|
UN and Africa
Programme Number: 077
Week of: Sunday, 4th December, 2005
Recording Date: Thursday, 8th December, 2005
Topical Issue(s):
• Eritrea has decided to expel
United Nations peacekeepers from the United States,
Canada,Europe and Russia. The UN Deputy Envoy in Ethiopia
and Eritrea, Ambassador Joel Adechisays the expulsion
will make an already difficult job even more difficult
for the UN.
• People in the Western African Sahel region
are developing strategies to cope with droughts that
affect their food security. Anthony Nyong of the University
of Jos of Nigeria says a study has been conducted
to better understand the problem and how people are
coping.
• Cote d’Ivoire this week finally got
an interim Prime Minister to promote the stalled peace
process and reconciliation in the country. Sammy Buo
of the UN Department of Political Affairs says the
new Prime Minister, Charles Konan Banny, will face,
among other things, the task of promoting reconciliation
organizing elections in ten months time.
Editor / Presenter: Ransford Cline-Thomas
Producer: Derrick Mbatha
Production Assistant: Charles Appel
Studio Engineer: John Macias
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 Ransford
Cline-Thomas.
*** SIG TUNE ***: (Bring Sig Tune up briefly, dip
and hold under)
PRESENTER:
Eritrea this week demanded that United Nations peacekeepers
monitoring its tense border with Ethiopia should leave
the country within ten days. The authorities gave
no reason for their decision.
CLIP-1: JOEL ADECHI
“They had said before that they were not happy
with the way the international
community was dealing with the issue of the demarcation
of the border between Eritrea
and Ethiopia and they have already said that they
would be obliged to take things into
their own hands.”
NARRATOR:
That was Ambassador Joel Adechi, the Deputy Special
Representative of the Secretary-General in Ethiopia
and Eritrea talking about Eritrea’s decision
to expel UN peacekeepers.
Also In this edition of UN and Africa, we look at
the problem of drought which is threatening food security
in the West African Sahel region.
And finally in the programme Cote’d’Ivoire
gets an interim Prime Minister to help push the peace
process forward.
CLIP-2: SAMMY BUO
“I think that everybody wishes the new Prime
Minister well, and hopes that all the parties in the
peace process will give him their full cooperation
to ensure that this time around the way forward is
smooth and steady.”
PRESENTER:
That was Sammy Buo of the UN Department of Political
Affairs. More from
him later in the programme.
So stay tuned to UN and Africa.
*** SIG TUNE *** (Bring up briefly, dip and hold under
until first sentence.)
Eritrea Gives United Nations Monitors Ten Days to
Leave the Country
PRESENTER:
Eritrea has decided to give United Nations peacekeepers
monitoring the border with Ethiopia ten days to leave
the country without giving any reasons. Eritrean officials
specified that the peacekeepers being expelled are
from the United States, Canada, Europe and Russia.
This prompted the Security Council to discuss the
issue and issue a statement condemning the decision
-- a decision which comes amid concerns about the
restrictions which Eritrea had already imposed on
the United Nations UNMEE -- by not allowing it to
fly its helicopters on its airspace and limiting night
patrols along the border. On the to line to Asmara
Ambassador Joel Adechi, the Deputy Representative
of the Secretary-General to Ethiopia and Eritrea explained
to me how Eritrea’s decision was conveyed to
him on Tuesday.
ADECHI: Eritrea’s Acting Commissioner called
me saying that he has a communication from his government,
and when I met with him, informed me that the government
of Eritrea has decided to request a number of UNMEE
personnel to leave the country within ten days. And
it was specified that those UNMEE personnel were nationals
from the U.S.A Canada, Europe including Russian Federation.
And I asked for some explanation but he told me that
he has no explanation at that time so he couldn’t
give me an explanation for that decision.
THOMAS: He didn’t give you any explanation.
But can you sort of offer any explanation yourself
why they might have resorted to this action?
ADECHI: Officially I don’t have any explanation.
I can only guess that it’s is a kind of decision
that is along the lines like the previous one on the
ban of the helicopter flights.
THOMAS: And, of course, if he didn’t give you
an explanation why he was asking that these peacekeepers
leave the country, obviously he did not tell you why
these particular countries.
ADECHI: He didn’t. That was my second question,
why those people but he didn’t give me any explanation
why this kind of selection.
THOMAS: Did you get any incline any indication whatsoever
that the government was going to take such as a step?
