Yesterday, in defiance of a total ban on public gatherings, tens of thousands of Egyptians marched in Cairo, decrying the authoritarian methods of the regime of long-time president Hosni Mubarak. Organizers said they planned to repeat and expand the protests today, but thousands of military and riot police are reported to be lining the streets of Cairo, and the government has shut down all access to Twitter inside Egypt, in an effort to prevent social media organizing.

International media are showing images of protesters bloodied after being physically assaulted by heavily armed police. Mubarak’s regime has been in power for three decades, and has consistently faced vehement opposition from sometimes extremist parties, but yesterday’s protests appeared to be more mainstream, with young people demanding more individual liberty and denouncing the perennial emergency rule Mubarak has used to crush dissent and eliminate democratic opposition.

Mubarak has long been seen as a US ally, in part because he has supported long-term peace with Israel, cooperating on security and trade issues. But critics in the US, Europe, and Israel have also warned Mubarak’s authoritarianism might be a serious political and security liability, warning that Egypt needs to democratize in order to achieve real security across the region.

The so-called “Day of Rage” protest was by far the largest mass demonstration against Mubarak in decades. Foreign Policy’s Ashraf Khalil reports:

The Egyptian government’s standard operating procedure is to overwhelm any public protest with a massively disproportionate wave of black-clad police. As a result, most protests tend to boil down to the same 500 noisy hard-core activists hopelessly penned in by thousands of riot cops.

But today those numbers were reversed, and the police, at times, seemed completely confused and struggling to keep up. In one confrontation outside the Supreme Court building in downtown Cairo, the riot police attempted to lock arms in a human chain to block the protesters’ path. Their effort, however, proved hopelessly ineffective — waves of marchers simply overwhelmed them and continued on their path.

Today the numbers are restored to normal, and the use of teargas, batons and outright assault, according to numerous reports, appear to be clamping down on the demonstrations. The real question for Mubarak and his regime will have to be whether such events will be repeated not today or tomorrow, but at a time determined by a growing protest movement demanding more democratic freedoms.

The Grand Ayatollah Hossein Ali Montazeri died this past weekend, opening a period of seven days of mourning for one of the nation’s most influential clerics. The seventh day of mourning happens to coincide with the Shi’a holy day of atonement, Ashura. Ashura marks the killing of Hossein, grandson of the prophet Mohammed, by the Caliph Yazid, in the year 680. Yazid is often portrayed as a tyrannical ruler in Shi’a tradition, and the festival lends itself to an expression of the very anti-dictatorship language used by the reformist opposition.

Efforts to hold large-scale ceremonies to mourn Montazeri’s death have been blocked by security forces in Qom and Isfahan, both ancient holy cities with high strategic and political value. Qom is the holy seat of the Assembly of Experts, the panel of senior clerics responsible for installing or (potentially, under Iran’s constitution) removing the Supreme Leader.

Qom and Isfahan are also the cities next to which Iran has built its two most important centers of nuclear research and production. And, it is believed they share a common characteristic of entrenched political interests critical of the Khamene’i-Ahmedinejad power bloc. ‘Believed’, because Iran’s government so persistently suppresses dissent, it is hard to unearth organized centers of dissent.

But the effort to suppress dissent at public gatherings during the Ashura holy day celebrations is already aggressively underway. Security forces have warned against “illegal gatherings”, though specific mention of what tactics will be used to mobilize against dissident demonstrations has not been forthcoming.

The government has also been clamping down on its opponents in incremental ways, dismissing opposition leader Mir Hossein Mousavi from an arts post he held, though he still sits on the influential Expediency Council. And top opposition organizers have been jailed, put through show trials and accused of “treason”  and “espionage” for organizing demonstrations critical of the government.

According to Reuters and the New York Times:

It said Abdullah Ramezanzadeh, who backed opposition leader Mirhossein Mousavi in the vote, was sentenced by a court on charges including acting against national security, propaganda against the Islamic system and possessing classified documents.

There are concerns that the government may once again over-play its hand, leading to more widespread and more violent unrest. If security forces are seen attacking demonstrators or worshippers on the feast day of Ashura, a day of spiritual sacrifice and atonement, and the holiest day of the Shi’a religious calendar, it could solidify public opposition to the ruling power bloc.

Raids on mosques have already led to a convergence of views among secular reformists and religious conservatives who accuse the Khamene’i-Ahmedinejad power-bloc of betraying the Islamic principles of the Iranian constitution. Further invasions of places of worship by security forces, or interventions to bloc communication between clerics and worshippers could provoke violent clashes between demonstrators and security forces.

Amnesty International is now calling on Iranian authorities to permit peaceful demonstrations during Ashura, in keeping with the Iranian constitution, which guarantees the right to free assembly. A statement on Amnesty International’s website reads:

“Iran’s government must make ‘Ashoura the time to end the practice of preventing peaceful demonstrations – including by making pre-emptive, arbitrary arrests – and ensure that excessive force is not used in the event that those taking part in ‘Ashoura commemorations gather to voice their opposition to the government,” said Malcolm Smart, Director of Amnesty International’s Middle East and North Africa programme.

“We call on the Supreme Leader to ensure that no one faces arrest or the batons of plain-clothed Basij for merely taking part in a peaceful demonstration on such a solemn occasion.”

Amnesty has specifically called for the Basij militia not to be used in any efforts to maintain order. The Basij are accused of widespread human-rights abuses, including kidnappings, torture and murder, and were implicated in the shooting death from close range of unarmed civilian bystander Neda Agha Soltan, during this summer’s post-election demonstrations.

There is also a competition for control of cyberspace lining up, as the US has lifted its ban on Iranians downloading US-produced computer-based communications software and Iran has pledged to target social networking sites like Twitter and Facebook, in an effort to crack down on viral dissent and the spread of eyewitness testimony from rallies and security crackdowns.

The World Bank is working with the Chinese government to fund major industrial development in specific areas across Africa, as part of an effort to spur development and create jobs. The effort is needed in order to breathe new life into African cities that are experiencing population explosions, with little new investment to match the demand for resources and jobs. But three key factors raise questions about whether the China plan for African industry will be good for Africa.

Those factors are human rights, environmental protection and the legitimacy of governments associated with the ramping up of Chinese investment. China has been heavily criticized for taking advantage of politically precarious situations to win favorable investment conditions, leading to Chinese money and technology helping to prop up sometimes brutal regimes. It has also been criticized for alleged plans to use Africa as a colonial dumping ground for its own industrial waste.

And the question of human rights is crucial: China has long resisted nearly any effort by the international community to lobby on behalf of downtrodden minorities or dissidents in any country, a policy generally considered to mirror Beijing’s concern that its own internal power would be destabilized if intense international scrutiny of its rights standards were permitted and/or published. China’s censorship and persecution of dissidents is thought to be a threat to already fragile democracies in Africa.

But the Chinese investment goes beyond the admittedly fearsome complexities of those three main points. The depletion of Africa’s resources is already a serious problem for nearly every nation on the continent, and China is very explicitly seeking to expand its own direct exploitation of those already scarce resources. China is facing a severe crisis in food production, with grazing ranges and arable land being reduced dramatically by desertification and industrialization.

