Shravan Vidyarthi and Christina MacGillivray of the International Reporting Project report from Kenya.

Dan Rubenstein, professor of ecology and evolutionary zoology at Princeton University, joins Daljit Dhaliwal to discuss the causes of the drought and water conservation efforts.

In recent days it has launched another deadly attack in the capital, Mogadishu, killing people as they were fasting during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.

Meanwhile, thousands of displaced people continue to stream across the border into a large refugee camp in northern Kenya. The Dadaab refugee complex, with almost 300,000 people, is the largest refugee camp in the world and grows by about 8,000 Somalis a month.

Spencer Platt, a photographer for Getty Images, recently returned from a visit to the refugee camps in Kenya and shares his impressions of the camps.

Find more information at the Doctors Without Borders Web site.

Michael Novacek, the provost of science at the American Museum of Natural History, joins Martin Savidge to discuss the challenges of fighting malaria.

Clinton pledged to expand America’s support for Somalia’s weak interim government as it struggles against Islamic extremists. As she makes her way through Africa, economic development and human rights are also expected to be high on the agenda.

Emira Woods, the co-director of Foreign Policy In Focus at the Institute for Policy Studies, joins Martin Savidge to discuss Clinton’s agenda in Africa and U.S. goals in Somalia.

Below, view an interactive map exploring Hillary Clinton’s tour of Africa. Click on a country to view her plans.

Nairobi’s largest slum, Kibera, is largely populated by Nubians. Photo: Flickr user MothersFightingForOthers

Nubians in Kenya are one of the groups that Worldfocus is exploring on our extended coverage project Stateless to Statehood.

Adam Hussein Adam, project coordinator of the Open Society Initiative for East Africa, writes how his community’s plight is largely unknown outside of Kenya.

Kenyan Nubians have been defined as stateless people because their identity is questioned. They are without doubt one of the country’s most invisible and under-represented communities – economically, socially, politically and culturally. This is because they have been silent victims of discrimination, exclusion and violations of human rights and fundamental freedoms for as long as they have been in Kenya…

My great-grandfather worked in the service of the British in Somalia around the First World War and later resettled in Meru, a small town on the slopes of Mt. Kenya. His father before him worked for the Turko-Egyptian army in the Sudan. I, like my parents, was born in western Kenya.

Although I am well-educated, I have experienced serious difficulties in interacting with government officials. Between 1992 and 2000, I applied unsuccessfully for a passport five times, losing jobs in the process. One manager once asked me why I did not have a recognisable ethnic identity and that this was why I could not be promoted. Apart from studying to university level, which is an exception rather than the rule, mine may as well be the story of most Nubians. It is a story characterized by the need to survive through challenges that are never explained to you. It is a story characterised by limited interactions with state officials who always remind you it is your privilege to be served by them. It is a story characterised by assuming false identities in order to belong…

Before I encountered these challenges in my own life and found out that many of my Nubian colleagues gave up hope of productive careers because of delayed or denied identity cards, I had accused most of them of being lazy. Today I understand that Kenyan Nubians, whether citizens or not, do not belong.

The Kenyan government uses both ethnicity and territory to establish belonging. Since both Nubian ethnicity and their territory of occupancy are contested by the government, most Nubians live as de facto stateless persons without adequate protection under national and international law, irrespective of the fact that they should be considered Kenyan citizens under the Constitution. In Kenya nothing defines your citizenship more than your ethnicity. Nubians face institutionalised discrimination in issuance of documents. They are subjected to a vetting process of ethnic determination in order to acquire an identity card or passports.

Kenya today does not have official figures of Nubians and does not include them in census reports. There is no official recognition of the community; the Kenyan government had classified the community as ‘other Kenyans’ or just ‘others’ and has only recently started a process of recording Nubians as a named clan of other Kenyans.

Above all, Nubians live in temporary structures throughout Kenya and often on contested lands. Most Nubians’ settlements do not have title deeds and are only occupied on a Temporary Occupational Licence (TOL), leaving the present generation of Nubians as mere squatters.

