Afro-Netizen

Shell's Settlement Doesn't Hide Unsettling Reality in Nigeria

By Stephen Kretzmann
Republished courtesy of Huffington Post
 
After thirteen years and countless hours by lawyers, community members, and activists around the world, Royal Dutch Shell finally settled the Wiwa v Shell case in a New York court for $15.5 million.

Plaintiffs in the case, which included Ken Saro-Wiwa Jr., and the families of other Ogoni men hanged in November 1995, charged that the Royal Dutch/Shell company, its Nigerian subsidiary, and the former chief of its Nigerian operation, Brian Anderson, with complicity in the torture, killing, and other abuses of Ogoni leader Ken Saro-Wiwa and other non-violent Nigerian activists in the mid-1990s in the Ogoni region of the Niger Delta.

Shell says they settled the case as a "humanitarian gesture" to the Ogoni. Does anyone really believe that after fighting for more than a decade to keep this out of court, Shell suddenly woke up and felt great compassion for the Ogoni? Please.

Shell settled because they were scared, and they knew the evidence against them was overwhelming. They publicly say they had nothing to do with the execution of Ken Saro-Wiwa and the other Ogoni, and yet there were documents and video that they fought hard to keep out of the public eye.

Evidence that was to be introduced in the case included an internal Shell memo where the head of Shell Nigeria offered to intervene on Saro-Wiwa's behalf, if only Saro-Wiwa and others would stop claiming that Shell had made payments to the military.

Then there was this memo, requesting payment to the Nigerian military for an incident in which at least one Ogoni man died.

Witness were set to testify that they saw Shell vehicles transporting Nigerian soldiers, that they saw Shell employees conferring with the military, that they saw money being exchanged between Shell employees and military officers, and that they heard military officers, including the brutal Major Okuntimo of the Rivers State Internal Security Task Force, make admissions regarding the work they were doing on behalf of Shell.

We have known some of Shell's involvement in this tragedy for a long time. In early May of 1994, Ken Saro-Wiwa Sr. faxed me a memo authored by Major Okuntimo which read "Shell operations still impossible unless ruthless military operations are undertaken for smooth economic activities to commence" and further called for "pressure on oil companies for prompt regular inputs".

I received that fax and immediately called Ken. He said "this is it. They're going to kill us all. All for Shell." It was the last time I talked with him. Several weeks later he was arrested on the trumped up charges for which he was ultimately hanged.

In the last day, lots of people have asked me if $15.5 million is enough to compensate for the hanging of nine men, the death of thousands more, and for the destruction of an ecosystem. No of course not. But was it on par with what a jury would have awarded in this case? Yes, lawyers tell me, for sure.

More importantly, does the settlement bring relief to Ken Wiwa jr and the families of the other men who were executed? If you read Ken's thoughtful and moving piece in the Guardian , the answer is clearly yes. That alone should be cause for celebration.

Ken Sr.'s famous last words from the gallows were "lord take my soul but the struggle continues". In this moment, perhaps more than ever before, we need to heed that call to action. The settlement in this case brings satisfaction to the plaintiffs for an event that happened 14 years ago. It in no way, shape or form excuses or absolves Shell of their ongoing destruction of the Niger Delta environment

One of the central complaints of Niger Delta communities for forty years has been gas flaring, which sends plumes of toxic pollutants into the air and water of the Niger Delta. Gas flaring endangers human health, harms local ecosystems, emits huge amounts of greenhouse gases, wastes vast quantities of natural gas, and is against Nigerian law. Shell does it nowhere else in the world in volumes that are even remotely comparable to what they flare in the Delta.

But Shell is still flaring gas in Nigeria.

While there is no doubt that the settlement represented a significant victory for the plaintiffs' in this one human rights case against Shell, true justice will not be served as long as the people of Nigeria continue to suffer the terrible impact of Shell's operations. Shell estimates it would cost about $3 billion -- only 10% of just their last year's profits -- to end Shell's gas flaring in Nigeria once and for all.

