Calling a coup a coup? Egypt’s African Union bid to make inroads in Sudan | MadaMasr
▻https://madamasr.com/en/2019/04/22/feature/politics/calling-a-coup-a-coup-egypts-african-union-bid-to-make-inroads-in-sudan
While the head of the transitional military council that has ruled Sudan since ousting former President Omar al-Bashir announced a “readiness” to hand over power to a civilian government last night, negotiations to usher in the transition to civilian rule in Sudan are at a “deadlock,” sources in the opposition tell Mada Masr.
Lieutenant General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, who sits atop the transitional council, took to television late on Sunday night to announce the military’s willingness to hand over the “reins of government” as early as tomorrow, provided that political forces reached a consensus among themselves and put forth a government they could agree upon.
Burhan’s speech was roundly rejected by leading member of the opposition Freedom and Change Coalition Wagdi Salih, who spoke at a rally in front of the military headquarters shortly after the lieutenant general’s address, announcing that the opposition would suspend talks with the military council.
“We were supposed to have a meeting with the military council yesterday to inform them of the choices for the civilian sovereign council, but the council, which is a continuation of the ruling regime, revealed its dark side. The council told us they want to discuss our proposal among another 100 proposals from political parties,” Salih told protesters.
Sunday’s televised exchange played out against the backdrop of a flurry of meetings held on Saturday, when the African Union Commission chairperson Moussa Faki met with the military and opposition in Khartoum.
]]>World Court Says U.K. Should Cede Rule of Indian Ocean Islands - Bloomberg
▻https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-02-25/world-court-says-u-k-should-cede-rule-of-indian-ocean-islands
The International Court of Justice said the U.K. should hand back to Mauritius control of an Indian Ocean archipelago where a key U.S. naval base is located.
“The U.K.’s continued administration of the Chagos archipelago “is an unlawful act of a continuing character,” court President Abdulqawi Ahmed Yusuf said in The Hague. “Accordingly the U.K. is under an obligation to bring an end to its administration of the Chagos archipelago as rapidly as possible,” Yusuf said.
The United Nations in 2017 sought an advisory opinion from the ICJ, its principal judicial organ, on the legal status of the archipelago.
Chagos is part of the British Indian Ocean Territory, which has been administered by the U.K. since 1965, when it paid the then self-governing colony of Mauritius 3 million pounds ($3.9 million) for control of the islands. Between 1967 and 1973, hundreds of inhabitants were removed to make way for the Diego Garcia U.S. military base, which has been used to launch bomber jets for wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Mauritian Prime Minister Pravind Jugnauth in August obtained the backing of the African Union and about 30 other countries in his bid to have control of the archipelago returned to Mauritius. The request to the ICJ excludes Diego Garcia, he said.
]]>Chimurenga signale sur FB
The African Imagination of a Borderless World:
▻https://www.facebook.com/BardeAmu/posts/2053819831377429?__tn__=-R
▻https://www.dropbox.com/s/m2ahiylwb2rfv00/afrique%20festac%2077.pdf?dl=0
The debate that started in Manchester 1945 when the leadership of a movement founded by “concerned black people” in the West (Garvey, du Bois, CLR etc) was taken up by Africa-born poet-philosopher-politicians like Nkrumah and Nyerere - and accelerated when these poet-philosopher-politicians took charge of independent states (or “mini-states” as Walter Rodney liked to call them) and reduced pan Africanism to OAU bureaucracy (which Mbeki subsequently re-branded AU). Not all were poets or philosophers..
Anyway, this debate was still in full swing by the time FESTAC came around - the 2nd World Black and African Festival of Arts and Culture, held in Lagos/Kaduna in 1977 (note the “Black AND African”)
This is Kongi speaking his peace for Abibiman (his prefered name for Africa) at the FESTAC Colloquium - btw we’re working on a publication on FESTAC, soon come!
(And this vid is courtesy of the Centre for Black Arts and Civilisations in Lagos - part the legacy of FESTAC. Check them out)
Bright Moments!
FESTAC’77 - the Second World Black and African Festival of Arts and Culture - YouTube
▻https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BzAIGgWNHbY
Festac ’77, also known as the Second World Black and African Festival of Arts and Culture (the first was in Dakar, 1966), was a cultural jamboree held in Lagos, Nigeria, from 15 January 1977 to 12 February 1977. The month-long event celebrated African culture and showcased to the world African music, fine art, literature, drama, dance and religion. About 16,000 participants, representing 56 African nation and countries o
]]>How Borders Are Constructed in West Africa
The E.U. has led an expensive and often contradictory effort to modernize African borders. Author #Philippe_Frowd looks at the gap between policy and outcomes.
Over the past 15 years there has been a surge in E.U. spending on borders outside Europe. The impact of this funding on West Africa has received little attention until recently.
A new book by Philippe M. Frowd, an expert on the politics of borders, migration and security intervention, seeks to correct this. In “Security at the Borders: Transnational Practices and Technologies in West Africa,” Frowd details both the high politics and everyday culture clashes that have shaped European interventions and the way they have been received in countries like Senegal.
An assistant professor in the School of Political Studies at the University of Ottawa, Frowd coins the term “border work” to denote how everything from training to technology to migration deals work in combination with each other. Here in conversation with Refugees Deeply, he shares some of his main observations.
Refugees Deeply: You talk about tracing the “who” of border work in West Africa. Can you explain your findings?
Philippe Frowd: One of my book’s points is to use the term “border work” to identify how seemingly disparate practices such as negotiating migrant readmission agreements, deploying citizen identification technologies, funding border management projects and routine police cooperation actually combine. To try and make sense of what seems to be a bewildering but also often opaque set of actors operating at the intersection of these fields in West Africa specifically.