Stateless individuals and communities like the Nubians are assumed to be hopeless and helpless victims, dependent upon the goodwill of others. Under the assumption that citizenship is the only vehicle for having a civic and political voice and that therefore stateless people lack any political identity, stateless people become less than fully human and are reduced to mere targets of humanitarian assistance. All energies are thus focused on how to acquire citizenship for stateless people as fast and as easily as possible.

What are the Nubians’ issues?

Obstacles to citizenship are also faced by other minority groups in Kenya such as Kenyan Somalis and Coastal Arabs although the Nubians have experienced some progress. The real progress in Nubian experience is in their adaptation and mastery of living in Kenya without belonging…

In 2003 the then Chairperson of the Kenyan Nubians’ Council, the late Yunis Ali, encouraged a procession of Nubians marching to Kenya’s High Court thus:

“My people! For a century, we have sought a compassionate hearing from all authorities in Kenya but we got none. Today, we march to the Kenyan High Court for justice – if not to get it, then as testimony that we stood up for our rights.”

In the end, the challenge of standing up to statelessness – or any human rights abuse – is that as a victim you see it through the emotional lenses of feelings and experience; others will then judge you as subjective. When you stand apart and subject the issue to objective criteria, legal definitions limit one’s expression; most of the legal terms are not expressive enough for local realities. For Kenyan Nubians the lack of a link to the state, lack of integration and lack of social acceptance have been part of our existence. We are neither Sudanese nor accepted as Kenyans.

As a statelessness advocate, I believe that legal links are important for anyone belonging in contemporary society; however, without addressing the social acceptability of any community of a people, groups like the Nubians will continue to live from one crisis to another.

The original article was published in Forced Migration Review, 2009. No. 32.

Worldfocus was nominated for an Emmy in the “Best story in a regularly scheduled newscast” category for our coverage of the “Crisis in Congo” (Executive Producer: Marc Rosenwasser, Correspondent: Michael J. Kavanagh of the Pulitzer Center, Producers: Lisa Biagiotti, Taylor Krauss). The “Crisis in Congo” videos also won the 2009 Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Award in the international television category.

Pascal and Vestine are alive, but still not home

Rape as a weapon of war

Worldfocus was also nominated for an Emmy in the “Outstanding feature story in a regularly scheduled broadcast” for our coverage of “21st Century Africa” (Executive Producer: Marc Rosenwasser, Correspondent: Martin Seemungal, Producer: Yuval Lion).

China strengthens trading ties in Africa

Middle class sprawls in Nairobi, Kenya

Tech advances rev up across Africa

Rwanda aims for one laptop per child

Obama’s message was described as a kind of “tough love,” encouraging democracy and at the same time warning African nations they need to take care of themselves.

Yaw Nyarko, a professor of economics and director of Africa House at New York University, joins Martin Savidge to discuss why the president chose Ghana and what is at stake for the U.S. in Africa.

Longtime CNN correspondent Gary Strieker, now a citizen correspondent, traveled to western Kenya recently, where he discovered a health project taking that very approach.

Fighting in Somalia is prompting large numbers of civilians to flee into Kenya. Photo: IRIN

Somalia’s president has declared a state of emergency following weeks of intense fighting between Islamic militants and pro-government forces. Over the weekend, the government requested foreign troops from neighboring countries to help stabilize the troubled nation.

Somali President Sheikh Sharif Sheikh Ahmed has blamed al-Shabab, a radical Islamist group with alleged ties to al-Qaeda, for the surge in violence. Control over the failed state is split between many groups.

The nation has had no effective government since 1991, and one third of the population requires food aid. Read more: Q&A: Answers to lawlessness in Somalia.

Michael Keating is the senior fellow and associate director at the Center for Democracy and Development at the University of Massachusetts, Boston. He writes at Worldfocus contributor World Politics Review about Kenya’s response to the Somali government’s request for intervention.

As the world was riveted to the events in Iran last week, the beleaguered government of Somalia put out an S.O.S. for international military support in its deteriorating fight against al Shabab guerrillas and other radical opposition forces. Thus far, only Kenyan government officials have publicly responded with threats of military intervention.

