UN Radio

UN and Africa
Programme Number: 155
Week of: Sunday, 3 June, 2007
Recording Date: Thursday, 7th June, 2007
Topical Issue(s):
• UN Radio

• The UN has released a mid-term report on how African countries are doing in pursuit of the Millennium Development Goals. The report was timed to coincide with the G-8 Summit in Germany.

• A church service on Sunday at the Arctic Cathedral in Tromso, Norway started the festivities for World Environment Day. The sermon was read by Archbishop Desmond Tutu.

• The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights has called for ending the impunity of perpetrators of sexual violence in the Great Lakes region of Africa. Returning from a 12-day tour of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Rwanda and Burundi, Louise Arbour focused especially on the DRC and the gender violence that has accompanied the conflict there.

Producer: Bissera Kostova
Editor//presenter: Ransford Cline-Thomas
Production Assistant: Chuck Appel
Studio Engineer: Zach Prewitt
Duration: 15’00”

RESENTER: This is United Nations Radio in New York.

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PRESENTER:

Hello and welcome to UN and Africa. I’m Ransford Cline-Thomas.

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PRESENTER:

This week the UN observed World Environment Day with a church ceremony in Tromso, Norway where there was a call for better treatment of our planet.

CLIP 1: Tutu
“The future of our fragile, beautiful planet home is in our hands. We are stewards of God’s creation.”

PRESENTER:

Archbishop Desmond Tutu delivering a sermon at the Arctic Cathedral.
Also in this programme, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights talks about ending impunity for sexual violence in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

CLIP 2: Arbour
“The level of sexual violence in its intensity is pretty surprising and appalling.”

But first we’ll hear how African countries are doing in reducing extreme poverty, as called for by the UN Millennium Development Goals .

So stay tuned to UN and Africa.

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PRES: The UN has just released new data showing where sub-Saharan Africa stands in its efforts to achieve the Millennium Development Goals. The analysis gives a measure of the sub-continent’s progress, at the midway point between the adoption of the Goals in 2000 and the 2015 target date for achieving them. Bissera Kostova spoke to Francesca Perucci of the UN Statistics division, who says the update is being released in connection with the G-8 Summit, which started in Germany on Wednesday.

Duration: 4’02”

Perucci: We know that the focus of the discussion at the G-8 meeting will be the promises made at Gleneagles in 2005 and the climate change issue and the impact on the efforts in reducing poverty, aside from, of course, many other problems that this will bring to the planet.

BK: So what are the main findings of the report?

Perucci: Well, the main findings – it’s now for the first time we have a little bit more information, more data available on after the year 2000, so we can see for instance that poverty overall has declined from about 46.8 in 1990 down to 41.1 in 2004, but most of this decline happened after 1999, so over the last few years. So that’s in a way a good sign. But, of course, poverty still remains very high – we’re talking about 40% of the population on the sub-continent living on less than a dollar a day. And given the population growth, the absolute number of poor people has been increasing rapidly and is now sort of beginning to level off, so the last couple of years for which the information is available we see that the increase was only marginal, so that’s again a positive sign, but we’re still talking about 298 million people living in extreme poverty.

So at the midpoint now from 2000 to 2015, you’re saying that Africa is not on target?

Yeah, certainly not, it’s not on target, but we also see a lot of success stories, and I think all countries can still reach the targets, they can still meet the goals if progress is accelerated and if all these initiatives are intensified and of course, if various pledges made by donor countries are fulfilled.

BK: And which countries would you say, are success stories?

Perucci: Well, if you look at the picture globally one success story is the enormous decrease, about 75% decrease in the number of measles deaths in children and that was mainly due to sort of intensified campaign efforts, rather than, you know routine measles immunizations. Now, if you look at single countries, you can mention enormous progress made by Senegal in improving access to water and sanitation, which is a big problem in the continent, especially in rural areas. And you can mention the success story in Zambia, that canceled fees for basic rural health services; Burundi that has introduced free medical services and the quite well-known story of Malawi for fertilizers and the improvement of agricultural productivity over 2006-2007.

BK: Now, you mentioned some of the successes, but which countries would you say you’re most worried about, that are falling behind the most?

Perucci: Each country has some progress in some areas and is lagging behind in other areas. We’ve seen that, for instance in health and treatment of HIV. Some countries, you know, have been able to make some progress in that particular area, due to increased efforts in prevention campaigns, etc. But perhaps they lag behind in education, for instance, or gender equality – still on the continent only one-third of women have access to wage employment outside of agriculture, which is the type of employment that gives you some sort of security.

BK: In terms of the successes – the report says that many countries are ready to scale them up on a national level, but they lack the resources, there’s not enough official development assistance. What are you looking for from this G-8 summit, what are your hopes?

Perucci: What I would like to see is, of course, a strong commitment on the climate change issue, and of course, a strong commitment by donors to keep their promises and hopefully, some concrete steps to see this happening in the next few years, with a clear and well-defined time line.

PRES: Francesca Perucci, heads the Statistical Development and Planning Section of the UN Statistics Division.

MUSIC: CHURCH BELLS

BENEDICTIONS (HOLD UNDER)

PRES: A church service on Sunday at the Arctic Cathedral in Tromso, Norway started the festivities for World Environment Day this year. The benedictions were given in Norwegian, Inuit and Xhosa.

FADE UP on last words

PRES: The sermon was delivered by Nobel Laureate, Archbishop Desmond Tutu.

