“I fish every day to feed my children. I fished all weekend but there are no fish, so I can’t raise my children… So I’ll drop this net and pick up the knife… so that they remember us in this bush where we live and where they drill our oil”

These were the words of a father living in the Niger Delta, outraged and exasperated at the disregard in which he is held by the oil companies who he holds responsible for ruining the ecology surrounding his local community.

International oil giant Shell’s activities in the Niger Delta are well documented and have been the subject of international discussion, criticism and high-profile campaigning over recent years. And yet, a situation exists in which local groups continue to protest that their way of life has been devastated by an international company extracting local mineral wealth that seems only to enrich government officials and company executives; those who are far removed from the daily realities and environmental disruptions associated with a life lived in the shadow of numerous unwelcome oil wells.

According to the World Bank, oil represents 97% of Nigeria’s total export revenue, and 80% of public revenue. Currently, oil exports account for around $50bn of income a year, and yet 70 million people in Nigeria live on less than $1 dollar a day.

Amnesty International estimates that 60% of the population of the Niger Delta “depend on the natural environment for their livelihood”, and yet so extensive is the environmental damage caused by oil extraction activities in the area, that the United Nation’s estimates that it will take 30 years to fully clean up.

Artist Mark Boulos’ 2008 film All That is Solid Melts Into Thin Air juxtaposes two very different perspectives of the oil trade, simultaneously projecting images of traders at Chicago’s Mercantile Exchange on the one hand, and disgruntled residents of the Niger Delta on the other.

Listening to the testimony of the residents, we are not only given an insight into the desperation caused by the destruction of their local way of life, but are also introduced to the armed resistance that Shell’s treatment of local people has elicited. Chillingly, the video closes with a member of the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta declaring,

“We Declare War on Everything that is White!”

Bearing in mind that the UN’s Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples states that  “the recognition of the rights of indigenous peoples will enhance harmonious and cooperative relations… based on principles of justice, democracy, respect for human rights, non-discrimination good faith” it is not unreasonable to suggest that rather than rejoicing over the recent increase of regional oil production resulting from heightened levels of security in the region – as reported by Bloomberg last year – the international community should instead demand that the profits of the powerful cease to be placed over and above the right to life exercised by those who – other than through their violence – rarely have their voices heard. In this case, as in most others, fairness rather than force is the better route to achieving a lasting peace.

Related Stories:

• Enough is Enough: Clean up your mess, Shell!
• Shell Nigeria case verdict & the war against oil pollution
• Briefing: Fracking – Curse or Blessing?
• No more impunity for oil giants?

Ivan Lanegra, who confirmed his resignation yesterday, considered his position untenable after witnessing repeated attempts by ministerial colleagues to roll back a ‘consultation law’ written to protect the rights of indigenous peoples.

The law, passed in 2011, descends from the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, and sets out a clear framework within which to ensure the voices of tribal communities are heard when international companies move to an area seeking to exploit natural resources.

In addition to acknowledging that “respect for indigenous knowledge, cultures and traditional practices contributes to sustainable and equitable development of the environment”, the UN declaration also considers the cultural, social and economic rights of those

“indigenous peoples who have suffered from historic injustices as a result of their colonization… thus preventing them from exercising their right to development in accordance with their own needs and interests.”

Mr. Langera’s resignation comes after Peruvian president, Ollanta Humala, attempted to exclude Andean Quechua-speaking communities from protection under the law, after having been persuaded by his energy minister that listening to their concerns would delay a new $50bn pipeline that is set to pass through the region.

Peru’s export revenues are set to hit $30bn in 2013, and the relatively small Andean country has enjoyed an average growth rate of 6.3% over the last five years as a result of being South America’s leading producer of gold, silver, zinc, lead, tin and tellurium. Mineral exports account for 60% of export revenues and 20% of all tax receipts, and have made a significant contribution to a reduction of the population living in poverty from 50% to 27.8% over the last ten years.

