Africa
A genocide against Christians is silently unfolding in Nigeria
The International Society for Civil Liberties and Rule of Law, – a Nigerian-based non-governmental organization that monitors human rights violations and advocates for peace and integrated society, – has asked the United Nations (UN), the Commonwealth Secretary General, the African Union (AU) and Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), and other international organizations to step up efforts to address rising armed attacks mostly on civilians in the Federal Republic of Nigeria.
The latest letter, a copy made available to Modern Diplomacy, titled “Calling For Urgent International Intervention To Stop State Protected Fulani & Other Jihadists From Wiping Out Christians In Nigeria” and was addressed to H.E. (Mr.) Antonio Guterres, Secretary General of the United Nations, Rt. Hon (Madam) Patricia Scotland, QC Secretary General of Commonwealth, H.E. (Ms) Fatou Bensouda, Chief Prosecutor of the Int’l Criminal Court Office of the Prosecutor, ICC Headquarters, among others.
It said in part: We, the International Society for Civil Liberties and Rule of Law, are a federally registered human rights group in Nigeria, formed in 2008 with thematic mandate of campaigning for promotion and advancement of democracy and accountable governance, civil liberties and rule of law and public security and safety.
As a core part of our thematic mandate, Intersociety has, since 2010, followed, monitored (including patterns and trends of anti-Christian butcheries), researched, investigated, documented and published or exposed inter faith and intra faith intolerance and violence including massacre of Christians by Jihadists in Nigeria or any part thereof and persecution of Shiite Muslims by Sunni Muslim political and security actors.
Intersociety strongly opposes use of violence for religious propagation and adoption whether in principle or in practice, of any particular religion as a state religion by any sitting Government or its security and law enforcement agencies.
As a result of the above, Your Excellencies; and with greatest respect and humility, we wish to bring the attention of Your Excellencies to the following facts:
1. That Christians are at high risk of being wiped out by state protected Islamic Jihadists, especially the Jihadist Fulani Herdsmen, parented by three major Fulani associations (Miyatti Allah, FUNAM and Fulani Houta lHore), all recognized and registered till date by the present central Government of Nigeria. Other jihadist groups massacring Christians in Nigeria are: Boko Haram, ISWAP, Ansaru and Jihadist “Bandits”. Of the named Jihadist groups, Jihadist Fulani Herdsmen enjoy full state cover and protection and are also independently found dominating other jihadist groups.
2. That from January to July 2020, Jihadist Herdsmen have been responsible for no fewer than 1,027 Christian deaths and destruction or burning of thousands of houses and hundreds of worship and learning centers belonging to Christians. All their victims since 2015 and before then are Christians. The Jihadist group is further responsible for over 15,000 Christian deaths and destruction or burning of at least 1,500 churches and Christian learning centers in Nigeria since 2009.
3. That combined with anti-Christian killings by other Jihadists including Boko Haram, ISWAP, Ansaru and Jihadist “Bandits”, over 32,000 Christian lives and more than 17,000 churches and Christian schools have been lost since July 2009. Owing to the inaction and strongly suspected conspiratorial role of the present central Government of Nigeria since mid-2015, the number of Jihadist groups in Nigeria has also increased dangerously and uncontrollably from three (BH, Ansaru and Herdsmen) in mid-2015 to not less than 20 including splinter and autonomous jihadist groups.
4. That this is to the extent that they now operate, kill, maim, torture, rape, massacre and convert Christians and loot, plunder, burn and destroy their churches and other properties at will; with Nigeria’s central Government and its security forces looking the other side or doing little or nothing.
5. That specifically, Your Excellencies, a total of1,421 Christians have been hacked to death by Nigeria’s Jihadists in Jan-July 2020; a period of seven months. The breakdown of the massacre carefully monitored by Intersociety, shows that Jihadist Herdsmen accounted for 1,027 Christian deaths, Boko Haram and Islamic State in West Africa Province (ISWAP) 310 Christian deaths and Jihadist Ansaru and Jihadist “Bandits” over 60 Christian deaths. Jihadist Fulani Herdsmen also accounted for over 9,000 Christian deaths since mid 2015 when the present Government of Nigeria came on board.
6. That in Southern Kaduna alone, 683 Christian lives have been lost to Jihadist Herdsmen in the past 570 days or 19 months (1st Jan 2019-31st July 2020). Not less than 363 Christian lives were also lost to Fulani Jihadists in the past seven years or 1st Jan-31st July 2020 and in July 2020, alone, no fewer than 175 Christians were butchered by the same Jihadist group in the State.