ADECHI: Not clearly. They had said before that they
were not happy with the way the international community
was dealing with the issue of the demarcation of the
border between Eritrea and Ethiopia and they have
already said that they would be obliged to take things
into their own hands. But in terms of taking this
kind of decision we were little bit surprised.
THOMAS: Now, since Eritrea had also decided to impose
restrictions on United Nations helicopters, were these
monitors able to do their work?
ADECHI: The Force Commander tried to reinforce the
ground patrols since the ban of the helicopters. So
they were trying to do their job as much as they can.
There were some few restrictions, but they were trying
to do their job. But now that some of them have been
asked to leave, I think the job will be more difficult
to perform.
THOMAS: What is the overall situation along the border
right now?
ADECHI: Along the border right the situation is at
it was the previous week. It’s tense and potentially
volatile but no specific events these days.
THOMAS: Now obviously again, with the order to expel
the nationals of the countries that we’ve talked
about, this obviously adds to the escalation of the
problems between the mission and this particular government,
doesn’t it?
ADECHI: The situation is already difficult, yes,
you are right. But as peacekeepers were are always
there to try to find a way of bringing, when a situation
is tense to try to bring it back to normal. The main
reason for our presence here is to find a way to monitor
and observe what is happening in the Temporary Security
Zone in waiting for the process of demarcation to
start. In that respect I think that is still needed
here and we should find a way to see how we can still
monitor the Temporary Security Zone to make sure that
the sanctity and the integrity of the Temporary Security
Zone is preserved and to recommend that at the political
level, at the international level necessary steps
are done so that the demarcation process can start.
PRESENTER:
That was Ambassador Joel Adechi, the Deputy Representative
of the Secretary-General in Ethiopia and Eritrea on
the line to Asmara. Meanwhile, the United Nations
Secretary-General has made it clear that Eritrea’s
request that UN peacekeepers who are nationals of
specified member states should leave the country contravenes
Eritrea’s obligations under the United Nations
Charter to respect the exclusively international character
of United Nations staff. He said this obligation is
a fundamental principle of UN peacekeeping. The Secretary-General
also said the United Nations cannot accede to the
request and demands that the government immediately
and unequivocally rescind its decision without preconditions.
STING/JINGLE: UN AND AFRICA THEME
People in Drought Dry Sahel Region Devise Strategy
for Food Security
PRESENTER:
Over the last ten days delegates from around the
world have been meeting in the Canadian city of Montreal
to discuss climate change and measures that can be
adopted to stop global warming. In many African countries
adapting to climate change has become an urgent priority
as the continent continues to face cycles of drought
and floods with their devastating effects. At the
Montreal meeting, UN Radio’s Bissera Kostova
spoke with Anthony Nyong of the Centre for Environmental
Resources and Hazards Research of the University of
Jos in Nigeria. The Centre has conducted a study on
Households and community strategies for securing food
in the changing climate of the Sudano-Sahel region
of Africa. Mr. Nyong says droughts are increasingly
becoming a problem in that region.
Nyong: We’re having droughts occurring more
frequently. Before we could really time them there
were largely 30-year events or 20-year events. Now,
we’re having droughts sometimes with repeat
time cycles of about five years, three years and so
on which is really becoming a lot more frequent in
the Sahel.
Bissera: And how is that impacting food security?
Nyong: Well, basically the food system in the West
African Sahel is largely driven by small-scale farmers
who depend on rain-fed agriculture, and that means
that when the droughts come the rains are no longer
there and it’s going to affect food crop production.
Other people don’t have enough resources to
buy the food because their own activities are also
affected. So you find young men and women leaving
and going to the cities and thereby still further
reducing the population that is left to produce the
food in Africa.
Bissera: Now what was the purpose of your four-year
project?
Nyong: The purpose of our four-year project was basically
to assess the impacts of climate variability and change,
largely droughts, on poor rural households in the
West African Sahel. What strategies are there adopted
so far to deal with the issues of drought?’
Then and only then can we understand and build on
those strategies to help us deal with the issues of
climate change as they occur in the future.
Bissera: And what are some of these coping strategies
that you found?
Nyong: Yeah, we found basically that the local populations
are resorting to indigenous, traditional foods that
were largely abandoned in support of commercially
viable crops like maize and wheat. We also find that
the people are developing, they have ingenious ways
of storing foods even though it could be perfected
because post-harvests loss is still a major issue.
They still lose a lot of crops to birds and to weevils
and insects and so on. But it would be important for
us to build on what they already know and see how
we can improve on those coping capacities.