However, these developments have come at a cost of increasing internal conflict. Peru’s national ombudsman’s office estimates that 47% of social violence during 2009 was in response to “environmental and land disputes related to the extraction industry”. In 2009, 33 died and over 200 were injured when police attempted to break up a peaceful protest against development in Bagua – situated in Peru’s northern Amazon region.

Susan Lee, Americas Programme Director at Amnesty International, commented that;

“steamrolling over the rights of Indigenous Peoples and others most affected by rural development projects is not the way to economic development. In Peru and across the Americas, the social conflicts exacerbated by ignoring the rights and rejecting the input of Indigenous Peoples have resulted in many preventable human rights violations”.

In the light of Mr. Langera’s resignation, and as cases such as these continue to gain publicity, there is an opportunity for the international community to again consider how to strike the balance between necessary domestic economic development, the aims of international extraction companies, and the cultural and economic needs of indigenous communities. Yes, a firm international consensus has been reached on the importance of protecting the rights of indigenous communities, but now it is time for governments to stay true to their public commitments, even when closeted behind private cabinet doors.

Related Stories:

• ‘Lost’ report exposes Brazilian-Indian genocide
• Worldwide protests to stop Amazon gas project expansion
• Auction of Native American sacred objects goes ahead, despite legal challenge
• Oil showdown in the Amazon

 Image licensed under wiki-commons.

The two juveniles were convicted by the Juvenile Court in the capital Male’ over a fatal gang stabbing incident in February. Both the accused, who have now reached 18, reportedly deny the charge.

“The Maldives authorities are flouting international law – anyone convicted of a crime committed when they were under 18 is exempt from the death penalty,” said Polly Truscott, Amnesty International’s Deputy Asia-Pacific Director.

Maldives is a State Party to two UN treaties, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the Convention on the Rights of the Child, which forbid capital punishment for crimes committed by persons below 18 years of age.

“The authorities must immediately reverse these death sentences, and the prosecution must not try to uphold the death sentences in any appeals,” said Polly Truscott.

“The sentences of all other prisoners on death row should be commuted, and an official moratorium on executions established, towards abolishing the death penalty.

“The Maldives is entering new and dangerous territory – imposing death sentences for crimes allegedly committed by children is alarming.”

The victim’s family had reportedly earlier asked the court for the death penalty. The two teenagers have 90 days to appeal the death sentence at the High Court.

Another teenager was apparently acquitted due to a lack of evidence while murder charges were filed against several others in connection with the attack.

“Amnesty International opposes the death penalty in all cases without exception. There is no convincing evidence that the death penalty works as a special deterrent against crime,” said Truscott.

In a recently published report covering the first three months of 2013 in Iraq, Jordan and Lebanon, evidence suggests that more than 1 million refugees need treatment for a wide range of both common and conflict-related conditions, Adrian Edwards, spokesman for the UN High Commissioner for Refugees told journalists in Geneva.

Mr. Edwards explained that the situation is particularly challenging for those with chronic and other costly health conditions, such as diabetes, hypertension and cardiovascular illnesses, as well as expensive referral care more commonly diagnosed and treated in middle-income countries. The report was primarily based on information from established refugee camps, except for data from Lebanon.

He said that as of last night, 1,401,435 Syrians had registered as refugees in the region or were pending registration. This corresponds to 30 per cent more than the total envisaged under the current Regional Refugee Response Plan by end June 2013 – for which around 55 per cent of funding has so far been received.

“An updated plan is due to be presented to donors in late May. UNHCR continues to roll out additional capacity as funding comes in,” he added.

With nearly 2.5 million Syrian refugees throughout the entire region, the report cites two major problems facing the health system. First, with low funding for the refugee crisis, the challenge of providing access to quality health care for Syrian refugees is growing – particularly for people living outside of camps.

Secondly, the increasing numbers of people needing medical help is straining existing health services in each of the affected countries.

“Both issues are a matter of serious concern to UNHCR,” Mr. Edwards stressed, adding: “We continue, with our partners, to provide medical care for refugees in the camps in Jordan and Iraq. But for those refugees who live outside of camps, often in urban settings, the situation is more difficult.”

