MiaFarrow.org |
Humanitarian and Advocacy Information |
Archives
| January 31, 2010 |
Democratic Republic of the Congo's mineral wealth continues to fuel the armed groups that commit the atrocities in eastern Congo. Despite the upsurge in atrocities during 2009 and more than a million people on the run from armed groups,, multinational companies continue to purchase minerals such as gold, tin and tungsten from the Congo.
Urge your Representative to support legislation for conflict-free cell phones, laptops and other electronics by cosponsoring the Congo Conflict Minerals Trade Act of 2009 (HR 4128) <http://www.enoughproject.org/conflict_minerals_trade_act> . The bill will indentify any conflict minerals from Congo imported into the United States. It is the strongest effort to stop the scourge of conflict minerals in Congo.
Contact Your Own Representative Urge him or her to support conflict mineral legislation (HR 4128)
Dial 1-800-GENOCIDE. By entering your zip code, you will have access to the contact information for elected officials ranging from your state Governor
to your Senator to the President.
Take Action: Urge Industry Leaders to Make Conflict-Free Products
We need your help to increase demand for conflict-free electronics products. As a consumer, we can influence electronics industry leaders as they weigh whether or not to invest in making their supply chains transparent and producing verifiably conflict-free products. Tell companies that if they take conflict out of their products, you'll buy them.
Go to this website and through them you make your voice heard at Nokia, Samsung, Motorola, Sony Ericsson, Microsoft, Canon, IBM,Intel Apple, Dell, Toshiba, Lenovo. Rim,Nintendo, Phillips, Panasonic
http://www2.americanprogress.org/t/1659/campaign.jsp?campaign_KEY=6265
Write to President Obama and ask him to make finding a non-military solution to the war in Congo a priority in his foreign policy agenda:
http://www.whitehouse.gov/CONTACT/
Educate yourself about how conflict minerals are illegally and inhumanely pillaged from the Congo and make their way into your cell phones and the computer you are using to read this post right now. Demand that electronics companies alter their mining and trade policies so that conflict-free minerals are used in our electronics. Until this happens, we all literally have blood on our hands.
You can inform yourselves on the sites listed here and let your voices be heard
ttp://www.raisehopeforcongo.org/conflictminerals_faq <http://www.raisehopeforcongo.org/conflictminerals_faq>
http://money.cnn.com/2009/03/27/news/international/congo.fortune/
That's why I'm here in the lovely, lush and threatening hills west of Lake Kivu, where militias rape, mutilate and kill civilians with a savagery that is almost incomprehensible. I'm talking to a 9-year-old girl, Chance Tombola, an orphan whose eyes are luminous with fear. For Chance, the war arrived one evening last May when armed soldiers from an extremist Hutu militia - remnants of those who committed the Rwandan genocide - burst into her home. They killed her parents in front of her. Chance ran away, but the soldiers seized her two sisters, ages 6 and 12, and carried them away into the forest, presumably to be turned into "wives" of soldiers. No one has seen Chance's sisters since.
Chance moved in with her aunt and uncle and their two teenage daughters. Two months later, the same militia invaded the aunt's house and held everyone at gunpoint. Chance says she recognized some of the soldiers as the same ones who had killed her parents. This time, no one could escape. The soldiers first shot her uncle, and then, as the terrified family members sobbed, they pulled out a large knife.
"They sliced his belly so that the intestines fell out" said his widow, Jeanne Birengenyi, 34, Chance's aunt. "Then they cut his heart out and showed it to me." The soldiers continued to mutilate the body, while others began to rape Jeanne.
"One takes a leg, one takes the other leg" Jeanne said dully. "Others grab the arms while one just starts raping. They don't care if children are watching." Chance added softly: "There were six who raped her. One raped me, too." The soldiers left Jeanne and Chance, tightly tied up, and marched off into the forest with Jeanne's two daughters as prisoners. One daughter is 14, the other 16, and they have not been heard from since.
"They kill, they rape, burn houses and take people's belongings" Jeanne said. "When they come with their guns, i'ss as if they have a project to eliminate the local population."
A peer-reviewed study <http://www.theirc.org/special-reports/congo-forgotten-crisis> found that 5.4 million people had already died in this war as of April 2007, and hundreds of thousands more have died as the situation has deteriorated since then. A catastrophically planned military offensive last year, backed by the governments of Congo and Rwanda as well as the United Nations force here, made some headway against Hutu militias but also led to increased predation on civilians from all sides.
This is a pointless war - now a dozen years old - driven by warlords, greed for minerals, ethnic tensions and complete impunity. While there is plenty of fault to go around, Rwanda has long played a particularly troubling role in many ways, including support for one of the militias. Rwanda's government is dazzlingly successful at home, but next door in Congo, it appears complicit in war crimes.
