Peacemakers Trust posts news, reports or announcements of interest to people studying or working in the field of dispute resolution, conflict transformation and peacebuilding. Inclusion of an item on the media watch blog does not imply endorsement or agreement of Peacemakers Trust with views expressed by authors of posted items.
A recent graduate from Colorado College in Colorado Springs, Amy was volunteering as a rape crisis counselor in Chicago when she learned about the alarming levels of sexual violence in Congo. When Amy told family and friends that she wanted to relocate to the Democratic Republic of Congo, her cousin gave her the email address of Father Charles, a Catholic priest from the war-torn province of North Kivu. Father Charles found housing for her with the Crosiers, an order of monks and priests, and also introduced her to Maman Marie Nzoli, who works with victims of the ongoing war, especially rape victims.
JUBA, Sudan — South Sudan vowed on Monday to end its use of child soldiers by the end of the year, as the former rebel force works to transform itself into a regular army ahead of a 2011 independence referendum.
Filed under: Africa files, Rwanda — story spotted by Catherine Morris @ 11:43 UTC
News source:
27 August 2010
CS Monitor
By Jason Stearns, guest blogger
As opposed to what some press accounts may have you believe, the UN mapping report is not a report on the Rwandan genocide of Hutu refugees in the Congo. The sections on the massacre of refugees is a small part of a 565-page report that chronicles many different mass atrocities between 1993 and 2003…
But you need to know what the report talks about, I don’t expect you to read 565 pages. Here are the first highlights of the report, chronicling the period between 1993-1996.
The photographic reporting of famine, especially in ‘Africa’, continues to replicate stereotypes. Malnourished children, either pictured alone in passive poses or with their mothers at hand, continue to be the obvious subjects of our gaze. What should drive our concern about this persistent portrayal? This morning [13 April] I came across an example that demonstrates how criticism needs to be careful before it can make its point effectively.
Filed under: Rwanda — story spotted by Catherine Morris @ 17:48 UTC
News source:
22 August 2010
African Press Agency
Rwandan President Paul Kagame in what looks like a radical move to silence critics questioning his democratic credentials has offered to form a government of national unity with the opposition candidates and their parties who lost to him during the recently concluded presidential elections, APA learns here Saturday.
“The day begins at five o’clock, as mosques call out morning prayer and the sound of traffic and children can be heard filling the streets. The first task is to make some strong coffee and check the online newspapers. We need to keep well abreast of affairs in Puntland State of Somalia in order to ensure that our humanitarian activities do not get caught up in the middle of an altogether separate issue or dispute.
MAG has been operating in Puntland for the last two years and has worked hard to build relations and acceptance within all sectors of society. Our core message when visiting a new areas or communities is that dangerous items of Explosive Remnants of War (ERW) know no clan or religious lines, therefore it is in everyone’s interest to assist and facilitate in our work saving lives and building futures.
This great editorial speaks to the challenges and necessities of giving a voice to the voiceless. The author, Mary Magellan, traveled to Sierra Leone as part of a peacebuilding course. Her fellow students met with Search for Common Ground staff in Sierra Leone to learn about the roles they have played in the peacebuilding process and how they have engaged media in their efforts…
Berkley Center for Religion, Peace, and World Affairs
Scholars and practitioners have devoted increasing attention to the roles played by religious leaders and communities, both in instigating and prolonging violent conflict and in negotiating and building peace. In much of the world, formal religious leadership tends to be heavily dominated by men, and so investigations of religion and conflict have tended to focus on men’s perspectives and roles. Women’s engagement in religious peacemaking has received far less attention and their perspectives, needs, and unique leverage are often largely ignored in the design of traditional religious peacemaking initiatives. However, women often play critical roles in conflict situations…. Recent Interviews
Filed under: Environment, Rwanda — story spotted by Catherine Morris @ 08:11 UTC
News source:
17 August 2010
TIME
By Krista Mahr
Residents living along the shores of Lake Kivu in central Africa have always appreciated – and feared – its power. In Swahili, the word mazuku, or “evil wind,” refers to pockets of deadly, odorless gas that seep from the lake, killing whatever happens to be in its path. Two hundred and fifty feet below the surface of Lake Kivu, which covers an area of roughly 1000 square miles on a natural border between Rwanda and Congo, some 250 cubic kilometers of carbon dioxide is lurking, along with another 65 cubic kilometers of methane. Every so often, some escapes.
Yesterday, the Guardian’s east Africa correspondent Xan Rice wrote about Rwanda’s efforts to harness some of that deadly potential for clean energy.
"... we want to get back in and to work as soon as possible"
By CNW
Last week’s suspension of World Vision programs in south central Somalia will mean almost certain starvation for thousands of children, the aid agency said today.
