By Senior API Correspondent

The answer is no. This court should be abolished. It is easy to blame Mr Kay for his utterances. It is easy to reach conclusions. Yet in this case where Steven Kay has spoken against the ICC, it will be improper to jump over the rope claiming he has wronged anyone .

Those who have followed cases in the court room at the ICC, and particularly the Kenya cases, will most probably agree with me if they want to be fair with the Kenyans involved in the process when I say, after listening to the evidence in September and October last year against the then Ocampo 6, now Ocampo 4, there was nothing pointing in the direction of indictment for either of them.

Now the court has decided to indict Mr Uhuru Kenyatta, William Ruto, Francis Muthaura and Joshua Sang, an act I consider as a face-saving move in order to continue  sourcing funds to keep their jobs.

When Mr Kay points out the wrongs done by the ICC, one of the wrongs being ICC’s own orchestrated “movie like show” to punish Kenyan leaders, I agree with him because we all know it is meant to satisfy the UK and USA, – a sad thing when one considers the fact that USA, a country pulling the strings behind the scenes against Kenya is  not even a signatory to the Rome Stature creating the International Court.

ICC should be abolished and money that goes there be utilised to strengthen courts in countries without strong court systems.

ICC is being used by some leaders in some countries and in Kenya to punish others. In those cases where foreigners are involved they are committing a crime because they are forcing leaders of their choice on the people of Kenya.

Kenya is not a failed state and should not be subjected to the ICC intrigues aimed at destroying potential leaders by relying on false evidence concocted  by unreliable individuals and NGOs. There is no doubt that there are strong powers outside Kenya with intent to stop Uhuru Kenyatta and William Ruto from going for the presidency during the coming general elections.

The Kenyan media reported recently on the trip to Kenya by the British Foreign Secretary . The UK is very active in their efforts to dictate leaders for the Kenyan people. This was clear when the UK foreign Secretary William Hague told the Kenyan electorate not to elect people with cases at the ICC. This is in no doubt directed against Uhuru Kenyatta and William Ruto who are presidential contenders in the coming elections. He wants Kenyans not to elect people who are indicted by the ICC.

This is a hidden agenda and revenge by the British people who are still in pain of losing the settlement farms when Kenya chased them out of the country in 1963. When the Kenyan people became independent led by Mzee Jomo Kenyatta, the British felt reduced to some level that made them unhappy and especially those who had grabbed large parcels of land in the country. Now they want to, vindictively, use the ICC to cut down Mzee Kenyatta’s son and deny him leadership.

It is not long ago that Uhuru Kenyatta  and William Ruto told the Kenya electorate to ignore outsider coming to the country pretending to be development conscious while instead they use their time dishing out money to NGOs in the name of democracy,  and yet clearly the mission is to dictate which leaders the Kenyan people should elect.

End

MYANMAR: “Urgent” need for HIV treatment

Photo: Jo Kuper/MSF

Seeking treatment for AIDS and TB in Yangon, far from home

BANGKOK/YANGON,  – Lack of access to anti-retroviral therapy (ARV) to treat HIV has left thousands of patients in Myanmar with deteriorating immunity and increased vulnerability to tuberculosis (TB), say health workers.

“The situation is dire,” said Peter Paul de Groote, head of Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) in Myanmar. “The gap between the treatment that is needed and what is received is unacceptably high.”

ARV providers in Myanmar – of whom MSF is the largest – are concentrated in Yangon and Mandalay divisions, and Shan and Kachin states, which account for more than 60 percent of the country’s 133 ART distribution sites, according to UNAIDS Myanmar.

“The unfortunate case is that many people have to travel far to access treatment. This country has the potential to treat more people, save more lives and prevent transmission by expanding service provision,” Sung Gang, the UNAIDS Myanmar country coordinator, told IRIN from Yangon.

But according to MSF, funding is the biggest problem.

When donors did not deliver on pledges, the Global Fund to Fight HIV, Tuberculosis and Malaria cancelled its Round 11 funding in late November.