But instead of putting their great "humanitarian concern" into action, Shell points the finger at the Nigerian government and demands that they pay to end this practice.

Send a message to Shell's CEO Jeroen van der Veer, and let him know that if he really wants to prove his great concern for the Ogoni people, he'll end gas flaring once and for all.

The struggle continues.

President Barack Obama addresses the Muslim world from Cairo, Egypt with historic speech

White Privilege in the Americas

By Aisha Brown & Dedrick Muhammad
Guest Contributors

"Usted quien es ... Gánese el baloto para que se cambie el color."

"Who do you think you are?...Go win the lottery and change your color," a metro policeman whispered to Afro-Colombian leader Carlos Rosero, founding member of the Black Community Process (PCN).  Rather than just being an isolated incident of racism in Latin America, this incident gives us a mirror, an insight as to how white privilege prevails in Latin America.

Latin America has a long history of white privilege and white supremecy, including: is colored with white privilege, from its political roots:  U.S. implementation of Jim Crow in the Panama Canal, brutal Dominican dictatorship that erased African presence from its history and its culture, the massacre of hundreds of thousands indigenous Mayans in Guatemala, and blancismento (whitetification) in Argentina (South America) in which governments actively recruited Europeans to emigrate to their nations in order to "whiten" the society of its heavily indigenous and African populations.

To its social implications, white privilege has permeated Latin America's everyday language: "pelo malo" versus "pelo bueno" (good hair vs. bad hair), negrita used as both an insult and "term of endearment" for Latinos with "darker features," and referring to one another by our race or complexion morena, trigueña, indio, zambo.

On March 31, 2009, Grupo Afro Descendiente sponsored a discussion entitled, "White Privilege in Latin America: Myths and Realities" as part of White Privilege Awareness Week.  The panel featured indigenous persons from Peru and Guatemala, an afro descendant from Cuba, a mestiza from Mexico, and an African immigrant from Cote d'Ivoire.  Each panelist shared personal accounts, reflections on their experience with white privilege in Latin America.

What we found was that white privilege began and has been reinforced in society through socio-economic manipulation, cultural jokes/stereotypes, and paternalism often implemented by the Catholic Church and more recently the Evangelical movement.  In every country in Latin America one will find that people of color are often the poorest, least educated, and least empowered/politically engaged in the society.

Even though there are high levels of integration in Latin America, intense segregation still exists.  Often indigenous and Afro descendant populations live apart in communities that are somewhat isolated from the mainstream.  This is prevalent throughout Central and South America among the garifuna and other indigenous Latin Americans.  The country of Nicaragua for example is virtually divided into two countries by the rainforest: the West mostly inhabited by whites and the East populated mostly by people of color.

This segregation is highlighted by the lack of Afro and indigenous presence on Latin American television.  There are very few reflections of people of color in the Latino media.  Sabado Gigante, the most popular variety program throughout all of Latin America is the greatest example of this phenomenon.  With the exception of the occasional reggaeton or bachata artist and/or a futbol player, people of color are largely excluded as members of the cast and even in the audience of the popular program.  Internalized racism of Latin Americans has led our community to deny or reject their African and/or indigenous heritage.  This practice further reinforces the idealization of whites in our society.

Further complicating the issue of white privilege for Latinos is living in a nation who has a different type of racial hierarchy than our homelands.  The identity of Latino has practically become a racial category in this country.   If you do not fit in the U.S. perceptions of Black or white or Asian (yes there are Asian Latinos) you are designated as "Latino."  In the United States white supremacy followed the one drop rule, one drop of Black or Indigenous blood or any visible signs of these ancestries would exclude individuals of white privilege and condemn one to racialized disenfranchisement.  The "one drop" of blood was almost in reverse in Latin America; one drop of European blood or visible characteristics of European ancestry granted one access to some degree of white privilege and wealth, helping open the door for some people of color in Latin America to become part of the white elite of the country.

