could leave bitter memories among civilians, memories that outlast Kenya’s mission in Somalia. Those memories could further weaken the legitimacy of the Kenyan government in the north.
Let me be clear: I am not saying that Somali communities in Kenya are inherently a security threat. Far from it; almost all of these people are simply struggling to survive and to build normal lives. What concerns me more is the possibility of greater political division in Kenya, and greater regional fragmentation within the country. As Kenya attempts to pacify its neighbor, the risk grows that core issues of poverty and security will go unaddressed back home.
– Alex Thurston is a PhD student studying Islam in Africa at Northwestern University and blogs at Sahel Blog.
Related: What is Somalia's Al Shabab?
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In Nov. 2006 the leader of the Lord's Resistance Army, Joseph Kony, answers journalists' questions following a meeting with UN humanitarian chief Jan Egeland in southern Sudan.
Joint UN-African mission seeks to end LRA violence
Two high-ranking officials traveled to Bangui, Central African Republic, Juba, South Sudan, Kampala, Uganda and Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of Congo last week to address the coordination of regional efforts to defeat the Lord’s Resistance Army, or LRA.
During their four-country tour, the African Union (AU) special envoy for the LRA, Francisco Madeira, and Abou Moussa Special Representative of the Secretary-General, or SRSG, and head of the United Nations Regional Office for Central Africa, met with high-ranking civilian and military officials, as well as diplomatic representatives from the United States, European Union, and France, to discuss regional cooperation and the implementation of an AU initiative focused on ending the LRA.
The United Nations and the AU have a history of cooperation promoting peace and security, and their coordination on the LRA issue is encouraging. While in each capital, Madeira and Moussa reiterated the need for regional harmonization between the four countries.
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There were several important advancements in the regional initiative that came out of the recent trip.
The joint mission aimed to reiterate the AU and UN's common goal of ending the LRA. At the first stop in the Central African Republic’s capital of Bangui, the diplomats said, “It is time to take action.” Following this declaration, Madeira laid out a tentative time table citing it was necessary that all of the components of the regional mission, including the Regional Intervention Force, Joint Operations Center and Joint Coordinating Mechanism, be immediately put in place, ideally within two months. Additionally, Moussa announced a February meeting in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia for all stakeholders to discuss continuing coordination of strategies for defeating the LRA. According to Enough sources, technical assessments are ongoing, and a ministerial-level meeting to mark the launch of the operation is planned for early February in South Sudan.
The diplomats were met with assurances of commitment from all of the governments of LRA-affected countries. South Sudan Vice President Dr. Riek Machar, met directly with the AU and UN officials. Machar said the government of South Sudan was ready to contribute troops to the Regional Intervention Force, which is said to consist of 5,000 troops from the four countries (though Enough sources suggest the final number may be closer to 3,500), and a Joint Operations Center is being readied in Yambio, in southwest South Sudan. He noted that the countries must combine resources to stop Joseph Kony, leader of the LRA, and end the many atrocities committed by the group. Likewise, while the diplomats were in Kampala the Ugandan defense minister, Jeje Odongo, reasserted the Uganda’s commitment to the anti-LRA initiative and announced the nomination of Ugandan Colonel Dick Prit Olum as commander in chief of the Regional Intervention Force.
The mission addressed regional tensions that have been plaguing military operations combatting the LRA. Of particular concern is the ability of other armies, particularly the Ugandan army, to operate in LRA-affected areas in the DRC to pursue the LRA and protect civilians. Given that officials in Kinshasa asked the Ugandan army several months ago to halt operations in their territory, an agreement between these neighboring countries is greatly needed.
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The Congolese have been wary of the idea of Ugandan troops for historical reasons, however Ugandan forces will make up the vast majority of the current counter-LRA mission, operating in Congolese territory. After getting approval from the authorities in Bangui, Juba, and Kampala, a Congolese government official said he “was not against” cross-border troop operations with the caveat that the terms of the patrols would be “well defined, justified, and targeted." A clear agreement between Kinshasa and Kampala will be critical for ensuring that the regional task force can operate effectively. The Obama administration, working with the AU special envoy, should make this a priority.
The U.S. decision to send approximately 100 military personnel to the region was a focus of many high-level discussions during this trip. CAR’s defense minister, Jean-Francis Bozizé, noted, "With the arrival of US forces to help in the fight against the LRA, it has been observed that there was no clear coordination of operations. This is why this AU mission has come to find out ways to unify these operations." Both Congolese authorities and Ambassador Madeira called on the US to invest more in the fight against Kony and the LRA, citing the need for modern technology and communications equipment in apprehending the group’s top commanders.
UNOCA noted that SRSG Moussa will brief the U.N. Secretary-General and the Security Council before May 31, 2012 about the progress of coordination between the AU, UN, and affected countries in their mission to end the LRA.
-Anette LaRocco blogs for the Enough Project at Enough Said. Juliana Stebbins contributed to this post.