But there remains the possibility that troops from Ethiopia, Djibouti, the Sudan and Uganda might be deployed in a combined warmaking/peacekeeping operation under the banner of the African Union and other international and regional organizations. More than 5,000 peacekeepers from Uganda and Burundi are currently deployed to protect government operations in and around Mogadishu, but in recent days they have been targeted by anti-government militants who refuse to recognize their neutral status.

The response from Kenya seems to suggest that the profile of the intervention would shift from peacekeeping to combat operations against al Shabab. In response, a spokesman for al Shabab said that any foreign troops “would be sent home in coffins.”

Kenya has many reasons to try to deal with the chaos on its border. The primary one is al Shabab’s close ties with al-Qaida, which put Kenya in the crosshairs of international jihadists. Both the U.S. embassy bombing in Nairobi in 1998 as well as the subsequent Paradise Hotel bombing in Kikambala were coordinated by al-Qaida-backed operatives coming across Kenya’s long and virtually unpoliced border with Somalia. Kenya also has problems with its own homegrown militants, many of whom train and get both financing and weapons from Somali brethren.

Another reason for Kenyan concern is the rapid increase in recent weeks in the number of Internally Displaced Persons arriving at border towns along the Kenya-Ethiopia border. There are already 160,000 Somali refugees in the Dadaab camps on the Kenyan side of the border, most of whom have been living there since the early 1990s.

[...]This is a developing situation that the Europeans and Americans should pay careful attention to. The recent “World War” in the Democratic Republic of Congo, in which troops from multiple foreign countries ran riot for several years in the name of stabilization, led to millions of civilian deaths. Somalia has far fewer riches than the Congo to plunder, but no matter what happens, civilians are likely to bear the brunt of the fighting. And any survey of Somali history suggests that nothing radicalizes the population like an invasion of foreigners.

To read more, see the original post.

The views expressed by contributing bloggers do not reflect the views of Worldfocus or its partners.

The battle is between government forces and an insurgency that aims to topple the government and impose a stricter form of Islamic law. For more on the conflict, listen to our online radio show on lawlessness in Somalia.

In recent weeks, there has been intense fighting in Mogadishu, Somalia’s capital, with more than 100 people killed. The United Nations says 34,000 people were forced from their homes by the fighting just last week. More than a million Somalis have been displaced by the war, and fully 40 percent of the population is said to require humanitarian assistance.

Aid groups say that 5,000 Somalis make their way to Kenyan refugee camps each month, where conditions are bad enough that some consider returning to their violent homeland. Three of the camps are in the border town of Dadaab, where there are now more than a quarter million Somali refugees.

Joke van Peteghem, head of Doctors Without Borders in Kenya, describes the deplorable conditions in Kenyan refugee camps. 

A member of the U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM) speaks with a Ugandan colonel.

Barack Obama’s election as president of the U.S. brought pride to Kenya, where his father was born, as well as to Africa as a whole. But it remains to be seen whether African policy will be a priority for the Obama administration.

Jean Herskovits is a professor of history at the State University of New York at Purchase, where she specializes in African history and politics. She writes at the “African Arguments” blog.

While the Bush administration prioritized HIV/AIDS, conflict resolution and policy in Africa, she emphasizes the importance of the U.S.’s political and military role on the continent.

For more on the new administration’s options in Somalia, listen to our radio show on lawlessness in Somalia.

A Hippocratic Africa Policy

The past decade of U.S. Africa policy has made some wish most for policies that would “first, do no harm.”   A Hippocratic test could be useful for President Obama’s new Africa team at the NSC and the State Department, as they reflect on the harm that has punctuated their predecessors’ policies towards many African countries.

The sins fall into (at least) three categories: omission, commission, and intersecting them at times, militarization.  Here are three.  First, “democratic” elections in Nigeria and, relatedly, Kenya; this could also be called non-regime-change.  Second, fear and loathing of “Islamist” regimes, as in Somalia; thus, regime change. Finally, the rushed creation of AFRICOM, with a mission that looks likely to ingest functions of the State Department and USAID.

In Nigeria, missed opportunities and worse have led to pervasive pessimism as Nigerians face the future.  Key in this was President Olusegun Obasanjo, fresh from political imprisonment, who became president in May 1999 through an only slightly flawed election.  Nigerians and Americans alike rejoiced at the departure of the military; Obasanjo had more goodwill at home and abroad than any head of state before him.  The relief in Washington was palpable, and largely set the tone for the next nine years:  Washington could rely on Obasanjo’s help on African and other global issues  and wouldn’t have to worry about Nigeria’s stability.