As a result, China is seeking to lease or buy land in countries in several African countries, including Zambia and Mozambique, as well as Russia, the Philippines, Australia, Myanmar, Kazakhstan and Brazil. In the Democratic Republic of Congo —a desperately poor country whose abundance of natural resources has made it the site of a catastrophic regional proxy war in which 5 million lives have been lost— China has secured a lease for 50% more land than the entire nation devotes to growing corn, its staple food, for 66 million of its own people.

What’s more, human-induced climate destabilization is having a more direct impact on Africa than on any other continent, in part due to already unfavorable climate patterns, and so geography, but also due to the inability of governments to adequately fund both sustainable practices and the regulatory regimes necessary to maintain stable conditions for climate-sustainable practices. China is fast catching up to and will likely soon eclipse the United States as the world’s leading emitter of greenhouse gases.

This means Chinese industrial expansion, whether in China or in Africa, poses a direct threat to the environmental, economic and political stability of African societies, and therefore a significant conflict of interest for the African populations whose governments would be negotiating with the World Bank to secure fresh Chinese investment. There are significant reasons for concern about what strings come attached to that investment, like a demand for neglect of environmental concerns or an incentive to slow democratic progress.

In much of Africa, infrastructure is failing or non-existent, with only one in four having regular access to electricity, while one in four also lack access to safe drinking water. This crisis-level situation, across whole regions, helps explain the appeal of China’s investment strategy. But African nations will have to study very closely what the impact of any specific project will be on their local environment, living conditions, political freedoms, and economic dynamism. Standards should be adopted that require both Chinese entities operating or investing in Africa and the local authorities, to meet certain criteria that advance the interests of the population on each of these fronts.

The issue of women’s equality is a question as old as human history. And even now, in the most modern of democracies, which guarantee more or less political and economic equality for women, there remain fundamental imbalances in rights, privileges and enforcement. Women are often guaranteed freedom from discrimination, but nevertheless suffer essential inequalities that do in fact alter the landscape of their choices and freedoms.

Economic rights in the developed world remain a serious issue where gender-based inequality must be addressed. In most developed democracies, women enjoy 100% equal rights in terms of property ownership, education, voting and political freedoms. But wages are still on average significantly lower for women, property tied up in marriages is often harder for women to hold onto, and in the worst cases, the modern slave traffic deals mostly in women and young girls, even in the most advanced democracies.

In the developing world, the situation is vastly more dire. Women in Africa suffer such a serious threat of death in childbirth that some fear if something is not done to provide adequate obstetric care to remote areas, population levels in poor African nations could fall dramatically, at a time when development requires an expanding workforce. The result of maternal mortality rates, barring women’s access to education, and rampant violence against women, is prolonged political instability.

In a nation like the Democratic Republic of Congo, where a multi-front civil war has plagued the nation since 1998, and as many as 14 neighboring countries were involved in combat or in supplying fighters with weapons and support, the extreme violence suffered by women is part of what keeps the war going. Rape has been used as a weapon of war, and impunity among both government and rebel forces in the eastern Kivu provinces means extreme violence begets more violence, with women constantly under threat from neighbors and invaders alike.

Maternal mortality rates in Africa are now a kind of epidemic, which actually spreads in a way similar to contagion, as resources are drained away from one village after another, and central governments dealing with unstable security situations abandon remote areas, let infrastructure collapse or even force out the charity groups that might be a region’s only means of reliable up-to-date medical care.

1,500 women are dying in childbirth every day across Africa, according to the World Health Organization (WHO). That’s roughly 1,000 women per 100,000 live births, meaning a woman has a one in 100 chance of dying in childbirth. The situation is severe enough that the US Congress has been working on legislation that could make protecting women and girls, including maternal health, a focus of all US foreign aid.

In a Guardian newspaper blog on Katine, Uganda, Sarah Bosely writes:

The other day I watched a woman die. A small crowd of nursing staff, orderlies and onlookers clustered round the bed in the treatment room where she had been taken after collapsing on the grass outside. It seemed like an intrusion to join them,but, in truth, one more made no difference. She was motionless, legs bent below her red dress and head to one side. With the horror of a westerner used to ambulance sirens, I counted the seconds ticking away while nothing was done. No drip, no oxygen mask, no injections, no resuscitation. They had seen it too often before. They knew there was nothing they could do.

As a Café Sentido colleague reported, in reference to Ms. Bosely’s testimony:

[The patient] had been perfectly healthy and active just the day before. But once she went into labor, her situation, geographically and socio-economically, left her in peril. There is no doctor in her town. There are no doctors for over 20 miles. The town of Soroti, where she might find a hospital and a doctor, also has the nearest obstetrician.

Violence against women in Darfur continues to rage out of control. As this publication reported in late July:

Attitudes about violence against women in Darfur vary widely and are a source of high controversy in Sudan. Last year, at the UN’s Commission on the Status of Women, at the UN Headquarters in New York, a panel of women from the Sudanese parliament, headed by a female Sudanese doctor linked to the Khartoum government, gave a report on the status of violence against women in the Darfur conflict zone, in which rape was virtually ignored.

Though the presentation focused on rape as a form of violence against women, the reports of “confirmed cases”, based only on the cases the authorities both accepted as legitimate complaints and had successfully prosecuted, put the annual number of rapes for each of the three designated zones in Darfur in the single digits, even as NGOs and UN agencies were estimating figures, compiled from sporadic reports of cases never prosecuted, in the tens of thousands, including documentation of a deliberate campaign involving some government-backed forces.

But the failure to prosecute rape, or even to adequately treat rape victims or investigate reports of rape in the first place, is only part of the extreme violence that puts women in danger and threatens to keep the benefits of a full life engaged with society from them.

Failure to act to prevent forcible or coercive female circumcision and a refusal to treat cases of fistula, which is easily cured if treated early, cause women to endure not only physical trauma and ongoing disability, but also to be relegated to a lower level of social relevance. Providing even one trained physician for a remote village or over-stressed refugee camp can do a lot to prevent these kind of problems from crippling women or keeping them away from the public sphere.

Justice for women victimized by corruption, war and impunity, is of primary urgency for societies whose women are so extremely disadvantaged. Whether it is the inability of women to sue to hold onto family-owned land, to fight against powerful local leaders who commit crimes against them, including rape, theft, abduction and forcible indenture, securing women’s right to access the justice system, be treated as equals and enforce their rights before the law, is essential to healing communities, speeding their economic development and stabilizing political systems.

Economic rights that cannot be overlooked, include the right to own and inherit property, the right to fair pay or equal pay for equal work, the right to hold personal bank accounts, start businesses in their own name, and to secure microfinancing for their personal or business ventures. Extending each of these economic rights to women has repeatedly been shown to have a stabilizing effect on volatile regions and nations and to aid in economic development.

Key political rights that must be addressed are both women’s suffrage —which means examining and securing the voting rights of all citizens within a given country, so that women can be adequately assured of having equal, and verifiably so, access to the voting process— and women’s right to participate in electoral politics as candidates.

In Afghanistan, the plight of Malalai Joya is instructive. As reported by Café Sentido this June:

Malalai Joya is a pioneer in Afghan politics, one of the female members of Parliament, as of 2005, and a voice for women’s and human rights generally in a nation increasingly beleaguered by corruption, mass violence and social disintegration. Joya was stripped of her seat in parliament in 2007, in extralegal proceedings, for criticizing the warlords among her colleagues.