In terms of the overall health situation of Syrian refugees, the UNHCR report shows a “mixed” picture. Syrian refugees are not reported to be suffering from high rates of mortality and acute malnutrition. Mortality at the Za’atri camp in Jordan, for example, is reported at 0.1 per 1,000 people per month, while global acute malnutrition in children below five years is less than 5.8 per cent – neither rate being outside norms seen in the region. This is in contrast to many other humanitarian situations in other parts of the world.

“However, preventive services, chronic disease treatment and expensive referral care are not sufficiently provided at a cost that refugees, despite the support provided by governments and humanitarian agencies, can afford,” he said.

Meanwhile, at a reception and concert in New York last night for Syrian children, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon recalled his visit to Za’atari camp last December. He was struck by how many children there were, lining the road “cheering, running and full of fun and mischief.”

Yet, he said, there was no disguising that their lives had been massively disrupted. “Most had fled with their families with only what they could carry. Many had witnessed or ensured unspeakable atrocities.” Almost 2 million children are internally displaced, and more than 600,000 have fled Syria as refugees, he added.

With no end to the conflict in sight, the Secretary-General called on the Security Council and countries in the region to come up with a unified position that can persuade all actors to come to the negotiating table. “We risk an entire generation of children being scarred for life. The children of Syria are our children. They need our help,” he implored.

This article was originally published by the UN News Centre.

The new UN Security Council Resolution 2098, passed at the end of March this year, heralded the creation of a new UN Intervention Brigade in the DRC, with a mandate to “prevent the expansion of all armed groups, neutralize these groups, and disarm them”. 

The 3,069 strong group is drawn from a coalition of Tanzanian, Malawian and South African troops, and includes infantry and artillery battalions, an elite ‘special force’ and intelligence capabilities.

Fueled by cross-border rivalries and oxygenated by government institutions riddled with corruption, the recent violence in the DRC has long proved difficult for the international community to resolve. This new brigade is therefore intended to bolster the reputation of MONUSCO – the UN’s stabilisation mission in the region – which was widely considered operationally ineffective against the M23 rebels when the group seized towns and villages in the east of DRC last year. 

Whereas the creation of the Intervention Brigade raises hopes that a moment of real boots-on-the-ground engagement with the DRC’S many non-state armed groups has arrived, if the UN fails to engage with the economic, political and ethnic problems which caused MONUSCO to be so ineffective last year, it is unlikely that this new group will be strong enough to overcome these hurdles either.

How to Succeed? MONUSCO’s Problems

• Firstly, MONUSCO’s job has always been somewhat self-contradictory: it is required to protect the civilian population and reimpose the authority of the Congolese state, however it is the government – or at least many members of the governing class – that is often implicated in much of the violence in the first place.

• Secondly, the fact that MONUSCO drew troops from many different countries meant that there were a diverse set of troops with differing operational practices, and parallel command chains. This hampered MONUSCO’s Chapter VII mandate to “use all necessary means…[to] ensure the effective protection of civilians”.

• Thirdly, MONUSCO is incredibly thinly spread. Its 17,000 troops and 3,000 civilian and police staff, are tasked with protecting a region the size of western Europe. This amounts to one MONUSCO soldier per 10-15 square kilometres. In addition to this, MONUSCO is under-equipped, with many contributing nations reluctant to send expensive up-to-date equipment to be used in an other country. This means that MONUSCO is often slow to respond, and easily overwhelmed.

If the new Intervention Brigade is to succeed, it is imperative that policy makers take care to prevent it operating along similar lines to its parent predecessor.

With only 3,000 troops set up against 30-40 rebel groups, the UN must ensure that its new Intervention Brigade prioritises which groups to engage first, while also ensuring that the decision regarding which units tackle which rebel groups doesn’t rouse suspicions as to each contributing country’s wider political motives. As MONUSCO’s previous problems already suggest, UN peacekeeping forces are most effective when both strongly united in purpose and supported with adequate resources. And yet, those same experiences also suggest that subtle differences between contributing nations often act to make missions less united than they initially appear. The violence in the DRC and surrounding regions has long been a scar on the humanitarian conscience of the international community, and – perhaps – with a good policy and diplomatic investment, a sustainable and effective solution just might be within the UN’s reach this time.

