THURSDAY, 12 AUGUST 2004
301 Byliner: Steps for Saving Lives in Sudan
(Op-ed column in August 11 Washington Post) (860)
302 U.S. Funded Program Emphasizes Self-Reliance In Guinea
(FR) (Tostan human rights project works in 60 villages) (670)
303 Growing Number of African Communities Focus on Women's
Rights
(FR) (Senegalese program is helping to discourage female genital cutting)
(1000)
304 EPA Web Site Showcases International Environmental Best
Practices
(Focus shifts from exporting expertise and dollars to importing innovation)
(1140)
*AEF301 08/11/2004
Byliner: Steps for Saving Lives in Sudan
(Op-ed column in August 11 Washington Post) (860)
(This column by Senator Bill Frist, Tennessee Republican and Senate majority leader, was published in The Washington Post August 11 and is in the public domain. No republication restrictions.)
(begin byliner)
Steps for Saving Lives in Sudan
By Bill Frist
I have spent the past few days on a fact-finding mission to the region of Darfur in western Sudan. I met the regional leaders, visited a refugee camp in Chad not far from the Sudanese border and talked with survivors -- mostly women and children -- of attacks by militias commonly known as Janjaweed. Their stories are horrific, and in most cases much the same: Janjaweed assaults are preceded by aerial attacks by government aircraft. In some cases, soldiers in government uniforms are present and references are made to "orders from Khartoum." Survivors tell of racial slurs as the militia sweeps through the villages.
The growing toll is by now familiar to many: Tens of thousands have been killed, more than a million forced from their homes, and hundreds of villages razed. The crimes committed also include mass rape, the slaughter of young boys and the destruction of village after village.
The dictatorship in Khartoum claims it has no control over the Janjaweed, but it continues to neglect the first responsibility of every government: to protect its people. Unless the genocide in Darfur is halted immediately, tens of thousands more will die before the end of the year. The rainy season makes roads impassable for relief convoys and facilitates the spread of waterborne disease. The United States has provided more than 80 percent of the supplies now flowing to Darfur and eastern Chad, and has sent more than $140 million to aid the refugees. Humanitarian supplies may soon dry up unless other nations quickly fulfill their commitments.
Further, there is a good chance that this conflict could spill over into neighboring states and create instability in the region. Sudan's actions inflame ethnic tensions and impose an exceptional burden on local communities across its borders. Sudan's policies are creating turmoil in regional governments and populaces, some of whom identify with or are ethnically related to the oppressed peoples of Sudan.
The first step toward addressing this problem is to provide adequate security for the refugees to return home and for relief workers to assist them. Khartoum must abide by U.N. Security Council Resolution 1556: It must disarm (and disband) the militias and bring those responsible for their crimes to justice. It must provide unfettered access to humanitarian workers. And it must begin the political process critical to permanently resolving the differences between the Khartoum regime and the non-Arab peoples of Darfur.
Despite Khartoum's claims that it cannot meet the U.N. deadline, I believe it could do so in a matter of days. But given the government's likely motives, its failure to live up to previous agreements and its past practices, we should not rely on the Khartoum regime alone to fulfill its obligations. Nor can we rely on escalatory steps such as economic sanctions to pressure Khartoum as it employs dilatory and diversionary tactics to complete its final solution.
The crisis in Darfur is a regional problem that demands an African remedy. It requires forces capable of providing security in a timely and credible manner. Such a remedy is available. Forces led by the African Union (AU) are already deploying to the region. They can be complemented by troops from Khartoum and the Sudanese People's Liberation Movement (SPLM), which stands ready to provide thousands of well-trained soldiers to protect the people of Darfur.
The Sudanese People's Liberation Army (SPLA) is in a unique position to help. During one of the world's longest running civil wars, the SPLA fought Sudanese forces to a standstill. In June the Sudanese government and SPLM signed a historic peace accord that includes creating SPLA-GOS (government of Sudan) integrated units. Creating a security force for Darfur would merely accelerate this peace-building initiative.
Having been victimized by Khartoum for decades, the southern Sudanese understand the plight of their fellow citizens in Darfur. Khartoum claims it does not have the capacity to protect the people of Darfur. The southern Sudanese are eager and ready to provide the balance of forces.
Finally, logistical support for these AU-led forces could be provided by world nations as necessary. This formula builds on available resources and serves the needs of the people of Darfur. It also serves the interests of the region. It should be pursued immediately under U.N. auspices.
As a U.S. senator and a physician who has practiced medicine throughout Sudan, I am convinced that time is not on the side of the people of Darfur nor the countries of the region. A wise man told me recently that genocide is what they call it after the killing is over; it is usually followed by a solemn promise of "never again." Action must be taken while there is still reason to act.
