Mission & Justice

Connie Levett; 13/8/08

The farmlands of West Africa look desperate to the untrained eye - sandy, barren and hostile. But despite much talk of desertification as the Sahara’s dunes creep ever southward, a quiet green miracle is taking place. And the efforts of an Australian development worker have provided the impetus for the homegrown project. More than 200 million new trees have grown up in the region in the past 20 years, reforesting 5 million hectares of semi-desert in the Sahel, a strip of land directly below the Sahara. A substantial part of that regrowth is due to regeneration of underground forests. The Dutch researcher Dr Chris Reij says the regreening is largely due to the farmers adapting their practices. The farmers have not planted and watered new trees but tended regrowth from seeds and dormant root systems. “The whole aspect of underground forests is you almost find, I don’t want to say as much biomass underground as you find above ground, but it’s obvious that the root systems of the trees that are now growing increasingly in parts of the Sahel are as important as what is above ground,” he says.

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Henrietta H. Fore; 12/8/08

Young people under the age of 25 make up more than 50 per cent of the population in the Middle East and North Africa. More than 100 million are between the ages of 15 and 29. Youth are three-and-a-half times as likely as older workers to be unemployed, and their sheer numbers tax already overstretched health and education systems. Yet, with this challenge comes a great demographic opportunity. A large youth generation is the region’s best hope for economic growth and progress. The last similar regional demographic bulge was in Southeast Asia in the late 1980s. The countries of that region harnessed the power and creativity of their young people and fuelled an economic boom, a boom that weathered multiple financial crises and continues to pay rich dividends today. Young people are energetic and productive workers. They are avid consumers of goods and services. And when the ratio between the working age population and the nonworking age group shifts in favour of those working - as will soon happen in the Middle East and North Africa - it opens up the door to even higher productivity and incomes.

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6/8/08

France’s foreign ministry has accused Rwanda of making “unacceptable accusations” in a report alleging that French politicians and military played an active role in the 1994 genocide. The report named 33 French military and political figures, including Dominique de Villepin, the former prime minister, and Francois Mitterrand, the late former president, who it said should be prosecuted. It also accused French troops of directly taking part in the slaughter, which killed 800,000 people. Romain Nadal, the foreign ministry spokesman, said on Wednesday: “This report contains unacceptable accusations made against French political and military officials.”

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Sarah-Jane Collins and Miki Perkins; 5/8/08
Riding home from his part-time job at KFC last October, 17-year-old Sudanese refugee Ajang Gor was attacked by a group of youths who shouted racist taunts at him. In an unprovoked assault they called him a “black c–t”, punched him and hit him over the head with a Bacardi Breezer bottle, before leaving the Melton resident unconscious on the road and stealing his mobile phone.

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Patricia Karvelas; 31/7/08

Asylum-seekers will be refused the dole but given greater rights to work and access to Medicare while they wait for their cases to be resolved. In a radical departure from the Howard government’s hardline policy, the Rudd Government will dramatically increase the rights and support granted to asylum-seekers. Under the changes unveiled by Immigration Minister Chris Evans yesterday, detention would be used only if department officials could show a person posed a security risk. If not, they would be released into the community until their status was determined. Senator Evans said he was aware of concerns that the current bridging visa arrangements can leave people in the community “without the capacity to work and earn a living or be in receipt of Medicare”.

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Cameron Stewart; 23/7/08

It is a drug that cost Fartun Farah her marriage and one she says is fuelling domestic violence across the nation’s African community. But what makes her story unusual is that the drug in question, khat, is legal in Australia despite being banned in other countries such as the US, Canada and New Zealand. Now Ms Farah and a group of Somali women in Melbourne are taking on the men in their own community by pushing for Australia to also ban khat - an African shrub that is chewed for amphetamine-like effect - saying it is destroying the social fabric of African communities. “Each month, we see women walking into our centre saying khat is destroying their family,” says Ms Farah, who heads the East African Women’s Foundation in Melbourne.

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Cynthia Johnston; 18/7/08

Nearly two-thirds of Egyptian men admit to having sexually harassed women in the most populous Arab country, and most say women themselves are to blame for their maltreatment, a survey shows. The forms of harassment reported by Egyptian men, whose country attracts millions of foreign tourists each year, include touching or ogling women, shouting sexually explicit remarks, and exposing their genitals to women. “Sexual harassment has become an overwhelming and very real problem experienced by all women in Egyptian society, often on a daily basis,” said the report by the Egyptian Centre for Women’s Rights.

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Alain Navarro; 10/6/08

In Sudan, gum arabic is “manna” from heaven and a key ingredient in iconic brands of globalisation despite US sanctions on this African country listed as a state sponsor of terror in Washington. Hands covered in balls of see-through resin, Issam Siddig is categorical: Gum arabic is the food which both the Bible and the Koran say fell from heaven to save the Israelites from starvation during their sojourn in the Sinai Desert. “Manna, it’s the bread of heaven. Allah expelled Adam and Eve from paradise to Darfur, giving them manna to survive,” said the boss of Mannafibre Company. For him the acacia sap is a “pure miracle”. In Saharan Africa, the gum grows west to east, from Senegal to Somalia. Sudan is the world powerhouse of “manna”, providing more than half the total and the best variety, known as Hashab.

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2/7/08

Hundreds of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip have stormed the Egyptian gate at the Rafah crossing, clashing with security forces. Palestinian youth on Wednesday threw rocks at Egyptian soldiers, who responded in kind, keeping the crowd at bay with water cannons. At least six border guards were hurt in the exchange, Reuters news agency reported, citing an Egyptian police source. Television footage showed some Palestinians were also wounded. Egypt opened the crossing for two days to allow in Palestinians who need medical treatment not available in Gaza, and for Palestinians to return home.

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Natalie O’Brien; 28/6/08

The USA Government told the head of Australia’s spy agency ASIO that it wanted to render Mamdouh Habib to Egypt for questioning, but the then ASIO chief, Dennis Richardson, has never publicly admitted the official approach was made. The startling revelations come from his successor, Paul O’Sullivan, who said Mr Richardson was told about the rendition plan by a US government official weeks before the Sydney father of four was “kidnapped” and sent to Egypt, where prisoners are known to be tortured. This contradicts the Howard government’s claims it had no knowledge of Mr Habib’s rendition until after he had been transferred to Egypt. Mr Richardson, who was questioned in Senate estimates hearings about his knowledge of Mr Habib’s rendition to Egypt, has never admitted the US had told him of the possibility or that he had told the US that Australia would not condone it.

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