Photo: Manoocher Deghati/IRIN

NGOs unhappy with new law

LUSAKA ,  – Zambian president Rupiah Banda has signed legislation regulating the operations of civil society, sending shock waves through the sector, which fears its independence will be severely compromised.

Presidential assent means the 2009 NGO Bill, withdrawn in 2007 after widespread protests by civil society and opposition parties, now only needs gazetting to become legislation that will require “the registration and co-ordination of NGOs” and can “regulate the work, and the area of work, of NGOs operating in Zambia”.

Dickson Jere, a special assistant to the president for press and public relations, confirmed in a statement: “His Excellency the President Mr Rupiah Banda has assented to 13 Bills, which were recently passed by the National Assembly, including … the Non-Governmental Organisations Bill.”

The new stipulations will compel NGOs to re-register every five years and submit annual information on their activities, funders, accounts, and the personal wealth of their officials; failure to comply could result in the suspension or cancellation of registration.

On 28 August civil society organizations held an emergency meeting in the capital, Lusaka, to plan a response to the looming regulations, which the NGOs have termed “unconstitutional”.

“We have already resolved to carry out a peaceful demonstration next week on Friday [4 September 2009] in Lusaka, and there are arrangements going on so that people in the provinces also carry out the protests. I think the court action [a proposed injunction] is a definite intervention as well, but we are still talking,” an NGO worker, who declined to be identified, told IRIN.

Unconstitutional

Engwase Mwale, executive director of the NGO Co-ordinating Committee [NGOCC], an umbrella body for civic organizations promoting gender issues, told IRIN after the emergency meeting: “We wish to register our dismay and shock at President Rupiah Banda’s assent to the NGO Bill.

We still find it upsetting and retrogressive that in a democratic society such as Zambia, the president could see it fit to assent to a proposed law that has brought constitutional encroachments on our well-entrenched constitutional rights of freedom of association and expression

“Although we appreciate the constitutional obligation that he has to assent to any proposed bill that he wishes, we still find it upsetting and retrogressive that in a democratic society such as Zambia, the president could see it fit to assent to a proposed law that has brought constitutional encroachments on our well-entrenched constitutional rights of freedom of association and expression,” she said.

Mwale said the law was conceived without consultation with civil society, and government’s “micro-management” of the sector would impact negatively on Zambia’s social development.

“As NGOs, we recognize the legality of our existence and therefore we are resolved not to allow any unconstitutional means, let alone illegal legislation, to regulate the existence of NGOs … and have requested an audience with the president so that we can put before him some of the development challenges as well as constitutional deviations of the NGO law that he has just assented to,” Mwale said.

“As president, he’s still got an opportunity to reconsider his decision … before it finds its way into the gazette,” she said. A bill can take from a few days to a few weeks to come into effect after the president has signed it.

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Photo: Mujahid Safodien/PlusNews

Too few health workers are struggling to cope with high patient numbers

JOHANNESBURG, – South Africa’s Free State Province is again experiencing a crisis in the delivery of antiretroviral (ARV) treatment, with understaffed clinics, erratic drug supplies and long waiting lists preventing many dangerously ill patients from accessing the life-prolonging drugs, according to AIDS activists.

Runaway overspending by the provincial health department in 2008 led to a moratorium on new patients starting ARV treatment that lasted from November until February 2009. The Southern African HIV Clinicians Society estimated that 30 people a day died during this three-month period because they could not access treatment.

Local newspapers reported that national health minister Aaron Motsoaledi told a meeting of the South African National AIDS Council (SANAC) in July: “What happened in the Free State last year should never be allowed to happen again in any province.”

Now, several reports from the Free State suggest that many of the factors leading to last year’s moratorium have not been addressed, and patients are again suffering the consequences.

“There’s definitely a crisis with ARV stocks again,” said Trudie Harrison, director of the Anglican Church’s Mosamaria AIDS Ministry. “They’re not able to initiate new clients at the rate they should be, there are long waiting lists, and one of the clinic staff members told me that people coming now will only be able to start [treatment] next year [2010].”

Harrison told IRIN/PlusNews that the crisis was the result of drug shortages and a dearth of health workers. At one ARV site she recently visited, normally staffed by three doctors, about 200 patients were waiting to see just one doctor. “They can only see so many, and they send the rest home,” she said.

