Category Archives: UN

US offering reassurance of support for ICC process on Kenya

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Sunday Nation:  “Envoy: US will veto deferral of Kenyan ICC case“:

The Obama administration will block any attempts to halt trials of post-election violence masterminds at The Hague, a decision which means government efforts to get the process deferred at the UN are almost certainly doomed to failure.

Outgoing US ambassador Michael Ranneberger told the Sunday Nation Washington would not back any delay of ICC action.

“The American position is that we want the ICC process to proceed expeditiously. We do not want to see the process delayed. We think that carrying through with the trials is absolutely crucial to fighting impunity and to ensuring accountability.”

The US holds veto power in the Security Council and a rejection of the petition by any one of the five permanent members of the Council means the appeal would stand defeated. Highly placed diplomatic sources also indicated that Britain and France were unlikely to support the Kenya bid for deferral.

Mr Ranneberger stopped short of stating that the US would apply its veto power when the deferral request comes up at the UN. But he said the Obama administration wanted The Hague process to continue without interruption.

“We never say in advance what our positions are to be (at the UN) so obviously I can’t say that we will veto. What I would say is that we do not see this effort to seek deferral as positive and we support a continuation of the process and we want to see the process move ahead expeditiously.”

Sunday Standard:  “Ranneberger explains why US backs The Hague process”:

Ranneberger: Let me be very clear. The US supports the ICC process and the reason is simple: There must be accountability for the post-election violence. Terrible crimes were committed, Kenyans deserve justice and it’s gone to the ICC and that process needs to be carried through. Our deputy secretary of state was very clear in his public statements that we support this process.

Q: Kenya is lobbying the permanent members of the UN Security Council, if that is put to the vote, what will be US’s likely position?

A: Nobody in the Security Council ever announces the answer hypothetically. The ICC process is vital to countering impunity and to ensure that type of violence never happens again. One of the biggest problems in Kenya and one of the things that have held this country back for so many years is the culture of impunity. And so these issues simply must be addressed.

Raila heads back to Cote d’Ivoire

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Cote d’Ivoire is obviously not in East Africa, so I haven’t tried to address it here, but think it is worth noting that Kenyan PM Odinga is back for meetings with both sides Thursday and Friday.   Obviously there is a certain irony in Odinga finding himself in this role, where there seems to be a consensus now that the power sharing deal in Kenya was not exactly a model solution to the 2007 election dispute, and that the vote total was falsified at the ECK in Nairobi to allow Kibaki to hold on to power.  I don’t know what Odinga tells Gbagbo, but at least he is an example to Ouattara of someone who chose to stand down rather than attempt to fight a civil war to vindicate what he understands as the election result.

I do think that Odinga genuinely values international respect and being called on to serve in this role is probably one of the main consolations associated with being given the “Prime Minister” title in Kenya.

RFI reports with an interview with Joseph Lake, the Africa editor for the Economist Intelligence Unit, that the prospects for military intervention are diminishing:

“The main is reason is that other African leaders would not want to intervene militarily because of the precedent it would create for outside intervention following elections in their own country.”

He added that countries such as Nigeria may feel reluctant to provide troops to any such mission for internal reasons.

“Nigeria, which would be expected to contribute troops to a regional intervention force has a presidential election this year and such move would not be politically popular for Goodluck Jonathan, the incumbent president there.”

Some countries would also be fearful that any military intervention would result in violent retribution for their own nationals that currently reside in Côte d’Ivoire.

Lake sees three possible scenarios:  1) Gbagbo could still possibly be talked into stepping down eventually, although it might take months; 2)  Gbagbo could persuade Ouattera to enter into a “power sharing” arrangement, although it would probably produce a “bitter and fractured” administration; 3) the civil war could reignite.

Dr. Carl LeVan has a good new post up regarding power sharing arrangements in Africa today, which includes a  link to download free (for now) his current article “Power Sharing and Inclusive Politics in Africa’s Uncertain Democracies” in Governance.

In the meantime, as the standoff continues IRIN had a report on the humanitarian situation in the west of Cote d’Ivoire toward the Liberian border:

Ngokwey [ UN humanitarian official] said at least 35 people had been killed in the confrontation between Malinké and Guéré communities in Duékoué, with the local Catholic Mission now playing host to thousands of displaced.

Ngokwey said Duékoué appeared to be calm for now, but warned against complacency. “The conflict may have died down and one can talk about a relative peace. I didn’t hear any gunshots in the time I was there. But you can definitely sense the tensions. The situation remains volatile.”