Related Stories:

• Briefing: Humanitarian disaster looming in DRC as rebels take city of Goma 
• Briefing: What’s Happening In Mali? Geopolitics and the Long-Arm of French Economic Influence
• Congo: Is Rape Cultural?

Images: © UN News Media

Named after its author – Jader de Figueiredo Correia – the report caused international consternation when first published in 1967, in response to investigation initiated by the Brazilian interior ministry. It detailed cases of habitual and unchecked abuses carried out by both rich and powerful landowners and the government’s own Indian Protection Service (IPS). The awareness raised as a result of publication led to the creation of tribal rights organization Survival International just two years later.

The document’s 7,000 pages told of organised genocide, slavery, sexual violence, torture, bacteriological warfare, and the confiscation of land, all brutally imposed on Brazil’s indigenous population. As a consequence, many tribes ceased to exist, and most others were decimated.

Rediscovered in Rio’s Museum of the Indian, the findings will be submitted to Brazil’s National Truth Commission, an organisation that has the task of considering human rights abuses committed from 1947 to 1988.

The ‘massacre of the 11th parallel’ - just one case among many – saw dynamite thrown from a light-aircraft onto a small village, leaving behind only two survivors able to tell the story.

Other examples include hundreds of Indians poisoned with arsenic laden sugar, and methods of torture such as crushing the ankles of victims with an instrument known as the ‘trunk’.

The report’s account of the violence led to international protests. In his 1969 article entitled ‘Genocide‘ journalist Norman Lewis reported that ‘from fire and sword to arsenic and bullets – civilisation has sent six million Indians to extinction.’

A judicial enquiry was eventually commissioned, and 134 officials were charged with over 1,000 crimes. Whereas thirty-eight government officials lost their jobs, none of the perpetrators was sent to jail for their crimes.

As a result of their complicity, the IPS was shut down and replaced by FUNAI, Brazil’s National Indian Foundation. However, despite the protections that FUNAI has initiated, many tribes continue to struggle as their lands are destroyed and invaded loggers, ranchers, and a government led development programme that includes the creation of several hydroelectric dams, and the licensing of large scale mining projects.

Stephen Corry, director of Survival, commented that, “the Figueiredo report makes gruesome reading, but in one way, nothing has changed: when it comes to the murder of Indians, impunity reigns. Gunmen routinely kill tribespeople in the knowledge that there’s little risk of being brought to justice – none of the assassins responsible for shooting Guarani and Makuxi tribal leaders have been jailed for their crimes. It’s hard not to suspect that racism and greed are at the root of Brazil’s failure to defend its indigenous citizens’ lives”.

A version of this article was originally published by Survival International.

Image 1) © Survival International, 2) © IGPA archive

The presidential election of September 2012 heralded the troubled nation’s first, if awkward, steps towards a free democratic vote in several decades. Somalis in and around Mogadishu rejoiced as a new government was sworn into office and militants of the al-shabaab group were driven out of the capital by African Union (AU) troops. And yet, despite this recent upward trajectory, the freedoms granted in Somalia are still so very fragile that a brave Somali filmmaker had to carry out her most recent project undercover.

This inspiring young woman – who prefers not to be named – is in the process of making a documentary shedding light on the continuing issue of sexual violence against women. In order to protect her identity, I refer to her as Fatima. Recent events prove this precaution is well justified.

In late March this year, a women’s rights reporter was the third journalist to be killed in what has been a series of deadly attacks. The case of Lul Ali Osman Barake, who was raped by five soldiers, and then jailed for allegedly defaming the government and the police, was another case that sparked worldwide outrage and acted as a stark reminder of the country’s fragility. Although Barake was later released after winning an appeal against her sentence, the Somali journalist who interviewed her remained in prison for two months.

“No female victim in Somalia will feel able to talk about this. Rape victims will stay silent in their home and not tell anyone”, Barake told The Guardian in her first interview after her acquittal.