Sello Mokhalipi, of Treatment Action Campaign (TAC), an AIDS lobby group, confirmed that a critical staff shortage was compounding the drug supply problem. He told IRIN/PlusNews that a number of HIV-positive people could get only one of the three ARVs they needed from their local ARV clinic.

Harrison and Mokhalipi cited mismanagement as the main reason for the renewed crisis, but Jabu Mbalula, a spokesperson for the provincial health department, said in an emailed response to questions from IRIN/PlusNews: “The allocated funds for ARVs for this financial year will most certainly not be enough” to keep pace with the number of new patients needing ARVs. A request for additional funding has been lodged with the national health department.

Mbalula said the waiting list for treatment had been reduced to 705 patients, and waiting times differed “in terms of site, patient load and availability of HR [human resources]“.

“Shortage of HR is a challenge,” he admitted, but denied that there had been any drug stock-outs. “Low levels of certain drugs were reported, but the province was able to address this.”

I see it getting worse before it gets better, unless we can have massive intervention from the [national health] minister himself

However, Harrison said a young man had recently died in the back of her car while she was trying to get him medical help, after several months waiting to start ARV treatment, and “We’ve had reports from all over the province of similar things happening.”

Donor-funded NGO programmes that used to assist patients who could not obtain ARVs from the public health sector had reached their limit, she added, and very few patients could afford to buy the drugs from the private sector at a cost of about US$100 a month.

Various NGOs, trade unions and church groups formed the Free State HIV/AIDS Coalition in March to lobby for better services for people living with HIV, but despite numerous requests the group had failed to secure a meeting with the provincial health minister.

The coalition is collecting affidavits from HIV-positive patients who have struggled to get treatment. Coalition chairperson Kabelo Makhetha interviewed three HIV-positive women who recently gave birth at public health facilities.

Only one was offered nevirapine, an ARV that reduces the risk of transmitting the virus to the baby, and none were offered formula milk as an alternative to exclusive breastfeeding, which carries a small HIV transmission risk. One baby who tested positive for HIV had since died.

Harrison had little confidence in the provincial health department’s capacity to deal with the crisis. “I see it getting worse before it gets better, unless we can have massive intervention from the [national health] minister himself,” she said.

The TAC’s Mokhalipi was doubtful. “If the national department of health was really willing to intervene, we wouldn’t be experiencing the shortage of staff right now; they should have fixed it right after the moratorium.”

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Photo: USAF/Wikimedia

A US soldier gives a young Pakistani girl a drink of water in the aftermath of the 2005 earthquake

DAKAR,  – On the first-ever World Humanitarian Day on 19 August, when the UN spotlights fallen aid workers and growing humanitarian needs, experts say a trend toward integrating aid goals into broader social and security agendas has contributed to an erosion of “humanitarian space”. IRIN looks at why, and at how donors, UN agencies and NGOs might ensure that it does not shrink for good.

Lacking any formal definition, the term “humanitarian space” has been taken to encompass any or all of the following: physical locations safe from attack in a conflict; respect for core humanitarian principles, independence, impartiality and neutrality; and the ability of aid agencies to access and help civilians affected by conflict.

By any of these definitions, observers say, humanitarian space is shrinking, with decreasing access to beneficiaries and increasing attacks on beneficiaries and aid staff.

Factors squeezing humanitarian space, according to the Inter-Agency Standing Committee (IASC), include a trend toward coherence between political and humanitarian agendas; blurred distinctions between the roles of military and humanitarian organizations; political manipulation of humanitarian assistance; perceived lack of independence of humanitarian actors from donors or from host governments; a perceived social, cultural or religious agenda by humanitarian workers; and a breakdown of law and order.

Coherence and integration – riskier?

Donor governments started to move towards coherence of humanitarian and political agendas in the early 1990s based on the growing recognition that complex emergencies were in essence politically driven and aid alone could not solve them.

Further, counter-terrorism, counter-insurgency efforts have contributed to a shift in military policy towards integration of security, political, humanitarian, reconstruction and economic activities. There has also been an expansion in the number of UN peacekeeping missions with a focus on civilian protection.

In 2000 the UN system officially endorsed “integrated missions” to channel UN forces and agencies towards a common political, military and humanitarian goal, putting at their head a single Special Representative to the Secretary General (SRSG) and placing a humanitarian coordinator under the SRSG’s management.