In 2003 elections were due again.  Washington didn’t want to know about political assassinations, intimidation and looming fraud.  The elections themselves, taking rigging and violence to new depths, bore out Nigerians’ and observers’ worst fears.  But from official Washington, only silence.  Further, just weeks after Obasanjo’s second swearing-in, President Bush paid his only visit to Abuja, signaling to Nigerians U.S. approval of  what had happened.

Months later rumors began circulating that Obasanjo wanted to change the constitution to secure a third term, a project he denied but Nigerians gradually knew to be his priority.  The embassy in Abuja, with a new ambassador, sent ample warning to Washington, producing no effort to dissuade him.

Nigerians managed to mobilize and defeat the constitutional change in May 2006, and a period of uncertainty and anxiety followed.   It was clear that the electoral commission, whose chairman was nominated by the president, was unable or unwilling to conduct free and fair elections.  This time, the U.S. Embassy in Abuja and professionals in Washington were reporting and analyzing fully.

But from Washington came no pressure to remedy the impending election disaster.  On the contrary, when the issue that had been Obasanjo’s policy priority from the start-debt forgiveness for Nigeria-was coming to fruition, the Treasury Department helped out; no one asked for anything in return.

When the 2007 election of Obasanjo’s hand-picked successor proved to be another travesty, as reported by Nigerian and international observers alike, Washington withheld congratulations briefly, and then recognized “reality.”  Other problems were more pressing.

Such as Kenya’s upcoming elections.  Two points here: first, that President Mwai Kibaki is known to have said that Nigeria’s elections showed that the U.S. didn’t care, as long as the result was a seemingly stable government and reliable ally.  The tragic consequences of that assumption are well known.  The New York Times has just reported  the suppression by the Nairobi embassy-on whose instructions from Washington it doesn’t say-of exit polling, done by the International Republican Institute, that showed initial results favoring the challenger, Raila Odinga.  This echoes the Abuja Embassy’s attitude towards Obasanjo’s reelection in 2003.

The harm done in Nigeria and Kenya is obvious.

Meanwhile, proactive, regime-change policy is evident in Somalia, where American attempts at engagement since 1991 have had far-reaching consequences for the region and U.S. policy alike.    After 9/11, Jendayi Frazier, first at the NSC and then as Assistant Secretary for African Affairs, focused, along with the Pentagon, on fighting Islamist terrorism in the Horn.  In Somalia in 2006, an alliance called the Islamic Courts Union (ICU) finally brought peace to Mogadishu and much of southern Somalia.  But it was “Islamist,” and the Bush administration reacted by urging the Ethiopian army to invade and seize control of the country.  It installed an alternative government, which could never function beyond Baidoa and eventually, not even there.

No one who knows the history of the Horn could imagine the Somalis welcoming an Ethiopian force.  In the fighting that followed, thousands of Somali civilians died, and now the Ethiopian soldiers are gone.  The Somali parliament, which was able to meet only in Djibouti, has just elected a new president: Sheik Sharif Ahmed, now heading the Alliance for the Re-liberation of Somalia, is the moderate Islamist who, in 2006, headed the ICU.  Somalis in Mogadishu cheer!   Somalia “has come nearly full circle.”

The “nearly” part is that now there is a strong  Al Shabaab, a more radical breakaway group from the ICU, whose fighters control much of south-central Somalia, including key towns.    And there is escalating piracy, fueled by the lack of effective government on shore, but which, ironically, had been controlled by the ICU in 2006.

The harm to Somalis and to how they view the United States is obvious.

And finally, AFRICOM. Presented first as a simple reorganization, unifying previously divided U.S. military activities in Africa under one command, AFRICOM has grown into something new.  Highly unpopular among African governments, which have denied it a base on the continent, it now will undertake development projects and engage with African governments through civilian deputy leadership-apparently assuming aspects of the State Department’s and USAID’s traditional roles.