Like in many capitalist societies, money can buy privilege, but in Latin America it can also buy your whiteness.  For generations Latin Americans have paid to change their race on their identification cards. Purchasing one's whiteness has historically been a common practice for many Latinos of African descent. Yet this practice did not challenge white supremacy rather it found a loophole to gain access to white privilege.   

Our discussion of white privilege and the diverse racial characteristics of our communities allowed us to see that though the white supremacist socio-economic orders of our homelands are different than the ones found in the U.S. the deconstruction of white privilege is something that is needed throughout the Americas.  

Aisha Brown is the  founder of the Global Awareness Project and is an associate of the Racial Wealth Divide Program of the Institute for Policy Studies. Dedrick Muhammad is a coordinator of the Racial Wealth Divide Project.

UN Conference on Racism, Botany, Animal Husbandry & Sodoku can't help but succeed

With anti-racist stalwarts including such nations as USA and Israel not in attendance, and Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as the event's opening comedy act, the United Nations Conference on Racism, Botany, Spelunking, Animal Husbandry & Sodoku began on Monday, April 20, 2009 in Geneva, Switzerland, 8 years after the World Conference on Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophia, Related Intolerance and Lint convened in Durban, South Africa.

With white male patriarchy fully dissolved domestically and abroad upon the historic inauguration of U.S. President Barack Obama, the remaining vestiges of intolerance will most certainly be wiped out by year's end.

Race and the Obama Administration

By Danny Glover
Republished courtesy of The Nation

In 2001 I traveled to Durban, South Africa, to join the tens of thousands of people who came to participate in the United Nations-sponsored World Conference Against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance. More than 2,000 came from the United States, a rainbow of people crossing all lines--racial, ethnic, national, language, immigration status, religious and much more--joining an equally diverse crowd from across the globe. It was an extraordinary opportunity to meet, discuss, argue and strategize over how to rid the world of these longstanding evils.

Our participation paralleled that of the official US delegation. And that's where we faced a huge challenge. The Bush administration team, having only grudgingly agreed to participate at all, made clear they had no real commitment to fighting racism or offering leadership on other challenging issues of discrimination. When they didn't like a few small parts of the sixty-one-page text, they packed up and walked out of the conference. It was a sad but hardly surprising moment, exposing once again the history of US failures to take seriously the consequences of its own legacy of racism, a point most recently made by Attorney General Eric Holder.

The 2001 Declaration expressed powerful truths. It stated: "We acknowledge and profoundly regret the massive human suffering and the tragic plight of millions of men, women and children caused by slavery, the slave trade, the transatlantic slave trade, apartheid, colonialism and genocide, and call upon States concerned to honor the memory of the victims of past tragedies and affirm that, wherever and whenever these occurred, they must be condemned and their recurrence prevented." Another part declared, "We recognize the inalienable right of the Palestinian people to self-determination and to the establishment of an independent State and we recognize the right to security for all States in the region, including Israel, and call upon all States to support the peace process and bring it to an early conclusion."

Now, eight years later, the United Nations is convening the Durban Review Conference in Geneva April 20 to 24 to review and assess the progress since 2001. Member nations have toiled for two years to craft an outcome document that assesses the current analysis and challenges. This document--which called for particular measures to provide support and reparations to all the victims both of long-ago histories, like the descendants of the European-Atlantic slave trade, and those facing contemporary forms of discrimination and apartheid policies, such as the Roma, the Dalits (India's "untouchables") and the Palestinians--was rejected by the Obama administration.

This year we thought things would be different. Our country has taken a huge step in our long struggle against racism: we have elected our first African-American president. And perhaps more important, the mobilization of people who made Barack Obama's election possible brought more young people of color into political action, with others of various ethnic and political backgrounds, than perhaps any campaign before. It is a moment not to sit on our laurels; certainly, we have much farther to go. But it is certainly a moment for our nation's political leadership to acknowledge a new marker in the long and painful struggle for justice, and a time to offer global leadership in the United Nations forum organized to combat bigotry and injustice.