And over the past decade some humanitarian agencies have expanded their assistance beyond “life-saving” activities to embrace advocacy, peace-building and human rights promotion among other goals, said Overseas Development Institute (ODI) researcher Samir Elhawary.

“More and more [aid] agencies feel they have to go beyond life-saving…Peace-building, and conflict resolution have been applied to humanitarian relief, which has made relief seem more political. It is not just about saving lives but also about social transformation and tackling the root causes of conflict.”

In this mix humanitarian objectives can be subsumed by wider political and military goals, say humanitarian experts. In Sudan the international community is running one of the world’s biggest humanitarian operations, facilitating a peace process, pushing human rights and justice through the International Criminal Court, and promoting the comprehensive peace agreement between north and south Sudan.

“Some might say these roles are complementary but the expulsion of aid agencies in Sudan is an indication that these objectives might not be so compatible,” Elhawary told IRIN.

Impact

Insecurity linked to coherence policies has diminished aid agencies’ ability to access beneficiaries, experts say. In the case of Iraq many international NGOs have left; about 60 remain, many of them managed remotely and with uneven geographical distribution, according to a March 2009 ODI report, ‘Providing Aid in Insecure Environments’.

More aid workers died in 2008 than in any other year, the report says, arguing that the increase was partly a result of this coherence push. Some 75 percent of attacks – which the ODI says were “increasingly politically motivated” – occurred in Afghanistan, Chad, Iraq, Pakistan, Somalia, Sri Lanka and Sudan.

In Iraq and Afghanistan, where aid agencies are often funded by governments humanitarian actors are now “not only perceived to be cooperating with Western political actors, but…as wholly a part of the western agenda,” the ODI notes in its report.

However, attacks decreased for the International Red Cross Movement, which has pushed its purely humanitarian, neutral line.

Taking responsibility

But there was no “’golden age’ in which humanitarian space was always protected,” ODI’s Elhawary told IRIN. Aid agencies were manipulated by Biafran secessionists in the Nigerian civil war and the International Committee of the Red Cross was attacked in Ethiopia as early as 1935-36.

And ODI says responsibility for securing humanitarian space lies partly with aid agencies themselves.

It is not right to blame reduced access to beneficiaries solely on the coherence agenda, according to Ross Mountain, deputy SRSG and humanitarian coordinator in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).

Warfare trends have a more significant role in access than do coherence policies, he said, pointing out that in parts of DRC aid agencies have recently had a tougher time reaching some vulnerable populations mainly because of an upsurge in conflict with militia groups targeting civilians.

Some agencies have adjusted to those realities by reducing their visibility on the ground, working through local NGOs, or improving their risk assessment and analysis capacity and sharing information; but sector-wide progress has been slow.

Further, many agencies still do not anticipate potential consequences of decisions taken in complex environments such as Afghanistan, where “there is no humanitarian consensus and very little humanitarian space,” according to Antonio Donini in a Feinstein Center report.

For Howard Mollett, conflict advisor at the NGO CARE International, in settings like Afghanistan agencies must work harder to manage the tensions among competing imperatives.

“Most agencies involved in humanitarian response are multi-mandate,” he said. “And that partly reflects the messy field realities in which we work. In one country acute humanitarian needs, chronic poverty and opportunities to promote recovery typically coexist.”

Photo: WFP/Ebadullah Ebadi

Large parts of Afghanistan are off-limits to aid agencies

Shift

Experts say the aid community appears to recognize a shift in approach is needed to ensure humanitarian space does not disappear.

The UN has adjusted the aid element of some integrated missions, Mollett said. In Afghanistan, where humanitarian expertise within the UN Assistance Mission (UNAMA) had been reduced to a few people, the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) was re-established in 2009; while in Somalia the UN has called for extensive consultation with humanitarians before developing any integrated mission plan.

Mountain said in DRC different actors are tackling the complexity of working within an integrated mission with more mutual respect, helped by a clear civilian protection mandate. “It is not the military doing humanitarian action… rather military and political become strong allies in promoting humanitarian objectives by providing physical protection.”

The coherence approach appears to be here to stay; but some 35 major donors have signed up to the good humanitarian donorship principles, which stress the need to promote humanitarian space.

A December 2009 UN meeting of OCHA, the Department for Peacekeeping Operations, Department of Political Affairs and IASC will provide an opportunity for the concerned actors to air their views.

This is a sign of a progress, said Mollett.

