Zimbabwe’s president Robert Mugabe. Photo/Reuters

HARARE, Monday
Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe’s Zanu PF party is now calling for limited presidential terms in the new Constitution in the clearest sign yet of growing internal discontent over the veteran leader’s long rule.

Zanu PF and MDC have already clashed on proposals to legalise gay marriages.

President Mugabe has spoken publicly about his hatred of homosexuals and at one time described them as worse than dogs and pigs.

The writing of a new constitution is in compliance with the Global Political Agreement signed between Zanu-PF and the two MDC formations in 2008.

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Photo: Anne Isabelle Leclercq/IRIN

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DAKAR,  – IRIN has asked a range of experts over the past year why malnutrition is recurrent in Niger even after decades of donor support and government programmes. Two of the hardest-hit regions were focused on – Diffa, which has borders Chad, and Zinder, which borders Nigeria.

Hassane Doudou Boukary, Zinder regional director of the UN Population Fund:

“Demography is at the heart of [efforts to reduce the malnutrition rate in Zinder below the 15 percent emergency threshold]. In Niger, each woman has on average 7.1 children; in Zinder it is 7.4. Unless we can resolve the issue of family planning, there will be an open door for more malnourished children. Contraception needs to be one of the strategies to fight malnutrition.”

Patrick Barbier, head of the Niger mission of Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF):

“Even though there is a law that guarantees no-fee care for under-five children, it is not enforced. Access to care would give a child the resilience to withstand [food security] shocks better.”

Amadou Harouna, Zinder regional director of the Health Ministry:

“You can heal people, [but] they will always fall sick: we must educate them. But there is not enough action at the community level. There is a lack of awareness and education on nutrition issues. When there is a food distribution, people come, we distribute the food quickly because they are so rushed, but we do not know what happens when they get home. There is also the fact that [those trying to combat malnutrition] focus too much on the child, forgetting that there is a family around [that child].”

2010 food crisis

More needed to avoid catastrophe

Southern villages emptying as drought bites

Food pressures spread north

Mariama Adao, “We help each other“

Aboubacar Mahamadou, deputy director of the Health Ministry’s office of nutrition services:

“It is a vicious circle of constant crises and international actors responding to them. There is no exit strategy for these groups. Their goal should be to prepare a government to face crises. Dependency [on these NGOs] is not good because the state does not stand on its own. It is like these emergency NGOs put out the fire, but the gas is still on. The government [until now] has not capitalized on crises to draw lessons so donors can see we have learned… There is lack of government financing on nutrition. We want the nutrition problem recognized not only as a food security and malnutrition issue, but as something needing to be tackled in a continuum from prevention to treatment. Costs can be hard to quantify, but this a critical activity.”

Yacouba Adjahararou, Tanout regional director in the Agriculture Ministry:

“The population eats cereals [millet, sorghum] of little nutritional value. There is no off-season cultivation. However, where vegetable gardening has been developed [using drip irrigation], people eat what they produce [cabbage, lettuce, carrots, tomatoes, onions] and they like it.”

Animal malnutrition

Kosso Matta Kellou, Diffa regional director in the Livestock Ministry:

“In a pastoral region like Diffa, international agencies focus on under-five children in their fight against malnutrition, but the problem starts with animals. Animals represent a family’s savings, their income, their food source, their lives and livelihoods. With dwindling water resources, animal illnesses, the shortage of pasture and fodder, herders and breeders are losing dozens of animals at a time. You can go a long way to preventing human malnutrition if you can prevent animal malnutrition. The two are linked. There is not enough investment in livestock – 90 percent of the population is made up of herders and livestock brings in most of the region’s income, and investment is not proportionate.”

Photo: Anne Isabelle Leclercq/IRIN

Not enough animal fodder in 2010 for two-thirds of the country’s livestock

Mamane El Hadj Omar, Diffa director of the NGO Helen Keller International:

“There needs to be economic development. Without that, there will always be malnutrition. It is not only a question of treating the malnourished, but also investing in education. A mother’s level of education determines how receptive she is to [nutrition education] outreach… We need to harmonize our interventions. A village has one person coming through and telling them what to do; that person leaves and the next [person] says ‘no, don’t do that, thi s is what you should do.’”