She now lives a nightmare of constant persecution, in which she is forced to change location nearly every night to avoid falling into the hands of those who threaten to kill her for speaking out. Joya says that Afghan democracy and the “voiceless” people of her country are engaged in an invisible and desperate struggle with enemies of her nation and her people, enemies of peace, like the Taliban leaders and warlords who seek to subjugate the population.

Joya’s own story of heroic advocacy and tragic persecution mirrors the situation in which Afghans find themselves generally, struggling to emerge from a reign of terror, in which fundamentalist militia attack schoolgirls by throwing acid on them and women are stoned simply for walking alone, even if covered from head to toe, in public.

But women also need to be protected from the evils of culturally rationalized shame-based killings, in which male family members murder their own female relatives in order to defend their “honor”. There is also the problem of shame-based torture, as in the case of a Sudanese law that subjects a woman to 40 lashes —a bloody and agonizing experience— for the crime of “harassment to the public sentiments”, committed by wearing full-length pants.

Such laws demean women and foster the ancient superstition that women should be treated as “unclean” or “sinful” and thus excluded from public life. They allow thugs and murderers to justify violent assaults against defenseless women and even young girls. And even where violence is absent, such beliefs help to preclude women’s accessing educational institutions or even learning to read and write.

And yet, in one after another country, it has been demonstrated that empowering poor women, through education, political rights and economic equality before the law, fosters political stability and economic advancement for their communities and for the society at large.

Defending women and girls against the very real evils of the human trafficking —i.e. modern slavery— underworld, working to prevent and to punish violence against women, and guaranteeing girls’ access to a full education, are must-do priorities for any society where poverty, political violence and tribalism threaten stability.

• Some reporting contributed by J.E. Robertson

Niger is the third leading source of uranium in the world, after Canada and Australia. Uranium accounts for as much as 70% of Niger’s export revenue. Pres. Mamadou Tandja ordered a referendum be held to amend the constitution, permitting him to remain in office. That order was overturned by the nation’s constitutional court, which Tandja subsequently dissolved, replacing the justices with jurists he believed would be more favorable to his interests.

Tandja also dissolved Parliament, after legislators sought to block his efforts to alter the constitution. Now, several opposition parties have joined together in pledging to withdraw their members from the Independent Electoral Commission, thus delegitimizing any effort by Tandja to use the body to call a referendum to extend his term in office.

Abdullahi Jauri, a member of the dissolved parliament, says Tandja does not have the power to dismiss the justices or replace them, as the constitution holds that they cannot be removed. Jauri says the opposition must take on the political risk and do anything in their power to oppose Tandja’s efforts to change the law to extend his term.

Moumouni Hamidou, chair of the National Independent Electoral Commission (CENI), says the referendum will be held on 4 August. Mr. Hamidou said “As for legal aspects, everything is OK thanks to the president who implemented Article 53 of the constitution of August 9th 1999 in pursuance of a prerogative given to him…as head of State”, despite the decisive position of the political opposition, the Parliament and the Constitutional Court, that such a move would in fact be illegal.

There have been rumors of maneuvering between the government and the opposition to win the favor of military chiefs, to stop the opposing side from seeking to implement their agenda. The opposition alleges that Tandja’s acts amount to a hostile flouting of the constitution, effectively an attempted coup cloaked in legalistic proceedings not founded in law, and Tandja is escalating rhetoric alleging the opposition is plotting to overthrow him.

Now, Afrique en ligne is reporting:

The deputy secretary-general of the Niger Party for Democracy and Socialism (PNDS-Taraya), Mr Hassoumi Massaoudou, on Tuesday urged Nigeriens to boycott the referendum polls, scheduled for 4 August, by President Mamadou Tandja.

“The people do not need a referendum whose results are known in advance. This referendum should not take place. We will do everything possible to prevent it. We will create such a situation that it will take place in an extremely difficult condition,” Massaoudou threatened at a news conference here.

The back story, which has received less attention, is what the effect would be of significant unrest in Niger on the world’s supply of uranium, produced to fuel nuclear reactors. While France officially administers the Niger uranium industry, in an oversight agreement with the International Atomic Energy Agency (the UN’s nuclear regulator), some observers fear Tandja’s political maneuvering could amount to an attempt to exert extraordinary control over the nation’s valuable uranium resources.

Gabon’s president Omar Bongo has died, aged 73, while undergoing treatment for cancer in a clinic in Barcelona, Spain. Bongo took over the country in a 1967, after Leon Mba, Gabon’s first post-independence president, under whom Bongo was vice-president, died. Bongo had ruled for 22 years through an authoritarian one-party system based on legislation he had introduced granting himself the right to rule for life, then for another 20 years, after he was forced to legalize opposition parties by spreading political unrest.

During his 42-year reign, Bongo accumulated one of the world’s largest fortunes. There is no exact figure for how much wealth he had stashed in bank accounts across the world, but the French government had frozen his assets, pending investigations into corruption and financial wrongdoing. 

According to The Scotsman: 

Critics have long argued that Bongo’s longevity in power was secured through a combination of violence and corruption.

He was being investigated by the French government for massive fraud and embezzlement. His French bank accounts had been frozen and it was alleged that the huge volume of real estate owned by the Bongo family in France, mainly in Nice and Paris, could not have been bought with official salaries alone.

Gabon is an oil-rich country, and a lack of transparency is thought to have allowed Bongo and his family to extract enormous private wealth from the country’s natural resources. But Bongo has also been praised for helping to achieve and maintain peace in the region. UN Sec. Gen. Ban Ki-moon praised him for the “key role he played in the search for peace and stability not only in the Central Africa subregion, but also in other parts of the continent”. 

US pres. Barack Obama also expressed “condolences to his family and to the people of Gabon”, saying Bongo had helped forge a “strong bilateral relationship” with the United States. Obama also recognized the importance of Bongo’s support for conservation of the natural environment and for peace efforts on a continent riven by bloody conflagrations, saying: “his commitment to conflict resolution across the continent are an important part of his legacy and will be remembered with respect”. 

For one day after Bongo’s death, the government, and the prime minister, denied the president had died, a signal —many thought— there is no clear plan for succession. In principle, Gabon is a multi-party democracy and elections should be held, but there were fears that after such a long rule, those close to Pres. Bongo might be unwilling to accept a regular constitutional process. 

The Gabonese constitution requires that the president of the Senate assume the presidency in the interim and organize elections for a new president, to be held within 90 days of the president’s death. According the Associated Press:

Gabon’s chief lawmaker will be sworn in Wednesday as the African country’s interim leader following the death of longtime ruler Omar Bongo, the head of the constitutional court said.

The move will make senate chief Rose Francine Rogombe the first new president the country has known since Bongo took power after his predecessor died in 1967. It also quashed fears there could be a struggle for power.

Rogombe’s swearing in should calm fears the government could come apart in an internecine struggle for the presidency. In keeping with constitutional provisions, both the Cabinet and the Constitutional Court held meetings in which they officially recognized the lack of a president and the need for succession. 

Ali Ben Bongo, the son of Pres. Bongo and the current defense minister, went on national television to urge calm among the population. Most Gabonese citizens have never known any other head of state. The president’s son said he spoke on behalf of his family and that the country. His appearance has raised speculation he may be seeking to run for the presidency.

The World Health Organization has found that 1,500 women are dying every day across Africa from pregnancy-related complications or during childbirth. The figure has not improved over the last decade, largely due to the lack of adequate medical facilities. An extremely high rate of maternal mortality, as many as 1,000 per 100,000 live births (fully 1% of women giving birth), makes the situation an extreme threat to women’s health.