“For too long the erosion of humanitarian space was put in the ‘too difficult’ box, but the severity of the situation in countries like Somalia and Afghanistan has brought us to a decisive moment…Perhaps the time has come to recognize the limitations of ‘integrated approaches’ and set some red lines in policy and practice.”

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Photo: Eddy Isango/IRIN

Congolese army soldiers (file photo): A mutiny over pay, by a section of the army is restricting population movement in parts of Uvira, South Kivu

KINSHASA,  – A mutiny over pay, by a section of the army in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) Uvira territory, is restricting population movement and heightening fear, say officials.

Meanwhile, farther north, an escalation in attacks by Ugandan Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) rebels has prompted large-scale displacement.

The Congolese army (FARDC) is in Uvira, South Kivu Province, in an operation to oust Rwandan Hutu FDLR [Forces démocratiques pour la libération du Rwanda] militia there.

“It [the mutiny] was [caused by] some FARDC soldiers who were demanding their four-month salary arrears,” Victor Chomachoma, the Uvira territory administrator, said.

“[They] were firing into the air the whole day [and] barricaded roads, preventing all [pedestrian and vehicle] movement on the Uvira-Kamanyola axis.” The road goes to Bukavu, the main town in the province.

Chomachoma said the mutiny had forced the population to stay in their homes on 26 August.

Confirming the mutiny, the spokesman for the UN Mission in the DRC (MONUC), Lt. Col Jean-Paul Dietrich, said about 50 FARDC soldiers were involved.

The two said military authorities had convinced the mutineers to remove the blockades even if they had not been paid.

The mutiny has led to an increase in fear among residents already affected by ongoing anti-FDLR military operations.

Residents had to endure artillery fire on the night of 26 August following an FDLR attack on the village of Sange, 15km north of Uvira, he said.

The village of Nyakabere was also under fire on 25 August in an attack lasting 30 minutes, said Dietrich, adding that “two FARDC soldiers were injured and three FDLR militia killed. [The dead] were carried away by their fleeing colleagues.”

“Three civilians, among them two girls, suffered bullet injuries. [Some] 53 houses were burnt by the FDLR, who also took away goats, sheep and cows,” Chomachoma said.

Photo: Voxcom/IRIN

Lord’s Resistance Army, LRA, members (file photo): At least 125,000 people have been displaced in the past three weeks alone by LRA attacks in Haut Uele, Orientale Province

Farther north in Orientale Province, at least 125,000 people have been displaced in the past three weeks alone by LRA attacks in the district of Haut Uele, says the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR).

“A staggering 540,000 Congolese have been uprooted in Orientale by deadly LRA assaults since September 2008,” UNHCR said in a 28 August statement.

During the same period, the rebels have reportedly killed some 1,270 people and abducted 655 children.

The attacks have caused about 8,000 Congolese to flee to neighbouring Southern Sudan and the Central African Republic. Of these, 6,500 are in the Western Equatoria region of Southern Sudan, where recent LRA attacks  in the area of Ezo forced UN staff to evacuate.

Humanitarian agencies estimate that at least two million people have been displaced by anti-FDLR operations and FDLR counter-attacks since January in eastern DRC. This figure surpasses that during the 2006 civil war.

Recently, the DRC government said it would continue military operations against Rwandan militias in the eastern provinces until they were dislodged from Congolese soil.

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Photo: Jo Foster

Chadians demonstrate for greater local benefits from oil (file photo)

DAKAR,  – In Chad oil wealth – poorly managed – has stoked conflict and corruption rather than boost the economy and living conditions, says a new briefing paper by International Crisis Group.

Oil exploitation has contributed to the deterioration of governance in Chad, and the government has progressively cut civil society out of the management of petrodollars, the paper says. “The government must work to establish a national consensus on the management of oil revenues,” ICG says, calling on Chad’s principal external partners – China, France and the United States – to “condition their support for the regime on such a consensus”.

Chad must reform its management of oil revenues – now used largely for paying cronies and building up the military – if it is to avoid further impoverishment and destabilization, ICG says.

The 1,070-kilometre Chad-Cameroon pipeline, which yielded its first oil in 2003, was hailed as a unique effort to make large-scale oil production a driver of sustainable development. Integral to the World Bank’s support of the project was a revenue management scheme that would provide social and economic benefits for the poor including future generations. Chad eventually scrapped the provisions and the World Bank pulled its support for the pipeline.