Jeanne and Chance contracted sexually transmitted diseases. Like other survivors in areas that are accessible, they receive help from the International Rescue Committee, but Chance still suffers pain when she urinates.
It takes astonishing courage for Jeanne and Chance to tell their stories (including in a video posted with the on-line version of this column). I'll be reporting more from eastern Congo in the coming days, hoping that the fortitude of survivors like them can inspire world leaders to step forward to stop this slaughter. It's time to show the same compassion toward Congo that we have toward Haiti.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/31/opinion/31kristof.html?th&emc=th
===================================================================
And from Nick's blog
There are of course many problems in the world, many demands on our conscience. But the Congo war seems to me particularly important because of the death toll (already 5.4 million as of April 2007); the savagery or rape and mutilation directed at civilians; and the prospect that some pressure and heavy diplomacy could resolve it. Moreover, without that pressure and diplomacy, it will continue unabated for years to come. I do think that the news media have dropped the ball on this one, but that may reflect the new media realities in which television reporting in particular from abroad just falls off the map.
I was last in Congo in 2007, and so it was dispiriting to see that while some parts of Congo are better off, the situation has worsened in the Kivus. Last year was a particularly bad year, because of the catastrophic military offensive, and more than 1 million people were newly displaced in 2009 in the Kivus alone. With 45,000 people dying unnecessarily every month, this should be a priority. I'll talk more in later columns about what is to be done, but here's a preview: pressure on Rwanda, pressure on Congo's president, pressure on the Congolese minerals that finance conflict, and efforts to professionalize Congo's army and end the impunity for rape and murder. Your thoughts?
http://kristof.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/01/30/your-comments-on-my-congo-column-2/
| January 30, 2010 |
Last March the ICC issued an arrest warrant for al-Bashir last March on seven counts of war crimes and crimes against humanity including murder, rape and torture, and displacement of millions, but said it lacked evidence to prosecute al-Bashir for the crime of genocide. Moreno-Ocampo appealed the ruling, arguing that nearly 3 million people languishing in Darfur s camps, itself justifies the label of genocide.
"The people in the camps are still suffering what I consider genocide," he said. "And in a few weeks the appeal chairman will rule on my request to include genocide charges. I think I will win." Moreno-Ocampo said conditions in the camps amounted to a "slow death" which the world has lost interest in.
-------------------------------------------------------------
HAS GENOCIDE OCCURRED IN DARFUR?
The Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide of 1948 defines genocide as any -not all- of the following acts with intent ---
It is clear to me that ALL of the elements listed below were at play during 2003-2004 rampage when 80-90% of Darfurs villages were destroyed. The Fur, Masalit and Zaghawa tribes were targeted by the Khartoum regime and its entire apparatus in coordination with the Janjaweed, .
Some question whether the genocide continues today. For seven years, nearly three million people primarily of the Fur, Zaghawa, Masalit tribes are barely surviving in refugee camps. I think the genocide is in fact complete-the culture and the villages of these three tribes are memories. Traditional tribal life is no more. It is doubtful that it can ever be reclaimed. People are dying of disease and hunger now, they lack basic necessities such as clean water, sanitation, sufficient food, tents, education and medicines. Genocide by attrition.
Excerpt from the Convention on the Prevention and
Punishment of Genocide (For full text click here <http://www.preventgenocide.org/law/convention/index.htm#text> )
"Article II: In the present Convention, genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:
(a) Killing members of the group;
(b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
(c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;
(d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;
| January 28, 2010 |
UNAMID UN Peacekeeping Mission in Darfur) said a joint assessment mission with UN agencies had found worrying signs of shortages around the North Darfur settlements of Dar El Salaam and Shangil Tobay and their surrounding displacement camps. "IDPs (Internally displaced persons) in both regions were found to be in desperate need of food and water," it said.
Thu Jan 28, 2010
By Andrew Heavens
KHARTOUM (Reuters) - Refugees in parts of Sudan's strife-torn Darfur region are desperately short of food and water due to a lack of rain, and problems have been exacerbated in at least one area by Khartoum's expulsion of aid groups, officials said on Thursday.
An estimated 4.7 million people rely on humanitarian aid in Darfur -
UNAMID said a joint assessment mission with UN agencies had found worrying signs of shortages around the North Darfur settlements of Dar El Salaam and Shangil Tobay and their surrounding displacement camps. "IDPs in both regions were found to be in desperate need of food and water," it said.
A U.N. official, who asked not to be named, said the aid group Oxfam had provided water services in Shangil Tobay before it was expelled last year. "That gap has not been properly filled," said the official.