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Why mobile money is popular in Africa, but not in the US
For several years now, Western technology commentators and analysts have proclaimed the imminent rise of mobile cash – the ability of users to conduct financial transactions using an application on their phone. And for several years now, Western technology users have remained militantly uninterested. Analysts’ excitement for the technology seems to be based on solely on coolness and the search for profit. How cool would it be if we could pay for our meals with our phones? How profitable would it be for the companies who facilitated our payments were we to take care of dinner with our iPhone or Android?
But on a recent trip to Kenya to cover that country’s booming mobile applications industry, I was surprised to see that the futuristic world of mobile money was accepted by most Kenyans as the norm. There are, at last count, 17 mobile cash companies in Kenya alone. And that raised a question: Why would mobile money be more acceptable in Africa, a continent not generally known for technical innovation, than in America, reputedly the most advanced nation on earth?
After talking to a host of American tech professionals at a recent conference, ReadWriteWeb’s Dan Rowinski boiled down their assessment of mobile cash to: “This is not something I would use to buy a fridge." In most parts of Africa, by contrast, where mobile cash is extremely popular, it is often the only way, excepting paper money, to buy a fridge.
The University of Nairobi’s Tonny Omwansa, who is writing a book on mobile money, believes the slow growth of mobile cash in the US comes down to Americans’ trusting relationship to banking institutions, despite recent protests.
“The little time I spent in the U.S., I noticed folks very confident of the (banking) system which is very much accessible to them, unlike many African countries,” he told the Monitor. “Rarely would you find a rural poor (African) asking ‘How secure is M-Pesa?’ But this question easily comes up when I meet typical Americans.” M-Pesa is the most popular mobile cash app in Africa.
In Africa, mobile cash has been going gangbusters for years. The reasons are both structural and cultural, even among those who use a traditional banking institution.
“Besides accessibility, most banked people in urban Kenya prefer mobile money for its convenience and speed,” said Omwansa. “Keep in mind that Internet penetration and use of e-banking and e-commerce is low, so mobile money just fits the bill.”
Simeon Oriko, mobile technologist at m:lab East Africa, a mobile development lab in Kenya, described the popularity of mobile cash in Africa as a family affair.
“Mobile money for me is a cultural issue,” he said. “It has very little to do with the technology itself. Mobile money channels in Kenya generally flow within family units. Secondly, mobile money offered a way for the unbanked to bank their money in a way that's personal and that fits right within their lifestyle.”
Ben Lyon is the co-founder of Kopo Kopo, a Nairobi-based company that helps businesses accept mobile-based payments from its users. He explained why mobile money has been so popular and successful in Africa, especially in East Africa where the industry dominates.
“It has been so successful in these markets because it leapfrogged the payment card industry,” he said, “which requires expensive ATM and Point of Sale (POS) networks to function. ATMs and POS Terminals require regular maintenance and, with ATMs, regular liquidity balancing. By leveraging third party retail outlets and making the phone the primary means of exchange, mobile money bypassed the need to distribute ATMs and POS Terminals. The reverse is true in the US: mobile money isn't leapfrogging the payment card industry, it's augmenting it.”
One of the reasons that mobile cash has yet to catch on in the US, aside from the (sometimes too-open) access to credit and to banking services, is the complexity. M-Pesa and its competitors have to make their services as responsive and simple as possible to accommodate a wide spectrum of user needs, education levels and technology types. But here in the US, mobile cash comes in a bewildering variety of types, none of which have much common ground.
Google Wallet is a near-field communication tool, which allows a mobile phone owner to make a payment by tapping or waving it “near” the pay-point or cash register of a store. That’s great, if your retailer of choice has an NFC reader. Such readers are becoming more common, but by no means ubiquitous. It also requires a credit card. Mastercard’s PayPass requires, well, a Mastercard. Zong charges purchases to your mobile carrier. Square uses a dongle to swipe credit card numbers, but does not pay out.
There is, in essence, too much complexity and too little utility for mobile money here in the US. There is no shared platform for payments and most of the current offerings are merely wrappers for credit cards. And, most importantly of all, in the Western world, mobile cash is, depending on whether you’re an entrepreneur, a financial institution or a user, an opportunity, a potential for growth or a convenience. It is not the solution to a problem.
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Children walk along a road above a camp for people displaced by violence near Minova in eastern Congo, in 2009. (Finbarr O'Reilly/Reuters/File)
Recent rebel attacks in Congo highlight complexity of protecting civilians
This post was originally published on January 10, 2012.
Eight years after the official end to the war in Congo, violence endures in the eastern portion of the country as the region remains overrun with rebel groups leaving civilians to bear the brunt of weak civilian protection measures. A horrific example of this is the latest round of attacks on civilians by the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR) rebel group took place on January 2 and 3 in a remote area of eastern Congo’s South Kivu province. A Congolese army spokesman recently revised the death toll, bringing the number killed to 45, and making these attacks some of the most devastating in months. The majority of the dead are reportedly women and children.