PRESENTER:
That was Anthony Nyong of the Centre for Environmental
Recourses and Hazards Research at the University of
Jos in Nigeria, speaking with UN Radio’s Bissera
Kostova.
STING/JINGLE: UN AND AFRICA THEME
Cote d’Ivore Finally Gets an Interim Prime Minister
PRESENTER:
The good news from West Africa this week is that Cote
d’Ivoire has finally got an interim Prime Minister.
He is Charles Konan Banny, the governor of the Central
Bank of the West African States, based in Dakar Senegal.
South African President Thabo Mbeki and the Nigerian
President Olusegun Obasanjo took more than a month
to finally settle on the name of Konan Banny whose
task is now to break the political deadlock in Cote
d’Ivoire – a country which remains divided
between the north, controlled by the Forces Nouvelles,
and the south under government control. UN Radio’s
Derrick Mbatha spoke with Sammy Buo, who deals with
African issues in the United Nations Department of
Political Affairs. Mr. Buo recalls that towards the
end of October the Security Council adopted a resolution
which set out a roadmap to break the impasse and move
the peace process forward in Cote d’Ivoire.
Buo: Among the key elements of that resolution of
course was the appointment of a new Prime Minister.
Unfortunately it took us more than a month to get
there, but finally we are there so this is indeed
a breakthrough and it’s an important one because
right now it allows the new Prime Minister to form
a team that can begin to put in place the key elements
of that resolution which include preparations for
the elections in 2006.
Derrick: Why did it take a month to get a month to
get this Prime Minister appointed?
Buo: Well, it’s understandable. This is a difficult
process, and confidence among the parties has been
weakened by the conflict. So it is very difficult
in the heat of war for any one national of that country
to come out unscathed by the conflict. So one side
may like you, the other side may not like you, but
at least what is important is that they were able
at the end to find an Ivorian in whom they could all
have confidence to lead the process forward.
Derrick: Now what powers is the new Prime Minister
going to have since he will be working under the President?
Buo: Well the key powers have been outlined in the
Security Council resolution. And those powers, initially
negotiated at the regional level would allow the new
Prime Minister to have a free hand in putting together
his team, and in being given the resources and the
personnel with which to work because the last Prime
Minister had complained that even though he was at
the head of the government, he did not have free control
over the members of his team. Neither did he have
the financial wherewithal to implement his programme.
This time around, I believe that that lacuna has been
closed, and the new Prime Minister will have the powers
in choosing his team and the resources that are necessary
to execute the mandate of the new government.
Derrick: Where is his team going to come from?
Buo: Well essentially as you know this is a country
in conflict, which means that fundamentally you’ve
got to try to build a team that enjoys the confidence
of the various parties to the conflict. So I’m
pretty sure that the Prime Minister will be sensitive
to the dynamics at play, and that he would form a
team which would be able to work closely with all
members who signed the Marcoussis Agreement. And the
same formula which allowed each party to the conflict
to put forward members into the government is likely
to follow this time around. But the difference is
that the Prime Minister now will have the powers to
hire and fire his own ministers. So he will not be
at their beck and call. He would be their leader,
in a sense the head of government.
Derrick: What about the resources? Where is he going
to get the resources? You said that the previous one
couldn’t perform as much as he would have liked
to because he didn’t have the necessary resources
to do so.
Buo: Well the resource may be available to the government,
but he did not have a free hand in controlling the
Minister of Finance for example. This time around
it is clearly spelled out that he will have a hand
in designating the people and the people would be
answerable to him.
Derrick: What will happen if we face another crisis?
You know there has been moving haltingly?
Buo: Last November 2004, the Security Council had
adopted in principle a decision on the possible use
of sanctions in Cote d’Ivoire. This is a weapon
of last resource I believe in this case, and if we
have to use coercive measures, it means that the people
are begrudgingly committing themselves to the struggle
for peace. We would like to have them do so willingly,
and I think that everybody wishes the new Prime Minister
well, and hopes that all the parties in the peace
process will give him their full cooperation to ensure
that this time around the way forward is smooth and
steady.
PRESENTER:
That was Sammy Buo who deals with African issues at
the United Nations
speaking there with UN Radio’s Derrick Mbatha.
SIG TUNE ((Bring up briefly, dip and hold under)
And that’s for this edition of UN and Africa.
From me, Ransford Cline-Thomas, Producer Derrick Mbatha,
Production Assistant Charles Appel and engineer John
Macias, good bye for now.
*** CLOSING MUSIC ***
(Please bring music up and play till the end.)
|