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Photo: Sarah Birke/IRIN

Olive trees in Dara’a

DAMASCUS,  – Syria’s huge olive oil industry is leaving its mark on the environment. Waste products from olive oil processing mills which are not properly disposed of are causing soil and water pollution, and killing plant and animal life.

During the processing of olive oil, olives are crushed and mixed with water. The oil is then separated out from the dirty water and solid residue.

“The water used in the process and then discarded is often just pumped out onto surrounding land,” environment expert Marwan Dimashki told IRIN.

“This waste water contains polythenols which provide the natural green and black colouring of olives. However, they are chemicals which, when spread in large quantities, change environmental conditions and cause a reduction in soil fertility.”

Impact on human health

He said human health could be at risk. “Contaminated water becomes undrinkable. It goes brown and smelly and contains chemicals bad for human consumption, such as some of the polythenols.”

Where processing plants are close to rivers, the waste water can run off into the rivers, harming aquatic life (with toxic chemicals or through compounds in the waste using up supplies of oxygen) and contaminating human drinking water.

Photo: Sarah Birke/IRIN

Olive oil pomace sat outside a mill in Dara’a

If pomace – the solid residue left over from the processing of olive oil – is not properly dried out and disposed of, it too can seep into the soil, changing the acidity and nutrient make-up.

The impact on human health of consuming the chemicals in olive waste water is still unknown. Catechol, one of the chemicals in the waste water thought by some experts to be harmful, is not considered a threat by the World Health Organization (WHO).

“Catechol is not considered by WHO in its guidelines for drinking-water quality and thus there is no proposed drinking-water recommended maximum limit,” said Bruce Gordon, head of the drinking water safety and quality team at WHO.

However, the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) lists catechol as “possibly carcinogenic to humans”.

The problem is not a small-scale one. Syria is the world’s fifth largest olive oil producer, contributing 4.6 percent of the world’s supply each year from its 920 mills.

The total waste water from Syria’s olive oil production amounts to 700,000 cubic metres a year, along with 280,000 tonnes of pomace.

Lack of awareness

The reasons for the contamination include dated technology and a lack of awareness by mill owners.

“The majority of the mills are family-run businesses which still use traditional presses rather than [modern] machinery,” Dimashki said. “They do not have the equipment to clean the waste water and often cannot afford to buy it.”

Apart from lacking the financial resources, many mill owners are unaware of the environmental damage they are causing. “There is a lack of education as to why and how waste products need to be dealt with, so mill owners release the waste water not realizing it will harm their land as well as the wider environment,” Dimashki said.

Photo: Sarah Birke/IRIN

Olive oil flows out of the tap following processing

Regional project

However, the importance of the olive oil industry means the problem is receiving attention. A 1.7 million euro three-year regional project to tackle the industry’s pollution across Syria, Lebanon and Jordan, funded by the UN Development Programme and the European Commission, concludes at the end of this year.

During the initial stages of the project, every olive mill was registered. Mill owners were given information on the negative effects of discharging waste water and on how they should treat it.

The owners were informed of the uses to which pomace could be put so they would not need to throw it away: It can be sold to factories which could extract the remaining oil for use in the manufacture of other products.

One of the mills to have benefited from the project is the Massalme Brothers Mill in Dar’a, southern Syria. The mill’s owners have learnt how to treat waste water and store it for collection, rather than discharging it onto surrounding land. Their mill’s pomace is dried and sold to factories in Aleppo where it is used to make the city’s famous olive oil soap.

The final stage of the project, due to begin in September, is the trial use of a mobile waste water treatment plant.

“Education is not enough,” Dimashki, who heads the project, said. “Not all the mill owners can afford modern machinery to treat their waste water… so the plant will move around the country cleaning the water.”

Demonstrations will start in Tartous on the Syrian coast, at one of the most polluting mills in the country.

Central treatment plants?

Given the huge demand for waste water treatment, experts say large central treatment plants will be needed in the future.

“Without this technology, the pollution from olive oil processing will lead to greater ecological problems,” said Roland Damann, head of Enviplan, the German environmental planning firm which supplied the mobile treatment plant.

“The environmental balance is getting more and more fragile over time so there is a long-term obligation to move the olive oil industry towards good ecological standards. Syria has started this and so must other countries,” he said.

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