One of the most striking developments of the past 10-15 years has been the phenomenal growth of E.U. border security-related spending, much of it in “third countries,” mainly in Africa. This has gone hand in hand with a growing salience of “border security” on the part of many African states as a way of understanding flows at borders.
One of my main findings was the sheer diversity of actors involved in determining policies, experiences and practices of borders in the region. The African Union is the successor to the Organisation of African Unity which accepted Africa’s inherited borders in 1964, and the A.U. continues to provide assistance for demarcation of borders and dispute resolution. The Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) is one of the guarantors of free movement in the region and generally pursues an ambitious agenda of greater harmonization (e.g., of visa policy).
Yet other actors, such as the E.U. and U.N. specialized agencies (such as the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime), tend to have agendas driven by primarily Western security concerns. Then there are the more immediately visible police and gendarmeries who directly enact border controls. More recently, the G5 Sahel force consistently invokes border security and transnational crime.
Beyond simply tracing who does what, there is tracing the interconnections and tensions between these different institutions. Looking sociologically at the diverse range of actors, we can see how knowledge is a crucial part of the equation: What is the vision of borders, security and migration each actor puts forward? On one hand, institutions like ECOWAS are focused on legal mobility rights while those such as Interpol envision mobility as a regulated, digitally legible practice. The range of actors who contribute to this border work is often a patchwork in which uneasy bedfellows co-exist. E.U. funding, for instance, goes to supporting free movement projects at the ECOWAS level but also to train and equip the security forces of states like Niger to crack down on irregular migration routes. West African borders are the product of the balance of forces between this range of competing visions.
Refugees Deeply: Can you talk us through the way in which border practices move between different regions. Is there a model for the process of emulation?
Frowd: Border security is made up of everyday routines but also of various digital and other technologies, both of which are potentially mobile. I point to a couple of ways that these tools of doing border security can travel: One of these is emulation of existing (often Western) methods and standards, but this also goes alongside what I describe as “pedagogy” and the role of exemplars.
“West African borders are the product of the balance of forces between this range of competing visions.”
All of these interact in some way. As an example, a border management project led by the IOM [International Organization for Migration] might include training sessions during which members of the local police and gendarmerie learn about key principles of border management illustrated by best practices from elsewhere. Emulation is the desired outcome of many of these trainings, which are the backbone of international border security assistance. The EUCAP Sahel missions, for example, put a heavy emphasis on training rather than equipping so there is a strong faith that mentalities matter more than equipment.
Equipment also matters and plays its part in shaping how border security works. Biometrics, which aim to verify identification using some kind of body measurement, require ways of reading the body and storing data about it. Senegal adopted, in one decade, a range of biometric technologies for national I.D. cards and controls at borders. There is a very obvious mobility of technology here (a Malaysian company providing e-Passport infrastructure, a Belgian company providing visa systems) but movement of border practices is also about ideas. The vision of biometrics as effective in the first place is one that I found, from interviews with Senegalese police commanders, was strongly tied to emulating ideals of modern and selective borders found elsewhere.
Refugees Deeply: In your work you identify some of the gaps between policy goals and to actual outcomes and practices. Can you talk us through the greatest discrepancies?
Frowd: Some of the discrepancies I found showed some interesting underlying factors. One of these was the shifting role of global private sector companies in frustrating public policy goals. Not through deliberate sabotage or state capture, but rather through the diverging incentives around doing border work. In the case of Senegal’s biometric systems, the state has been keen to make as coherent an infrastructure as possible, with connections between various elements such as biometric passport issuance, automated airport arrivals for holders of this passport and systems such as the national I.D. card. Given the need for private companies to compete based on technological advantage, rival systems made by rival companies could not interconnect and share data without sharing of valuable corporate information.
Another underlying factor for the discrepancies I point to is that, once again, the sociological dynamics of the people doing the border work come into play. Many border management projects bring together a diverse range of actors who can have competing visions of how security is to be performed and achieved. For instance the ways police and gendarmerie competed over border post data in Mauritania leading to separate databases. It can also happen at a larger scale through the lack of integration across the donor community, which leads to a huge amount of duplication.
Refugees Deeply: You spent a section of your book on Spanish-African police cooperation to show the limits of European knowledge and technology. You mention a clash of cultures, can you elaborate?
Frowd: This is a particularly salient point today for two reasons. First because we are hearing more elite (e.g., Frontex) discourse about the “reopening” of a migration route to Spain. Second because Spain itself is increasingly active in E.U. projects across the Sahel. My book tells some of the story of Spanish security ambitions in Africa. But these ambitions, and those of other Western partners, have hard limits. Some of these limits are quite straightforward: Climate is often a barrier to the functioning of surveillance technologies and some countries (like Mauritania) are harder to recruit international experts for if they cannot or do not bring their families along.
In terms of Spanish-African cooperation, much of the narrative about clashes of cultures comes down to perceptions. One of the elements of the clash is a temporal one, with Spanish security officials often considering local partners as existing at a completely different stage of progress.
More broadly in terms of the limits of knowledge itself, the ambitions of experts to implicitly recreate aspects of European best practice are flawed. Part of this form of border security knowledge involves supporting technological solutions to make African mobility more legible to states. This comes up against the reality that movement in West Africa is already quite free but highly informalized. European experts are well aware of this reality but seek to formalize these flows. A police expert I spoke to recently suggested co-located border posts, and many international funders are supportive of specific I.D. cards for residents of border regions. This is not to impede movement, but rather to rationalize it – in much the same way that common I.D. standards and databases underpin free movement within Europe.