The FDLR is one of the largest and most dangerous rebel groups in Congo’s volatile eastern region. The group is made up predominantly of Hutus, and claims it is trying to overthrow the government in Rwanda, however, the rebels spend much of their time committing atrocities, including mass rapes, looting natural resources, and killing civilians in eastern Congo.
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Without a professionalized and reliable military or any form of civilian police protection against rebel attacks, civilians have increasingly been left to their own devices. The attacks took place in three villages in the Shabunda region of South Kivu—Luyuyu, Ngolombe, and Kishenya—and were purportedly in retaliation to villagers aligning themselves with a group of youth vigilantes associated with local Mayi Mayi groups who recently organized to fight the FDLR. In addition, some of these local Mayi Mayi groups have been allegedly receiving support from ex-National Congress for the Defence of the People (CNDP) forces, now within the Congolese army. Sources on the ground reported to Radio Okapi that the FDLR said they would “shoot at everything that moves” in its quest to remain dominant in the Shabunda area.
The attacks by the FDLR have been particularly brutal; the local village leader of Kishenya was decapitated and at least one of the victims was a pregnant woman whose baby was cut from her stomach. Enough field researchers reported on insecurity and FDLR violence committed in the summer of 2011. However, the high number of fatalities and the brutality of this most recent attack makes it stand out even in the perennially volatile region.
The civilians’ suffering did not end with the attacks. Because of the remoteness of the area and lack of infrastructure many of the most critically injured civilians remained without medical care for days after the attack. On January 5 The United Nations mission to the Democratic Republic of Congo, MONUSCO, airlifted 13 of the most severely injured victims to the main hospital in the city of Bukavu. Three days later, the mission evacuated another six severely wounded civilians. Seven of the 19 evacuees are children.
Army spokesman Colonel Sylvain Ekenge noted that though these attacks were the worst in many months, the death toll could still rise. In an attempt to prevent further violence, the Congolese army has been deployed to the area. Colonel Ekenge underscored the severity of the situation, saying, “It’s very, very serious, to the point that the army is re-enforcing the area.” In addition, MONUSCO has begun aerial monitoring and standing patrols in Lubimbe-II, Katshungu, and Kinglube villages in an effort to increase its presence in the affected areas, and is also coordinating with the national army.
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This tragic loss of life underscores the need to address the issues of dismantling rebel groups and reforming the broader security sector in the region. It also underscores the complexity of the ongoing conflict in the East and inter-relatedness of the issues that drive these actors. Protection of civilians cannot happen without security sector reform; security sector reform cannot happen without justice reform; justice reform cannot happen without political reform; and none of these reforms can take hold in the East until the economic drivers of corruption and conflict are mitigated.
Ending future attacks is contingent upon a comprehensive approach to dismantling the remaining rebel groups, particularly the FDLR, the promotion of reliable civilian protection measures, and the meaningful reform of the security sector, including a focus on professionalizing the national Congolese army.
-Anette LaRocco blogs for the Enough Project at Enough Said. Aaron Hall contributed to this post.
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International Criminal Court's (ICC) Chief Prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo attends a news conference announcing suspects behind Kenya's post-election violence following the 2007 elections, in the Hague, in this December 2010 file photo. (Jerry Lampen/Reuters/File)
Note of caution on the International Criminal Court trials in Kenya
The International Criminal Court (ICC) is currently holding trials for six Kenyans accused of fomenting ethnic violence following Kenya’s 2007 elections. Several of the “Ocampo Six” (so named because of the ICC’s Chief Prosecutor Luis Moreno Ocampo) are prominent politicians, and two – Uhuru Kenyatta and William Ruto – are candidates in the presidential elections scheduled for this December. The case has already caused major controversy in Kenya, and has the potential to significantly affect the campaign this year – which includes stoking ethnic tensions. Whether the ICC likes it or not, by virtue of its work it is a political actor. In the case of the Ocampo Six, the politics of the ICC’s action feel wrong to me, at least as far as peace in Kenya is concerned.
The International Crisis Group (ICG), an organization I very much respect, has put out a thoughtful report sounding a note of caution about the case and its potential impact. Three key sentences from the report read:
These cases have enormous political consequences for both the 2012 elections and the country’s stability. During the course of the year, rulings and procedures will inevitably either lower or increase communal tensions. If the ICC process is to contribute to the deterrence of future political violence in Kenya, the court and its friends must explain its work and limitations better to the public.
Given the political reality that this case is likely to go forward, ICG takes the practical approach of giving suggestions to both the ICC and the Kenyan government for how to minimize the potentially incendiary effects of the case. In my view the recommendations are sound.
I am glad to see this kind of direct and pragmatic discussion of the ICC’s political role. The conversation about the politics of the ICC’s actions is not new – Alex de Waal and Julie Flint, in particular, began making insightful critiques of the ICC’s indictment of Sudanese President Omar al Bashir several years ago – but ICG’s contribution is timely and will likely make new audiences consider these important issues.
– Alex Thurston is a PhD student studying Islam in Africa at Northwestern University and blogs at Sahel Blog.
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