American NGO workers prevented from leaving Egypt
Son of US transportation secretary among several election monitors placed on 'no-fly list' as tension with Cairo escalates
Tension between the US government and the Egyptian military authorities has reached a new peak after it emerged that several American non-governmental workers, including the son of a member of President Obama's administration, are being prevented from leaving the country in an ongoing spat over Egypt's recent parliamentary elections.
Sam LaHood, the son of the US transportation secretary Ray LaHood, was turned back at the airport in Cairo on Saturday in a significant escalation of the diplomatic stand-off between the two countries. LaHood heads the Egyptian outpost of the International Republican Institute, a conservative-leaning think tank that had been monitoring the elections held in recent weeks in the wake of the toppling of President Hosni Mubarak.
According to Politico he was placed on a "no-fly list", without explanation, after he tried to board a plane in an attempt to escape rising hostility towards his and other foreign NGOs. LaHood had previously been named in the state-run press in Cairo.
Lorne Craner, president of IRI, said that Egyptian officials quizzed about the no-fly policy had told the institute that they were still completing their investigations following the December raids and that they might "go to trial soon".
"That's pretty disquieting – to have that kind of thing raised by an ally that's receiving a billion and a half dollars in US aid each year," Craner said.
He added that the Obama administration was working very hard to ameliorate the crisis. All five IRI workers in Cairo who have been put on the no-fly list, three of whom are American, are still free to move around the country and have their passports.
Craner said that at first the military generals had responded to the raids as though they were utterly unaware of what had happened. "But it's been nearly a month since then and the generals have been approached on a number of occasions and yet things have only got worse. So you have to wonder what's going on," he said.
The move follows a raid conducted on 29 December against 17 NGOs by Egyptian security forces in which computers, money and documents were seized. President Obama raised the harassment of US and other foreign NGOs in a phone conversation with the Egyptian military chief Field Marshal Tantawi on 20 January.
It is understood that six workers in the Cairo office of the National Democratic Institute, three of them American, have also been told they may not leave the country. NDI was among several groups involved in election monitoring.
News of the no-fly lists prompted a rash of diplomatic activity and public condemnation against the actions of the Egyptian authorities. John McCain, the US senator for Arizona, said that he had watched events in Egypt with "growing alarm and outrage. It's outrageous that these individuals would be held against their will by Egyptian authorities and prohibited from leaving the country."
The escalation poses a sensitive diplomatic challenge for the Obama administration. The US government is coming under mounting pressure from Congress to suspend the $2bn in aid it gives Cairo every year, largely in the form of military assistance.
While needing to be seen to protest against the Egyptian military junta's resistance to democratic change and ongoing human rights violations, the administration is also keen not to destabilise its relationship with one of its key allies in the region.
The timing of the move against the foreign workers comes as a further blow to the reform movement in Egypt that has been pushing for real democratic change in the wake of last year's popular uprising against Mubarak. The first democratically-elected parliament to sit in Egypt in 60 years convened on Monday, raising hopes that the junta would honour its promise to cede power in June.
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Questions raised about foreign aid link with resource development
The Conservative government is fundamentally realigning the way Canada delivers foreign aid, using private-sector partners in the mining and agricultural sectors. In some instances the government's aid agency is even helping write legislation regulating the mining industry in developing countries.
But if the policy direction at the Canadian International Aid Agency seems to blur the line between Canada's economic interests and international development goals, it is not something that worries International Co-operation Minister Bev Oda. When asked, during an interview with the Citizen, how she separates Canada's trade and foreign policy interests from Canadian development goals, she replied: "I really don't separate them."
"I think if we can increase the capacity of any country to become a global trading partner, if they've got products Canadians need, we can import them, and if Canada has products they would like, Canada can export them."
And Oda says she wants to see more partnerships between aid agencies and companies to help deliver Canadian aid around the world.
"Our government is very much looking to increase its relationships with the private sector," she said, adding that she would like to see such relationships between NGOs and corporations in manufacturing, agriculture and tourism, in addition to the extractive industry.
Oda said Canada's expertise in the mining and extraction industries — Canada is a global leader in mining — provides "added value" when it comes to international development. "It's another way of improving the effectiveness of CIDA's work," she said.
It is a direction that has divided the foreign aid community and has critics asking whether Canada's international aid strategy has been overtaken by the country's economic interests.
Liberal MP John McKay, who has pushed for more accountability for Canadian mining companies working overseas, calls the policy direction regrettable. "I don't think that poor peoples' money should be, first and foremost, used to benefit our economic interests."
Many of the countries CIDA works in have burgeoning resource development industries and, in many cases, Canadian companies are already there and would like to expand. Oda said helping these countries develop their resources and establish stable economic foundations is the best way to reduce poverty over the long term. CIDA will even help developing countries draft mining legislation to better attract foreign investment, she said. Such investment, she said, builds the economy and reduces poverty.
She pointed to a recently announced CIDA-funded project in which Canadian NGO Plan International Canada is working with the mining company Iamgold Corp. to train young people "in occupations directly related to the mining sector or other sectors surrounding this industry."
"These are all skills that can be left behind, that these people can take to other areas," Oda said. When mining companies from other countries, such as China, go into developing nations, she noted, they bring their own workforce.
The policy direction takes place against the backdrop of the federal government's corporate social responsibility strategy which, according to CIDA documents, is aimed at "improving the competitive advantage of Canadian international extractive sector companies by enhancing their ability to manage social and environmental risk." CIDA's role in the strategy is to help developing countries manage their minerals, oil and gas "and to benefit from these resources to reduce poverty."
The very title of the federal government's CSR strategy, Building the Canadian Advantage: A Corporate Social Responsibility Strategy for the Canadian International Extractive Sector, "suggests that it is corporations that are intended as the real beneficiaries of CSR initiatives," said Catherine Coumans of the group MiningWatch, "with collaborating NGOs following in second place."
The foreign aid link with resource development is likely to be controversial because of the obvious self-interest for Canada. As home to about 75 per cent of global mining companies, any policy that helps open up mining markets around the world or smooths the way for companies already there, will benefit Canada. And it raises legitimate questions about what happens when the government's foreign aid direction clashes with Canada's economic interests.
In recent years some Canadian mining companies have worked to overcome growing concern about the environmental and social impacts of mining around the world — concerns heightened by specific cases in which mining companies were accused of human rights abuses and environmental damage. Many companies have recognized they need a social licence to operate and have adopted corporate social responsibility policies. Partnerships with NGOs, supported by the federal government, are part of this direction.
But linking development assistance to resource development results in mixed motives for CIDA, according to McKay. "Is this for alleviation of poverty, to further our economic and corporate interests, or for gaining influence in particular industries? That has been the problem with CIDA all along: We have mixed motives."
"Why not just wind up CIDA and put it into the international trade portfolio if that is what it is being used for?"
The Canadian aid agencies that are working with mining companies on the pilot projects announced by Oda last fall defend the initiatives as worthwhile and beneficial.
"When NGOS are working in these countries, should we do nothing, or should we roll up our sleeves and push these companies to do better. It is easy to stand on the sidelines and be sanctimonious," said Plan Canada CEO Rosemary McCarney, a founding member of the Devonshire Initiative, which is based on the belief that the Canadian mining and NGO presence in emerging markets can be a force for positive change.
McCarney dismisses critics who say working with mining companies compromises NGOs.
"This is not going to compromise our perspective or our ability to speak out on development practices," she added. Plan Canada is working with Iamgold on a $5.7-million CIDA-funded skills-training project in Burkina Faso. The company contributed $1 million to the project.
McCarney said Plan thought long and hard before getting involved in the project and made sure it was comfortable working with the company and with the project.
"It took a lot of courage, it also took a lot of homework for us. Our reputation is everything for an NGO. You have to partner carefully and purposefully and have your eyes wide open."
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NGOs seek tit-for-tat rules on visas
BEIRUT: More than 20 civil society groups called on the government Wednesday to treat foreign nationals who wish to visit Lebanon the same way their countries treat Lebanese when they apply for visas, expressing frustration that Lebanese are treated as “inferior” by many countries.
The groups also called on the government to pressure states to treat Lebanese decently.
“We call on the Lebanese state to force states with which it maintains diplomatic ties to treat the Lebanese the same way Lebanon treats the nationals from these states,” activist Hayat Arslan told a news conference at her residence in Aley which was attended by representatives of nearly two dozen associations.
“We are treated as inferior when we seek a visa to most countries, whether for work, tourism or medical treatment, as if we are second class people,” she added.
Arslan called on the government to enforce certain rules governing how embassies treat Lebanese.
According to Arslan, Lebanon should force foreign embassies to set dates for appointments for Lebanese seeking visas within a “specified and plausible period of hours or days, rather than weeks or months.”