Onlookers have attributed the ‘recent wave’ of sexual abuse to the country’s more current events and instability as associated with the rise of al-shabaab or the plague of severe famine, displacement, overcrowded IDP (internally displaced peoples) camps and other factors that put women at risk. According to Fatima, the brave filmmaker, this is an incomplete if not faulty analysis.

Her journey began in 2010, when she returned to Somalia for the first time in 18 years. Although overwhelmed by the country’s beauty, the state of women left Fatima feeling uneasy. Upon her return she approached several women in the diaspora and was deeply shocked by her findings. “Every second woman I spoke with either knew someone personally or knew of someone, who had been raped or sexually assaulted – and this dates as far back as 1991”, she tells me.

The shocking reality on the ground compelled Fatima to get involved. She decided to make a documentary about the plight of women in Somalia. The first step in taking the project to the next level was to shoot a trailer. While on a second trip to her country of origin, Fatima interviewed several women who had experienced sexual abuse, many of whom were minors.

“One girl was just 16-years-old when she was raped. You can see her speaking on camera when you watch the trailer, but it took a lot for her to feel able to talk about what happened to her. After she was raped, she stopped speaking almost completely. Being in the same room with the girl, one could really feel how much damage and trauma the experience had caused her”, Fatima recalls.

In this grim tale of sexual abuse and violence against women, the story of how and where Fatima met the victims she interviewed, is one filled with bravery and hope. In 2012, a 63-year-old former refugee, known by most as “Mama Hawa”, was awarded the Nansen Refugee Award for her humanitarian work. Hawa Aden Mohamed is the founder and director of the Galkayo Education Center for Peace and Development, located in Somalia’s Puntland region. The center offers an education, leisure activities and a home to displaced Somali women and girls, many of whom have experienced sexual violence. Fatima says, she owes the completion of her filming to date entirely to Mama Hawa and Hawa’s sister Amina, known as Aamow. “They gave me a place to stay, they gave me food to eat, and introduced me to the girls”, her voice lights up as she speaks about Hawa and Aamow, “seeing what they do for Somalis on a daily basis, it is simply incredible”. Mama Hawa’s Galkayo Centre is a safe haven for victims of sexual violence, where they get the support they so desperately need.

The center succeeds where the country’s fragile institutions fail. In far too many cases, the perpetrators will never face any punitive consequences for their appalling actions; fear may even prevent the victims from speaking out in the first place.

Cases such as the one of Lul Ali Osman Barake send a detrimental message to Somalia’s women, that the dignity of their bodies does not matter, that they do not matter. Women such as Mama Hawa and Fatima are out to change this. The Galkayo Education Center for Peace and Development gives women and girls a voice, an education and protection. For the victims of sexual violence at the center, who are absolved from any false notions of responsibility, this conveys an important message. You matter and you have a voice. What you have experienced is nothing less than a despicable crime. You are not guilty.

In a society in which women’s bodies are still closely connected to ideals of honour, this is a message of utmost importance for young girls in particular. Fatima’s hope is for her film to act as a much needed wake-up call that will shed some light on the crimes against Somali women, and the shame and stigma connected to acts of sexual violence. After all, the women of Somalia are the very backbone of its society.

If you would like to donate to the film project please email: contact@haanfilms.com

Click here to make a donation to Mama Hawa’s Galkayo Education Center for Peace and Development

Related articles: 

• ONE WOMAN RAPED EVERY 22 MINUTES: A Culture of Sexual Violence in India?
• FilmAid in Daadab – Can A Camera Save A Life?
• Horror in paradise
• FGM and Rape: Social Approach and Direct Help

Over half a million tribal people in both Ethiopia and Kenya face the total destruction of their way of life as a result of large scale infrastructure and agriculture projects.

A report published by Oxford University’s Africa Studies Centre, suggests that a government led sugar planting project in Kuraz will cause Lake Turkana’s high-water mark to plummet by 22 meters. Lake Turkana is currently the world’s largest desert lake, and such dramatic changes are projected to decimate its fish stocks which are vital to the subsistence of local peoples.