The news comes as 53 African Union nations are meeting in Ethiopia to discuss possible means of addressing the persistent crisis. The AFP has reported:

“Women and mothers are at the heart of communities and yet to all our regret, … every minute across Africa a woman dies during pregnancy and childbirth,” Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi told the meeting.

The situation is so dire that the US House of Representatives is considering legislation, HR 1410, that would make protecting and saving the lives of women and young children a focus of US foreign aid donations. Activists, NGOs, UN agencies and aid workers, have called on governments and politicians to be more aware of the nature of this African problem and help seek solutions that can prevent such huge numbers of women from dying.

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In 2007, 994 women died for every 100,000 live births, a disturbing increase over 1987, when 578 women died for every 100,000 live births. With such a level of degradation of the health condition for women, the continent is facing a true moment of crisis. Beset with the HIV/AIDS pandemic, malaria and sleeping sickness, which kill millions each year, it must also face this crisis, in which hundreds of thousands of women are dying, most unnecessarily.

Population increase is thought to play a large role in those numbers, as well as the diversion of medical resources to other disease-related health emergencies, and the often low status with which women’s rights or health are treated in some traditional societies. Where population explodes and an exodus to urban centers leaves the rural poor on the extreme margins of the developed infrastructure, resources are less able to reach women in need, both in urban slums and in remote countryside.

In a Guardian newspaper blog on Katine, Uganda, Sarah Bosely writes:

The other day I watched a woman die. A small crowd of nursing staff, orderlies and onlookers clustered round the bed in the treatment room where she had been taken after collapsing on the grass outside. It seemed like an intrusion to join them,but, in truth, one more made no difference. She was motionless, legs bent below her red dress and head to one side. With the horror of a westerner used to ambulance sirens, I counted the seconds ticking away while nothing was done. No drip, no oxygen mask, no injections, no resuscitation. They had seen it too often before. They knew there was nothing they could do.

She had been perfectly healthy and active just the day before. But once she went into labor, her situation, geographically and socio-economically, left her in peril. There is no doctor in her town. There are no doctors for over 20 miles. The town of Soroti, where she might find a hospital and a doctor, also has the nearest obstetrician.

Florence Ayupo would be treated by a ‘traditional birth attendant’ (TBA), who could deliver the child and provide care in a normal delivery, but not treat massive hemorrhaging or other complications that require advanced medical or surgical intervention. Unfortunately for Florence, she suffered a massive hemorrhage after delivery, and there was no way to treat her to save her life.

Ms. Bosely goes on to explain:

Certainly she haemorrhaged. But she could still have been saved if she had got to a hospital in time. But it all happened like one of those nightmares where you try to run, but your feet are stuck to the ground. Her husband hired a motorbike from a neighbour and took her to a local health centre. But it was a clinic with only low-grade nursing staff. She was bleeding heavily, they told Etoku. She must go to the district hospital in Soroti.

They set off, and the vehicle ran out of fuel. Nobody can afford a full tank here. Etoku had to flag down a car. They got a bit further, but it broke down. Eventually a Land Rover stopped, but the driver took one look and said she needed urgent medical help. It would take half an hour to get to Soroti. He drove the short distance to Tiriri health centre, a level 4 facility that is supposed to have a doctor, but doesn’t because the doctor left for better pay elsewhere. It has an operating theatre, but nobody qualified to do surgery, and hardly any drugs, let alone a blood bank.

The case of Florence Ayupo, tragic and despairing, is all too common in Africa. A chronic shortage of doctors is fueled by endemic poverty, lack of resources, and the lure of more in-depth training and experience, and better pay elsewhere. In rural areas like Katine, or much of Darfur, for example, medical infrastructure is literally non-existent.

Liya Kebede, a supermodel, actress and designer, who was born in Ethiopia, is a maternal health activist and one of the World Health Organization’s goodwill ambassadors. She writes that “in the developing world, more women die from pregnancy and childbirth than any other cause. In my native Ethiopia, children are treasured, yet dying in childbirth is a fact of life”.

Kebede says having lived and given birth in the US has allowed her to see the stark contrast through her own experience, and that this experience has left her “haunted by what pregnancy and childbirth means for so many women in places like Ethiopia”. Part of the reason conditions are so extreme in remote parts of Africa is the lack of awareness of the problem. For many in the developed world, it is simply inconceiveable how forsaken some people find themselves in terms of access to quality, or even basic, modern healthcare measures.

Kebede also writes in a Mother’s Day awareness essay that:

Every minute, a woman dies in childbirth, mostly from preventable causes. Ninety-nine percent of those deaths occur in the developing world. No other health disparity is so stark; virtually every woman who dies giving birth lives in a poor country. And as horrific as this statistic is, it hides the true scope of the problem. For every woman who dies in childbirth, twenty more will suffer debilitating and often lifelong injuries. Injuries such as fistula — literally a hole between the mother’s vagina and her bladder or rectum that is caused by obstructed labor and avoided in the developed world through medical intervention — often leave women isolated, rejected by their communities and unable to support themselves.

The marginalization of women whose main problem is a lack of ability to control their own fate or find care when it is needed, worsens the problem. Such intimate problems are often kept quiet in traditional communities, and it is the most traditional communities that are often marginalized or blocked out altogether by Africa’s uneven and hectic process of development.

• WHO Reports on Maternal Health
• African Union: LUTTE CONTRE LA MORTALITE MATERNELLE ET INFANTILE : L’UA S’ENGAGE [PDF]
  
• The Liya Kebede Foundation
• White Ribbon Alliance / CARE

• Some reporting for this piece contributed by J.E. Robertson

Earlier this month, Cuban president Raúl Castro made the stunning announcement that Cuba was “ready to discuss everything” with the Obama administration, including political prisoners, economic policy, and democratic electoral processes. Pres. Obama has been firm but cautious in his declarations of a willingness to open a new era of engagement with the Cold War enemy just 90 miles from the Florida coast.

Voice of America reports:

The State Department says U.S. diplomats are holding talks with officials of Cuba’s diplomatic mission in Washington on possible follow-up measures to steps President Barack Obama took earlier this month to ease restrictions on the island nation. The Obama administration says it wants to see an easing of political conditions by the Havana government.

The assistant secretary of State for hemispheric affairs, Thomas Shannon, reportedly met with Jorge Bolaños, chief of Cuba’s Interests Section, stationed in Washington to meet with US officials or watch how US policy affects the island nation. The meeting was an informal lunch and the points discussed have not been announced.

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The White House says the meeting does not represent a push for talks with Cuba as yet, but was just a starting point for dialogue on a number of issues of mutual interest. Robert Wood, a spokesman for the State Dept., told reporters “We have concerns about Cuban policies. We’ll be raising them.” Wood called for “reciprocal steps” from Cuba in order to establish concrete talks. 

He suggested that these early signs of engagement were aimed at moving Cuba’s government toward a relaxing of its constraints on political dissent and individual liberty. “What we’d like to see are some steps to give the Cuban people some of the freedoms that are enjoyed by other peoples in the hemisphere”, Wood remarked. 