In an effort to address the administration's concerns, the United Nations has released a new "outcome document," stripped of all language deemed offensive or controversial. Yet we face the sad reality that our president, the first African-American to lead this country, who has galvanized hope among victims of injustice around the world and encouraged them to stand up with dignity for their rights, has yet to indicate if he will send an official delegation or continue to abstain from the entire process.

Our historical struggle against racism can claim great progress as a legacy of the civil rights movement led by the likes of Fanny Lou Hamer and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., but this 2009 review of the 2001 Durban conference against racism should still be a moment in which the administration of President Obama returns to the world stage to join deliberations aimed at making even further progress against injustice.

For twenty years, Congressman John Conyers, dean of the Congressional Black Caucus, has annually introduced a bill urging the United States to form a commission to study whether reparations are an appropriate response to the continuing legacy of slavery in our country. Would not the Durban Review Conference be a perfect venue to the administration to support the remedies recommended by the global community of nations to overcome the impacts of racism, slavery, anti-Semitism, apartheid and other forms of discrimination?

Would this United Nations conference not be exactly the right place for our new president to show the world that his administration's commitment to "change we can believe in" means rejecting our country's tarnished legacy of violating international law, undermining the United Nations and using American exceptionalism to justify walking away from the leadership responsibility many in the world expect of the United States?

To make that change clear, wouldn't this be a great opportunity to remind the world that even if the final document does not call out the name of every perpetrator government, the United States at least believes that every group of victims facing discrimination or worse based on their identity, especially the most vulnerable, and those who are stateless and thus in need of special attention by the international community, should be named and promised assistance?

This should be a moment for the United States to rejoin the global struggle against racism, the struggle that the Bush administration so arrogantly abandoned. I hope President Obama will agree that the United States must participate with other nations in figuring out the tough issues of how to overcome racism and other forms of discrimination and intolerance, and how to provide repair to victims. Our country certainly has much to learn; and maybe, for the first time in a long time, we have something by way of leadership to share with the rest of the world in continuing our long struggle to overcome.

Danny Glover  is an actor/activist and chair of the TransAfrica Forum Board of Directors.

Holder, Chiquita and Colombia

Fronting for Paramilitaries

Courtesy of CounterPunch
By Mario A. Murillo

First the good news: We're two months away from President George W. Bush's last full day in the White House. The countdown for the end of the nightmare has begun in earnest.

Now the bad news: As Barack Obama puts together his cabinet and eyes a slew of former Clinton officials for key staff positions, it is becoming ever more apparent that all those calls for change coming from progressive circles in the U.S. – and abroad - have fallen on deaf ears.

Most striking, at least for the time being, is the soon to be named position of the top law enforcement official of the country. It looks like the first African-American President will appoint the first African-American attorney general in the coming days, something that on the surface looks like an advance, but should actually sound alarm bells for anybody seeking true change in the way things are done in Washington, especially when it comes to bringing corporate criminals to justice.

Although no final decision has been made, the New York Times reports that the President-elect's transition team has signaled to Eric H. Holder Jr., a senior Clinton Justice Department official, that he will be selected as the next attorney general. Holder helped lead the team that selected Sen. Joe Biden as Obama's VP choice.

Most news accounts about the pending appointment seem to be limiting their criticism of Holder to one of his final acts as President Bill Clinton's deputy attorney general in 2001. At the time, on the last day of Clinton's term, Holder apparently said he was "neutral, leaning toward favorable" for a presidential pardon for Marc Rich, the wealthy commodities dealer whose ex-wife, Denise, was a major donor to the Democratic Party. Clinton's pardon of the tax-evading Rich was criticized as politically motivated, leading to a congressional investigation over the matter.

What is not being discussed too much, and was not even mentioned in today's New York Times report, is Holder's key role in defending Chiquita Brands International in a notorious case relating to the company's funneling money and weapons to the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia, AUC, the right-wing paramilitary organization on the U.S. State Department's own list of terrorist organizations.

