Originally posted by Fir3start3r
I didn't demand anything - where are you going with this?
The very fact that they have been able to vote for the past 14 years doesn't bother you just a little?
You expect good governance from a society that has no precedent. Did Europe leap into good transparent governance fifteen years after the fall of the Roman Empire?
And the only thing that bothers me about South Africans being allowed to vote only in the last fourteen years is that it didn't come decades earlier. The habits and mores of democracy don't come from thin air. AND, that said, South Africa's government is a fairly representative one. They deal with problems yes, but considering the state's infancy, that really isn't something for which you should provide rope to hang them with.
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*sigh*
Can't help you if you can't stay on topic, which, by the way, was Africa and foreign aid...(are 'we' doing enough...ring any bells?)
I still have no bloody idea what you mean by "our backyard is getting raped".
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I never said what the solutions were, I simply impled they exist and that if they're anywhere near serious about solving their problems, the onus is on them to provide the environment for it to happen.
That may sound a little too nebulous for you but not everything is the fault of former colonists either...
For you maybe...
Well without knowing what these mystery "solutions" are that the entire international development community has been ignoring for the past thirty years, it's hard to gauge whether or not African states have the capacity to implement them. But going by the latest estimates by the UN, Millennium Challenge Corporation, World Bank, etc., I'm guessing they don't.
Considering 41% of Africans live on under $1/day and only 25% have access to clean water in most countries, I'd say they're behind the 8-Ball so to speak with developing all on their own.
Lebezniatnikov
In any case, anyone interested in African development issues should take a gander at the latest UN update on the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) -- it is a pretty comprehensive status check as well as an overview of the challenges and prospects of meeting each of the individual goals set out by the Millennium Declaration.
I'm on my way out the door, but this op-ed is too great to not post, even if without comment:
quote:
March 6, 2008
Op-Ed Columnist
Good News: Karlo Will Live
By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF
NUBA MOUNTAINS, Sudan
The farm families living in these rocky hills in central Sudan confront every disease imaginable, from leprosy to malaria, and perhaps one-quarter of children die by the age of five.
Yet this is a “good news” column. Karlo will live.
The number of children who die worldwide each year before the age of five has dropped below 10 million for the first time in recorded history — compared with 20 million annually in 1960 — Unicef noted in a report last month, “Child Survival.” Now the goal is to cut the death toll to four million by 2015.
Think about that accomplishment: The lives of 10 million children saved each year, 100 million lives per decade.
To put it another way, the late James P. Grant, a little-known American aid worker who headed Unicef from 1980 to 1995 and launched the child survival revolution with vaccinations and diarrhea treatments, probably saved more lives than were destroyed by Hitler, Mao and Stalin combined.
One of the lives saved this year seems to be that of Karlo, an 8-month-old baby boy who lives in a thatch-roof hut here. His older brother, Kuti, had died a few days before I arrived: Kuti was taken to the hospital and tested positive for malaria, but the doctor believed that he probably died from meningitis.
Then Karlo fell sick, and his mother was frantic at the thought that he would die as well. The father, Bolus Abdullah, was more fatalistic.
“Many children die here,” Mr. Bolus explained to me as volunteers with an American aid group, Samaritan’s Purse, drove the family to the nearest hospital over a fantastically rutted road. “But if that’s the will of God, then there’s nothing we can do.”
Yet there are things we can do — and that brings us to the American presidential campaign.
African children like Karlo may actually have more at stake in the outcome of the presidential election than children in the United States. Just imagine if the next president were to wage a serious war on malaria. At a tiny fraction of the cost of the war in Iraq (or a war on Iran!) such a campaign would save millions of lives and be a huge boost to African economies whose productivity is sapped by diseases.
The hospital to which we took Karlo is run by an aid group, German Emergency Doctors, and is run by a husband-wife team of physicians, Karl Eiter and Gabi Kortmann. The hospital, whose “wards” are thatch-roof huts with no electricity, is perched on a rural mountainside to protect it from aerial bombings by the Sudanese government. (Sudan’s main involvement in health care in contested areas like this has been to strafe hospitals.)
Dr. Eiter ordered a blood test for Karlo, and it came back positive for malaria. He gave Karlo a medication that is almost always effective against malaria here, artemisinin combination therapy, costing just 50 cents for an entire course of treatment.
Saving children’s lives in rural Africa or Asia, where millions die of ailments as simple as diarrhea, pneumonia or measles, is achingly simple and inexpensive. The starting point is vaccinations and basic sanitation.