The civil society groups also requested that Lebanese applying for a visa be treated decently, be given explanations if their request for an appointment is rejected, be notified if any necessary documents for a visa application are missing and have fees returned to them by consulates or embassies if they are denied a visa.
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Bahrain u-turns on pledge to give NGOs unfettered access
The Bahrain Government has denied a leading Human Rights activist entry to the country earlier this month, despite recent assurances that NGOs would have full access to the Kingdom.
Bahrain suggested Human Rights First’s (HRF’s) Brian Dooley’s delay his visit until March, a step Dooley’s branded a “terrible signal” to the regime’s crackdown on those asking for democratic reform.
The latest denial comes less than two weeks after Bahrain refused to admit Rick Sollom of the Physicians for Human Rights.
“Bahrain’s decision to block observers from entering the Kingdom only suggests its Government has something to hide,” Dooley said in a statement to The Muslim News.
“They may talk a good game, but denying or delaying access to human rights organizations undermines their claim to have learned from past mistakes.”
In a letter to Bahrain’s Minister of Human Rights and Social Development, Fatima Al Balooshi, Dooley said his ban was surprising given the Government’s recent claims that NGOs would have unfettered access.
In a meeting with Al Balooshi on November 24, Dooley was guaranteed that NGOs would be granted access to the Gulf Island if they gave five days’ notice of their arrival.
In addition, on October 21, Bahrain Minister for Foreign Affairs, Sheikh Khalid bin Ahmed bin Mohammed Al Khalifa, assured Dooley and other observers that NGOs would not be denied access to the kingdom.
In his letter to Al Balooshi, Dooley said. “At the release of the BICI [Bahrain Independent Commission of Inquiry] report in November, HRH King Hamad assured the world that ‘any Government which has a sincere desire for reform and progress understands the benefit of objective and constructive criticism,’ and that the day of the BICI report ‘turns a new page of history.’ Delaying or denying access to independent human rights observers runs counter to these statements.”
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Syria Chaos claims ICRC Aid Official
SYRIA- Local Syrian NGOs along with International ones condemned late on Wednesday the killing of Secretary General of the Syrian Arab Red Crescent Dr. Abdel Razaq Jbeiro and a Christian priest the Rev. Basilious Nasser on Wednesday.
Syrian Arab Red Crescent Dr. Jbeiro was shot dead Wednesday as he travelled outside the capital Damascus in a clearly marked vehicle, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) said.
Doctor Abd-al-Razzaq Jbeiro, also head of the Red Crescent branch in the northern town of Idlib, was on the highway to Idlib from Damascus after attending meetings at Red Crescent headquarters, the agency said in a statement.
"Regardless of the circumstances, the ICRC condemns this very severely," Beatrice Megevand-Roggo, head of ICRC operations for the Near and Middle East, told Reuters in Geneva.
In a statement expressing shock at the killing, the International Committee of the Red Cross called on “all those involved in the violence” to spare Red Cross and Red Crescent staff members.
“The exclusively humanitarian aim of the Red Crescent and Red Cross is to bring aid in a fully impartial and neutral manner to people in need,” the statement said.
She added that the "lack of respect for medical services" remained a major issue in Syria.
"The president of the Syrian Arab Red Crescent, Dr. AbdulRahman al-Attar, said that he has "officially requested the Syrian authorities to launch an investigation into the death of Dr. Jbeiro," the ICRC said in a statement.
Syria official media reported Wednesday “The Syrian Arab Red Crescent (SARC), the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) and the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) denounced the assassination of head of Red Crescent Branch in Idleb Dr. Abdel Razaq Jbeiro, who was gunned down by armed terrorist group on Wednesday in Khan Shekhoun.”
Syrian state television blamed "terrorists" for the killing, saying he had been "assassinated" in Khan Sheikhoun district.
State-run SANA news agency added “A statement issued by the three organizations said that the news of Dr. Jbeiro's death was a great shock, pointing out that Jbeiro was on his way back to work after the conclusion of meetings held in Damascus, and that he was in a car clearly carrying the distinct logo and symbol of the Syrian Arab Red Crescent.”
Dr. Jbeiro, born in 1945, had also previously worked as director of Idlib hospital.
Megevand-Roggo, who had just returned from a two-week trip to Syria, Yemen and Lebanon, told Reuters that checkpoints and harassment in Syria prevented ambulances and medical workers from evacuating and treating the wounded, some of whom have died as a result.
"It is very difficult for the wounded, notably those among the opposition forces, to get access to necessary medical care. It is difficult for medical personnel to do their work without being under pressure," she said. "Lives have been lost."
"There have been repeated incidents where Red Crescent ambulances have been shot at, our volunteers have been wounded. Their work is very dangerous," she added to Reuters.
"Protests started out as non-violent but today the situation is one of widespread violence in the country because many arms are circulating and many people use them, Megevand-Roggo said.
"Our access remains fairly random, we cannot go places with any regularity or frequency, some areas are more problematic than others," she said. "We'd like to develop a more regular and frequent presence in affected areas, including rural zones."
The ICRC started visiting prisoners in Syria for the first time last September, including the central prison in Damascus.
But it has been unable to carry out further visits to detention centers due to a disagreement with Syrian authorities over the ICRC's standard terms, she said.
"The dialogue is difficult, we are in a situation of stagnation regarding the possibility for us to resume our activities and visit other detention centers," she said.
ICRC terms worldwide include the right to interview prisoners privately about their treatment and conditions of detention and to make follow-up visits.
Syrian authorities say that more than 5,000 detainees were released under Bashar's latest amnesty this month, although activists say this still leaves many thousands more behind bars.
"There are certainly several thousand detainees. We have very little information on the situation," Megevand-Roggo said. "The most urgent thing is to be able to tell families where their loved ones are being held and to facilitate contact between them."
The ICRC is the only international agency deploying aid workers in Syria. A local Red Crescent volunteer was killed and three others were injured in the flashpoint city of Homs last September when an ambulance came under heavy fire.
More than 5,000 people have been killed in a 10-month-old uprising against President Bashar al-Assad`s regime, the United Nations said last month.
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3 NGOs De-registered by the Registrar of Societies
Three non-governmental organisations have been de-registered by the Registrar of Societies.
They include the Committee of Citizens, Leadership Environment and Development Southern Africa and the Evangelical Youth Alliance International.
Chief Registrar of Societies Clement Andeleki has confirmed the development in a press statement issued to ZNBC News on Tuesday.
Mr Andeleki has explained that the three organisations have been operating illegally, failed to pay annual returns and failed to comply with their terms of registration.
He has also reminded political parties, clubs, charity organisations and churches to pay their annual returns by 31st March, 2012.
But Committee of Citizens Executive Director Gregory Chifire has maintained that his organisation is still a legal entity.
Mr Chifire has challenged the Registrar of Societies to check his records and tell the nation the truth.
He says the action has not surprised him, describing it as a political gimick by the PF government.
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No one cares about the welfare of internal migrant labourers
Rajiv Khandelwal is the founder and director of Aajeevika Bureau, a specialised public initiative based in Udaipur that provides services to thousands of migrant workers from impoverished rural areas who enter urban labour markets for seasonal employment.
Aajeevika Bureau is an attempt to address the problems associated with exhaustion of rural resources and the inevitability of migration among rural youth.
Khandelwal’s team at the Bureau has designed a number of innovative solutions for migrants, including registration and photo ID services, vocational training, employment counselling, legal aid, financial services, and destination support.
The Bureau also actively seeks to influence policy around rural migration and has presented strong alternatives to the government, donors and research agencies.
Aajeevika Bureau’s work has been picked up by a number of organisations in high-migration states like Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh, Orissa, Bihar and Maharashtra.
In this interview, Khandelwal explains what India’s growth story means for internal migrants who have both fuelled and fed off the country’s development. He suggests a possible course of civil society action and state policy for this large, growing, yet overlooked segment of our population.
What implications does the India growth story have for internal migration?
The truth is that India’s growth story is essentially fuelled by internal migration, and India will grow as internal migration increases. They both fuel and feed off each other.
A lot of the benefits of growth, however, actually skip large sections of migrant workers. They may be contributing significantly to high-growth industry and services, but the returns for them continue to be low.
Wages in our country are among the lowest anywhere in the world and that does not look likely to change anytime soon. India’s economic growth, in fact, is a success story because of unbridled distress migration by the country’s poor.
How have the state, markets and civil society shaped the discourse on internal migration?
I would say that migrant workers are neglected by all three major columns of society.
The state has largely ignored migrant workers, mainly because it perceives internal migration, or the relentless shift of people from villages to cities, as a problem. In fact, a lot of the state’s programmes are driven by the agenda to keep people in villages.
The National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme, for example, is built around the need to help people find local employment. Little is said about the fact that the NREGS does not fully answer people’s need to migrate.