Ngokwey pointed out that the recent violence, reportedly triggered by the killing of a trader, had deep roots, with local tensions exacerbated by the political stand-off in Côte d’Ivoire. He said the humanitarian needs in Duékoué were stark. “People need food. They need water and sanitation. They need medical care. Until recently, we were looking at a figure of around 4,000 people requiring help in the west, then it suddenly shoots up to 16,000.”

The west remains divided. Guiglo and Duékoué, important urban centres long seen as major strongholds for Laurent Gbagbo remain under the control of an administration that recognizes Gbagbo’s rule. Man and Danané are in territory controlled by the pro-Ouattara Forces Nouvelles. But Ngokwey stressed that, despite the difficulties of the political context, authorities on both sides, at national and regional level, understood the humanitarian priorities and were being supportive, trying to facilitate access.  . . . .

Closer to home for me:  Kenyan Peter Kimboi captures Mississippi Blues Marathon.

“Why 300 million more people are suddenly poor”–release of “Multidimensional Poverty Index” and Ethiopia

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Why 300 million more people are suddenly poor, by Jina Moore at the Christian Science Monitor:

Kigali, Rwanda In November, 300 million more people around the world were suddenly poor – on paper, at least. The latest numbers on poverty from the United Nations, released Nov. 4, include a new measurement for poverty and reveal some surprises.

The Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI) raises the number of poor by 21 percent, to more than 1.7 billion. According to the MPI, sub-Saharan Africa is still home to the greatest proportion of the world’s poor, but more than half of the total number of poor lives in South Asia.

These numbers, and the new index that produced them, are part of the UN’s annual Human Development Index (HDI), a statistical touchstone. It covers everything from the number of women who die in childbirth to how many people have Internet access and can sway decisions on US policy, influence where nonprofits spend money, and help determine where donors give.

For years, the HDI has set the standard for just how little a person has to live on to be considered poor. The answer? $1.25. But some researchers have long said income alone doesn’t define poverty.

“There are some things money can’t buy,” says Sabina Alkire, cocreator of the index and director of the Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative, which launched the index in collaboration with the UN. “It might not buy electricity; it might not buy a public health system, or an education system.”

Ms. Alkire’s index looks at poverty more experientially. It uses existing survey data and categorizes households as poor if they lack three or more of the 10 poverty indicators, which are spread across health, education, and basic standards of living. “For the first time ever, it measures poverty by looking at the disadvantages poor people experience at the same time,” she says.

Examining more than income changes the equation. It doubles the poor in Ethiopia, where 39 percent of people live on less than $1.25 a day. But 90 percent are “multidimensionally poor,” or lacking at least three of the 10 indicators.

. . . .

Some specialists have raised objections to the new index, including the director of research at the World Bank, which publishes its own income measure for poverty. Among the criticisms is that the measure is still a single standard, even if it looks at many factors.

“If my bosses were to ask for my recommendation on using the MPI as a factor in allocating USAID resources among countries or programs, I would recommend against doing so,” says Don Stillers, an economist for the US Agency for International Development, in an e-mail message. “Rather, I would emphasize the ongoing need to pay attention to evidence on each major dimension of poverty in each country we work in.”

. . . .

Indeed, Alkire of HDI admits her index isn’t perfect. She acknowledges that good data are hard to come by, and not all types of data that researchers want even exist. “These are messy numbers, and comparisons are fraught with danger,” she says. But she also thinks her approach gives existing information more context and helps correct misperceptions.

This seems to me to represent incremental progress in understanding actual living conditions at the type of “overview” level that inevitably influences political decisionmaking and overall public awareness.  While the USAID economist is right about the need to look at specifics country-by-country, comparisons are necessary and inevitable.  The Ethiopia example seems especially useful in evaluating the performance of the Meles regime which claims credit for a significant level of “growth” and seems to use that as political capital with donors to excuse or divert attention from political repression.

Speaking of Ethiopian governance, Meles has attacked the EU Election Observation Mission for its report issued this week on the May election, which he called “trash“.  Thijs Berman, the Chief Observer, responded as reported by VOA:

“If we say 27 percent of the results in the cases we observed had changed between the polling station and the final aggregation, then this is something that warrants a serious investigation about what went wrong and is this something that can be corroborated by other investigations in the rest of the country,” Berman adds.

