Mission & Justice

14/10/08

Scores of Somali migrants are feared drowned off the coast of Yemen after traffickers forced them overboard in the Gulf of Aden. The UN refugee agency said on Friday that up to 100 people were believed to have died after around 150 people were told to swim for their lives about 5km from the shore. Peter Kessler of UNHCR told Al Jazeera that his agency was working with the Yemeni coastguard in an attempt to find the missing migrants but there was little chance they would be found alive. “There is almost no hope, these are mostly women, some children, some men, of course they are very often poor swimmers,” he said.

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13/10/08

Graca Machel, wife of Nelson Mandela and Mozambique’s former first lady, has pleaded with schools to take more action to prevent children being kidnapped and sold into prostitution. The human rights campaigner said Mozambique was being targeted by child traffickers because it did little to protect the young. “The vulnerability of many schools arises from the fact they are not protected by walls or fences, and have no security guards. Anyone can enter,” she said. “Pupils, particularly girls, are exposed to the risk of falling into the hands of criminals, who kidnap them for forced labour or for prostitution.” Police are investigating at least two cases where children were recently kidnapped from a primary school in the southern city of Matola.

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Najad Abdullahi; 11/10/08

Somali pirates have accused European firms of dumping toxic waste off the Somali coast and are demanding an $8m ransom for the return of a Ukranian ship they captured, saying the money will go towards cleaning up the waste. The ransom demand is a means of “reacting to the toxic waste that has been continually dumped on the shores of our country for nearly 20 years”, Januna Ali Jama, a spokesman for the pirates, based in the semi-autonomous region of Puntland, said. “The Somali coastline has been destroyed, and we believe this money is nothing compared to the devastation that we have seen on the seas.” The pirates are holding the MV Faina, a Ukrainian ship carrying tanks and military hardware, off Somalia’s northern coast.

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7/9/08

Up to 500 people are feared to have been buried in their homes after a mountain landslide crushed a town on the outskirts of Egypt’s capital. At least 30 people have been declared dead and 35 injured after at least eight rocks, some measuring 30m high, buried more than 50 homes in the poor district of Manshiyet Nasron on Saturday, officials said. A six-storey building was reduced to rubble by the rockfall, one witness said. Hassan Ibrahim Hassan, 80, whose house escaped the destruction, said: “It was horror. “The power went out, we heard a loud bang like an earthquake, and I thought this house had collapsed. “I went out and I saw the whole mountain had collapsed.”

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Abdulaziz Bin Mohammad Arrukban; 5/9/08

For millions of Muslims, the holy month of Ramadan is a time to reflect on the good and bad events of the year gone by and an opportunity to think about others less fortunate than ourselves. When I was a child, my parents used to tell me to view fasting during Ramadan as a privilege - I have the luxury of being able to choose when and what to eat. I was taught that during this time I should pause and think about those less fortunate than myself, and that I should try to help these people in any way I can, whether by dedicating time and energy, or by giving zakat (tithe). Today, I recall my parents’ words and their mild instruction on solidarity and moral duty for all of us. Last week, just before Ramadan, I witnessed for myself the suffering of fellow Muslims much less fortunate than me. I had the opportunity of going to the town of Waajid in South Central Somalia. I also went to the refugee camp in Dadaab in northeastern Kenya to which over 210,000 Somalis have fled. What I saw is a real humanitarian crisis for Somalis.I went to an old hospital in Waajid where displaced persons, who had fled the fighting in Mogadishu, had spontaneously settled. The hospital itself has been unused for almost 20 years and is unable to serve the local population for anything but shelter. There I saw women, children and the elderly in a malnourished state, living in very precarious conditions.

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Miki Perkinsl, 3/9/08

Accused murderer Clinton David Rintoull was allegedly drunk and frustrated when he left his Noble Park home wielding a metal pole and said “I guess I’ll go and take my anger out on some niggers”, a court heard yesterday. The two metal poles that Rintoull, 22, and his co-accused, Dylan Giuseppe Sabatino, 20, allegedly used to beat Sudanese teenager Liep Gony were bent out of shape and covered in blood when they returned home, according to statements tendered to a committal hearing at Melbourne Magistrates Court. Sabatino ran after Rintoull when he left the house and picked up a square iron bar from near the front door on his way out, according to a statement by his former girlfriend, Shandelle Laurie, 18.

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Habib Toumi, 15/8/08

Tunisian women celebrated their national day amid calls by their first lady for greater involvement of women in scientific research and a better contribution in promoting knowledge “for the sake of a durable and balanced development of the nation.” Tunisia, regarded as the most advanced Arab country in women’s rights and political, social and economic empowerment, has been celebrating Women’s Day on August 13 since 1957 when the Personal Status Law was promulgated and hailed as a great step forward by the predominantly Muslim North African country. The celebrations, marked by a public holiday, provide an opportunity to assess the progress achieved by women and to plan the year ahead.

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Frank Nyakairu; 13/8/08

Ugandan authorities have launched a mass circumcision drive with the hope it will reduce HIV/AIDS rates in the east African country. Some studies indicate circumcision could be 70 per cent effective in protecting men against infection by the disease during heterosexual intercourse, when used in conjunction with condoms and other safe-sex practices. Government officials in Kampala have decided to take advantage of a month-long traditional “circumcision season” practiced by some tribes to drive the message home. “Socially, it is uniting, and now it has also been proven medically, that is gratifying and it is part and parcel of now the strategy for fighting AIDS,” Kibale Wambi, chairman of Sironko district in eastern Uganda, said.

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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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