Folks,
Kenya has become a pathetic sad story. After power hungry leaders caused serious repercussion in 2007/8, it is clear, these leaders have not learned any lesson. They are at it again. Whatever their mission is, it did not start today, it is a project designed and re-shaped to take a much larger scale by 1995 and it is why Uhuru was Moi's project and which is why, Mungiki was formed by Moi. Kibaki is the tool used by Moi, why he stole the election and was the reason for 2007/8 mayhem. Behind the scene Moi is and has remained the masterminded to see the mission is accomplished. This mission involved Land Grabbing, terrorizing homes and families, turning humanity into slaughter commission every election time. Without care, they kill at will to manipulate elections in their favor and destroys all those who stand on their way or expects to vote against their interest. They formed criminal gangs in their Mafia type of network to protect their political interest in order that they stay in power at whatever cost. Justice delayed is justice denied……Kenyans cannot afford to reverse what they gained in the 2010 Referendum and the properly Legislated Constitutional policies will remain a way of life and a tool to re-shape good Democratic good governance with Just Rule of Law which people will rely to improve their lifestyle and livelihood in a fair mutual manner. Women and Children have suddenly become a victim and a target by these selfish and greedy brutal monster maniacs who care the less about human pain and sufferings…….These-good-for-nothing politicians created poverty and hunger and now they put ropes on the neck of these women and children for wrongs not of their own making. They led without any plan but were busy lining their pockets which is why there were no balance and things stopped working a long time ago. Kenya has enough wealth to feed its people and have plenty of balance to trade with……..but these leaders have no brain for that. All they know is how to kill and destroy humanity and survival. This behavior must be stopped. It is way past the climax and it cannot be tolerated. Where did the idea of cutting family size come from? It will reach a point that they will demand all husband and wives must be authorized by certification to have sex, if not you go to jail. They will device thermometors to find reason to throw people to jail......Who are these people???.......Are they translating Kenya to China......???.......Where is the freedom.......???........At this point, nature has been completely tampered with and destroyed by these wicked monsters. This amounts to serious and dangerous slavery conditions we have never witnessed before in lifetime. Mungiki, Al-Shabaab, Al-Qaeda, sabaot land defence force and MRC has become a terror squad Politicians use to destroy peaceful community and their survival as a way to get rid of people from their lands which they had in advance sold illegally and unscrupulously. Insecurity problem in Kenya is therefore not a small thing and it cannot be solved by merely keeping the Coalition Government to continue to remain in power. It is why, cleaning the country from gangsters without cleaning the country from bad leaders will not resolve the underlying causes of careless killings and human slaughter. These groups works with the Government Leadership in parallel and they support each other. A leader that promotes violence is not worth any sympathy. Non of the Coalition Government leaders are clean and vetting them all to clear them from wrong doing is the way to go. Yes, they are in working coalition secret network with the unscrupulous International Corporate Special Business Interest to steal public wealth resources from good people of the world……and Vision 2030 is the revelation. It is because vision 2030 has not been proper constituted and this is what each and everyone of them struggles to control…….it is why Kibaki has sent Mungiki into the rural of Nyanza and the local people of Nyanza are being terrorized daily. The purpose is to stifle development in that region until all are wiped out. In Tana River they have wiped out people mercilessly. Can we continue to allow them to go by this design? Where is Human Rights people………??? The Gangs groupings have created many funny names and recently, one such, the American Marines group raided a police station in a bid to free a member who had been detained"……Can you imagine, a group of thugs breaking into a police station ……where is the Law and Order……These are well organized paid youths who have been made jobless by political designed to be used as destroyer tools…….well-connected anti-Democratic establishment movement meant to kill Democracy for the Corporate Special Interest to do business without Law or Order or even pay their fair share of taxes or fees……. This behavior is unacceptable and must be stopped immediately. CJ Willy Mutunga must stay the course and do what needs to be done to put Kenya on the path of recovery. A fresh start in leadership of Kenya is the way to go. We all must support The Transitional Caretaker Committee and in a hurry take the whole Coalition Government Leadership to ICC Hague……..They are all dirty and filthy…….Kenya must be cleaned up and proper plan of action to move Kenya Progressively forward is the way to go people…… ----- Forwarded Message -----
From: freespecialreportz <freespecialreportz@yahoo.com>
To: kumekucha@yahoogroups.com
Sent: Saturday, October 6, 2012 7:24 AM
Subject: [kumekucha] Uhuru Kenyatta and Tana violence expose
See special note about the most explosive political book on Kenya in a very long time below this email. Hello, Why is it that all of a sudden Uhuru looks like a very attractive prospect for president? There is plenty that Kenyans don't know about the son of Jomo from the scandal at the American University he went to, to his campaign secrets which have thrust him to the top and could easily win him the presidency before people know what is really going on. And then there is the violence at Tana. Who is really behind it and what is the motive? Just to list what you will get; 1. Dark secrets of the Kenyan presidency
2. Political assassinations in Kenya
3. You will also receive 50 more issues of my raw notes for FREE so you will
end up with 2 years subscription- 100 issues after paying only for one year!!!umissedthis@gmail.comMy warmest regards, Chris Kumekucha. Militia behind Kenya's Tana River Killings, Say Villagers by Naharnet Newsdesk 14 September 2012, 05:20  Villagers targeted in a recent wave of tit-for-tat killings in southeast Kenya say trained militia, including men from outside the region, are behind the raids. And they suspect politicians may have brought them in. The killings have pitted the Pokomo, a farming community, against their Orma pastoralist neighbors in the Tana River region. Clashes between the two tribes are normally attributed to disputes over water and grazing rights. But local people say the latest violence -- in which more than 100 people have been killed in less than a month -- is largely fueled by politics. "We were born into the conflict between Pokomos and Ormas," Kadze Kazungu, a Pokomo, told AFP in front of the blackened walls of what was once his house in Chamwanamuma village. "We have fought over land and water before. "But whenever that occurs, elders from both tribes always find a way of resolving the issue," Kazungu added. "This time it is not about land. It is politics. Bad politics." On Wednesday an MP from the region was charged with inciting violence. Dhadho Godhana, the MP for Galole in the Tana River delta, denied the charges and was released on bail pending another hearing set for October 2. But he has been dropped from his cabinet position as assistant livestock minister. Kazungu's house was torched on Tuesday when Ormas launched attacks on several villages, killing four people and burning hundreds of homes. The attacks were in retaliation for what was described as an attack on the Orma by the Pokomo they day before. But the villagers targeted say the assailants were not all Pokomo -- and were not all local people. "Amongst the attackers were Pokomo boys I've known since they were small...," said Hadija Guyo, an Orma woman in one of the villages targeted told AFP. "But the majority of the attackers were people we had never seen," she added. "Most of them did not even look like Pokomos." The attackers were not villagers angered by a group of pastoralists, she said: "They attacked us with so much precision and in so little time. These were trained people." The raiders came from all directions to surround the village, she recalled. "The few who had guns were at the front, those with machetes behind them and then those with petrol and matches at the back," she said. Another witness, who asked to remain anonymous, described how the assailants used whistles to coordinate the attack. "They would whistle and a group would change direction and attack houses in a different area of the village," he said. "They would whistle again and those with the guns would move back a bit as the ones with machetes moved to the front." A policeman, who was at the scene and who also spoke on condition of anonymity, told AFP the raiders had stretchers made of branches and blankets with them. "Their aim was to leave no man behind," he said. For him, that meant that the assailants did not want any of their men who might be injured or killed to be identified. Guyo accused the Mombasa Republican Council, a Mombasa-based secessionist group that was until very recently outlawed, of being behind Monday's attack, in which 38 people were killed. It is believed that while the Pokomos are sympathetic to the secessionist cause of the MRC, the Ormas and other pastoralist tribes are against the group. But Kazungu was cautious about such accusations. "I cannot comment on the involvement of the MRC," he told AFP. "All I can say is that sympathizers are amongst us." The MRC has denied any involvement. "Those are rumors, we are not militants," MRC secretary general Randu Nzai told AFP. "We do not have a militia and we do not kill. We are a peaceful group and do all our lobbying through the court," he added. Statement on Tana River Killings Today, my heartfelt condolences go out to the families and friends of those who died in the attacks and counter attacks that happened within Tana River County. The killings are completely inexcusable. These attacks led to lives being lost, homes being lost and livelihoods compromised. This unfortunate and heinous incident is a humbling and so be ring reminder of how desperately we need to stand together as one people belonging to one nation. The temporary gains we seek to claim by turning on one another eventually lead to our collective downfall as a people. Even as Kenyans seek to resolve historical disputes and wounds, I would ask that we focus on what unites us rather than what divides us. We are united by the desire to give our children a better future and better opportunities than we had. We are united in our desire to see an economically prosperous nation where the chance to succeed is the prerogative of all. In Tana River County up to 11 children died in a conflict that they inherited. Generally, residents in that area were propelled backward-not forward-by violence as they lost homes, providers, livelihoods and a sense of hope. We know that violence begets much more division unless there is reconciliation. It is impossible for differing communities to move forward if they allow themselves to remain in a cycle of retaliation and reciprocity. My plea today is therefore extended to all Kenyans everywhere. For the sake of our future, for the sake of our children, and for our own sake let us strive to uphold peace within our nation. Let us take personal responsibility for being part of the solution and for being part of creating a more unified Kenya. I will be touring Tana River County in the upcoming days to hold talks with local leaders from the different communities. I commend the efforts that are already underway on the ground to create opportunity for inter-community exchanges and dialogue. As I prepare to travel to that area, it is my firm belief that the recent suffering experienced by those communities is only redeemable if it spurs us all to promote unity and peaceful co-existence wherever we are. We must remember that our greatest accomplishments will come when we imagine; hope; act and build- together. Uhuru Kenyatta Deputy Prime Minister Drastic plans to cut down family size Women carrying their babies queue for consultation during a past family planning campaign. Owing to fears of a population boom, the government plans to reduce the average number of children a Kenyan woman should have. Photo/FILE NATION MEDIA GROUP By SAMUEL SIRINGI ssiringi@ke.nationmedia.com
Posted Friday, October 5 2012 at 23:30 - Ministry proposes to reduce the number of children per household by half as worries over population boom lead to a new plan of action
The government wants to halve the average number of children that Kenyan women can give birth to. The new policy is meant to put a stop to the fast ballooning Kenyan population within the next decade. If all goes according to plan, Kenyan women will, on average, give birth to 2.6 children over their reproductive age of between 15 to 49 years. Currently, the women give birth to an average of 4.6 children. This is one of the proposals contained in the new Sessional Paper No. 3 of 2012 on Population for National Development passed in Parliament this week. The move is part of plans to control the growth of Kenya's population, which is expected to nearly double by 2030. According to the document, the population is expected to reach 77 million by 2030 when Kenya's economic blue-print, Vision 2030, expires. The country's population stood at 38.6 million in 2009 when the last National Housing and Population Census was carried out. It is estimated that the country's population grows by 2.9 per cent — or one million people — annually, a figure the ambitious policy seeks to reduce by nearly half. The policy also sets other targets meant to enable newborns escape the dangers of disease and malnutrition that contribute to early childhood mortality. The policy envisages that the number of children dying before celebrating their first birthday — currently 52 out of every 1,000 live births — will reduce by half. Mothers will also be helped to give birth safely, helping to cut their deaths during delivery by nearly half. Eventually, a healthy growth of the young ones is expected to help raise life expectancy, or the number of years children can live, from the current 57 years to 64 years by the end of the policy period. Kenyans will also be persuaded to delay the age at which they get married and reduce the number of children they give birth to by at least one. That would mean that the average age for one to marry would be raised from the current 20 to 23. Such campaigns would also seek to create awareness that can make men to prefer having a mean ideal number of three children as opposed to the current four. Women's mean ideal number of children will also go down by a child from the current preference of four. Under the campaign, teenage pregnancies will be reduced. Also targeted for reduction is the number of people who die annually. Currently, 13 people die for every 1,000, a figure that would be reduced to seven. MPs were unanimous that the policy was a good document that would help the country navigate the problems of population pressure. Moving the motion on Tuesday on behalf of Planning, National Development and Vision 2030 Minister Wycliffe Oparanya, Mr Simon Lesirma, the Provincial Administration and Internal Security assistant minister, said the document had been written following wide consultations. "It is a good policy," Mr Lesirma said before he opened the floor to contributions from his colleagues. "The policy recognises that improvements in socio-economic conditions, especially improved levels of education and income, have a significant effect in reducing fertility and mortality." The assistant minister said the policy advocates the use of various family planning methods as a short-term measure for fertility reduction without compromising the rights of individuals and couples. Seconding the motion, Medical Services Minister Anyang' Nyong'o said the policy was important for planning. "Without a good knowledge of the demography of the country, its structure, geographical spread, the manner in which it uses space and its health status, we cannot plan effectively," Prof Nyong'o, a former Planning Minister, said. "We need to get all the variables derived from the study and analysis of our population," the minister said. Prof Nyong'o said the devolved system of government would rely on statistics on population to help determine how resources would be moved to the grassroots level. It would also help the national government to determine how to distribute the Equalisation Fund, which will try to address forms of inequalities that will still arise when devolved resources are distributed to the counties. The minister said the government needed to deal with the prevalence of disease among the poor. "I think this Sessional Paper will provide us with data on the poor in urban areas, where public policy that can affect the development of slums will be very important in including these poor into the central matrix of national development," he said. Nominated MP Millie Odhiambo-Mabona said lack of proper planning of families had led to fast growth of population that had caused a proliferation of slums in towns and cities. She said there were many households in Kenya, which were led by children and elderly persons, who were also taking care of children that are orphaned, mainly as a consequence of HIV and Aids. Ms Odhiambo-Mabona praised the policy, arguing that it focused on improved maternal health, combating HIV/Aids-related diseases and ensuring environmental sustainability. The nominated MP called for efforts to ensure "reduced fertility and mortality rates" and make it possible for substantial resources to be freed for national development. Finance Minister Njeru Githae criticised MPs who call upon their constituents to give birth to many children for the sake of obtaining political support. From the policy, he said, "we have again seen that low-income people tend to have larger families and you have to ask yourself, why?" People with high income tended to have smaller families, he said, adding: "People in the high-income groups live in large maisonettes with many bedrooms, which most of the time are locked because there are no children to sleep there." Mr Githae said population can be an asset but it must be well educated. "It must be a population which has jobs and other means of livelihood," he said. The policy was developed by the Ministry of Planning and National Development to replace an earlier one that expired two years ago.