Tensions about the EU mission have been building, even before the election.  The government had laid down strict rules for conduct of the observers, arguing that a previous EU mission observing the disputed 2005 election had violated its mandate. The government has also criticized the long delay between the May 23 election and the release of the final mission report.

But Berman tells VOA the report was ready months ago.  He says the release was delayed and the report eventually released in Brussels after it became clear he would not be allowed to present it officially to Prime Minister Meles. “In more than 80 missions in more than 50 countries, it has never happened that the inviting government refuses the presentation of the final report before the first, who are entitled to get this information, namely the Ethiopian citizens.  Which is bad for the long-term future of Ethiopia because real stability can only be brought about by improving the democracy in Ethiopia,” he said.

Uganda, Iran and the Security-Democracy Trade Space?

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Secretary of State Clinton noted this week to the African Chiefs of Mission the Africa Bureau’s efforts on wrangling votes for Iran sanctions:

The bureau was enormously helpful in rounding up votes for the sanctions resolution on Iran – Gabon, Nigeria, Uganda, thank you, because it wasn’t easy. I think I talked to President Museveni three times and Johnnie visited him several times. But – end result was we got strong African support for the international sanctions regime. We are building, and in some – many cases, rebuilding collaboration not only along bilateral lines, but multilateral alliances, most especially in our collaboration and engagement with the African Union, because it’s very important that we do more to build up the African Union and other regional entities like the East African Community, which has a real potential for being an engine of economic prosperity. [emphasis added]

Secretary Clinton’s Remarks at African Chiefs of Mission Conference

Tensions continue building over Uganda’s February 2011 elections–see yesterday’s news about opposition plans for a parallel electronic vote count and the Ugandan government’s strident reaction.

Carl LeVan has an excellent discussion of "Democratization and Securitization in Uganda" that I would highly recommend.

The ruling NRM has cleverly adopted the Global War on Terrorism as a political resource. Even before the terrorist bombing in the capital in July 2010, the government began closing political space in the name of national security while it successfully obtained aid commitments from the United States to fight counter-insurgency wars, one of which is against the brutal Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) in the north.

. . . .

Looking beyond the Pentagon, Washington is clearly aware of Uganda’s governance drift. For example the US announced that will not renew 10 million dollars committed through Millennium Challenge Corporation to help Uganda move from “threshold” status to a full compact (ie, an agreement) for aid. USAID’s plans call for strengthening democratic institutions, enhancing political competition, and improving parliamentary capacity for oversight through partnerships with civil society. Unfortunately USAID faces an uphill battle, with no increases in the lines funding for either for civil society programs or for its good governance in Uganda, and cuts are planned for programs relating to “political competition and consensus building.” Even aid to fight transnational crime is slated for cuts.

In addition to all the regional security issues involving Somalia, Sudan, Congo and the Lord’s Resistance Army, the Iran sanctions issue adds another interesting twist. I noted back in May that Assistant Secretary Carson and AFRICOM Commander General Ward were seeking Museveni’s support on Iran sanctions during a visit to Kampala, as well as pushing for Museveni to relinquish unilateral control of the Electoral Commission. The U.S. succeeded in persuading Uganda to support sanctions, but did not secure action on the Electoral Commission. Both worthy goals, but is there a trade off?

It is also interesting to note a report that Uganda has now been working with Iran to create a joint bank as a mechanism to allow Uganda to obtain access to $46M in pledged Iranian credits that have impeded by the sanctions:

[A] memo prepared by the ministry for Parliament’s public accounts committee, in response to an audit query, said that sanctions had complicated the money transfer. "The ministry has followed up the implementation of this line of credit. However, it has faced challenges, especially following the imposition of sanctions on Iran," said the memo.

"In a bid to overcome the difficulty in transferring funds to and from Iran because of sanctions and to promote investment and trade, the two countries agreed on the establishment of a bank as a joint venture as the best way forward," it said.

Burundi: “Back to Square One” politically after ten years of power sharing? [Update 9-14]

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From a new story on IRIN today assessing the state of democracy in the "other" partner in the East African Community:

“We convened on a political system liable to take into account both the political and ethnic dimensions of Burundi’s problem,” recalled Jean-Baptiste Manwangari, one of the Tutsi negotiators who worked on the pact. “It was a democratic system functioning much on the basis of a consensus and dialogue instead of a system of majority [rule], which for Burundi was likely to bring forth dictatorship.”