This is happening in part because far greater resources are available to the military than to the State Department, a fact recently deplored, notably, by Secretary of Defense Robert Gates.  In Africa the harm has not yet been done, but the potential can easily be imagined, from the Horn of Africa, to the Sahel, to the Niger Delta and elsewhere.   The hope is that the new Africa team in Washington may reexamine the structure now being elaborated at AFRICOM’s headquarters-in Stuttgart.

With this, as with all of Africa’s challenges, remembering Hippocrates is a place to begin.

See the original post.

The views expressed by contributing bloggers do not reflect the views of Worldfocus or its partners.

Photo courtesy of Flickr user Army.mil under a Creative Commons license.

John Atta Mills of the opposition National Democratic Congress party narrowly won a runoff election in Ghana.

Recently, Ghanaians returned to the polls for a runoff election after both major presidential candidates failed to gain a majority in last month’s vote. John Atta Mills of the opposition National Democratic Congress party narrowly defeated Nana Akufo-Addo of the ruling New Patriotic Party.

Leaders from the United Nations and several countries around the globe congratulated Ghana on the peaceful elections, the country’s second transfer of power between parties since restoring democratic elections in 1992. Some consider Ghana’s elections a model for African democracy, given election-related conflict in other African nations like Kenya and Zimbabwe.

Ayo Johnson is a journalist of African heritage working in the United Kingdom. He writes at “Africa speaks to you” about the significance of Ghana’s peaceful elections.

Ghana elections

Ghana is the blue-eyed boy of the African continent. One of Africa’s brightest-known democracies; from the famous Kwame Nkrumah for his revolutionary and progressive views and aspiration for a united Africa. To a chequered past was with that of infamous Jerry Rawlings – (NDC); who came to power repeatedly via the barrel of a gun. Rawlings finally adopted self-governing values with elections that eventually saw him crowned as president.

Election today in Ghana is a stark reminder of how far the nation have come since it’s independence 51 years ago. Ghana is a mature democracy having grown as a nation with decent economic growth forecasts that have cemented their position globally as a major producer of cocoa, gold and now new found wealth of high grade oil.

No wonder the John Atta-Mills of the National Democratic Congress (NDC) and Nana Akufo-Addo of the ruling party New Patriotic Party (NPP) are prepared to fight tooth and nail to the bitter end; to get what must be a lucrative opportunity for high office in Ghana.

A win for John Atta-Mills of (NDC) will be dogged by counter claims and further appeals by (NPP) to the electoral commission of vote rigging and election irregularities. Both parties must use the judiciary in line with the constitution and take their grievance to the courts.

Both the (NDC) and (NPP) must respect the courts decision as final, failure to adhere could lead to increased tensions that could lead to chaos and anarchy.

To read more, see the original post.

Photo courtesy of Flickr user bbcworldservice under a Creative Commons license.

Many African countries have been slow to criticize the Zimbabwean leader, but Kenya recently called for foreign intervention.

A spokesman for Mugabe claimed that the U.S. and United Kingdom are planning to invade Zimbabwe.

Andrew Meldrum, a senior editor at GlobalPost, reported from Zimbabwe for more than 20 years and joins Martin Savidge to discuss the humanitarian situation in Zimbabwe, Robert Mugabe’s role in the country and international calls for the leader to step down.

Below, bloggers discuss the humanitarian and political situations in Zimbabwe.

Blogger “Sokwanele” posts images of raw sewage in the streets of Ruwa — an ominous sign for the spread of cholera as the disease spreads. For more on the cholera epidemic in Zimbabwe, see our previous Blogwatch: Cholera claims more than 560 lives in Zimbabwe.

The “Kubatana” blog writes that it is the failing government who is responsible for the health crisis.

The “Foreign Policy Blog” says that international calls for Mugabe’s removal give him the excuse to play victim of Western imperialism.

The “Back Towards the Locus” blog responds to an article in the Times Online that calls on the African Union to send troops into Zimbabwe, arguing that such military action would endanger aid workers and exacerbate instability.

A Chinese worker on a crane in Tanzania.

Worldfocus anchor Martin Savidge writes about the importance of multi-layered coverage of Africa and elsewhere.