In 2003, an Organization of American States report showed that Chiquita's subsidiary in Colombia, Banadex, had helped divert weapons and ammunition, including thousands of AK-47s, from Nicaraguan government stocks to the AUC. The AUC – very often in collaboration with units of the U.S.-trained Armed Forces - is responsible for hundreds of massacres of primarily peasants throughout the Colombian countryside, including in the banana-growing region of Urabá, where it is believed that at least 4,000 people were killed. Their systematic use of violence resulted in the forced displacement of hundreds of thousands of poor Colombians, a disproportionate amount of those people being black or indigenous.

In 2004, Holder helped negotiate an agreement with the Justice Department for Chiquita that involved the fruit company's payment of "protection money" to the AUC, in direct violation of U.S. laws prohibiting this kind of transaction. In the agreement brokered by Holder, Chiquita officials pleaded guilty and agreed to pay a fine of $25 million, to be paid over a 5-year period. However, not one Chiquita official involved in the illegal transactions was forced to serve time for a crime that others have paid dearly for, mainly because they did not have the kind of legal backing that Holder's team provided. Holder continues to represent Chiquita in the civil action, which grew out of this criminal case.

One of the arguments in defense of Chiquita's criminal acts was that the company was being strong-armed by thugs in Colombia, and that it either had to make the payments, or close up shop in the country, which would have resulted in the loss of tens of millions of dollars in profits. Chiquita officials even disclosed to the Justice Department that they were making the illegal payments to the AUC, to see what could be done.

As the Washington Post reported back in 2007, Federal prosecutors had said in court papers that Justice Department officials made clear in April 2003 that Chiquita was clearly violating the law and that "the payments . . . could not continue." The Post reported "lawyers at Justice headquarters and the U.S. attorney's office in Washington were incensed by what they considered the flagrant continuation of these payoffs, despite the warnings." At the time, Holder said he was concerned that company leaders who disclosed the corporation's illegal activity to prosecutors were facing the possibility of prosecution.

"If what you want to encourage is voluntary self-disclosure, what message does this send to other companies?" asked Holder, deputy attorney general in the Clinton administration. "Here's a company that voluntarily self-discloses in a national security context, where the company gets treated pretty harshly, [and] then on top of that, you go after individuals who made a really painful decision."

So in Holder's view, we should feel sympathy for these poor corporate executives, whose identities were kept confidential, and who were forced to make "very painful decisions" about opening up to their own criminality. Never mind that this company was complicit in the above-mentioned human tragedy waged by the AUC. The many victims of this paramilitary terror did not even cross the mind of the well-connected defense attorney now being considered for the Attorney General job.

Yet the opposition to Holder's nomination to the top position at Justice should not stop with this sordid history, one that perhaps can be excused as the obligation of a lawyer to defend his or her client regardless of the alleged crime. The disappointment in Obama's pick for AG should stem from the President-elect's strong words during the campaign in defense of human rights, particularly for those of workers in Colombia. On several occasions, including in the last presidential debate held at Hofstra University just three weeks before the election, the Democratic Candidate said he opposed the U.S.-Colombia Free Trade Agreement precisely on the grounds of the human rights violations carried out consistently against trade unionists in Colombia, and the ongoing impunity that has followed in most of those crimes.

This is directly connected to the Holder nomination because currently, there is a lawsuit underway from the families of 173 banana workers, who were killed by one of these paramilitary groups in Colombia. These family members do not buy into the argument, made by people like Holder and his Chiquita clients, that the company was forced to make these illegal payments to the AUC. Their claim is that Chiquita Brands International deliberately hired these armed thugs specifically to repress the rights of these workers, a tool used by other major multinationals operating in Colombian hot spots, including Coca Cola, BP, and the Drummond Corporation.

As Dan Kovalik recently wrote in the Huffington Post, the major concern that emerges with a Justice Department led by Holder is that none of these allegations will ever be fully investigated. Kovalik points to the Human Rights Watch report entitled, "Breaking the Grip? Obstacles to Justice for Paramilitary Mafias in Colombia," where the organization recommends that,

"in order to assist with the process of ending the ties between the Colombian government and paramilitary death squads, the U.S. Department of Justice should, among other things, "[c]reate meaningful legal incentives for paramilitary leaders [a number of whom have already been extradited to the U.S.] to fully disclose information about atrocities and name all Colombian or foreign officials, business or individuals who may have facilitated their criminal activities," and "[c]ollaborate actively with the efforts of Colombian justice officials who are investigating paramilitary networks in Colombia by sharing relevant information possible and granting them access to paramilitary leaders in U.S. custody."