Kenya: China to Build Lake Basin Headquarters in Kisumu The Star By Angwenyi Gichana, 5 October 2012 THE Chinese government has agreed to finance the construction of the Lake Victoria Basin Commission headquarters in Kisumu. LVBC executive secretary Canisius Kanangire said the constructions will cost Sh1.7 billion (20 million US dollars). He was speaking in Kisumu, where he rolled out the 2011-2016 strategic plan. The project has been delayed for five years since the government donated the land, because of lack of funds. "The project has taken long to take off, but I am confident the project will begin, following the Chinese funding,' said Kanangire. "We expect the work to start immediately once all the formalities are completed." The new headquarters will be built on a 2.8 hectare piece of land along the lake shores. Currently the LBVC is housed at Re-Insurance Plaza building. He said: "The design is complete and will only require few adjustments. "We are moving from only preparing policies and strategies to having projects and investments that are tangible in areas like infrastructure," he added. Lake Victoria Basin Commission is a specialized institution of the East African Community (EAC) that is responsible for coordinating the sustainable development agenda of the Lake Victoria Basin. Kenya: International Judges Hail Kenya's Vetting Process The Star By Wesonga Ochieng, 5 October 2012 INTERNATIONAL judges have hailed the Kenyan judiciary for what they termed as significant reforms in the adjudication of justice. The judges, attending the International Association of Refugee Law Judges-African Chapter conference in Mombasa, said the ongoing vetting will see the judiciary rated highly in because only competent memebres of the bench will allowed to work. IARLJ African president Ahmed Arbee said the recent ratings by pollsters is an indication that in the next 50 years, Kenya will be ahead in terms of judicial reforms. "At some point I came across the ratings indicating that reforms in the Kenya judiciary were in good momentum. Today, the ratings are even much higher. As we celebrate 50 years of Kenyan independence, we must ensure that the next 50 years bring an independent judiciary," said Arbee. He said Kenyans will only benefit from the gains if the judiciary becomes independent. The recent results by info track Harris released on Wednesday revealed that 84 per cent of Kenyans have confidence in the judiciary. According to the polls, only 13 per cent do not trust it with 77 per cent saying they are willing to take their disputes to the courts. Kenya: CIC Faults the Law On Integrity By Sam Kiplagat, 5 October 2012 THE Commission for the Implementation of the Constitution has moved to court seeking to declare the Leadership and Integrity Act unconstitutional. In a petition heard yesterday, the CIC argues that the Act, which was passed by Parliament recently, does not meet the constitutional thresholds and standards embodied in Article 80 of the Constitution. Through lawyer Njoroge Regeru, CIC told Justice Majanja that Parliament also failed to enact the legislation within the deadline set out in the fifth schedule. Leadership and Integrity Act was enacted to operatinalise Chapter six of the Constitution. However, CIC says that Act as it is, does not establish procedures and mechanisms to enable the Ethics and Anti-Corruption Commission to enforce compliance with Chapter 6 of the constitution as envisaged under Article 79. "Clearly, the Act does not amount to the legislation which the 1st respondent (Parliament) is commanded to enact under Article 80 of the Constitution, particularly sub-article (a) thereof. The said acts falls short of the requirements specifically set out in the Constitution," argued Regeru. According to CIC, Parliament ignored the constitution, the public and the commission in passing the law. The commission says that thecourt has to uphold the letter and spirit of the constitution by making orders and directions aimed at ensuring that the legislation contemplated by Article 80 of the constitution is passed. Further, it says the legislation will ensure that the next generation of leaders, including those to be elected in the forthcoming polls, meet the strict ethical and moral requirements stipulated in Chapter. On the late enactment of the law, CIC said Parliament passed the Leadership and Integrity Act barely six months to the next general election, locking out Kenyans from enforcing the law in good time and long before the elections. The commission chairman Charles Nyachae says in a sworn statement that the legislation of the Act should have been made within two years after the promulgation of the constitution. He says Article 261(5) of the constitution grants the court the jurisdiction and power to make an order directing Parliament to enact legislations aimed at implementing the constitution. Kenya May Recover Billions Lost Through Anglo-Leasing The Star By Walter Menya, 5 October 2012 The country is on the verge of recovering billions of shillings lost through the Anglo-Leasing deals. Safina party leader Paul Muite and the chairman Mwalimu Mati alerted the Controller of Budget Agnes Odhiambo to follow the recovery efforts in Switzerland closely and brief the country. "The Anglo-Leasing fraud is now in the advanced stages of investigation, prosecution and recovery. In Switzerland for example, Kenya's lawyer is on the verge of recovering substantial funds from the fraudsters," the memo stated. The Controller of Budget was asked to stop further payment of dubious external debts, including the Anglo-Leasing deals and the Ken Ren Fertilizer Company. "We submit that a large amount of the debts that Kenya is listed as owing are bogus, corrupt debts including for example the Sh4.2 billion Ken Ren Fertilizer Company debt which your office red-flagged in its recent annual report. We hope you will also note that in the 18 debt contracts known as the Anglo Leasing scandal, Sh56 billion of irrevocable promissory notes were issued as repayment of alleged loans that were never advanced. In effect, Kenya was illegally bound to repay a sovereign debt for money never lent to it," reads the memorandum. Safina called on the government to stop further external borrowing without Parliament's approval. Gallant aide who died to save minister  Photo/GEORGE KIKAMI Above: Fisheries Minister Amason Kingi's bodyguard Harrison Maitha (left), who was killed in the attack at a meeting in Kilifi County. Below: Mr Maitha (centre) looks on as Roka Ward Councillor Hassan Mohamed blesses Mr Kingi. By ANTHONY KITIMO akitimo@ke.nationmedia.com
Posted Friday, October 5 2012 at 23:30 He literally laid down his life for the person he was employed to protect. Had not Harrison Maitha, an Administration Police constable guarding Fisheries Minister Amason Kingi, not stepped up in time, the Coast politician may not have survived a vicious attack by a machete-wielding gang. As it were, the machete blows intended for the minister landed on Mr Maitha, inflicting injuries from which he would die, as the minister escaped unhurt. Mr Maitha was cut several times on the head and the limbs as he and others formed a ring around the besieged minister at a meeting with youths at Mtomondoni, Mtwapa, on Thursday afternoon, according to a witness. Mr Maitha died at Jocham Hospital, Mombasa, while being treated. Kilifi Senate seat aspirant Stewart Madzayo, a former judge of the Industrial Court who sat next to the minister, bled profusely from a cut on the back of the head. "When he saw the attackers heading for the minister, the bodyguard rushed over to block them. But the attackers already had their pangas out and they cut him on the head," a person who attended the ill-fated youth meeting told the Saturday Nation at the scene on Thursday. "He then reached for his gun from the belt, but one of the gang members struck him on the hand, severing his thumb and he dropped the pistol." Well-wishers spirited the minister to safety. Still shell-shocked by the brazen attack, Mr Kingi was on Friday mourning his aide, whom he described as a hero, brother, childhood chum, dedicated and polite police officer who had been by his side for more than two years. Classmate in primary school "I have known Mr Maitha for many years," Mr Kingi said. "It is not the job that brought us together; he was my classmate at Kamale Primary School in Magarini many years ago. "He was like a brother to me. We played childhood games in primary school and, even though we went our separate ways at secondary school, we kept in touch. I recently asked him to be my bodyguard." The minister spoke after meeting the bereaved family, who were in mourning. He said the police have asked for the post-mortem examination to be carried out on Monday. Mr Maitha is survived by a wife and three children aged 17, 14 and nine. In the absence of his dedicated aide, Mr Kingi expressed fear for his life as he appeared to have been the target of the attack. "The group was targeting me. I do not know what will happen to me next. I am living in fear, that is why I am calling for deployment of more police officers in Coast Province to help fight the emerging groups." Coast Provincial Police Officer Aggrey Adoli said Mr Maitha was assigned to guard the Minister by police headquarters in Nairobi. Kenya tribal killings stain Tana RiverBy Roopa Gogineni | Aljazeera – Fri, Sep 21, 2012 Kilelengwani, Kenya - Men with machetes hacked their way inside the mosque's prayer room where the women and children were hiding as the morning light streamed through a jagged hole in the front door. Village elder Omar Shure, 57, barricaded himself and dozens of others in the adjacent room of the Masjid al-Noor in eastern Kenya, desperately pushing against it as the attackers tried kicking it down. Outside he heard shouting. "Just kill them," someone commanded. And then another voice said: "Are you still alive? You're lucky." By the time the tribal militia was finished, 38 bodies were strewn about the village. Shure managed to keep the assailants at bay. But the others in the prayer room were not so fortunate. Five women and two children lay dead on the floor. A young girl, slashed across the face, was the sole survivor. "They were screaming, so loudly," Shure recalled. "Even now I hear them in my head." The militia left after 20 minutes. Shure opened the mosque's door and walked out into his destroyed village. He found his wife's body 50 metres from the entrance. The September 10 massacre at Kilelengwani - carried out by ethnic Pokomo against the Orma tribe - followed a string of tit-for-tat attacks between the agriculturalist and pastoralist communities. More than 110 people have been killed since late August in Kenya's Tana River region, about 420km from the capital Nairobi. Some 6,000 people have been displaced, according to Human Rights Watch. Tensions regularly flare between the two groups during the dry season, when Orma bring their cattle to graze on Pokomo land. But the conflicting livelihoods of two communities no longer sufficiently explains the level of violence. The attackers are better organised and display unprecedented levels of brutality, indiscriminately killing women and children. A growing cast of politicians and local and foreign investors have become increasingly involved in the resource-rich Tana River region, raising questions as to who exactly is behind the violence - and to what end. From rivalry to enmity It was not the first time Kilelengwani has been attacked. A month before, 30 Pokomo stormed the village but were outnumbered by Orma residents armed with spears. The Orma killed two raiders and chased the rest away. Shure recognised one of the two bodies as a former teacher from the Kilelengwani primary school. "He came to attack his students and their parents." Other survivors echoed Shure, identifying neighbours among the assailants. "They are trying to push rivalry to enmity. People are really pushing it," said Tony Soka, a 26 year-old Pokomo shop-owner from the nearby town of Garsen. "You can live with your rivals, but you cannot live with your enemies." In the past, skirmishes over pasture and water have been settled by Pokomo and Orma tribal elders. They met, slaughtered an animal, and prayed together. But the scale and nature of recent violence confounds traditional peace mechanisms. "This is not normal. I have never seen a situation where people deliberately kill women and children," said Hussein Dado, a politician running for governor of Tana River County. The systematic nature of the killing in Kilelengwani and Riketa, where 54 have died, suggests a well-trained militia is at work. Survivors of both massacres describe uniformed men, wearing black trousers and red T-shirts with red scarves wrapped around their heads or wrists. The attackers moved in groups, each with a commander and a distinct task: to kill, to burn, and to carry out their own casualties. Kenya's final frontier Most here said they face a large Pokomo militia backed by politicians with the intent to permanently remove the Orma people from Kenya's most fertile region. "They are after this delta," said Omar Bacha, an Orma health worker posted at a camp for displaced people in the town of Dide Waride. "That's why our tribe is being killed, and their cows are being destroyed." Hundreds of Orma survivors from the massacres at Riketa and Kilelengwani, including Shure, sought refuge in the camp supported by the Kenya Red Cross. Historically, Kenya's government has been largely absent. But recently, this neglected delta has garnered interest by those in Nairobi and beyond. The Tana and Athi River Development Authority, a government subsidiary, has dished out land to a number of large-scale commercial farms, a sugar plantation, and a Canadian biofuel project. These schemes threaten the unique wetland habitat, as well as require the eviction of thousands of indigenous residents - both Pokomo and Orma. Despite their protests and those of environmental organisations, the conditions for land-grabbing are ripe. Kenya's poorest and least educated citizens live here on its richest land. Commercial interests will soon be subject to new political authorities. As outlined in Kenya's new constitution, the process of devolution will transfer significant power to newly created counties and their governors, to be elected in Kenya's election next March. Several Orma and Pokomo politicians are vying for the governorship of Tana River county. "Now we can do a lot of development in these counties, when everything is decided here locally," said candidate Hussein Dado. "This region can feed the nation." Obtuse government response
Late last week, more than 1,000 new Kenyan military police, known as General Service Units (GSU), left the academy in Nairobi for Tana River district on buses gifted by the Chinese government. Residents of Tana River warily awaited their arrival. "GSU historically enjoys a dreadful reputation with most Kenyans," explained Abdullahi Halakhe, the Kenya analyst with the International Crisis Group. "As a paramilitary unit, they are only deployed in situations where the police have failed to maintain law and order. And in most cases where they have been deployed, they have employed the ultimate indiscriminate force." Just days after the GSU arrived, the Kenya Red Cross reported the burning of 20 homes in two Pokomo villages, Buranazi and Ozi. Residents accused the military police of razing the houses after searching for weapons, and arresting 19 men suspected of perpetrating violence. Other security measures imposed include a dawn-to-dusk curfew issued by President Mwai Kibaki following the massacre at Kilelengwani, broken by Orma attackers only hours later as they struck the Pokomo village of Semikaro. Member of Parliament Dhadho Godhana, serving as assistant minister of livestock, was arrested last week on charges of inciting violence. A subsequent Human Rights Watch report implicated three other politicians and found local police failed to react to repeated reports that violence was imminent. "Several politicians or political hopefuls have been linked to the violence in Tana River," HRW's Leslie Lefkow said . "Ending the political violence in Tana River requires bringing to book those behind the clashes on both sides." The government's responses illustrate its inexperience in this far corner of the Kenyan state. And the recent deployment of the military police units has inspired little confidence among the local population. "It's better we run instead of waiting to be killed," said Suleiman Ludu, a Pokomo staying in a camp in Witu, just a few kilometres from the Orma camp in Didi Waride. Returning home, if it still stands, is not yet an option, he said.
Kisumu falls to 'China' and 'America' gangs
 Kisumu residents demonstrate/FILE NAIROBI, Kenya, Sep 29 – The re-emergence of two criminal gangs in the lakeside city of Kisumu after the dreaded Bhagdad Boys in the early 1990′s during the clamour for multi-party rule brings focus to laxity on the security apparatus in the region. The defunct Bhagdad Boys, a criminal group that left a trail of disasters in Kisumu city and its environs as the country agitated for multi-party democracy has now ushered in two new entrants "China Squad" and "American Marine" with similar ideologies. For the last two weeks police officers in Kisumu have been battling to dismantle the two groups that had been in existence for quite some time. Nyanza provincial police Chief Joseph Oletito has warned that police will not take sides but will ensure the gangs are dismantled. Crashed, despite accusations from American Marines that police is fueling more violence in the city by leaning towards their opponent. "These are terror groups and we don't want to engage them more on peaceful coexistence,' he said, as the situation escalated a week ago with calls to unconditionally release suspects arrested by police and are aligned to American Marine. Security agents led by Nyanza PC Francis Mutie last week met the two groups to iron out the impasse that has been traced to supremacy battle at the Kisumu Bus Terminus, while others linked it to political war. Mutie then called upon the youths to report any police officer abetting crime in the city and allayed fears that administration police and their regular counterparts are at logger heads. The PC was shocked to learn how police officers collude with criminal gangs to terrorize the city residents instead of offering protection and curtailing the formation of terror groups. "What I heard from these youths is shocking and action must be taken against police officers abetting crime. We will transfer all the officers who were mentioned to restore security,' he said. Mutie however said no terror group will be left to thrive and compromise the peace that Kisumu residents have been enjoying and directed the provincial police boss to ensure such groups do not exist. Many Kisumu residents feels that the bad blood between the two organised criminal groups stems from the fact that a presidential candidate used youths from the China Squad to organise a political rally. "This war is about money that was given to China Squad members to organise the rally. American Marine members were left out since they are ardent supporters of another presidential candidate," said Collins Omondi, a city dweller. There is a strong feeling among the Kisumu residents that millions of shillings have been poured in the region for the purpose of undercutting the political clout and influence of a popular presidential candidate. Another school of thought points to a supremacy battle for the control of the Kisumu Bus Terminus where most youths from the two groups own stalls that are rented out. American Marine members for quite some time had been at the helm of the bus terminus controlling stalls being put up until four months ago when China Squad sprouted sparking bloody confrontations.
Police probe three leaders over election chaos claims  Deputy Police Spokesperson Charles Owino (right) during a news briefing by the media monitoring committee at Teleposta Towers, Nairobi August 29, 2012. He is with Director of Public Communications Mary Ombara. Ms Mary Ombara said police investigations were at an advanced stage and action would be taken against the leaders. Photo|FILE|NATION MEDIA GROUP By ZADOCK ANGIRA zangira@ke.nationmedia.com
Posted Wednesday, October 3 2012 at 23:32 - Two groups named ''American Marines'' and ''China Squad'' are active in Kisumu county.
- The groups are made up of jobless youths who are being given handouts by the politicians.
- One of the politicians, who is also a presidential aspirant, is said to have used China Squad to organise a rally in the county.
Police are investigating three senior politicians over allegations of plotting election-related violence in Nyanza, Coast and Western regions. The politicians, including a presidential aspirant, allegedly plan to use militia groups to attack supporters of their rivals to prevent them from voting. Two groups named ''American Marines'' and ''China Squad'' are active in Kisumu county, the National Steering Committee on Media Monitoring said on Wednesday. The groups are made up of jobless youths who are being given handouts by the politicians. Ms Mary Ombara, the committee's spokesperson said police investigations were at an advanced stage and action would be taken against the leaders. Last week, the American Marines group raided a police station in a bid to free a member who had been detained. The two groups initially fought for the control of the Kisumu bus terminus but were increasingly being used by politicians. American Marines was in charge of the terminus before the emergence of China Squad. One of the politicians, who is also a presidential aspirant, is said to have used China Squad to organise a rally in the county. Though police have vowed to wipe out the groups, they are still causing terror in Kisumu. Nyanza police boss Joseph ole Tito on Wednesday said the situation was almost back to normal after five members from both groups were arrested and arraigned in court. Ms Ombara also warned parties against political adverts likely to degrade and humiliate opponents. She said similar adverts in the media were partly responsible for the 2008 post-election violence. "We trust that this time round, all political advertising outlets will be sensitive to the silent but charged emotions in the country," she said. The committee said all politicians who incite people should be prosecuted, and supported DPP Keriako Tobiko for his action on Embakasi MP Ferdinand Waititu. Mr Waititu has been suspended from his assistant minister's position and charged after he incited violence against Maasai watchmen in Kayole, Nairobi last week. He is out of custody on a cash bail of Sh1 million. (READ: MP Waititu freed on Sh1m cash bail) Ms Ombara said the Waititu case was partly responsible for a sharp decrease in hate speech incidents in the past one week. "The committee also noted a sharp decrease in the reportage of hate speech and incitement in the mainstream media and use of social media to spread such messages," she said. Similarly, there is marked awareness by Kenyans of the consequences of hate speech following the decisive action on politicians. Cabinet minister Chirau Ali Mwakwere escaped prosecution after he publicly apologised for remarks he made during by-election campaigns in his Matuga constituency. The committee warned that the country was also grappling with the menace of organised crime. The Mungiki group is re-emerging as well as other groups at the Coast. Last week, 15 people were killed during a confrontation between villagers and youths alleged to have been taking oaths in Kaloleni, Kilifi county. Police have said they are prepared to deal with the emerging groups. Bensouda: ICC timelines won't change Updated 2 hrs 6 mins ago By FELIX OLICK in Nuremburg, Germany Even if cleared by local courts to run for the top job, Uhuru Kenyatta and William Ruto have no hope of buying time to take part in a run-off should the presidential contest go to a second vote as expected. A day after it emerged the date for the run-off coincides with the start of one of the cases, prosecutors at the International Criminal Court (ICC) say they will oppose any calls for a postponement. This means the Deputy Prime Minister and Eldoret North MP will not be in the country for a run-off, if one were called, creating a challenge to their presidential bids.
ICC Chief Prosecutor Fatou Bensouda expects no changes to the timetable set during the status conferences on the two Kenya cases early this year. "We will stick to the judicial calendar of the Court, irrespective of the ongoing political happenings in Kenya," she told journalists in Germany on Thursday.
Although she did not state how long the first phase of the trials is likely to take, the two accused may be required to be present at The Hague, Netherlands for weeks or even months. Ms Bensouda was speaking on the sidelines of a conference to mark the ICC's tenth anniversary. ICC President Sang-Hyun Song and Hans Peter Kaul, one of the pre-trial judges in the Kenya cases, attended the conference. On Wednesday, electoral officials released a revised calendar that sets April 11 as the date for a run-off vote in the presidential election. Pre-trial judges at the ICC set the start dates for the Kenya cases as April 10 and 11.? Ruto and radio presenter Joshua arap Sang are the accused in the first case, while Uhuru goes on trial alongside former Head of Civil Service Francis Muthaura a day later. Given the requirement for ICC accused to appear at trial in person, this is likely to complicate the plans of two presidential hopefuls. Uhuru is now working to avoid a run-off for which he would have little time to campaign and in which he would be unable to vote. Polling firm Synovate this week said The National Alliance hopeful seems headed for a second-round victory after trailing ODM leader Raila Odinga in the first. Neither candidate comes close to meeting the 50-per-cent-plus-one-vote threshold required by law to win in the first round. International legal experts at the conference argued that no immunity enjoyed by any Head of State would bar the court from exercising its jurisdiction as stated in Article 27 of the Rome Statute. Uhuru and Ruto are yet to overcome another judicial hurdle in the Kenyan courts.?The High Court has been asked to rule on whether they are eligible to run for State House with the ICC cases hanging over their necks. Speaking during the conference, Bensouda also rebutted claims that the ICC is targeting only African states even as she emphasised the need for co-operation of State parties with the ICC. Her sentiments were echoed by the ICC President who noted that lack of cooperation from state parties is one of the major challenges facing the court. Song said that co-operation is crucial in the provision of certain evidence, identification and seizure of the suspects assets and enforcement of warrants of arrest since the court have no police force. Clashes in Tana River disrupts family life Updated 2 hrs 9 mins ago BY JECKONIA OTIENO He speaks fluently in Pokomo, stops and swaggers to let the crowd at Tarasaa Primary School digest what he is saying. Mathira West DC, Audi Galgalo, is among the administrators charged with initiating dialogue between the warring communities in the Tana Delta. Mr Galgalo was born in the troubled delta, and despite being Orma, he fluently speaks fluent Pokomo. From the Tarasaa meeting, the administrators are headed for Dida Waride, another camp for internally displaced persons. This is a welcome move for the locals. Not less than 100km away in Malindi is another group of Kenyans from Tana Delta, displaced by fighting and not ready to go back home until there is an assurance that peace will be perpetual and long-lasting – but before then they are categorical that the police have to leave the delta. Afraid of counter-attacks The residents from Chamwanamuma, Shirikisho, Nduru, Semikaro, Ozi, and even Garsen are afraid that attacks and counter-attacks may still occur. These IDPs from the Pokomo community say that they were ready to go back home, but when Ali Swayo, a doctor working in a Government hospital in Witu, was allegedly assaulted by security officers, the residents hardened their resolve to wait until they are sure there is peace. The doctor is living with his sister-in-law, Asha Omar in Malindi as he recuperates after he sustained two broken arms from the alleged attack a few days before. There are also other families living with them despite the fact that Omar has no stable job to support all of them. "One family has six children, the others have two each and I also have six of my own; add this to my sick brother-in-law and you can imagine the burden yet I cannot throw them out because we are family." As they meet at the Emmanuel Baptist Church in Muyeye area of Malindi to receive foodstuff donated by the Coalition on Violence Against Women and Urgent Action Fund International, the IDPs say that in as much as they wish for peace, they dare not just go back home. One of the areas that have been greatly mentioned is Ozi, which they claim has seen many atrocities by the security forces that have gone unreported due to a media blackout. Police brutality Mabuki Haribaye, an elderly man from Semikaro, says: "Police brutality is now the major problem because people are more afraid of the force than the neighbouring community." Like others he has been forced to put up in a relative's house although he says it is embarrassing for an elderly person like him. Since there is nowhere to go, he has to stay on until all is well. The disabled have also borne a significant brunt of the skirmishes. When The Standard On Saturday featured Jacinta Weyamo's story early this year, she was the perfect picture of determination, living by the motto 'disability is not disability.' She had to leave her wheelchair in Garsen and this forces her to move around on her back. Weyamo has since the clashes fed her family by weaving mats and making ropes for sale but she had to leave Garsen, on advice from a man from the Orma community. Weyamo narrates: "I was told that with this war, I had to leave early before it was too late because I would be an easy target." She therefore boarded an empty bus that was escaping from Garsen; she was ferried free of charge to Malindi where she stays with her children who followed later. The dingy single room that she shares with her two sons, daughter and grandson has no chair, no bed and sadly no food. Thankfully, she does not worry about any impending attacks. The locals' are at a crossroads – they argue that even if they were to go home, a lot of odds will still be against them. Lack of national identity cards that they say were burnt in the village is part of their travail as they worry how they will register as voters. Schools like Buyani Primary were destroyed and parents wonder where their children will study even if peace is restored today. No action from Government Others, in a rush to escape, left their families behind yet they have no idea of their whereabouts. Asha Saidi from Ozi stays in Malindi with relatives but she does not know where her 10 children are. Saidi had gone to Malindi on business when security officers cordoned off Ozi hence she could not return. Her prayer is that they are fine and hopes to meet them all in one piece. Despite their dire situation, the displaced feel that the Government has turned a blind eye to heir tribulations. They say the Government sent officers to register them but ever since nothing has been done, making them believe that they are truly forgotten. Mr Hirbaye Dhoyo, a young man in his 20s observes that despite the Government knowing of their existence, it has continued to ignore them. "We hope this is not going to turn out like the circus that has been various other IDPs cases," he states. "The Tana River Killings Have Been Planned and Sustained; Carefully Planned and Ruthlessly Executed; They Can Meet the Threshold of the ICC!" – Mr. Kigeugeu.
