UN Radio

UN and Africa
Programme Number: 142
Week of: Sunday, 4th March, 2007
Recording Date: Thursday, 8th March, 2007
Topical Issue(s):
" Members of the Security Council are still awaiting a response from Sudanese President Omar el-Bashir to a letter sent by UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon outlining a proposed UN/AU hybrid force for Darfur. Meanwhile, the UN Special Envoy for Darfur, Jan Eliasson says relief workers on the ground are frustrated by problems of access to the needy people.

" Nigeria has been for many years notorious for coups d'etat and corruption. But in the last seven years, according to Nasir el-Rufai, the Minister of Federal Capital Territory of Nigeria the country has been putting its house in order. He says Nigerians are working around the clock to ensure that the upcoming elections in April will be free, fair and transparent.

" Recent developments in Somalia, including the defeat of the Islamists and the holding of a reconciliation conference have prompted the United Nations humanitarian agency to call for a resumption of humanitarian work in the country.



RESENTER: This is United Nations Radio in New York.

Hello and welcome to UN and Africa. I'm Derrick Mbatha.

PRESENTER:

In today's programme, members of the Security Council are still waiting for a response from President Omar al-Bashir of Sudan to a proposal for the deployment of a joint United Nations African Union Force to Darfur, where humanitarian workers are facing insecurity problems. The UN Special Envoy Jan Eliasson has just returned from Darfur.
CLIP 1: ADOLF OGI
"I was Emergency Relief Coordinator in the past and I know the humanitarian workers and I sense the deep fatigue, deep sense of frustration in that community."

PRESENTER:

Also in this programme Nasir el-Rufai, the mayor of Abuja, says Nigeria is doing its best to fight corruption.
CLIP 2: ISHMAEL BEAH

"Nigeria was run by military governments on and off more or less since 1966, when the First Republic was overthrown and, though the earlier military regimes were clean and tried to do a good job, subsequent regimes more or less institutionalized corruption as their policy."

PRESENTER:

And later in the programme United Nations officials say it is time for relief workers to return to the Somali capital of Mogadishu.
So stay tuned to UN and Africa.

Security Council Awaits Sudan's Response to Proposed Force for Darfur

PRESENTER:

The situation in the troubled western Darfur region of Sudan continues to frustrate the international community. On the one hand, hundreds of thousands of internally displaced people in that region urgently need assistance. On the other hand, insecurity is forcing relief agencies to scale down their operations. And this is all happening while the government of Sudan does not seem to move as quickly as expected to implement the commitments it has made to help resolve the crisis. UN Radio's Ransford Cline-Thomas reports.
NARRATOR:
Well, I can tell you Derrick that the members of the Security Council, who have the awesome responsibility of maintaining international peace and security, are completely and utterly frustrated. Ambassador Dumisani Khumalo of South Africa, President of the Council this month summed up that sentiment when he told correspondents on Tuesday that Council members don't see any progress and seem to be caught up in a waiting game.
CUT 1: DUMISANI KHUMALO
One of the things we heard, and I was asked to convey to the Council by the Secretary-General that the Secretary-General was still awaiting the letter form the government of Sudan.

NARRATOR:

The letter the ambassador is referring to, is expected to come from President Omar al-Bashir of Sudan in response to a letter sent by the Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon in January, outlining a plan for the deployment of a joint-United Nations African Union force to protect the displaced people in Darfur. The deployment is expected to be in three phases. The Assistant Secretary-General for peacekeeping operations, Hedi Annabi says that President Omar Al-Bashir had already agreed to this deployment.
CUT 2: HEDI ANNABI
The only caveat, if you like, expressed on the 23 December letter of President Bashir regarding the hybrid was about the size of the force. And he referred to the language of the Abuja communiqué of 13 November which stipulates that the size of the force will be decided by the African Union and the United Nations, taking into account the evolution of the situation on the ground, and the need for that force to be sufficiently strong in order to be effective.

