http://www.africanpress.me/ API’s Elizabeth M. Koikai (Left) with Kari Gran of Norway’s Bymisjon Organization during an interview in her office on 13th of June.2012

The Begging epidemic brought about by the Roma gypsies is causing uneasiness in big cities in Norway. Many of the beggars have descended on the streets of Oslo due to lack of jobs and opportunities back in their country. Many of them turn to begging to support their families back in Romania. Norwegian political parties are trying to come to an agreement on how to stop the menace.

However, according to Kari Gran who works as a chairperson at Kirkens Bymisjon a Christian-based humanitarian organization, claims that Romanian beggars need help rather than being discriminated. They are seen as outlaws and not as human beings. Kari Gran adds that most Roma gypsies are willing to work. They come to Norway with the hope of finding employment rather than beg.

Kirkensbymisjon runs a cafe called the meeting place. It is a shelter where beggars, drug addicts and homeless people get meals at a reasonable price. The organization conducts outreach work among men and women who are battling substance abuse around Oslo area. They also act as a link to doctors, social services among others.

Kirkens Bymisjon co operates with other humanitarian organizations like Red Cross and Caritas which work effortlessly to help the less fortunate in the society. Their hopes are that the politicians will work together and find a long-lasting solution that will help humans beings who are languishing in the streets.

Below: API’s Elizabeth M. Koikai interviews Kari Gran of Bymisjon Organization in Oslo, Norway;

http://www.africanpress.me/ API’s Elizabeth interviews Kari Gran of Bymisjon, Norway

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Related story:

• Norway: A magnet for beggars

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Photo: Godfrey Mwampembwa/Nation Media Group

 

LODWAR/LOKICHAR,  – Although just a few hundred kilometres from Nairobi, the county of Turkana, where newly confirmed oil reserves are set to go on stream in the next few years, feels more like a million miles away from the gleaming skyscrapers and concentrations of power and money found in Kenya’s capital.

Residents of Lokichar, the closest settlement to the viable oil concession, speak of “Kenya” as if it were an entirely different country and of “Kenyans” – or “the people with long trousers” – as if they were foreigners.

Turkana’s socioeconomic indicators do indeed set it apart. More than 96 percent of its predominantly pastoralist population are categorized as poor, the highest proportion in the country. Turkana also trails near the bottom of national leagues in terms of employment, literacy and healthcare spending. 

Only 39 percent of the youth aged 15-18 in Turkana attend school, compared to the national average of 70.9 percent. 

Can oil, coupled with an unprecedented process of political devolution enshrined in a new constitution, reverse Turkana’s fortunes?

In Lodwar, the region’s main town, where the principal economic activity has long been basket-weaving, there are few positive signs.

Among the new businesses springing up is the Ngamia-1 Mobile Phone Repair Shop, named after the promising oil well. There are also several new hotels, guest houses and restaurants. 

Formerly half-empty flights to Lodwar now tend to be fully booked.

Hopes

As climate change, cattle-raiding and agricultural development erode the viability and attraction of the pastoralist livelihood, many in Turkana hope some of their most pressing needs will soon be met.

“Until recently many people did not know what oil as a resource means. Most of them were asking if water could instead be drilled for them,” said Lokichar resident Robert Kamaro. 

“The government needs to build schools for our children, drill boreholes. We believe that we will benefit, especially the vulnerable,” Simon Esekwen, who lives close to Lokichar, told IRIN.

Lodwar resident and doctor Lawrence Lomuria said the oil discovered was an opportunity for the Turkana people to embrace education. “We do not need to fear education; this can act as a motivator for the Turkana to study and to do well.”

Photo: Ann Weru/IRIN

Oil futures? Youths in Lokichar hope the find will lead to jobs and prospects

“Oil is being seen as a ladder to help the people go up,” said Christopher Ekaru Loskipat, coordinator of the Catholic Peace and Justice Commission (CPJC) in Lodwar.

“When the companies come here, the local people expect employment. If this is not done, we are anticipating conflict. What will the government trickle down as the benefit to the community?” he asked.

“We are happy with the oil find,” Lokichar resident Lokapel Katilu told IRIN. “We pray that the find is real. We are just idle, there is no work. We just walk around. Before, we would rely on grazing, but the herds have been stolen.”

One young resident, who left school before completing his primary education, said: “We understand that we have limited skills, but we would want all those casual jobs given to us.” 

