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UN Radio
UN and Africa
Programme Number: 181
Week of: Sunday, 2nd December, 2007
Recording Date: Thursday, 6th December, 2007
Topical Issue(s):
• Scores of people are forced to flee
their homes as fresh fighting breaks out again
in the eastern part of the Democratic Republic
of the Congo. The cause of the fighting is the
refusal of dissident troops to disarm while
the government is determined to extend state
authority throughout the Congolese territory.
• Eleven African countries, meeting at
the FAO Headquarters in Rome, agree to join
forces to meet the challenge of providing education
for rural communities. FAO’s Senior Agriculture
Education Officer, Lavinia Gasperini says education
for rural people is important for meeting the
millennium development goals.
• The Ministry of Health of Zambia, supported
by UNICEF and the World Health Organization
vaccinates two million children against measles.
UNICEF says the challenge is to follow-up and
vaccinate more children as soon as they are
born all the time.
Producer/presenter: Derrick Mbatha
Editor: Ransford Cline-Thomas
Production Assistant: Charles Appel
Studio Engineer: Zach Pruwit
Duration: 15’00”
RESENTER: This is United Nations Radio in New
York.
*** SIG TUNE *** (Please, play briefly, dip
upon wave, and hold under narr.)
PRESENTER:
Hello and welcome to UN and Africa. I’m
Derrick Mbatha.
*** SIG TUNE ***: (Bring Sig Tune up briefly,
dip and hold under)
PRESENTER:
In today’s programme, fresh fighting
breaks out in the eastern part of the Democratic
Republic of the Congo forcing more people to
flee their homes.
CLIP 1: Andrej Mahecic
“Some 405,000 Congolese have been forced
from their homes in the province in the past
12 months, including 170,000 just since August.”
PRESENTER:
You will hear more on that in a moment. Also
in this edition, eleven African countries agree
to join forces to meet the challenge of education
for rural people.
CLIP 2: Lavinia Gasperini
“You cannot achieve universal primary
education if you don’t reach rural people
because they are the majority and the one who
are still out of school.”
And later in the programme, a successful campaign
against measles vaccinates two million children
in Zambia.
So, stay tuned to UN and Africa.
*** SIG TUNE *** (Bring up briefly, dip and
hold under until first sentence)
Fresh Fighting Breaks Out in Eastern DR Congo
PRESENTER:
Fresh fighting has broken out again in the
eastern part of the Democratic Republic of the
Congo, forcing scores of people to flee their
homes. The heart of the conflict is the refusal
by armed groups which are not part of the national
army to disarm and allow the central government
to extend its authority to that region. UN Radio’s
Donn Bobb reports.
NARRATOR:
Peace has been elusive in the eastern part of
the Democratic Republic of Congo, since the
country held its first multi party elections
in over forty years last year. The cause of
the fighting is the refusal of dissident troops
loyal to renegade General Laurent Nkunda to
disarm and be integrated into the national army.
For its part, the Congolese government is determined
to extend state authority throughout the Congolese
territory. And so, in preparation for a military
offensive to do just that, the Congolese army,
the FARDC, has been reinforcing its positions
in North Kivu. The Force Commander of the UN
Mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo,
Leutenant-General Babacar Gaye explains.
CUT 1: Babacar Gaye
We are in a crisis, and even this decision to
launch the operation is part of the crisis management.
The strength of Laurent Nkunda is estimated
now to about 3,000 troops with them. The FRADC,
they have regrouped more than 20,000 of their
soldiers now in North Kivu.
NARRATOR:
The United Nations Mission in the Democratic
Republic of the Congo has the mandate to protect
the civilian population. Lieutenant-General
Gaye says that MONUC is also authorized to support
the Congolese army.
CUT 2: Babacar Gaye
This means that any transportation of ammunition,
evacuation of wounded, transportation of reinforcement
will be done by us in order, first of all, to
avoid any failure because we are supporting
also a process and they are engaged against
renegades. What is always our best option is
a peaceful solution and in that regard what
resulted form this decision is first of all
the surrendering of forty followers of Laurent
Nkunda and out of them one major commander.
Even though hope is not a policy, we hope that
this trend will continue.
NARRATOR:
But, of course, while some of the renegade
fighters have been surrendered, others continued
to fight. Kemal Saiki is the spokesman for the
United Nations Mission in the capital Kinshasa.