NGOs have divided their work into rural, urban, farmers, artisans, women, children, and so on. Very few NGOs actually define migrant workers as a segment requiring attention. NGOs’ work with unorganised sector workers in the labour market is actually very limited.
Even NGOs based in urban areas that receive large waves of migrant workers barely recognise these groups as candidates for support -- they are seen as mobile or unavailable. Large trade unions too have left out unorganised sector workers because they are difficult to bring together and mobilise and do not represent significant political gains for them.
Large corporations and the urban industrial economy, I think, are enjoying the benefits of this neglect of migrant workers. In the scenario of deregulation and lax labour laws, they reap the dubious and short-term benefits of a casual and informal workforce.
On whom does the onus lie to ensure that internal migrant workers are not excluded from policy responses and protective measures?
I think the onus has to mainly lie with the state. There is a strong argument, and I agree with it, that in the case of workers in the informal economy, where the relationship between employer and worker is not very clearly established, the state should be seen as the principal employer. It is the state’s responsibility that workers in the informal economy are protected and given services and social security benefits.
With increasing numbers of migrant workers, I also see a significant role for trade unions and NGOs. Large numbers of rural people now live in cities, even if seasonally.
India will be poor in its cities, not just in its rural areas anymore. The focus of civil society attention has to start shifting similarly. They have to start seeing migrants as major candidates for services, support and advocacy.
When we talk of the role of NGOs and trade unions, are there any concrete examples or interventions on their part?
In the case of interventions by NGOs and civil society, I am happy to say that attention is now growing. Our organisation, Aajeevika Bureau, for instance, has specifically focused on issues of migrant workers.
We have worked both at the ‘source’, in Rajasthan, and at the ‘destination’, in Gujarat. We also work and collaborate with a number of organisations across the country in high-migration settings and help them in their programmes for migrant groups.
These organisations work in high-migration corridors like Orissa to Andhra Pradesh and Kerala, Bihar and Uttar Pradesh to Mumbai, and corridors within Rajasthan, Maharashtra and Gujarat.
The number of organisations is steadily increasing, although it is nowhere close to the scale of the problem. I would say that there is a need to see more trade union involvement in this sector and new forms of trade union activity among migrant workers in some of the sectors that I mentioned earlier. I think that aspect still remains poorly covered.
We have the Inter-State Migrant Workmen Act (ISMW Act). What has its implementation been like?
The ISMW Act is an obsolete piece of legislation. It was drafted in the mid-’70s and in the very specific context of inter-state movement of labour. It largely governs contractors and attempts to bring them under some kind of regulation, which is desirable.
But there are several facets of internal migration that have opened up since then, which the ISMW Act does not even consider. If anything, there is a need to re-draft the legislation itself and bring some specific industries within its ambit -- especially industries that are known to hire unskilled, vulnerable, migrant groups.
This would include industries like construction, head-loading, low-end retail, manufacturing, hospitality and brick-kiln work. Trade unions, NGOs, workers’ organisations and the government need to come together to push for new legislation for migrant workers.
We’ve now gathered that the primary response should come from the state. But the interventions that we’ve seen so far have been coming largely from civil society. How scaleable do you think their interventions are? And what is their ability to influence state responses and policies, and change the current discourse on migration?
Some of the work that civil society is doing -- for instance the move to issue migrants an ID, provide them with skills training, offer legal protection, and financial services -- is highly scaleable.
They are not unique to a specific geography; they are fairly universal solutions that can be taken to any geography and any group of migrants across the country. Of course, civil society is limited by its resources, its networks and its ability to deliver.
Therefore, it can partner well with governments to deliver these services. I think that the replicability is in the content. How it should be done, how we roll it out now over a larger area with a greater number of groups is a matter of state definition.
The state can work closely with civil society towards that end. I would come back to the need to show working models in these corridors. It will also bring some inter-state coordination to the front. It will show how the governments of Orissa, Gujarat, Rajasthan and Maharashtra can work together, and how organisations across these geographies can work together. Unless that coordination is cracked, between source and destination, we will not be able to scale up services significantly.
Secondly, a lot of investment is coming into urban infrastructural improvement and improvement of urban services. These services can start looking at the presence of large populations that are present seasonally, not permanently. Services can be designed around the presence of temporary workers, which is another potential for scale because a lot of investment is now happening in urban areas.
The discourse will be changed by practice, not purely by research. A combination of research and practice will change the discourse. The fact that there are national symposiums, conferences, debates and inquiries around the issue of internal migration shows that some effect is already taking place.
There is a fair bit of recognition of the success that is happening in pockets of the country, wherever work with migrants is taking place. The discourse will obviously change when the state adopts it wholesale and accepts it as its development agenda.
This will take some time, but the fact that civil society is contributing to working functioning models on the ground will be the tipping point for the discourse, not just research or policy analysis. - Infochange News & Features
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Activists in Egypt to hold massive rally today
CAIRO Egyptian activists are preparing for a mass rally on Friday, after they spent the night in Cairo’s Tahrir Square marking the first anniversary of the uprising that ousted president Hosni Mubarak.
In an interesting development on Thursday, the Muslim Brotherhood, the big winners of the parliamentary vote, said it will not field a candidate for the Egyptian presidency.
“The Muslim Brotherhood will not support (former member) Abdel Moneim Abul Fotouh or any candidate who has an Islamic reference in the presidential elections,” he said, quoted by Egypt’s news agency Mena.
Also on Thursday, the country’s military authorities told several American pro-democracy activists, including the son of a member of US President Barack Obama’s cabinet, that they cannot leave the country, in what one of those affected called a “de facto detention”.
At least 27 pro-democracy groups have called for the rally to press for democratic change, with marches to set off from mosques after the noon Muslim prayer towards Tahrir, the National Front for Justice and Democracy said.
Egypt’s press on Thursday hailed the “revival” of the revolution after massive crowds took to the streets in Cairo, the Mediterranean city of Alexandria, the canal city of Suez and in the Nile Delta and Sinai peninsula.
“The revolution continues,” trumpeted the independent daily Al Shorouq, saying millions of Egyptians wanted to see “the end of military rule.”
“The people want the continuation of the revolution,” proclaimed the state-owned Al Ahram, above a large picture of massive crowds thronging Tahrir Square — the symbolic heart of the Egyptian protests.
Protesters spent a peaceful Wednesday night in Tahrir Square, despite weeks of warnings by the military council and state media of possible trouble.
Egypt’s bourse on Thursday spiked 7.18 per cent in a buying spree, after the peaceful and orderly rallies. The main EGX-30 index reached 4432.99 points at the close of trading.
“The Muslim Brotherhood will not support (former member) Abdel Moneim Abul Fotouh or any candidate who has an Islamic reference in the presidential elections,” he said, quoted by Egypt’s news agency Mena.
He said the movement would “reach an agreement with all national powers on the qualifications of the upcoming president,” stressing that “the demands of the Egyptian nation are on the top of the Muslim Brotherood’s priorities.”
The Brotherhood’s Freedom and Justice Party (FJP) won 235 seats in the new People’s Assembly, or 47.18 per cent, while the ultra-conservative Salafist Al Nur party came second with 121 seats.
Describing a travel ban that may add to strains with its US ally, officials at two prominent US-funded NGOs said on Thursday that 10 of their staff must stay in Egypt.
They said the orders were related to judicial investigations launched last month into a number of NGOs for alleged violations of rules relating to the registration of organisations in Egypt.
Among those targeted is Sam LaHood, Egypt director of the International Republican Institute, whose father Ray LaHood is US Transportation Secretary.
Sam LaHood had tried to fly out from Cairo on Saturday and was told that he could not leave, one NGO official said.
The US urged Egypt to lift travel bans placed the NGO officials.
“We are urging the government of Egypt to lift these restrictions immediately and allow these folks to come home as soon as possible,” State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland told a news briefing.
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Rape, corruption in camps blight lives of Somali displaced
MOGADISHU (AlertNet) - Nurto Isak's food rations are feeding her, her three children, and -- she suspects -- the militiamen guarding the camp in Mogadishu where she and other uprooted Somalis have taken refuge.
The city is host to more than 180,000 internally displaced people (IDPs) who, like Isak, have fled a killer combination of conflict, drought and hunger back home.
Many risk long, difficult journeys to reach the capital, their sights set on the numerous aid agencies that have set up relief operations to hand out food and treat malnutrition there.
Yet many people at various IDP settlements in the war-torn city complain that food aid is not reaching them and accuse local aid workers working for international and Somali NGOs of taking it to line their own pockets.
"Half of the rations intended for our camp is given to the warlord whose militia are said to be guarding us," Isak told AlertNet (www.trust.org/alertnet), a humanitarian news service run by Thomson Reuters Foundation.
Many of the displaced said women were being raped in camps, while others lamented a lack of jobs, health clinics and schools despite the increased presence of aid groups.