· Here and there: Serious food for thought: - · 1) We have been warning that the Tana River Delta madness could have a bigger hidden political hand; a bigger hidden political agenda; our viewpoint has been that those who thrive under an environment of confusion, division, chaos, lawlessness, and anarchy, would like to derail the electoral process; · Our standpoint has been that the masters of deception, falsehoods, trickery, fraud, and diversionary tactics, would like to make Kenya ungovernable; and lobby for international troops (read UN troops) to be deployed in Kenya, ostensibly to "ensure Kenya and Kenyans conduct free, fair, credible and transparent elections"; · But that (read the troops) would finally install a puppet Government like happened in Ivory Coast, where Prof. Laurent Gbagbo was criminally carted to The Hague and replaced with a poodle called Alassane Ouattara! Honestly, we maintain the same position! · Let us listen to a few interesting remarks related to the senseless killings: One, residents of Tana River County interviewed by a local vernacular Radio Station (name withheld) said, with obvious unanimity: · "We have lived here for many years; yes, we have disagreed and fought; but nothing like this has ever taken place. Nothing like this has ever been experienced in this area, between the Orma and the Pokomo! Let us be serious, the attackers are very systematic and well-organised; they appear to be very well-trained; they behave like ex-officers from the disciplined forces… · Why? Because every time they loose a comrade, they collect the dead body, quickly, to remove evidence. Besides, we have evidence of a training base 'in the thickets'; we can swear that the whole thing is politically-motivated and we suspect the Mombasa Republican Council (MRC), et cetera, could be involved. There must be powerful financiers!" · Two, deputy police spokesman Charles Owino Wahongo has rubbished calls by MPs to deploy the Kenya Defence Forces (KDF) in the Tana River Delta, saying that the police have not failed at all. · Wahongo said: "What is happening in the Tana River Delta is nothing to warrant military intervention; our General Service Unit can deal with this in five minutes; but the police need guarantees. We did our best to safeguard lives during the 2007/2008 post-election violence and the reward was the handover of our boss, Maj. Gen. Mohammed Hussein Ali, to the ICC… · The Constitution has tied our hands such that we don't even respond when one of us is killed! We need executive guarantees and orders to use live ammunition and/or shoot-to-kill-orders by the Cabinet; let the Cabinet take a collective decision and responsibility and give the police the mandate to use force, where necessary; · We don't want to be sold to the ICC again; we don't want a Tribunal to be formed to investigate our boss Mathew Iteere! Let there be a very clear and legal order and we shall act like yesterday… · It is sad when one of us is killed nobody cares; look at the so-called civil society, they only wait for police to kill one criminal and they shout extra-judicial killing all over the place! We are also human beings with human rights." Incredible stuff! Well done, brother: You are spot on! · We support our brilliant policemen and women 100%! The likes of Charles Owino Wahongo, Mathew Iteere, Ndegwa Muhoro, Eric Kiraithe, Michael Gichangi, et cetera. · Three, those calling on the Son of Teresia to deploy the KDF to the Tana River Delta are lazy fellows who don't want to think straight! Assuming the soldiers are deployed today, you can bet that any death of the criminals, now engaged in the senseless killings, will attract condemnations immediately; · From the shameless, slavish, gluttonous civil society mercenaries, mutants and prostitutes; and from their shameless and arrogant Western racist neo-imperialists, et cetera! These beastly goats are silent as if nothing is happening in the Tana River Delta. · Just remember what happened the last time our gallant soldiers were deployed to deal with the Sabaot Land Defence Force (SLDF), in Mt. Elgon. Our soldiers have been accused of committing atrocities, human rights abuses, extra-judicial killings, and crimes against humanity, and what have you! · Maybe Ugandan President Yoweri Kaguta Museveni was right when he said: "Kenyans sometimes behave like idiots. How could they adopt 100% a Constitution driven by the civil society and Western interests?" · Four, Mr. Kigeugeu told a press conference at his office that the killings could be investigated under the Rome Statute. Mr. Kigeugeu (Star, September 12, 2012), said: "These acts (read the Tana River killings) have been planned and sustained… · This is not something that is happening spontaneously but is carefully planned and ruthlessly executed. They can meet the threshold of the International Criminal Court (ICC)!" Crass stupidity! It is called clinical madness! · This Mr. Kigeugeu fellow has a dangerous inferiority complex. If he has tangible evidence, with whom has he shared the same? Who said we cannot handle our own internal problems; must he run to the international community for help like a crybaby; · Does he want to sacrifice other Kenyans to the ICC; who are in his radar, this time around; Gen. Julius Karangi, Maj-Gen. Michael Gichangi, Mathew Iteere or who is it he is targeting this time, after the Son of MAU MAU freedom fighters and MAU MAU detainees and Ambassador Francis Muthaura? · He should be busy thinking of how our police could be given teeth to quell the madness and not manufacturing demonic strategies against Kenya and Kenyans. · This mad monk would sell Kenya and Kenyans to the highest bidder among his paymasters if Kenyans are foolish enough to make him the 4th President of the Republic! Shidwe pepo mbaya hii! · If any Kenyan should be at the ICC; if any Kenyan must face the ICC; if any Kenyan meets the threshold of the ICC; then that Kenyan is Mr. Kigeugeu! · 2) Mr. Kigeugeu has moved to forestall mend fences with Kipsigis MPs by ordering the resettlement of everyone evicted from Mau Forest within two weeks (all dailies of September 12, 2012). · The promise came as four Kipsigis/Kalenjin MPs – Assistant ministers Magerer Lang'at, Joyce Laboso, Beatrice Kones and Minister Franklin Bett – beat a retreat over their threat to quit ODM-KPU over the Mau issue. · The MPs also went back on their decision to resign from the resettlement committee. It is called political prostitution-cum-horse-trading! · Why has Mr. Kigeugeu never, ever, mentioned the internally displaced persons (IDPs) borne out of his satanic, murderous negative ethnicity pet strategy of 41 against 1, aimed at ethnic mobilisation and decimation of the Kikuyu/GEMA, and displacement of others like the Kisii, Turkana, et cetera, from the Rift Valley, et cetera? · Are they not Kenyans; or are they Sudanese, Burundians, Senegalese, et cetera; why can't Magerer Lang'at, Joyce Laboso, Beatrice Kones, Franklin Bett, William Ruto, Isaac Rutto, David Koech, Peris Simam, Joshua Kuttuny, Mr. Kigeugeu, et cetera, call and agitate for the return of the IDPs to their original homes in Burnt Forest, Kimumu, Kiambaa, et cetera? · 3) Minister Amos Kimunya is now blaming Mr. Kigeugeu for cancellation of the Green Field project at the Jomo Kenyatta International Airport (JKIA). Kimunya exonerated himself before a joint parliamentary committee probing the intended cancellation of the multi-billion project. · "The PM through his PS instructed that the matter be halted since it was before Cabinet," said Kimunya (The People Wednesday, September 12, 2012). · Kimunya said it was after Mr. Kigeugeu's directive that he wrote to his PS Dr. Eng. Cyrus Njiru to ask Kenya Airports Authority (KAA) management not to commit the Government to any contractual agreement until issues raised by Mr. Kigeugeu were addressed. Kimunya said he was shocked to later learn that a tender had been given and a letter of notification issued. · 4) The Star's 'Corridors of Power' segment (September 12, 2012) carried the following item, among others: "Just who is the Government if Cabinet ministers are blaming the Government for all manner of ills? · While Roads minister Franklin Bett is blaming the Government for failing to settle Mau Forest evictees, his Fisheries counterpart Amason Kingi is whining over insecurity in the Tana Delta. · Water minister Charity, too, is accusing the Government of dishonouring the contracts with teachers and doctors! So, who is the Government?" Brilliant questions! · 5) Daily Nation's 'Cutting Edge' segment (Daily Nation, September 12, 2012) carried the following item, among others: "As former Government spokesman Alfred Mutua prepares to vie for the Machakos governor's seat in the coming elections, Avery Hornbill won't let him get away with this one… · Says Avery: "We have not forgotten his promise to beautify Uhuru Highway, Nairobi, from the Museum Hill roundabout to Nyayo National Stadium. He got rid of all the beautiful flowers (and trees), claiming that pebbles and mosaic would be better. To date, the flowers are not there and the eyesore is there for all to see."" · We would wish to remind ourselves that Mutua, indeed, engaged the late Prof. Wangari Maathai in a public altercation, after the good professor (God rest her soul in eternal peace!) challenged Mutua to stop felling trees. Mutua dismissed Prof. Maathai saying: · "Who told you that you have the monopoly of environmental matters? Prof. Wangari Maathai should not think she is the only one who knows about the importance of planting trees." · We are reminded, good people, that the nonsense Dr. Mutua treated Kenya and Kenyans to cost a cool Kshs.800 million! Nothing to add: Enough said! Everything is in black and white. Alluta Continua. Uhuru: we didn't target Raila Updated 2 hrs 13 mins ago By Mwaniki Munuhe Deputy Prime Minister Uhuru Kenyatta denied claims he met two other leaders to plot how to defeat Prime Minister Raila Odinga in the March General Election. Uhuru said his meeting with Vice-President Kalonzo Musyoka, and Eldoret North MP, William Ruto, did not target any individual. Uhuru, speaking during The National Alliance (NTA) women congress, said his meeting with the two leaders was aimed at forging an alliance capable of uniting the country. "Yesterday you saw we met with other leaders. I want to say this so that the media can stop spreading falsehoods. We did not meet to see how we can defeat one man. I am not interested in an individual and I will not work to fight one person. We are interested in Kenya," he said. And in what appeared to be a thinly veiled attack on parties challenging TNA in its strongholds, Uhuru urged aspirants to stop contesting political positions on what he termed as 'small parties'. He asked them to join TNA. "I am urging you to stop doing politics of joining small parties," he said. Uhuru is now official driver of APK party Updated 2 hrs 11 mins ago By AUGUSTINE ODUOR Deputy Prime Minister Uhuru Kenyatta is now the official driver of the Alliance Party of Kenya bus. This is after he beat Vice- President Kalonzo Musyoka in party polls that saw 165 delegates vote for him against 58 for Mr Musyoka. Total 256 votes were cast in a hotly contested duel that saw Coast and part of Eastern Province delegates walk out of the exercise, citing irregularities. Mr Johnstone Muthama, a close ally of Musyoka was conspicuously absent during the exercise even after his name was slotted in the programme. The disgruntled delegates argued the voters were not vetted to ascertain whether they are bona fide party members. Party director of elections Peter Munya, however, insisted the elections were conducted freely and fairly. "Delegates from 44 of 47 counties voted. That means that almost the entire country has voted," he said. Before the vote, the delegates had argued that they should field their own presidential candidates to drive the bus because Musyoka and Uhuru already have their political parties. But Mr Munya said the decision to back either Uhuru or Musyoka follows a pact the two signed earlier with the late George Saitoti. He said the party would have preferred to field a candidate, but noted that the APK respects agreements entered to by its leaders. But even with the drama that did not paralyse the voting, party leader Kiraitu Murungi said that APK would field aspirants in all positions except for president. He said the party has put adequate measures in place for nominations and noted that all qualified aspirants would be granted a fair opportunity to compete. However, Murungi expressed fears Uhuru, Musyoka, and Eldoret North MP William Ruto meeting may collapse again if the people do not free them to negotiate alliances. "These leaders always agree during meetings to work together. But the moment they leave the meeting room the talks collapse," he told the delegates. Kiraitu narrated the sacrifices he made to bring the party to the level it is now. "I was ridiculed. I was laughed at, but I am happy we are where we are today because of sacrifices," he said. He said the bus has officially left the stage to tour the whole country. NCCK unhappy with the fight against terror
Friday, 05 October 2012 00:08 BY SAMUEL OTIENO NOT ENOUGH: Peter Karanja addressing a press conference in Kisumu yesterday. He hinted NCCK will sue the state for failing to protect churches from terror attacks. Photo/SAMUEL OTIENO The National Council of Churches of Kenya has called on the government to provide maximum security to Kenyans. NCCK secretary general Peter Karanja yesterday said the recent spate of insecurity in parts of the country was worrying. He said, "formation of terror gangs and the re-emergence of outlawed groups is a pointer that security is deteriorating." Karanja was speaking in Kisumu in a church leaders' gathering. He told the gathering, "we are concerned that gangs are terrorising people in different parts of the country. Some of these gangs are being used by politicians to intimidate their opponents, yet the police has not acted promptly." He said the government should be more pro-active now that in a few months time, the country will be holding a general election. "It seems terror gangs are being formed as the government watches. What is worrying is the inability of the security agencies to deal with them firmly and swiftly", said Karanja. The secretary general asked the state to assure Kenyans of their security before and after the general election, "especially in areas where gangs have threatened to disrupt the election." Karanja said, "the Christian community has suffered more in the wake of the rising insecurity after being targeted by terrorist groups." He hinted that NCCK may sue the government "over attacks meted out on the Christians." He said the council has gathered enough evidence "to challenge the state for failing to protect Christians and their properties." Karanja said even though NCCK called for tolerance among Christians, "it is the government's duty to protect them." Karanja said Churches have incurred losses running into millions of shillings as a result of terror acts. "The attacks on place of worship are crime against humanity and we are shocked that the government is still doing business as usual in the face of such violations of rights", said Karanja. The church leaders who gathered in Kisumu said Government have failed to use the security agencies proper utilization of intelligence gathering information as well sharing information to pre-empt such incidence before they happen. "we know that this attack is a aimed at stirring religious conflict, we encourage Christians to exercise restrain but we want the government to be vigilant all the time and take enhance the security of our churches", added Karanja. Kenya: Mungiki Unleash Terror in Major Towns 15 April 2008 Nairobi — Eleven people died on Monday as members of the outlawed Mungiki sect went on the rampage spreading terror in Nairobi and nine other towns. They barricaded roads, burnt cars, disrupted public transport and blocked major highways in a brazen act challenging the law enforcers and authority, allegedly to protest against the killing of the wife of their jailed leader, Maina Njenga. What Did Uhuru and Muthaura Do? Mr Moreno-Ocampo accused government officials: Mr Kenyatta, Mr Muthaura and Major General Ali of planning and executing well coordinated retaliatory attacks. "On or about 3 January 2008, KENYATTA, as the focal point between the PNU and the criminal organization the Mungiki, facilitated a meeting with MUTHAURA, a senior Government of Kenya official, and Mungiki leaders to organize retaliatory attacks against civilian supporters of the ODM. "Thereafter, MUTHAURA, in his capacity as Chairman of the National Security Advisory Committee ("NSAC"), telephoned ALI, his subordinate as head of the Kenya Police, and instructed ALI not to interfere with the movement of pro-PNU youth, including the Mungiki. "KENYATTA additionally instructed the Mungiki leaders to attend a second meeting on the same day to finalise logistical and financial arrangements for the retaliatory attacks," he said. The ICC prosecutor said he had no evidence linking President Kibaki or Mr Odinga to the violence. UN Guidelines Use Corporations in African "Land Grab"
May 14th, 2012 Susanne Posel Occupy Corporatism May 14, 2012 Whoever controls the land controls the nation. Corporations and foreign governments have been " land-grabbing" from third world nations to control agriculture. "What is missing the most in terms of land grabbing is a clear condemnation of this practice. That was one of the baseline demands of civil society," Stephane Parmentier from aid agency Oxfam. "It was impossible to include it, because it was too sensitive and too controversial for quite a lot of member states." Nations like Ethiopia, South Sudan, Democratic Republic of Congo and Sierra Leone, in Africa have "voluntarily" signed agreements with multi-national corporations and foreign investors, allowing them to control agricultural land. The nation's leaders believe that giving access to their resources will benefit their people; however this is just another manipulative ploy to coercively acquire control over land, food production and securitization. The world's governments have agreed to follow UN dictated guidelines over land, and who controls the fate of land. The United Nations (UN) has enacted global guidelines on purchasing agricultural land from developing nations like Africa and Asia. The UN claims that to secure equality for the poor and disadvantaged, this international body must control their lands through the allowance of mutli-national corporations and governments who will develop the land for agriculture and securitize the crop yields; thereby giving the UN control over the global food supply. The UN decries that their voluntary code of conduct promotes equal rights for women by securitizing title to land. They also claim that they will give poor people access to their own land once they own and control it. And once the UN controls the land, they will enact "legal help" to settle disputes.
This document requires governments and local communities to adhere to UN rules with respect to business practices. The UN asserts that the Rio Declaration on Environment and Development; and the United Nations Convention against Corruption and subtle Agenda 21 initiates will allow their Global Compact principles to facilitate universal consensus. To create this document and the guidelines within it, the UN collaborated with non-governmental groups, members of the global Elite within the private sector, and multi-national corporations. "It's a starting point that will help improve the often dire situation of the hungry and poor," the head of the UN's Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), Jose Graziano da Silva, said at a news conference in Rome. Grazino da Silva said the guidelines should prompt revisions of national and international law. Once agreements are signed, the land and the people are indebted to the UN for slave labor to work the land and watch their resources being reallocated to other countries for consumption. The promise of investment and technological advancement are just the hook to convince leaders to sign away the rights of their people and their land. Over the last decade, the UN has "acquired" an area of land in Africa and Asia the size of Great Britain. The World Bank, FAO and other UN agencies are meeting to create a new document to expand on the current guidelines. Certain acquisition of Africa through the guise of "investments" is a usurpation of land rights over a people who cannot say no or fight back. Corporations like Cocoa-Cola have descended upon Africa by an $11 million dollar project funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. "Africa is now the last frontier in terms of arable land," said James Nyoro, the Rockefeller Foundation's managing director for Africa. "With the population growing to 9 billion, the rest of the world will have to depend upon Africa to feed it." Cocoa-Cola Corporation are employing 50,000 Kenyan and Ugandan smallholders to produce fruit for Minute Maid, a subsidiary for Cocoa-Cola, to utilize their land in the hopes that crop yields will boost their profit margins. "I have no doubt whatsoever that Africa can feed itself and that Africa can be a major contributor to world food security," Namanga Ngongi, the former president of the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA). It is also no coincidence that researchers for the British Geological Survey (BGS) and the University of London have uncovered underground aquifers of water in Africa that are 100 times the amount found on the surface of the continent. Andrew Mitchell, the United Kingdom's Secretary of State for International Development is delighted by this find. Considering the plethora of natural resources in Africa, it makes perfect sense why the UN and multi-national corporations are now usurping this continent for their own use. The UN is currently allowing corporatism through aggressive international law to claim governance over crop production, privatization of water, disbursement of food stores and the eventuality of securing control over the world's food supply. Land Grabbing In Kenya And Mozambique: A Report On Two Research Missions – And A Human Rights Analysis Of Land Grabbing Published on Sunday, 18 April 2010 13:07
Over the past years vast tracks of agricultural lands have been taken over by foreign firms. The total area probably surpasses the farmland of France. Much of this land is located in African countries with fast increasing populations suffering hunger and under-nourishment. Such land acquisition has been happening outside public scrutiny and many details are still hidden. This land grabbing has sparked debates in the media, in developmental institutions, in UN organisations and in civil society.
FIAN International has been working for more than twenty years against forced evictions of rural communities from their agricultural lands, pastures, forests or fishing grounds. In these two decades FIAN International has witnessed how peasant farming and pastoralism got increasingly marginalized as a matter of international and national policies. They are now faced with losses of lands to an extent reminiscent of colonial times.
The current publication contributes to the debate about land grabbing and in particular to a human rights framework dealing with this phenomenon. In May and August/September 2009 FIAN investigated four cases of land grabbing in Kenya and Mozambique in detail on the spot. In its introductory part the report puts these case studies in the context of land grabbing. A definition of land grabbing is suggested along with the reasons for the recent surge in land grabbing due to the financial crisis and the boom in agrofuels. The introduction mentions some general concerns about the effects of globalisation penetrating into the primary sectors of national economies, sectors which are absolutely essential for countries' and peoples' self-determination, food security and food sovereignty. Such activities of investors and their TNCs are seen as contrary to the democratic vision of local people's equitable access to land and resources as a precondition for a decentralized, sustainable and autonomous agriculture.
The report introduces a human rights framework to analyze land grabbing, based on the rights to adequate food, to adequate housing, to an adequate standard of living including access to resources, the right to work and the rights to information and political participation. It recalls the rights of indigenous peoples, the right to self-determination and the right not to be deprived of one's means of subsistence. This framework is applied to two cases on land grabbing in the Tana River delta (Kenya), to the Yala Swamp case (Kenya) and to the Massingir case (Mozambique).
In November 2008 Kenyan President Mwai Kibaki leased 40000 ha of high potential land in the Tana river delta to the government of Qatar so that Qatar may use it to produce horticultural products for Qatar. It has not officially been made known where this plantation is to be located. The project has been surrounded with secrecy, as the news on this alienation of land and export of food crops was revealed just as Kenya had experienced severe droughts and failed harvests, and the government had declared a national food shortage emergency. A second project in the Tana delta concerns sugarcane monoculture. In a planned public private joint venture, Mumias Sugar Company Ltd., the largest sugar company in Kenya, and the state-run Tana Athi River Development Authority (TARDA), are proposing to turn 16,000 hectares into a sugar cane plantation for agrofuels. These two projects, if realized, will lead to the displacement of tens of thousands of peasant farmers, who currently use this land for food crops like maize, cassava, beans, vegetables and mango. Pastoralist tribes such as Orma and Wardei will also suffer severely as the delta has been used as grazing land for their cattle for generations. For at least 2,000 pastoralists the projects would spell doom. The report identifies human rights violations that have already been committed in the preparatory stage of these two projects - and other human rights violations threatening.