7. For more details, Your Excellencies, please access the follow links concerning the ongoing butchering of Christians in Nigeria and strongly suspected complicity of the present central Government of Nigeria and some State Governments in the troubled areas including the present Government of Kaduna State.
a. Our latest report, dated 3rd August 2020: 1,421 Christians Hacked To Death By Nigeria’s Jihadists In Jan-July 2020:
b. Our updated Statistical Data File backing our recent reports on massacre of Christians in Nigeria, updated on 3rd August 2020:http://intersocieng.org/phocadownload/2019/file%20containing%20statistical%20sources2-converted%20new.pdf
c. Our recent statement, exposing eight major indicators vicariously and directly linking the present central Government of Nigeria to Fulani & BH Jihadism in the country, dated 31st July 2020:http://intersociety-ng.org/component/k2/item/558-eight-major-indicators-vicariously-linking-the-present-government-of-nigeria-to-herdsmen–bh-jihadism
d. Our recent letter to Nigeria’s Inspector General of Police urging the NPF to intervene and end ceaseless massacre of Christians in Southern Kaduna, dated 22nd July 2020:
f. Our updated version of the periodically reviewed reports on massacre of Christians in Nigeria, released on 12th July and updated on 24th July 2020 (1,202 Nigeria’s Christians Hacked to Death by Jihadists in Jan-June 2020): http://intersociety-ng.org/component/k2/item/556-nigeria
Our writing,Your Excellencies is in recognition of Your Excellencies’ respective international mandates for promotion and sustenance of global peace, security and stability. Going by enormous powers and responsibilities at Your Excellencies’ disposal, it will be gravely calamitous to sit and watch by and allow Nigeria, a country of multi-ethnicity and religions with explosive population of over 200m people; to explode into ‘complex humanitarian emergencies’; incapable of being managed if allowed to explode..
To UN Secretary General: We therefore urge the Secretary General of UN, H.E., Antonio Guterres, to consider the situation in Nigeria as dicey and a time-bomb and adopt effective measures to reverse same. These include investigating the massacre of Christians in Nigeria by the country’s Jihadists and the role of the present Government of Nigeria as well as doing the needful by briefing the UN Security Council and recommending to same to act without further delays. Totality of these is in line with the Principles and Purposes of the United Nations including international peace and security. The situation in Nigeria is a serious threat to international peace and security under the UN’s Principles and Purposes.
To Commonwealth Secretary General: We urge the Secretary General of the Commonwealth, Rt. Hon Patricia Scotland, QC, to act by investigating the state actor and non-state actor roles in the Nigeria’s anti-Christian butcheries. The Secretary General is reminded about the Harare Commonwealth Declaration (1991) which affirmed that human rights are among the fundamental political values of the Commonwealth. … The Commonwealth Charter, agreed to by the Commonwealth’s Heads of Government in 2012 also underscores the commitment of Member States to Commonwealth principles and values inclusive of human rights. Nigeria, as a key member of Commonwealth, must not be allowed to transform into and exist as a jungle.
To the ICC’s Chief Prosecutor: We urge the Chief Prosecutor of ICC, H.E. (Ms) Fatou Bensouda to break its long years of silence and inaction regarding the ongoing butcheries in Nigeria. The delays by the ICC to do the needful in Nigeria since 2010 when it “opened its investigations on Nigeria” are technically responsible for the loss of over 32, 000 Christians and 17,000 churches and Christian schools and tens of thousands of Christian houses and hectares of their ancestral lands.
Such delays are also technically responsible for the massacre of thousands of Muslims by fellow Muslim radicals including victims of Jihadist Banditry attacks and state actor massacre of over 1300 Shiite Muslims and over 480 Judeo-Christians dominated by Igbo citizens. In line with the plain wording and language of the ICC Statute of 1998, ratified by Nigeria in Sept 2001, “crimes against humanity including massacre of Christians; war crimes and genocide (including anti-Christian butcheries) have been committed in ‘industrial scale’ in Nigeria by state actors and non-state actors and are still ongoing”. We, therefore, urge the ICC to act immediately.
Africa
The Operational Problems of administering Covid-19 Vaccines in Western Africa
The world let out a collective sigh of relief on Monday the 9th of November, as Pfizer announced to the world the successful creation of a covid-19 vaccine developed in partnership with German biomedical company, BioNtech.
With the vaccine completing all relevant and necessary trials over 90% effectiveness, a wave of optimism has come over the world, which has been reflected in the market’s hope to return normal by the end of 2021.
The following week other leading vaccine candidates, Moderna, announced on the 16th of November that their vaccine was even more effective against the virus at a rate of 94.5%.