Six months after famine was declared in parts of Somalia, the Horn of Africa country remains in the grip of a humanitarian crisis, with 4 million people in need of aid, according to U.N. figures.
However, fighting between government forces and Islamist rebels, combined with attacks on aid workers and a history of aid being manipulated for political gain, means Somalia is one of the toughest countries for relief agencies to operate in.
As such, it is a classic case study of the obstacles to effective aid as highlighted in an AlertNet poll of 41 leading relief agencies published on Thursday.
In the survey, more than half the experts cited increasingly complex disasters as one of the biggest challenges to aid delivery -- with the use of aid as a political weapon and violence against relief workers also featuring highly.
Last month two staff working for Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) were shot dead by a colleague in Mogadishu, while earlier this month the International Committee of the Red Cross suspended food distribution to 1.1 million people after al Shabaab rebels blocked deliveries to areas under the militant group's control.
"This is one of the most complex environments for humanitarians," said U.N. humanitarian coordinator for Somalia, Mark Bowden, in response to the claims by displaced people that food rations were being sold by local aid workers.
"Despite continued efforts to strengthen our monitoring systems, allegations still and will continue," he said in a statement to AlertNet.
FAST BUCK
Some of the IDP camps -- little more than a clutch of flimsy shelters made of sticks and cloth -- are directly and indirectly run by government forces or warlords linked to the government, residents say.
Shukri Aden, a resident at another camp, said she had witnessed traders buying food supplies directly from a number of local staff working for NGOs and aid agencies responsible for distributing food in her camp.
"Traders park their cars and lorries beside the camp when it is food distribution day," the mother of six said.
Once a month residents of the camps are handed a card that allows them to collect 25 kg of rice, 25 kg of wheat flour, 10 kg of sugar and 5 liters of cooking oil, Aden said.
But often they are pressured into handing their rations to a local aid worker who pays them around $5 each -- hardly enough to buy food for a day.
The aid worker then sells the food at a marked-up price to a trader, earning thousands of dollars in profits, she said.
"They give us cards to take food but we rarely receive the ration," said Aden, who has taken to begging and washing clothes to scrape together a few more shillings to feed her family.
RAPED AT GUNPOINT
A few miles away in Dinsoor IDP camp, Kadija Mohamed, 36, told AlertNet she was raped.
"Three armed men in government uniform came into the camp. The strongest one shone a powerful torch in my eyes, he strangled me and then raped me in front of my crying kids," she said.
Mohamed, a widow, said she waited for sunrise before making her way to a nearby clinic only to be told there were no doctors.
"Later the camp leaders brought me some painkillers. Now I'm OK but I do not know what diseases I caught from the rape. I have nowhere to go for a check-up," Mohamed said. "We live in these makeshift shelters. We have no aid agency or government to protect us at night. We are at God's mercy."
Isak also said rape was common in her camp.
"They rape even mothers at gunpoint at night -- and we are threatened to death should we disclose it," she said. "The makeshift shelters have no lockable doors, so these men just come in at night and lie on you."
In its January 18 report, the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said sexual violence against women and girls was continuing in Somalia. It also said security in the IDP settlements was insufficient and at risk of deteriorating.
QUESTION OF PRIORITIES
Mohamed's brother, Macalim Ibrahim, 40, reserved his biggest criticism for government officials and local aid workers.
"These local aid workers are building houses with the sale of food intended for the poor displaced people like us," he told AlertNet. "We are deprived and yet have no government or aid agencies to ask for help."
He also questioned the effectiveness of some of the aid that has been given.
"Many NGOs come, take our photos, and never come back. For example, one aid agency came and erected this school building made of iron sheets," Ibrahim said.
"We brought our kids to the school but it did not work more than 7 days. The guys took footage of the kids at school and never came back. And the teachers disappeared.
"Other aid agencies came and built these latrines. That is good but a hungry man never goes to the toilet. We need food and water to survive," he said.
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FEATURE-Rape, corruption in camps blight lives of Somali displaced
MOGADISHU, Jan 26 (AlertNet) - Nurto Isak's food rations are feeding her, her three children, and -- she suspects -- the militiamen guarding the camp in Mogadishu where she and other uprooted Somalis have taken refuge.
The city is host to more than 180,000 internally displaced people (IDPs) who, like Isak, have fled a killer combination of conflict, drought and hunger back home.
Many risk long, difficult journeys to reach the capital, their sights set on the numerous aid agencies that have set up relief operations to hand out food and treat malnutrition there.
Yet many people at various IDP settlements in the war-torn city complain that food aid is not reaching them and accuse local aid workers working for international and Somali NGOs of taking it to line their own pockets.
"Half of the rations intended for our camp is given to the warlord whose militia are said to be guarding us," Isak told AlertNet (www.trust.org/alertnet), a humanitarian news service run by Thomson Reuters Foundation.
Many of the displaced said women were being raped in camps, while others lamented a lack of jobs, health clinics and schools despite the increased presence of aid groups.
Six months after famine was declared in parts of Somalia, the Horn of Africa country remains in the grip of a humanitarian crisis, with 4 million people in need of aid, according to U.N. figures.
However, fighting between government forces and Islamist rebels, combined with attacks on aid workers and a history of aid being manipulated for political gain, means Somalia is one of the toughest countries for relief agencies to operate in.
As such, it is a classic case study of the obstacles to effective aid as highlighted in an AlertNet poll of 41 leading relief agencies published on Thursday.
In the survey, more than half the experts cited increasingly complex disasters as one of the biggest challenges to aid delivery -- with the use of aid as a political weapon and violence against relief workers also featuring highly.
Last month two staff working for Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) were shot dead by a colleague in Mogadishu, while earlier this month the International Committee of the Red Cross suspended food distribution to 1.1 million people after al Shabaab rebels blocked deliveries to areas under the militant group's control.
"This is one of the most complex environments for humanitarians," said U.N. humanitarian coordinator for Somalia, Mark Bowden, in response to the claims by displaced people that food rations were being sold by local aid workers.
"Despite continued efforts to strengthen our monitoring systems, allegations still and will continue," he said in a statement to AlertNet.
FAST BUCK
Some of the IDP camps -- little more than a clutch of flimsy shelters made of sticks and cloth -- are directly and indirectly run by government forces or warlords linked to the government, residents say.
Shukri Aden, a resident at another camp, said she had witnessed traders buying food supplies directly from a number of local staff working for NGOs and aid agencies responsible for distributing food in her camp.
"Traders park their cars and lorries beside the camp when it is food distribution day," the mother of six said.
Once a month residents of the camps are handed a card that allows them to collect 25 kg of rice, 25 kg of wheat flour, 10 kg of sugar and 5 litres of cooking oil, Aden said.
But often they are pressured into handing their rations to a local aid worker who pays them around $5 each -- hardly enough to buy food for a day.
The aid worker then sells the food at a marked-up price to a trader, earning thousands of dollars in profits, she said.
"They give us cards to take food but we rarely receive the ration," said Aden, who has taken to begging and washing clothes to scrape together a few more shillings to feed her family.
RAPED AT GUNPOINT
A few miles away in Dinsoor IDP camp, Kadija Mohamed, 36, told AlertNet she was raped.
"Three armed men in government uniform came into the camp. The strongest one shone a powerful torch in my eyes, he strangled me and then raped me in front of my crying kids," she said.
Mohamed, a widow, said she waited for sunrise before making her way to a nearby clinic only to be told there were no doctors.
"Later the camp leaders brought me some painkillers. Now I'm OK but I do not know what diseases I caught from the rape. I have nowhere to go for a check-up," Mohamed said. "We live in these makeshift shelters. We have no aid agency or government to protect us at night. We are at God's mercy."
Isak also said rape was common in her camp.
"They rape even mothers at gunpoint at night -- and we are threatened to death should we disclose it," she said. "The makeshift shelters have no lockable doors, so these men just come in at night and lie on you."
In its Jan. 18 report, the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said sexual violence against women and girls was continuing in Somalia. It also said security in the IDP settlements was insufficient and at risk of deteriorating.
QUESTION OF PRIORITIES
Mohamed's brother, Macalim Ibrahim, 40, reserved his biggest criticism for government officials and local aid workers.
"These local aid workers are building houses with the sale of food intended for the poor displaced people like us," he told AlertNet. "We are deprived and yet have no government or aid agencies to ask for help."
He also questioned the effectiveness of some of the aid that has been given.
"Many NGOs come, take our photos, and never come back. For example, one aid agency came and erected this school building made of iron sheets," Ibrahim said.
"We brought our kids to the school but it did not work more than 7 days. The guys took footage of the kids at school and never came back. And the teachers disappeared.
"Other aid agencies came and built these latrines. That is good but a hungry man never goes to the toilet. We need food and water to survive," he said.