▻https://www.newsdeeply.com/refugees/community/2018/07/18/how-borders-are-constructed-in-west-africa
#externalisation #asile #migrations #réfugiés #frontières #Mauritanie #Sénégal
Detainees Evacuated out of Libya but Resettlement Capacity Remains Inadequate
According to the United Nations Refugee Agency (#UNHCR) 262 migrants detained in Libya were evacuated to Niger on November 12- the largest evacuation from Libya carried out to date. In addition to a successful airlift of 135 people in October this year, this brings the total number of people evacuated to more than 2000 since December 2017. However Amnesty International describes the resettlement process from Niger as slow and the number of pledges inadequate.
The evacuations in October and November were the first since June when the Emergency Transit Mechanism (ETM) centre in Niger reached its full capacity of 1,536 people, which according to Amnesty was a result of a large number of people “still waiting for their permanent resettlement to a third country.”
57,483 refugees and asylum seekers are registered by UNHCR in Libya; as of October 2018 14,349 had agreed to Voluntary Humanitarian Return. Currently 3,886 resettlement pledges have been made by 12 states, but only 1,140 have been resettled.
14,595 people have been intercepted by the Libyan coast guard and taken back to Libya, however it has been well documented that their return is being met by detention, abuse, violence and torture. UNHCR recently declared Libya unsafe for returns amid increased violence in the capital, while Amnesty International has said that “thousands of men, women and children are trapped in Libya facing horrific abuses with no way out”.
In this context, refugees and migrants are currently refusing to disembark in Misrata after being rescued by a cargo ship on November 12, reportedly saying “they would rather die than be returned to land”. Reuters cited one Sudanese teenager on board who stated “We agree to go to any place but not Libya.”
UNHCR estimates that 5,413 refugees and migrants remain detained in #Directorate_for_Combatting_Illegal_Migration (#DCIM) centres and the UN Refugee Agency have repetedly called for additional resettlement opportunities for vulnerable persons of concern in Libya.
▻https://www.ecre.org/detainees-evacuated-out-of-libya-but-resettlement-capacity-remains-inadequate
#réinstallation #Niger #Libye #évacuation #asile #migrations #réfugiés #HCR #détention #centres_de_détention #Emergency_Transit_Mechanism (#ETM)
Reporter’s Diary: Heal Somalia’s former child soldiers, heal a nation
Even by Mogadishu standards, late September was particularly violent.
Amino Hussein Hassan, a female law student, was shot dead on her university campus. Yahye Amir, a prominent economics professor and political analyst, escaped an assassination attempt when a bomb strapped to his car exploded, killing his brother. And Ahmed Mukhtar Salah, from the long-marginalised minority Bantu community, was beaten and burnt to death by a mob after his nephew married an ethnic Somali woman.
Violence has been a way of life in Somalia since the outbreak of the civil war in 1991, seeping deep into the nation’s marrow as clan conflict gradually morphed into an all-out war against the al-Qaeda affiliated Islamist group #al-Shabab. “The layers of violence that people have had to digest is one of the key problems for building a peaceful and healthier society,” Laetitia Bader, a senior researcher at Human Rights Watch (HRW), told me recently.
Most often, those who bear the life-long consequences are the poor, the politically marginalised, and young people. In particular, the thousands of children who must deal with the trauma of years on the front lines.
In May, I travelled to the capital, Mogadishu – as I have done regularly since 2012 – to report on a crisis that, save for some international NGOs and human rights organisations, few seem to talk about: child soldiers.
There, I met Abdi, 16, a former child soldier. Intelligent and eloquent, he had been a star pupil at the Koranic school in his home town, about 55 miles from the capital. In 2009, at the age of seven, his teacher took him and seven other boys to join al-Shabab.
For two years, Abdi lived in a camp with about three dozen other young recruits. By the time he was eight, he had learned how to drive a car and shoot a gun. By nine, he took part in his first raid in the village of Darussalam Mubarak, where he witnessed an assassination: a man killed by three bullets to the back.
As horrific as that experience was, the image that has most haunted Abdi for years is that of the severed head of a young man his al-Shabab camp commander brandished before the recruits as a warning: this is what happens to informants.
“Even now after all these years, I have nightmares,” Abdi told me. “Sometimes I wake up screaming in the middle of the night.”
A disposable front line
While al-Shabab’s use of children as soldiers is nothing new, in the last several years the number of child soldiers has increased markedly.
In al-Shabab’s heyday around 2010, when it controlled vast swaths of the country, including a sizable chunk of the capital, persuasion and indoctrination were enough to ensure a steady supply of young fighters. Since 2016, increased attacks by the Somali national army and US and African Union troops have resulted in a loss of territory for the group. Most recently, on October 16, the US military announced that it had carried out one of the deadliest airstrikes against al-Shabab, killing 60 militants in the Mudug region.
So, desperate for more foot soldiers, al-Shabab has turned to the abduction and forced recruitment of minors. Accurate numbers are difficult to come by. Child Soldiers International calculates that there has been a 269 percent increase in the number of children within the ranks of armed groups in Somalia between 2015, when there were 903 documented cases, to 2017, with 3,335 cases. Meanwhile, according to a May report on children and armed conflict presented by the UN secretary-general to the General Assembly, 1,770 children were recruited as soldiers in 2017 alone, with al-Shabab doing the vast majority of the recruitment. The overall number is likely even higher: UNICEF Somalia estimates that as many as 6,000 children and youths are part of armed groups in the country.