TUTU 1: We, who should have been responsible stewards, preserving our vulnerable, fragile planet home, who should have kept the waters and the wilderness at bay, have been wantonly wasteful through our reckless consumerism, wantonly devoured irreplaceable natural resources.

PRES: The gathering heard testimonies on the effects of global warming from different parts of the world. Iyabo Oyekola from Nigeria, represented the African continent.

NIGERIA: My family comes from the southwest Nigeria, where we live as farmers. Earlier, we were able to harvest richly from the land. Now drought and the lack of available water has made it difficult for us to make a living from farming. In other parts of the country, people lack food and are hungry because of drought. Many people are leaving the land and are seeking a better way of life in the cities. But in the cities there are already too many people who are struggling to make a living.

PRES: A report issued by the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) says the melting of the glaciers will have global impact, raising sea levels by 20 to 80 centimeters this century and affecting the availability of fresh water from the spring thaw of snow and ice. UNEP’s Executive Director Achim Steiner says the report is a wake up call.

Steiner 1: What we are saying is: it is humans, who have in a sense brought about the key element of global warming. It is humans who change reverse paths. So these reports are not meant to say: sit back and give up, they are meant to say: get up and do something. Get your politicians, get your business leaders to commit to reversing the kinds of trends that we are documenting. The reports are not meant as a resignation, they are meant as a call to action and that’s also why we are releasing it on world environment day.

PRES: Asked what message he would like to send on environment day to his fellow Africans, Archbishop Desmond Tutu said he was hopeful for the continent.

TUTU 2: We need leaders, who will be accountable to the people. And once we have such leaders, then they will set themselves goals that are people-friendly and if they are people-friendly, they will be environment-friendly. But as long as we have corrupt leaders, we are going to have a lot of trouble and there will be leaders, who agree to have, for instance, oil pipes that run across the countries, with no concern about the environmental impact of such constructions. No, I have a great deal of hope for Africa. I have a great deal of hope for Africa. See, people forget that Africa used to be a refuge for people who were running away from starvation. Abraham in the bible, when there was a famine – where did he go? Africa. The holy family, when they were being persecuted – where did they go for refuge? Africa. People have forgotten …. And I often try and say to the West: be a little more modest.

PRES: In his sermon Archbishop Tutu concluded that it was not all gloom, as governments are beginning to listen to their people that climate change is a serious issue. He called on government leaders to act now to arrest the deteriorating situation.

TUTU 3: To ignore the challenge of global warming may be criminal. It certainly is disobeying God. It is sin. The future of our fragile, beautiful planet home is in our hands. We are stewards of God’s creation. We can be wantonly irresponsible, or we can be caring and compassionate. God says: I put before you a choice. Choose life.

MUSIC: SOUTH AFRICAN CHOIR

PRES: The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights has called for ending the impunity of perpetrators of sexual violence in the Great Lakes region of Africa. Returning from a 12-day tour of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Rwanda and Burundi, Louise Arbour briefed the UN Security Council recently about her trip and spoke to reporters afterwards in New York. Focusing especially on the DRC, she spoke of the gender violence that has accompanied the conflict there.

Arbour 1: I was appalled to see the extent to which it is still the tragic fate of women, children, young girls, on a day to day basis, particularly in the east of the DRC. I traveled to Kisangani, to Bunia and Goma and in the Kivus, where armed groups are still continuing their predatory practices. I have to say the level of sexual violence in its intensity is pretty surprising and appalling.

PRES: Ms. Arbour noted that the situation is complicated by the fact that militia leaders suspected of human rights abuses have been incorporated into the national armed forces, the FARDC.

Arbour 8: The result of this most unfortunate ‘mixage’ exercise, which brought into the fold of the armed forces most of the militia leaders with the result now that many of them have had an upgrade of their ranks in the FARDC, they have been emboldened, further empowered and seem to be continuing exactly the same pattern of predatory practices against civilians in the region.

PRES: The High Commissioner said that while many leaders of illegal armed groups are under nationalrrest warrants, some dating back to 2002, these warrants have not being enforced. And asked whether any of the militia members who joined the army had been offered amnesty, Ms. Arbour said that while there may have been no legal amnesty, they are just not being prosecuted.

Arbour 10: For those who may not have been the beneficiaries of a kind of legal or paper agreement – de facto they have been put totally out of the reach of the law. Now, one has to hope also that the ICC continued investigations will trump any of these … locally granted amnesties, and that may be a source to call them to account. It’s certainly an enormous source of continued insecurity in the region. And, I think, in retrospect, if this was the price for peace, it looks like a very heavy price, that is in fact, not buying anything that you and I would call peace but just a kind of cessation of hostility on a large scale and just a predatory targeting of civilians.

PRES: The International Criminal Court (the ICC) is prosecuting war crimes committed in the DRC during the past five years. And Ms. Arbour has announced that her office is undertaking to collect data on human rights violations in the country for the decade preceding the jurisdiction of the international court. During her visit to the DRC Ms. Arbour went to see special clinics supported by the UN Population Fund and non-governmental organizations to help the victims of sexual crimes. But she wants to see more being done to end the impunity of the perpetrators of these crimes.

Arbour 7: The meager efforts that we have been able to deploy have been very victim-centred. I don’t want to diminish the importance of that, but now I think we have to have the dual strategy, and the second part should be perpetrator-centred. It should ostracize and stigmatize the perpetrators, not the victims.

PRES: That was Louise Arbour, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights.

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PRES: And that’s all for this edition of UN and Africa. Our Production Assistant was Chuck Appel and our sound engineer was Zach Prewitt. And from me, Ransford Cline-Thomas – bye for now.

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