The Yala Swamp wetlands are located on the northeastern shoreline of Lake Victoria covering approximately 17,500 ha (175 km2). It provides major ecological and hydrological functions and is a major source of livelihoods for the neighbouring communities. The Yala swamp land is trust land under the custody of the Siaya and Bondo County councils. With a population of about half a million, it is densely populated. For a long time, the local people accessed it and used it in their various daily activities on a free access basis. In 2003, Dominion Farms Ltd, a subsidiary of Dominion Group of Companies based in the USA, made its appearance in Yala swamp.
Dominion entered into an agreement with both the Siaya and Bondo County Councils covering 6,900 ha of the 17,500 ha wetlands under the Yala Swamp Integrated Development Project, for duration of 25 years, with a possibility of extension. Eventually, Dominion proposed to cover the entire swamp region of 17,500 hectares. The report investigates how states authorities breached their human rights obligations towards the local population and describes the experience of peasant farmers resisting the take-over of their lands.
The Massingir case must be seen in the context of the agrofuels-oriented export policies of Mozambique. The case (also known as ProCana) concerns a projected sugar cane plantation of 30000 ha under a 50 year contract meant to provide ethanol mainly to South Africa. The British company BioEnergy Africa bought 94% of the project from other investors in 2008 and 2009. The lands affected are the main source of livelihood of the Massingir communities and used for livestock raising, charcoal production, and subsistence farming. The Mozambican government granted ProCana extensive rights for irrigation waters from the Massingir dam.
Such (re)allocation of water resources undermines the autonomy and capacity of adjacent local communities to produce food. Moreover the project would affect the pastoralists by disrupting spaces for livestock grazing and pastoralist routes. There is a great risk that these communities would lose their lands and livelihoods against their will and without being properly reallocated and compensated. Consultations with the affected communities affected took place, but severe irregularities were reported. The communities interviewed indicated that only the local elites and elders were actually consulted, some of whom had personally endorsed the mega-project in their communities in spite of apparent widespread objection amongst the communities. Some consultations did not deal with the question whether or not the local communities accept the ethanol project and under what terms they would do so.
Some affected communities highlighted that ProCana was expanding the boundaries of the lands it wanted to control, disregarding original agreements with the communities. In late 2009 BioEnergy Africa announced the suspension of investment in ProCana. According to recent information the government of Mozambique then cancelled the ProCana project.
The report summarizes the findings of these four case studies by pointing to their severe impacts in terms of livelihoods for the displaced and adjacent population. In all cases, no proper consultation of local communities took place. The report criticizes that no comprehensive impact assessments were made prior to the initiation of the project. At least as worrying as the particular human rights violations or threats mentioned above are the systemic violations underlying the policies implemented in the studied countries. In the case of Kenya, the government's "Vision 2030" strategy has not undergone any human rights impact assessment, nor does it even signal awareness of economic, social and cultural rights. It is based on a simplistic and misleading ideology: Foreign money coming into the country is seen as a panacea. It should, however, be observed that the ideology reflected in Vision 2030 has been promoted by the international financial institutions while at the same time ignoring the development of peasant farming and even instigating governments to dismantle the existing elements of pro-peasant policies and institutions. It is also observed that the EU's policy on agrofuels promotes land grabbing.
The report concludes by revisiting its human rights framework and making the point that land grabbing is a violation of the Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. This point is argued by considering the multiple threats of severe human rights impacts of land grabbing for the displaced and adjacent population in terms of economic, social, cultural, civil and political rights. This argument is then extended to the human rights of future generations which are likely to be affected by land grabbing: Land grabbing is a long term activity destroying ecosystems and foreclosing rightsbased rural policy options such as agrarian reform. The report rejects claims that large scale industrial agriculture is needed to increase soil productivity and hence food production. It refers to the scientific evidence that such claims are false. Productive and sustainable rights-based agricultural technologies exist for farming communities and the respective policies urgently need to be implemented.
States and the international community are under a human rights obligation not to promote or permit land grabbing. The duty-bearers in this context are first of all the states of the lands at stake. Moreover the states where the respective transnational corporations are based or operating carry particular extraterritorial obligations. Extraterritorial states obligations to prevent land grabbing are also incumbent on all other states, for example in the context of intergovernmental institutions. Land Grabbing In Kenya And Mozambique: A Report On Two Research Missions – And A Human Rights Analysis Of Land Grabbing Published on Sunday, 18 April 2010 13:07
Over the past years vast tracks of agricultural lands have been taken over by foreign firms. The total area probably surpasses the farmland of France. Much of this land is located in African countries with fast increasing populations suffering hunger and under-nourishment. Such land acquisition has been happening outside public scrutiny and many details are still hidden. This land grabbing has sparked debates in the media, in developmental institutions, in UN organisations and in civil society.
FIAN International has been working for more than twenty years against forced evictions of rural communities from their agricultural lands, pastures, forests or fishing grounds. In these two decades FIAN International has witnessed how peasant farming and pastoralism got increasingly marginalized as a matter of international and national policies. They are now faced with losses of lands to an extent reminiscent of colonial times.
The current publication contributes to the debate about land grabbing and in particular to a human rights framework dealing with this phenomenon. In May and August/September 2009 FIAN investigated four cases of land grabbing in Kenya and Mozambique in detail on the spot. In its introductory part the report puts these case studies in the context of land grabbing. A definition of land grabbing is suggested along with the reasons for the recent surge in land grabbing due to the financial crisis and the boom in agrofuels. The introduction mentions some general concerns about the effects of globalisation penetrating into the primary sectors of national economies, sectors which are absolutely essential for countries' and peoples' self-determination, food security and food sovereignty. Such activities of investors and their TNCs are seen as contrary to the democratic vision of local people's equitable access to land and resources as a precondition for a decentralized, sustainable and autonomous agriculture.
The report introduces a human rights framework to analyze land grabbing, based on the rights to adequate food, to adequate housing, to an adequate standard of living including access to resources, the right to work and the rights to information and political participation. It recalls the rights of indigenous peoples, the right to self-determination and the right not to be deprived of one's means of subsistence. This framework is applied to two cases on land grabbing in the Tana River delta (Kenya), to the Yala Swamp case (Kenya) and to the Massingir case (Mozambique).
In November 2008 Kenyan President Mwai Kibaki leased 40000 ha of high potential land in the Tana river delta to the government of Qatar so that Qatar may use it to produce horticultural products for Qatar. It has not officially been made known where this plantation is to be located. The project has been surrounded with secrecy, as the news on this alienation of land and export of food crops was revealed just as Kenya had experienced severe droughts and failed harvests, and the government had declared a national food shortage emergency. A second project in the Tana delta concerns sugarcane monoculture. In a planned public private joint venture, Mumias Sugar Company Ltd., the largest sugar company in Kenya, and the state-run Tana Athi River Development Authority (TARDA), are proposing to turn 16,000 hectares into a sugar cane plantation for agrofuels. These two projects, if realized, will lead to the displacement of tens of thousands of peasant farmers, who currently use this land for food crops like maize, cassava, beans, vegetables and mango. Pastoralist tribes such as Orma and Wardei will also suffer severely as the delta has been used as grazing land for their cattle for generations. For at least 2,000 pastoralists the projects would spell doom. The report identifies human rights violations that have already been committed in the preparatory stage of these two projects - and other human rights violations threatening.
The Yala Swamp wetlands are located on the northeastern shoreline of Lake Victoria covering approximately 17,500 ha (175 km2). It provides major ecological and hydrological functions and is a major source of livelihoods for the neighbouring communities. The Yala swamp land is trust land under the custody of the Siaya and Bondo County councils. With a population of about half a million, it is densely populated. For a long time, the local people accessed it and used it in their various daily activities on a free access basis. In 2003, Dominion Farms Ltd, a subsidiary of Dominion Group of Companies based in the USA, made its appearance in Yala swamp.
Dominion entered into an agreement with both the Siaya and Bondo County Councils covering 6,900 ha of the 17,500 ha wetlands under the Yala Swamp Integrated Development Project, for duration of 25 years, with a possibility of extension. Eventually, Dominion proposed to cover the entire swamp region of 17,500 hectares. The report investigates how states authorities breached their human rights obligations towards the local population and describes the experience of peasant farmers resisting the take-over of their lands.
The Massingir case must be seen in the context of the agrofuels-oriented export policies of Mozambique. The case (also known as ProCana) concerns a projected sugar cane plantation of 30000 ha under a 50 year contract meant to provide ethanol mainly to South Africa. The British company BioEnergy Africa bought 94% of the project from other investors in 2008 and 2009. The lands affected are the main source of livelihood of the Massingir communities and used for livestock raising, charcoal production, and subsistence farming. The Mozambican government granted ProCana extensive rights for irrigation waters from the Massingir dam.
Such (re)allocation of water resources undermines the autonomy and capacity of adjacent local communities to produce food. Moreover the project would affect the pastoralists by disrupting spaces for livestock grazing and pastoralist routes. There is a great risk that these communities would lose their lands and livelihoods against their will and without being properly reallocated and compensated. Consultations with the affected communities affected took place, but severe irregularities were reported. The communities interviewed indicated that only the local elites and elders were actually consulted, some of whom had personally endorsed the mega-project in their communities in spite of apparent widespread objection amongst the communities. Some consultations did not deal with the question whether or not the local communities accept the ethanol project and under what terms they would do so.
Some affected communities highlighted that ProCana was expanding the boundaries of the lands it wanted to control, disregarding original agreements with the communities. In late 2009 BioEnergy Africa announced the suspension of investment in ProCana. According to recent information the government of Mozambique then cancelled the ProCana project.
The report summarizes the findings of these four case studies by pointing to their severe impacts in terms of livelihoods for the displaced and adjacent population. In all cases, no proper consultation of local communities took place. The report criticizes that no comprehensive impact assessments were made prior to the initiation of the project. At least as worrying as the particular human rights violations or threats mentioned above are the systemic violations underlying the policies implemented in the studied countries. In the case of Kenya, the government's "Vision 2030" strategy has not undergone any human rights impact assessment, nor does it even signal awareness of economic, social and cultural rights. It is based on a simplistic and misleading ideology: Foreign money coming into the country is seen as a panacea. It should, however, be observed that the ideology reflected in Vision 2030 has been promoted by the international financial institutions while at the same time ignoring the development of peasant farming and even instigating governments to dismantle the existing elements of pro-peasant policies and institutions. It is also observed that the EU's policy on agrofuels promotes land grabbing.
The report concludes by revisiting its human rights framework and making the point that land grabbing is a violation of the Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. This point is argued by considering the multiple threats of severe human rights impacts of land grabbing for the displaced and adjacent population in terms of economic, social, cultural, civil and political rights. This argument is then extended to the human rights of future generations which are likely to be affected by land grabbing: Land grabbing is a long term activity destroying ecosystems and foreclosing rightsbased rural policy options such as agrarian reform. The report rejects claims that large scale industrial agriculture is needed to increase soil productivity and hence food production. It refers to the scientific evidence that such claims are false. Productive and sustainable rights-based agricultural technologies exist for farming communities and the respective policies urgently need to be implemented.
States and the international community are under a human rights obligation not to promote or permit land grabbing. The duty-bearers in this context are first of all the states of the lands at stake. Moreover the states where the respective transnational corporations are based or operating carry particular extraterritorial obligations. Extraterritorial states obligations to prevent land grabbing are also incumbent on all other states, for example in the context of intergovernmental institutions. Land grabbing in Kenya and Mozambique
A report on two research missions - And a human rights analysis of land grabbing Fian International, 16 april 2010 Over the past years vast tracks of agricultural lands have been taken over by foreign firms. The total area probably surpasses the farmland of France. Much of this land is located in African countries with fast increasing populations suffering hunger and under-nourishment. Such land acquisition has been happening outside public scrutiny and many details are still hidden. This land grabbing has sparked debates in the media, in developmental institutions, in UN organisations and in civil society. FIAN International has been working for more than twenty years against forced evictions of rural communities from their agricultural lands, pastures, forests or fishing grounds. In these two decades FIAN International has witnessed how peasant farming and pastoralism got increasingly marginalized as a matter of international and national policies. They are now faced with losses of lands to an extent reminiscent of colonial times. The current publication contributes to the debate about land grabbing and in particular to a human rights framework dealing with this phenomenon. In May and August/September 2009 FIAN investigated four cases of land grabbing in Kenya and Mozambique in detail on the spot. In its introductory part the report puts these case studies in the context of land grabbing. A definition of land grabbing is suggested along with the reasons for the recent surge in land rabbing due to the financial crisis and the boom in agrofuels. The introduction mentions some general concerns about the effects of globalisation penetrating into the primary sectors of national economies, sectors which are absolutely essential for countries' and peoples' self-determination, food security and food sovereignty. Such activities of investors and their TNCs are seen as contrary to the democratic vision of local people's equitable access to land and resources as a precondition for a decentralized, sustainable and autonomous agriculture. The report introduces a human rights framework to analyze land grabbing, based on the rights to adequate food, to adequate housing, to an adequate standard of living including access to resources, the right to work and the rights to information and political participation. It recalls the rights of indigenous peoples, the right to self-determination and the right not to be deprived of one's means of subsistence. This framework is applied to two cases on land grabbing in the Tana River delta (Kenya), to the Yala Swamp case (Kenya) and to the Massingir case (Mozambique). In November 2008 Kenyan President Mwai Kibaki leased 40000 ha of high potential land in the Tana river delta
to the government of Qatar so that Qatar may use it to produce horticultural products for Qatar. It has not officially been made known where this plantation is to be located. The project has been surrounded with secrecy, as the news on this alienation of land and export of food crops was revealed just as Kenya had experienced severe droughts and failed harvests, and the government had declared a national food shortage emergency. A second project in the Tana delta concerns sugarcane monoculture. In a planned public private joint venture, Mumias Sugar Company Ltd., the largest sugar company in Kenya, and the state-run Tana Athi River Development Authority (TARDA), are proposing to turn 16,000 hectares into a sugar cane plantation for agrofuels. These two projects, if realized, will lead to the
displacement of tens of thousands of peasant farmers, who currently use this land for food crops like maize,
cassava, beans, vegetables and mango. Pastoralist tribes such as Orma and Wardei will also suffer severely as the
delta has been used as grazing land for their cattle for generations. For at least 2,000 pastoralists the projects
would spell doom. The report identifies human rights violations that have already been committed in the preparatory stage of these two projects - and other human rights violations threatening. The Yala Swamp wetlands are located on the northeastern shoreline of Lake Victoria covering approximately 17,500 ha (175 km2). It provides major ecological and hydrological functions and is a major source of livelihoods for the neighbouring communities. The Yala swamp land is trust land under the custody of the Siaya and Bondo County councils. With a population of about half a million, it is densely populated. For a long time, the local people accessed it and used it in their various daily activities on a free access basis. In 2003, Dominion Farms Ltd, a subsidiary of Dominion Group of Companies based in the USA, made its appearance in Yala swamp. Dominion entered into an agreement with both the Siaya and Bondo County Councils covering 6,900 ha of the 17,500 ha wetlands under the Yala Swamp Integrated Development Project, for duration of 25 years, with a possibility of extension. Eventually, Dominion proposed to cover the entire swamp region of 17,500 hectares. The report investigates how states authorities breached their human rights obligations towards the local population and describes the experience of peasant farmers resisting the take-over of their lands. The Massingir case must be seen in the context of the
agrofuels-oriented export policies of Mozambique. The case (also known as ProCana) concerns a projected sugar
cane plantation of 30000 ha under a 50 year contract meant to provide ethanol mainly to South Africa. The
British company BioEnergy Africa bought 94% of the project from other investors in 2008 and 2009. The
lands affected are the main source of livelihood of the Massingir communities and used for livestock raising,
charcoal production, and subsistence farming. The Mozambican government granted ProCana extensive
rights for irrigation waters from the Massingir dam. Such (re)allocation of water resources undermines the
autonomy and capacity of adjacent local communities to produce food. Moreover the project would affect the pastoralists by disrupting spaces for livestock grazing and pastoralist routes. There is a great risk that these communities would lose their lands and livelihoods against their will and without being properly reallocated and compensated. Consultations with the affected communities affected took place, but severe irregularities were reported. The communities interviewed indicated that only the local elites and elders were actually consulted, some of whom had personally endorsed the mega-project in their communities in spite of apparent widespread objection amongst the communities. Some consultations did not deal with the question whether or not the local communities accept the ethanol project and under what terms they would do so. Some affected communities highlighted that ProCana was expanding the boundaries of the lands it wanted to control, disregarding original agreements with the
communities. In late 2009 BioEnergy Africa announced the suspension of investment in ProCana. According
to recent information the government of Mozambique then cancelled the ProCana project. The report summarizes the findings of these four case studies by pointing to their severe impacts in terms of
livelihoods for the displaced and adjacent population. In all cases, no proper consultation of local communities
took place. The report criticizes that no comprehensive impact assessments were made prior to the initiation
of the project. At least as worrying as the particular human rights violations or threats mentioned above are the systemic violations underlying the policies implemented in the studied countries. In the case of Kenya, the government's "Vision 2030" strategy has not undergone any human rights impact assessment, nor does it even signal awareness of economic, social and cultural rights. It is based on a simplistic and misleading ideology: Foreign money coming into the country is seen as a panacea. It should, however, be observed that the ideology reflected in Vision 2030 has been promoted by the international financial institutions while at the same time ignoring the development of peasant farming and even instigating governments to dismantle the existing elements of pro-peasant policies and institutions. It is also observed that the EU's policy on agrofuels promotes land grabbing. The report concludes by revisiting its human rights framework and making the point that land grabbing is a violation of the Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. This point is argued by considering the multiple threats of severe human rights impacts of land grabbing for the displaced and adjacent population in terms of economic, social, cultural, civil and political rights. This argument is then extended to the human rights of future generations which are likely to be affected by land grabbing: Land grabbing is a long term activity destroying ecosystems and foreclosing rightsbased rural policy options such as agrarian reform. The report rejects claims that large scale industrial
agriculture is needed to increase soil productivity and hence food production. It refers to the scientific evidence
that such claims are false. Productive and sustainable rights-based agricultural technologies exist for farming
communities and the respective policies urgently need to be implemented. States and the international community are under a human rights obligation not to promote or permit land grabbing. The duty-bearers in this context are first of all the states of the lands at stake. Moreover the states where the espective transnational corporations are based or operating carry particular extraterritorial obligations. Extraterritorial states obligations to prevent land grabbing are also incumbent on all other states, for example in the context of intergovernmental institutions. Food Security & Agriculture
| Land Grabbing: the End of Sustainable Agriculture? | | | | | The contentious issue of 'land grabbing' has become the subject of numerous media reports since the global food crisis worsened in 2008 - but what are the likely consequences of the increasing trend to secure farmland abroad?
6th May 09 ~ STWR Questions of food security and land tenure are preoccupying non-governmental organisations (NGOs) as stakeholders from food agencies, civil society and the agriculture sector met at the Wilson Centre in Washington on 5 May to discuss the 'The Race for the World's Farmland'. Whilst some analysts remain unsure whether overseas land purchases can be viewed positively or negatively, others are expressing concern over the sovereignty of land and food supplies, as well as the impact on local communities. At least five separate studies into the new development are due over the next few months as more NGOs wake up to the potentially grave implications of 'outsourcing food production'. The latest wave of land grabbing began towards the end of 2008 when the global food crisis generated concern over supplies in countries that consume more food than they produce. In a desperate attempt to bolster their food security, import-dependent countries including China, Saudi Arabia and South Korea have acquired acres of farmland from poorer, resource rich nations such as Brazil, Cambodia and Sudan –and especially Africa where the trend is being dubbed the "new colonialism" or a modern day version of the 19th-century scramble for Africa. Whilst an overreliance on imports may be the primary reason for acquiring land abroad by governments, the phenomenon also has a less obvious motivation: financial return. Land is not a conventionally lucrative asset for investors, but the combined food and financial crises have turned land into a strategic investment for multinational corporations with ties to hedge funds. The first major exposé on land grabbing was detailed in a 2008 publication by the non-governmental organisation GRAIN. In their report Seized! The 2008 Landgrab for Food and Financial Security , agribusiness development was shown to be the prime objective behind land grabbing deals, despite the 'win–win'rhetoric of governments and investors that promote the agreements as development opportunities for the nations which sell their land. Promises that the deals would bring employment and a fair share of the agricultural produce to host countries has swayed a number of African and Asian governments, which have readily sold acres of arable land - and with it, the potential livelihoods of their people. As GRAIN have argued, the deals would inevitably lead to a redistribution of land ownership from smallholder farmers to large industrial estates, whilst creating comparatively few new job opportunities in the process. The International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), a US government-backed think tank, released a report in April 2009 which made an initial estimate at how much land has been sold in land deals since 2006 – estimated at 20 million hectares, or twice the size of Germany's croplands. Although the paper acknowledges the impact of land deals on poor communities that risk losing ownership of the land on which they depend, it also embraces the 'win-win' interpretation of land sales between food deficient and cash-strapped countries, by suggesting that foreign investment can bring development infrastructure and jobs for local people. For food policy analyst Devinder Sharma, however, the rewriting of the political economy of food has far more losers than winners. The losers will be those who remain hungry as the land their community has cultivated for centuries becomes a source of food security for a distant nation. Rather than jobs and a share of the produce, they will be left with the environmental tab of intensive farming - devastated soils, dry aquifers, and an ecological system damaged by chemical infestation. This is a sentiment echoed in an article by Sue Branford which points out that in displacing local farmers, governments and investors may in fact be destroying the very solution to the interlinked climate and food crises - local farming knowledge and small-scale sustainable agriculture.