In the background of these developments has been the scramble by countries to secure access for their citizens. As soon as these companies announced their quest to find a safe and effective vaccine, deals were being done to provide access to viable manufacturers should their candidate pass clinical trials. In the western world, governments have successfully purchased at a huge cost, enough inoculations to vaccinate their populations entirely by the end of 2021.
Those lucky enough to live in countries with extensive, well-funded and will resourced public health systems will see normalcy return next year.
Others aren’t so lucky.
Nowhere is this truer than in West Africa, which has long been a difficult area to provide wide scale medical assistance in times of crisis. Home to an estimated 380 million people, living in some of the least developed social and economic circumstances, vaccine acquisition and distribution is challenging for a number of reasons.
Firstly, is the inability to purchase vaccines outright. With no ability to manufacture, the West African region will subsequently be some of the last countries to receive doses, and even then, the amount that they are able to acquire through 2021 may not be sufficient to stop the virus spreading to the most vulnerable. Developed countries are understandably focusing on domestic wide-scale inoculations to mitigate the economic impact of the virus, but their ability to negotiate and purchase ‘off-the-shelf’ puts them at the front of the que for the overwhelming majority of doses.
Such is the discrepancy in vaccine accessibility that according to Clare Wenham, assistant professor of global health policy at the London School of Economics and Political Science, “90% of the world’s pharmaceutical products serve 10% of the world’s population”.
Many smaller poorer nations all over the world are struggling to secure the doses needed which has eaten into the ability for the rest of the world to access the vaccines. This has seen the WHO and Gavi work to create COVAX, an amalgamation of 165 of both some of the world’s poorest and wealthiest countries. The aim is for 75 countries to finance the vaccines from their own public finance budgets while assisting up to 90 lower-income countries vaccinating up to 20% of each participant countries population.
Secondly and arguably more importantly, once a vaccine is secured, both the storage and distribution become a greater challenge. Sub-Saharan West Africa is one of the hottest, and must humid areas in the world, which further increases storage risks. For example, most countries in the region do not have adequate means to store the vaccines, especially the Pfizer vaccine, which needs to be stored at -70 C. The region faced similar infrastructure problems when distributing Ebola vaccines in Sierra Leone, with many remote health clinics using solar-powered refrigeration.
Likewise, getting the vaccines into these remote areas is extremely complicated. Roads and access to certain areas simply doesn’t exist, which again leaves some of the world’s most vulnerable people waiting. Similarly, countries would need to increase their domestic capacities in training people to administer vaccines once they have arrived. The highly contagious nature of the virus means that time cannot afford to be wasted in the vaccine to roll out, and as such, large numbers of professionals will be needed to safely administer the doses.
With the first vaccines expected to be delivered around the world by years end, it’s clear from these regional challenges, that for West Africa and world-wide vaccination remains some years off.
Only once we are all vaccinated can we breathe easy, and we are reminded by the WHO that, “With such a highly contagious virus, and in a globalised world, no country will be safe from the fallout of the pandemic until all countries are protected”.
Africa
Ghana: Citadel of Democracy
In a tightly contested presidential election, Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, an experienced politician and highly successful business magnet, has been re-elected for a second term as the president of the Republic of Ghana, the Ghana’s election commission has declared.
Nana Akufo-Addo of the governing New Patriotic Party (NPP) won 7 December’s election outright with 51.6% of the votes, garnered simple majority, beating former President John Dramani Mahama of the main opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC), who received 47.4%, according to the commission’s official statement.
More than 13.4 million people voted at more than 38,600 polling stations, making the turnout about 79%, Head of Electoral Commission, Jean Mensa, said of the election, which has tested the West African nation’s credentials as one of the continent’s most politically stable countries in the West Africa region and the entire Africa.
At the media briefing, Chairperson Jean Mensa said: “The election process was very transparent and participatory” before declaring the newly elected president for the next political season.
Ghanaians went to the polls on 7 December 2020 to elect a new President and members of the parliament. These were the eighth elections under the fourth republic since returning to civilian rule. The elections were held within the context of the Covid-19 pandemic, which required the Electoral Commission (EC) to put in place unprecedented preparatory measures.
In practice, Ghana’s civil society and most of the institutions have worked to preserve the democratic gains Ghana has accomplished in a peaceful manner. The media has also played its legitimate role in promoting peace through civic education and providing unbiased and objective-based reports
The civil society organizations play a significant role by providing an independent assessment of the electoral process through election observation. Furthermore, the presence of observers during the opening, voting, closing and tabulation of results reduces the risk of electoral malpractices and inspires confidence in the electoral process.
