Africa-EU summit will sidestep human rights, analysts say

There is agreement that human rights needs to be an issue addressed at the Africa-EU summit being launched in Portugal this weekend, however, analysts and academics from both Europe and Africa doubt that any real progress will be made on the matter, AllAfrica.com reported Thursday, citing Inter Press Service.

“It is an unavoidable truth that human rights and democratic values are one level below strategic interests,” said researcher Manuela Franco at the Portuguese Institute of International Relations.

The summit, being held Saturday and Sunday in Lisbon, will include 52 government delegations from Africa and 27 from EU member states, as well as observers from the African Union, the European Commission, the European Parliament, the Council of Europe and the United Nations.

The official aim of the summit was summed up by Portuguese Foreign Minister Luís Amado, who said that what is important is that “problems are tackled in a multilateral manner, since they are not limited to a single state.”

According to Angolan Ambassador Assunção Afonso de Sousa dos Anjos, cooperation between Africa and Europe “is essential for fomenting development,” but “we must be our own architects.”

The relationship between Europe and Africa is being promoted in large part due to the increasing influence of China in Africa, Franco said.

Pointing to China, political analyst Eugenio Costa Almeida argued that when economic interests are at stake, the EU forgets about human rights.

“It is China that most protects the African countries I mentioned, due to its interest in fossil fuels and minerals, while Europe continues to see Africa as a market for its products, rather than a partner on an equal footing,” he said.

The issue of human rights first came up when British Prime Minister Gordon Brown announced he would not attend the summit if Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe did.

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Campaign against gender-violence launched in Africa

November 23 marked the beginning of a 16-day campaign against gender violence, which for 2007 has the theme: “Demanding Implementation, Challenging Obstacles: End Violence Against Women,” IRIN reported Monday.

At the launch of the campaign in Nairobi, Kenya, Fartun Abdi Ahmed, a Nairobi-based community outreach worker, described her personal experience with female genital mutilation, which she underwent while living in Somalia. “One cannot imagine the pain, the fear and the stress I went through; thank God it was a rural area and so we did not get some of the infections that are common nowadays,” such as HIV. She called FGM the most prevalent form of gender-based violence in Somalia, and said the practice leads to complications such as infections and the need for additional surgery during childbirth, which may lead to the death of the baby or mother.

Men and boys “must be engaged at the grassroots level in order to come up with community-based solutions” to gender-based violence, said Eddie Gedalof, the acting representative of the United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR).

Besida Tonwe, the head of U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs’ regional support office in Nairobi, said that: “Sexual violence is widespread in central and eastern Africa; in conflict areas such as eastern [Democratic Republic of] Congo, it has reached almost grotesque proportions.” She added: “Sexual and gender-based violence should be addressed robustly on several fronts simultaneously, not least because the violence does not end when armed conflict ends – it must be addressed also in post-conflict settings.”

U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon, in a statement made Sunday (the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women), said: “Violence against women is always a violation of human rights; it is always a crime; and it is always unacceptable. Let us take this issue with the deadly seriousness that it deserves – not only on this International Day, but every day.”

The campaign ends on December 10, International Human Rights Day, to reinforce the message that violence against women is a human rights abuse.

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Needs of displaced Africans take center stage at World Refugee Day hearing

According to the latest U.N. reports on Africa’s refugee crisis, the continent currently has over 2.4 million refugees and 6.4 million internally displaced persons (IDPs). This accounts for nearly 25 percent of the world’s refugee population and nearly half of the world’s IDP population. In the past year alone there has been a 14 percent increase in the number of refugees worldwide. These staggering figures are just a few of the reasons why the situation in Africa was the focus of a House subcommittee hearing today.

Many issues were discussed in the hearing, but the most noteworthy were the circumstances in Darfur, the matter of African nations closing their borders to refugees, the enormous number of IDPs on the continent, and the rights and services available to refugees. The subcommittee heard first from Daoud Hari, a Darfurian man that escaped the genocide by fleeing to Chad and then to Ghana. Hari is one of three refugees that have been resettled in the U.S., and he reported to the committee that there is much work to be done in Darfur. Hari and Joel Charny, the vice president for policy at Refugees International, both gave testimony regarding the dire state of affairs in Chad, noting that refugees from Darfur are overwhelming the Chadian government and straining the country’s resource base. The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) has been working closely with the Chadian government to set up new camps to hold the refugees. However, such an operation would be beset by numerous complications, including limited water and access to transportation, and there is currently no plan for relocation.

In addition to the dilemma of refugee overflow in existing camps, many African nations are now closing their doors to refugees in order to better attend to the violent struggles raging on within their own borders. Perhaps the biggest obstacle many nations face is trying to meet the needs of their own IDP population. IDPs face the same struggles of finding food, water, shelter and basic services that refugees face. However, because they have not crossed an international border, they are not legally refugees, and are therefore ineligible to receive the same services as refugees.

The entire committee expressed deep concern for the well-being and of Africa’s existing refugee population. Many refugees do not receive sufficient services, and few are receiving education while they are in the camps. Additionally, there was much discussion about trying to extend these services to IDPs. All witnesses confirmed reports that IDPs are now gathering at the edges of refugee camps in order to try to collect any services possible from the camps, or from the refugees themselves.

Despite all the disheartening accounts delivered, the committee was also able to report on great progress. The U.S. currently is home to half of all resettled African refugees. In particular, the progress of Sudan’s “Lost Boys” was noted. This group of refugees arrived in 2003 and has served as a model for resettlement and adjustment to American culture ever since. This year the group proudly saw the first wave of boys graduate from various colleges and universities around the nation.