Land Grab: the Race for the World's Farmland 3rd May 09 - Independent (UK) In Africa they are calling it the land grab, or the new colonialism. Countries hungry to secure their food supplies – including Saudi Arabia, the Emirates, South Korea (the world's third biggest importer of corn) China, India, Libya and Egypt – are at the forefront of a frantic rush to gobble up farmland all around the world, but mainly cash-starved Africa. Over the past few months, Saudi Arabian investors have paid $100m for an Ethiopian farm where they hope to grow wheat and barley, adding to the millions of acres they already own in the war-ravaged country, as well as in neighbouring Sudan. The Saudis also have land in Indonesia and Thailand for growing rice. China owns vast tracts of overseas land, mainly in Algeria and Zimbabwe, and one estimate suggests that more than a million ethnic Chinese farm workers will be living on the continent this year. Kenya and Tanzania have leased land while the Ugandans have been big sellers, allocating two million acres of land to Egypt for wheat and corn. Further afield, the Saudi government and other Gulf States are negotiating with Pakistan to buy another million acres. The deal includes the services of a 100,000-man private army to protect the food being exported. Buyers or lease-holders have have also been promised legal cover in case a future government in Islamabad is less welcoming. Soaring wheat and rice prices over the past two years – which have caused riots in more than 30 countries from India to Haiti – were the catalyst for the latest dash for land. But the rush really took off at the end of last year when many big food-exporting nations introduced export controls. Food scares hit Saudi, Kuwait, Bahrain and other Arab states the hardest, because they felt particulary vulnerable as their own efforts to grow crops in the desert have proved costly and inefficient. By far the most aggressive buyer is Saudi Arabia, where the government is now actively encouraging private investors and companies to buy farmland abroad after abandoning its attempt to be self-sufficient because of worries over water scarcity. It cut its wheat production by 12.5 per cent last year, prompting the search for new land. Not every country is opening its arms to these new landlords with as much enthusiasm as Pakistan. In Madagascar, public anger over a plan to sell more than a million hectares to South Korea's Daewoo on a 99-year lease forced the government to drop the deal and was one of the reasons for the recent change in president. But the issue is not a clear-cut case of neo-imperialism. At the African Union (AU), the agriculture commissioner, Rhoda Peace Tumusiime, is worried that many land buyers are ignoring the interests of local farmers and communities. But the AU also recognises that bringing new capital into Africa could be positive if it is directed in the right way. Instead of purchasing land, she says, buyers or lease-holders should invest through production and trade agreements with the host country. Deals which increased overall food production should be encouraged, a move which would bring more food to the international markets, as well as to the poorest African households, Tumusiime said. Some of the AU's new guidelines on land sales, due to be ratified in July, include recommendations that new investors should promise to help with infrastructure, such as health facilities, agree to pay local taxation and look at ways to get more involved on the food-processing side which would create more local jobs. David Hallam, the deputy director of the trade and markets division at the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), part of the UN, also cautions about making over-hasty judgements on such a sensitive issue. "This could be a win-win situation or it could be a sort of neo-colonialism with disastrous consequences for some of the countries involved. I really do have an open mind to whether this new development is positive or not." On Tuesday, Hallam will be opening a conference at the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington provocatively called "Land Grab: The Race for the World's Farmlands", at which some of the world's leading food experts will try to get a better grip of what is happening. Sovereignty over the land and food supplies is the biggest concern, says Hallam. "There is a danger that host countries, particularly the more politically sensitive and food-insecure, will lose control over their own food supplies when they need it most." Imagine, he says, empty trucks being driven into, say, Ethiopia, at a time of food shortages caused by war or drought, and being driven out again full of grain to feed people overseas. "Can you imagine the political consequences? That's why proper legal structures need to be put into place to protect land rights, and why we should look at some form of international code of conduct." Hallam is carrying out his own detailed research with FAO people on the ground because so few figures exist. The first stab at gathering numbers was made by the International Food Policy Research Institute, which reported last week. It estimated that 20 million hectares of land – twice the size of Germany's croplands – have been sold since 2006 in more than four dozen land deals, mainly in Africa. So far, most of the buyers are a mix of private investors, US private equity houses such as Sanlam Private Equity, the Saudi Kingdom Zephyr fund, the UK's CDC and sovereign wealth funds. The institute's report will not be the last: at least five separate studies into the phenomenon are due over the next few months as international bodies and NGOs wake up to the danger. The International Institute for Environment and Development, for example, is particularly worried about the impact on local communities and the threat to local output. It will publish its latest research in the next few weeks. Subsistence farmers and nomadic tribesmen are of particular concern, since many of them do not have titles to their land and could be easily exploited by their own governments, which are desperate to sell to boost their foreign reserves. Ruth Meinzen-Dick, a senior research fellow at the International Food Policy Research Institute, who is due to speak at the Washington conference, warned: "The majority of agricultural land in Africa is not titled. If these rights are not respected in these transactions, the livelihoods of millions of people will be put at risk." If the latest invasion of overseas money can be handled well, it could bring huge advantages to Africa after a generation of declining investment. "For more than two decades, we have been trying to persuade governments and investors around the world to invest in agriculture to halt the downturn in food production," Hallam says. "So it is difficult for us to turn around and argue against it now." Much of the new money is going into capital intensive farming – and speculative bio-fuel crops – which do not bring great benefits to local farmers. Hallam's report, prepared with the UN's development agency, UNCTAD and the World Bank, will also be published later this summer. Food security and encouraging more of the right sort of investment in agriculture was top of the agenda at the G8 agricultural summit in Italy last month. For the first time, the G8 ministers conceded that efforts to tackle hunger were failing, and that the UN's attempts to halve the number of malnourished by 2015 were way off target. Wheat and grain prices have fallen since last year's spike, but they are still high; so high that the FAO predicts the number of chronically hungry will shoot up by 100 million this year – on top of the 1.4 billion people already living on the poverty line.
Outsourcing Food Production 24th November 2008 - Devinder Sharma, India Together 24 November 2008 - At the 150th commemoration of the Irish Famine held at Cork, Ireland, I vividly recall the mayor of the city telling the audience: "How barbarian was the society then that at a time when people were dying of hunger and starvation, corn was being loaded in ships for export to neighbouring Britain." Nearly 160 years after that great tragedy, the world is preparing a fertile ground for yet another, more sinister and barbaric act. This time, the world is witnessing a race to invest in overseas farmlands and turn them into food estates. In the name of food security, what is worrisome is that the global food production and distribution channel is actually getting into the hands of a few international agribusiness companies with ties to hedge funds. With large populations being displaced world over from such land takeovers, and with World Bank aggressively promoting it, control over the food chain is increasingly being passed into the hands of private investment. Many of the food and financial companies investing in farmlands around the world are also bringing in their own farm workers, production technology and equipment. It is happening around the world. In India, Karnataka is preparing to lift restrictions on purchase of farm land in what appears to be a misguided attempt to attract investments. Meanwhile, about 15 companies, led by the public-sector State Trading Corporation (STC), and including Gujarat Ambuja, Ruchi Soya industries and Jhunjhunwala Vanaspati Ltd., are in the process of leasing 10,000 hectares of productive farmlands in Paraguay, Uruguay and Brazil in Latin America, mainly to cultivate soybean and oilseeds. Indian companies are also moving into Burma to undertake production of pulses, and buying palm oil plantations in Indonesia. Australia and Canada are next on the land shopping list. National laws are being suitably amended. The Indian Ministry of Food and Agriculture is backing the outsourcing initiative. The Reserve Bank of India through the Exim Bank is contemplating a change in the existing laws to provide loans to these companies to purchase land abroad. Not only in India, national laws are also being rewritten elsewhere - in Argentina, Mongolia, Australia, Russia, and many other nations - to facilitate the purchase of land overseas or allow foreign companies to buy land within their own borders. In Pakistan, now in the throes of a food crisis, Prime Minister Yusuf Raza Gilani showed exuberance after his return from a state-visit to Saudi Arabia in mid-June. After all, in exchange for the desperately needed foreign investment, he had reportedly offered to sell thousands of hectares of productive farmlands. Meanwhile, Qatar is preparing to outsource its food production to Pakistan's Punjab, where nearly 25,000 villages are faced with displacement. Saudi Arabia is also planning to acquire a 1.6 million hectares food estate in Merauke in Indonesia to produce rice for export back home. Saudi Arabia is not the only Gulf country looking for land elsewhere. A Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) has been constituted - with membership from Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar, Oman, Jordan and the United Arab Emirates - scouting for overseas land in return for investments. Land deals have already been struck with Laos, Indonesia, the Philippines, Vietnam, Cambodia, Pakistan, Thailand and Burma in Asia; Ukraine, Kazakhstan, Georgia, Russia and Turkey in central Asia/Europe; and Sudan and Uganda in Africa. Realising that oil revenue alone cannot feed their populations, as seen in the recent global food crisis when food disappeared from the supermarket shelf, Gulf countries are investing for future food security needs. China is emerging as a major player in this land grab. After having increasingly divested its farm population from agriculture and moving them into the cities, China is now on a land buying spree. With some 30 land deals already known to have been signed, mostly in Africa, Central Asia, Australia and the Philippines, China has also prepared an agricultural policy on outsourcing food production. Most of these deals are being executed in a hush-hush manner. Interestingly, while China is looking for land outside its territory, agribusiness companies from Japan, South Korea and America are taking control over its own agribusiness activities. The population shift in China - pushing farmers out of agriculture and moving them into the cities - has taken a heavy toll of the social fabric, marred by social unrest, often bloody. China Daily, the official organ of the Chinese government, had reported a massive increase in rural protests - from 10,000 a year some 11 years back to over 75,000 in 2005-06, which means roughly 250 protests a day. Rapid industrialisation in the countryside had played havoc with a sustainable farming system, thereby necessitating the search for farmland outside the country. India too, in a blind race to catch up with China, is following the same faulty prescription. Egypt, which recently was faced with food riots, stirred a hornet's nest, when it was divulged that a deal was underway to lease 840,000 hectares - amounting to 2.2 per cent of Uganda's farm land - for wheat and maize production to be shipped back. Ironically, at the same time, Egyptian farmers in Qena district were fighting a long-drawn battle to recover 1600 hectares of land owned by a Japanese agribusiness giant, Kobebussan. Many other countries face the same dilemma - while they are looking for land elsewhere, their own farmlands are being taken away by foreign companies. According to a report, Seized: The 2008 Land Grab for Food and Financial Security prepared by the Barcelona-based GRAIN, food corporates from Japan - including Asahi, Itochu, Sumitomo and Mitsubishi - have between 2006-08 leased and purchased land in China, Brazil, Africa, and central Asia for organic food production. No wonder, with Japan not allowing corporates to own farmland, these companies are looking for greener pastures everywhere. South Korea, where the government is supporting outsourcing, is buying land in pristine Mongolia, thereby threatening one of the world's naturally endowed ecosystems. Financial companies and others have even been using bailout packages from various governments to move into this land grab. Goldman Sachs and Deutsche Bank are eyeing a takeover of China's livestock industry. Morgan Stanley has purchased 40,000 hectares in the Ukraine, where Landkom, the British investment group has also bought 100,000 hectares. The two Swedish investing firms, Black Earth Farming and Alpcot-Agro, have purchased 331,000 hectares and 128,000 hectares of farm land in Russia, respectively. South Korean giant Daewoo has brought in the mother of all land-grabbing deals; this month it unveiled a plan to farm some 1.3 million acres in Madagascar - half the size of Belgium - to produce corn and palm oil. The political economy of food is certainly being rewritten, with grave implications in store. The global financial meltdown had privatised the profits, and socialised the losses. Outsourcing food production will ensure food security for the investing country, and leave behind a trail of hunger, starvation and food scarcities for the native populations. Only the environmental tab of the highly intensive farming - devastated soils, dry aquifers, and an ecological system runied by chemical infestation - will be left for the host country to pick up.
Food Crisis Leading to Unsustainable Land Grab 22nd November 08 - Sue Branford, Guardian (UK) The world map is being redrawn. Over the past six months, China, South Korea, Japan, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and other nations have been buying and leasing huge quantities of foreign land for the production of food or biofuels for domestic consumption. It's a modern day version of the 19th-century scramble for Africa. This year's bubble in food prices – driven by financial speculators, biofuels and compounded when some countries halted food exports to ensure their own supplies – led to pain for nations dependent on imports. Alarm bells rang, with many governments alerted to what might lie ahead as climate change and soil destruction reduce the supply of food on the world market. The result, a huge international land grab, raises many troublesome issues. Although governments are encouraging the trend, the acquisitions are generally made by the private sector. Along with agribusiness, corporations and food traders, investment banks and private equity funds have been jumping on board, seeing land as a safe haven from the financial storm. Indeed, with the supply of the world's food under long-term threat, investment in land may prove a more solid bet than earlier speculation in dotcoms and derivatives. Yet from a global perspective, it is difficult to see how such investments can deliver long-term food security. The investors will want a quick return. They will practise an industrial model of agriculture that in many parts of the world has already produced poverty and environmental destruction, as well as farm-chemical pollution. Furthermore, many local communities will be evicted to make way for the foreign takeover. The governments and investors will argue that jobs will be created and some of the food produced will be made available for local communities, but this does not disguise what is essentially a process of dispossession. Lands will be taken away from smallholders or forest dwellers and converted into large industrial estates connected to distant markets. Ironically, these very small communities may have a key role to play in helping the world confront the interlinked climate and food crises. Many such communities have a profound knowledge of local biodiversity and often cultivate little-known varieties of crops that can survive drought and other weather extremes. Scientific studies have shown that farming methods that are not based on fossil-fuel inputs and are under the control of local farmers can be more productive than industrial farming and are almost always more sustainable. The reason why this year's food crisis had such a harsh impact, particularly in Asia and Africa, was that many countries had been pushed by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and other institutions to produce food crops for external markets. They would have been far less vulnerable if they had concentrated first and foremost on feeding their populations through local production. Many of the countries that are rushing to outsource their food supplies should perhaps be looking first to see if they can produce more of their food locally, even if it means carrying out difficult measures like land reform. By seeking a quick fix to their food shortage, they may well end up without a long-term sustainable solution. And even if they succeed in generating a steady stream of food imports, they may simply be exporting their food insecurity to other nations. | 'Our Land, Our Lives': Time out on the global land rush Land sold off in last decade could grow enough food to feed a billion people – Oxfam World Bank must freeze investments to protect poor people from land grabs Land eight times the size of the UK was sold off globally in the last decade, enough to grow food for a billion people says international development agency Oxfam. This is the equivalent to the number of people who go hungry in the world today. In its new report, Our Land, Our Lives, Oxfam warns that more than 60 per cent of investments in agricultural land by foreign investors between 2000 and 2010 were in developing countries with serious hunger problems. However, two thirds of those investors plan to export everything they produce on the land. Nearly 60 per cent of global land deals in the past decade have been to grow crops that can be used for biofuels. The report comes as Oxfam steps up its campaign to end land grabs that violate the rights of the world's poorest people. Oxfam supports greater investment in agriculture and to small-scale farmers. However the unprecedented rush for land has not been adequately regulated or policed to prevent land grabs. This means that poor people continue to be evicted, often violently, without consultation or compensation. Many lose their homes and are left destitute, without access to the land they rely on for food to eat and make a living. Already an area of land the size of London is being sold to foreign investors every six days in poor countries. In Liberia, 30 per cent of the country has been swallowed up by land deals in just five years. Oxfam calculates that land deals tripled during the food price crisis in 2008 and 2009 because land was increasingly viewed as a profitable investment. With global food prices again hovering at record levels urgent action is needed to stop the threat of another wave of land grabs. Oxfam says the World Bank must act now to freeze temporarily its agricultural investments in land so it can review its advice to developing countries, help set standards for investors and introduce more robust policies to help stop land grabs. Oxfam's Chief Executive Barbara Stocking said: "The rush for land is out of control and some of the world's poorest people are suffering hunger, violence and greater poverty as a result. The World Bank is in a unique position to help stop land grabs becoming one of the biggest scandals of the century and must act now. "The World Bank can help stop these human rights abuses and ensure that investments help not harm poor communities. Investment should be good news for developing countries – not lead to greater poverty, hunger and hardship." The World Bank, with a remit to tackle global poverty, is in a unique position as both an investor in land and an adviser to developing countries. The Bank's investments in agriculture have increased by 200 per cent in the last 10 years, while its private sector arm, the International Finance Corporation, sets standards followed by many investors. The World Bank's own research reveals that countries with the most large scale land deals are those with the poorest protection of people's land rights. And since 2008, 21 formal complaints have been brought by communities affected by World Bank projects that they say have violated their land rights. Oxfam wants to see progress towards the freeze at the World Bank's first Annual Meeting since Jim Kim was installed as its new President, which takes place in Tokyo from 12 - 14 October. Putting a stop to its investments in the short term will give the Bank time to put its own house in order. Specifically, Oxfam wants the World Bank's freeze to send a strong signal to global investors to stop land-grabbing and to improve standards for: · Transparency – ensuring that information about land deals is publicly accessible for both affected communities and governments. · Consultation and consent – ensuring communities are informed in advance, and can agree or refuse projects. · Land rights and governance – strengthening poor people's rights to land and natural resources, especially women, through better land tenure governance as set out by the Committee for Food Security. · Food security – ensuring that land investments do not undermine local and national food security. The UK government can use its influence in the World Bank to persuade it to implement the freeze. It can also play a crucial role as President of the G8 next year by putting food and hunger at the heart of the agenda, and addressing land grabs as part of this. Critically, it can also press the EU to reverse biofuels targets – a key driver of land grabs. Stocking said: "Addressing the rush for land is key to tackling global hunger and must be at the heart of the debate when the UK government presides over the G8 next year. The UK should also show leadership in reversing flawed biofuels targets which are a main driver for land and are diverting food into fuel." Ends// Notes to editors: · According to the International Land Coalition, 203 million hectares of land was acquired in major deals globally between 2000 and 2010. · The same research shows that 106 million hectares of land in developing countries was acquired by foreign investors between 2000 and 2010. Oxfam is campaigning against land grabs as part of its GROW campaign, which aims to secure a future where everyone has enough to eat. Property Grabbing and Africa's Orphaned Generation: A Legal Analysis of the Implications of the HIV/AIDS Pandemic for Inheritance by Orphaned Children in Uganda, Kenya, Zambia and Malawi By Duncan McPherson INTRODUCTION Humanity has never experienced an orphan-crisis as severe as the one currently unfolding in Sub-Saharan Africa, as a result of HIV/AIDS. By 2002, according recent estimates, some 30 million people in sub-Saharan Africa were living with HIV/AIDS, with the incidence of HIV increasing in many countries. In 2002, some two million adults died of HIV/AIDS in the region. Left behind were their children. In eastern and southern African states—the areas hardest hit by HIV/AIDS—it is estimated that in the coming years between 15 to 25 percent of children will have lost one or both parents due to the pandemic. The orphan crisis in sub-Saharan Africa is just beginning. According to UNICEF, As today's young adults die in growing numbers, they will leave growing numbers of orphaned children; by 2010, HIV/AIDS will have robbed an estimated 20 million children under the age of 15 of one or both parents, nearly twice the number orphaned in this age group in 2001. The largest increases will be in countries with high or growing HIV prevalence rates, but even where HIV is brought under control, the number of orphans will continue to grow or remain on a high plateau for several years, due to the long time between HIV infection and death. For example, HIV prevalence in Uganda peaked in the late 1980s, but the percentage of children orphaned by the disease has recently peaked and begun to decline. Africa's households have responded to the orphan crisis with great stoicism. UNICEF has found that in "nearly every sub-Saharan country, extended families have assumed responsibility for more than 90 per cent of orphaned children," despite the great economic strain this has caused most households. Although extended families are caring for AIDS orphans, these children remain highly vulnerable in African societies. Empirical studies suggest that orphans are less likely to receive schooling; suffer from greater malnutrition; are more frequently forced into dangerous child labour; and, in the case of girls especially, are at