Will this recommendation be carried out by a Justice Department led by the man who defended one of the most visible protagonists in these crimes? If the Obama Administration is seriously concerned about impunity and human rights in Colombia, Holder should probably step out of the way immediately.

Furthermore, and as Kovalik pointed out in his Huffington Post commentary, one of the most notorious paramilitary leaders currently in U.S. federal custody, Salvatore Mancuso, claims that he has extensive knowledge, not only about Chiquita's relationship with paramilitary death squads in Colombia, but with other major firms such as Dole and Del Monte. None of these firms are even on the radar screen of the Justice Department, and the question is whether or not they will be should Holder be appointed the next Attorney General. My assumption is that it is not a priority for Obama, certainly not for Holder.

The calls for change in Washington's relationship with Latin America are coming from both within the United States and throughout the continent. There was no doubt that here in Colombia, people were relieved to hear of Barack Obama's historic victory on November 4th. Given his public denunciations of the murders of hundreds of union leaders in Colombia, and his interesting life story which points to at least somewhat of a distinct international perspective, it was not surprising to hear car horns go off in the streets of some towns when he was declared the winner on election night.

But it now seems like business as usual in Washington, where corporate criminality is not a major priority, and justice is only an empty promise made on the backs of the victims of these crimes, directed mainly at gullible voters before elections.

We cannot let this happen.

Mario A. Murillo is associate professor of Communication at Hofstra University in New York and author of Colombia and the United states: War, Unrest and Destabilization. He is currently living in Colombia working on a book about the indigenous movement and its uses of communications media. He can be reached through his website.

Clinton Global Initiative 2008 Focuses on Global Health

By Mary Dillard

Guest Contributor

Today is the third day of the 2008 Clinton Global Initiative.  This year I decided to focus on listening to the global health panels, which have emphasized the goal of expanding the global health workforce. 

One statistic that was mentioned yesterday is that Africa has 11% of the world’s population, over 20% of the world’s disease burden, but only 3% of the world’s health workers.  This has not always been the case and there are a number of reasons the numbers of health care workers have diminished so precipitously over the past thirty years. These include the Structural Adjustment Programs imposed on a number of African countries during the 1980s and 90s that forced African governments to decrease the amount of money that went into public health.

A second factor was the so-called brain drain- a controversial term referring to the migration of skilled professionals from developing countries to fill human resource needs in wealthier countries.  This process began in the 1970s but accelerated due to the decline in working conditions for health workers in the 1980s and 90s.   

Over the past two days, several panel participants have called for private investors to pay more attention to partnering with the public sector, thus challenging the legacy of structural adjustment.  The clearest call for this came yesterday from Paul Farmer, co-founder of Partners in Health who reminded the audience that the CGI goals (Poverty Alleviation, Energy and Climate Change, Education and Global Health) are particularly relevant for impoverished countries in the global south. 

While Farmer was technically on the panel to speak about global health, he emphasized that the recent devastation that Haiti has faced is due to climate change.  Although this has been little reported in the U.S. corporate press, Haiti has been battered by four hurricanes in the past two months.  These storms have resulted in the deaths of over 1000 people and displacement of close to a million people. 

Farmer argued that with the splintering of NGO groups, it has been more difficult than ever to coordinate efforts or to share best practices of health care delivery but that it is crucial for people to pay attention to what is happening in Haiti in order to avoid an increasingly dire humanitarian crisis.   