President Omar Hassan al-Bashir ordered 13 foreign aid agencies to leave north Sudan in March, and closed three local groups, after the International Criminal Court issued an arrest warrant for him to face charges of war crimes in Darfur. Bashir accused the groups of passing information to the Hague-based court, an accusation they denied.
Link to complete article
http://af.reuters.com/article/topNews/idAFJOE60R0HQ20100128
| January 27, 2010 |
The last three photos were taken in the refugee camp, Oure Cassoni.
I took this photo of children in Jebel Marra, Darfur in 2004. They are still waiting for protection.
Refugee mother and child
Oure-Cassoni refugee camp
Girl getting water at the Oure Cassoni water-point-
The water is not clean. People were asking for new jerrycans. As far as I know, none have come.
Oure-Cassoni refugee camp
Girl getting water at the Oure Cassoni water-point-
The water is not clean. People were asking for new jerrycans. As far as I know, none have come.
With respect to the weapons, we heard today from the UN that it is not just small arms but some heavier munitions that seem to be flowing in. We weren't given specifics on that. But we have seen, in the violence that is taking place in the South, a higher degree of sophistication and lethality of the weapons employed, and that's a source of concern.--
I think the issue is to find out what is the principle source, what is the motivation behind the flow of those weapons. Is this simply small arms trafficking of the sort that we see throughout the continent or is it actually a deliberate effort to sow instability’
Link to State Dept transcript
http://www.reliefweb.int/rw/rwb.nsf/db900SID/SNAA-8242VA?OpenDocument
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/24/opinion/24kristof.html
Another great piece by Nick Kristof
Kevin Salwen, a writer and entrepreneur in Atlanta, was driving his 14-year-old daughter, Hannah, back from a sleepover in 2006. While waiting at a traffic light, they saw a black Mercedes coupe on one side and a homeless man begging for food on the other.
“Dad, if that man had a less nice car, that man there could have a meal,” Hannah protested. The light changed and they drove on, but Hannah was too young to be reasonable. She pestered her parents about inequity, insisting that she wanted to do something.
“What do you want to do?” her mom responded. “Sell our house?”
“No one expects anyone to sell a house,” said Hannah, now a high school junior who hopes to become a nurse. “That’s kind of a ridiculous thing to do. For us, the house was just something we could live without. It was too big for us. Everyone has too much of something, whether it’s time, talent or treasure. Everyone does have their own half, you just have to find it.”
Check out Hannah’s video too! http://www.thepowerofhalf.com
| January 22, 2010 |
If you can, support organizations that have been working in Haiti for decades-
Partners In Health has been providing health care to Haiti for 20 years“ We urgently need your support to help those affected by the recent earthquake. our mission; “ PIH uses all of the means at our disposal- to providing medical care and social services. Whatever it takes. Just as we would do if a member of our own family –or ourselves-were ill.”
P.O. Box 845578
Boston, MA 02284-5578
http://www.standwithhaiti.org/haiti
UNICEf has been in Haiti since 1946
Another plane loaded with UNICEF emergency relief supplies arrived in Port-au-Prince this morning, carrying urgently needed water and sanitation supplies. This is the second load of UNICEF water and sanitation materials to arrive in Haiti in the past 24 hours. The shipment contained additional oral rehydration salts, water purification tablets and jerry cans. Two experts in water and sanitation were also on the flight
http://www.unicef.org/
Partners In Health and UNICEF are charitable organizations under Section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code. The full amount of the gift you make on this page is tax-deductible.
Partners in Health <http://www.pih.org/> is a name that comes up again and again — or those with expertise in disaster relief.
Victims stream aboard from a steady procession of helicopters
Robert Little
Baltimore Sun
January 21, 2010
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti
The faces of the Haitian disaster arrived Wednesday aboard the Navy hospital ship Comfort as a procession of earthquake victims, looking lost and scared, staggered off helicopters or strained to look up from their stretchers while corpsmen carried them below deck. They came from clinics and triage centers across Haiti, beginning just after sunrise and ending at dusk, shattering the ship's military and clinical sterility with the cries and smells and blank stares of human anguish
The patients were flown in by the Navy, Coast Guard or Air Force in one of the 30 helicopters available within the ship's range. Plans for a boat-based shuttle were foiled by an earthquake aftershock that flattened the pier the Comfort had expected to use and that jolted the ship as if it had hit ground. Ship officials identified an alternate boat-landing site by midafternoon.
Operations were also hindered Wednesday by the slow arrival of more than 350 crew members who are expected to bring the vessel up to its full 1,000-bed, 12 operating room capacity. Most of those crew members, expected to join the ship during the next two to three days, will arrive by boat. But even with the slowed startup, the ship's main treatment and assessment rooms seemed on the verge of being overwhelmed. As one helicopter touched down on the Comfort's flight deck, three or more could sometimes be seen circling over Port-au-Prince harbor.
