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Wednesday 9 April 2014

[AfricaWatch] Top Africa News and Issues

 

Rwanda's women make strides towards equality 20 years after the genocide

 
A majority parliamentary presence, constitutional support, a drive to tackle gender-based violence – post-genocide Rwanda seems a good place to be a woman. But the reality is more complex
 
Critics of the government argue that the regime – which has beenaccused of locking up, or assassinating, dissenters – is impeding progress. Many suspect the number of women in parliament may be linked to a desire to change the constitution to allow Kagame to run for a third term in 2017.
 
 

Britain hits international development aid target

LONDON (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - Britain became the first of the world's richest large nations to hit an internationally agreed target -- spending 0.7 percent of national income on development aid.
Over the past year, Britain spent 11.4 billion pounds on overseas development assistance (ODA), an increase of 30.5 percent from 2012, the government said in a statement.
This lifted the proportion of national income spent on aid to 0.72 percent from 0.56 percent in 2012, according to provisional data.
By hitting the long-standing target agreed by the United Nations, Britain joined a group of smaller wealthy countries that have already met or exceeded it: Sweden, Norway, Luxembourg, Denmark and the Netherlands.
Climate change a problem today - not tomorrow - for food security, experts say
LONDON (Thomson Reuters Foundation) – Climate change has already had a powerful negative effect on agriculture and food security for the world's most vulnerable, and that impact will get worse, according to agricultural experts responding to the latestIntergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report at a conference in London.
Pramod Aggrawal, an IPCC author and reviewer, said scientific data on agriculture over the last three decades shows that "indeed some impacts (are) already happening in terms of food security. It's not a problem of the future anymore."
 

Congo (DR) conflict

 
Democratic Republic of Congo's five-year war officially ended in 2003, but the country is still regularly listed as the site of one of the world's worst humanitarian crises. 
Insecurity continues in the remote, resource-rich provinces near the eastern border, and the world's largest peacekeeping mission – a U.N. force of nearly 20,000 soldiers – struggles to prevent violence and protect the population of 67.7 million.
 

Reconciliation elusive in Rwanda, 20 years on from genocide

KIGALI (Thomson Reuters Foundation) – In April, Jean Pierre never switches on his television, afraid of what might happen to his wife, Grace, if she sees the programmes broadcast during Rwanda's annual genocide commemoration week.
"I've taken her to hospital twice in April," he said. "She had flashbacks. She was crying and saying that the militias had come back."
A Tutsi living in Kigali, Grace was slashed with machetes and left for dead during the 100 days of slaughter that began on April 6, 1994, shortly after Hutu President Juvenal Habyarimana was killed when his plane was shot down over the Rwandan capital.
 
 
RWANDA: The United Nations chief tells a packed stadium of sombre and weeping Rwandans the world will "never again" let genocide tear their nation apart, at a ceremony marking 20 years since 800,000 people were butchered.

Central African Republic troubles

 
Landlocked Central African Republic (CAR) has for years experienced one of the most silent and forgotten emergencies in the world, according to the United Nations.
The government has little presence or control outside the capital after years of instability and a history of frequent coups and mutinies.
The most recent coup took place in March 2013, when fighters from the Seleka rebel alliance ousted President Francois Bozize, accusing him of failing to uphold his end of a January 2013 peace deal.
 
The Government of United Kingdom is channelling £600 million in aid to the G8-sponsored 'New Alliance for Food Security and Nutrition', claiming it will lift 50 million people out of poverty by 2022. But campaigners say the scheme is set to benefit multinational companies like Monsanto and Unilever at the expense of millions of small-scale farmers, and is likely to increase poverty and inequality on the continent. 
Ethiopia, Ghana, Tanzania, Burkina Faso, Côte d'Ivoire, Mozambique, Nigeria, Benin, Malawi and Senegal are the African states currently involved in the New Alliance.
In return for receiving aid money and corporate investment through the New Alliance, the African countries involved have to change their laws, making it easier for corporations to acquire large tracts of farmland, control the supply of seeds, and ship agricultural produce to other parts of the world.
 
We can solve global education crisis
 
As a newly appointed Global Youth Ambassador for A World at School, I want to call attention to the57 million children around the world are currently being denied their human right to an education.

I am joined in this call to action by 500 other young advocates for global education. Together, we make up the Global Youth Ambassadors group – launched on April 1, by the United Nations Secretary-General Bank Ki Moon and the United Nations Special Envoy for Global Education Gordon Brown.

The big number of children out of school means a lot of human resource is being wasted. These children without education can never realise their potential in life and this means they will not have a developmental goal to achieve in life.
 
 

SA respects Uganda anti-gay laws: Zuma

Pretoria - South Africa respects Uganda's anti-homosexual laws, President Jacob Zuma said on Tuesday.
Responding to a parliamentary question on whether he intended to clear South Africa's policy position regarding Uganda's anti-homosexuality law, Zuma said: "South Africa respects the sovereign rights of other countries to adopt their own legislation."
"In this regard, through diplomatic channels South Africa engages with Uganda on areas of mutual concern bearing in mind Uganda's sovereignty," Zuma said through a written response to the National Assembly.

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