In a single military operation carried out by the Somali National Army and US troops in January on a base near the town of Baledogle, 70 miles northwest of Mogadishu, for instance, 36 child soldiers between the ages of eight and 13 were rescued.
Often untrained and ill-equipped, these child soldiers make for a disposable front line on the battlefield, protecting older, more experienced fighters. This makes them more likely to suffer physical wounds and psychological trauma.
Young defectors
I first met Abdi and other boys through a man I’ll call Hussein. I am not using his real name, or identifying his location, since in addition to running an orphanage he manages a centre that works with young al-Shabab defectors. About 120 boys now live there, two hours’ drive from the capital, but at one point it housed as many 520.
RBG - Ruth Bader Ginsburg - YouTube
▻https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=biIRlcQqmOc
AU moins deux personnes m’ont dit grand bien de ce film
At the age of 84, U.S. Supreme Court Justice #Ruth_Bader_Ginsburg has developed a breathtaking legal legacy while becoming an unexpected pop culture icon. But without a definitive Ginsburg biography, the unique personal journey of this diminutive, quiet warrior’s rise to the nation’s highest court has been largely unknown, even to some of her biggest fans – until now. RBG is a revelatory documentary exploring Ginsburg ’s exceptional life and career from Betsy West and Julie Cohen, and co-produced by Storyville Films and CNN Films.
]]>SI vous réussissez à vous extraire du bruit de fond, vous avez là une forme quasi parfaite du repas georgien avec des voix plus que parfaites qui se superposent comme s’il n’y en avait qu’une. Frissons assurés.
J’ ai encore envie d’être Tamada.
▻https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3HDOQk1SBWQ
“It all stayed in the past” (Composed by Jansugh Kakhidze, Lyrics by Petre Gruzinski)
Lyrics:
I am looking for the reason but can not grasp it
How come our path split into two
All I’m left with now is sorrow
Everything I loved and believed in
It all stayed in the past.
No promises, no dates
Like none of that has happened
No quarrells, no appeals
It all stayed in the past.
I am left with my thoughts
Those tireless chasers
And I hear a silent plea
Of the days that faded like a dream
You too seemed like a dream brought to life
Back when my daring heart prayed for you
I couldn’t even catch my breath
I wasn’t even left with hope
I don’t know where you’ve gone
No promises, no dates
Like none of that has happened
No quarrells, no appeals
It all stayed in the past..
Speech by High Representative/Vice-President Federica #Mogherini at the European Parliament plenary session on the Progress on the UN Global Compact for safe, regular and orderly migration and UN Global Compact on refugees
Let me start with a good news, a good story for once; a little, big European achievement of the last few months. You might remember, last December I came to Strasbourg and here, in this hemicycle we talked about detention centres in Libya. I took in front of you, and most of all, in front of all those people who are suffering inside these detention centres in Libya, the commitment to bring back to their homes 15.000 migrants from within the detention centres to their countries or origin, in a safe manner with Assisted Voluntary Returns, made with our assistance, through the IOM [International Organisation for Migration].
At that moment we had just reached an unprecedented agreement between our European Union, the African Union, and the United Nations, in particular the United Nations’ agencies for migrants and refugees – at our EU-Africa Union Summit in Abidjan. Thanks to this agreement, in the first two months of this year – so January and February - we managed to rescue and free more than 16.000 people from the camps in Libya. In two months, we managed to achieve more than in the previous year and already in 2017, the results were ten times better than the previous year.
Now, in the detention camps, there are still some 4.000 to 5.000 people. It is far too much and we are going to continue our work with the United Nations and with the African Union to empty the camps. We have managed to bring out from there 16.000 people in two months, I believe we can make it and empty them completely, within the, at maximum, coming next couple of months.
This has been possible for one reason: we joined forces – first of all within Europe, second with our African partners and friends, and on a global scale, within the UN system. I am glad to start with this positive note - while acknowledging that there is still work to be done -because sometimes we forget to focus on the achievements we managed to build. I think the achievements are important to lead us towards the solution.
▻https://eeas.europa.eu/headquarters/headquarters-homepage/41272/speech-high-representativevice-president-federica-mogherini-european-par
#Libye #camps #centres_de_détention #détention #asile #migrations #réfugiés #vide #plein
Commentaire de Marie Martin via la mailing list Migreurop :
No resettlement from Libya to the EU was mentioned, if anyone has information on this it will be welcome
@reka :
ça rentre aussi peut-être dans tes réflexions sur la #géographie_du_vide et #géographie_du_plein
When Rex Tillerson toured some of Africa’s “shithole” countries
►https://africasacountry.com/2018/03/when-rex-tillerson-toured-some-of-africas-shithole-countries
The African Union’s partners still fund significantly more of its budget than its member states, which
]]>When is a coup a coup?
▻http://africasacountry.com/2018/02/when-is-a-coup-a-coup
In recent times when militaries in Burkina Faso, Egypt, Madagascar and Mali suspended civilian rule, they were subsequently suspended by regional actors. From a continental standpoint, these suspensions were in line with the African Union’s (AU) mandate to challenge unconstitutional transitions of power. Then came Zimbabwe. On November 21st, 2017, President Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe stepped down from the presidency after 37 years in…
]]>Australians spent AU$3.23bn on video games in 2017
▻https://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2018-02-22-australians-spent-auusd3-23bn-on-video-games-in-2017
IGEA data shows AU$1bn on physical hardware and software, console sales up 36% year-on-year
]]>South Australian Game Development Fund now open
▻https://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2018-02-14-south-australian-game-development-fund-now-open
Production, development, and marketing grants now available as part of state government’s AU $2 million investment fund
]]>Je pensais avoir archivé sur seenthis un article (au moins) qui montrait qu’une partie des personnes rapatriées (#retours_volontaires), par l’#OIM (#IOM) notamment, du #Niger et de #Libye vers leurs pays d’origine reprenaient la route du Nord aussitôt...