Son of US transportation secretary among several election monitors placed on 'no-fly list' as tension with Cairo escalates
Tension between the US government and the Egyptian military authorities has reached a new peak after it emerged that several American non-governmental workers, including the son of a member of President Obama's administration, are being prevented from leaving the country in an ongoing spat over Egypt's recent parliamentary elections.
Sam LaHood, the son of the US transportation secretary Ray LaHood, was turned back at the airport in Cairo on Saturday in a significant escalation of the diplomatic stand-off between the two countries. LaHood heads the Egyptian outpost of the International Republican Institute, a conservative-leaning think tank that had been monitoring the elections held in recent weeks in the wake of the toppling of President Hosni Mubarak.
According to Politico he was placed on a "no-fly list", without explanation, after he tried to board a plane in an attempt to escape rising hostility towards his and other foreign NGOs. LaHood had previously been named in the state-run press in Cairo.
Lorne Craner, president of IRI, said that Egyptian officials quizzed about the no-fly policy had told the institute that they were still completing their investigations following the December raids and that they might "go to trial soon".
"That's pretty disquieting – to have that kind of thing raised by an ally that's receiving a billion and a half dollars in US aid each year," Craner said.
He added that the Obama administration was working very hard to ameliorate the crisis. All five IRI workers in Cairo who have been put on the no-fly list, three of whom are American, are still free to move around the country and have their passports.
Craner said that at first the military generals had responded to the raids as though they were utterly unaware of what had happened. "But it's been nearly a month since then and the generals have been approached on a number of occasions and yet things have only got worse. So you have to wonder what's going on," he said.
The move follows a raid conducted on 29 December against 17 NGOs by Egyptian security forces in which computers, money and documents were seized. President Obama raised the harassment of US and other foreign NGOs in a phone conversation with the Egyptian military chief Field Marshal Tantawi on 20 January.
It is understood that six workers in the Cairo office of the National Democratic Institute, three of them American, have also been told they may not leave the country. NDI was among several groups involved in election monitoring.
News of the no-fly lists prompted a rash of diplomatic activity and public condemnation against the actions of the Egyptian authorities. John McCain, the US senator for Arizona, said that he had watched events in Egypt with "growing alarm and outrage. It's outrageous that these individuals would be held against their will by Egyptian authorities and prohibited from leaving the country."
The escalation poses a sensitive diplomatic challenge for the Obama administration. The US government is coming under mounting pressure from Congress to suspend the $2bn in aid it gives Cairo every year, largely in the form of military assistance.
While needing to be seen to protest against the Egyptian military junta's resistance to democratic change and ongoing human rights violations, the administration is also keen not to destabilise its relationship with one of its key allies in the region.
The timing of the move against the foreign workers comes as a further blow to the reform movement in Egypt that has been pushing for real democratic change in the wake of last year's popular uprising against Mubarak. The first democratically-elected parliament to sit in Egypt in 60 years convened on Monday, raising hopes that the junta would honour its promise to cede power in June.
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Questions raised about foreign aid link with resource development
The Conservative government is fundamentally realigning the way Canada delivers foreign aid, using private-sector partners in the mining and agricultural sectors. In some instances the government's aid agency is even helping write legislation regulating the mining industry in developing countries.
But if the policy direction at the Canadian International Aid Agency seems to blur the line between Canada's economic interests and international development goals, it is not something that worries International Co-operation Minister Bev Oda. When asked, during an interview with the Citizen, how she separates Canada's trade and foreign policy interests from Canadian development goals, she replied: "I really don't separate them."
"I think if we can increase the capacity of any country to become a global trading partner, if they've got products Canadians need, we can import them, and if Canada has products they would like, Canada can export them."
And Oda says she wants to see more partnerships between aid agencies and companies to help deliver Canadian aid around the world.
"Our government is very much looking to increase its relationships with the private sector," she said, adding that she would like to see such relationships between NGOs and corporations in manufacturing, agriculture and tourism, in addition to the extractive industry.
Oda said Canada's expertise in the mining and extraction industries — Canada is a global leader in mining — provides "added value" when it comes to international development. "It's another way of improving the effectiveness of CIDA's work," she said.
It is a direction that has divided the foreign aid community and has critics asking whether Canada's international aid strategy has been overtaken by the country's economic interests.
Liberal MP John McKay, who has pushed for more accountability for Canadian mining companies working overseas, calls the policy direction regrettable. "I don't think that poor peoples' money should be, first and foremost, used to benefit our economic interests."
Many of the countries CIDA works in have burgeoning resource development industries and, in many cases, Canadian companies are already there and would like to expand. Oda said helping these countries develop their resources and establish stable economic foundations is the best way to reduce poverty over the long term. CIDA will even help developing countries draft mining legislation to better attract foreign investment, she said. Such investment, she said, builds the economy and reduces poverty.
She pointed to a recently announced CIDA-funded project in which Canadian NGO Plan International Canada is working with the mining company Iamgold Corp. to train young people "in occupations directly related to the mining sector or other sectors surrounding this industry."
"These are all skills that can be left behind, that these people can take to other areas," Oda said. When mining companies from other countries, such as China, go into developing nations, she noted, they bring their own workforce.
The policy direction takes place against the backdrop of the federal government's corporate social responsibility strategy which, according to CIDA documents, is aimed at "improving the competitive advantage of Canadian international extractive sector companies by enhancing their ability to manage social and environmental risk." CIDA's role in the strategy is to help developing countries manage their minerals, oil and gas "and to benefit from these resources to reduce poverty."
The very title of the federal government's CSR strategy, Building the Canadian Advantage: A Corporate Social Responsibility Strategy for the Canadian International Extractive Sector, "suggests that it is corporations that are intended as the real beneficiaries of CSR initiatives," said Catherine Coumans of the group MiningWatch, "with collaborating NGOs following in second place."
The foreign aid link with resource development is likely to be controversial because of the obvious self-interest for Canada. As home to about 75 per cent of global mining companies, any policy that helps open up mining markets around the world or smooths the way for companies already there, will benefit Canada. And it raises legitimate questions about what happens when the government's foreign aid direction clashes with Canada's economic interests.
In recent years some Canadian mining companies have worked to overcome growing concern about the environmental and social impacts of mining around the world — concerns heightened by specific cases in which mining companies were accused of human rights abuses and environmental damage. Many companies have recognized they need a social licence to operate and have adopted corporate social responsibility policies. Partnerships with NGOs, supported by the federal government, are part of this direction.
But linking development assistance to resource development results in mixed motives for CIDA, according to McKay. "Is this for alleviation of poverty, to further our economic and corporate interests, or for gaining influence in particular industries? That has been the problem with CIDA all along: We have mixed motives."
"Why not just wind up CIDA and put it into the international trade portfolio if that is what it is being used for?"
The Canadian aid agencies that are working with mining companies on the pilot projects announced by Oda last fall defend the initiatives as worthwhile and beneficial.
"When NGOS are working in these countries, should we do nothing, or should we roll up our sleeves and push these companies to do better. It is easy to stand on the sidelines and be sanctimonious," said Plan Canada CEO Rosemary McCarney, a founding member of the Devonshire Initiative, which is based on the belief that the Canadian mining and NGO presence in emerging markets can be a force for positive change.
McCarney dismisses critics who say working with mining companies compromises NGOs.
"This is not going to compromise our perspective or our ability to speak out on development practices," she added. Plan Canada is working with Iamgold on a $5.7-million CIDA-funded skills-training project in Burkina Faso. The company contributed $1 million to the project.
McCarney said Plan thought long and hard before getting involved in the project and made sure it was comfortable working with the company and with the project.
"It took a lot of courage, it also took a lot of homework for us. Our reputation is everything for an NGO. You have to partner carefully and purposefully and have your eyes wide open."
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NGOs seek tit-for-tat rules on visas
BEIRUT: More than 20 civil society groups called on the government Wednesday to treat foreign nationals who wish to visit Lebanon the same way their countries treat Lebanese when they apply for visas, expressing frustration that Lebanese are treated as “inferior” by many countries.
The groups also called on the government to pressure states to treat Lebanese decently.
“We call on the Lebanese state to force states with which it maintains diplomatic ties to treat the Lebanese the same way Lebanon treats the nationals from these states,” activist Hayat Arslan told a news conference at her residence in Aley which was attended by representatives of nearly two dozen associations.
“We are treated as inferior when we seek a visa to most countries, whether for work, tourism or medical treatment, as if we are second class people,” she added.
Arslan called on the government to enforce certain rules governing how embassies treat Lebanese.
According to Arslan, Lebanon should force foreign embassies to set dates for appointments for Lebanese seeking visas within a “specified and plausible period of hours or days, rather than weeks or months.”