At the ship's medical receiving area, the first stop of any patient aboard, the same scene was repeated throughout the day: Elevator doors rumbled open to reveal a bewildered collection of men or women, some on stretchers, some in wheelchairs, all gaping at the mad frenzy and bright lights of the Navy's flagship of disaster response. They wore bloody bandages and wounds wrapped in old sheets or clothing. Some had tape or stickers affixed to their shirts, bearing messages from the triage team such as "chronic renal failure" or "left leg."
By early afternoon, some surgeons were calling for more operating rooms to open, a challenge before the rest of the crew arrives. The idea was resisted by others, however, because it could tie up all of the surgical teams and leave them vulnerable if an emergency patient arrived. There was little time for arguing though, as the elevator doors kept opening.
The ship had been preparing for this day since it left Baltimore on Friday, testing equipment, unpacking supplies and holding trauma drills. But the human reality of what the crew will face - and what Haitians have struggled with for a week - became evident on one of Wednesday's first flights. He was a young Haitian whose crusting burns covered his head, concealing most of his features.
"A number of them have been injured in the last few days by walls falling on them in structures where they were trying to sleep," said Cmdr. Tim Donahue, head of surgery on the Comfort. "It shows how dangerous Haiti still is, and how much work we have to do."
Link to complete article
http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/maryland/bal-md.hs.comfort21jan21,0,4154306.story
| January 21, 2010 |
| January 20, 2010 |
Haiti shows the need for better disaster relief.
- <http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703837004575013083189066118.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_LEFTTopOpinion#>
'You have not been forsaken," President Barack Obama assured the people of Haiti two days after the earthquake demolished a country already on its knees. The president's message was on point. But, for Haitians desperate for aid, it was likely little comfort.
With massive military capabilities and highly trained rescue staff both in the United States and around the world, why do natural disasters always seem to catch us so unprepared? When Hurricane Katrina struck New Orleans in 2005, Americans reached into their pockets and prayed, while those we trusted to lead scrambled, mangling their half-baked plans.
The response to the Haitian earthquake has been different. President Obama has been involved from the outset, and the American response has been massive and commendable. The American people responded to the catastrophe with characteristic generosity—over $112 million was contributed to the Red Cross alone. And 30 countries came together with rescue teams and supplies. Yet seven days have passed and we still have not managed to fully implement a coherent rescue and relief operation in a country just one hour's flight from Florida.
A weak and overwhelmed Haitian government has declared there is little it can do. An aide to the mayor in Port-au-Prince described the situation as "anarchy." So it has fallen to the U.S. to lead the relief effort, deploying a fully equipped floating hospital, 250 government doctors and medical personnel, helicopters, and more than 10,000 soldiers and Marines.
Despite these resources Haiti's incapacitated infrastructure has crippled relief efforts, costing precious time and lives. The Haitian port is too damaged to accommodate large ships. Airplanes circle the tiny, single-runway airport for hours waiting for an opportunity to land, and the airport lacks sufficient fuel to refuel departing planes. Some humanitarian aircraft are rerouted to neighboring Dominican Republic where they must find trucks to convoy the 12 or more hours along broken roads. Still, 200 planes have managed to land and take off each day in Port-au-Prince, leaving their precious cargo—food, water, medicines and equipment—stacked on the sizzling tarmac.
As we enter day eight, the odds of finding buried victims alive are slim. The priority now is organizing orderly distributions of food and water to increasingly desperate people. Medical centers must be set up immediately to care for the wounded. And vulnerable, starving people competing for resources need to be protected by military forces from violence and stampedes.
Some have been critical of the United Nations, which has had a significant presence in Haiti since 1994, for not playing a stronger role in organizing the rescue operations. But the peacekeeping mission suffered the greatest loss in U.N. history when 150 workers—including Mission Chief Hedi Annabi—perished beneath the collapsed U.N. compound.
Television coverage of this disaster has been agonizing. It has been shocking to see the corpses clogging the streets, piled high outside the morgues, or dumped by the thousands into mass graves. From the comfort of our couches, we watch the horror of dying children trapped in the rubble in real time.
Abhorrent as this thought may be, as sure as night will fall there will be another disaster so terrible that entire infrastructures will be decimated, hundreds of thousands of people will need to be rescued, and every moment will matter.
We must plan for the next time. The first step is clear: The U.N. needs to formulate an international response corps. This corps would be tasked with contingency planning for sites known to be at risk of natural disaster. It would ensure there is a coherent game plan capable of putting rescue teams on the ground in any country. And it would apply the same alacrity and level of organization we use when we have a military objective. No matter how good an ad hoc response is, it will never be quick enough to save lives in the first chaotic days of a catastrophe. There are many components to building a more effective response in the future, but advance planning is essential.