No jobs bonanza

But according to oil industry analyst Antony Goldman, no major jobs bonanza is on the horizon.

“Typically oil is capital- rather than labour-intensive: unlike mining, it does not yield many unskilled or semi-skilled jobs,” he told IRIN.

“In the case of an inland discovery, there may be pipeline construction jobs, and oil does bring – in the boom period of expansion – a range of opportunities in the service sector… The question is the extent to which indigenous communities can compete for any but the most basic tasks,” added Goldman, a director of Promedia Consulting, a London-based risk analysis consultancy.

Katilu said that to date he knew of only a few people who had found oil-related work, “to control traffic and to prevent people from accessing the rig site”.

Lokichar resident Kamaro said there was a widespread fear that lack of local skills would “lead to people from Kenya coming in” to the area.

People here “are afraid of an influx of foreigners, that there will be congestion, that the foreigners will bring diseases, that their culture will be polluted,” said Kamaro. 

Others have warned that any oil rush could lead to a rise in crime, prostitution and sexual exploitation of minors.

Child protection challenges

“The coming of oil to an `illiterate’ community will mean an influx of expertise and money and in exchange maybe there will be child protection challenges,” warned Eunice Majuma Wasike, a children’s officer with the Catholic Diocese of Lodwar.

“If we can empower the community to know about child protection, have legal officers to take up cases pro-bono, have rescue centres in place, then this would help us in addressing the potential protection challenges.”

Photo: Ann Weru/IRIN

The Ngamia-1 oil well

For Joseph Elim, coordinator of Riam Riam, a local NGO, “there is a need to manage people’s expectations. Information should be unpacked and the people mobilized to receive information, and feedback collected and monitored.” 

“I heard some people ask, `What will happen to pastoralists?’ or `Will they deport us to Sudan?’ There is a need for information to counter the alarmists. The people are saying: `We do not want people with long trousers coming here because they have colluded with those who have sold the land’,” he added.

These attitudes chime with Goldman’s analysis that in the longer term the real impact of the oil find will be on “land prices and government revenue… The challenge for the industry in Kenya will be to develop an inclusive strategy that benefits all stakeholders,” he said.

Patrick Imana, an official with the Agency for Pastoralist Development (APaD), another local NGO, put it more bluntly: “Will we see militias like in Nigeria or the elite looting oil riches?” 

Mindful of the “resource curse” risks that have plagued other African countries with major oil reserves, the Kenyan government has professed its commitment to ensuring “natural resources should generate long-term economic and social benefits for the country and in particular for the host communities.”

“This will involve reviewing the existing legal and regulatory framework to conform to best international practice and to align it with the new constitutional dispensation,” the Ministry of Energy adds on its website.

There are hopes that the new constitution, adopted with overwhelming public support in 2010, will help reverse decades of marginalization and check the endemic corruption that continues to pervade the highest echelons of power in Nairobi. (In Transparency International’s 2011 corruption index, Kenya was ranked 154 out of 182 countries, i.e. near the bottom). 

“Devolution will help to remove fear. We will have a county assembly in Lodwar,” said APAD’s Imana. “We need a vibrant county assembly with civil society activists to take the government to task,” he added.

Title deeds

People in Turkana are also worried about being left out of any appreciation of land prices that are likely to arise from development of the oil field. Land in the county is communally owned, and managed by the county council.

“When the oil was found, people started saying, `Now we are in Kenya, good things are coming out of this place’. But coming from a pastoral community that did not attach monetary value to land, now [they wonder]: `What about this whole mass of land that investors are going to be interested in’?” explained Riam Riam’s Elim.

“Here we do not have title deeds, people live without documents,” said the CPJC’s Loskipat.

“The situation will be threatening for those without land documents and some people may capitalize on this. There is a possibility that at the end of the day the vulnerable will easily give away their land or sell it at throwaway prices,” he said.

Others fear that the Turkana people’s closest neighbours and historical resource-conflict adversaries, the Pokot, may also try to claim land near the oil installations.

“There is a need for security to protect us from the hostile communities around us,” warned Elim, noting that the region was awash with small arms.

“We need to wake up from the slumber [delusion] that if the people are attacked, it is [just] their culture, or a normal conflict around water and pasture: oil will raise the stakes,” he added.