(The writer, a Republican from Tennessee, is the Senate majority leader.)
(end byliner)
(Distributed by the Bureau of International Information Programs, U.S. Department of
State. Web site: http://usinfo.state.gov)
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*AEF302 08/11/2004
U.S. Funded Program Emphasizes Self-Reliance In Guinea
(FR) (Tostan human rights project works in 60 villages) (670)
By Tara Boyle
Washington File Staff Writer
Washington -- In the village of Boffa in the West African nation of Guinea, residents have begun a clean-up campaign for their local market. Once a week, they descend on vendors' stalls armed with determination and improvised tools -- from handmade brooms to scraps of old metal -- which they use to sweep and scoop up trash that has accumulated over several days.
Meanwhile, in the town of Bantou, families have begun registering their children for birth certificates, so that they will have access to schooling and other government services. And in the village of Tarambly, residents have planted thousands of seedlings that will one day replace the trees they have cut down for firewood and shelter.
In each of these communities, the tasks being undertaken are relatively simple, but the underlying goal is significant: to use their own resources to improve their quality of life.
Residents launched the initiatives after participating in community education classes conducted by Tostan, a non-governmental organization based in Senegal. Tostan, which means "breakthrough" in the African language Wolof, has taught villagers across Senegal the skills they need, from the basics of hygiene to bookkeeping and financial management, in order to undertake their own community development programs. Now, the organization is bringing its self-empowerment message to Guinea.
"If people just wait for the government or for international organizations to do something for them, we are going to violate that principle that it is better to teach somebody to fish rather than to give them a fish," said Tostan's Deputy Director Malick Diagne August 4 in an interview at the organization's Washington office. "So the strategy of Tostan is essentially showing the communities that they have the capacity to take care of their own development and improve their own lives."
Sixty Guinean communities are currently participating in the classes, which are being funded by a $1.8 million grant from the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID). Another 60 villages will be added to the program by January 2005.
So far, Tostan's results in the first 60 communities have been dramatic: by June, more than 1,600 children had been registered for birth certificates, nearly 500 adults had received national identity cards, and more than 800 girls had been reintegrated into school. Many villages have also organized community clean-up and reforestation campaigns and launched sewing, soap-making and gardening programs to generate extra income.
Tostan is one of several organizations working with USAID as part of an effort to increase democratic and civic participation in Guinea, which has suffered under autocratic rule for much of its post-independence history. Under Sékou Touré, who led the nation from 1958 until his death in 1984, political opposition was ruthlessly suppressed, and thousands of people were sent to prison camps.
The current regime, led by President Lansana Conté, still suffers from a lack of accountability and a weak commitment to the rule of law, although Guineans have begun to lobby for more involvement in the political process, said Mamadou Kenda Diallo, a member of USAID's democracy and governance team in Guinea.
"A nascent civil society, donors and political parties are putting pressure on the government, which is being more cooperative," said Diallo in an interview by e-mail. "Citizens' political participation in Guinea will -- we hope -- ensure greater stability when a change in political power occurs."
For Tostan, the mandate in Guinea is to focus on human rights and communication at the grassroots level. Molly Melching, the executive director of Tostan, is optimistic that this village-by-village educational approach can have a deep impact.
"We're talking about giving people principles of democracy and human rights and respect for one another, and solving problems in a peaceful way through consensus and negotiation -- and in a way that uses African traditions and gives value to African traditions," she said.
(The Washington File is a product of the Bureau of International Information Programs,
U.S. Department of State. Web site: http://usinfo.state.gov)
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*AEF303 08/11/2004
Growing Number of African Communities Focus on Women's Rights
(FR) (Senegalese program is helping to discourage female genital cutting) (1000)
By Tara Boyle
Washington File Staff Writer
Washington -- In the dusty Matam region of northern Senegal, where the sands of the Sahara desert blow down from Mauritania, residents of the town of Polel Diaobé recently took to the streets in what may have been the community's first protest. Students, teachers, and village leaders of all ages marched through the town, united in a common goal: expressing their unhappiness at the recent marriage of a 10-year-old girl to a much older man.
"They carried signs [saying], ‘Parents, have pity on our girls. We want to go to school... Please stop child marriage,'" recalled Molly Melching, the executive director of a Senegalese nongovernmental organization, Tostan, which works in Polel Diaobé.
In the end, residents were successful in their protest. The marriage was annulled, and the girl will be allowed to return to school. The result was also a success for Tostan, which has worked in more than 1,500 villages across Senegal, teaching communities about human rights, leadership, and other critical issues. In each of the villages, says Tostan Deputy Director Malick Diagne, residents learn how to confront and resolve their own problems.
"When we come to a village, one of the first modules that is taught in the class is problem solving. We try to get them to visualize how they want to be and what are the obstacles to reaching that ideal state," Diagne said.