CUT 3: Kemal Saiki
On Sunday the Congolese armed forces positions
were attacked by the dissidents and the very
next day on Monday the government forces launched
an offensive against dissidents’ positions
and this is the situation in which we are now.
NARRATOR:
The United Nations refugee agency, UNHCR, has
received some of the people displaced by this
latest round of fighting at a site some ten
kilometres west of the provincial capital of
Goma. UNHCR spokesman Andrej Mahecic says these
people have added to the already larger number
of internally displaced people in North Kivu.
CUT 4: Andrej Mahecic
The fighting near Sake followed another round
of conflict on Sunday at Nyanzale, some 100
kilometers north of Goma. Since December 2006,
conflict and military build up in North Kivu
have led to massive population displacement,
one of the worst since the end of the civil
war in 2003. Some 405,000 Congolese have been
forced from their homes in the province in the
past 12 months, including 170,000 just since
August.
NARRATOR:
According to the United Nations refugee agency
there are approximately 800,000 displaced people
in the province and renewed fighting could add
even more. It is clear that a lasting solution
is needed so that the people of North Kivu can
live peace. It is also recognized that renegade
Laurent Nkunda is a major factor for instability
in that province. So what should be done? William
Swing is head of the United Nations Mission
in the Democratic of Congo.
CUT 5: William Swing
I think the process as we understand it, is
that he goes into exile. That is the position
of the government because if he stays there,
it will result in more difficulty, including
the addition of more internally displaced persons
for which he is responsible. I think it’s
important to see all of this in the context
of what has been happening. There is a process
that has been up there for eight or nine years
since the signing of the first of five peace
accords in July of 1999. The process has moved
forward. The country now has for the first time
in half a century legitimate institutions that
have come out of an electoral process that all
of the visiting electoral observers have endorsed
as a good election.
NARRATOR:
Mr. Swing says there are new solid basis for
state institutions in the Democratic Republic
of the Congo but the aberration of rebel forces
remains a big problem. Reporting for UN Radio,
I am Donn Bobb.
STING UN AFRICA THEME MUSIC
Eleven African Countries Join Forces for Rural
Education
PRESENTER:
Eleven African countries, meeting at the Headquarters
of the Food and Agriculture Organization in
Rome, have agreed to join forces to meet the
challenge of providing education for rural communities.
Representatives of Burkina Faso, Ethiopia, Guinea,
Kenya, Madagascar, Mozambique, Niger, Uganda,
Senegal, South Africa and Tanzania held a workshop
where they adopted recommendations to improve
coordination between various institutions and
departments as well as international agencies
in order to achieve their goal. To find out
more about this workshop, I called Lavinia Gasperini,
Senior Agriculture Education Officer at the
Food and Agriculture Organization in Rome, who
told me that this year’s workshop was
a follow up to a meeting held in Addis Ababa
two years ago.
GASPERINI: The same countries met, acknowledging
that unless we educate rural people, we cannot
achieve millennium goals because education and
training are transversal to achieving all of
the millennium goals, and especially the goal
of halving poverty and hunger and also millennium
goal two: universal primary education. You cannot
achieve universal primary education if you don’t
reach rural people because they are the majority
and the one who are still out of school. And
the same applies for environmental management
and all of the MDGs.
MBATHA: And now, how do these eleven African
plan to go about meeting this challenge of educating
rural people?
GASPERINI: These countries have already done
some recommendations in 2005 to their own governments
for ministries of education and of agriculture,
and the first recommendation is to work very
closely and in collaboration.
MBATHA: So you are talking about ministries,
for instance, of education and ministries of
agriculture working together?
GASPERINI: Yes.
MBATHA: What about the rural people themselves,
the farmers?
GASPERINI: What these eleven countries recommend
is that the owners of the schools to be the
communities. They recommend even going to a
point which even the hiring and firing of the
teachers is done by the community so that the
teachers are then reliable to the community
that controls their performance, the attendance,
but also support them, give them incentives,
maybe build homes for them or provide them garden.
And also the community is the one who discusses
the plan of work for the school and might decide
this year we better focus the programme more
on one topic than the other according to specific
needs. Traditionally the programmes were often
programmes that are biased towards urban areas
and then they are just brought to rural areas
and thus they are not so interesting for rural
people.