The civil society groups also requested that Lebanese applying for a visa be treated decently, be given explanations if their request for an appointment is rejected, be notified if any necessary documents for a visa application are missing and have fees returned to them by consulates or embassies if they are denied a visa.
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Bahrain u-turns on pledge to give NGOs unfettered access
The Bahrain Government has denied a leading Human Rights activist entry to the country earlier this month, despite recent assurances that NGOs would have full access to the Kingdom.
Bahrain suggested Human Rights First’s (HRF’s) Brian Dooley’s delay his visit until March, a step Dooley’s branded a “terrible signal” to the regime’s crackdown on those asking for democratic reform.
The latest denial comes less than two weeks after Bahrain refused to admit Rick Sollom of the Physicians for Human Rights.
“Bahrain’s decision to block observers from entering the Kingdom only suggests its Government has something to hide,” Dooley said in a statement to The Muslim News.
“They may talk a good game, but denying or delaying access to human rights organizations undermines their claim to have learned from past mistakes.”
In a letter to Bahrain’s Minister of Human Rights and Social Development, Fatima Al Balooshi, Dooley said his ban was surprising given the Government’s recent claims that NGOs would have unfettered access.
In a meeting with Al Balooshi on November 24, Dooley was guaranteed that NGOs would be granted access to the Gulf Island if they gave five days’ notice of their arrival.
In addition, on October 21, Bahrain Minister for Foreign Affairs, Sheikh Khalid bin Ahmed bin Mohammed Al Khalifa, assured Dooley and other observers that NGOs would not be denied access to the kingdom.
In his letter to Al Balooshi, Dooley said. “At the release of the BICI [Bahrain Independent Commission of Inquiry] report in November, HRH King Hamad assured the world that ‘any Government which has a sincere desire for reform and progress understands the benefit of objective and constructive criticism,’ and that the day of the BICI report ‘turns a new page of history.’ Delaying or denying access to independent human rights observers runs counter to these statements.”
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Syria Chaos claims ICRC Aid Official
SYRIA- Local Syrian NGOs along with International ones condemned late on Wednesday the killing of Secretary General of the Syrian Arab Red Crescent Dr. Abdel Razaq Jbeiro and a Christian priest the Rev. Basilious Nasser on Wednesday.
Syrian Arab Red Crescent Dr. Jbeiro was shot dead Wednesday as he travelled outside the capital Damascus in a clearly marked vehicle, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) said.
Doctor Abd-al-Razzaq Jbeiro, also head of the Red Crescent branch in the northern town of Idlib, was on the highway to Idlib from Damascus after attending meetings at Red Crescent headquarters, the agency said in a statement.
"Regardless of the circumstances, the ICRC condemns this very severely," Beatrice Megevand-Roggo, head of ICRC operations for the Near and Middle East, told Reuters in Geneva.
In a statement expressing shock at the killing, the International Committee of the Red Cross called on “all those involved in the violence” to spare Red Cross and Red Crescent staff members.
“The exclusively humanitarian aim of the Red Crescent and Red Cross is to bring aid in a fully impartial and neutral manner to people in need,” the statement said.
She added that the "lack of respect for medical services" remained a major issue in Syria.
"The president of the Syrian Arab Red Crescent, Dr. AbdulRahman al-Attar, said that he has "officially requested the Syrian authorities to launch an investigation into the death of Dr. Jbeiro," the ICRC said in a statement.
Syria official media reported Wednesday “The Syrian Arab Red Crescent (SARC), the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) and the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) denounced the assassination of head of Red Crescent Branch in Idleb Dr. Abdel Razaq Jbeiro, who was gunned down by armed terrorist group on Wednesday in Khan Shekhoun.”
Syrian state television blamed "terrorists" for the killing, saying he had been "assassinated" in Khan Sheikhoun district.
State-run SANA news agency added “A statement issued by the three organizations said that the news of Dr. Jbeiro's death was a great shock, pointing out that Jbeiro was on his way back to work after the conclusion of meetings held in Damascus, and that he was in a car clearly carrying the distinct logo and symbol of the Syrian Arab Red Crescent.”
Dr. Jbeiro, born in 1945, had also previously worked as director of Idlib hospital.
Megevand-Roggo, who had just returned from a two-week trip to Syria, Yemen and Lebanon, told Reuters that checkpoints and harassment in Syria prevented ambulances and medical workers from evacuating and treating the wounded, some of whom have died as a result.
"It is very difficult for the wounded, notably those among the opposition forces, to get access to necessary medical care. It is difficult for medical personnel to do their work without being under pressure," she said. "Lives have been lost."
"There have been repeated incidents where Red Crescent ambulances have been shot at, our volunteers have been wounded. Their work is very dangerous," she added to Reuters.
"Protests started out as non-violent but today the situation is one of widespread violence in the country because many arms are circulating and many people use them, Megevand-Roggo said.
"Our access remains fairly random, we cannot go places with any regularity or frequency, some areas are more problematic than others," she said. "We'd like to develop a more regular and frequent presence in affected areas, including rural zones."
The ICRC started visiting prisoners in Syria for the first time last September, including the central prison in Damascus.
But it has been unable to carry out further visits to detention centers due to a disagreement with Syrian authorities over the ICRC's standard terms, she said.
"The dialogue is difficult, we are in a situation of stagnation regarding the possibility for us to resume our activities and visit other detention centers," she said.
ICRC terms worldwide include the right to interview prisoners privately about their treatment and conditions of detention and to make follow-up visits.
Syrian authorities say that more than 5,000 detainees were released under Bashar's latest amnesty this month, although activists say this still leaves many thousands more behind bars.
"There are certainly several thousand detainees. We have very little information on the situation," Megevand-Roggo said. "The most urgent thing is to be able to tell families where their loved ones are being held and to facilitate contact between them."
The ICRC is the only international agency deploying aid workers in Syria. A local Red Crescent volunteer was killed and three others were injured in the flashpoint city of Homs last September when an ambulance came under heavy fire.
More than 5,000 people have been killed in a 10-month-old uprising against President Bashar al-Assad`s regime, the United Nations said last month.
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3 NGOs De-registered by the Registrar of Societies
Three non-governmental organisations have been de-registered by the Registrar of Societies.
They include the Committee of Citizens, Leadership Environment and Development Southern Africa and the Evangelical Youth Alliance International.
Chief Registrar of Societies Clement Andeleki has confirmed the development in a press statement issued to ZNBC News on Tuesday.
Mr Andeleki has explained that the three organisations have been operating illegally, failed to pay annual returns and failed to comply with their terms of registration.
He has also reminded political parties, clubs, charity organisations and churches to pay their annual returns by 31st March, 2012.
But Committee of Citizens Executive Director Gregory Chifire has maintained that his organisation is still a legal entity.
Mr Chifire has challenged the Registrar of Societies to check his records and tell the nation the truth.
He says the action has not surprised him, describing it as a political gimick by the PF government.
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No one cares about the welfare of internal migrant labourers
Rajiv Khandelwal is the founder and director of Aajeevika Bureau, a specialised public initiative based in Udaipur that provides services to thousands of migrant workers from impoverished rural areas who enter urban labour markets for seasonal employment.
Aajeevika Bureau is an attempt to address the problems associated with exhaustion of rural resources and the inevitability of migration among rural youth.
Khandelwal’s team at the Bureau has designed a number of innovative solutions for migrants, including registration and photo ID services, vocational training, employment counselling, legal aid, financial services, and destination support.
The Bureau also actively seeks to influence policy around rural migration and has presented strong alternatives to the government, donors and research agencies.
Aajeevika Bureau’s work has been picked up by a number of organisations in high-migration states like Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh, Orissa, Bihar and Maharashtra.
In this interview, Khandelwal explains what India’s growth story means for internal migrants who have both fuelled and fed off the country’s development. He suggests a possible course of civil society action and state policy for this large, growing, yet overlooked segment of our population.
What implications does the India growth story have for internal migration?
The truth is that India’s growth story is essentially fuelled by internal migration, and India will grow as internal migration increases. They both fuel and feed off each other.
A lot of the benefits of growth, however, actually skip large sections of migrant workers. They may be contributing significantly to high-growth industry and services, but the returns for them continue to be low.
Wages in our country are among the lowest anywhere in the world and that does not look likely to change anytime soon. India’s economic growth, in fact, is a success story because of unbridled distress migration by the country’s poor.
How have the state, markets and civil society shaped the discourse on internal migration?
I would say that migrant workers are neglected by all three major columns of society.
The state has largely ignored migrant workers, mainly because it perceives internal migration, or the relentless shift of people from villages to cities, as a problem. In fact, a lot of the state’s programmes are driven by the agenda to keep people in villages.
The National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme, for example, is built around the need to help people find local employment. Little is said about the fact that the NREGS does not fully answer people’s need to migrate.