“We never have all the vaccines that are required,” Dr. Eiter said.
For years, the rationale for opposing foreign assistance has been that it doesn’t work. It’s true that humanitarian aid is devilishly difficult to get right, money is squandered and the impact of aid is often oversold.
But President Bush’s record underscores that other policies are difficult to get right as well: Iraq is a mess, and social security reform and immigration reform both failed. Mr. Bush’s greatest single accomplishment is that his AIDS program in Africa is saving millions of lives.
That makes it all the more stunning that Mr. Bush’s proposed budget for 2009 cuts U.S. funding for child and maternal health programs around the world by nearly 18 percent.
Fortunately, all the candidates are saying the right things about malaria, AIDS and support for education in Africa (although John McCain is fuzzier about commitments). You can compare the candidates’ positions on global humanitarian issues at www.onevote08.org.
Voters should remember this: A president may or may not be able to improve schools or protect manufacturing jobs in Ohio, but a president probably could help wipe out malaria. Compared with other challenges a president faces, saving a million children’s lives a year is the low-hanging fruit.
Karlo, bouncing in his mother’s lap, underscores the hope. With the medicine, he recovered quickly and was sent home from the hospital after a few days. The news here is simple and giddy ... he’s alive!
I saw this film in theaters back in October, and finally got around to buying the dvd last week. I just finished watching it again now, and it is still numbing.
The Devil Came On Horseback:
The most vulnerable populations in the world are being systematically destroyed in Sudan, Burma, the DRC, etc., while we sit around and debate the nature of sovereignty. Darfur will spill back into the South, and the civil war will ignite the entire region. By 2010 we could very well see a war involving up to ten national governments and dozens of rebel groups. And we can't even fill the UN peace-keeping mandate that was issued to preserve the semblance of peace that now exists on the ground. Where is the West on this? The US has called it genocide. And has been silent ever since. Where is the EU? Without support, UN mandates are meaningless. How is it that a mandate can be passed to intervene (that's supposed to be the hard part), and then we fail to actually fill it? This deserves it's own thread, but I just wanted to get that off my chest.
Lebezniatnikov
A bit off-topic maybe, but I figured this was as good a place as any to post this. I think this documentary is due out soon. Definitely looking forward to it - I don't know if anybody here listens to much hip-hop, but Emmanuel's stuff is really amazing, and the content is quite moving.
It's worth noting that the war in Southern Sudan is likely to break out again shortly - a census is mandated by the CPA as a precursor to voting on secession... there doesn't appear to be any way that the government is going to honor that agreement, especially with open insurrection in Darfur and increasing unrest in Kordofan and Kassala provinces.
This is an exceptionally good summary of what is going on in Sudan right now for those interested:
As conflict in Congo intensifies, the prospect for an international peacekeeping force looks dim.
Karen MacGregor
NEWSWEEK
While the world wrings its hands over the fate of an estimated quarter million people caught up in the roiling conflict in the Democratic Republic of Congo, it seems likely that little will actually be done about the long-running African civil war. The best bet for stopping the violence, the United Nations' 17,000-strong multilateral peacekeeping force, known as MONUC, is spread thin and considered ineffective; it will take months to increase its presence in the country. The European Union is reluctant to deploy a crack force, and southern African leaders have committed only to sending in a "technical team." The world's response, in the words of Henri Boshoff, a military expert for the Institute for Security Studies in Pretoria, is likely to be "too little too late."
Since last month, rebels under the command of Laurent Nkunda, a Tutsi and former Congolese General, have been at war with government forces. The rebels, ethnic Tutsis, were once a part of the national army, but they turned on the government in 2004, after accusing it of supporting a Hutu militia. Since then, Nkunda's followers have battled the Congolese army and its allies. Now they've overrun the villages and towns around Goma, a town in eastern Congo, and 250,000 people have been displaced and more than 100 civilians killed in the past month. Looting, rape and the recruitment of child soldiers, once vilified, have returned.
Despite widespread agreement in the international community that something must be done—a summit on Nov. 7 attended by U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon urged an immediate ceasefire and political settlement—precious little action has been taken. Military analysts believe the best hope for a cessation of violence would come from a European Union battle group—an elite, well-equipped force of roughly 1,500 soldiers. "That would be a short-term solution while MONUC's capacity is built and its mandate reconsidered," military analyst Boshoff says. But the chances of a European response are slight, largely because of opposition from Britain. Already embroiled in Afghanistan and Iraq, the U.K. is reluctant to get involved in what could be a protracted civil conflict.