Last week, the world celebrated the historic election of Barack Obama as the next president of the United States. But now that the votes are in, the party is over.

The economic crisis has returned to the headlines, the war in eastern Congo has intensified and the cameras have even left the Kenyan villages that marked the occasion with a national holiday.

Last Thursday, I interviewed Sarjoh Bah of New York University’s Center on International Cooperation about the desire from Africans to change the existing humanitarian relationship between the U.S. and Africa, expanding into more of a strategic partnership.

As a foreign correspondent, I reported from dozens of countries, but never once stepped foot on the African continent. The networks just didn’t cover it. And when they did, the images that dominated the news were war, poverty and hunger — not all too different from today.

But as Bah explained, there are enormous amounts of opportunity in Africa — an expanding middle class and increased trade and investment from China and India.

In 2007, the U.S. imported more oil from Africa than the Middle East. By 2015, it is projected that 25 percent of U.S. oil will likely come from Africa.

Obama’s familial roots in Kenya are significant, but coverage shouldn’t stop there. And while hunger, poverty and war are serious challenges in parts of Africa, there’s also another world embodied within the continent — an emerging global presence.

I think it’s important to sometimes go beyond tired images and photo ops — they’re helpful, but as entryways and opportunities to look deeper.

- Martin Savidge

Martin Savidge speaks with reporters in six countries about reactions to the U.S. presidential election and potential changes in the world’s perception of America.

But many countries have replaced paper ballots with electronic buttons and still others have taken their elections online.

In deciding how they will vote, countries weigh the speed, accuracy, anonymity and security of various technologies.

For some nations, electronic voting machines (EVMs) represent a chance at heightened accuracy, as well as increased participation due to accessibility for illiterate voters. Others retain the traditional paper and pencil, concerned that EVMs will open doors for hackers and put the democratic process at risk.

See our other coverage of the 2008 U.S. election and its global impact. The slideshow below shows voting technology in several countries around the world.

Here are some sample ballots [PDF]: Latvia, Ghana, Ethiopia, Brazil, Albania and Congo.

Sample ballots courtesy of The ACE Electoral Knowledge Network under a Creative Commons license. All photos courtesy of Flickr users under a Creative Commons license. Find Worldfocus on Flickr here and contribute your internationally-themed pictures to our collection.

From Kenya to Argentina, from Egypt to India, world citizens speak out about U.S. foreign policy, culture and infrastructure.

Below, see the final piece of the series. In it, David Marash travels to the Czech Republic to sample Czech opinion of the U.S. — somewhat boosted by American tourists but soured by U.S. foreign policy.

Worldfocus travels to both nations and finds that today, their people hold varying opinions of America. In Kenya, several Kenyans take comfort in American popular culture. Some Kenyans say they feel a connection to Americans because of their shared pain of terrorism and the ascent of presidential candidate Barack Obama, whose father was Kenyan.

In the Muslim-populated country of Tanzania, the view of America sours. Some citizens report a more negative view of the U.S. and its foreign policy.

Worldfocus correspondent Martin Seemungal and producer Yuval Lion report from Kenya and Tanzania.

Worldfocus correspondent Martin Seemungal and producer Yuval Lion report on Africa’s technological advances.

And despite Africa’s limited access to the Internet, bloggers are weighing in on the role of technology around Africa.

The “Geek2Live” blog writes about efforts to speed up Africa’s connection to the World Wide Web.

The “White African” blog discusses why African technology matters, including why Africa is a great place to test technology and gain a competitive edge in world markets.

“ReadWriteWeb” recently completed a three-part series on social media in Africa: an introduction to the African web community, mobile innovations in the continent and the effect of more democratic media on Africa’s social and political landscape (including its role in Zimbabwean elections).

The “AfriGadget” blog cites examples of African ingenuity and invention, including a phone-based security system designed by an 18-year-old Kenyan. “Startup Africa” also provides resources for African entrepreneurs.

YouTube user “bahiaboy” posts a video about the Internet trading platform TradeNet, which provides African farmers with price updates and purchase offers over cell phones, with testimonies from both rural Africans and the platform’s developers.

Photo courtesy of Flickr user Esthr under a Creative Commons license.