Rescue teams, water, food, medicine and tents have finally started to reach the Haitian people. But for far too many, help has come too late.
| January 19, 2010 |
| January 18, 2010 |
Partners In Health: www.standwithhaiti.org/haiti.
Read his blog from Haiti
http://standwithhaiti.org/haiti/news-entry/building-back-better-op-ed/
Paul Farmer is the Presley Professor of Social Medicine at the Harvard Medical School, the co-founder of Partners In Health, and the deputy to Bill Clinton, United Nations Special Envoy for Haiti
| January 16, 2010 |
Port-au-Prince, Haiti (CNN) -- U.S. helicopters carrying food hovered above the ground in one area of the battered Haitian capital on Saturday, flinging out boxes to the anxious crowd. It was a chaotic scene as hundreds of Haitians without food and water for four days swarmed toward the boxes, ignoring the wind and dust kicked up from the helicopters' blades.
How we Can help Haiti
Great relief agencies working in Haiti.-Partners in Health www.standwithhaiti.org/haiti
- International Medical Corps <https://www.imcworldwide.org
- World Vision <http://www.worldvision.org
-American Red Cross <http://www.redcross.org
- CARE: http://www.care.org
- Catholic Relief Services <https://secure.crs.org
- World Food Programme <http://www.wfp.org
- Save the Children <http://www.savethechildren.org
- UNICEF http://unicefusa.org
- Americares <http://www.americares.org
- Doctors Without Borders <http://www.doctorswithoutborders.org
- The International Committee of the Red Cross <http://www.icrc.org
- The Salvation Army <http://www.salvationarmyusa.org
-Clinton Bush fund ,http://www.clintonbushhaitifund.org
To text a donation:
Red Cross/ US Government joint rescue/relief effort- text 90999 type HAITI then 10 dollars will automatically be added to your phone bill.
For information about relatives in Haiti 888-4074747
- International Medical Corps <https://www.imcworldwide.org
- World Vision <http://www.worldvision.org
-American Red Cross <http://www.redcross.org
- CARE: http://www.care.org
- Catholic Relief Services <https://secure.crs.org
- World Food Programme <http://www.wfp.org
- Save the Children <http://www.savethechildren.
- UNICEF http://unicefusa.org
- Americares <http://www.americares.org
- Doctors Without Borders <http://www.doctorswithoutbord
- The International Committee of the Red Cross <http://www.icrc.org
- The Salvation Army <http://www.salvationarmyusa.
-Clinton Bush fund ,http://www.clintonbushhaitifund.org
To text a donation:
Red Cross/ US Government joint rescue/relief effort- text 90999 type HAITI then 10 dollars will automatically be added to your phone bill.
For information about relatives in Haiti 888-4074747
| January 15, 2010 |
30 countries have responded with the US taking the lead, deploying warships, a fully equipped floating hospital, 5,500 soldiers and marines. But the port is damaged and closed to large ships. The single runway airport is clogged and not nearly big enough. Planes filled with supplies circle for hours but eventually they are able to land. Piles of life-sustaining supplies are accumulating on the tarmac but distribution is another matter. Centers must be set up with guards to protect desperate people from stampeding. The Haitian Government is completely overwhelmed and barely existent. Reporters say Haitian police are not visible in the streets. The UN team was a peace keeping team, now it must regroup with experts in to ensure the aid is distributed in an orderly manner as quickly as possible. Haiti's people have been left to fend on their own, still digging for loved ones with their hands and hammers. Some are using car tires as funeral pyres to burn the bodies of relatives, but countless unclaimed bodies are piled in the streets, outside the morgues and at the graveyerds. Reportedly 8000 bodies have been deposited in a mass grave. There are not nearly enough doctors or nurses, there is little medical care to be found anywhere. The wounded suffer outside the crumpled hospital and flattened medical clinics.
Tomorrow will be day 4. The people watch the helicopters circling and the planes landing, but so far there is little relief for the hungry and thirsty. Too many of Haiti’s children were already malnourished. How long can they survive?
| January 13, 2010 |
More photos, taken by me in 2008 are in 'photo' gallery at right of homepage.
Doctors Without Borders were mobbed by people with severe traumas and crushed limbs, and by people begging for help in rescuing trapped relatives. Most of the medical centers in Port-au-Prince have collapsed. Electricity and communication lines are down, so it is difficult to assess the damage and locate lost aid workers.
Many international relief agencies have had large presences in Haiti since a series of hurricanes in 2008 caused drastic levels of flooding, mudslides and devastation. They were struggling now to get people and supplies into the country and then distribute them. The survivors are trying to dig buried people out from the rubble. The wounded and the dead fill the streets.