But even if the EU sends a Battle Group, it will be only a temporary fix until the United Nations can bolster its ineffectual MONUC force. On Tuesday, the U.N. Under-Secretary General for peacekeeping, Alain Le Roy, told reporters that he had requested an additional 3,000 troops and police from the Security Council. "No decision has been taken yet by the council, but I think the mood is evolving into reinforcing the troops," he said. Even if Le Roy's request is granted, the United Nations, in its usual way, will take its time in dispatching the reinforcements. The Security Council won't vote on the issue until a new report on MONUC is released next week, and even then it could take weeks to pass a resolution. Le Roy said it will take at least two months for troop reinforcements to arrive. In the meantime, he is redeploying existing troops throughout eastern Congo, especially around the hotspot area near Goma.
The regional response, too, has been slow in coming and feckless. The 14-country Southern African Development Community (SADC) is sending a technical team to Congo to investigate, and based on its report it will decide whether or not to send troops. On Sunday, leaders have agreed to provide peacekeepers to eastern Congo if needed. The SADC is concerned about the possibility of conflict engulfing the region. "The security situation in DRC is affecting peace and stability in the SADC," said executive secretary-general Tomaz Salomão. But Boshoff believes that, even if they're willing to act, "SADC doesn't have the capacity to immediately deploy the kind of well-trained EU-style battle group that is needed."
With near-term military action looking extraordinarily unlikely, that leaves diplomacy. But the DRC's government has rejected calls to talk with rebel-leader Nkunda; Congo's ambassador to the United Nations, Atoki Ileka, has called him "a killer" worthy of war-crimes prosecution. Nkunda recently told the BBC that his Tutsi rebels were abiding by a ceasefire declared on Oct. 30, but threatened to topple the government if negotiations don't begin soon—although it's unlikely that his small force could do more than control the eastern reaches of the Congo.
The worry is that Congolese fighting will spill over into neighboring countries. Indeed, geopolitical machinations have already come into play. The DRC's government has accused Rwanda of supporting Nkunda (which it denies), and has called on Angola for help. Yesterday, Angolan Deputy Foreign Minister Georges Chicoty told a national radio program that his country would send troops to the Congo, overseen by the European Union and SADC. But given their close ties to the DRC government, Angolan troops could serve as a provocation to Nkunda, who has warned that while he will welcome impartial African peacekeepers, he will attack forces that align themselves with government troops. What is abundantly clear is that without effective action, the conflict in eastern Congo will continue to wreak havoc on this vast, underdeveloped, mineral-rich but poverty-stricken country. Boshoff fears more internal refugees and, if Goma falls to Nkunda's rebels, possibly countrywide riots and retaliation against Tutsis. At its worst, that could mean a Rwandan-style genocide.
URL: http://www.newsweek.com/id/168954
The Congo isn't another Rwanda - it has the potential to be far, far worse.
Lebezniatnikov
Since it won't get published at this point, here's an op-ed I tried to place a few weeks ago. Nobody bit on it, but I thought I'd share:
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*content removed in the event someone picks this piece up after all*
tathi
nicely written leb, are you a free lance journalist?
Magnetonium
I'll be brief and simple. Since African nations have gained independence in 1960s, billions in dollars in loans, and hundreds of millions (and possibly more) dollars in aid and more in food/supplies have been pumped into those countries, yet with very little result. Corruption, crime, wars are rampant. Education and infrastructure is weak or non-existent. At least several countries are heavily in debt to their European and American "landlords", who have long ago lobbied for loans to put those countries in ruin and debt. The same European and American and now Chinese partners support and deal with some of these terrible regimes who have little concern for the people or human rights and freedoms. African women, under pressure and with little education or other options, are popping out many babies - and one can only wonder why so many rich and famous people say cant "afford" more than even one child.
More aid - more dependent the nations are. As a matter of a fact, the nations who have received the bulk of the aid are the ones who have the huge problems.
Aid has not solved problems. It never will. Fixing leaking fossets with tape is a bad idea. You can save-a-child-a-day but tomorrow the same woman will give birth to 5 more. And so on.
Problems are endless, but with current options, and continuing trends, dont expect much to change. There are too many factors, and most will likely not be considered in the next little while. Its a shame, but the pretty talk isn't getting the continent anywhere.
Lebezniatnikov
quote:
Originally posted by tathi
nicely written leb, are you a free lance journalist?
Nah, not a journalist, just a guy trying to get published on an op-ed page.