And for some, the very concept of individual land ownership is as alien as the “men in long trousers”. “How can you sell soil?” asked one young man in Lokichar.

aw/am/cb
source www.irinnews.org

Photo: Alexis Adele/IRIN

Attempts to fix rice prices are not working

ABIDJAN,  – Some 320,000 people in Côte d’Ivoire are grappling with hunger partly because they cannot afford the high prices of imported rice, but government efforts to bring down the cost of the staple food are so far not working well.
 
More than half of the country’s cereal intake is rice, but just half of the national requirement is produced domestically, making Ivoirians heavily dependent on imported rice. Government statistics record some 837,000mt imported in 2010, and 819,061mt in 2009.
 
In March 2012, the price of imported rice was 68 to 92 US cents per kg – 30 to 50 percent more than the five-year average, depending on where the market was located – while locally grown rice cost 55 to 77 US cents per kg, making it 15 percent more expensive.
 
The price of manioc – another staple food, also known as cassava – which is heavily consumed in western Côte d’Ivoire, has gone up by 70 percent.
 
Food insecurity is most severe in the north and west, where hundreds of thousands of people were displaced in the election-related violence that overtook much of the country from 2010 to 2011, when they could not access their fields to plant crops.
 
Some 260,000 people in the west are moderately or severely food insecure, and 60,000 are food insecure in the north, according to the World Food Programme (WFP). On average these families spend over half of their daily income on food.  
 
Prices in the north also are coming under increasing upward pressure because many of the available grains are being exported to neighbouring Burkina Faso and Mali, which are experiencing widespread hunger.  
 
Some 1.1 million people in Burkina Faso and 3.5 million in Mali are food-insecure or malnourished, according to government statistics; while just over half the international aid responses for the two countries are funded – 53 percent for Burkina Faso and 52 percent for Mali – according to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.

The latest nutrition survey in Côte d’Ivoire, carried out in late 2011 – another one will take place in July 2012 – put the global acute malnutrition rate in the west at 4.7 percent, and in the rest of the country at 7.7 percent.
 
However, chronic malnutrition in children younger than five years ranges from 35 percent in the south to 43.6 percent in the north, which WFP described as “quite alarming”. Because of these figures, WFP is extending its emergency food programmes in Côte d’Ivoire until the end of October of 2012.  
 
“Rice has become gold”
 
In early April 2012 the government tried to regulate prices by imposing guidelines: the most widely consumed rice should cost between 207 and 317 cfa (40 to 60 US cents) per kg; semi-luxe rice should be sold at 362 to 543 cfa (70 cents to $1.05); and fragrant rice at 710 to 760 cfa ($1.38 to $1.48) per kg.
 
But six weeks later these measures have not yet been implemented at most of the main markets in Abidjan, the commercial capital. “Every time the government announces a drop in food prices, when you go to the market two or three days later you see nothing has changed,” said Françoise Etilé, a housewife from the Yopougon area of Abidjan.  
 
In many markets rice prices have gone up even more. “Rice has become gold,” said Etilé. “Already families are only eating one meal a day, and now we’re heading towards one meal every two days.” Traders say they are not to blame for the high prices, which are experienced globally and dictated by international markets.
 
“Each time he [Minister of Commerce Dagobert Banzio] accuses of us of causing the rises, but this is not true,” Salif N’diaye, a big rice vendor in Abidjan’s Marcory neighbourhood, told IRIN. He closes his shop for several days each time a new price category is announced, “Otherwise my stock would disappear.”
 
Price-watching teams
 
The government is now taking stronger measures and sending monitoring teams to markets to verify prices. “We have given three months for them [traders] to sort this out, to see prices significantly drop. Some show good willing but others still refuse – it’s deplorable,” Banzio told IRIN.
 
Ginaluca Ferrera, head of WFP in Côte d’Ivoire, welcomed the government’s proactive approach. “The government does not want to wait for foreign aid – it is good that they are trying to help with macroeconomic measures,” he said, but noted that discussions must be held with importers and traders so that compromise solutions can be found.
 
Fixing rice prices is difficult in today’s globalized marketplace, said Marie Noelle Koyara, head of the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) in Côte d’Ivoire, and would probably not be in line with development strategies agreed with the World Bank and International Monetary Fund.  
 
Likewise, further reducing taxes on rice, which were cut in March, or subsidising prices would be expensive for the state, and would not necessarily lead to a significant drop in prices, given the role of external market forces in raising rice prices, Koyara added.
 