67% of Cuban Americans answering a recent poll say they support Pres. Obama’s new diplomatic efforts to engage the Cuban regime in talks. There is mounting support for lifting the trade embargo against the island, and even some Cuban American groups that are strongly anti-Castro profess Robert Kennedy’s view that a ban on American travel there is “unamerican” and infringes on citizens’ rights. 

It is a complex political and diplomatic environment. The Republican party has long sought to distinguish itself from the Democratic party on Cuba policy, pushing for the hardest line possible, despite little evidence of any security risk or economic pitfalls involved in more open relations. Obama was heavily criticized by the right for greeting Venezuelan pres. Hugo Chávez warmly at the Summit of the Americas, but public opinion seemed to side with the White House that it was paranoid to believe shaking hands could endanger America. 

Obama has moved steadily but with caution to reverse many highly controversial policies of the last administration and to re-establish the Constitutional basis for certain values in American domestic and foreign policy. He has cited Pres. Reagan’s legacy of engagement with the Soviet Union as a precedent for the exercise of smart power. Secretary of State Clinton, who has said 5 decades of US Cuba policy have failed, has promoted Obama’s vision of “3d” foreign policy, commitment to diplomacy, development and defense.  

While Raúl Castro has said Cuba is ready for talks, his ailing brother and Cuba’s 49-year dictator, Fidel Castro seemed to attempt to play down Cuba’s solicitude toward the Obama administration, saying Pres. Castro’s comments had been misinterpreted. Such tensions make for slow-going, but the Obama White House and the State Dept. under Hillary Rodham Clinton appear to be planning a steady shift toward engagement and firmly principled dialogue.

The indictment of Sudanese president Omar Hassan al-Bashir by the International Criminal Court means the nation of Sudan itself is, under international treaties to which it is party, obliged to arrest and extradite its own president. But the regime of the authoritarian ruler has, unsurprisingly, rejected that obligation and says the indictment is a conspiracy against Sudan by western powers.

‘Voices from Darfur’ (documentary from 2007)

There are now fears that Bashir’s government may do as other embattled authoritarians with illegal military campaigns have done, and try to speed the process of ethnic cleansing it has engineered and still supports in the western region of Darfur. Government-backed militia, reportedly with Khartoum-linked air support, have been purging the region of black African tribes, murdering hundreds of thousands and forcing millions to flee their homes.

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The fallout from the bloodshed in Darfur has so affected neighboring Chad, which has taken in hundreds of thousands in refugee camps, that Chad accuses the Bashir government of using Darfur as a staging ground for a paramilitary border war against the Chadian government. Fears of a larger regional war have been growing for some time.

The joint African Union / UN force operating in Darfur is not large enough to stage a full ground and air campaign to keep Bashir’s forces out of the region altogether, and diplomats have expressed concern that the situation may now escalate as Bashir seeks to consolidate his hold on power and rule out the possibility that rebel groups from Darfur may gain political legitimacy, enter Sudanese government or secure autonomy for the region.

The indictment also places added pressure on Bashir to destroy evidence, including witnesses who could testify about the Darfur mass killing and the links between “janjaweed” militia and regular Sudanese military forces. Aid workers and journalists have long been in danger when operating in Darfur, and fighting has repeated forced the delay or suspension of aid to the region.

It is expected a motion may be put forth at the UN to give the peacekeeping forces there jurisdiction to arrest Bashir or officials operating under him, in order to carry out the ICC warrant. The ICC has no police force of its own, and is powerless to act on its arrest warrants without the aid of national governments. UN powers are now looking to secure cooperation from all members, to isolate Bashir and prevent his traveling without risk of arrest.

But the immediate concern needs to be the civilians “on the ground” in and around Darfur, and possibly in other regions of Sudan that were engaged in drawn-out civil war with Khartoum. There is growing consensus that the AU/UN force must be charged with acting to prevent any incidence of violence against civilians, in order to prevent Bashir from using the warrant as an excuse to wage all-out war on the civilian population of Darfur.

Already, Bashir has expelled 13 aid organizations from the region, a move UN sec. general Ban Ki-moon said will cause “irrevocable damage” to humanitarian aid operations in the region. An estimated 4.7 million people receive humanitarian aid in the devastated Darfur region; the expulsions could lead to the rapid spread of disease, hunger and preventable death among the hardest hit populations.

The crisis in Darfur continues to worsen, as the Khartoum government continues to support groups attacking civilians indiscriminately under the guise of counter-insurgency. Various rebel groups in Darfur have sprung up as the crisis has worsened, making a political solution increasingly difficult, as Darfuris refuse to accept the rule of the Bashir government in Khartoum. Meanwhile, the killing goes on.

A new round of peace talks is now underway in Qatar, with the UN and the AU expressing confidence about the chances of reaching a ceasefire deal. But the lead rebel faction, the Justice and Equality Movement (JEM) says recent Sudanese troop movements are “yet more proof of the government’s lack of seriousness and the fact that it does not feel engaged by the peace process”.

This comes as numerous reports suggest the ethnic cleansing campaign is ongoing, and a new film details former Sudanese officials’ direct involvement in planning and implementing atrocities carried out against the people of Darfur. The International Herald Tribune reports:

The documentary released Wednesday was produced by the London-based human rights group, Aegis Trust. It features interviews with four men the group says were former Sudanese army and militia members.

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The men, whose names are not given and faces are blurred, recount their roles in what they said was government-ordered attacks on Darfurians in a campaign to cleanse the area of non-Arab Africans.

At least 300,000 people have been killed since the Darfur crisis began, and many decry the international response as shamefully slow and passive, allowing genocide to go on while diplomatic negotiations center on whether or not the government in Khartoum will recognize the need for foreign troops to protect civilians against its forces.

John Atta Mills, leader of the opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC) party, has won the presidency, paving the way for Ghana to again demonstrate its standing as an established democracy in which a peaceful transfer of power is the accepted process.

Kwadwo Afari-Gyan, chairman of Ghana’s Electoral Commission, released the official figures today, in the capital Accra. According to the Electoral Commission’s final count, Atta Mills won with 50.23% of the vote, defeating Nana Akufo-Addo of the National Patriotic Party (NPP) who garnered a strong 49.77%. The narrow election victory does not necessarily leave Atta Mills with an overwhelming mandate, but seems to be enough to give him an outright majority and therefore the presidency.

According to AllAfrica:

The African Elections Project (AEP) reports from Accra that the commission’s certified results showed that the NDC won 4,521,032 votes and the NPP 4,480,446 votes. The commission said 72.91 percent of the country’s 12,472,758 voters had cast ballots.

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Atta Mills had run twice before, losing on both occasions, in 2000 and 2004, to now outgoing president John Kufuor. In what could have been a serious question about the legitimacy of Atta Mills’ victory, the western Ghanaian constituency of Tain saw “problems with ballot papers” and a lead for Atta Mills “so narrow that the electoral commission judged that the outcome in Tain had the potential to overturn [the entire election outcome].”

Also according to AllAfrica:

Earlier in the week both the NPP and NDC made allegations of electoral irregularities, in the Volta and Ashanti regions respectively. The electoral commission said on Saturday that neither party had been able to provide sufficient evidence to invalidate the result.

That significant irregularities were not demonstrated, even given the close final results, is considered by observers to be a good sign for Ghana, and for the stability of its democratic processes. The AP notes that: “Ghana is a rare example of democracy in a region of totalitarian states. After coups in the 1970s and 1980s, coup leader Jerry Rawlings organized elections.” After Rawlings won two terms, he peacefully turned over power when the candidate for his party lost to Kufuor in 2000.

