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UN Radio
Programme Number: 138
Week of: Sunday, 4th February, 2007
Recording Date: Thursday, 8th February, 2007
Topical Issue(s):
" UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon has briefed
the Security Council on his first mission to Africa.
The crises in the Darfur region of Sudan and in Somalia
dominated his briefing of the press following his meeting
with members of the Security Council.
" Preparations are under way for the trial of Thomas
Lubanga Dyilo at the International Criminal Court in
The Hague. He is accused of recruiting and using children
as soldiers in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
UN Radio's Walter Mulondi talks about the man whom he
met and interviewed in the Congo.
" Meeting most if not all of the Millennium Development
Goals of improving the lives of people will be meaningless
if housing is not addressed. This is the assessment
of Anna Tibaijuka, the head of UN-HABITAT, the UN agency
dealing with housing.
RESENTER: This is United Nations Radio in New York.
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PRESENTER:
Hello and welcome to UN and Africa, I'm Derrick Mbatha.
PRESENTER:
In today's programme, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon
reports on his first trip to Africa.
CLIP 1: BAN KI-MOON
"I think it was a very useful and necessary trip
for me, as I place African challenges on the top of
my agenda."
You will hear more from the Secretary-General later
in the programme. Also in this edition, preparations
are under-way for the first trial of a Congolese charged
with recruiting and using child-soldiers in the Democratic
Republic of the Congo.
And later in the programme, the head of UN-HABITAT,
Anna Tibaijuka, says that housing is fundamental in
the efforts to improve the lives of poor people.
"If people have nowhere to sleep, then all this
talk about girl's education and health is just a joke.
Even if you vaccinated children there they will still
die from water borne diseases for lack of toilets."
PRESENTER:
You will hear more from Mrs. Tibaijuka later in the
programme.
So, stay tuned to UN and Africa.
PRESENTER:
This week United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon
reported to the Security Council on his first mission
to Africa. Although his trip took him to Europe, where
he met with European leaders and participated in a conference
on the reconstruction of Lebanon, it was the African
leg which dominated his briefing to the international
press corps at the UN. UN Radio's Ransford Cline-Thomas
reports.
CUT 1: BAN KI-MOOON
I think it was a very useful and necessary trip for
me, as I place African challenges on the top of my agenda.
NARRATOR:
United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon speaking
to reporters after briefing the Security Council on
Tuesday. He said that it was very important for him
to attend the African Union Summit in Addis Ababa where
he had the unique opportunity of meeting African leaders
in person. The Secretary-General said that he and members
of the Security Council discussed the situation in the
Darfur region of Sudan, Somalia, the Democratic Republic
of the Congo, and Cote d'Ivoire. Regarding the Darfur
crisis, the United Nations has been discussing with
Sudanese officials a plan to deploy a hybrid United
Nations/ African Union force to protect thousands of
people who have been displaced by militias. The Secretary-General
said he briefed members of the Security Council about
his discussion of this issue with President Omar Al-Bashir
of Sudan.
CUT 2: BAN KI-MOON
I explained about my meeting with President Bashir of
Sudan to make the process faster on this introduction
of a hybrid and I was encouraged that, out of my meeting
with President Bashir that there was an agreement to
re-energize the political process, led by my Special
Envoy, Mr. Jan Eliasson, and the AU Special Envoy, Mr.
Salim Ahmed Salim. They will be visiting Khartoum and
Darfur starting from February 11 to 17. On the basis
of their recommendations and report, we will discuss
again what next steps should be taken.
NARRATOR:
But what did the Secretary-General specifically ask
President Omar Al-Bashir to do?
CUT 3: BAN KI-MOON
I told him that he should respond, as soon as possible,
positively to my letter of 24 January, outlining all
the detailed conditions on force generation and command
and control and funding. The next step is to wait for
a positive and clear agreement from the Government of
Sudan, which will pave the way toward the deployment
of hybrid operations in Darfur.
NARRATOR:
During his mission to Africa, the Secretary-General
also met President Abdullahi Yusuf of Somalia to discuss
the situation in that country. Thousands of Somalis
have been displaced by the recent fighting between government
troops, supported by Ethiopian forces and fighters of
the Union of Islamic Courts who have been driven out
of the capital, Mogadishu.