Rather than setting fixed prices, it would be more effective to clamp down on outside factors like racketeering, which push up the price of cereals, and to significantly boost rice production, the FAO said, noting that the government has put in place a project to boost rice production to 1.9 million mt by 2016, and aims to reach 2.1 million mt by 2018.
 
At the end of March the government tried to counter the racketeering associated with high prices, but observers say not enough is being done to stop the widespread criminality and banditry in the north and west, where ex-combatants or criminal gangs set up roadblocks to extract money from transporters or to loot their goods.
 
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source www.irinnews.org

The Office of the Prosecutor has submitted an amended application to ICC Judges for an arrest warrant against Sylvestre Mucadumura, for 5 counts of crimes against humanity (murder, inhumane acts, rape, torture and persecution) and 9 counts of war crimes (attack against a civilian population, murder, mutilation, cruel treatment, rape, torture, destruction of property, pillaging and outrage upon personal dignity). The new application follows ICC Judges’ decision to dismiss a previous application, considering that this application fell short of the proper level of specificity.

The Prosecution considers that Sylvestre Mudacumura is Supreme Commander of the FDLR-FOCA, one of the most active militias in the Kivu Provinces of the DRC, and is allegedly responsible for a campaign of violence targeting civilians in these provinces.

ICC judges have already issued one arrest warrant for Bosco Ntaganda, leader of the CNDP militia, another armed group actives in the Kivu provinces. The Prosecution has also sought to add new charges against him on May 14, 2012. Both these men lead armed and dangerous militias and their arrest can lead to stopping the crimes and bringing justice to the populations they continue to afflict.

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source ICC

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Photo: Jaspreet Kindra/IRIN

Millet prices suffered further hikes (file photo)

DAKAR/OUAGADOUGOU,  – Unexpectedly sharp price rises in April for local cereals like millet, rice and maize in parts of Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger and Chad mean many vulnerable people in the drought-hit Sahel could find it even harder to get enough to eat.

The high prices of basic foods are the most alarming feature of the current Sahel crisis, according to the Famine Early Warning Systems Network (FEWS NET) of the US Agency for International Development (USAID). Prices are expected to keep rising until the end of August – during the lean season – but the size of recent hikes has surprised food price analysts and humanitarian aid personnel.

In Burkina Faso’s capital, Ouagadougou, local millet is 85 percent above the five-year average, and in Mali’s capital, Bamako, it is more than double, said Jean-Martin Bauer, the Food Security Monitoring Systems leader at the UN World Food Programme (WFP).

In Ouagadougou a 100kg bag of millet cost 26,000 cfa (US$49) in May 2012, compared to 15,000 cfa ($28) in May 2011, while in Bamako a 100kg bag of millet cost 28,500 cfa ($53) this year but only 14,000 cfa ($26) a year ago, according to UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) monthly reports.

This volatility – when prices move outside of historical minimum or maximum increases, as they did in April – is as important to watch as steadily rising levels, said Gary Eilerts, Programme Manager at FEWS NET. Aid agencies say the very poor, who own no land or animals of their own and must buy most of their food, are worst affected.

Why are local grains so expensive?

The price of key foods is still very high across the globe. In February 2011 they reached a historic peak, partly linked to the rise in bio-fuel costs, the impact of speculation, and high oil prices, dropping by six percent in March 2012.

Analysts have questioned why these global price trends have also touched millet and sorghum – grains that are consumed in the Sahel but not globally.

While each Sahelian country has its own specific price dynamic – markets are disrupted in Mali partly because of conflict and displacement for instance – many of the answers can be found in Nigeria, which supplies half of West Africa’s cereal needs, Bauer noted.

Economic growth in Nigeria has boosted domestic grain demand for human consumption, as animal feed, to produce beer, and for other uses, yet even steeply rising production – Mali and Niger produced 5 million mt of these grains plus other cereals in 2010 – cannot keep up with demand.

Ghana, too, has mounting consumption rates of these and other grains in its booming, oil-fuelled economy; and it has also been pushing agro-industrial development, including large poultry farms, which require grain as feed.

The Niger-Nigeria price differential for grains “is still what it should be”, Bauer said. One kg of millet costs 222 cfa (45 US cents) in Maradi, a trading hub in southern Niger, and 200 cfa (40 US cents) across the border in Nigeria, which means exports are flowing normally. But Nigeria’s capacity to respond to demands in the Sahel has weakened.