El Hadji Abdou Salissou, president of the regional committee of nutritional crises and deputy secretary-general Diffa governor’s office:

“Water is a huge problem here. The growing cycle keeps getting shorter. The water basin [used for growing] is increasingly covered in sand. It is not that people do not want to work, but there is no water. There have been attempts to bring in motor pumps, but that did not work. There is not enough funding for electricity [to power the pumps]. This region has the country’s fastest growing population, along with extreme poverty, water shortages, rain problems and few international actors here.”

Jenny C. Akers, economist at US-based Tufts University and fellow, Center for Global Development:

“Niger is a highly risky agro-climatic environment, with 300-500mm of rainfall per year, poor soil quality and subject to periodic droughts and pest infestations. All of these factors, but especially the periodic shocks, reduce agricultural production on a regular basis and discourage investment in agricultural production – as it is a highly risky venture. The frequency of shocks… can either be exacerbated or mitigated by agricultural markets.

“If fuel prices are low, if only a few areas were affected by drought and prices in northern Nigeria, and if surrounding countries’ prices were lower than those in Niger,  then traders could import grains from surrounding countries to make up the local deficit and keep prices fairly stable in the country. If, however, multiple markets – especially those in the breadbasket regions of Niger, Maradi and Zinder – are affected by drought, and neighbouring countries also are affected by shocks, then Niger can’t import. This is what happened in 2005 – prices soared partially because of a combination of droughts but also because of fewer imports from neighbouring countries.”

pt/ail/cb source.irinnews

According to sources he was scheduled to tour UK with his father in two weeks time.

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Photo: Anthony Mitchell/IRIN

Many Ethiopians prefer to keep their HIV status hidden for fear of isolation

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ADDIS ABABA,  – On stage in the Ethiopian capital, Addis Ababa, Mestihet Temane, 27, enacts the story of how, after the death of her parents, a young woman winds up alone on the streets with no money, no confidence and no support.

“Sometimes I cry when I’m singing and so do a lot of the people listening,” she told IRIN/PlusNews.

Mestihet is a member of Mekdim Ethiopia National Association, a local NGO that performs HIV-related dramas at offices, colleges and community centres. The drama and music club members who put on the plays are a mixture of orphans and people living with HIV – their harrowing stories of abandonment and discrimination are often semi-autobiographical.

Despite public attempts to tackle the subject of HIV, the status of many of Mekdim’s actors is not revealed to audiences; many of them also keep their HIV status secret in their personal lives.

“A colleague said, ‘if I knew you had HIV I would not have swapped clothes with you’,” Dawit*, a 21-year-old actor said. “Even now there is a problem with HIV and discrimination.”

Mickey*, a dancer, says he suffers psychologically when his colleagues discuss the HIV-positive status of other dancers in a derogatory manner; Fatiya*, 17, has kept her infection hidden from her landlord due to fear of eviction.

According to Tilahun Sheko, Mekdim’s programme manager, while the plays have significantly increased the number of visitors to the voluntary counselling and testing clinics that accompany the performances, many in Addis, particularly the wealthy, are still “more worried about their reputation than getting treatment”.

Alemu Anno Ararso, the director of the multi-sectoral response coordination directorate at the Federal HIV/AIDS Prevention and Control Office, said just like the government’s “community conversations” – where participants are encouraged to discuss and share their experiences, including traditionally taboo issues – the Mekdim plays were a useful tool in demystifying HIV.

“They tell the stories and how it is transmitted,” he said. “They are giving their life experiences; no one can know more than they can.”

A colleague said, ‘if I knew you had HIV I would not have swapped clothes with you’

However, Alemu acknowledged that despite the government’s efforts to tackle stigma, the problem persists.

“Ethiopians prefer to keep silent. We don’t want to disclose ourselves. If I have a problem, I don’t want to talk about it,” he added. “That is why the community conversation strategy has been used. They listen to their friends and everything comes out.”

Alemu further noted that the issue of stigma affected HIV programming. “We have problems of uptake of services and it revolves around stigma. If you’re found to be HIV-positive you will be discriminated against, so people decide not to get tested,” he said. “We can understand the effect by proxy; it’s all because of discrimination.

A local NGO, Network of Networks of HIV Positives in Ethiopia, is working on a stigma index – due to be completed this year – that will reveal the root causes and extent of stigma in the Horn of Africa nation.