More than 3,400 children were receiving vital nutritional feeding from the organization before it was forced to suspend its operations last week by militant group Al-Shabaab…
World Vision says that there is no unilateral solution to the problems in Somalia and lasting development and peace building will only be viable if leadership for them comes from indigenous and acceptable Somali process.
Rwanda needs to “get to grips” with a more open press following the re-election of president Kagame, according to a British journalist who produces a news wire from Kigali.
Graham Holliday, who runs the Kigali Wire spent a week on the campaign trail, working in tandem with a Reuters correspondent and photographer…
“I think this is a problem that impacts Rwandan journalists more than foreigners,” he told Journalism.co.uk. “However, it is definitely an issue for all journalists. It’s something I hope Rwanda can get to grips with in the coming months and years. The government, quite rightly, points to the hideous role of hate media during the Genocide in 1994. They want to minimise the chances of that ever re-emerging. However, there are some very good arguments that the time is now right to start opening up the media space.”
Former Expo Times editor Dr Ibrahim Seaga Shaw, aka Tech, now Senior Research Fellow at the University of the West of England (UK) was among five peace research academics elected to represent the Africa region in the International Peace Research Association Governing Council (IPRA) at the organization’s biennal conference hosted by the University of Sydney between 6th and 10th July 2010…
IPRA, which has about 1400 individual members and many associate group members worldwide, is an international non-governmental organisation seeking to advance trans-disciplinary research into the conditions of sustainable peace and the causes of war and other forms of violence…
In addition to presenting two academic papers on human rights journalism, and peace journalism and education at the Sydney IPRA conference, Dr Shaw was the co-convener of the Peace Journalism Commission which brought together 26 paper presenters from internationally diverse backgrounds (Europe, Asia, Middle East, Asia-Pacific, Latin America, and North America). He was also endorsed to continue in this capacity to help organise the next IPRA conference billed to take place in 2012 in Hiroshima, Japan.
Filed under: Africa files — story spotted by Catherine Morris @ 08:18 UTC
News source:
6 August 2010
MacArthur Foundation
report online
Researchers from the University of California Berkeley’s Human Rights Center canvassed nearly 2,000 households in the Central African Republic to document the impact of violence in the country and gather opinions about the best way forward. The results present a stark picture of a population traumatized by decades of political strife, military coups and poverty; leading the researchers to conclude the country is one of the worst cases of a humanitarian crisis in the world.
By Sasha Lezhnev and John Prendergast, Special to CNN
Quietly, over the past four presidential administrations, a powerful and deep bipartisan consensus has developed in Congress in support of a stronger U.S. policy toward Africa. The latest manifestation of this cooperation is a small but potent provision addressing Congo’s “conflict minerals,” folded into the recently passed Wall Street reform bill.
The trade in four conflict minerals — tin, tantalum, tungsten (the 3Ts), as well as gold — fuels the war in eastern Congo today. It’s been the deadliest war in the world since World War II.
We regularly travel to eastern Congo, and on our last trip, we traced the minerals from the mines…
International oil companies operating in Nigeria’s Niger Delta region agreed to set up a fund to cover the costs of oil spills, the country’s environment minister said.
Litigation and Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR) are two sides of the same coin. ADR is not a replacement to litigation but only an alternative and a supplement. Both are aimed at the determination of disputes and resolution of conflicts in society. But some disputing parties, especially those involved in commercial matters, appear to have a preference for ADR because its resolution mechanism is faster and time saving. Asst. Law Editor Francis Famoroti discusses the benefits of the ADR and the options available to the aggrieved litigants having cases in the courts.
l Res-ti-tu-tion: the act of returning something lost or stolen to its owner, or of paying for damage.
lRe-pri-sal: an act of punishing others for harm done to oneself, especially of a political or military kind.
l Re-demp-tion: the act of making free from blame or bringing back into favour
l Ret-ri-bu-tion: severe, deserved punishment.
l Re-sto-ra-tive: something which brings back to a healthy condition or back to its original state.
l Re-dun-dant: not needed; more than is necessary.
You may wonder why anyone would think all the words (loosely) defined above should be part of any discussion on national healing and reconciliation.
It’s not because I opened my dictionary at “r” and stopped there! But oddly enough all these “r” words are relevant to Zimbabwe’s discourse on the matter.
I have read many articles and heard stories and explanations about the government’s proposed Commission of Inquiry into the execution of 29 citizens of Sierra Leone in 1992. And I have long seen and heard more than enough to shake my head at claims that Sierra Leone is indeed faced with the dilemmas of Truth, Justice and Security…