Mais je ne retrouve plus cet article... est-ce que quelque seenthisien se rappelle de cela ? ça serait super !
#renvois #expulsions #migrations #réfugiés #retour_volontaire
J’étais presque sûre d’avoir utilisé le tag #migrerrance, mais apparemment pas...
]]>L’#Union_Africaine s’active pour un plan de rapatriement des migrants en #Libye
L’ONU, l’Union Européenne et l’Union Africaine se sont données rendez-vous ce 04 novembre à Addis Abeba au siège de l’organisation panafricaine pour la mise en œuvre d’un plan de #rapatriement de migrants bloqués en Libye en partenariat avec l’Organisation Internationale pour les Migrations (l’#OIM).
Il s’agira d’abord pour les organisations régionales et internationales de mettre en place « une #cellule_opérationnelle » qui coordonnera le rapatriement de 15.000. Ensuite, mobiliser le fonds pour la réussite de cette opération.
A cet effet, le #Maroc a fait une promesse, celle de contribuer au transport des migrants et le #Rwanda d’accueillir 3000 qui ne veulent pas retourner dans leur pays d’origine.
▻http://rjdh.org/ethiopie-lunion-africaine-sactive-pour-un-plan-de-rapatriement-des-migrants-en
#UE #EU #ONU #OIM #IOM (tous complices !) #sommet #rencontre #plan #expulsions #Libye #asile #migrations #renvois #réfugiés #Sommet_UA-UE
Et l’article parle de l’étonnement face à la vidéo de la CNN qui a montré les tortures perpétrées aux migrants en Libye :
Le reportage de CNN sur la traite des migrants subsahariens et leur soumission à l’esclavage avaient indigné l’opinion africaine internationale. Après une mission de l’UA dans « l’enfer libyen » et le Sommet UA-UE, les responsables de l’organisation onusienne, européenne et africaine se réunissent pour mobiliser les moyens et réfléchir sur un plan de rapatriement des migrants en Libye.
#hypocrisie, on le sait depuis des années !
$2bn EU-Africa ’anti-migration’ fund too opaque, say critics
Trust fund intended to prevent migration by tackling insecurity and poverty suffers from lack of clarity, say observers
▻https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2017/oct/31/2bn-eu-africa-anti-migration-fund-too-opaque-say-critics?CMP=Share_Andr
#trust_fund #Afrique #externalisation #contrôles_frontaliers
Le nom en français de ce #fonds :
« #fonds_fiduciaire_d’urgence de l’Union européenne pour l’Afrique » (►http://europa.eu/rapid/press-release_MEMO-15-6056_fr.htm) #fond_fiduciaire_d'urgence
Ctrlr - Control your #midi life (MIDI editor for all your hardware)
▻http://ctrlr.org
Control any MIDI enabled hardware: synthesizers, drum machines, samplers, effects. Create custom User Interfaces. Host them as VST or AU plugins in your favorite DAWs.
#controller #synth #patch #panel #bank
]]>“#UN issues formal warning to the #USA over #racism issues, a rare move often used to signal potential of civil conflict”
▻https://www.yahoo.com/news/un-racism-committee-issues-warning-over-us-tensions-103644308.html
Infant mortality, malnutrition, dynastic political power, corruption - and now this... Maybe the African Union should consider sending observers.
]]>Sudan–the second time as farce
▻http://africasacountry.com/2017/07/sudan-the-second-time-as-farce
For six years rebel forces in Sudan’s South Kordofan and Blue Nile states (the Two Areas) have been battling the Sudanese government. Round after round of negotiations mediated by the African Union (AU) in Addis Ababa have failed to bring an end to what is a continuation of the second Sudanese civil war (1983-2005) fought by the Sudan People’s…
]]>South Sudan, the second time as farce
▻http://africasacountry.com/2017/07/south-sudan-the-second-time-as-farce
For six years rebel forces in Sudan’s South Kordofan and Blue Nile states (the Two Areas) have been battling the Sudanese government. Round after round of negotiations mediated by the African Union (AU) in Addis Ababa have failed to bring an end to what is a continuation of the second Sudanese civil war (1983-2005) fought by the Sudan People’s…
]]>The African Union is now complete, but at what cost?
▻http://africasacountry.com/2017/05/the-african-union-is-now-complete-but-at-what-cost
At the end of January this year, Morocco was readmitted to the African Union, after spending 33 years on the “outside.” Morocco left the Organization of African Unity in 1984 due to the organization’s recognition of Western Sahara’s sovereignty by admitting a delegation claiming to represent the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic (SADR) as its 51st…
]]>2016 Africa Report on Internal Displacement
The Africa Report on Internal Displacement, launched with the support from the African Union and the Norwegian Refugee Council, is the first IDMC’s report focusing on a single continent. The report expands on data and analysis available in our annual Global Report on Internal Displacement including new figures from the first half of 2016.
Trump administration announces new military operation in Somalia - World Socialist Web Site
▻http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2017/04/18/soma-a18.html
On pensait Clinton comme une guerrière, c’est finalement Trump qui est sur tous les fronts...