“HIV is everybody’s business, so everybody has to talk about it; you can fight HIV by improving knowledge and behaviour,” he added.

wd/kr/mw source.irinnews

* Not their real names

Photo: Hilary Uguru/IRIN

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AWKA,  – Interceptions and convictions of human traffickers and smugglers have risen year-on-year in Nigeria since the government passed legislation to ban the trade in 2005, but the volume of trafficking is still high and progress on convictions needs to speed up, say government officials.

“Trafficking rates have come down,,,and convictions are up,” Ego Uzoezie, Commissioner of Women Affairs in Anambra State Ministry told IRIN, “but the progress is not as high as we’d like when we compare it to the efforts the government has put in.”

Nigeria uses the UN definition of trafficking, which includes recruiting, transporting, harbouring or receiving people through use of force or coercion, abduction, or fraud; and exploiting a person in a position of vulnerability for forced labour or servitude.

How many men, women and children are trafficked each year in Nigeria is unknown – the only figures on record are the number of people law enforcement officers have intercepted since the National Agency Prohibiting Trafficking in Persons (NAPTIP) was set up in 2004.

Over 4,000 victims were intercepted between 2004 and the end of 2009, with the number rising each year to reach 1,000 in 2007 and 1,269 in 2008, according to NAPTIP.

Most children trafficked and smuggled in Nigeria are sent by families to work as domestic labourers, with a minority used as street beggars, or sold into marriage or to illegal orphanages, according to NAPTIP. Families pay middlemen to take children across the borders to West African destinations like Togo and Cameroon, or north to Saudi Arabia, said Simon Chuzie Egede, the head of NAPTIP.

The UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) child protection specialist in Abuja, Sharon Oladiji, said poverty was still the main reason families pushed children to leave home to find work.

“I was sold by my mother because of a 20,000 naira [US$137] debt she owed a yam-seller. Later I was forced into early marriage by him [the seller],” said Grace Ikede (not her real name), from Rivers State. She was lucky – the man she married helped her trace her family when he heard her story. “We are on the look-out for the seller, but he is on the run,” she told IRIN.

Convictions up

The government has been making progress in the fight against traffickers and smugglers, partly because the Ministry of Women’s Affairs, NAPTIP, the police, immigration services, and child protection agencies such as UNICEF, have started working closely together, Egede told IRIN. Prosecutions have steadily risen since 2006, with 67 traffickers convicted between 2004 and the end of 2009, UNICEF said.

On the US State Department list rating countries’ efforts to eliminate the worst forms of trafficking, Nigeria rose from tier-two to tier-one status

“This is a clear sign Nigeria has made progress in preventing trafficking, punishing traffickers and protecting children,” UNICEF’s Oladiji told IRIN.

In 2009 the government also set up a Victims Trust Fund, through which assets confiscated from traffickers are transferred to victims. NAPTIP said so far the assets of two traffickers in Sokoto State had been seized.

But prosecuting traffickers was still “achingly slow”, Oladiji said, with dozens of cases awaiting trial. A 2009 report on Nigeria’s justice system noted that detainees could wait up to nine years for conviction. NAPTIP’s southern zonal coordinator, Ijeoma Okoronkwo, said it would take state-by-state reform of the prosecution system to speed up the rate.

Next steps

Oladiji told IRIN that preventing trafficking would have to be stepped up in view of the sluggish prosecution service, and stressed that this must be a community effort, not a family-by-family attempt. UNICEF has been working with communities in at-risk border areas to encourage them to protect vulnerable families from turning to child smugglers.

A human rights lawyer in Anambra State, Ben Nwosu, told IRIN that punishments should be made more severe to deter traffickers. “The fines and jail terms given to those convicted and sentenced are still not enough compared to the inhumane treatment that the traffickers subject their victims to.”

NAPTIP is evaluating the impact of its recent efforts – including the Victims Trust Fund, among other tools – to better prioritize its funding, Egede told IRIN.

To attract more funding for the fight, NAPTIP and all other agencies involved should develop clear action plans on prevention and prosecution, so that donors could peg funding to the initiative, UNICEF’s Oladiji told IRIN.

The governments of Italy, Switzerland, Finland and the United States have recently supported anti-trafficking activities in Nigeria.

hu/aj/he source.irinnews