One of the most frequently discussed obstacles to that "ideal state" is the tradition of female genital cutting (FGC). To date, more than 1,360 Senegalese villages that have participated in the Tostan program have held public declarations to announce that they will no longer engage in FGC or child marriage, which many villagers say are inherently linked traditions.
The Tostan strategy has been so successful that Melching and Diagne predict that FGC may be completely abandoned in Senegal within the next six years. Now, Tostan is taking the lessons it has learned in Senegal and is seeking to replicate them in neighboring Guinea, where nearly 99 percent of women are estimated to have undergone FGC.
"People are comfortable with doing excision (FGC) in Guinea. In Senegal they have to hide it now to do it," said Diagne. "We have changed the mentality...in such a way that it is not cool or politically correct to do excision [in Senegal]. In Guinea we and other [non-governmental organizations] have to work at changing that kind of atmosphere, that kind of prejudice."
According to the World Health Organization (WHO), FGC is practiced in at least 28 African countries and in some parts of Asia and the Middle East. The practice, which varies from region to region, is defined as any procedure to remove part or all of the female external genitalia. The WHO and other public health advocates have warned that FGC can result in hemorrhages, shock, urine retention, infection and death. Long-term consequences can range from cysts and abscesses to difficulty with childbirth.
The Tostan strategy for addressing this practice, Melching says, is to work with intra-marrying communities that traditionally perform FGC as a rite of passage to adulthood. After going through the Tostan program, these villages usually make a collective public declaration to end FGC.
"It's extremely important for marriageability reasons that people do the public declaration, and that the declaration be a collective decision so that people can end FGC safely knowing that their daughters will have more secure futures. Without the public declaration, the girl will be shunned, rejected, she will not be respected, and then she won't find a husband," Melching explained.
Equally important to the Tostan model is the concept of self-empowerment, said Melching.
"We don't go at all into a village to get them to end FGC. That is not our goal...our goal is to help villagers improve their own lives, to define their own goals and achieve their own objectives, and along the way, if they see this is something that could improve their lives, we support them in that decision, but they are the ones who lead that movement," she said.
The Tostan initiative in Guinea is being funded by a three-year, $1.8 million grant from the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID). The program, which will be in place in 120 villages by 2005, is part of a larger USAID project to increase democratic and civic participation in a nation that has had little experience with democracy.
"Citizen political participation in Guinea will -- we hope -- ensure greater stability when a change of political power occurs," said Mamadou Kenda Diallo, a member of the USAID team in Guinea, in an e-mail interview.
For Tostan, this mandate to increase civic involvement will be fulfilled at the grassroots level by teaching people about their human rights and responsibilities -- their right to receive adequate health care, for example, as well as their responsibility to ensure that they receive frequent check-ups during pregnancies.
"It is getting people to see that as human beings, we all have basic rights and we need to look at this when those rights are being violated, and how we can work together to solve those problems," said Melching.
"And people become engaged because it's a noble movement," she continued. "They like it because it's positive. I think people in Africa in particular like being involved in a movement that's positive, rather than one that says we're fighting against something or we're out to destroy or eliminate [something]."
That message is one that Tostan would like to bring to other nations in West Africa.
"We'd like to unite people and allow them to exchange and come together. For major social transformation to come about, there needs to be consensus with large numbers. That's what affects people," said Melching.
(The Washington File is a product of the Bureau of International Information Programs,
U.S. Department of State. Web site: http://usinfo.state.gov)
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*AEF304 08/11/2004
EPA Web Site Showcases International Environmental Best Practices
(Focus shifts from exporting expertise and dollars to importing innovation) (1140)
By Cheryl Pellerin
Washington File Staff Writer
Washington -- A new Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Web site showcases environmental policies and best practices from countries around the world — including Australia, Canada, Germany, the Netherlands, Sweden, Australia and Brazil — to share innovative solutions to complex problems that affect the world's air quality, water and land use.
The Web site (http://www.epa.gov/innovation/international), a project of the EPA National Center for Environmental Innovation (NCEI), is a portal to information about innovative environmental policies and programs mainly from the European Union and the 30-member Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD).
"Sharing best practices among like-minded organizations and governments," says EPA's Brian Swett, an environmental protection specialist and the NCEI lead on international innovation, "is an important paradigm shift in traditional international environmental activity — from exporting environmental expertise and dollars to importing good ideas from around the globe."
The Web site offers links to resources in environmental learning, international innovations on key environmental issues, international experiences with crosscutting approaches to environmental issues, examples of U.S.-international partnerships and exchanges and international program evaluation. An online global library links to environmental journals, databases and guidelines, programs and case studies.