MBATHA: Yes. As you know, there is this important
meeting that is taking place on climate change.
Now I would like to know if this issue of educating
rural people actually did address the question
of climate change, how to adapt to climate change.
GASPERINI: Absolutely. The opening speech from
Dr. Mueller, the Director of the Department
of Environment and Natural Resource Management
was on the contribution of education for rural
people to adaptation to climate change to develop
the resilience, the capacity to address the
changes like the new unpredictability of seasons.
So they are not sure anymore what to plant or
when to plant, how to introduce storage, how
can education help to address the new pests
that arise from the climate change because there
are plants that are disappearing but there lots
of pests that are appearing, a lot of bio-diversity
that is getting eliminated. So education can
help the communities, the farmers to address
this issue and to choose between the conventional
crops and the new crops or how to address these
new pests and other kinds of challenges because
education is the only thing they will not lose.
But often in a flood or in a drought they lose
everything. So education builds within them,
inside them, the capacity to not be overcome
by the physical condition.
PRESENTER:
That was Lavinia Gasperini, Senior Agriculture
Education Officer at the Food and Agriculture
Organization in Rome.
STING - UN AFRICA THEME MUSIC
Zambian and UN agencies Vaccinate Two Million
Children against Measles
PRESENTER:
The World Health Organization has reported that
measles deaths in Africa fell by over ninety
per cent between 2000 and 2006. Thanks to the
firm commitment of governments to fully implement
their measles reduction strategies. One of these
governments is Zambia, which vaccinated approximately
two million children in July this year. The
Zambian Ministry of Health conducted the campaign
with support from the United Nations Children’s
Fund and the World Health Organization which
provided publicity, logistical support and personnel.
Blue Chevigny of UNICEF Radio picks up the story.
CHEVIGNY: UNICEF ‘s representative in
Zambia, Lotta Sylwander spoke with UNICEF Radio
about the results of Zambia’s recent nationwide
measles campaign.
SYLWANDER: This is actually a follow up measles
campaign to the 2003 vaccination campaign. And
at the same time during this one week, which
is called child health week, kids under five
were also given Vitamin A supplementation. They
were also given de-worming medicine, which is
very important in terms of keeping the nutrition
in the kids and stopping diarrhoeal diseases
and so on and the parents that brought the children
were also able to re-treat their malaria nets.
Overall, I think it was a very successful campaign.
CHEVIGNY: Sylwander says there are unique challenges
involved in doing this campaign in Zambia.
SYLWANDER: This is a vast country with a relatively
small population which means it’s difficult
to reach the whole population. So this child
health week was proceeded by quite a massive
information campaign. For weeks before on radio,
on posters, all kinds of things like that was
happening around villages and towns everywhere
in the country. And even out in rural areas
information was pumped out to make sure that
parents actually brought children to these health
clinics or health points where they could be
vaccinated. And that was hugely successful because
so many kids did actually come.
CHEVIGNY: The importance of meeting the children
of Zambia where they are cannot be overstated.
SYLWANDER: Especially in a place like Zambia
where almost fifty per cent of children are
malnourished and sometimes during dry spells
during the year more children are malnourished,
there is HIV/AIDS prevalence, malaria is still
the biggest killer in the country, so a disease
like measles very easily kill children under
five and even older children for that matter.
And it is such a relatively cheap thing to stop.
It’s relatively easily done. I mean if
we can vaccinate two million children in a week’s
time and actually protect them for quite some
time against measles or even a lifetime, then
we should do that. And we have a vulnerable
child population here.
CHEVIGNY: Even with their success, the work
of the vaccinators is far from complete.
SYLWANDER: The challenge there is, of course,
to follow up. Kids are born all the time. And
the children that are born this year, next year
should also be captured in a new campaign. So
we shouldn’t kind of be complacent and
say ‘wow, we did a great success, we vaccinated
two million kids, now we don’t need to
do this for a while. We do.
CHEVIGNY: You have been listening to Lotta
Sylwander, the UNICEF representative in Zambia
talking about a recent measles campaign and
child health weak in Zambia. This is UNICEF
Radio. I am Blue Chevingy. United for Children.
PLAY MUSIC OF UNICEF PIECE AND FADE TO
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 Charles
Appel and our sound engineer was Zach Prewit.
I am Derrick Mbatha saying bye bye.
*** CLOSING MUSIC ***
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