greater risk of sexual abuse, than children with parents. Given that in many African countries, due to the lack of availability of the standard antiretroviral therapies to prevent perinatal (mother to child) transmission, perinatal infection, with 25 to 45 percent of babies born to HIV-positive mothers becoming infected. Thus, a significant number of children orphaned by AIDS will themselves die from the disease. This paper examines a particular manifestation of the vulnerability of African children orphaned due to AIDS: "property grabbing" as it is referred to in Africa . Property grabbing is the dispossession of orphans and widowed parents (predominantly mothers) by relatives and others. The underlying premise of this paper is that orphans should not be left destitute and so should continue to have access, through inheritance or from surviving parents, to the household property on which their livelihoods depend. In the academic literature, AIDS orphans are defined as those under the age of 18 that have lost one or both parents to the disease. Maternal orphans have lost their mother, paternal orphans, their father, and double orphans have lost both mother and father. Having one surviving parent seems like a far less vulnerable scenario than having lost both. Unfortunately, existing research on orphans tends not to distinguish between these different categories and so often this paper will refers to orphans generally. Where possible, nuances in the treatment of different types of orphans, including boys vs. girls, were captured. Sadly, all orphans are vulnerable to property grabbing. Double orphans have no parents to defend their inheritance rights; paternal orphans do not fare much better if the father has died, because dispossession of widows and their children is widespread, due to patrilineal inheritance customs in much of sub-Saharan Africa . Although widowers are less likely to be victims of property grabbing, they frequently abandon their children, rendering many maternal orphans de facto 'double orphans'. The objectives of this paper are threefold. The first objective is to describe the extent of property grabbing, in particular where the phenomenon appears to be exacerbated by the AIDS pandemic. Four illustrative case studies ( Uganda , Kenya , Zambia and Malawi ) are presented, explaining the factors underlying property grabbing and the legal frameworks that allow such practices to take place. These countries were selected in part by virtue of the availability of field research, but also because they demonstrate interesting variation in terms of their relevant legislation, population densities, and reactions to the AIDS pandemic. The second objective is to argue that a policy imperative exists for governments and donors to mitigate the destitution of widows and orphans created by property. Not only is this necessary to preserve equity, but to help slow the spread of AIDS and keep the peace in states prone to violent confrontation. The third objective is to make practical suggestions for steps to mitigate the extent of property grabbing. Emphasis is placed on overcoming the stigma that attaches to families affected by HIV/AIDS, since this often emboldens relatives to take from widows and children; a call for local aid programs to help orphans stay on their parent's property, since possession appears to be nine-tenths of the law; and proposals to assist parents with AIDS to engage in succession planning, to reduce the risk that their children will be victims of property grabbing. Uganda, Kenya , Zambia and Malawi are have low-income, largely subsistence agriculture economies. The existence of poor agricultural economies has important implications for the discussion that follows. First, land law features prominently in the case studies because land is the crucial asset for most households. Second, recommendations for policy reform must recognize the extremely limited judicial and bureaucratic capacity that such states have at their disposal, which have been further depleted by the pandemic. While property grabbing may be discouraged through national legislative reform and court-action, for many orphans, the only realistic defense against property grabbing will be within the norms of acceptable behaviour that govern their local communities. Efforts by NGOs, donors, and governments should focus on shaping these norms, to ensure that dispossessing orphans is not acceptable, no matter how their parent(s) died. UGANDA Uganda is one of the few countries in Africa in which, due to quick and decisive government action, the incidence of new HIV infections is believed to be declining. Reflecting the long-term effects of an epidemic that began 25 years ago, Uganda has seen the proportion of its children that are orphaned increase from an estimated 10 percent in 1990 to 14 percent in 2003. By 2010 the percentage of orphaned Ugandan children is predicted to decline to 11 percent. The absolute number of orphans is expected to stay constant at around 2 million between now and 2010 in a country with a population of 25 million in 2002. Household competition for land is a serious problem in Uganda , as soil fertility has been dropping along with farm productivity, while poverty and food insecurity have risen. It appears that formal Ugandan law offers some protection to orphans and widows from the risk of dispossession of property. S. 31(2) of the Ugandan Constitution requires Parliament to make "appropriate laws for the protection of the rights of widows and widowers to inherit the property of their deceased spouses and to enjoy parental rights over their children." Furthermore, s. 34(4) indicates that "children are entitled to be protected from social or economic exploitation…" Unfortunately, statutory legislation appears to set the level of protection for women and children's rights considerably below the bar established by ss. 31 and 34 of the Constitution. The overwhelming majority of Ugandans die intestate. The Succession Act of 1972 appears to uphold the rights of widows and children to inherit property with or without a written will. These entitlements are limited to usufructary rights only, which expire when the wife remarries or when the children marry or reach the age of majority. Moreover, the Act allows conveying of land—the central asset for most households in Uganda—to be predominantly (and lawfully according to s. 237(3) of the Constitution) regulated under customary tenure systems. Systems of customary law vary from community to community, but their overall thrust with respect to inheritance is patrilineal descent, particularly in rural areas, with land being passed on to (especially eldest) sons but not daughters, on the belief that girl children will marry and be provided for by their husbands. Moreover, deeply entrenched patriarchal traditions and values deny widows any right to own land beyond limited usufructary rights and if a woman separates from her husband, she loses all rights to matrimonial land, irrespective of her contributions to its improvement. In practice, customary norms regarding land often trump the high standards of protection for women's and children's rights suggested by the Constitution. Evidence exists that outright grabbing of property from orphans and widows is a serious problem in Uganda . In 2001, Gilborn et al. conducted a baseline survey of a large number of AIDS-affected households, including potential guardians for orphans, in the Luwero and Tororo districts of Uganda . They found that almost all HIV-positive parents (91.5 percent) expressed worries about their children's future. The risk of children's property being grabbed after parental death was the third most frequently mentioned among parental concerns. The only concerns that were mentioned more frequently were worries about children's access to education, followed by the availability of food and basic necessities of life. Almost half of adult respondents reported property grabbing as a problem in their communities, with women and orphans particularly vulnerable. Paternal relatives were believed by respondents to be the most likely to steal inherited property, but fears were also expressed that other community members and maternal relatives would also attempt to grab property. Among widows surveyed (n = 204), 29 percent indicated that property had been taken from them when their husbands had died. A further 21 percent of older orphans (n = 105, ages 13-18 years) reported that they had experienced property grabbing. Several other studies have identified property grabbing as a threat to the wellbeing of orphans. Wakhweya et al. (2002) found that single orphans predominate in Uganda , with most orphans living with a surviving (generally female) parent after the first parent dies. Of the widowed parents surveyed, 75 percent found it "very difficult" to support their families and 22 percent of female widows reported experiences of property grabbing or mismanagement of their property by relatives after their spouse had died. Anecdotal evidence of extensive property grabbing in Arua district (in the country's north-west corner), particularly against widows with daughters, is cited by Witter. Similarly, Kamusiime et al.cite interviews with community-members in the Iganga and Rakai districts (in the south-east and south west of Uganda , respectively), indicating that clansmen or neighbours often expropriate property from families affected from AIDS. The authors underscore that households affected by AIDS are particularly vulnerable to this risk because their lands typically remain comparatively underutilized, or even fallow, for considerable periods of time as adult family members are progressively debilitated by the disease. But property grabbing is not unique to AIDS affected families, threatening any household made weak by the illness or death of the patriarch. KENYA Intense conflict over land has been a central theme of modern Kenyan history. African resistance to expropriation by the colonial government of large tracts of land for White settlers was the driving force behind Kenya 's war of independence in the 1950s. Yet the landlessness and dislocation originally wrought on many African households by White settlement has not been overcome since Kenyan independence in 1963. The factors behind continuing land insecurity are complex, but include the concentration of land in the hands of Black elites following the demise of the settler economy and rapid post-colonial population growth (from 13.6 million in 1975 to 31.5 million in 2002). Today, reports of 'land-grabbing' are daily occurrences in Kenyan newspapers, and over the last decade political violence rooted in competition for land has broken out periodically in several of the densely populated parts of the country. Due to the intense competition for land, dispossession of women and children, especially girls has been a serious problem in Kenya before the arrival of AIDS. The epidemic is exacerbating the vulnerability of land for these traditionally vulnerable groups. The incidence of HIV infection amongst Kenyan adults from 15-49 years of age is 15 percent, relatively high for East Africa . By 2010, 14 percent of Kenyan children are expected to be orphaned; AIDS is expected to lie behind the orphaning of 73 percent of these 2 million children. Kenya has been slow to address its AIDS crisis. Fortunately, a new government elected in 2002 has made fighting AIDS a priority; however, HIV-infection remains a source of stigma and shame at the local level in most Kenyan communities. Once the male head of a household dies, neither formal Kenyan laws nor customary law offer much protection for women and children, particularly girls, wishing to retain rights to the property upon which they depend. Unlike the governments of many other African nations, both colonial and post-independence Kenyan governments have made broad attempts to demarcate household land holdings across the country and provide legally-intelligible title deeds to occupants, with the belief that privatizing informal or communal landholdings would produce productive, capitalistic farmers. In theory, this titling system could help protect the inheritances of orphans and widows by allowing testators that so desired to provide their chosen heirs with legal deeds to land upon succession. In practice, this has not been the case. Title deeds are often ignored by land-grabbers because they are superseded by customary land allocations and rules, simply out-of-date, or too expensive for households to officially register and give legal effect. Kenya's Law of Succession Act of 1981 attempted to codify succession rights and prima facie does offer women and children a measure of protection. In the case of intestate succession, for example, the Act specifies that female and male children should inherit from their parents equally. Widows are entitled to an absolute interest in the deceased spouse's personal and household effects and usufruct rights to the rest of the estate until death or remarriage, at which point the estate passes to the children. The law is compromised, however, by a number of de jure exceptions. For example, the Act does not apply to Muslims who constitute about 30 percent of the population. The Act also exempts agricultural land, crops, and livestock, in other words, the most valuable assets to Kenya 's predominantly rural communities, in certain "gazetted" districts from the intestacy rules. In these districts, designated in a legal notice in the official government gazette, customary law applies. Furthermore, most women and children are not aware of their rights under the Succession Act or have no means of vindicating them in court. In reality, succession rights for the vast majority of Kenyans are governed by customary norms, predominantly based on notions of patrilineal inheritance. While variations exist from community to community, the result is that men are considered the sole owners of household land and other assets, regardless of the contribution of their wives; sons inherit from their fathers while daughters generally do not; if they are fortunate, widows may maintain access to land upon the passing of their husbands, but only to hold it in trust for their sons; and women with no children or only daughters are not likely to inherit from their husbands. In parts of Kenya, indeed in many parts of Sub-Saharan Africa, the only way for a widow to retain her household's property is to be 'inherited', essentially remarried, to one of her husband's male relatives. Such 'wife inheritance' represents a clearly coercive, albeit traditional, way of providing widowed households a modicum of economic and social protection. The practice is falling out of use in some communities due to fears that widows will infect their new husbands with HIV. Given these patriarchal succession norms, Human Rights Watch has compiled evidence from across Kenya of widespread disinheritance and destitution for women and their children, especially girls, upon a separation from or the death of the male head of household. Human Rights Watch has also found that double orphans in Kenya are vulnerable to property-grabbers. This occurs partly because ostensible 'guardians' have taken custody of children in order to expropriate their inheritances, not to give proper care. In several cases, Human Rights Watch encountered relatives and guardians of children orphaned by AIDS who wished to safeguard their property, but ran into extensive legal difficulties. Because they could not produce birth certificates for the orphans and because of the corruption and incompetence of administrative, judicial and traditional authorities, many well-meaning guardians have been unable to assume trusteeship over the inheritances of orphans too young to claim their proprietary rights themselves. This has left orphans' legacies vulnerable to property grabbing. Similar results were found by Mwangi et al. in their study of AIDS and land rights in Bondo and Nyeri, two districts in the west and centre of Kenya that are severely affected by AIDS. The authors found that children were the most affected when it came to the impact of HIV/AIDS on land. Most respondents were aware of incidents in which relatives (typically men) had dispossessed orphans of their land and property under the pretext of acting as guardians. These situations were made worse by the lack of a legal framework to determine who is best suited to be guardian for the child in question. Moreover, the inability of minors to be signatories on title deeds or otherwise custodians of property, left orphans vulnerable to property grabbing unless a relative was willing and able to seek from local authorities recognition as a child's trustee and to faithfully fulfill this role; "their parents are [the children's source of] security, and with their demise, insecurity overshadows their entire existence." Mwangi et al. further point out that even if orphans are able to retain their property, it will most likely be vested in the male children; daughters are left dependent on the goodwill of their brothers and often carry the heaviest burden of providing for what remains of their families after AIDS has killed their parents. Female-headed households have been hit hard by the interaction of AIDS and property rights due to the stigma attached to disease: When a married man dies of AIDS or gets infected, the woman is often [falsely] accused of having infected her husband. Widows… are often condemned as the ones who have infected their husbands and are subsequently under massive pressure [from relatives] to leave their marital homes. Unmarried female-headed households that comprise roughly half of the households in the rural areas studied by Mwangi et al. were ordinarily apportioned land with user rights in order to build a house and to provide for themselves; sons in such households could inherit land from their grandfathers. However, according to the authors: in the event that a single mother died of HIV/AIDS or related causes, and left young orphans, the inheritance for her children was at great risk due to the single mother's 'questionable' position in her community and the stigma associated with HIV/AIDS. In depth research in three districts: Embu, Thika (both in central Kenya ), and Bondo, by Aliber et al., paints a somewhat different picture. In Embu district, for example, some anecdotal evidence of orphans being deprived of their inheritances was found, but so too was encouraging evidence that widows were generally secure in their land tenure and daughters were able to inherit from their parents. Interviews in Bondo district suggested that tenure insecurity is rife, but is not rooted in discrimination on the basis of gender or HIV-status: "many of the targets of land grabbing are men, and households not affected by HIV/AIDS appear to be equally likely to be threatened with tenure loss." Aliber et al. recognize that their methodology, using semi-structured interviews on the experiences of individual households may have made evidence of AIDS decreasing tenure security difficult to detect, since the disease is not easily discussed in many parts of Kenya . Nonetheless, the authors prudently warn: "that one should be wary of 'over-privileging' AIDS-affected households to special protective measures, especially given that tenure insecurity is experienced by many households irrespective of their particular exposure to AIDS." With the election of a new government in 2002, many had hoped that Kenya would strengthen protection for all its vulnerable citizens, especially with respect to property rights. Kenya 's current Constitution outlaws discrimination on the basis of sex, but exemptions largely eviscerate these provisions. Article 82(4) permits discrimination "with respect to adoption, marriage, divorce, and burial, devolution of property on death or other matters of personal law." The new government under President Kibaki has promised a new Constitution, a draft of which was released for Parliamentary debate in 2002. The draft includes a revamped Bill of Rights that would, according to Human Rights Watch, "be an enormous improvement over the current constitution in terms of women's property rights." Unfortunately, the adoption of a new Constitution has become mired in political dissent, with President Kibaki seeking more power for the Presidency than the drafting Constitutional Review Committee had intended. It is not clear if the any constitutional reforms will ever be enacted. Parallel promises had been made by the new government to reform Kenya 's customary land laws; however, public consultation on a new policy have yet to begin. ZAMBIA Zambia's colonial period began in earnest in the late 1800s when Cecil Rhodes annexed the territory to the British Empire (not so modestly) as Northern Rhodesia . In 1964, Zambia would ultimately gain independence in a relatively peaceful manner, and prospered for a short time due to profits from its wealthy copper mines. The copper industry has become sclerotic as a result of declining terms-of-trade, a program of nationalization in the 1970s that slowed capital invest and botched privatizations in the 1990s that have brought few benefits to the many Zambians that had come to rely on mining jobs. Today the mainstay of the economy is agriculture, the sector that employs some 75 percent of labour in Zambia , predominantly in small-scale production. Somewhat paradoxically, and worryingly for an economy that has reverted to a largely agricultural base, Zambia nonetheless has a sizeable urban population (estimated in 2002 at 40 percent of the total population of 10.7 million). This comparatively high degree of urbanization reflects Zambia 's historic role as a supplier of labour to mines and industries at home and throughout the Southern African region. Historically, Zambia has relied on relatively large-scale commercial farming to feed its urban workforce. Commercial farms (the progeny of pre-independence settler estates) are predominantly concentrated on State Land , for which tenure takes the form of long-term (99 year) leases from the President of Zambia. These leasehold interests are freely tradable on land markets. Only 6 percent of Zambia is State Land , representing the best land in terms of agronomic potential and ease of access to transportation (rail and road) networks. The remainder of the country is deemed Customary Land , tenure of which is regulated by local customary norms, generally under the governance of community chiefs; typically, chiefs make decisions regarding allocation of spare land; rights are usufructary, vested in male community-members and inheritable patrilineally. As part of the donor-driven Structural Adjustment Program undertaken by Zambia in the 1990s, Parliament passed the Land Act 1995. The Act continues to recognize customary tenure, but in a bid to create more privatized land holdings, allows any person who holds land under customary tenure to convert their plot into State Land secured by way of long-term lease. Traditional governance structures remain strong in rural Zambia, and so in order to assuage chiefs' concerns regarding the conversion of customary rights into leasehold rights, the Lands Act 1995 provides that the state 'shall not alienate any land situated in a district or an area where land is held under customary tenure without taking into consideration the local customary law on land tenure [and] without consulting the chief and the local authority in the area in which the land to be alienated is situated". Notwithstanding this statutory safeguard, the Land Act 1995 has been critiqued as opening a door for corrupt government officials—at their own behest or as agents for others—to expropriate land from customary users. Despite the conversion provision, the customary land tenure system still predominates in Zambia . This likely reflects low awareness in rural areas of the Land Act 1995, but also the relative abundance of arable land in Zambia obviating the need (at lease for healthy, male-headed) households to acquire leasehold title to secure their land holdings against encroachment. Yet despite Zambia 's comparatively rich endowment of land (and fresh water), the country is gripped by poverty. Since the collapse of the copper industry in the late 1970s and 1980s and moribund attempts to revive it through privatization, the people of Zambia have been struggling to survive economically. Eighty percent of the Zambians now live in chronic poverty. The per capita external debt amounts to US$605. The annual per capita national income: US$330. In a terribly vicious cycle, existing poverty has abetted the rapid spread of HIV infection in Zambia (for instance, by forcing girls into prostitution, where they are likely to be infected), while the toll of AIDS has driven the country further into misery. The adult (15-49 years) prevalence rate of infection was estimated (in 2001) at 21.5 percent. Zambia 's orphan population is expected to grow to over one million by 2010, with AIDS responsible in 77 percent of cases. The interaction of AIDS and poverty appears to be rendering property grabbing a ubiquitous phenomenon in Zambia . Adams writes that historically members of Zambia 's tribes enjoyed a 'right of avail': they could demand some land from their chief for subsidence purposes and the chief could not refuse—the ultimate traditional social safety-net. The right of avail has, however, been seriously eroded due to deepening poverty and is not available to the many urban Zambian poor that live disconnected from their traditional communities. Similarly, while customary land allocation has always disadvantaged women by denying them inheritance rights, traditional norms always provided a modicum of care for widows and orphans. In the era of AIDS this is changing. Scholz and Gomez conducted in-depth interviews in Zambia on women's inheritance rights and found that whilst: Customary systems used to ensure that the heir of the estate would protect and provide for the widow until she remarried or died. Nowadays, this responsibility is rarely, if ever, fulfilled. Rather, the majority of heirs [presumably adult sons or brothers of the deceased husband] simply take what they can and run. Many Zambians interviewed…blamed this on incessant poverty, saying that people are so desperate to gain any material goods, they will go to any extreme. According