A 50 percent fuel price rise in January 2012 has increased food transport costs. Boko Haram – a jihadist group using violent means to establish Sharia law in northern Nigeria – caused the government to close the eastern border, bringing slowdowns in trade in western Chad and Niger. However, Chad, northern Cameroon and Niger are all still tapping into the same supply pool.

“Demand is getting stronger by the day, while supplies across the Sahel are approaching their seasonal low,” said Bauer.

Narrowing gap

The dynamic is unusual. The price of imported grains is traditionally much higher than local grains, but this gap is “seriously narrowing”, said Bauer. For instance, imported rice usually costs roughly twice as much as local millet – as it did in May 2011 – but now a 50kg bag of millet in Bamako sells for 28,500 cfa ($54), while a bag of imported rice costs 35,000 cfa ($66), and 50kg of locally grown rice is priced at 42,500 ($81).

FEWS NET’s Eilerts said other reasons for the sharp price rise in April may be because traders think institutions (governments, aid agencies) are still interested in buying large quantities of food, but “it might start raining, which means prices will drop,” he said.

Buy cautiously

FEWS NET warns that in this context, “local and regional procurement [by aid agencies] should proceed cautiously”. Governments are by far the biggest grain buyers in West Africa, but WFP, a significant purchaser, is careful to buy only off-market grains from long-term national stocks in Nigeria so as to limit the risks to local markets.

Rather than only buying grain to distribute, WFP is also boosting its cash voucher distributions in Niger, Mali, Senegal, northern Cameroon and Burkina Faso. The amounts given will not be able to keep up with rising prices, but a small buffer is built in to absorb some of the anticipated monthly price increases during the lean season, said Margie Rehm, WFP’s cash-for-change programme officer. WFP has calculated that a household in Niger would receive vouchers worth 32,500 cfa ($62) per month, and one in Mali would get 25,000-36,000 cfa ($47-68), depending on where it is located.

Market interventions

Many agencies, including the international NGO, Oxfam, say that given the right market conditions, cash vouchers can be an important social protection mechanism for poor households. Several other interviewees said less targeted measures – such as subsidies or reduced taxes on cereals, which the government is taking to try to control prices – are expensive and inefficient because the rich also benefit.

Mali has lowered taxes on imported rice. Niger, Chad and Mauritania have made subsidized grains available. The new government in Senegal is attempting to bring down cereal prices through consultations with importers, distributors and consumer groups. Burkina Faso has tried to fund selected traders to sell staple grains at reduced prices, but they did not respect the contract and the government now aims to open shops in 182 communes, selling rice at $14 per 25kg bag.

Such temporary measures to control costs “do have a role”, but historically they have been “very difficult to implement – subsidies generally don’t work well in West Africa – they can end up making problems worse”, said one food price specialist.

The Mali and Burkina Faso governments also banned grain exports, but blocking borders usually doesn’t work, said Eilerts. “People just try harder and pay more to get around them, and farmers, seeing a blocked market, may be disincentivized to produce, pushing down production,” which can have the opposite effect, he told IRIN.

Given chronic food deficiencies and malnutrition in the Sahel, governments need to set up safety nets that work in the long term, and can also be ratcheted up in an emergency, several interviewees told IRIN. “If measures are already in place, when the drought comes, governments should be able to shift gears,” said Bauer.

Aid efforts across the Sahel are currently keeping millions of people alive, but the aid “remains insufficient to fully mitigate food insecurity in northern Mali, parts of Burkina Faso, and western Niger”, FEWS NET said in its May briefing.

“We can do more to avoid catastrophe,” the UN Emergency Relief Coordinator, Valerie Amos, said at a press conference on 24 May in the Senegalese capital, Dakar. “We need good leadership, strong coordination; each country needs a comprehensive response plan and funding from the humanitarian community.”

Some $715 million of the $1 billion required for food and nutrition aid across the Sahel has been committed, according to the 18 May snapshot from the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), which estimates that non-food sectors like health, clean water, education and protection bring the needs to at least $1.5 billion.

Agriculture, livestock and non-food sectors are severely underfunded. In the emergency appeal for Chad, funding for education is at only 6 percent of the requested amount, and for water and sanitation just 8 percent, while in Niger’s appeal, education is 0 percent funded, with water and sanitation at 18 percent, according to OCHA.

“An integrated response is needed,” Amos told IRIN. ”Healthcare is particularly important, clean water and sanitation are critical, and we need to go beyond immediate relief efforts to support people’s livelihoods in the long term.”

aj/bo/he
source www.irinnews.org