Africa News blog
African business, politics and lifestyle
PHOTOBLOG: Children in Kenya and Haiti forced to grow up fast, if they survive
I had a flashback the other day when I was looking at photographs from Haiti of 15-year-old Fabianne Geismar, shot dead in the head after stealing wall hangings from a Port-au-Prince store, crushed in the Jan. 12 earthquake.
The image of Fabianne sprawled on the ground, blood trailing over the paintings she’d grabbed, took me back to my own childhood in Nairobi and the sight of a 7- or 8-year-old-boy – probably the same age as me at the time – who was caught stealing sweets from a street vendor and was beaten and burnt with rubber tyres. They called it mob justice.
To this day, I’ll never understand why that poor boy had to die such a violent and senseless death for something so trivial. I feel the same way about Fabianne – she survived one of the most catastrophic events in living memory, only to be shot in the head for petty theft. And for stealing wall hangings where there are no walls.
Fabianne’s childhood was brutally stolen from her and it got me thinking about how quickly so many young people in places like Africa, Asia and the Americas have to grow up, forced to fend for themselves through child labour or prostitution, denied an education and exposed to violence, disease and hunger at an age when they should be learning and playing.
Of the 2.2 billion children in the world, 1 billion live in poverty and experience violence annually, UNICEF figures show, meaning nearly half the children in the world don’t get to have childhoods. There are also an estimated 132 million orphans in the world, UNICEF says.
Children under 18 make up almost half of Haiti’s 9-million population and the country faces the highest rates of infant and child mortality in the Western hemisphere.
Officials fear thousands of children have been separated from their parents, leaving them vulnerable to exploitation by child traffickers, being illegally adopted by other countries or forced into child labour in order to survive. Around 150 million children worldwide aged 5–14 are engaged in child labour.
Guinea tests Western influence in Africa
Whether Guinea’s absent junta leader Moussa Dadis Camara makes it back to his home country or not will be the latest test of Western powers’ dwindling influence in Africa.
Ex-colonial power France and the United States — desperate to avoid a failed state in a region which is already attracting the interest of narco-traffickers and other criminals — have both made it clear Camara should be kept well away.
French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner warned Camara’s homecoming after treatment in Morocco following an assassination bid could spark an all-out civil war.
After talks with French and U.S. diplomats, caretaker junta leader Sekouba Konate announced last week that he would work with a prime minister from the opposition in a transition government that would hold democratic elections.
It all seemed to be going according to the script until Camara flew into Burkina Faso on Tuesday night, walking (with some help) and talking.
It seems Camara thought he was heading back to Conakry and was livid when he was told the Moroccan airplane had pitched up in the Burkinabe capital Ouagadougou.
A delegation of Camara allies immediately flew out to fetch him, but headed into a row with Konate. Guinea-watchers have been told to look out for some kind of statement from Burkina’s President Blaise Compaore on what happens next.
For more in-depth news about Africa, you may want to visit Newstime Africa http://www.newstimeafrica.com – We cover the whole of Africa. You will get our views on this topic and much more.
Nightmare start for Africa’s year of soccer
Africa’s year of soccer scarcely could have got off to a worse start.
Days before the start of the African Nations Cup — a warm-up for the continent’s first World Cup in South Africa this June — the gun attack on Togo’s national team by separatists in Angola for many will confirm Africa’s reputation for chaos.
The ambush of the team bus as it wound its way through the restive enclave of Cabinda left the driver dead, nine wounded and a huge question mark over whether the tournament can proceed – despite host Angola’s pledges to heighten security.
Sceptics of Africa’s ability to pull off major events of this kind will be saying “I told you so”.
Was it really a good idea to schedule six group matches and a quarter-final in a region where separatist factions have waged a three-decade-long war?
Why did the Togolese team choose to make its way through the area from its training ground in neighbouring Republic of Congo by coach, despite an apparent ban on bus travel?
Tournament organisers have vowed that the competition would continue as planned, but with the rebel group behind the attack promising it was “just the start” of a campaign of violence it may not be the end of the story.
For more in-depth news about Africa, you may want to visit Newstime Africa http://www.newstimeafrica.com – We cover the whole of Africa. You will get our views on this topic and much more.
Is an independent south Sudan now inevitable?
So, is it now inevitable that Sudan’s oil-producing south will decide to split away from the north as an independent country in a looming secession referendum in 2011?
That was the conclusion of some observers of a bluntly worded exchange of views between two leading lights from the north and the south at a symposium in Khartoum on Tuesday.
Sudan’s Muslim north fought a two decade civil war with southerners, most of them Christians and followers of traditional beliefs. The 2005 peace deal that ended that conflict set up a north/south coalition government and promised a referendum on southern secession.
Sudan’s foreign minister Deng Alor told journalists at the symposium most of his fellow southerners, embittered by decades of northern oppression and imposed Islamic values, “overwhelmingly” wanted independence. Only a miracle would change their minds, he said, going on to appeal for a “peaceful divorce” should the south choose to split.
Two days earlier, southern president Salva Kiir shocked many when he openly told a cathedral congregation they should choose independence if they wanted to be free and unity if they wanted to be “second class” in their own country.
Powerful northern presidential advisor Ghazi Salaheddin countered on Tuesday by accusing southerners of paranoia, “living in victimhood” and mismanaging their own semi-autonomous region. The comments were unusually blunt and personal for such a public venue. To many, their tone was a bitter reminder of the rhetoric routinely thrown around before the signing of the 2005 Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA).
Sudan commentator Alex de Waal wrote on his blog that many of the comments echoed what had been said in earlier closed sessions in the U.N. sponsored conference.
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Tenant Screening
this is a very sad thing indeed.
it makes me wonder,”are we Africans, the children of a lesser god?
i think not?
i saw more horrid images of brutalities when i was growing up in the slums of Nairobi.
nice and powerful story.