The governments of Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DR Congo / DRC) are accused of fighting a proxy war by providing aid to rebel militia in the eastern DR Congo, according to a new draft report to be presented to the UN Security Council Sanctions Committee. The BBC is reporting that the draft report accuses Rwanda of “supplying aid and child soldiers to Tutsi rebels” and the army of the DR Congo of collaborarating with “Rwandan-Hutu militia, the FLDR”.

Also according to the BBC, “Dissident rebel leader General Laurent Nkunda says he is protecting his Congolese Tutsi community from attack by leaders of the Rwanda genocide, but critics say the conflict is about raw power and control of mineral resources.”. DR Congo has long struggled with foreign involvement in bloody internal factional fighting, spurred by the desire to control the nation’s vast mineral resources.

Alleging that rebel factions have organized funding for their efforts in part by exploiting mines in the region for manpower and to siphon money into secret bank accounts. Rwanda is accused of helping Gen. Nkunda’s militia by giving him access to Rwandan banks, military equipment, and foot-soldiers, including some child soldiers. Rwanda is also accused of allowing Nkunda’s mlitia and related groups to organize and launch military strikes on the Congolese army from within Rwandan territory.

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There are currently peace talks ongoing to settle the dispute in eastern DR Congo, also known as the Kivu conflict, with much of the fighting centered in North Kivu province. Those talks have reportedly been extended for at least one day. The talks, in Nairobi, Kenya, were supposed to be closed Wednesday, with a press briefing the same, day, but representatives of the UN effort to mediate the talks have announced the negotiations will continue, and press will be briefed on Thursday.

An estimated 260,000 Congolese have been internally displaced by the Kivu conflict, and the Nairobi talks have featured pressure from the UN to find a political solution to prevent mass ongoing mass hardship for the Kivu refugees. Allegations of ethnic cleansing have been a constant in the back and forth of the two main factions and the Kinshasa and Rwandan governments. According to the Christian Science Monitor:

The bilateral talks, brokered by United Nations envoy and former Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo, are the first positive sign since fighting broke out between Gen. Laurent Nkunda’s rebels and government forces, a conflict that has exposed the ineffectiveness of the Congolese Army and stretched the UN peacekeeping force to the breaking point.

Gen. Nkunda’s militia, the National Congress for the Defense of the People (CNDP), is by far the most prominent in the region, but there are 22 “recognized” rebel organizations operating in eastern DR Congo, and the Kinshasa government of Joseph Kabila has reportedly invited them all to attend the talks. CNDP representatives have said involving all the factions in the talks would make it impossible to reach a viable settlement, and some accuse Kinshasa of not wanting to give ground in negotiations.

Mediators for the talks, including Mr. Obasanjo, former Tanzanian pres. Benjamin Mkapa and Kenyan pres. Mwai Kibaki, have expressed optimism about the progress made, as of Wednesday. A statement from Kibaki’s press office said mediators had informed the Kenyan president that “tremendous progress” had been made by Kabila’s and Nkunda’s representatives.

Former Nigerian pres. Obasanjo says the two groups of negotiators have demonstrated “serious commitment” to achieving peace in eastern DR Congo and a willingness to keep negotiations going until a viable political solution is worked out. Pres. Kibaki, who chairs both the Congo Peace Process and the Great Lakes Conference, a regional diplomatic initiative, says an end to the Kivu conflict with a lasting political settlement will contribute to peace throughout the African Great Lakes region.

With hospitals closing, funding non-existent, economy unraveling, political impasse and aid frozen, Zimbabwe is facing escalating risk of a severe cholera pandemic

The spread of cholera due to Zimbabwe’s foundering hygienic infrastructure is reaching crisis proportions. UNICEF is calling for an emergency fund of $17.5 million to fight the spread of cholera in Zimbabwe, calling the outbreak “a cholera crisis of unprecedented levels”. With 13,960 cases already declared and an estimated 589 dead to date, the UN warns upwards of 60,000 people could become infected if drastic and immediate action is not taken to contain the epidemic.

Aid groups are warning that many times more people may already have died from the disease, but that their infections and deaths are going unrecorded due to hospital closures and the collapse of Zimbabwe’s healthcare and communications infrastructure. According to the UK’s Guardian newspaper:

Oxfam said there were likely to be thousands of unreported deaths. “When you look at people who are already weakened by hunger, many already weakened by HIV and AIDS, and with rainy season comes malaria, and we know anthrax is spreading, it’s really just a recipe for disaster,” a spokeswoman said.

Itai Rusike, speaking for the Community Working Group, has said: “Phones are not working, nurses are not there, so their information system has collapsed. It is very difficult to tell how many people have died.” UNICEF is also warning that the severity of the humanitarian catastrophe cannot be underestimated, as 80% of the population of Zimbabwe has no access to safe drinking water.

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The UK prime minister Gordon Brown told the press Mugabe leads “a bloodstained regime”, that the cholera outbreak means Zimbabwe’s crisis is “now not just a national emergency, it’s an international emergency”, which could “spill over, if nothing is done, into Mozambique, into South Africa”. Echoing the calls of other leaders, Brown quipped “enough is enough”.

In addition to Brown and other world leaders, South African archbishop Desmond Tutu has also called for Mugabe to “step down”, saying he should be offered a “soft landing” if he resigns and hands over power, but threatened with prosecution at the Hague for crimes against humanity, should he refuse to leave office. Mugabe is being blamed for an ongoing crackdown on dissent at all levels, which some say is worsening as the political stalemate drags on.

The Associated Press is reporting “Brian Raftopoulos, organizer of the Solidarity Peace Trust, said a number of activists have been abducted and protests violently quashed by riot police.” While the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), led by Morgan Tsvangirai —who has been abducted and beaten multiple times this year by security forces— seeks to enter into a failing power-sharing agreement with Mugabe, the regime has refused to relinquish or share control of the police, leading to accusations Mugabe will use the police to impose his will indefinitely.

Mugabe’s government claims the cholera epidemic is being used to scapegoat the perennial president and blames sanctions imposed by “western” powers. Today, Zimbabwe’s information minister Sikhanyiso Ndlovu complained “the cholera issue has been used to drive a wedge among us,” said the disease had been brought “under control” and blamed sanctions for the deaths experienced to date.

World Health Organization officials and regional governments suggest otherwise:

468 cholera cases had been detected in South Africa, nine of whom had died, and that Zimbabwe’s epidemic also had spread to Mozambique and Botswana. WHO spokeswoman Fadela Chaib said the cases in South Africa were probably a mix of cholera already found in South Africa and spillover from Zimbabwe.

Experts say cholera is common in the region, as compared to other parts of the world, but that Zimbabwe had been better able to contain outbreaks before the startling collapse of its economy in recent years. Until now, the worst outbreak had seen roughly 3,000 recorded cases, according to Peter Lundberg, of the International Red Cross. By sheer number of infections, this outbreak is already 4.5 times as bad.

Joining the voices of Gordon Brown, Desmond Tutu, and Kenyan pres. Raila Odinga, US Sec. of State Condoleezza Rice has called on Mugabe to “leave”, blaming him for political violence, a “sham election”, and for sabotaging the process of forming a joint governing coalition with the opposition, who won more votes than his party in the first round of voting in this year’s election. Rice also blamed Mugabe for the socio-economic hardship and humanitarian crisis now facing the people of Zimbabwe.