NARRATOR:

And while there appears to be no movement in this direction, humanitarian workers in Darfur are facing serious problems in their work to help displaced people in Darfur. The Special Envoy of the United Nations for Darfur, Jan Eliasson who has just returned from Sudan, says there is need to improve the situation for humanitarian operations in the region.
CUT 3: JAN ELIASSON
I was Emergency Relief Coordinator in the past and I know the humanitarian workers and I sense the deep fatigue, deep sense of frustration in that community. They have been working enormously hard. This is a huge operation. Can you imagine 13,000 people at a billion dollar operation yearly and with tremendous problems of access and now problems of harassment, of insecurity.

NARRATOR:

So when Security Council members discussed the situation in Darfur on Tuesday, they all agreed there is urgent need for a number of thins to happen. First, to ensure that relief workers have full access to Darfur, second, that the Sudanese parties agree on a political solution to the crisis, and third, that President Omar Al Bashir gives his response to the proposal to deploy a joint United Nations African Union force to Darfur as soon as possible. Ambassador Emyr Jones Parry of the United Kingdom.
CUT 4: EMRY JONES PARRY
We expect President Bashir's letter to be handed in to the Secretary-General imminently. That is what we have been promised. We have been promised it will be helpful. We need that decision so that we can deploy the second stage, and then a rapid conclusion between the AU and the UN on the hybrid is needed. That is pretty well concluded and then the agreement of President Bashir so that we can move all those things forward.

NARRATOR:
Against that backdrop, the president of the Security Council, Ambassador Dumisani Khumalo of South Africa has said the uncertainty about the situation in Darfur and the lack response of the Sudanese government is making it very difficult for countries to finally make up their minds whether or not they want to contribute troops to a hybrid force. Reporting for UN Radio, I am Ransford Cline-Thomas.

STING/JINGLE: UN AND AFRICA THEME
PRESENTER:

Nigerian Authorities Fight Corruption

PRESENTER:

Nigeria, the most populous country in Africa, has not had a good name for many years. It was notorious for coups d'etat and corruption. But in the last seven years, according to Nasir el-Rufai, the Minister of Federal Capital Territory of Nigeria the country has been putting its house in order. Mr. el-Rufai told reporters at United Nations headquarters on Tuesday that his compatriots are working around the clock to ensure that the upcoming elections in April will be free, fair and transparent. I caught up with him just after his briefing and asked him why Nigeria had such a bad reputation for so many years.
I think the biggest reason behind was military rule. Nigeria was run by military governments on and off more or less since 1966, when the First Republic was overthrown and, though the earlier military regimes were clean and tried to do a good job, subsequent regimes more or less institutionalized corruption as state policy. The legacy of President Obasanjo's war against corruption is the reversal of that trend - the attempt to eliminate corruption from our politics and from our business - and the results are showing. We hope that this will continue in the next administration and hopefully in a few year, corruption will be a thing of the past in our national politics.

Tell me about some of the measures that the government is taking currently to fight corruption.

I think the most important measure taken was the establishment of two important anti-corruption agencies - the independent Corrupt Practices Commission, as well the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission. The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission has been practically successful in fighting corruption and money laundering, and has secured a hundred and fifty convictions in the last four years. This is probably the most successful anti-corruption agency in the world today. The establishment of these institutions and the quality of staff and the integrity of the people that run them is what we believe will sustain the war against corruption beyond the life of President Obasanjo's administration.

What about on the economic front, how has the country benefited from these measures?

The war against corruption has brought many benefits to Nigeria. For instance, due to the combination of the war against corruption and other economic reforms, we got external debts, Paris Club debt and bi-lateral debts written off with a sixty per-cent discount, which we balanced. We are now negotiating with the London Club of Creditors to pay them off as well. This is all as a result of the economic reforms, particularly the progress registered in the war against corruption because now countries now say that if you write off Nigeria's debts, you are not wasting money, you are giving a few people the money to steal. Nigeria has also been at the forefront in transparency of oil revenues. Our Nigeria Extractive Industry Transparency Initiative is the leading initiative in the world today, adopting Tony Blair's Extractive Industry Transparency Initiative. We've made progress in many, many areas due to these economic reforms and war against corruption, and I think Nigerians are the ultimate beneficiaries of this.