The Pentagon is sending an aircraft carrier to Haiti. It is expected to arrive by Friday and it will serve as an offshore staging area for helicopters and air support for the island. The Pentagon also ordered a hospital ship but officials said it was still assembling a crew and had not yet sailed. The United States Coast Guard dispatched four cutters, some equipped with helicopters, early Wednesday morning and had helicopters there helping with surveillance. More Coast Guard helicopters and aircraft were sent from the Bahamas and the Turks and Caicos Islands. China has sent a plane with relief workers and supplies.
France said it would send three military transport planes, including one from nearby Fort de France, Martinique, with aid supplies, and that 100 troops based in the French West Indies would be sent to help. Britain said it would send an assessment team as soon as snow could be cleared from a runway at an Airport near London. Germany, too, is sending an assessment team, and said it would make 1.5 million euros, or about $2.2 million, available for emergency assistance.
About 800 people from Doctors Without Borders, were already in Haiti when the quake struck. They treated more than 600 patients in various locations for fractures and other injuries and for burns, many of them caused by domestic cooking-gas containers that exploded as buildings collapsed. But even as Doctors Without Borders tried to mobilize staff and supplies, they could not get very far, roads that were not strewn by rubble were made impassible during the night by people sleeping or lying wounded there.
Partners in Health, working with medical centers throughout Haiti, said it was trying to send supplies to the capital from its nine medical centers in the Central Plateau of Haiti, about 100 miles from Port-au-Prince, which were not damaged in the quake. "We have to make sure that when we do bring aid in, we have a system that we can use effectively," said Andrew Marx, a spokesman for the organization. "The important thing is getting what we already have in country to the place that it's needed - there has to be a 'there' there."
The World Food Program -www.wfp.org/haiti is airlifting additional food supplies from its emergency hub in El Salvador, which will provide more than half a million emergency meals.
| January 12, 2010 |
January 11, 2010
To the Editor:
Re “After Years of Mass Killings, Fragile Calm Holds in Darfur <http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/02/world/africa/02darfur.html> ” (front page, Jan. 2):
Contrary to the impression given in your article, it is not the rebels but Omar Hassan al-Bashir, Sudan’s president, who is the real catalyst for seven years of government-sponsored terror in Darfur, resulting in 300,000 deaths and the displacement of about three million more.
This same man, who has been indicted on war crime charges, and his National Congress Party were responsible for the deaths of two million in southern Sudan during two decades of civil war as they sought to protect their hold on oil resources.
The “fragile calm” your article depicts in Darfur exists only because Mr. Bashir has largely finished his work there. He is now focused on other priorities, most important of which is rigging the coming elections to maintain his grip on power. Before an election farce legitimizes his reign, the Obama administration should impose strict consequences on his brutal regime. Otherwise, southern Sudan may descend into another war, and three million Darfuris suffering in camps may never be able to go home.
Susan Morgan
The writer is co-founder of Investors Against Genocide and executive director of Pax Communications.
Ms. Gies, a Catholic, risked her life to keep the eight alive, bringing them fresh food, books and newspapers. In 1944 they were betrayed by an unknown informant and taken to concentration camps. Again risking her own life, Meip Gies went to Gestapo headquarters and tried in vain to secure their release by offering money.
Anne, by then 15 and her older sister Margot died in Bergen-Belsen in 1945.
Otto was the sole survivor of the Frank family. Ms Geis gave him Anne's diary which she had saved and which became, after the bible, the best selling non-fiction book in the world.
I had the great privilege of spending time with Miep Gies, in New York and in Amsterdam. I was eager for my children to meet her, and to try to learn what it was within her that caused her to do these extraordinary things. Why Miep Gies? Why Raul Wallenberg? Why Schindler? And most importantly, why not everyone?
Miep shed no light on her decisions. "Of course it was not easy", she told me," But what else could I do?" The profundity of her response lies in its simple ordinariness. For Miep, there were no other options. She could not have done otherwise.
I have a Rwandan friend who survived the 1994 genocide but lost most of her family and was witness to unimaginable atrocities. Based on what took place in her country, she calculates that "95% of people will pick up a machete and kill strangers and friends alike for 90 days. This we know. 3%--they don't want to kill, they will run away."
My friend's words dropped me into the bleakest silence. But eventually I thought "Two percent! That's not zero! We have something to build on."