CUT 4: BAN KI-MOON
In my meeting with President Yusuf, I encouraged him
to have an inclusive political process, including the
moderate members of the Islamic Courts and clan elders
and political leaders, community leaders, and I was
encouraged by his intention to convene a reconciliation
congress. This is the right thing for him to do.
NARRATOR:
The head of the world organization said he was encouraged
by the willingness of African countries to provide peacekeeping
for the African Union Mission in Somalia, AMISOM.
CUT 5: BAN KI-MOON
I hope that the African Union will be able to have AMISOM
well in place. I discussed with the members on this
matter. There was a request from the African Union that
AMISOM should be taken over by the United Nations, but
this is a subject we will discuss later on, as we see
how the AU is placed in Somalia.
NARRATOR:
That was United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon
speaking to reporters after briefing of the Security
Council on his recent trip to Africa. Reporting for
UN and Africa, I am Ransford Cline-Thomas.
STING/JINGLE: UN AND AFRICA THEME
PRESENTER:
Recruiting children and using them in conflict is a
crime and those who do this must know that they may
have to answer for such action before the International
Criminal Court in The Hague. This is what is going to
happen to Thomas Lubanga Dyilo, founder and leader of
the Union of Congolese Patriots. In June 2004 the Prosecutor
for the International Criminal Court started investigating
crimes committed in the Democratic Republic of the Congo
since 2002. In February last year, the Court issued
a warrant of arrest for Mr. Dyilo, who was transferred
to the Court in March of the same year. The Court recently
confirmed that there is a case against Mr. Dyilo and
that he will be tried for the crimes he allegedly committed.
UN Radio's Walter Mulondi who reported from the war-torn
eastern part of the Democratic Republic of the Congo
in 2003 met and interviewed Thomas Lubanga Dyilo. So
I asked him about the man and the crimes he allegedly
committed.
MULONDI: When you look at him, he is a kind of cold
eyes, and a man who looks like kind, but when his eyes
join yours deeply, you can be frightened because there
is a kind of look which gives you a kind of freeze in
your body.
MBATHA: Did he frighten you when you interviewed him?
MULONDI: Yes.
MBATHA: What kind of questions did you ask him?
MULONDI: The question was: when we got in Bunia ten
days 9after the international troops from Operation
Artemis led by French troops mainly came in to make
Bunia a town without arms, Lubanga was doing a kind
of advocacy for himself, that he didn't kill anybody
that he came to save people who had suffered in Bunia.
And then he takes us and shows us some place where was
buried people who had been killed, supposedly, according
to Lubanga by the Lendus. Then we go there and you can
see fresh bodies and kind of ancient bodies. And after
this, he did a press conference, and I asked him a question.
Mr. Thomas Lubanga, we have seen two kinds of bodies,
fresh bodies and bodies which have been put there let's
say two months ago. Two months ago you were not here
or three months ago you were not in Bunia. There were
others. But what about the fresh bodies of two days,
one week. You have the control of all the city.
MBATHA: What was his response?
MULONDI: First, silence. Silence and then, 'you know,
I don't have control of all my troops. I will do my
best to control my troops.' And after that I was not
in safe place. Two week after that I was moved from
Bunia because of that.
MBATHA: Where did you move to?
MULONDI: I moved from Bunia to Kinshasa, the main station
of Radio Okapi after spending more than a month on the
ground reporting about what was happening there on the
ground.
MBATHA: Talking about the ICC and the actual charges
against him, he is accused of recruiting and using child
soldiers in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Is
there a case against him?
MULONDI: Yes of course. I have seen children in his
troops, talking to them. They were proud, taking Kalashnikovs
and so on and seeing themselves like heroes. They considered
themselves like commando in Arnold Schwarzenegger. You
know this kind of war movies. In their mind it was like
a game, they are doing a Hollywood movie in reality.
That's the child's mind. And, of course, there were
many around him. They were used as security guards to
go and listen what MONUC is doing, who is this guy who
came in, who is that journalist, and so on, like kids.
MBATHA: As a way of concluding, in your view, there
is a strong case against Thomas Lubanga Dyilo.
MULONDI: This is one of case, but I think it is not
the only one strong. There are other cases such as rape,
such as robbery, natural resources in this area. The
fact is that there is fighting in Bunia and Congo not
because of differences between people. The main thing
is mineral resources, natural resources. That's it,
oil and so and so on. That's the fact. And women, girls
raped by the soldiers, people killed. Sometimes when
you are reporting about this, when you are taking testimony
from displaced people, it is not easy to tell a story
about that.