In a Washington File interview, Swett said the EPA Web site has initially focused on EU and OECD countries because of similarities with the United States — socioeconomic profiles; environmental, economic, and social pressures to develop sustainable policies; and, in many of the countries, more environmentally efficient use of resources.
Also, in response to complex environmental challenges, many EU and OECD countries have implemented policies that a growing number of U.S. states and cities are using as models to deal with urban sprawl, pollution, contaminated land and water-quality problems.
Environmental officials and policymakers in California, Florida, Illinois, Maryland, New Jersey, New York, Oregon, Virginia and other states and cities have used international models to plan new initiatives and seek new approaches to environmental challenges, Swett said.
For example, he said, the Northern Virginia Regional Commission and Germany's Verband Region Stuttgart initiated in 2001 the first international region-to-region partnership. Portland, Oregon, adapted climate protection strategies from Stockholm, Sweden, and Copenhagen, Denmark. German and Swiss car-sharing programs inspired similar efforts in Seattle, Chicago, Denver, New York, Washington, Portland and Boston. And the idea for "green" rooftops in Chicago came from Hamburg, Germany.
Some of the most urgent environmental challenges in the United States involve air quality, water management, and urban sprawl. The following international policy innovations are among those detailed at the EPA Web site.
Air Quality
In many EU and OECD countries, creative state and local governments have pioneered policies and projects that are economically practical and environmentally sound. For example, smart-growth policy tools common in many OECD countries have preserved open space, supported urban forests, and created greenbelts — areas of parks, farmland, or uncultivated land — around many cities, especially in Europe.
Greenspace, which is any vegetated land or water in or next to an urban area, makes an important contribution to air quality. Greenspace planning in Stuttgart, Germany, and Stockholm, Sweden, is linked in networks of "green" air corridors. The corridors are designed to reduce air pollutants and mitigate the effects of urban heat islands, which are domes of high temperatures caused by pollutant emissions and heat fluxes from buildings and pavement.
In 2001, to mediate heat-island effects, the Tokyo metropolitan government enacted a law requiring all new or rebuilt public and private buildings on plots of 1,000 square meters or more to use plantings on at least 20 percent of their roof space. Europe is addressing air pollution by devoting more resources to public transportation. In France and England, 40 percent to 60 percent of transportation spending goes to passenger railroads and mass-transit systems.
Water
International efforts also help conserve and purify water and manage wastewater. In the 1950s, 20 years earlier than the United States, Germany began to research the treatment and cost efficiencies of constructed wetlands to help purify a growing amount of wastewater. A shallow pond is built near the wastewater and stocked with plants and animals found in natural wetlands. When wastewater is routed through the constructed wetland, microbes and plant uptake of nutrients clean the water. This work allowed Germany to show that constructed wetlands were a viable alternative to conventional water treatment processes.
Australia is a global leader in total asset-based management of water infrastructure, and has developed several ambitious, state-level water-demand management policies and programs. In 2000, the state of New South Wales cancelled plans for a major dam and instead set legally binding requirements and operating licenses for Sydney Water to reduce water demand by 35 percent from 1991 levels by 2011.
Urban Sprawl
In many European countries, policy tools address the development of urban sprawl. In the Netherlands, with 15 million inhabitants and Europe's highest population density, a national spatial-planning policy called the ABC Policy helps integrate land-use and transportation planning. The letters ABC refer to levels of population and traffic densities, A being the highest, C the lowest.
According to the European Partners for the Environment Web page, the idea behind the ABC Policy is to reduce avoidable car use by putting "the right business in the right place" and making sure residents have access to economic activity centers that are near highways and public transportation. The policy has inspired transportation and housing planning in cities like Groningen, where 50 percent of inner-city travel is by bicycle.
Europe has also hosted international design competitions that promote the creation of environmentally oriented buildings and redeveloped open spaces and landscapes.
Although many examples and case studies on the EPA Web site feature EU and OECD countries, Swett said, "we can certainly learn a great deal from innovations in developing countries." The Web site is constantly expanding, he added, and in the future will feature innovations from South Africa, Mexico and other countries.
The EPA NCEI Web site is much more focused on policies that promote and implement innovative practices like constructed wetlands than on the technologies themselves. The portal is meant to give local, state and federal officials who are interested in international solutions a place to find policy details and contact information for global leaders in specific environmental areas.
The site is also a resource for government bodies, businesses and nongovernmental organizations, with information about group and individual exchanges — not just country to country — and short- and long-term projects.
"This is a growing resource," Swett said. Anyone who has ideas or information about innovative policies or programs can contact the EPA National Center for Environmental Innovation through the Web site.
Additional information is available at http://www.epa.gov/innovation/international
(The Washington File is a product of the Bureau of International Information Programs,
U.S. Department of State. Web site: http://usinfo.state.gov)
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