Miep Gies always insisted, " I am not a hero. There is nothing special about me." I respectfully disagree. Ms Gies was among the "two percent" who set the bar, show us the way, and help us all feel more hopeful about being human.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/eve-ensler/ten-radical-acts-for-cong_b_418... <http://www.huffingtonpost.com/eve-ensler/ten-radical-acts-for-cong_b_418425.html>
‘Sexual terrorism was imported into the DRC like a plague about 12 years ago years ago, after a 1996 military operation know as Operation Turquoise - a plan supported and implemented by the international community which allowed murdering Hutu militias of Rwanda (FDLR) into Eastern Congo. Since then, this sexual terrorism has been sustained by these and other parties interested in the minerals, (coltan, gold, tin), that are serving you. Like a plague, this rape and sexual violence has spread infecting the Congolese Army and even the UN peacekeepers who are there to "protect" the women. Put pressure on the international community to remove all outside militias. They brought them there, they are responsible for getting them out.
Read the latest U.N. human rights reports:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/13/world/africa/13iht-congo.1.18648435.ht... <http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/13/world/africa/13iht-congo.1.18648435.html> )
Visits these sites:
AFEM
http://englishafemsk.blogspot.com/
Friends of Congo
http://www.friendsofthecongo.org/
Read the recent Human Rights Watch reports:
http://www.hrw.org/en/reports/2009/12/14/you-will-be-punished-0
Read the history:
http://www.amazon.com/King-Leopolds-Ghost-Heroism-Colonial/dp/0618001905
We know what is happening in the DRC. Now is the time for action.
Support the local groups and campaigns that already exist, that have existed. They need your support to continue to exist. Fight to make sure the money headed for Eastern Congo actually gets to the women on the ground - the grassroots groups who need it most like AFEM, the South Kivu Women's Media Association, Panzi Hospital in Bukavu and Heal Africa Hospital in Goma, women's collectives like I Will Not Kill Myself Today and AFECOD, and the Women's Ministry and Laissez l'Afrique Vivre.
Visit https://secure.ga4.org/01/drcongo to donate.
Write to President Obama and ask him to make finding a non-military solution to the war in Congo a priority in his foreign policy agenda:
http://www.whitehouse.gov/CONTACT/
Educate yourself about how conflict minerals are illegally and inhumanely pillaged from the Congo and make their way into your cell phones and the computer you are using to read this post right now. Demand that electronics companies alter their mining and trade policies so that conflict-free minerals are used in our electronics. Until this happens, we all literally have blood on our hands.
Investigate where and how your electronics companies are purchasing their materials. As a consumer, demand that they use conflict-free minerals in their parts.
Feel what your sister, mother, grandmother, daughter, wife, girlfriend would be feeling if she were being gang raped or held as a sex slave for years or if her insides were destroyed by sticks and guns and she could never have another baby.
Eve Ensler, a playwright and activist, is the founder of V-Day, a global movement to end violence against women and girls.
-
| January 10, 2010 |
Half the Sky by Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn is essential reading for every global citizen.
A book that is being referred to as a manifesto for our times. Kristof and WuDunn expose a global human rights crisis that is estimated to have killed more little girls and women in the last 50 years than the total number of the men lost in all the wars of the 20th century.
| January 8, 2010 |
Keep conflict minerals on your radar-I have provided sites below which will put you in touch with those trying to get a crucial bill passed which would require transparency so that US companies aren't fueling the violence through gold, tin (caserterite) and other minerals.
You can inform yourselves on the sites listed here and let your voices be heard
ttp://www.raisehopeforcongo.org/conflictminerals_faq
http://money.cnn.com/2009/03/27/news/international/congo.fortune/
| January 7, 2010 |
Thu Jan 7, 2010
By Opheera McDoom
KHARTOUM (Reuters) - Sudanese aid agencies must be helped to fill in the huge gaps left in Darfur's aid operation by the expulsion of 13 humanitarian organisations last year, Oxfam America said on Thursday.
The International Criminal Court (ICC) issued an arrest warrant for President Omar Hassan al-Bashir in March last year for war crimes in Darfur. He responded by expelling the major aid agencies from Darfur, leaving a hole in the world's largest humanitarian operation. Oxfam America was one of the small agencies left in Sudan which had to step up its work to fill the gap, but country director El Fateh Osman Adam said there was still much to do. "We worked hard to address the immediate life-saving issues, provide water, sanitation," he told Reuters in an interview. "If it was not provided we may have seen humanitarian catastrophe," he said. "But there are gaps in a number of areas, livelihood... protection... and nobody is talking about education."
Sister agency Oxfam GB was one of the largest and oldest agencies working in Sudan before being expelled last year.
Adam said his organisation's priority was to support Sudanese aid agencies to one day take the lead in the humanitarian operation in their own country.
"It's not something that will happen in one day -- we have to have the patience until we build the capacity of our local partners," he said.
"The expulsion showed that you can suddenly lose everything ... but if you are supporting other (local) actors then what you have done can continue."
Adam said international aid agencies, the United Nations and the Sudanese government should all work to help local organisations to lead the aid effort themselves.