Given the fact that there are many immediate healthcare crises occurring in the world, it may seem strange to focus the theme of the Global Health panels on recruiting healthcare workers.  However, this need was echoed by most panel participants over the past two days.  Yesterday, Dr. Nancy Aossey, President and Chief Executive Officer of the International Medical Corps (IMC) argued that this is a crucial priority for post-conflict and active conflict zones where IMC works including Chad, the Central African Republic, Liberia and the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Today was “policy-wonk day” on the health panels.  Most of the speakers on the smaller panels were very well versed in health policy and there was a clear emphasis on practical, replicable solutions to challenges facing health care workers around the world.  This morning’s global health panel featured Craig R. Barrett, Chairman of Intel Corporation,
Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, Minister of Health, Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia, 
Aruna Uprety, Director, Rural Health and Education Service Trust of Nepal and Dr. Lola Dare, Executive Secretary of African Council for Sustainable Health Development (ACOSHED).

The Ethiopian Minister of Health reported on initiatives that his government is doing to expand the medical corps.  According to Minister Tedros, when the government set priorities,  “We decided to focus on trying to reach the Millennium Development Goals, particularly the goal of ending poverty by 2015.”  Ethiopia’s per capita health expenditure is only one dollar per person.  With such limited funds directed towards the healthcare, increasing the numbers of low and mid-level providers (traditional birth attendants, nurses, physicians assistants) became a priority and the Ministry decided to strategically allocate resources. 

The current national health plan focuses on what he calls  “Flooding and Retention”.  Flooding refers to exponentially increasing the number of trained doctors, while retention refers to efforts to keep trained healthcare professionals employed in that capacity.  In too many impoverished countries, salaries for health care providers are so low that people cannot afford to work in the sectors where they were trained.  This contributes to skilled workers either leaving the country or finding other employment.  The largest outlay of funds in the health budget will go towards “Flooding” with  the hopes that at least a fraction of the doctors trained will continue to live and work in Ethiopia. It’s a risky strategy but clearly one that the government believes it must take.

Dr. Lola Dare made one of the most compelling arguments to not only increase the number of health care providers but also to provide those workers with the necessary supplies. She reminded the audience, “I worked in pediatric health and I left because I had no supplies in order to do my job.”  Her comments highlight the fact that the best intentions mean nothing to workers on the ground unless they have the supplies necessary to provide the kind of care that they were trained to provide. 

Africa has the highest disease burden but also has the lowest number of health workers.  Clearly the Continent has faced tremendous challenges in providing adequate health care over the past thirty years.  Since CGI is about creating “political will” my hope is that one day we will see real progress, by convincing governments around the world to make their health budgets more important than their military budgets.

Mary Dillard is Associate Professor of African History at Sarah Lawrence College in Bronxville, New York.

Afro-Netizen covers the 2008 Clinton Global Initiative: What a difference a year makes

By Mary Dillard
Guest Contributor

On Wednesday morning, I attended the first full day session of the Clinton Global Initiative (CGI), an annual meeting of world leaders, corporate executives, NGO representatives, foundations and research institutions.  Timed to coincide with the opening session of the UN General Assembly, CGI’s goal is to link these various organizations in an effort to direct resources towards sustainable solutions to some of the most vexing global problems. 

This is my second time blogging for Afro-Netizen about CGI.  I attended last year and was impressed by Bill Clinton’s ability to assimilate a wide range of information, to bring disparate perspectives together in the same room and to speak intelligently on a wide range of topics.  Last year, I diligently followed the education panels because I wanted to hear up close and personal about the latest innovations in girls’ education, especially in Africa. 

What a difference a year makes. 

Last year, Clinton sang the praises of Kenya’s President Mwai Kibaki for his efforts to provide universal primary education to all of Kenya’s children.  Today, Kenya is still recovering from its own political crisis at the end of 2007 which displaced thousands of families and set the country back tremendously in terms of its educational and development goals.