Already, tribespeople from the Bodi, Kwegu and Mursi clans have been forcibly removed from the land to make way for the Kuraz project, and channeled into resettlement areas. Once there, due to the limited space,  they are instructed to sell most of their cattle, removing a central aspect of their ongoing efforts to trade and feed themselves. The Bodi tribe have been given notice that food aid will be withdrawn until they agree to move and have reached the new settlement.

The report also states that as the new Gibe III dam will interrupt the Omo River’s natural flood rhythm, its flow will be curtailed by up to 70%, devastating farming along its banks and potentially facilitating a “major inter-ethnic conflict” as tribes compete over resources.

The Africa Resources Working Group predicts that over 200,000 tribal Ethiopians and 300,000 in Kenyans will suffer irrevocable damage as a results of the dam and plantations.

Another report, The Downstream Impacts of Ethiopia’s Gibe III Dam – East Africa’s Aral Sea in the Making? from campaign group International Rivers,  warns that the removal of waters via irrigation channels, and the use of fertilizers may create ecological dead-zones in this part of the Omo River. International Rivers state that the “destruction of livelihoods in the Lower Omo and the coercion necessary to appropriate their lands for plantation agriculture will severely disrupt the lives of an estimated 200,000-300,000  people”, and asks for funding to campaign for the dam to be halted.

After lobbying by Survival International, the UK’s Department for International Development sent officials to the Lower Omo region in January 2012, to investigate claims of government intimidation of Mursi and Bodi villagers. The officials were given accounts of “arrests and beatings; the deliberate destruction of grain stores; of denied access to the Omo River; and of the widespread use of the military to intimidate people into giving up their land”. There were also numerous accounts of rape.

Despite this, both DFID and USAID continue to provide funds to  Ethiopia’s ‘Protection of Basic Services’ program, which is reported as indirectly funding the forced resettlement of thousands of tribal people.

Stephen Corry, Director of Survival International, commented that “UK money is bankrolling the destruction of some of the best-known pastoralist peoples in Africa. Taxpayers should be outraged, but they probably won’t be surprised. The UK government is renowned for only paying lip service to human rights obligations where tribal peoples are concerned. When it comes to human rights in Ethiopia, DFID’s many commitments are worthless – the department consistently ignores both its own policies and the laudable conventions it has signed up to”.

A version of this story was originally published by Survival International. Sign their petition against the Gibe III dam here…

Related Stories:

• HOPES OF PEACE BUILT ON SAND: infrastructure development essential to Sudan’s future
• Press Review: EU human trafficking on the rise & Deforestation in Ethiopia
• Press Review: Land grabs in Ethiopia & Private health care clinics scam India’s poor
• In Sudan, humanitarian aid is used as a tool of war

Image © Survival International

Baby Sylvia weighed only 1.5 kg when born at the Mbale Regional Referral Hospital in eastern Uganda. Born early, and without the necessary body fat to keep her warm, her temperature soon dropped. She desperately needed to be kept warm or face a tragic death, and yet the one incubator in the maternity operating theatre was out-of-use, used instead as a table for newborn resuscitation.

Baby Sylvia’s case represents one of an estimated 20 million newborns of low birth weight (under 2.5 kg) born each year, 96% of whom are delivered in developing countries. An heart-breaking Four million infants each year who die before 27 days.

The Warm Embrace

However, the hospital in Mbale has begun to use the Embrace BabyWrap, a new low-cost incubator designed for low-resource contexts where the electricity supply isn’t reliable. The insulated pouch keeps low birth-weight babies at the optimum temperature of 37 degrees Celsius for up to six hours at a time. It does so using the WarmPak, a pouch of wax-like material that absorbs heat quickly and releases it back over a longer time span. It’s first warmed in a heater for 25 minutes, after which it is inserted into the back of the BabyWrap – no electricity required.

Embrace Global is the non-profit organisation behind BabyWrap and the ‘Embrace Programme’, which includes an awareness project on the dangers, causes and symptoms of  neonatal hypothermia, as well as guidance in Kangaroo Mother Care, a technique whereby premature babies are tied to their mother so as to draw natural heat.