to Scholz and Gomez, widows rarely resist either because they are conditioned to believe that they deserve no property or fear they will be accused of being witches if they assert their claims. Orphans also appear to be vulnerable to dispossession. For instance one group of respondents on the outskirts of Kitwe , a large city in the copper-belt, explained to Scholz and Gomez that: "there are so many orphans here, child-headed households. There is no orphanage. When parents die, their relatives take everything. They are left with nothing." Statistics suggest the phenomenon is not unique to Kitwe : AIDS is thought to be responsible for a doubling, between 1991 and 1999, of the number of street children in the Zambian capital, Lusaka . Scholz and Gomez heard other evidence of children being coercively taken from widows, so that relatives could benefit from property to which the children are entitled under the Intestate Succession Act (discussed below). In 2003, the U.S. NGO Family Health International conducted interviews and focus groups across Zambia to assess the impacts of HIV/AIDS on orphaned children and their guardians. The key conclusions reached included that: many extended families were stretched to their limits trying to respond to the orphans created by the pandemic; orphaned children saw lost opportunities for education as the key impact of losing a parent or parents; and child heads of households got virtually no support from relatives. With respect to property grabbing, the study reported that prior traditions ensuring some protection for widows and their children have broken down. With the HIV epidemic and increasing poverty, families are more resistant to taking on the responsibility of care and protection for widows and children, but continue to want their property: Hence, it seems that a habit of property grabbing is beginning to occur with greater frequency. Most of the participants in the study referred to relatives taking the belongings of their deceased family members. Widows and child heads of household, in particular, were able to link the property grabbing with a result in decreased income levels. Widows and child heads of household face particular problems when relatives take houses from them. The few resources that could be used for education, food and health care, is diverted to providing shelter. In addition to physical hardships, these widows and children must deal emotionally with an acute sense of abandonment and…rejection by their families. Child and adult heads of households who were left houses, expressed gratitude for having one less problem to consume their survival efforts. The report further notes that very little succession planning occurs amongst HIV-affected families in Zambia (in part due to continued taboos around the disease and will-making), leaving children vulnerable to exploitation; many children interviewed spoke of having houses and other material goods taken away from them after their parents died. A study in Zambia by Human Rights Watch also found widespread evidence of widows and children being left destitute by relatives seizing their household possessions, comparable to findings by Scholz and Gomez, as well as the Family Health International report. While poverty appears to be at the root of property grabbing, Zambia 's laws and court system create an extremely permissive environment for such abuse. As Human Rights Watch points out, Zambia's Marriage Act sets out nondiscriminatory rules for property division and inheritance between husband and wife; the difficulty is that the vast majority of Zambians (both urban and rural) are not married under the Act, but under customary laws which typically provide no protection for female rights to property and inheritance. While very few Zambians actually write wills, those that do are subject to the Wills and Administration of Testate Estates Act of 1989. Part 1, s.3 of the Act allows a court to intervene if a will makes no "reasonable provisions" for the maintenance of a dependant—defined as the "wife, husband, child or parent" of the deceased. The law is quite inclusive, defining wives to cover the multiple spouses that make up polygamous unions (a common phenomenon in Zambia ) and children to include those born out of wedlock. Part VII, s.65(1) and (2) make it an offence for any unauthorized person to deprive another of property they are entitled to under the Act, on pain of fine or imprisonment, providing useful statutory grounds for combating property grabbing in the courts. The Act is undermined, however, by a major exemption: it does not apply to land held under customary law. Prima facie, the Intestate Succession Act of 1989 provides significant protection to the dependents'—including multiple wives and children born out of wedlock—of deceased who have not written wills. The Act requires that the intestate's estate be divided as follows: twenty percent to the surviving spouse(s); fifty percent to the deceased's children in such "proportions as are commensurate with a child's age or educational needs or both;" twenty percent to the parents of the deceased (divided equally between mother and father, if both are alive); and ten percent to any other of the deceased's dependents, in equal shares. Other important protections include s. 9 of the Act which provides that any house in an estate shall devolve to the deceased's spouse and their children; when there is more than one widow or child, all are to hold the house as tenants in common. Under ss. 32-35, when minors are the sole beneficiaries of an estate, they require a court appointed guardian to ensure that their interests are protected. Guardians may not benefit from this position, and if they deprive minors of property inherited under the Act are liable to fine or imprisonment. That the Intestate Succession Act has failed to deter a surge of property grabbing reflects weaknesses in the law itself, but also its incongruence with Zambian customary beliefs and the law's lax application by the courts. The Act features two gapping loopholes, applying neither to land held under customary tenure nor 'family property', defined loosely as movable and immovable property that belongs collectively to the family. Yet according to Zambia 's leading NGO on gendered legal issues—Women and Law Southern Africa : The [Intestate Succession Act] is weakened first and foremost by the lack of conviction among women themselves that they have a legal right to their deceased husband's property, and secondly, by their fear of reprisals should they invoke the law. Furthermore, even the lawyers and the law enforcement agencies such as the police and Local Courts may have failed to give the new law the respect it deserves and encourage its use. Scholz and Gomez, reached similar conclusions, finding that many Zambians perceived the law as based on western cultural norms and a betrayal of African traditions. Perhaps not surprisingly, men were particularly opposed to the Act, often citing fears that "if their wives knew they could inherit such a large share, particularly the 70 percent they stood to gain if their children were still minors, they would 'get smart and kill us!'" Interestingly, many women—especially those whose sons had married—also did not believe that widows should be allowed to inherit property under the Act; as these women grow older, they rely increasingly on their sons to provide for their care and well-being. "These mothers argue that they are the ones who raised their sons, put them through school, and invested in them. Therefore, in the event of a son's death, his estate should repay and provide for his mother, not his widow." Those women or other vulnerable members of Zambian society that seek to vindicate their rights under the Intestate Succession Act are unlikely to receive much comfort from the courts. The Act provides at s. 43 that the higher the value of the estate at stake, the higher the level of court that has jurisdiction over its devolution. For the vast majority of Zambians, this means that disputes regarding the Act must be taken to the Local Courts, bodies that normally adjudicate differences under customary law. These courts have been found consistently ignorant or dismissive of the Act and civil law more generally. They are widely known to distribute inheritances without reference to the percentages mandated by the Intestate Succession Act, or to undermine its spirit by issuing extraordinarily low fines for property grabbing. The Local Courts prevent lawyers from participating in proceedings. Often they appoint a male relative of the deceased spouse to act as an administrator, even though they have no jurisdiction to do so. Most widows interviewed by the Scholz and Gomez expressed: Dissatisfaction at how Local Court justices had handled their cases. These justices are exclusively male and often show bias towards the deceased husband's male relatives. Not only poor women, but women of all classes encounter such discrimination. In addition, the Government of Zambia has been criticized for its neglect of the Local Courts, which are understaffed, under-funded and under-regulated. Many of these courts are short of or entirely lack proper materials, including copies of important laws. Their officials admit that they have little to no formal legal training…. Scholz and Gomez add that while decisions from the Local Courts can be appealed to the High Court, "many women are very reluctant to take this course of action, as it takes too much time and costs too much money." Arguably such discriminatory treatment by the Local Courts cannot be squared with Zambia 's current Constitution of 1996, whose Article 23(3) guarantees the equal application of laws to all, irrespective—inter alia—of gender. Worryingly, however, Article 23(4) of the Constitution excludes the application of this anti-discrimination clause to all laws with respect to "adoption, marriage, divorce, burial, devolution of property on death or other matters of personal law" and whenever "customary law" is applicable (i.e. most land tenure situations). Since August 2003, the Constitution has been under review, with gender discrimination on the agenda of the Constitutional Review Commission. Sadly, the process appears not to be advancing, with President Levy Mwanawasa (elected in 2001) now advocating a go slow approach to reform. The government had also released a Draft Land Policy in 2002, proposing to reform the Land Act of 1995, inter alia by guaranteeing that 30% of land in the country be demarcated and allocated to women. Adams warns, sadly presciently, that such a measure is "not practicable and in any case would be impossible to monitor." To date, the Draft Policy has experienced fierce resistance from traditional leaders and consultations on its possible implementation continue. MALAWI Malawi is a small, lush and green, land locked nation in the southern great lakes region of Africa of 11 million people. The country has been hard hit by HIV/AIDS. Malawi is the poorest of the nations considered in this paper, with a gross per capita annual income (in 2002) of just 160 US$. According to Stephen Lewis, Malawi 's medical and governance capacities are shockingly inadequate to respond to its AIDS pandemic, which is spreading largely unabated. The adult (15 to 49 years) prevalence rate of HIV infection in Malawi stood at fifteen percent in 2002. Approximately eighteen percent of Malawian children—some one million young people—are estimated to be orphaned, the majority as a result of AIDS. Evidence suggests that the combination of AIDS and existing poverty is leading to the dispossession of orphans or their surviving parent on a regular basis in Malawi . Malawi's economy is predominantly based on subsidence agriculture and land scarcity is a very serious problem. According to research conducted in 1998, some 75,000 rural households that needed land for cultivation had none; average household land holdings are generally shrinking as fixed plots are divided between successive generations; and disputes over land have generally been on the rise. Three land tenure regimes are in operation under the Land Act: customary, freehold, and leasehold. Customary land accounts for 70 to 80 percent of the total land and is utilized by most of the country's smallholder farmers, as well as a disproportionate concentration of those living in poverty. Statutory law governing inheritance (the Wills and Inheritance Act) does not extend to customary land, which has traditionally been allocated by chiefs according to customary law. Increasingly, however, chiefs are being left out of allocation decisions. Mbaya explains that in "most communities, there remains very little land that is not already allocated to a family." Once land is allocated by chiefs to a family, the normal perception is that the plot will stay in the hands of that lineage in perpetuity. "This means that family heads now play the allocation role as their holdings are fragmented to accommodate new family members." Research suggests, therefore, that decisions around allocation of property, including in relationship to inheritance, are not being based on customary laws (which have been eroded by the marginalization of chiefs) but by the perceptions of heads of households regarding what is right. Freehold land is privately-held and fully alienable. It is noteworthy that Malawi 's legislation pertaining to the acquisition of freehold land (the Land Law) does not discriminate between the sexes, a comparatively enlightened approach for Southern Africa where many countries bar women from ever owning private land. Despite this de jure equality, de facto very few women in Malawi have the opportunity to own freehold land. After all, 85 percent of Malawian women work in subsistence agriculture, the limited remuneration from which must generally preclude private land purchases. Leasehold tenure reflects attempts by Malawi 's post-independence government, beginning in the late 1960's, to develop a Black commercial agriculture estate sector. Households holding land under customary tenure can apply to have the land transferred to leasehold; leasehold interests can in-turn be rented or sold. According to Mbaya, the accelerated transfer of customary land to leasehold (up to 50 percent of customary land in some districts) has threatened the livelihoods of householders that remain dependant on customary access to land; moreover, agricultural estates consolidated out of leasehold land have tended to be underutilized, while ecological pressures on remaining customary land have steadily risen. To the extent that customary norms still inform succession in Malawi , it is notable that the country features both matrilineal and patrilineal systems of inheritance, the latter being employed predominantly in the south and centre of the country, the latter in the north. Patrilineal systems function similar to those considered in Uganda , Kenya and Zambia , with windows and their children denied rights to matrimonial land and home upon the death of the male head of household and dependant on the goodwill of his relatives for continued access. The matrilineal system suggests a potentially more beneficial system for women and their children, since inheritance passes through the female line. The reality is more complicated. On the positive side, with regards to customary land it appears that in practice women in matrilineal communities are able to keep their lands for themselves and their children if their husbands die—their access to property does not depend on the husband. Nonetheless, while usufruct rights are held by, and through women, (with husband's accessing land through their wives), women's tenure is at the discretion of their maternal uncles. Moreover, according to Mbaya conflicts often arise, especially in cases of intestacy, with regards to leasehold tenures—which are freely alienable and so (unlike customary land) valuable liquid capital. "Under the matrilineal system of marriage, a man's rightful heirs are his sister's children. Hence, it is often the case that on the death of the leaseholder, his sister's children claim the farm as their property at the expense of their cousins, the children of the deceased."Mbaya adds that in response to the frequency of such conflicts, a Presidential Commission has recommended a reformed system allowing for direct inheritance of all categories of property by a deceased's surviving spouse or children. Instead, as the pandemic takes its toll, there is much anecdotal evidence that surviving spouses and children of households afflicted by AIDS are increasingly not receiving any kind of inheritance. Mbaya points out that households afflicted, or perceived to be afflicted, by AIDS are often severely stigmatized in Malawi , and so generally less able to protect their property from grabbing-relatives and others. In particular, widows under patrilineal systems, and to a lesser extend widowers under matrilineal systems, appear vulnerable to eviction by relatives; orphans are vulnerable to being denied access to property on which they depend, irrespective of the system. Media reports suggest that such disinheritance is widespread in Malawi . The New York Times recently quoted Seodi White, head of the Malawi chapter of the respected NGO Women and Law in Southern Africa : "It is the saddest, saddest story. People are cashing in on AIDS. Women are left with nothing but the disease. Every time you hear it you get shocked, but in fact it is normal. That's the horror of it." Counselors at Malawi 's AIDS Information and Counselling Centre (MAICC), an NGO offering HIV testing and support in central Malawi , report that most of the women visiting the centre "have trouble with inheritance". It ought not to be so, according to Malawi 's law and policy. S. 24(2)(c) of the Malawian Constitution provides that "Any law that discriminates against women on the basis of gender or marital status shall be invalid and legislation shall be passed to eliminate customs and practices that discriminate against women, particularly practices such as -…(c) deprivation of property, including property obtained by inheritance." Malawi' s National Land Policy of 2002 states at s. E(2) that "The Government strongly supports gender sensitive access to land and calls for changes in inheritance laws to allow the remaining spouse, children and especially orphans to inherit the property of their parents even when the deceased parent or parents die without a will." Finally, Malawi's Wills and Inheritance Act provides that where a husband dies intestate (the case some 90 percent of the time) widows and children must be given a share of the property of the estate, to the exclusion of heirs at customary law. That the Wills and Inheritance Act does not prevent widespread disinheritance of widows and orphans, partly reflects the exclusion of land held under customary tenure from its ambit. The Act's allocation criteria are also problematic: in patrilineal communities widows must, at law, allow their husbands' relatives half the estate. According to Malawi 's National Statistics Office (NSO), about 55 percent of smallholder farmers in the country have less than one hectare of cultivable land, which does not meet their basic needs. The loss of half of this amount can, one imagines, be devastating. More fundamentally, however, Malawi 's vulnerable widows and orphans are largely unable to vindicate their rights under the Act. Few know their rights; those that do are coerced by relatives from pursuing them, or cannot afford the legal costs of a fight in court ( Malawi has 500 lawyers for a population of 11 million). The court process is made even less accessible by bureaucratic requirements that the poor find hard to meet, such as producing a death certificate, in a context where many deceased are buried before such paperwork can be secured. Finally, reports suggest that magistrates' courts, where inheritance claims are processed, are often corrupt and easily bought off by property grabbing relatives. COMBATTING PROPERTY GRABBING: POLICY IMPERATIVES Four interrelated rationales suggest a need for policies to combat property grabbing against orphans and widows, as part of a comprehensive program to deal with the HIV/AIDS epidemic and its social consequences. The first reflects basic norms of equality; the second recognizes that dispossession fuels the spread of HIV/AIDS; the third concerns the emotional wellbeing of orphaned children; and the fourth considers the risk that the large-scale, inequitable redistribution of wealth being affected by property grabbing will sow added turmoil for African states in the years to come. Long before a parent or parents die from HIV/AIDS, the economic situation of families afflicted by the disease begins to deteriorate: scarce household resources are diverted to medical treatments and adults are unable to work as they begin to succumb. When a parent dies from AIDS, funeral costs put a further strain on surviving members of the family. In short, even if property grabbing did not occur, orphans will often be left in a precarious economic situation. There does not appear to be any quantitative analysis calculating the further damage caused when orphans or surviving parents are victims of property grabbing, but the qualitative research cited in the case studies above generally suggests that dispossession of inheritance can push households from a modicum of economic security to desperation. In Zambia , research showed that widows and child headed households that were allowed to inherit homes, were (not surprisingly) better able to meet expenses for food and schooling, as compared to those forced to pay for new shelter. In Kenya , Human Rights Watch has documented the destitution of many households due to property grabbing. Monica Wamuyo's story is prototypical: " A forty-year-old widow from the Kikuyu ethnic group, [she] said her in-laws evicted her when her husband died in 1996. She and her husband had lived in a spacious house in Nyeri on land where she grew vegetables. Soon after Wamuyo's husband died, her in-laws pressured her to leave. "My father-in-law would kick my door at night and tell me I should leave because it was his land. He said if I wanted land, I should go to my mother and ask for land." When Wamuyo protested, her father-in-law demanded that she be his second wife. "I told him I had never heard of such a thing in our tradition," she said. "I went to the elders because I wanted to continue living there.... The elders said I had to move out." Wamuyo moved to Nairobi 's Kangemi slum, where she earns money washing clothes. She said she was crushed by losing her land and now struggles to make ends meet: "Sometimes I'm unable to buy food for my children. They haven't been in school since 1997....I told my daughters to look for housework. In Malawi , the New York Times recently reported on the sadly illustrative story of Chikumbutso Zuze, an eleven year-old orphan whose father died of AIDS, precipitating the seizure of virtually all his household's property by the father's nephew. Chikumbutso's mother resisted the dispossession, but was herself weakened by AIDS and soon died. The loss of the family's house and truck are bitter legacies for Chikumbutso, who: now lives off the charity of his maternal aunt and uncle, who say they struggle daily to feed their own six school-age children. To raise money for food, the boy carries buckets of water, hauls sand from the river and solicits other chores from the neighbor. ''I don't have a permanent place to stay,'' he wrote in a notebook provided to him by Unicef, which endeavors to track and aid orphans like Chikumbutso. ''I am shifted from one place to another, sometimes on a weekly basis. Assistance which I need: food, clothes, blankets, school uniform.'' He is at least marginally better off than his 14-year-old sister, Labbecca. A few weeks ago she turned up on the doorstep of his aunt, Befiya Phaelemwe, begging to be taken in. But the aunt said the pittance her husband earned patching clothes was not enough to feed her own children and Chikumbutso. She gestured toward a metal bucket half-filled with corn on the floor—the sum total, she said, of the family's provisions. ''I told her the house was small and I could not take one more child,'' she said. ''She was full of sorrow.'' In tears, Labbecca trudged off, saying maybe a boyfriend would provide her with a place to sleep. Ms. Phaelemwe said she had not seen her since and had no idea where she was. Said Chikumbutso: ''I am very worried.'' What these life stories illustrate is that fundamental norms of equality are violated by property grabbing against orphans and widows. No one should be deprived of the inheritance on which their livelihood depends so that a relative or another can get ahead. Protecting individual widows and orphans from such abuse is cause enough to respond to property grabbing, but wider economic considerations also call for action. As the World Bank points out in a comprehensive study of land law reform, effective access to land rights by women in Africa tends to: boost agricultural productivity (since women are better able to fulfill their full potential as agriculturists); and to ensure that household incomes are spent productively, on for example children's schooling (since women are less likely than men to waste income on personal consumption). Moreover, in communities where property grabbing is condoned, costly, distracting, often violent battles frequently break out between widows and relatives over inheritance, creating a systematic impediment to women's full participation in the economy. Beyond basic equity concerns, preventing the spread of HIV/AIDS adds a further rationale for confronting property grabbers. As UNAIDS explains: Poverty, underdevelopment and the inability to choose one's own destiny fuel this epidemic. Poverty may reduce an individual's ability to avoid becoming infected. For example, lack of income may lead people to engage in high-risk, income-generating activities such as sex work. Sex workers may engage in sex without condoms for the sake of higher fees. Poverty is also associated with lower education, which may, in turn, be associated with lower awareness of measures to prevent HIV infection. Also, the poorer the individual, the less likely that individual will be to have access to treatment, care, preventative