While a Transitional Funding Mechanism has been established to provide emergency relief to current recipients, which will run out of money before 2014, it only covers essential services such as HIV treatment, care and prevention, leaving ARV providers unable to expand to other needed areas, notes MSF.

Scale-up interrupted

Funds from Round 11 were expected to treat 46,500 more patients in Myanmar, according to a recent MSF study.

Of the estimated 240,000 HIV-positive people, only 24 percent receive ARV therapy. Roughly 85,000 people need treatment but cannot access it, causing up to 20,000 preventable AIDS-related deaths annually, according to MSF.

“The Ministry of Health, MSF, and the hospitals all have the willingness and capacity to scale up. There are a lot of new donor pledges [going into Myanmar] but not for HIV,” MSF’s De Groote said.

Doctors are forced to prioritize treatment for patients in the most advanced stages of HIV/AIDS, despite proof that earlier treatment decreases transmission rates and improves health outcomes, according to the Inter-Agency Standing Committee’s (IASC) 2010 Guidelines for addressing HIV in humanitarian settings.

“Turning back patients is a difficult and impossible choice. We have to tell them, come back when you get sicker,” said Khin Nyein Chan, MSF’s deputy medical coordinator in Myanmar and a doctor at the NGO’s clinic in Yangon, one of four nationwide.

While the World Health Organization (WHO) recommends starting ARV medications when an HIV patient’s CD4 count, a specialized immune system cell measure, has dropped below 350 cells/mm3, doctors in Myanmar administer ARVs only to those with CD4 levels below 150 cells/mm3.

“They have to wait until severe life-threatening and opportunistic infections are in their bodies before we can treat them,” said Khin Nyein Chan.

TB threat

TB is one such opportunistic infection. An HIV-positive status can increase the chance of contracting TB by up to 37-fold, according to WHO.

In Myanmar, 300,000 people are infected with TB – 60,000 of whom are also HIV-positive – according to MSF.

The increased incidence of airborne TB among HIV patients not taking ARVs raises the likelihood that it will spread among the general population, said Maria Guavara, MSF’s medical coordinator.

“HIV/AIDS and TB are a lethal combination. Treatment of HIV drops the instance rate of TB.”

At Phoenix Association, a Yangon-based social support centre for HIV-positive people, patients seek solace from debt and disease.

One patient from Phyuu Township of Bago Division in the country’s south, Sai Hlaw Aung, 33, told IRIN in 2011 that battling HIV and TB had made him too weak to continue working as a bamboo cutter.

“Now I am not as strong as before. I have no idea how I could earn household income when I go back home,” said Sai Hlaw Aung.

The association allows out-of-town patients to sleep in the office while undergoing treatment in Yangon. Space is tight.

“Currently we need shelter to accommodate the people,” said Thiha Kyaing, head of the association told IRIN. Little has changed since.

“We don’t just want to bridge the treatment gap and walk away. We need sustainable programmes, and the sooner the better,” De Groote said. “If we don’t treat people now we will lose them,” he added.

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source www.irinnews.org

AFGHANISTAN: Ill-prepared for cold snap

Photo: Mohammad Popal/IRIN

A family at an informal settlement area for IDPs inside Kabul

DUBAI,  – At least 150 people in Afghanistan have died in the past month after some of the coldest weather for years. The deaths – mainly of those without adequate food, housing or heating in Kabul and the northern province of Badakhshan – have prompted some to ask how this can happen given that the country has received billions of dollars of aid since the Taliban regime fell in 2002.

Sediq Hassani, director of policy at the Afghanistan National Disaster Management Authority, said every possible effort had been made to stock food and other items in the most at-risk areas, but acknowledged: “We were not 100 percent successful. There were districts to which, due to bad roads, we couldn’t send food items before winter started.”

He blamed lack of investment by the government and international community in the last decade, but one UN official told IRIN the international community has failed to prioritize disaster reduction management in Afghanistan.