Now, according to one civil servant, Burundi has “gone back to square one… a [new] political accord needs to be negotiated to bring the opposition back on board.”

The pre-Arusha winner-takes-all style of politics is dangerous because it “creates a kind of survival strategy for the losers”, explained Pacifique Nininahazwe, head of the Forum pour le Renforcement de la Societé Civile, a coalition of civil society organizations outlawed in 2009.

“If the ruling party behaves in the same way as other victorious parties did in the past, the losers will adopt the same survival mechanisms,” he added.

One-party warning

The more than two-thirds parliamentary majority won by the CNDD-FDD “will transform the state from a multiparty system to essentially one-party dominance”, Henri Boschoff and Ralph Ellermann warned in a paper for the Pretoria-based Institute of Security Studies – Elections without competition and no peace without participation: where might it go from here.

“Ultimately [this] could have a highly detrimental effect on peace and democracy in Burundi,” they wrote, arguing that “the reluctance of Nkurunziza and the CNDD-FDD to govern the country in the spirit of its power-sharing constitution … drove the political climate towards a hostile environment where trust between the parties and in the constitution dissolved.

“Burundi is at risk of civil disobedience… The worst-case scenario would be a rebellion [against] state institutions caused by opposition parties,” the paper warned.

Update: See at the Africa Works blog “A Great African Journalist Sheds Tears for Burundi”.

New Study on Democracy Assistance in Kenya

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The Spanish think tank FRIDE (Fundación para las Relaciones Internacionales y el Diálogo Exterior) has published a series of 14 case studies of international and bilateral democracy assistance efforts under an initiative for “Revitalizing Democracy Assistance” from the World Movement for Democracy, aimed at providing advice to both donors and recipients.

The Kenya paper was prepared by Jeroen de Zeeuw of Cordaid and is quite useful–download it here.

The paper provides some detail on the amounts of Democracy and Governance support and the funding mechanisms used by the major bilateral and international donors and critical assessment of programming and methods over time.

The report makes three key points. First of all, it shows that strong fluctuations in the level of critical engagement and assistance from the international community have given a mixed message to consecutive Kenyan governments, each of which has failed to follow through initial democratic reforms due to an absence of political will. Secondly, it argues that the focus of international assistance programmes on Nairobi-based elites and specialized NGOs has come at the expense of more community-oriented, traditional civil society actors with large memberships. Finally, the report argues that the current design of aid modalities (such as basket funding) and organizational profiles of many aid agencies fall short of what is required in terms of the flexibility and political savvy needed to support democracy in Kenya today.

A few key takeaways from anonymous interviews:

We have seen that donors are paying more attention to aligning their aid with a recipient country’s ‘national agenda’. But in many countries, including Kenya, the agenda that is put forward is the government’s agenda, which is not necessarily the same as the people’s agenda. In Kenya this has resulted in the strange situation that donor money has helped the police to become more effecient and effective, not in normal policing, but in the putting down of protests, harassment of human rights defenders and extra-judicial killings of criminals and other supposed law breakers.

Regarding corruption and the lack of political will: “everybody has something on everybody. As people are afraid that if they touch one person, the situation will escalate, nothing is being done. The result is political deadlock.” As for donors, they also lack political will “because of the high level of regional instability and the ongoing war in Somalia, ‘keeping Kenya stable’ is seen as a main security priority by most international actors based in Nairobi. Donors therefore feel they cannot push the government too hard as this might alienate their Kenyan partners.”

Karen Rothmyer insight on “Afro-optimism”, gloom and the media

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Karen Rothmyer writes her latest insightful dispatch from Nairobi in the current issue of The Nation, discussing perceptions of the dire state of Africa surrounding the reporting on the status of the Millennium Development Goals against the recent Sala-i-Martin and Pinkovskiy study concluding that there is significant progress in poverty reduction.

Sitting here in Kenya, I find it hard to believe that the situation is really as grim as portrayed by the UN, the World Bank and most of the NGO crowd. OK, maybe the rapid growth of Nairobi shopping malls, complete with fake waterfalls and expensive dress shops, is mainly a middle-class phenomenon. But whenever I travel in the countryside I am equally struck by the fact that so many rural women sport stylish braids or other hair designs—a far cry from the simple head scarves of forty years ago.