PRESENTER:
That was Walter Mulondi who covered the conflict in
the eastern part of the Democratic Republic of the Congo
in 2003.
STING/JINGLE: UN AND AFRICA THEME
PRESENTER:
When world leaders met in New York more than six years
ago, they agreed on eight Millennium Development Goals
which include cutting extreme poverty by half by the
year 2015. However, in the view of Anna Tibaijuka, the
Executive Director of UN Habitat, the United Nations
agency dealing housing, the issue of adequate and sustainable
human settlements has not been given the spotlight it
deserves. So, when United Nations Secretary-General
Ban Ki-Moon made his first stop at the Kibera slum during
his visit to Kenya last week, Mrs. Tibaijuka was gratified.
She told UN Radio's Carlos Araujo that the Secretary-General's
decision to move straight from the airport to the slum
highlighted one of the Millennium Development Goals,
or MDGs, to improve the living conditions of poor people
in urban areas.
TIBAIJUKA: I have spent about five years now working
on this programme and this is a big boost in the sense
that he has raised the profile. He understood the issue,
the structural problem because if people have nowhere
to sleep, then all this talk about girl's education
and health is just a joke. Even if you vaccinated children
there they will still die from water borne diseases
for lack of toilets. So I think it was really a very
good decision because this is the place where all the
UN agencies, one UN, this is where you can test the
thing, because, hunger: the people in Kibera are hungry.
Health: they are dying. Infant mortality rate is the
highest in the settlement. Violence, sexual abuse of
women, that's the place where it takes place. HIV/AIDS
is multiplying. So in a sense it was also the microcosm
of the MDG compact. And I think that was also a very
good demonstration of this new policy of the One UN.
ARAUJO: And what is the impact that this One UN policy
is having in a place like Kibera?
TIBAIJUKA: I feel that One UN will also be able to work
if we have the right conceptualization of the problem.
So, for example, a decent home is a basis for delivering
basic needs. I think until 2002 when HABITAT was upgraded
as a programme, this concept of shelter had slipped
from the equation. So I think the importance of shelter,
decent shelter as a basis of delivering other basic
needs has of course been underscored by Secretary-General
Ban Ki-Moon and I can only be grateful that he has done
that.
ARAUJO: Do you think this phenomenon of poverty is
more an urban phenomenon than a rural phenomenon in
Africa today?
TIBAIJUKA: Well, poverty, of course the rural Africa
is quite poor. But rural Africa is not overcrowded.
So what you saw in Kibera is when you are poor and you
become overcrowded, than health is threatened. So the
difference between urban poverty and rural poverty is
that the overcrowding makes urban poverty more life
threatening because of lack of sanitation, because of
the overcrowding. Urban poverty also is a reflection
of the increasing rural poverty because a good number
of the people you saw in Kibera, they are actually environmental
refugees, people from the pastoral communities. They
are no longer able to subsist on the deteriorating rural
environment. So they all come to the city. So there
is also the challenge of climate change. So Kibera defines
all the problems of our time.
ARAUJO: One last question, in the medium and long term,
what is the solution for places like Kibera?
TIBAIJUKA: You need a package of interventions. Now
a package of interventions, the way we are doing it
at UN HABITAT, we are now encouraging, for example,
the development of secondary and small towns to relieve
the pressure on the large cities like Nairobi so that
people, rural hinterlands have an urban centre around
which they can organize their economic activities. So
we have a programme here in this region called Lake
Victoria small town initiative, for example, where we
are trying to relieve the pressure on the large cities.
But also, having said this, the people in the settlements
like Kibera are there now and they have rights. So we
advocate also to the right to the city, these are citizens.
They are now in Kibera so we do slum upgrading, of course
also making sure that you provide opportunities, livelihoods,
and income-generating activities.
PRESENTER:
That was Anna Tibaijuka the Executive Director of UN
Habitat speaking with UN Radio's Carlos Araujo.
SIG TUNE ((Bring up briefly, dip and hold under)
PRESENTER:
And that's all for this edition of UN and Africa. Our
Production Assistant was Nyi Nyi Teza and our sound
engineer was Zach Pruitt. And from me Derrick Mbatha,
please join us for another edition of UN and Africa
next week. Until then, bye bye.
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