Trump administration announces new military operation in Somalia
By Eddie Haywood
18 April 2017
The Pentagon announced the deployment of dozens of US troops to Somalia last week, the first deployment of regular infantry since 1994, to assist the Somali military in the fight against Al Shabaab militants. Coincident with the announcement of the US deployment, a combat contingent from Uganda arrived in Somalia’s capital city Mogadishu on the weekend.
The Ugandan military contingent, which is one part of a multi-country cooperative offensive, replaces a group of Ugandan forces after that group’s one-year tour of duty ended. The Ugandan troops are to augment the US-backed African Union Mission in Somalia (AMISOM) against the Islamist militants.
]]>As new drought hits Ethiopia, UN urges support for Government’s ’remarkable’ efforts
▻http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=56063
/News/dh/photos/large/2017/January/Ethiopia_2016_Oromia_OCHA.jpg
Commending the Ethiopian Government and humanitarian partners on the response to last year’s El Niño drought that left 10.2 million people needing food assistance, United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres and UN aid chief Stephen O’Brien today said the international community must show “total solidarity” with country as it faces a new drought.
“This High-Level event must express our total solidarity with the Ethiopian people and the Ethiopian Government. And let’s be clear: that solidarity is not a matter of generosity. It is a matter of justice and of self-interest,” the Secretary-General told those gathered for the event, held earlier today in the Ethiopian capital, Addis Ababa, on the margins of the 28th Summit of the African Union.
#Éthiopie #sécheresse #climat #alimentation #malnutrition #faim #famine
]]>2016 Africa Report on Internal Displacement
The Africa Report on Internal Displacement, launched with the support from the African Union and the Norwegian Refugee Council, is the first IDMC’s report focusing on a single continent. The report expands on data and analysis available in our annual Global Report on Internal Displacement including new figures from the first half of 2016.
#IDPs #déplacés_internes #Afrique #asile #migrations #réfugiés #statistiques #chiffres #rapport #2015
cc @reka
10 million hectares a year in need of restoration along the Great Green Wall
▻http://www.fao.org/news/story/en/item/452701/icode
A groundbreaking map of restoration opportunities along Africa’s Great Green Wall has been launched at the UN climate change conference, based on collection and analysis of crucial land-use information to boost action in Africa’s drylands to increase the resilience of people and landscapes to climate change.
“The Great Green Wall initiative is Africa’s flagship programme to combat the effects of climate change and desertification,” said Eduardo Mansur, Director of FAO’s Land and Water Division, while presenting the new map at the COP22 in Marrakech.
“Early results of the initiative’s actions show that degraded lands can be restored, but these achievements pale in comparison with what is needed,” he added during a high-level event at the African Union Pavilion entitled: “Resilient Landscapes in Africa’s Drylands: Seizing Opportunities and Deepening Commitments”.
En français
▻http://www.fao.org/news/story/fr/item/452739/icode
Vijay Prashad’s Book Explores Why ’You Cannot Build Democracy With a Gun’
▻http://thewire.in/72317/vijay-prashad-death-of-a-nation-and-the-future-of-the-arab-revolution-review
Prashad asserts that however real the Sunni-Shia divide is, it does not drive the political turmoil in the region. That narrative is authored by the geo-political rivalry between Iran and Saudi Arabia, spurred by the machinations of the West and Israel. There was no inherent antipathy between the sultans of Arabia and the king of Iran. It was the Iranian Revolution of 1979 that posed issues which the Saudi monarchy saw as an existential challenge to itself and as an insidious influence on its neighbourhood. The fact that a Muslim king had been replaced by an Islamic form of republicanism, with the introduction of an elected parliament and the establishment of modern institutions which even allowed women to participate. Early on, the US had decided that its own preservation lay in protecting the Arab monarchs and their oil wealth. For its own interests, the US government deepened the sectarian divide by fanning Saudi fears about Iran.
“Anti-Iran morphed rapidly into anti-Shia rhetoric and practice,” notes Prashad. “It is how Saudi proxies have operated in Syria and in Iraq and why Saudi Arabia began its endless war in Yemen.”
Wahabism would have been unthinkable in the diverse and secular Iraq that existed before the US invasion in 2003. The occupation forces dug into fissures between the Shia and Sunni sects to smother any chance of reconstruction of Iraqi nationalism. The US occupation provided oxygen to al-Qaeda and its ilk, who the locals began to refer to as “the Saudis of Iraq”. Nothing in the soil of Iraq, says Prashad, suggested incipient sectarian brutality; under US sponsorship it developed and bloomed fully. The global war on terror declared by the US and its allies “did not erase the terrorists; it manufactured them”. ISIS dates its origin to the anti-US insurgency in Iraq. The danger of sectarian wars, he points out “is that they have no endgame. They will not end with a utopian outcome. They can end only where life becomes evil.”
Prashad adds that in similar fashion “the West – and Israel – have been content to see Syria bleed and weaken. No outcome is desirable to them.” Since the Syrian government was incapable of fulfilling people’s aspirations, Arab money intervened – backed by the adventurism of Western powers – to play out their own respective agendas. From a political dispute, the Syrian stand-off plunged into a confounding war among a number of proxy armies from neighbouring countries, the al-Qaeda, ISIS, the Kurds and Assad’s forces, with overt and covert gimmicks of Russia, France and the US further poisoning the quagmire.
The Death of the Nation maintains that the lessons from Iraq were not learned: they were repeated in Libya and again, calamitously, in Syria and Yemen. Was there an alternative to regime-change that might have saved these countries from devastation and chaos? If the West and its allies had not chased total victory, could a negotiated settlement have been fashioned to forestall the resultant catastrophe? Bear in mind that bodies like the African Union had offered to mediate; and Saddam Hussein, on his capture, begged to negotiate; while [Muammar] Gaddafi, before he was lynched, pleaded that he be allowed to surrender.