Reports from Ghana suggest turnout was historically high and the elections peaceful and without significant irregularities. While many voters were forced to wait in long lines for hours, and some began forming lines at polling stations the night before the vote, there were few reported incidents of serious problems. It is expected the election will result in Ghana’s second successive peaceful transfer of power, which the AP cites as “a litmus test for a mature democracy and a feat that only a handful of other nations in Africa have accomplished”.

Both top candidates are lawyers who received their training outside Ghana, but whose international credentials are seen as attractive for a nation entering what some are calling its “oil era”. New deposits of oil have been discovered and are being developed off the coast of Ghana, and oil may bring a lot of change, some welcome —in the form of prosperity—, some unwelcome —in the temptations of big money, power politics and corruption—, to the small coastal nation. 

The main opposition party, National Democratic Congress (NDC) has complained about the long lines and what it describes as irregularities, but on the whole the election seems to have been conducted fairly. Kwadwo Afari-Gyan, chairman of the Electoral Commission, projects “a higher number than we saw in the last elections”, due to the competitive nature of the race this year. In 2004, a record 85% of eligible Ghanaian citizens turned out to vote.

Reuters is reporting that:

Successful polls would be a boost for democracy in Africa after electoral bloodshed in Kenya, Zimbabwe and Nigeria, and would underpin a country that has become one of Africa’s brightest investment prospects due to its political stability.

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Turning 70 years old today, President John Kufuor will leave office on 7 January, after serving two terms in office, the legal maximum. Kufuor said, after voting near his home in Accra, the capital: ”What excites me is that I’ve ended my tenure, I believe, on a good note with the entire nation showing readiness to help select my successor and members of the next parliament”.

Kufuor supports his successor as candidate for the New Patriotic Party’s (NPP), Nana Akufo-Addo, who is the son of a former Ghanaian president and a lawyer trained in Britain. But it looks unlikely Akufo-Addo will win in the first round. Observers inside and outside Ghana a projecting a run-off vote, to be held on 28 December 2008, will be necessary.

Akufo-Addo’s main rival is the candidate for the center-left NDC, John Atta Mills. Mills, a lawyer with a focus on tax policy, who wants to play a role in crafting the future of Ghana’s oil economy, was projected early on to be trailing the NPP candidate, but final results are not expected for several days. Ultimately, the Electoral Commission was forced to extend voting, beyond the 10-hour preset period, to allow all voters waiting to cast ballots.

Some 12.5 million voters are estimated to have cast ballots in Sunday’s election. In all, the presidency and 230 parliamentary seats were contested in this election, with 8 presidential candidates and 1,064 parliamentary candidates on the ballots, nationwide. Barring any unforeseen complications, final results should begin to be announced 72 hours after the polls close.

Warning that a military crackdown in the wake of last week’s failed coup attempt could destabilize the West African country, the UN Peace-building Commission has called on teh government of Guinea-Bissau to guarantee civilian rule and the rule of law. The sitting president, João Bernardo “Nino” Vieira, initially came to power in a coup, was ousted during the 1998-99 civil war, and returned to power in the 2005 elections.

Rogue military factions attacked the residence of Pres. Vieira on Sunday, but Vieira took shelter in a protected area of the heavily fortified presidential palace, and escaped harm. Vieira reportedly placed a “panicked” phone call to Senegal’s president, Abdoulaye Wade, allegedly seeking assistance in ensuring the stability of his nation against the coup-leaders; Wade ordered Senegalese soldiers to the Bissauan border, and said they would remain there until the situation was stabilized.

The attack has been treated as a direct attempt at assassination and has been condemned by the African Union, the UN secretary general Ban Ki-moon, and the international community. The mutiny was staged just one week after Vieira’s party defeated the opposition in parliamentary elections. According to Nigeria’s Guardian newspaper group, during the elections “opposition leader and former President Kumba Yala accused Vieira of being the country’s top drug trafficker. The president did not comment on the accusation.”

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Yala took power after Vieira was ousted in 1999, and lost to Vieira in the 2005 elections. There is no clear evidence to suggest that Yala was behind the mutiny, but there are clear indications the government views the opposition leader with suspicion. UN Sec. Gen. Ban hinted at the likelihood of involvement of the opposition, via a spokesman, who said “It’s unacceptable that after legitimate elections they could attack the president and try to kill him.”

Guinea-Bissau’s interior minister, Cipriano Cassama, said the government had learned of the coup plot in advance and took “certain measures” to protect the life of Pres. Vieira and counter the mutiny. The attack reportedly failed after a 3-hour gunbattle that included “heavy artillery fire on Vieira’s home shortly after midnight”, again according to the Guardian (Nigeria).

The small nation has been struggling with the rising influence of drug-trafficking cartels and organized crime, and has struggled to meet the timetables for peace-building projects designed to stabilize civil society and speed development. One woman was quoted as having told the Integrated Regional Information Network (IRIN) in the run-up to the parliamentary elections: “We want water, we want electricity” and suggesting that the political conditions were undermining the possibility of having a “normal life”.

UNICEF estimates that no more than 20% of the population of Bissau, the capital city, have drinkable tap water. Cholera is a major problem in rural and urban areas during the rainy season, as most Bissauans must get their water from exposed, untreated sources. 119 of every 1,000 live births ends in the infant’s death, while children suffer chronically from preventable but often fatal diseases. In 2006, life expectancy stood at just 46 years.

As civilians have fled clashes among rebel militia and government forces in the Democratic Republic of Congo, calls have been mounting for UN intervention to restore peace, prevent atrocities against civilians and ensure the delivery of much needed humanitarian aid. The UN Security Council (UNSC) voted last Thursday to send reinforcements of 3,085 additional soldiers to try to better secure the region now inflamed with rebel-government clashes.

MONUC, the UN Mission for Congo peacekeeping, will now have a force strength of 20,000. Observers, locals and some activists, have complained the UN forces are not using the full level of force permitted under their security mandate, which unlike many UN peacekeeping missions, allows aggressive use of fire to protect civilians and dissuade attacking hostile combatants. MONUC officers have said they are too few personnel spread over too large an area and do not have enough tactical support to engage in direct combat.

The reinforcements will be sent into the eastern DR Congo province of North Kivu, where there have been insufficient MONUC peacekeepers deployed to stop the atrocities resulting from mounting clashes between government forces teamed with Hutu militia and rebel groups defending Tutsi villages and pushing to take terrain from the government. By January of this year, there were 45,000 people dying each month from war and its effects in DR Congo; estimates suggest the death toll has been worsening throughout 2008.

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Wikipedia explains:

By 1996, tensions from the neighboring Rwanda war and genocide had spilled over to Zaire. Rwandan Hutu militia forces (Interahamwe), who had fled Rwanda following the ascension of a Tutsi-led government, had been using Hutu refugees camps in eastern Zaire as a basis for incursion against Rwanda. These Hutu militia forces soon allied with the Zairian armed forces (FAZ) to launch a campaign against Congolese ethnic Tutsis in eastern Zaire. In turn, the Tutsis formed a militia and erupted in rebellion against Mobutu.