NGOs have divided their work into rural, urban, farmers, artisans, women, children, and so on. Very few NGOs actually define migrant workers as a segment requiring attention. NGOs’ work with unorganised sector workers in the labour market is actually very limited.
Even NGOs based in urban areas that receive large waves of migrant workers barely recognise these groups as candidates for support -- they are seen as mobile or unavailable. Large trade unions too have left out unorganised sector workers because they are difficult to bring together and mobilise and do not represent significant political gains for them.
Large corporations and the urban industrial economy, I think, are enjoying the benefits of this neglect of migrant workers. In the scenario of deregulation and lax labour laws, they reap the dubious and short-term benefits of a casual and informal workforce.
On whom does the onus lie to ensure that internal migrant workers are not excluded from policy responses and protective measures?
I think the onus has to mainly lie with the state. There is a strong argument, and I agree with it, that in the case of workers in the informal economy, where the relationship between employer and worker is not very clearly established, the state should be seen as the principal employer. It is the state’s responsibility that workers in the informal economy are protected and given services and social security benefits.
With increasing numbers of migrant workers, I also see a significant role for trade unions and NGOs. Large numbers of rural people now live in cities, even if seasonally.
India will be poor in its cities, not just in its rural areas anymore. The focus of civil society attention has to start shifting similarly. They have to start seeing migrants as major candidates for services, support and advocacy.
When we talk of the role of NGOs and trade unions, are there any concrete examples or interventions on their part?
In the case of interventions by NGOs and civil society, I am happy to say that attention is now growing. Our organisation, Aajeevika Bureau, for instance, has specifically focused on issues of migrant workers.
We have worked both at the ‘source’, in Rajasthan, and at the ‘destination’, in Gujarat. We also work and collaborate with a number of organisations across the country in high-migration settings and help them in their programmes for migrant groups.
These organisations work in high-migration corridors like Orissa to Andhra Pradesh and Kerala, Bihar and Uttar Pradesh to Mumbai, and corridors within Rajasthan, Maharashtra and Gujarat.
The number of organisations is steadily increasing, although it is nowhere close to the scale of the problem. I would say that there is a need to see more trade union involvement in this sector and new forms of trade union activity among migrant workers in some of the sectors that I mentioned earlier. I think that aspect still remains poorly covered.
We have the Inter-State Migrant Workmen Act (ISMW Act). What has its implementation been like?
The ISMW Act is an obsolete piece of legislation. It was drafted in the mid-’70s and in the very specific context of inter-state movement of labour. It largely governs contractors and attempts to bring them under some kind of regulation, which is desirable.
But there are several facets of internal migration that have opened up since then, which the ISMW Act does not even consider. If anything, there is a need to re-draft the legislation itself and bring some specific industries within its ambit -- especially industries that are known to hire unskilled, vulnerable, migrant groups.
This would include industries like construction, head-loading, low-end retail, manufacturing, hospitality and brick-kiln work. Trade unions, NGOs, workers’ organisations and the government need to come together to push for new legislation for migrant workers.
We’ve now gathered that the primary response should come from the state. But the interventions that we’ve seen so far have been coming largely from civil society. How scaleable do you think their interventions are? And what is their ability to influence state responses and policies, and change the current discourse on migration?
Some of the work that civil society is doing -- for instance the move to issue migrants an ID, provide them with skills training, offer legal protection, and financial services -- is highly scaleable.
They are not unique to a specific geography; they are fairly universal solutions that can be taken to any geography and any group of migrants across the country. Of course, civil society is limited by its resources, its networks and its ability to deliver.
Therefore, it can partner well with governments to deliver these services. I think that the replicability is in the content. How it should be done, how we roll it out now over a larger area with a greater number of groups is a matter of state definition.
The state can work closely with civil society towards that end. I would come back to the need to show working models in these corridors. It will also bring some inter-state coordination to the front. It will show how the governments of Orissa, Gujarat, Rajasthan and Maharashtra can work together, and how organisations across these geographies can work together. Unless that coordination is cracked, between source and destination, we will not be able to scale up services significantly.
Secondly, a lot of investment is coming into urban infrastructural improvement and improvement of urban services. These services can start looking at the presence of large populations that are present seasonally, not permanently. Services can be designed around the presence of temporary workers, which is another potential for scale because a lot of investment is now happening in urban areas.
The discourse will be changed by practice, not purely by research. A combination of research and practice will change the discourse. The fact that there are national symposiums, conferences, debates and inquiries around the issue of internal migration shows that some effect is already taking place.
There is a fair bit of recognition of the success that is happening in pockets of the country, wherever work with migrants is taking place. The discourse will obviously change when the state adopts it wholesale and accepts it as its development agenda.
This will take some time, but the fact that civil society is contributing to working functioning models on the ground will be the tipping point for the discourse, not just research or policy analysis. - Infochange News & Features
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Activists in Egypt to hold massive rally today
CAIRO Egyptian activists are preparing for a mass rally on Friday, after they spent the night in Cairo’s Tahrir Square marking the first anniversary of the uprising that ousted president Hosni Mubarak.
In an interesting development on Thursday, the Muslim Brotherhood, the big winners of the parliamentary vote, said it will not field a candidate for the Egyptian presidency.
“The Muslim Brotherhood will not support (former member) Abdel Moneim Abul Fotouh or any candidate who has an Islamic reference in the presidential elections,” he said, quoted by Egypt’s news agency Mena.
Also on Thursday, the country’s military authorities told several American pro-democracy activists, including the son of a member of US President Barack Obama’s cabinet, that they cannot leave the country, in what one of those affected called a “de facto detention”.
At least 27 pro-democracy groups have called for the rally to press for democratic change, with marches to set off from mosques after the noon Muslim prayer towards Tahrir, the National Front for Justice and Democracy said.
Egypt’s press on Thursday hailed the “revival” of the revolution after massive crowds took to the streets in Cairo, the Mediterranean city of Alexandria, the canal city of Suez and in the Nile Delta and Sinai peninsula.
“The revolution continues,” trumpeted the independent daily Al Shorouq, saying millions of Egyptians wanted to see “the end of military rule.”
“The people want the continuation of the revolution,” proclaimed the state-owned Al Ahram, above a large picture of massive crowds thronging Tahrir Square — the symbolic heart of the Egyptian protests.
Protesters spent a peaceful Wednesday night in Tahrir Square, despite weeks of warnings by the military council and state media of possible trouble.
Egypt’s bourse on Thursday spiked 7.18 per cent in a buying spree, after the peaceful and orderly rallies. The main EGX-30 index reached 4432.99 points at the close of trading.
“The Muslim Brotherhood will not support (former member) Abdel Moneim Abul Fotouh or any candidate who has an Islamic reference in the presidential elections,” he said, quoted by Egypt’s news agency Mena.
He said the movement would “reach an agreement with all national powers on the qualifications of the upcoming president,” stressing that “the demands of the Egyptian nation are on the top of the Muslim Brotherood’s priorities.”
The Brotherhood’s Freedom and Justice Party (FJP) won 235 seats in the new People’s Assembly, or 47.18 per cent, while the ultra-conservative Salafist Al Nur party came second with 121 seats.
Describing a travel ban that may add to strains with its US ally, officials at two prominent US-funded NGOs said on Thursday that 10 of their staff must stay in Egypt.
They said the orders were related to judicial investigations launched last month into a number of NGOs for alleged violations of rules relating to the registration of organisations in Egypt.
Among those targeted is Sam LaHood, Egypt director of the International Republican Institute, whose father Ray LaHood is US Transportation Secretary.
Sam LaHood had tried to fly out from Cairo on Saturday and was told that he could not leave, one NGO official said.
The US urged Egypt to lift travel bans placed the NGO officials.
“We are urging the government of Egypt to lift these restrictions immediately and allow these folks to come home as soon as possible,” State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland told a news briefing.
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Rape, corruption in camps blight lives of Somali displaced
MOGADISHU (AlertNet) - Nurto Isak's food rations are feeding her, her three children, and -- she suspects -- the militiamen guarding the camp in Mogadishu where she and other uprooted Somalis have taken refuge.
The city is host to more than 180,000 internally displaced people (IDPs) who, like Isak, have fled a killer combination of conflict, drought and hunger back home.
Many risk long, difficult journeys to reach the capital, their sights set on the numerous aid agencies that have set up relief operations to hand out food and treat malnutrition there.
Yet many people at various IDP settlements in the war-torn city complain that food aid is not reaching them and accuse local aid workers working for international and Somali NGOs of taking it to line their own pockets.
"Half of the rations intended for our camp is given to the warlord whose militia are said to be guarding us," Isak told AlertNet (www.trust.org/alertnet), a humanitarian news service run by Thomson Reuters Foundation.
Many of the displaced said women were being raped in camps, while others lamented a lack of jobs, health clinics and schools despite the increased presence of aid groups.