“The ones who died were mostly the children of internally displaced persons who live in tents and mud-huts in Kabul and those poor families in other parts of the country who can’t afford to keep their homes warm,” said Health Ministry spokesman Kargar Norughli.

“In the last few days, 35 children were killed by pneumonia in two districts of Badakhshan Province and more than 30 others by avalanches in the last few weeks,” Abdul Marouf Rasekh, a spokesperson for the governor of Badakhshan said.

“I thought everybody was dead after an avalanche hit our village,” Ghulam Yahya, 48, from Eshkashim District in Badakhshan Province, told IRIN in Faizabad, the provincial capital. “I saw one of our relatives die after being trapped in the snow for hours. Many houses were destroyed by the avalanche.”

NGO Save The Children has launched a rapid response to get help to families as more heavy snowfall is predicted for this coming week and temperatures are expected to drop as low as minus 17 degrees centigrade.

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source www.irinnews.org

AFGHANISTAN: IDPs at a crossroads

Photo: Mohammad Popal/IRIN

Besmillah’s two-year old daughter, Nazia, looks out from their mud-hut, which doesn’t even have a door, in the capital, Kabul

KABUL,  – Thousands of internally displaced persons (IDPs) in Afghanistan, mainly from the strife-torn southern provinces, have been heading for Kabul in the hope of finding work and a better life, but most end up living in appalling conditions in makeshift camps.

Besmillah (he goes by just the one name), 38, fled the southern province of Helmand with his five children and wife two years ago after a rocket landed in his compound.

“Because I was a poor farmer we didn’t have a lot of valuable stuff, but we couldn’t even bring our clothes with us,” Besmillah told IRIN.

He and his family now live in a mud-hut in a makeshift settlement in eastern Kabul. He has not been able to find work and the government has not provided him with shelter.

“This winter killed my three-year-old child as I couldn’t fix the holes in my hut and I wasn’t able to buy fuel or wood for a Bukhari [heater],” he said.

According to the Afghan Health Ministry, more than 20 children have frozen to death in these settlements over the past few weeks.

The UN Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) in its latest report said 2011 marked the fifth year in a row that civilian casualties had increased, with more than 3,000 civilian deaths in the ongoing conflict between Taliban and other insurgents and government forces backed by US-led foreign forces.

Many IDPs are attracted to Kabul by its relative safety and food availability, better access to health and education services, and perceived job opportunities.

However, Amnesty International (AI) says the government not only does not care about IDPs in the city but was also preventing aid from reaching them.

UN agencies and aid organizations are barred by the government from delivering effective aid to displaced communities or helping them in ways which imply the creation of permanent settlements: Instead of digging permanent wells, aid workers are forced to deliver water to displaced communities in tankers, said the AI report.

Government reaction

Islamuddin Jurat, a spokesman for the Ministry of Refugees and Repatriation (MoRR), said the government had not stopped anyone from helping IDPs and would never do that, but building permanent health clinics or a school, or a water supply system, was not something the government wanted.

“If we build a permanent infrastructure for them, they will stay in that place for ever. But they can’t as every plot they have settled on right now belongs to a government ministry of an individual.” He said he did not want to encourage migrants to head to Kabul or become aid dependent, adding that it was “not possible to bring the whole population to Kabul”.

Conflict-induced displacement, limited reintegration opportunities for returning refugees, the rapid growth of cities and the proliferation of informal settlements constituted an enormously complex challenge for the government, humanitarian and development actors in Afghanistan. Finding durable solutions would not be easy, Nader Farhad, a spokesperson for UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR), told IRIN.

However, Jurat said the government had plans to help IDPs settle outside Kabul: “We have drafted a plan to give IDPs shelter either in their own provinces or in any of the MoRR settlement areas in the other provinces around Kabul and we have sent the draft to the president for his approval.”

If the plan was signed off, he said, all IDPs in Kabul would be given shelter within a year.

UNCHR asks all stakeholders, including the government, to look for sustainable solutions for IDPs and develop a comprehensive and integrated developmental approach to tackle the problem of displacement in Afghanistan.

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source www.irinnews.org