Let's talk preparations for the forthcoming elections - how are they proceeding?
The preparations are going on very well. The voters' registration has been completed, and we have about sixty million registered voters. The final list of candidates will be published by the independent National Election Commission. On 14 April, we'll have the first set of elections, to elect the governors in thirty-six states, and state legislatures in all…thirty-six states. A week [from now], on 21 February, we are going to have elections for the presidency as well as the Senate and House of Representatives at the federal level. All preparations are at advanced stages, and we are confident that [the] will go as planned.

Are you planning to have monitors from outside of Nigeria?

Yes, the government of Nigeria, as well as the independent National Electoral Commission, has already invited all international organizations - multi-lateral and bi-lateral - as well as international NGO's and election monitors from all over the world to come and witness our elections. It is our intention that the elections will be clean, free, and fair, and will set a new standard for electoral cleanliness on the African continent.

PRESENTER:

That was Nasir el-Rufai, the Minister of Federal Capital Territory of Nigeria, mayor of Abuja.
STING/JINGLE: UN AND AFRICA THEME
UN Relief Officials Say It Is Time to Return to Somalia

PRESENTER:

Recent developments in Somalia, including the defeat of the Islamists and the holding of a reconciliation conference have prompted the United Nations humanitarian agency to call for a resumption of humanitarian work in the country. Somalia has not had a central government for fifteen years during which one million people are estimated to have died as a result of fighting among rival war lords, famine and disease. Dianne Penn has more.
NARRATOR;
Insecurity in Mogadishu has made it extremely difficult for relief workers to help the people in need in that country. Things changed in Mogadishu last year when the Islamists gained control of much of the south and Mogadishu after kicking out the war lords. The Somali transitional federal government, formed in Kenya in 2004, was still based in Baidoa and was still unable to establish itself in the capital. But then in December last year, the government forces, backed by Ethiopian troops drove the Islamists out of the capital. When that happened, there was concern that lawlessness would return to Mogadishu. However, the United Nations Humanitarian Coordinator for Somalia, Eric Laroche says the country is at a turning point.
CUT 1: ERIC LAROUCHE
I have been in Mogadishu almost every week since the beginning of January and I found that it was particularly quiet. And when I was talking to the people in Mogadishu they were telling me this time it's different. First we are tired. And number two we have an authority that comes in, that looks to be organized, that is the fruit of a democratic environment. The institutions with the president's office, be it the government, be it the parliament, be it the national commissions and so on, have been nominated on the basis of a participatory method based on the clan.

NARRATOR:
The Head of the Somalia Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, Phillip Lazzarini, agrees that it is time to return to Somalia.
CUT 2: PHILIPP LAZZARINNI
We do not want to depict a rosy situation of Somalia. But what we think is. It is time to see Somali differently than sitting from Nairobi and then dealing with this country in a remote way as a way we have done until now.

Mr. Lazzarini says by being in Somalia, humanitarian workers would be closer to a lot that is going on in the country.
CUT 3: PHILIPP LAZZARINNI
People are meeting. And even in Mogadishu, we had, for example, two weeks ago quite important reconciliation conference going on for about one week organized by the President with the participation of about 300 people. And basically these people for one were talking about how to improve the security of Mogadishu. And despite the fact that they have been target to some shelling, because they have got during the conference a certain number of mortar, people decided to continue to talk.

NARRATOR:
For his part, the new Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs, John Holmes says the critical situation in southern and central Somalia is one of the priority areas where he'd like to be more actively involved.
We as OCHA would like to be more active in south and central Somalia where there are something like one million people in urgent need of assistance and where access has been extremely difficult for many years now. There are also again, hundreds of thousands of IDPs and a serious problem of food insecurity after fifteen years of conflicts after alternating bouts of droughts and flooding. So we would like to be more active in that area if we can. And that's irrespective of the prospects of peacekeeping missions by the African Union and the United Nations.

NARRATOR:

In fact, the first advance contingent of African Union troops from Uganda has arrived in the Somali capital of Mogadishu this week. Even as the peacekeepers were being welcomed at the airport, insurgents fired mortars to disrupt the ceremony, a stark reminder of insecurity problems in Somalia. Meanwhile, in his latest report on Somalia, the UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon warns that despite the relatively improved circumstances in Somalia, there is urgent need to help stabilize the country. Reporting for UN Radio, I am Dianne Penn.
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 Prewitt. 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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