interventions. Action against AIDS must be part and parcel of poverty reduction and development strategies. To the extent that preventing property grabbing can help keep women and children out of desperate poverty, such measure should help control the epidemic and its effects. Stopping property grabbing may also assist the psychological wellbeing of orphaned children. It bears recalling that millions of orphans are growing up in Africa with extraordinary emotional burdens caused by: grief over loss of parents, fear of the future, worries about immediate economic circumstances and discrimination and isolation. The psychological toll these burdens will take is difficult to quantify, but intuitively the more children are deprived of stability, love and nurturing, the greater the emotional difficulties they will face as adults. Indeed, research suggests that minimizing "concurrent stressors" (worries over access to school, economic security) is vital to helping African children that have lost parents to AIDS through the bereavement process. So too is the protection of continuing emotional bonds between the child and the deceased, which for some children entails continued attachment to family property. Ensuring orphans inherit from their parents should therefore help their psychological wellbeing, by providing them a measure of economic security and an outlet for continued emotional connection to the deceased parent(s). The final rationale for preventing property grabbing is to pre-empt the great risk of systemic conflict that such abuse could seed. Many orphans will reach adulthood and may seek to avenge the destitution relatives wrought on them or their mothers or may try to take back property, creating a further source of violence and instability in African states. In other cases, orphans (especially males) will themselves internalize the notion that taking from others, irrespective of the consequences, is acceptable, thus perpetuating oppression of the weak by the strong (such as property grabbing) to the long-term detriment of human rights in Africa . COMBATTING PROPERTY GRABBING: RECOMMENDATIONS FOR ACTION Two fundamental aspects of property grabbing make it a particularly thorny phenomenon to resolve. First, it is rooted in poverty: because opportunities for economic advancement have become increasingly slim in those parts of Africa hard hit by AIDS (partly due to the disease, partly due to external factors like prolonged drought and declining terms-of-trade for exports) relatives appear more emboldened to outright take from each other than has traditionally been the case. Property grabbing appears merely a symptom of a much deeper conundrum confronting Africa : chronic poverty. Second, whilst the normative stance of this paper is that property grabbing is wrong, the phenomenon is grounded in entrenched patriarchal traditions. In affected countries, therefore, many (including women) see the dispossession of widows and orphans as a fact of life, not a problem to be overcome. Widows and orphans are expected to cope—the former by returning to their parents—the latter by accepting whatever guardianship is arranged for them, no matter how oppressive—not to complain. With these caveats in place, the following are a series of recommendations for mitigating property grabbing or its ill effects. The first set of recommendations do not specifically target property grabbing, but rather seek to change the macro conditions that allow such abuse to thrive. The second set focus directly on the problem, suggesting measures specifically to deter property grabbers. Macro Recommendations Reduce Poverty: to remind that there are no quick fixes to poverty in Africa is platitudinous, but sadly it seems, unavoidable. To the extent that property grabbing cannot be easily stopped where poverty abounds, a first step would be for western nations to stop talking about comprehensive debt-forgiveness and to start providing it. As UNAIDS underscores, under the current paradigm: Crippling debt burdens are undermining the ability of many African governments to [even] tackle the pandemic. Malawi , for example, spends the same amount servicing its debt as it does on health. Zambia pays about US$125 million a year on its debt—more than two-thirds the amount it spends on health, education and welfare combined. Its time this stopped, so that Africans can start building for tomorrow, not perpetually paying for the follies of strong men past. Combat the stigma attached to AIDS: As noted in the Kenya and Malawi case studies above, widows and orphans are often stigmatized if their misfortune is perceived to have been caused by AIDS. The disease is so shameful in the eyes of many that those made vulnerable by AIDS do not deserve community or extended family support. Overcoming the stigma associated with AIDS in Africa is crucial to fighting the pandemic, since prevention (i.e. safe sex) is greatly hampered if people fear being open about their HIV-status. Moreover, discrimination unnecessarily marginalizes HIV-positive people (a sizeable portion of the population in several African states) depriving society and the economy of their full potential. A further benefit of lifting the veil of shame that surrounds AIDS infection in Africa is that it will enhance the status of those widowed or orphaned by the disease, and so could help boost their ability to resist property grabbers. Combating stigma requires leaders and influential organizations to take action. There are positive signs: the Anglicans in Uganda , for example, have made a broad effort to ensure that those living with AIDS are welcome at church. Nelson Mandela's recent public disclosure that his son has died of AIDS is an iconographic message to Africans that it is okay to speak openly of the disease. Rule of Law Reform: The case studies above suggest that inaccessibility, bias and corruption in courts render it very difficult for orphans and widows to vindicate rights to property that they have at law. Further evidence suggests that other branches of the legal system are also failing; in Kenya , for example, widows generally see no point going to the police—unless their children are physically threatened—to stop abuses by property grabbers, because of police indifference to their plight and corruption. Prima facie this suggests that the broad movement to reform legal institutions in developing countries may indirectly assist to prevent property grabbing by improving the equity and effectiveness of judicial and police bodies. Since the late 1990s there has been a trend towards donor encouraged rule of law reform, premised on the idea that effective legal institutions are necessary for promoting human rights, but also investment and growth. As Daniels and Trebilcock underscore, however, legal institutions such as judiciaries typically operate the ways they do because of deeply embedded vested interests, and it is naïve to believe that change can be easily bought by donor funds. Indeed, World Bank indicators (seeking to quantify, inter alia the independence of judiciaries) suggest that the quality of the rule of law deteriorated between 1996 and 2002 in each of the countries studied above. Moreover, as Daniels and Trebilcock explain, state courts in many African jurisdictions are vestiges of oppressive colonial regimes, and have yet to gain credibility and respect: "under-staffed and under-resourced state courts in many African states are seldom in a position to compete with highly resilient, locally legitimate and resource-independent community courts and modes of dispute resolution." This suggests (a point expanded on below) that property grabbing may best be stopped by seeking to influence traditional authorities, not formal courts. At the same time, however, where traditional authorities are weak, courts may legitimately step in to resolve community disputes. In Zambia , for example, courts in rural areas were found to largely impose customary rules regarding property grabbing, to the detriment of widows. In contrast, in urban areas customary rules have eroded and local courts have taken the lead as institutions for solving community disputes, "applying concepts of logic and fairness in the process", thus allowing widows to better protect their rights. This suggests that efforts at judicial reform should be targeted carefully at courts that are amenable to change and have a meaningful role to play in conflict resolution for the vulnerable. Help Orphans get to School: According to UNAIDS, "staying in school offers orphaned children the best chance of escaping extreme poverty and its associated risks." Parents and orphans would appear to share this wisdom since in the case studies above this emerged as one of their top concerns for the future. This confirms that assisting orphans with their school fees is an absolutely vital step. This is may achieved through targeted subsidies to assist orphans to pay fees, as is currently occurring, for example, in Swaziland with the help from the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Malaria and Tuberculosis. However, in a context where many households find it difficult to afford schooling for their children, subsidies risk encouraging deep-seeded resentment against children affected by AIDS. Ideally, therefore, all children should receive quality universal education, with donor support filling-in where countries cannot afford such delivery themselves. Even without property grabbing, school fees are difficult for AIDS-affected households to meet. When property is taken, it becomes impossible for most. In short, if property grabbing cannot be stopped, at least its ill-effects can be mitigated through access to schooling. Micro Recommendations Agencies Providing Support to Orphans Should Take Practical Steps to Discourage Property Grabbing: In Kwa-Zulu Natal, South Africa, a hospice providing care to child-headed households ensures that one of the older children in a family always remains at the family home, to help keep property grabbers at bay. In Kenya , a local NGO requires guardians to register as trustees for orphans property, with "titles lodged with the local administration for safekeeping until the children grow up", as a pre-condition to giving guardian families aid and support for the orphans. These are pragmatic steps that can be taken by NGOs and others to deter property grabbing. They should be replicated whenever practicable. Encourage Succession Planning: Several NGOs, notably in Uganda , have begun programs assisting HIV-positive parents in Africa plan for their eventual passing. Programs tend to emphasize the preparation of Memory Books, a document of the family's history to be kept by children as a memento of their parents, as well as the writing of wills. Counseling parents in succession planning is not easy; as noted in all the case studies, will-writing is extremely rare in eastern and southern Africa because it is widely considered an alien practice that invites death. Allocation decisions regarding property are traditionally made by clan leaders or influential relatives (sometimes long) after the deceased's funeral. Succession planning projects to date have had limited success in overcoming these cultural barriers to written wills, but have produced some positive results. They have successfully encouraged parents to plan guardianship for their children before they die, thus reducing the risk that exploitative relatives will take children for their property. Moreover, some evidence exists that written wills or instructions on inheritance included in Memory Books, have helped sway relatives or local authorities to allocate the deceased's property to orphans or surviving spouse(s). Learning from these projects, and including elements of them in wider assistance for HIV-positive families, appears worth pursuing. Statutory Reform versus Swaying Local Leaders: In each of the countries studied above, it emerged that statutory laws that prima facie offered a measure of protection to orphans' and widows' property upon succession, were largely undermined by exemptions for property held under customary tenure. It is tempting, therefore, to recommend a comprehensive overhaul of laws to ensure direct inheritance of all categories of property by a deceased's surviving spouse or children. The challenge is that any such move is likely to raise the ire of traditional or local leaders who will fear, inter alia, that customary norms are under threat, along with (more prosaically) the influence they garner from being arbiters of property rights in their communities. As the case studies above indicate, these local leaders are forces to be reckoned with. Given that African legislators tend to be sympathetic to the patriarchal values that infuse their societies, and customary leaders are a powerful lobby, it has proven very difficult to pass statutory reforms to protect the property of widows and (especially girl) children. In 1998, for example, women's groups in Uganda engaged in intense lobbying to have a clause requiring spousal co-ownership of land included in proposed land legislation. These activists succeeded in eliciting a promise from the government to include the clause, only to see it removed in last-minute parliamentary debate. Moreover, passing progressive laws that alienate local and traditional leaders is relatively futile given that these actors—not expensive, dysfunctional formal legal institutions—offer the only viable avenue for relief and protection available to the bulk of vulnerable households threatened by property grabbers. Chastened by failed attempts to impose formal property law on customary and local leaders, development organizations from the World Bank to Oxfam have concluded that the best way to encourage property rights reform in sub-Saharan Africa, including tenure security for women, is to 'build on' customary property systems, not to try and overrule them with statutory regimes. In contrast, Whitehead and Tsikata underscore that African feminist lawyers generally remain skeptical of the ability for customary or habitual local norms rooted in patriarchy to offer meaningful change, without serious pressure from a progressive statutory regime. In light of this tension, the best reform strategy for confronting property grabbing is likely to encourage legislators to pass laws that maintain a role for customary and local leaders in tenure systems, but that also insist on minimum protections for surviving children and spouses to all types of property. If nothing else this will send a message to local leaders that dispossession of women and children is not condoned by the state. Simultaneously, efforts should be made by political leaders, NGOs and donors to try and sway opinion across the local leadership class towards protecting orphans and widows. The unwritten, inherently malleable nature of customary norms does have a virtue: if local leaders can be convinced of the evils of property grabbing, they can very quickly apply a new approach to their decision making. In their study of Kenya , Aliber et al found that whether a widow had access to a sympathetic local headman made an enormous difference in her ability to defeat property grabbers. Local leaders can be sensitized to the needs of women and children and educated regarding the links between destitution and the spread of HIV that threatens their communities. At the same time, Africa 's churches may have a powerful role to play enlightening leaders, since the religious message of helping the vulnerable coincides well with broader equity arguments against property grabbing. According to James 1:27, "Pure and undefiled religion before God the Father is this: to care for orphans and widows in their misfortune and to keep oneself unstained by the world." Educate Orphans and Widows on their Rights at Law: Statutory reform should be accompanied by renewed efforts to inform widows and orphans (assuming they are old enough to comprehend) of their rights to inheritance. Many NGOs are engaged in such activities across sub-Saharan African, but judging by the extent of continued ignorance as to these rights, it appears there is a need for scaled-up efforts. In cases where customary norms are relatively benign, it may also be helpful to assist orphans and widows understand the protections they enjoy under local traditions (such as rights of avail), since their first line of defense against property grabbers will likely be community-based conflict-resolution mechanisms. Pursue High Profile Litigation: A final recommendation is for strategic litigation to be pursued by activists to challenge statutory laws that encourage property grabbing. A particularly ripe vein for litigation appears to be the inconsistencies within the constitutions of the countries studied, which formally prohibit discrimination against women and children, but allow this to persist by recognizing customary legal norms that are anathema to the basic property entitlements of widows and orphans. Ideally, court action could address this dissonance by requiring governments to extend minimum protections to women and children under customary rules, commensurate with the values of non-discrimination enshrined in the constitutions. Constitutional arguments to this effect can be bolstered by citing the numerous international human rights instruments on point. For example, the African Charter on Human and Peoples' Rights (which Kenya , Zambia , and Malawi have ratified) provides at Article 18 that "the State shall ensure the elimination of every discrimination against women and also ensure the protection of the rights of the woman and the child as stipulated in international declarations and conventions." In turn, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), widely recognized as customary international law, provides at Article 2 that: "Everyone is entitled to all the rights and freedoms set forth in this Declaration, without distinction of any kind, such as race, colour, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or other status." These include: rights to equality before the law and to equal protection; the right to own property; and the right to an adequate standard of living, including the right to adequate housing. The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) (ratified by all four countries studied herein), which elaborates and codifies the rights articulated in the UDHR, explicitly recognizes at Article 3 the right to equality between women and men and the right to non-discrimination. This has been interpreted by the United Nations Human Rights Committee to require that: "Women should also have equal inheritance rights to those of men when the dissolution of marriage is caused by the death of one of the spouses." The ICCPR further requires at Article 24 that "Every child shall have, without any discrimination as to race, colour, sex, language, religion, national or social origin, property or birth, the right to such measures of protection as are required by his status as a minor, on the part of his family, society and the State." Finally, the African Charter on the Rights and Welfare of the Child (ratified by Kenya, Malawi, and Uganda, but only signed by Zambia) includes Article 21 requiring States Parties to "take all appropriate measures to eliminate harmful social and cultural practices affecting the welfare, dignity, normal growth and development of the child…" The Charter further provides at Article 25 that "any child who is permanently or temporarily deprived of his family environment for any reason shall be entitled to special protection and assistance." More broadly, at Article 4 the Charter requires that "In all actions concerning the child undertaken by any person or authority the best interests of the child shall be the primary consideration." It is difficult to see how a legal environment that regularly permits the dispossession of widowed mothers and orphans meets the international obligations detailed above. CONCLUSION The best interests of sub-Saharan Africa 's inordinate number of orphans are betrayed when they, or their widowed parent, are callously deprived of vital household property. The pluralistic legal systems in Uganda , Kenya , Zambia and Malawi have always tolerated customary norms that limit or simply deny inheritance rights of widows and their children to the benefit of relatives. Orphans will always be vulnerable to exploitation, including appropriation of their legacies by those with the temerity to take from innocent children. The HIV/AIDS pandemic appears, however, to have gravely accentuated the frequency and depth of such property grabbing. While there are no easy solutions to prevent property grabbing, its proliferation is a serious social consequence of the HIV/AIDS pandemic for Africa 's generation of orphans. Combating property grabbing should, therefore, be integrated into holistic plans for confronting and ultimately defeating HIV/AIDS.
LEGISLATION Constitution of Malawi , 1996, online: http://chambo.sdnp.org.mw/ruleoflaw/lawcom/reports.html Constitution of the Republic of Uganda , 1995, online: www.parliament.go.ug/Constitute.htm. INTERNATIONAL INSTRUMENTS African Charter on Human and Peoples' Rights, online: www.africa-union.org African Charter on the Rights and Welfare of the Child, online: www.africa-union. International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, online: www.unhchr.ch/html/menu3/b/a_ccpr.htm International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, online: www.unhchr.ch/html/menu3/b/a_ccpr.htm United Nations Human Rights Committee, General Comment No. 28, online: www.unhchr.ch. Universal Declaration of Human Rights, adopted and proclaimed by UN General Assembly Resolution 217A (III) of 10 December 1948. SECONDARY MATERIAL: MONOGRAPHS Adams, Martin. 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Situation Analysis of Orphans in Uganda : Orphans and Their Households—Caring for the Future, Today ( Kampala : Government of Uganda Ministry of Gender, Labour, and Social Development & the Uganda AIDS Commission, 2002). Witter, Sophie. Breaking the Silence: Memory Books and Succession Planning—The Experience of NACWOLA and Save the Children UK in Uganda ( London : Save the Children, 2004) SECONDARY MATERIAL: ARTICLES Daniels, Ronald J.& Michael Trebilcock. The Political Economy of Rule of Law Reform in Developing Countries, January 13, 2005 Unpublished manuscript: Law and Development Bridge Week: Course Materials, February 2005, University of Toronto , Faculty of Law Deininger, Klaus, Marito Garcia & K. Subbarao. "AIDS-Induced Orphanhood as a Systemic Shock: Magnitude, Impact, and Program Interventions in Africa " (2003) 31 World Development 1201 Kalinda, Thomson, Glenn Filson & James Shute. "Resources, Household Decision Making and Organisation of Labour in Food Production Among Small-Scale Farmers in southern Zambia " (2000) 17 Development Southern Africa 165 Patterson, Amy S. "AIDS, Orphans, and the Future of Democracy in Africa" in The Children of Africa Confront AIDS: from Vulnerability to Possibility, ed. Arvind Singhal and W. Stephen Howard, ( Athens : Ohio University Press, 2003) Pender, John, et. al. "Development Pathways and Land Management in Uganda ", (2004) 32 World Development 767 Peters, Pauline E. "Inequality and Social Conflict Over Land in Africa " (2004) 4 Journal of Agrarian Change 269 Scott, Guy. " Zambia : Structural Adjustment, Rural Livelihoods and Sustainable Development" (2002) 19 Development Southern Africa 405 Skinner Cook, Alicia, Janet Julia Fritz & Rose Mwonya. "Understanding the Psychological and Emotional Needs of AIDS Orphans in Africa" in The Children of Africa Confront AIDS: from Vulnerability to Possibility, ed. Arvind Singhal and W. Stephen Howard, ( Athens : Ohio University Press, 2003) Whitehead, Ann & Dzodzi Tsikata, "Policy Discourses on Women's Land Rights in Sub-Saharan African: The Implications of the Re-turn to the Customary" (2003) 3 Journal of Agrarian Change 67 NEWSPAPERS, NEWSWIRES AND OTHER NEWS SOURCES —"Government to End Property Grabbing" Malawi Insider ( Blantyre ) (July 31, 2002), online: allafrica.com —"Land Policy Overdue" The National ( Nairobi ) (12 March 2005) online: allafrica.com —"Property Grabbing Escalates in Wake of HIV/Aids Deaths" UN Integrated Regional Information Networks ( Malawi ) (November 29, 2002), online: allafrica.com —" Swaziland : Tempers Flare As Govt Pays Orphans' School Fees" UN Integrated Regional Information Networks ( Swaziland ) (27 January 2005), online: www.allafrica.com Chipungu, Joel. "Property Grabbing Rages On In Malawi" Panafrican News Agency (PANA Lusaka , Zambia ) (January 6, 2000), online: allafrica.com Gama, Hobbs . "Women Activists Take Property Grabbers Head On" African Church Information Service, (September 16, 2002), online: allafrica.com Lafraniere, Sharon. "AIDS and Custom Leave African Families Nothing" New York Times (18 February 2005), online: nytimes.com. Malupenga, Amos. "I Am a Victim of Bad Legacy – Levy" The Post ( Lusaka ) (March 11, 2005), online: www.allafrica.com Maunga, Nomusa. "Kabeta Expresses Concern Over Game Title Deeds Allocation" The Post ( Lusaka ) (February 15, 2005), online: allafrica.com Nolen, Stephanie. "Breaking a taboo, Mandela says AIDS killed son" Globe and Mail ( Toronto ) (7 January 2005), online: www.globeandmail.com Onyango, Dennis. "Nagging Questions" The East African Standard ( Nairobi ) (5 March 2005), online: allafrica.com Phiri, Brighton & Larry Moonze. "Levy Seeks Conviction of Plunderers" The Post ( Lusaka ) (October 20, 2003), online: allafrica.com Human Rights Watch, Double Standard, supra at 32-33. The following districts are exempted: West Pokot, Turkana, Samburu, Isiolo, Mandera, Wajir, Garissa, Tana River, Lamu, Kajiado, and Narok—all districts predominantly inhabited by pastoralist communities; Wambui Mwangi, Wagaki Kiai, & Eric Bosire, supra at 22. Women and Law in Southern Africa Research Project, Inheritance in Zambia: Law and Practice, cited in Human Rights Watch, Suffering In Silence, supra at 58. See Brighton Phiri & Larry Moonze, "Levy Seeks Conviction of Plunderers" The Post ( Lusaka ) (October 20, 2003), online: allafrica.com; Nomusa Maunga, "Kabeta Expresses Concern Over Game Title Deeds Allocation" The Post ( Lusaka ) (February 15, 2005), online: allafrica.com. |
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