So I was very excited a couple of months ago when I read a Reuters story about a new study by two academics, Xavier Sala-i-Martin, a Catalan economist who teaches at Columbia, and Maxim Pinkovskiy, an MIT doctoral student, titled “African Poverty Is Falling… Much Faster Than You Think!” In the paper, published under the auspices of the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER, the sober outfit that decrees when recessions have begun and ended), the two argue that “the conventional wisdom that Africa is not reducing poverty is wrong…. In fact, since 1995, African poverty has been falling steadily.” The reductions have occurred, Sala-i-Martin and Pinkovskiy report, in all types of countries and all regions. Moreover, economic growth hasn’t benefited only the elites; inequality within countries has declined throughout the continent.

For several days after reading the Reuters piece, I checked the Internet to see how other major news organizations, especially those in the United States and Britain, would follow Reuters’s lead. Given the media’s appetite for provocative news from the world of science and health—whether on how fast the polar ice caps are melting or the value of drinking a glass of wine a day—I assumed that sooner or later everyone would want to report on this latest case of man-bites-dog. But apart from mentions in a couple of blogs and one piece in the Guardian, there was hardly a squeak. (I did find some earlier references to a possible fall in African poverty, but none so definitive or high-profile as the Sala-i-Martin and Pinkovskiy paper.)

Karen is a very perceptive observer from a long career as a reporter, and writes with a degree of care and understatement that may also reflect her experience as an editor and journalism teacher. She has a frame of reference in Kenya that goes back to the Peace Corp and she always seems to know who to talk to, so I give her thoughts on these things great weight.

Part of what is going on here really is the basic problem that too much of the information that we hear about Africa is generated through or at least influenced by a thick filter of self-interest, if nothing other than that of people looking out for their own perceived career circumstances. It’s not as if that is not the case in whatever policy area domestically in “the West”, but it may be harder to spot in regard to the state of economies in Africa.

Another factor, at least for people like me in the U.S., is the realization that most of us are relatively oblivious and complacent–so those of us who have experienced a bit of Africa do tend to want to whack people over the head a bit in hopes of generating just a bit of interest or awareness.

Marende praised by UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, meeting with Biden; South Mugirango by-election this week

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Kenyan Speaker of Parliament Kenneth Marende seems to be getting an increased international profile. Navanethem Pillay, UN Commissioner for Human Rights, called on Marende on Monday, expressing concern regarding progress on prosecution of suspects for post election violence. According to the Standard she singled out Marende for praise, “saying he had made immense contribution in stabilising the country through some historic rulings and the manner he handled issues in Parliament”.

U.S. Vice President Biden will call on Marende Tuesday as well, along with his meeting with President Kibaki and Prime Minister Odinga.

Interestingly, Marende says that Parliament “would easily pass” legislation to provide for a “local tribunal” to try election violence cases under Kenyan criminal law “if the ICC acted swiftly by taking away key perpetrators of the violence”.

Biden will leave Thursday morning, the day of the South Mugirango by-election to fill the seat vacated by a successful election petition against Omingo Magara, originally of ODM. As it stands the race is hot, with Raila Odinga campaigning for the substitute ODM nominee, Ibrahim Ochoi, William Ruto campaigning for Magara running as a PDP nominee and heavyweights in PNU affiliates split among Magara and other candidates.

Biden arriving in Kenya–Obama does KBC interview from Washington

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Biden arrives Monday in Nairobi. The Nation reports that the Kenyan gov’t wants to use the visit to make a case for greater U.S. engagement on Somalia, in particular boosting the U.N. role.

President Obama meanwhile did an interview from Washington with the KBC:

During the interview in Washington with KBC, President Obama spoke of his wish to see a more prosperous Kenya. He urged Kenyans to “seize the moment” offered by the referendum to put the post-election violence behind them.

The US President sent the strongest indication yet that he wanted to see Kenya’s constitution review process come to a successful conclusion and announced plans to visit the country before his term ends.

But he clarified that the US was not pushing for the Yes vote at the referendum, slated for August 4.

President Obama said the decision to vote Yes or No at the referendum was up to Kenyans themselves.

U.N. Experts Get Threats in Inquiry Into Somalia – NYTimes.com

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U.N. Experts Get Threats in Inquiry Into Somalia – NYTimes.com.

It seems that anyone looking into anything sensitive in Nairobi is subject to threat these days.  This will be a good test of where things stand on impunity.  If people can make death threats against people dispatched on behalf of the U.N. Security Council without getting arrested it wouldn’t seem to bode well for the rank-and-file journalist, lawyer or activist.