The Arab Revolutions were the outcome of the inter-play of three forces, contends Prashad. First, ‘political Islam’ which had originated as an Islamic component of the anti-colonial struggle. Exemplified in the Muslim Brotherhood, this was also a modernising influence and therefore, distinct from Wahabism. While it remained largely in the shadows, political Islam incubated in mosques everywhere, touching the lives of large numbers and developing a mass base and strong cadre. Second, the “youth bulge” in the Arab demographic presented a phalanx of under-employed, educated young people frustrated at the lack of economic and social opportunity and at the stultifying political atmosphere. The third strand – and in Prashad’s view the most significant – comprised of the organised working class and migrant residents of urban slums, who came together on everyday issues to demonstrate and strike, and to provide the spark for insurrection.
These forces combined to spur large sections of the population to rise against dispensations representing the security state on the one hand and neo-liberal policies on the other, triggering a revolution against economic deprivation and political suffocation. Prashad views the Arab Revolution as a “civilisational” uprising, but he does not offer anything more than anecdotal basis to support his wishful assertion that the memory of the popular upsurge “makes an irreversible slip backward impossible”.
On his extensive travels, Prashad comes upon a cross-section of individuals dreaming of revitalised Arab nationalism “as a cord that binds people across the widened sectarian divides”: Iraqi women’s activist Yanar Mohammed challenges the Americans: “You cannot build democracy with a gun”; journalist and theatre person Hadi al-Mahdi laments: “I am sick of seeing our mothers beg in the streets”; a young al-Nusra militant in Lebanon confides: “If I had a job, I would not do jihad”; Omar Abdulaziz Hallaj, “a wise and distinguished architect from Aleppo” works quietly with others like him to build trust to bridge the sectarian divide and buttress Syrian diversity.
]]>Libye. L’enfer sur terre pour les migrants
Repêchés in extremis en plein milieu de la Méditerranée par une équipe de sauvetage en mer, des migrants subsahariens racontent les violences qu’ils ont subies lors de leur séjour sur le sol libyen.
South Australia Police adopting facial-recognition technology
▻http://www.zdnet.com/article/south-australia-police-adopting-facial-recognition-technology
NEC Australia has been awarded with a AU$780,000 contract to deploy facial-recognition technology for South Australia Police. The South Australian government has awarded NEC Australia with a AU$780,000 contract to implement facial-recognition technology as of late October for the state’s police force in an effort to make it easier to identify persons of interest and missing persons. The facial-recognition technology allows police to compare images of suspects from such sources as (...)
#NEC #CCTV #facial #biométrie #surveillance
]]>Refugees and migrants fleeing sexual violence, abuse and exploitation in Libya
Horrifying accounts of sexual violence, killings, torture and religious persecution collected by Amnesty International reveal the shocking range of abuses along the smuggling routes to and through Libya. The organization spoke to at least 90 refugees and migrants at reception centres in Puglia and Sicily, who had made the journey across the Mediterranean from Libya to southern Italy in the past few months, and who were abused by people smugglers, traffickers, organized criminal #gangs and armed groups.
The opposite of Brexit: African Union launches an all-Africa passport - The Washington Post
►https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-cage/wp/2016/07/01/the-opposite-of-brexit-african-union-launches-an-all-africa-passport/?postshare=3601467391792824&tid=ss_tw-bottom
The e-Passport is a step toward eliminating borders on the continent, aiming to enable deeper integration, increased trade and further development. Just as important, the passport is a powerful symbol of unity across Africa – and simultaneously a step toward connecting African countries economically and politically.
Is it really ?
]]>What does #Brexit mean for Africa?
▻http://africasacountry.com/2016/06/what-does-brexit-mean-for-african-economies
The biggest news item of the past week was Britain voting to cancel its membership to the #European_Union. (The EU has many hoops that you need to jump through to join. Contrast this with African Union membership, for example). The results of the #Brexit (how the referendum is known popularly) vote came as a […]
]]>#UNESCO eAtlas of Research and Experimental Development
UIS Tellmaps
▻http://www.tellmaps.com/uis/rd/#!/tellmap/187250920?platform=hootsuite
Science, technology and innovation (STI) are key drivers of economic growth. Recognising the potential, many countries have set targets for the share of national wealth to be devoted to research and experimental development (R&D). R&D indicators can be used to monitor and benchmark progress towards these targets, while providing the information needed to set constructive policies and stimulate the expansion of R&D.
The eAtlas of Research and Experimental Development lets you explore and adapt maps, charts and ranking tables for more than 75 indicators on the human and financial resources devoted to R&D. Trends in STI are revealed through data on educational qualifications of researchers, their global distribution, sector which employs them, and the fields of science pursued in research. The eAtlas presents a breakdown of financing – who is funding research and which sectors spend the most money on research. It also includes historical data to track trends over time and measure the impact of policies. Many indicators are disaggregated by sex to better evaluate the role of women in science.
This eAtlas has been produced by the UNESCO Institute for Statistics (UIS), which collects R&D data for more than 200 countries and territories through its annual survey and partnerships with organizations such as the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), the Statistical Office of the European Union (Eurostat), the Ibero-American and Inter-American Network for Science and Technology Indicators (RICYT) and the New Partnership for Africa’s Development (African Union).
To End No Wars
▻http://fpif.org/end-no-wars
There are five main reasons why peace is so often beyond our grasp.
