Africa: Sept '07

Friday, 12 October, 2007

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IWPR staff

The international justice team this month launched its first Arabic translations of ICC-related stories, which we hope will prove to be an important resource for media in Sudan.



There was also further preparatory work for the ‘Darfur: Voices from the Ground’ conference scheduled to take place in The Hague on October 22. Much time was devoted to interviewing people living in displaced persons camps for a special report to be presented at the event.



The Arabic department of Radio Netherlands, our partner for the event, assisted with our Arabic-language interviews and recorded them - snippets of which will be played at the round table.



The international justice team has also been researching and writing features about the military court system in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, an analysis of whether justice is slipping off the agenda of world leaders over Darfur, and the issue of NGOs supplying food and money to the Lord’s Resistance Army in northern Uganda in a bid to stop attacks on villages.



Our first intern, Samuel Egadu from Uganda, was with us for most of September, and we spent a long time brainstorming ideas with him, working on stories and structure and identifying interviewees.



Three more interns arrived this month - one from a Dutch university and the other two from the United States. They will bolster our story production, and in so doing assist us with our objective of supporting domestic media in Uganda, the DR Congo and Sudan.



This month, IWPR Africa reported on growing conflict in the border area between Uganda and the Democratic Republic of Congo, DRC, as Kampala came close to sending in troops to try and flush out Lord’s Resistance Army, LRA, guerrillas.



Following severe tension in the area, Ugandan president Yoweri Museveni and his Congolese counterpart Joseph Kabila reached an agreement on September 8 to send a UN-supported joint Ugandan-Congo force to try to remove LRA fighters from Congo’s Garamba National Park by mid-December.



The IWPR correspondent interviewed Uganda’s defence minister Crispus Kiyongaadn, who had earlier threatened a unilateral Ugandan invasion of Congo to get at the LRA and other rebel groups.



He told IWPR that the discovery of oil to the north of Lake Edward, in the Lake Albert region, had heightened tensions along the undemarcated border between the countries. (Kampala Prepares to Hit Rebels - AR No. 132, 11-Sep-07)



September’s output also included a fascinating story which looked at the difficulties which north Ugandans face in returning home to their villages to start their lives again from scratch. (A Difficult Homecoming - AR No. 134, 24-Sept-07)



While much media attention is currently given to the peace talks aimed at ending the two-decade conflict, few stories have managed to provide such a clear insight into the lives of ordinary Ugandans struggling with its aftermath.



The IWPR correspondent spoke to couple Evelyn and Jimmy Opio who were taking advantage of the tentative peace in the region to return home to their village - which was attacked by the LRA in 1989 and 2002 - after spending the last decade in a camp for displaced persons.



“We need peace because our children have grown up thinking life is all about violence. My children are very disturbed,” said Evelyn.



This month, IWPR Africa continued to cover the ongoing political turmoil in Zimbabwe.



One story explored the controversy caused by the decision of opposition party the Movement for Democratic Change to back a bill that clears the way for next year’s elections. (Controversial Election Bill Passed Unopposed - AR No. 135, 27-Sept-07)



Politicians and civil society groups are outraged that the larger of the splintered opposition’s factions has made a deal with President Robert Mugabe - which involves backing down on a number of contentious issues - and are calling it a “great betrayal”.



Another interesting piece this month looked at the difficulties a Zimbabwean woman faces trying to look after her family at a time of continuing food and power shortages.



By focusing on one person’s plight, the feature successfully conveyed the difficulties experienced by millions of Zimbabweans as the economic crisis there deteriorates.

(Maria’s Daily Struggle - AR No. 135, 27-Sept-07)



The feature told the moving story of Maria, a former cross-border trader, who must rise at 2am each day to cart heavy buckets of water back from a nearby communal tap, and struggles to scrape meals together for her four children.



Maria, who used to import clothing items and footwear from South Africa for resale in Zimbabwe, had also just been put out of work by a new import tax.



“This is a blow for me. What am I going to do next? I used to take advantage of my trips and bought 15 loaves of bread and some beef whenever I traveled to South Africa. But now I can’t, so life has become really tough,” she told IWPR.