Mobutu was ousted and fled the country in 1997. Rebel leader Laurent Kabila entered the capital, Kinshasa, declared victory, claimed the presidency and chose the former official name for the country, Democratic Republic of Congo. In 1998, a civil war erupted, and by 2001, Kabila had been killed. He was succeeded by his son, Joseph Kabila, who called for comprehensive peace negotiations, and signed a peace deal with rebel groups.

After an interim government designed to bring peace under a new constitution, Joseph Kabila was returned to power, in the contested 2006 elections. There were violent clashes and allegations of irregularities by opposition leader and former rebel Jean-Pierre Bemba, but “independent observers” have recognized the second round vote as legitimate.

Since 1998, the multi-phased civil war in DR Congo has taken an estimated 5.4 million lives, making it the deadliest armed conflict on Earth since the end of World War II. The Kinshasa government, far to the West, has significant challenges in securing and governing the vast and fractious country, which covers a surface area of 2.345 million square kilometers, larger than the combined areas of France, Germany, Spain, Sweden and Norway.

The Kivu conflict, far to the east, along the border with Burundi and Rwanda, has seen the DR Congo official military fighting rebel forces commanded by Laurent Nkunda, of the National Congress for the Defence of the People (CNDP). Rwanda has repeatedly been accused of direct interference or of efforts to destabilize the eastern DR Congo. Nkunda had fought with the Rally for Congolese Democracy, the Goma faction, in the war lasting from 1998 through 2002. He then served in the transitional government’s joint military, reaching the rank of general before rejecting the Kabila government and taking up positions in North Kivu.

A tentative ceasefire has been declared, then variously violated, to separate rebel and government forces to allow for aid workers to get much needed medical and food assistance to the civilian population of the Kivu region. Nkunda ordered his troops out of densely populated areas, to allow a “humanitarian corridor” to provide aid to residents and refugees.

According to the UK’s Telegraph newspaper:

For the first time in weeks, aid workers were able to move freely in North Kivu province, the epicentre of the rebellion led by Laurent Nkunda, a renegade Tutsi general.

So far, a ceasefire is holding and Gen Nkunda has withdrawn his forces from two key locations 90 miles north of Goma, the local capital. This has allowed the creation of buffer zones between the rebels and Congo’s national army, patrolled by United Nations peacekeepers, and opened up large areas for aid workers.

The UN forces will be faced with the challenge of maintaining those buffer zones, though the rebel groups have not said they will cease all future actions against government forces, and the government has not signaled its willingness to negotiate with the rebels. Former Nigerian president Olusegun Obasanjo is working to negotiate a settlement between the two sides.

A federal judge in Miami has ordered the Curação Drydock Company to pay $80 million in damages and fines for enslaving workers shipped to Curação from Cuba. The workers were reportedly forced to work up to 112 hours per week at just 3 cents (US$0.03) per hour. Curação is a dependency of the Kingdom of the Netherlands — home to both the International Court of Justice and the International Criminal Court (ICC) and a leading light in diplomatic efforts to improve human rights conditions the world over.

According to the Christian Science Monitor:

The three men testified that they had been sent to Curaçao to work off Cuba’s multimillion-dollar debt to the Curaçao Drydock Company, a private company whose largest shareholder is the government of the Netherlands Antilles. Their passports were seized at the airport and they were rarely allowed to leave the shipyard complex, and only in groups with a minder.

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The workers were also reportedly forced to work for up to 15 days without a break and subjected to hours of “videotaped speeches” by Fidel Castro, presumably an attempt to persuade them that their plight was a noble contribution to the homeland. A nephew of the Cuban leader, Manuel Bequer, has been cited as production manager for the firm.

Seth Miles, the lawyer who represented the enslaved men who brought the case, has said:

They faced the worst choice you can imagine: to continue being slaves not knowing if they would live or die because they were being treated so badly or to try to escape, knowing that even if they were successful it would be horrific for their families in Cuba…

The plantiffs’ lawyer has also said “Their kids have been kicked out of school, their relatives have lost their jobs, and neighborhood gangs harass their families.” The case appears to reveal a very backward application of proletarian labor philosophy, enslaving citizens for the benefit of the state, long a major point of critique for the powerful exiled Cuban community in Miami.

CSM also reports that:

The company has denied many of the allegations, though they admitted that the Cuban workers’ passports were seized and that their unpaid wages were deducted from the debt Havana owed the company. After failing to get the case thrown out on technical grounds, the firm fired their attorneys and abandoned the case.

The case is a function of the Alien Tort Claims Act, a US law which allows foreign nationals to sue non-US officials or entities in US federal courts for major violations of international humanitarian law. Cases brought to date have included torture, murder, efforts to crush democratic dissent and inhuman working conditions. While the US has not joined the ICC, the Alien Tort Claims Act is a major precedent for prosecution of human rights abuses internationally.

The US State Department position on modern slavery involves efforts to curb and punish human trafficking, noting: “Human trafficking is modern-day slavery, involving victims who are forced, defrauded, or coerced into labor or sexual exploitation. While some victims of this crime are able to escape from involuntary servitude, many more are not able to break free on their own. They need help.”

Socio-economic issues linked to the disparate treatment of racial groups still plagues much of Brazil’s population and impedes the modernization of its economy. Though the Amazon nation is booming, and has become a world leader among developing market economies, the current president, Luis Inacio Lula da Silva, took office promising to finally rid the dense, remote rainforest of de facto slavery.

13 May 2008 was the 120th anniversary of the Lei Áurea, the “golden law” of emancipation, decreed by Princess Isabel, just one year before her empire was replaced by the Republic of Brazil. In fact, while Isabel is given credit in the written history for signing emancipation into law, she was under extreme pressure from Britain and from enclaves of escaped slaves —the ‘quilombo’ communities—, the most renowned of which resisted the institution of slavery for over one hundred years.

The leader of that community, Zumbi dos Palmares, died on 20 November 1695. In 2003, the anniversary of his death was made a day of national black recognition, and now —according to Worldpress— some 260 cities across Brazil have made the day an official holiday. In Brazil, slavery was more a matter of practice than of law, as individual laborers were trapped into slave conditions, a practice which has persisted in some form up to the present day in remote parts of the Amazon rainforest.

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Agricultural laborers are at times forced to work without pay, under brutal conditions, and whole communities can be dependent on local tyrants for protection or sustenance. Kevin Hall, writing for Knight Ridder, reports on the plight of José Silva:

Silva was a modern slave, working with 46 other men and a boy to clear jungle with machetes, chain saws and tractors from sunup to sundown in the tropical heat, seven days a week, for no money. He and the others got one meal a day of rice, beans and a little chicken or beef, which they were made to eat standing up to discourage resting. There were no toilets or latrines at the workers’ camp, only bushes.

Brazilian “hardwoods, pig iron and processed meats” are among products stemming from slave labor that go to market in the US, where there is virtually zero consumer awareness of the gravity of conditions at the point of origin. Soybeans and related products, which may be produced on farms where enslaved workers do the cropping and harvest work, are commonly sold on world markets, in direct competition with American-produced soy products —Brazil and the US are the world leaders in soy production—, also with little consumer awareness of the underlying slave conditions.

In 2004, the government of Brazil officially recognized before the UN that some 25,000 citizens suffer “conditions analagous to slavery”. Hall reports that “The top anti-slavery official in Brasilia, the capital, puts the number of modern slaves at 50,000.” President “Lula” da Silva’s promise to finally abolish slavery once and for all in Brazil is still, tragically, a project in the works.