Link to complete article
http://af.reuters.com/article/topNews/idAFJOE6060HF20100107
Speaking via satellite telephone Al Tigani Kurshaom, a JEM commander in the area, told the Sudan Tribune that three children and two women were killed during the Antonov attacks as well as hundreds of camels belonging to the nomads in the areas.
"We regret that these indiscriminate attacks target mainly civilians and their livestock", said the deputy head of JEM's nomad division, who belongs to Darfur Arab tribes.
The rebel official further urged international protection of Darfur nomads, saying Khartoum is targeting them now after their refusal to implement Khartoum's plans in the region. "Khartoum government is targeting the Arabs after they decided to join their hands with the rest of Darfur tribes. We are against the marginalization and the genocide of Darfuri because we are part and parcel of this region."
"The army now is attacking our people and the international community has to stop this new genocide, particularly the (UN/AU peacekeeping mission) UNAMID which has to protect the civilians," he stressed.
Excerpt from a Sudan Tribune article linked here.
http://www.sudantribune.com/spip.php?article33702
| January 6, 2010 |
http://www.girleffect.org/video
Breaking the cycle of mineral-fueled violence in eastern Congo will require a coalition of private and public actors ranging from the largest of multinational electronics and jewelry companies all the way to the most knowledgeable and dedicated Congolese civil society voices.
Urge your Representative to support legislation for conflict-free cell phones, laptops and other electronics by cosponsoring the Congo Conflict Minerals Trade Act of 2009 (HR 4128) <http://www.enoughproject.org/conflict_minerals_trade_act> . The bill will indentify any conflict minerals from Congo imported into the United States. It is the strongest effort to stop the scourge of conflict minerals in Congo.
Contact these influential members of the Foreign Affairs Committee now:
Mike Pence (R-IN)
Email <https://forms.house.gov/pence/IMA/webforms/contact_form.htm> Rep. Pence urging for support
Call (202-225-3021) Rep. Pence’s office directly
Send Rep. Pence a message on Facebook <http://www.facebook.com/mike.pence.usa?ref=search&sid=14600442.772246115..1>
Tweet <http://twitter.com/> Rep. Pence @RepMikePence about conflict mineral legislation (HR 4128)
Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-FL)
Email <http://ros-lehtinen.house.gov/IMA/issue.htm> Rep. Ros-Lehtinen urging for support
Call (202-225-3931) Rep. Ros-Lehtinen’s office directly
Tweet <http://twitter.com/> Rep. Ros-Lehtinen @IRL to support conflict mineral legislation (HR 4128)
Ed Royce (R-CA)
Email <http://royce.house.gov/Contact/> Rep. Royce urging for support
Call (202-225-4111) Rep. Royce’s office directly
Send Rep. Royce a message on Facebook <http://www.facebook.com/EdRoyce?ref=search&sid=14600442.1974795186..1#/EdRoyce?v=wall&ref=search>
Chris Smith (R-NJ)
Email <http://chrissmith.house.gov/Email/
Call (202-225-3765) Rep. Smith’s office directly
Contact Your Own Representative
CALL <http://www.senate.gov/general/contact_information/senators_cfm.cfm> , CONTACT <https://writerep.house.gov/writerep/welcome.shtml> , or EMAIL <http://www2.americanprogress.org/t/1659/campaign.jsp?campaign_KEY=6281>
Urge him or her to support conflict mineral legislation (HR 4128)
or
Dial 1-800-GENOCIDE. By inputting your zipcode, you will have access to
the contact information for elected officials ranging from your state Governor
to your Senator to the President.
Take Action: Urge Industry Leaders to Make Conflict-Free Products
We need your help to increase demand for conflict-free electronics products. As a consumer, we can influence electronics industry leaders as they weigh whether or not to invest in making their supply chains transparent and producing verifiably conflict-free products. Tell companies that if they take conflict out of their products, you'll buy them.
Go to this website and through them you make your voice heard at Nokia, Samsung, Motorola, Sony Ericsson, Microsoft, Canon, IBM,Intel Apple, Dell, Toshiba, Lenovo. Rim,Nintendo, Phillips, Panasonic
http://www2.americanprogress.org/t/1659/campaign.jsp?campaign_KEY=6265
| January 4, 2010 |
Israeli Arab and Jewish activists marched on Saturday in the city's Rabin square, chanting slogans and waving signs calling for "Freedom and Justice in Gaza".
The protesters demanded Israel end the blockade, deeming its continuation a "war crime", the AFP news agency reported.
The Gaza Strip has been under an Israeli blockade since 2007 when Hamas seized power in the territory.
Hundreds of international protesters held a similar demonstration on Thursday on both sides of an Israeli border crossing to the Palestinian territory.