18, June 2020
After the Death of Wazizi, Cameroon Needs Outside Political Mediation 0
Maurice Kamto is the leader of the Cameroon Renaissance Movement (MRC) and was the main challenger in Cameroon’s 2018 presidential election. He was imprisoned by the government from January to October in 2019.
Nearly one year ago, on August 2, 2019, journalist Samuel Ajiekah Abuwe—better known as Wazizi—was arrested and detained by government forces in Buea, located in the South-West region of Cameroon. Since 2017, Buea has been home to unrelenting violence between the government and separatist fighters. For three hundred days after his arrest, despite numerous domestic and international calls to produce Wazizi, authorities in Cameroon remained silent about his fate. This detention was indeed a textbook case of enforced disappearance. Despite holding out bleak hopes that Wazizi might eventually emerge alive, our worst fears came true when we learned he had died in custody following torture.
Like many other critics in Cameroon—including additional journalists—Wazizi was accused of “collaborating with separatists,” though his lawyers claim he had not been charged with any offense prior to his disappearance. I personally experienced this treatment. In early 2019, I was charged by a military court with rebellion and “hostility to the homeland” after my political party—the Cameroon Renaissance Movement (CRM)—staged peaceful protests in major cities, following a rigged presidential election in October 2018. Since that time, I have been repeatedly intimidated by the government and its associated militia groups, often being threatened with arrest and death.
Luckily, I am alive today and can raise my voice, while Wazizi can no longer. His commitment to basic freedoms, and his legacy, will surely live on. Importantly as well, his death at the hands of Cameroonian authorities raises major questions about the future of our country. Just last week—for the second year in a row—Cameroon topped the Norwegian Refugee Council’s list of “most neglected crises” worldwide. Our country is hemorrhaging under the boots of a dictatorship. More than ever, we need international assistance.
Indeed, for Cameroon to meet the long-subdued aspirations of its people, we must implement a democratic agenda—a viable path forward. The situation demands leadership and it is evident that the current ruling regime is unwilling to exercise the necessary courage.
First and foremost, all political prisoners incarcerated in Cameroon must be released—this would include Ayuk Tabe, the Anglophone separatist leader, and Mamadou Yakuba, our first Vice-President at the CRM. Secondly, to ensure that Wazizi’s death is not in vain, the government and key political and civic actors, should agree to a consensual political roadmap that principally includes an overhaul of the electoral system to end the ongoing post-electoral crisis.
Lastly, we must agree to definitively end our country’s ongoing civil war in the Anglophone regions. Too often over the years, the government has used conflict to justify the incarceration of journalists like Wazizi and opposition leaders like myself and my colleagues. This is why the international community must organize an all-inclusive dialogue with Cameroonian leaders across the political spectrum. This initiative would ideally fall under the auspices of the United Nations and cooperate directly with African Union leadership and Cameroon’s development partners.
For now, it is not yet too late to act. But act we must.
Culled from Council on Foreign Relations
19, June 2020
East Africa braces for another locust invasion 0
East Africa is bracing for a third outbreak of desert locusts, with billions of the destructive insects about to hatch and threaten food supplies in a region already reeling from damaging rains and the coronavirus pandemic.
Spurred by favourable weather conditions, the migratory pests have descended on East Africa in record numbers since late 2019 and another wave is about to take to the skies despite the concerted use of pesticides.
“Tens of thousands of hectares of cropland and pasture have already been damaged across the Horn and East Africa,” the International Rescue Committee said in a report this month, noting even a small swarm could devour the same amount of food in a day as approximately 35,000 people.
In Ethiopia between January and April, locusts destroyed 1.3 million hectares of grazing land and nearly 200,000 hectares of crops, resulting in the loss of 350,000 tonnes of cereals, IGAD, the East Africa regional organisation, said in a June report.
But these initial estimates — corresponding to the first and second locust waves — do not fully capture the extent of damage as field surveys have been hindered by the coronavirus pandemic.
“Until we get extended figures, I would just say Ethiopia was definitely the most affected in terms of croplands, then Somalia,” says Kenneth Kemucie Mwangi from ICPAC, the climate monitoring programme of IGAD.
Somalia, which like Kenya experienced heavy rains and flooding in recent months that left scores dead, had already declared a “national emergency” against the locust scourge in February.
So far East African neighbours Tanzania, Rwanda and Burundi have been spared the insects, which travel in huge swarms billions of insects strong, and can migrate 150 kilometres (90 miles) in a single day.
– 400 billion killed –
The World Bank in May approved a $500 million (445 million euro) programme to help countries vulnerable to hunger in East Africa fight the pests eating their way across the region.
Pesticide spraying operations have been underway since February, helping wipe out staggering numbers of the insects capable of multiplying their numbers 20-fold every three months.
“About 400,000 hectares were controlled in the region between January and mid May. We estimate that 400 billion locusts have been exterminated,” says Cyril Ferrand, a Nairobi-based expert with the FAO.
“We can’t estimate the total population because we don’t have access to certain areas, especially in Somalia. But we know that it’s been seriously reduced.”
In Kenya, where swarms blotted out the sky for miles in recent months, locusts have retreated to just three semi-arid counties in the country’s far north.
Fortunately too, forecasts of dire hunger did not materialise as the first swarm to arrive from Yemen in 2019 spared the end-of-year harvest, as the crops were already too mature.
The insects, which can eat their body weight in food in a single day, strip the leaves but not seeds.
“We have not seen signs of a large scale impact on food security,” says Lark Walters of the Famine Early Warning Systems Network, a US-funded food security monitoring organisation.
– Disaster after disaster –
However that doesn’t mean the impact hasn’t been keenly felt on among vulnerable communities where access to food is fragile, and any shocks can cause immense hardship, he said.
East Africa has endured a string of disasters of near-Biblical proportions in 2020: surging rain and devastating floods, locusts and then amid it all — a viral pandemic.
“Somali pastoralist communities have had three years of drought, then the locusts, now Covid, which will prevent them from exporting their livestock,” said Ferrand of the FAO.
“For them it’s disaster after disaster, so their resilience is already very low. The slightest shock can push them into extreme poverty.”
These shocks can ripple too through the wider economy, where coronavirus lockdowns and border closures have already dragged on trade and caused financial hardship.
On June 11, the credit rating agency Fitch Ratings noted that while coronavirus was the primary factor affecting growth “the ongoing desert locust invasion represents significant downside risk to East Africa’s macroeconomic stability”.
The looming third wave still lies as eggs beneath the soil, but is predicted to hatch in coming weeks, just as farmers take to the fields.
“We have concerns for the June-July harvest,” said Waters.
Warmer weather, more rain and wind gusts are expected to direct the insects northwards, deep into the Horn of Africa and as far as Yemen, areas that will become more conducive to their reproduction in the coming months.
Source: AFP