The world is awash in weapons. The volume of major weapons transfers went up 16 percent between 2010 and 2014 compared to the previous four-year period, and the United States is the leading driver of the $76 billion industry. Arms supplied to one faction often end up in the hands of its enemies, making arms embargos and targeted weapons transfers nearly impossible. And just as we have an explosion of shootings in the United States because of the availability of handguns, wars are much more likely to start, continue, and resist resolution because young men continue to have access to truckloads of sophisticated weaponry.
Both international and regional institutions are weak. The United Nations and regional bodies like the African Union are too weak to force combatants to lay down their weapons, too weak to provide enough peacekeepers to enforce a ceasefire, too weak to provide sufficient funds to rebuild conflict zones and ensure that strife doesn’t return. Such institutions remain weak in part because:
Superpowers like the United States and would-be superpowers like Russia and Turkey are determined to achieve their goals by #force. The United States continues to practice a la carte multilateralism, supporting only those international efforts that intersect with its national interests. As long as Washington continues to rule by #drone, forget about a robust international rule of law and the institutions required to uphold it. And don’t expect other countries to do anything other than follow the #leader.
States are weaker too. Thanks to the prevailing orthodoxy of neoliberalism — and its requirements to privatize, restrict government “interference” in the economy, and cut back on welfare provisions — states have fewer nation-building levers at their disposal and therefore command less loyalty from their citizens. Consequently,
Particularism is flourishing. Ethnic nationalism and religious fundamentalism have greater appeal in the absence of strong consolidating ideologies. In many countries, ideologies such as Arab nationalism, Marxism, and liberal democracy have all failed to secure peace and prosperity. It’s no surprise, then, that people are turning to ideologies that are far narrower in scope and audience.
[...]
Despite our fine words and the efforts of hardworking diplomats, we may no longer be able to end wars. Live by the sword, die by the sword — and there are no medical miracles that can save us from that terminal illness.
#Etats-Unis #armes #néolibéralisme #particularisme #guerres #paix
]]>Security Forces Allegedly Buried Bodies in Mass Graves in #Burundi
Burundian security forces attempted to cover up state-sponsored killings in December by throwing dozens of bodies in mass graves, according to a report from Amnesty International released on Thursday. The revelations come as the African Union begins its annual summit with the ongoing crisis in Burundi looming.
▻https://news.vice.com/article/security-forces-allegedly-buried-bodies-in-mass-graves-in-burundi
]]>Al Shabab attacks African Union troops in Somalia. Any prospects for security?
Forces from several African countries have been fighting the militant group in Somalia for over a decade now.
▻http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Global-News/2016/0115/Al-Shabab-attacks-African-Union-troops-in-Somalia.-Any-prospects-for-secu
]]>Child brides in Mozambique: ‘an affront to human rights on a massive scale’ | Simon Allison | Global development | The Guardian
▻http://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2015/nov/26/mozambique-child-marriage-african-girls-summit-lusaka-zambia
The African Girls’ Summit on ending child marriage, convened by the African Union (AU), is seeking to improve the lives of girls like Cidalia. The summit, being held in Lusaka, Zambia, this week, is the first of its kind in Africa, and is designed to put a stop to a practice that limits the prospects of girls across the continent. It is hoped the summit will secure concrete pledges from governments to tackle the problem.
“We must do away with child marriage. Girls who end up as brides at a tender age are coerced into having children while they are children themselves,” said the AU chairwoman, Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma.
According to statistics from the UN children’s agency, Unicef, published on Thursday, the number of child brides in Africa is predicted to increase from 125 million to 310 million by 2050.
merci @reka #mariages_forcés #filles #femmes #patriacat #pédosexualité
Reflections on the state of #LGBT activism in Africa
▻http://africasacountry.com/2015/09/reflections-on-the-state-of-lgbt-activism-in-africa
In 2014 at an annual summit of the African Union, Joachim Chissano – former head of state of Mozambique – made a declaration in which he called African nations to.....
]]>#Rosetta shows how #comet interacts with the solar wind
▻http://blogs.esa.int/rosetta/2015/07/29/rosetta-shows-how-comet-interacts-with-the-solar-wind
This blog post is based on the papers “Evolution of the ion environment of #Comet_67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko: Observations between 3.6 and 2.0 AU ” by H. Nilsson et al.; “Rosetta observations of solar wind interaction with the comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko” by T.W. Broiles et al.; and “Solar Wind Sputtering of Dust on the Surface of 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko ” by Peter Wurz et al., which have all been accepted for publication in Astronomy and Astrophysics, and “Dynamical features and spatial structures of the plasma interaction region of 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko and the solar wind” by C. Koenders et al, which is published in Planetary and Space #Science. #rosetta is making good progress in one of its key investigations, which concerns the interaction between the comet and the solar wind. The (...)
]]>#miro maps #water in #comet’s coma
▻http://blogs.esa.int/rosetta/2015/06/19/miro-maps-water-in-comets-coma
In a paper accepted for publication in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics, the MIRO team present their first map of water vapour in the coma of #Comet_67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko. MIRO, the Microwave Instrument for the #Rosetta Orbiter, first detected the emission from water molecules in the coma of Comet 67P/C-G on 6 June 2014, when #rosetta was 350,000 km from the comet, approximately equivalent to the distance of the Earth from the Moon. At the time, the comet was 3.9 AU – about 580 million km – from the Sun. Since early July 2014, the MIRO team have been continuously monitoring water in the comet’s environment, measuring its properties at different locations across the coma. Being in very close proximity to 67P/C-G, Rosetta, with the MIRO instrument on board, can ’dissect’ the (...)
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