In a joint statement of Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), African Union (AU) and UNOWAS on the post-election situation in the Republic of Ghana commended the leader and the people of the Republic of Ghana for the peaceful conduct of the 7 December 2020 presidential and parliamentary elections. “This is in line with Ghana’s enviable track record of organizing peaceful and successful elections since the return to multiparty democracy in 1992,” the statement said.
Ghana has an emerging digital-based mixed economy hybrid with an increasing primary manufacturing and export of digital technology goods along with assembling and exporting automobiles and ships. It engages in diverse resource rich exportation of industrial minerals, agricultural products primarily cocoa, petroleum and natural gas.
With only a population of about 30 million, Ghana is classified as a middle-income country. Ghana was ranked 7th in Africa out of 53 countries in the 2012 Ibrahim Index of African Governance. The Ibrahim Index is a comprehensive measure of African government, based on a number of different variables which reflect the success with which governments that pursue sustainable development and deliver essential political goods to its citizens.
Africa
DR Congo: Political tensions, armed attacks, displacement and COVID threats continue
There is a critical need for State institutions in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) to provide more stability and safety for citizens facing multiple threats, the head of the UN mission there told the Security Council on Monday.
Leila Zerrougui, Special Representative and Head of the UN Stabilization Mission in DRC (MONUSCO), warned of heightened political tensions in the country, including fissures within the ruling coalition and a presidential threat to dissolve the national assembly.
Over the past month, the mission’s leadership has met with numerous representatives, including civil society leaders, to diffuse “further provocations” that threaten security and economic stability, encouraging them to “resolve their differences through dialogue”, she explained, assuring that the UN would continue “to facilitate an expeditious and peaceful resolution”.
Noting the importance of accountability for perpetrators of atrocities, the Special Representative highlighted the recent trial and conviction of Ntabo Ntaberi Sheka for war crimes, including rape, sexual slavery and the recruitment of children, saying the resolution “represents an important step forward for the Congolese military justice in combating impunity”.
MONUSCO crucial
The UN official expressed concern over the situation in Eastern Congo, where “insecurity, grave violations of human rights and displacements continue to affect civilians, notably women and children”.
She updated that national and foreign armed group violence persists in the territories of Ituri, North Kivu and South Kivu, which serve to “highlight the crucial role” of the MONUSCO force in expanding state authority and “deterring violence against civilians”.
Working together
Other severe challenges include the theft of natural resources by armed groups, which, according to Ms. Zerrougi, require “regional and international efforts” to tackle.
At the same time, she saluted Congolese authorities for their efforts to “engage constructively with the country’s neighbours to resolve their differences, foster regional economic cooperation and consolidate regional peace and stability”.
The UN envoy also upheld that MONUSCO would continue to liaise closely with the Secretary-General for the Great Lakes to support the Government and work closely with the African Union, the International Conference of the Great Lakes Region and the Southern African Development Community (SADC) “to ensure synergies and to make certain that our joint investment in supporting regional stability brings maximum results”.
Protecting people
“Protection of civilians remains a central priority for MONUSCO”, the Special Representative asserted.
Against the backdrop of a deteriorating humanitarian situation in conflict-affected provinces, she flagged that although MONUSCO continues to use a “whole-of-mission approach” – involving civilian, military and police components – protecting civilians is “heavily dependent on unimpeded access to those in need”.
Ms. Zerrougui strongly condemned recent attacks against humanitarian workers who, despite numerous operational and security challenges, continue to assist vulnerable civilian populations.
“The ability of humanitarian workers to support the Congolese authorities is absolutely essential to relieve the suffering of victims of conflict and was key to ending the 11th Ebola outbreak in Equateur Province”, she stressed.
COVID toll
As the UN pledges to maintain support for its protection responsibilities, the impact of COVID-19 is making it increasingly more difficult.
In highlighting the coronavirus’ impact on MONUSCO, the mission chief revealed that 173 personnel had tested positive for COVID-19, six of whom have died after contracting it.
She attested that all possible measures to minimize the spread and manage cases have been put into place.
Exit strategy
To date, MONUSCO operates in the capital Kinshasa and six other provinces.
The Special Representative informed the Council of fresh discussions with the DRC Government to facilitate the phased drawdown of the mission, envisioning tailored “province-specific strategies” to consolidate its footprint in the most conflict-affected territories of North Kivu, South Kivu and Ituri.
As State authorities are ultimately responsible for civilian protection, she concluded by saying that MONUSCO is supporting the Government’s national police reform plan; advocating for new disarmament, demobilization and community reintegration frameworks for ex-combatants; and stands ready to step up international support coordination efforts for security sector reform.
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