Six months after famine was declared in parts of Somalia, the Horn of Africa country remains in the grip of a humanitarian crisis, with 4 million people in need of aid, according to U.N. figures.
However, fighting between government forces and Islamist rebels, combined with attacks on aid workers and a history of aid being manipulated for political gain, means Somalia is one of the toughest countries for relief agencies to operate in.
As such, it is a classic case study of the obstacles to effective aid as highlighted in an AlertNet poll of 41 leading relief agencies published on Thursday.
In the survey, more than half the experts cited increasingly complex disasters as one of the biggest challenges to aid delivery -- with the use of aid as a political weapon and violence against relief workers also featuring highly.
Last month two staff working for Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) were shot dead by a colleague in Mogadishu, while earlier this month the International Committee of the Red Cross suspended food distribution to 1.1 million people after al Shabaab rebels blocked deliveries to areas under the militant group's control.
"This is one of the most complex environments for humanitarians," said U.N. humanitarian coordinator for Somalia, Mark Bowden, in response to the claims by displaced people that food rations were being sold by local aid workers.
"Despite continued efforts to strengthen our monitoring systems, allegations still and will continue," he said in a statement to AlertNet.
FAST BUCK
Some of the IDP camps -- little more than a clutch of flimsy shelters made of sticks and cloth -- are directly and indirectly run by government forces or warlords linked to the government, residents say.
Shukri Aden, a resident at another camp, said she had witnessed traders buying food supplies directly from a number of local staff working for NGOs and aid agencies responsible for distributing food in her camp.
"Traders park their cars and lorries beside the camp when it is food distribution day," the mother of six said.
Once a month residents of the camps are handed a card that allows them to collect 25 kg of rice, 25 kg of wheat flour, 10 kg of sugar and 5 liters of cooking oil, Aden said.
But often they are pressured into handing their rations to a local aid worker who pays them around $5 each -- hardly enough to buy food for a day.
The aid worker then sells the food at a marked-up price to a trader, earning thousands of dollars in profits, she said.
"They give us cards to take food but we rarely receive the ration," said Aden, who has taken to begging and washing clothes to scrape together a few more shillings to feed her family.
RAPED AT GUNPOINT
A few miles away in Dinsoor IDP camp, Kadija Mohamed, 36, told AlertNet she was raped.
"Three armed men in government uniform came into the camp. The strongest one shone a powerful torch in my eyes, he strangled me and then raped me in front of my crying kids," she said.
Mohamed, a widow, said she waited for sunrise before making her way to a nearby clinic only to be told there were no doctors.
"Later the camp leaders brought me some painkillers. Now I'm OK but I do not know what diseases I caught from the rape. I have nowhere to go for a check-up," Mohamed said. "We live in these makeshift shelters. We have no aid agency or government to protect us at night. We are at God's mercy."
Isak also said rape was common in her camp.
"They rape even mothers at gunpoint at night -- and we are threatened to death should we disclose it," she said. "The makeshift shelters have no lockable doors, so these men just come in at night and lie on you."
In its January 18 report, the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said sexual violence against women and girls was continuing in Somalia. It also said security in the IDP settlements was insufficient and at risk of deteriorating.
QUESTION OF PRIORITIES
Mohamed's brother, Macalim Ibrahim, 40, reserved his biggest criticism for government officials and local aid workers.
"These local aid workers are building houses with the sale of food intended for the poor displaced people like us," he told AlertNet. "We are deprived and yet have no government or aid agencies to ask for help."
He also questioned the effectiveness of some of the aid that has been given.
"Many NGOs come, take our photos, and never come back. For example, one aid agency came and erected this school building made of iron sheets," Ibrahim said.
"We brought our kids to the school but it did not work more than 7 days. The guys took footage of the kids at school and never came back. And the teachers disappeared.
"Other aid agencies came and built these latrines. That is good but a hungry man never goes to the toilet. We need food and water to survive," he said.
-----------------------------------------
FEATURE-Rape, corruption in camps blight lives of Somali displaced
MOGADISHU, Jan 26 (AlertNet) - Nurto Isak's food rations are feeding her, her three children, and -- she suspects -- the militiamen guarding the camp in Mogadishu where she and other uprooted Somalis have taken refuge.
The city is host to more than 180,000 internally displaced people (IDPs) who, like Isak, have fled a killer combination of conflict, drought and hunger back home.
Many risk long, difficult journeys to reach the capital, their sights set on the numerous aid agencies that have set up relief operations to hand out food and treat malnutrition there.
Yet many people at various IDP settlements in the war-torn city complain that food aid is not reaching them and accuse local aid workers working for international and Somali NGOs of taking it to line their own pockets.
"Half of the rations intended for our camp is given to the warlord whose militia are said to be guarding us," Isak told AlertNet (www.trust.org/alertnet), a humanitarian news service run by Thomson Reuters Foundation.
Many of the displaced said women were being raped in camps, while others lamented a lack of jobs, health clinics and schools despite the increased presence of aid groups.
Six months after famine was declared in parts of Somalia, the Horn of Africa country remains in the grip of a humanitarian crisis, with 4 million people in need of aid, according to U.N. figures.
However, fighting between government forces and Islamist rebels, combined with attacks on aid workers and a history of aid being manipulated for political gain, means Somalia is one of the toughest countries for relief agencies to operate in.
As such, it is a classic case study of the obstacles to effective aid as highlighted in an AlertNet poll of 41 leading relief agencies published on Thursday.
In the survey, more than half the experts cited increasingly complex disasters as one of the biggest challenges to aid delivery -- with the use of aid as a political weapon and violence against relief workers also featuring highly.
Last month two staff working for Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) were shot dead by a colleague in Mogadishu, while earlier this month the International Committee of the Red Cross suspended food distribution to 1.1 million people after al Shabaab rebels blocked deliveries to areas under the militant group's control.
"This is one of the most complex environments for humanitarians," said U.N. humanitarian coordinator for Somalia, Mark Bowden, in response to the claims by displaced people that food rations were being sold by local aid workers.
"Despite continued efforts to strengthen our monitoring systems, allegations still and will continue," he said in a statement to AlertNet.
FAST BUCK
Some of the IDP camps -- little more than a clutch of flimsy shelters made of sticks and cloth -- are directly and indirectly run by government forces or warlords linked to the government, residents say.
Shukri Aden, a resident at another camp, said she had witnessed traders buying food supplies directly from a number of local staff working for NGOs and aid agencies responsible for distributing food in her camp.
"Traders park their cars and lorries beside the camp when it is food distribution day," the mother of six said.
Once a month residents of the camps are handed a card that allows them to collect 25 kg of rice, 25 kg of wheat flour, 10 kg of sugar and 5 litres of cooking oil, Aden said.
But often they are pressured into handing their rations to a local aid worker who pays them around $5 each -- hardly enough to buy food for a day.
The aid worker then sells the food at a marked-up price to a trader, earning thousands of dollars in profits, she said.
"They give us cards to take food but we rarely receive the ration," said Aden, who has taken to begging and washing clothes to scrape together a few more shillings to feed her family.
RAPED AT GUNPOINT
A few miles away in Dinsoor IDP camp, Kadija Mohamed, 36, told AlertNet she was raped.
"Three armed men in government uniform came into the camp. The strongest one shone a powerful torch in my eyes, he strangled me and then raped me in front of my crying kids," she said.
Mohamed, a widow, said she waited for sunrise before making her way to a nearby clinic only to be told there were no doctors.
"Later the camp leaders brought me some painkillers. Now I'm OK but I do not know what diseases I caught from the rape. I have nowhere to go for a check-up," Mohamed said. "We live in these makeshift shelters. We have no aid agency or government to protect us at night. We are at God's mercy."
Isak also said rape was common in her camp.
"They rape even mothers at gunpoint at night -- and we are threatened to death should we disclose it," she said. "The makeshift shelters have no lockable doors, so these men just come in at night and lie on you."
In its Jan. 18 report, the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said sexual violence against women and girls was continuing in Somalia. It also said security in the IDP settlements was insufficient and at risk of deteriorating.
QUESTION OF PRIORITIES
Mohamed's brother, Macalim Ibrahim, 40, reserved his biggest criticism for government officials and local aid workers.
"These local aid workers are building houses with the sale of food intended for the poor displaced people like us," he told AlertNet. "We are deprived and yet have no government or aid agencies to ask for help."
He also questioned the effectiveness of some of the aid that has been given.
"Many NGOs come, take our photos, and never come back. For example, one aid agency came and erected this school building made of iron sheets," Ibrahim said.
"We brought our kids to the school but it did not work more than 7 days. The guys took footage of the kids at school and never came back. And the teachers disappeared.
"Other aid agencies came and built these latrines. That is good but a hungry man never goes to the toilet. We need food and water to survive," he said.