The opening panel session featured Liberian President Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf, Queen Rania al-Abdalla of Jordan, former U2 member and co-founder of the ONE campaign Bono, E. Nevill Isdell the Chairman of the Board of Directors for Coca Cola, and former Vice President Al Gore.  President Clinton heaped praise on President Ellen Sirleaf-Johnson for the tremendous growth of Liberia’s GDP since she became Africa’s first female head of state in 2006, after the country ended fourteen years of civil war.  President Sirleaf-Johnson’s background as a senior loan officer at the World Bank has certainly enabled her to tap into the various multinational entities that are interested in participating in Liberia’s postwar recovery. 

Investors have flocked to Liberia because as President Johnson-Sirleaf stated “We are not a poor country, we have tremendous natural resources.”  She argued however, that the country still faces tremendous challenges, particularly in rebuilding infrastructure. In addition, the lack of coordination among donors has hampered smooth implementation of redevelopment efforts. 

Surprisingly, the most fiery speaker of the morning session was former Vice President Al Gore who linked the current economic crisis in the United States to the continuing climate crisis.  Gore suggested that for years, the American public received misinformation about the potential hazards of sub-prime lending practices.  The Vice President argued that similar misinformation is still being spread by entrenched fossil fuel industry interests about the dangers of climate change and suggested that these companies were committing a type of securities fraud by telling investors that their products were not harmful to the environment.  He then called for civil disobedience by young people to fight the building of any new coal burning power plants.

Bono began his statements by pointing out that the U.S. government can find $700 billion to bail out Wall Street, but the entire G-8 can’t find $25 billion to make sure that thousands of children don’t continue to die every day of preventable diseases.

His comments highlight the fact that part of the potential of CGI is that it can help to create the political will to divert more resources to alleviate poverty, bolster global health initiatives, support education and address the question of climate change.  In this respect, CGI is a very important forum for bringing key players together.  However, there also tend to be a lot of contradictions in these types of gatherings.  The winner of today’s “Clueless Africa Comment” prize must go to Bono. 

Addressing Queen Rania al-Abdallah of Jordan as “your majestyness”  he said, “The biggest problems of your continent are three types of extremes: extreme politics, extreme poverty, and extreme ideology.”  He continued, “Take a situation like Darfur.  I’ve been there. There is nothing there.  It’s just dirt.”

Clearly, his point was not well made but his words are also a reminder to many Africa specialists of the problems that arise when moderately informed celebrities end up being the last word on African politics.  First of all, Jordan is NOT in Africa.  Secondly, this kind of language obscures the real roots of political conflicts in Africa, giving the impression that Africans are once again fighting over things that don’t really matter.  Do the people of Darfur think there is nothing there? 

The Chinese government clearly sees something other than dirt in Darfur, or else it would not be continuing to expand its political and economic relationship with the Sudanese government.  Most troubling to me in the many invocations of Darfur that occurred today, was the complete silence on the Democratic Republic of Congo, Africa’s largest war to date.  Could it be because Canadian and American companies (among others) are still benefiting from their trade relationships in Congo?

There is obviously a lot of good that can come from this summit.  The rest of the week will feature announcements by CGI partners of funding commitments that they will make this year.  I for one, have returned more skeptical this year and will attend the remaining events hoping to hear more informed analyses about Africa and the Caribbean. 

Mary Dillard is Associate Professor of African History at Sarah Lawrence College in Bronxville, New York. 

Middle East Bloggers Remember 9/11

By Amira Al Hussaini
Courtesy of Huffington Post

Today marks the seventh anniversary of the September 11 attacks on the US, a pivotal day in history and a day which brought about so much heartbreak and destruction not only in the U.S. but around the world. Bloggers from the Middle East reflect on the disaster.

Jordanian Hareega wishes it never happened:

I wish it never happened. It could and should have been prevented.

You may ask, how come I'm still remembering this event even though most Americans (82% on today's CNN poll) are not doing anything significant to mark it?

I don't believe in conspiracy theories. I do believe that it was those 19 low-life men that flew those planes into the towers and into the Pentagon, and doubt that the US government had an active role in bombing the towers or shooting the planes. I am buying all of this.

Read more

Web-based cartoon inspired by China's anti-Darfur activities & the Beijing Olympics

This powerful parody speaks for itself.

Please share it widely!