Brie Stewart, Embrace Global’s Programme Associate, commented that this holistic approach is part of what sets the Embrace Programme apart: “Ultimately, we utilise the Embrace infant warmer as a vehicle to introduce health interventions for low birth-weight and premature infants – simply donating the infant warmers is not enough. To have a real, substantial, and sustainable impact, we implement holistic programming by providing access not only to the device, but also work to create awareness; offer continued training, education and support; and collect data to better understand our effect on maternal and child health.”

Originally developed by a multi-disciplinary group of graduate students at Stanford University’s Institute of Design in California, US, the Embrace Programme has been implemented in nine countries including India, South Sudan, China, Guatemala, Afghanistan, and Uganda. Programmes are partly funded by Embrace Global’s sister organisation, a for-profit, which sells the devices to hospitals in India – because Embrace Global owns the intellectual property, royalties from sales can be redirected into their programmes worldwide. This model helps to sustain the non-profit aspects of the organisation and prevents Embrace Global from being wholly reliant on aid.

Mbale Regional Referral Hospital is Embrace Global’s third pilot project site in Uganda, following successful implementations at Mulago Hospital in Kampala and the Teso Safe Motherhood Project in Soroti. Currently, there are six BabyWraps at Mbale Regional Referral Hospital which should be enough to keep all of the low birth-weight babies born at the hospital warm. Sister Jessica, who is in charge of the Acute Paediatric Unit, remarked, “The Embrace Programme is very helpful. The babies come in shivering and cold, but the warmers stabilise their temperature and help them get pink.”

Spreading the Love

If the programme is a success at the hospital, there are many opportunities for expansion within the region. The ‘warm chain’ could also be extended beyond the hospital setting by improving transport between Health Centre IVs and Mbale Regional Referral Hospital, or BabyWraps could be placed in other health centres which have inconsistent electricity.

In the next year, Embrace Global hopes to expand its programme all the way to the village, using a WarmPak that can be heated in boiling water – avoiding the need for electricity altogether. Additionally, the organisation is hoping that in the future, a village-focused Embrace programme can help significantly reduce neonatal hypothermia, morbidity, and mortality across Uganda, other parts of sub-Saharan Africa, and eventually anywhere low birth-weight infants may be born.

Read more about Embrace Global by clicking here…

A version of this article was originally published by Think Africa Press.

The auction house Neret-Minet Tessier & Sarrou yesterday went ahead with the sale of a collection of sacred items, having repeatedly turned down requests by the Hopi tribe to postpone the event. Having rejected the legal challenge mounted by Survival International, the judge ruled that ‘in spite of their sacredness to the Hopi, these masks are not a representation of any creature, alive or dead’. Lawyers had instead requested that the judge halt the sale in order to give time for the lawfulness of the collection to be established.

Oscar winner Robert Redford earlier added his calls for the auction to be stopped, commenting that “to auction these would be, in my opinion, a sacrilege – a criminal gesture that contains grave moral repercussions. I would hope that these sacred items can be returned to the Hopi tribe where they belong. They are not for auction”.

The masks, known as the Katsinam or ‘friends’ are of great spiritual importance to the 18,000 strong Hopi tribe, who have demanded that the objects are immediately returned to them.

Pierre Servan-Schreiber, counsel for the tribe, commented that “this is a very unfortunate outcome, as these objects will now be sold and dispersed, and the likelihood that they will eventually return to their true home amongst the Hopi is severely reduced. It also probably means that French institutions are still not fully aware of the devastating consequences that the mercantile fate of these truly sacred objects may have on tribes who have already suffered so much”.

Stephen Corry, Director of Survival International, later warned that “potential buyers of these objects should be aware that the Hopi are profoundly distressed at their sale, and regard them as the rightful property of the Hopi people. French law appears to offer the Hopi little comfort, but we still hope that justice will prevail, and that these objects can still be returned to their proper owners”.

To read the Hopi tribe’s letter to the Neret-Minet Tessier auction house, click here…

The Hopi Tribe Cultural Preservation Office website can be found here…

To read more on the background to this story, click here…

Another version of this article originally appeared on the website of Survival International.

Image: © Survival International