Nearly one and a half years ago when Alyssa Milano asked women to click MeToo on their social media platforms, the #MeToo movement was born. Since then millions of women have indicated through social media that they too have been victims of sexual harassment or assault.

The racial nature of the campaign lies behind the poor uptake in Africa. shutterstock

The power of this movement has been its ability to show the world how pervasive sexual harassment is. And it’s had an effect on perpetrators. In the film industry producers and actors such as Harvey Weinstein, Kevin Spacey and Bill Cosby all lost their jobs.

But is Africa part of this global movement against sexual violence? In her assessment of transnational activism in Africa, author Titilope Adayi, indicates that the global dimension of #MeToo has centred on the involvement of certain countries such as the US, the UK, France, India and China. There’s been virtually no mention of Africa or the Middle East.

But the visibility of #MeToo makes it easy to overlook the very powerful campaigns against sexual violence that go on in Africa. Most are happening outside the digital space.

MeToo was actually started by an African American women, Tarana Burke in 2006 – 11 years before #MeToo – to help young women deal with sexual harassment. Her campaign wasn’t on social media and didn’t become global. But it has now been tagged on to the digital campaign.

Before #MeToo there was the #EndRapeCulture campaign which was started in South Africa in 2016 by African women students. The #EndRapeCulture campaign was powerful enough to force universities in South Africa to appoint task teams to deal with the pervasive normalisation of sexual violence on campuses. But #EndRapeCulture didn’t become a global movement, even though it combined direct action (topless protests) with the digital campaign.

So why didn’t the #MeToo make big inroads into Africa?

The response of African women

One of the reasons for the lack of uptake is related to the racial nature of the campaign. It was started by white, wealthy women in the film industry in the US who had access to digital platforms.

Another reason #MeToo wasn’t that big in Africa is because of the very strong patriarchal culture in which women fear being stigmatised when they speak out about sexual harassment or assault. The very visibility of this kind of action makes them more vulnerable. Women are also afraid that their families may find out about the abuse. Women are therefore silenced by “cultures of respectability”.

And in many countries women are quite aware that the law won’t protect them. In a range of countries, including South Africa and Zimbabwe, secondary victimisation of survivors is rife in male dominated courts, where conviction rates for rape are on average below 10%.

But women in many African countries have staged street protests. This enables them to avoid individualised attention, but nevertheless makes their causes visible.

#MyDressismyChoice protest in Nairobi. Fickr.com/RubyGoes

In Kenya women started #MyDressismyChoice protests in the streets of Nairobi after a woman was assaulted at a bus stop for wearing a miniskirt. In Senegal two young women started “#Nopiwouma” to challenge Senegal’s silence on gender based violence. It means “I will not shut up” in Wolof. The campaign #Doyna, also in Senegal means “that’s enough”.

A consequence of not wanting to speak out about sexual harassment is that high profile men get away with this behaviour, and even when women speak out there may still be no consequences.

South Africa has a very high incidence of gender based violence. A recent example involved the former deputy minister of education Mduduzi Manana, who beat up two women in a nightclub. He resigned from his job, and was eventually forced to relinquish his parliamentary seat, but it took a very long time.

In Uganda, MP Sylvia Rwabwogo filed a complaint against a man who had stalked her for eight months. He was eventually sentenced to two years in prison but she was strongly criticised by Ugandans who expressed their sympathy for the “enamoured” student.

Organisations such as the African Union (AU) have also failed women when it comes to sexual assault. In January 2018, women staffers appealed to senior officials to end harassment in the AU. The matter was only dealt with after it reached the media. The AU’s limp-wristed response was to say that vulnerable young interns and volunteers hoping for permanent work were targeted, but that it could do little to protect them.

African novelist and film maker, Tsitsi Dangarembga, from Zimbabwe laments that #MeToo has not reached Zimbabwe were sexual harassment is also rife. She herself was in an abusive relationship for nearly eight years.

In South Africa women started another campaign, #MenareTrash, to challenge men to speak out about the epidemic of violence against women, especially intimate femicide by men killing their partners. There was a big push back by men against the campaign because some felt they were all being stigmatised.

This doesn’t appear to be a problem confined to South Africa. Globally men have problems showing solidarity with women speaking out against sexual harassment, assault and rape. This was clearly evident in Brett Kavanaugh’s case in the US. Accused of attempted rape, he went on to be confirmed as a judge of the US Supreme Court.

Courtesy: The Conversation

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Nigeria is preparing for its general election. But will it be credible? Nigerian voters are well aware that the elections will not be won solely by votes or popular consensus. There are several other variables that influence election results.

President Muhammadu Buhari attends a campaign rally ahead of the 16 February elections. EPA-EFE/Stringer

These include the incumbent’s control of state security apparatuses, grassroots structures, and control of institutions such as market traders associations, and the National Union for Road Transport Workers.

The road transport workers’ union, which acts as a canopy for bus drivers, conductors, and motor park touts in Southwestern Nigeria, has a history of providing foot soldiers for employment as election thugs with skills in ballot box snatching and voter intimidation tactics.
In addition, the possibility that the election could be rigged cannot be ignored.

Questions around the credibility of elections in post-independence Nigeria can be traced as far back as the “First Republic” which lasted from 1960 – 1966. After allegations of massive rigging in the 1965 elections the country’s western region was engulfed in the infamous “Operation Wet-ie” riots.

The riots pitted rival political groups against each other leading to Nigeria’s first military coup in 1966. From then on the country experienced a series of coups. Between 1966 and 1999, when the country made a decisive break with military politics, Nigeria experienced eight military coups. In that same time period three general elections were conducted.
 

Tumultuous past

The years outside of military rule were comparatively brief and arguably overshadowed by the spectre of the military. When elections did happen they were plagued by strong allegations of electoral fraud. Since 1999, when the country broke with military rule, five elections have been conducted all of which have been tainted by controversy.

It’s clear to see that Nigeria has survived a tumultuous political history. Going into this next election, questions still remain about the credibility of the country’s electoral system, and the viability of it’s governance structures. Looking back things have often gone wrong, but are there instances where things have worked out well for the electorate?

I would argue that there have at least two instances when voters got what they asked for. One is the June 1993 presidential election, which is considered to have been relatively free and fair in its conduct, its eventual annulment notwithstanding. Another is the presidential election of May 2015 when the incumbent Goodluck Jonathan, gracefully accepted defeat by conceding to President Muhammadu Buhari.
Yet I still feel that Nigeria’s electoral system needs a complete overhaul if it’s to perform its functions with as little external interference as possible.

Shadow of military rule

The country has been ruled by military administrators more than it has by democratically elected leaders. For 29 years of Nigeria’s independent history military dictators have had a grip on its leadership. This is compared to just 20 years of democracy. The result has been that electoral rigging and malpractice are rife within Nigeria’s electoral process.

Since 1999, Olusegun Obasanjo and Muhammadu Buhari, both of whom were previously military dictators spent a combined 12 years in power. President Buhari is now seeking a second term. As a result, there are still those who argue that the country’s transition from military rule to democracy is not quite complete.

The executive arm, for example, still maintains certain authoritarian characteristics that are reminiscent of the military era. One of these is the use of the armed forces to manipulate election processes. For instance, during the recent gubernatorial elections in Ekiti and Osun states voter intimidation by the security forces was rife. This was done to scare away opposition voters and give the ruling All Progressives Congress an edge.

The electoral commission

Another factor to consider is the supposed independence and impartiality of the Independent National Electoral Commission which is in charge of running the elections. Critics point to the fact that the commission chairperson and others in the commission are nominated by the president. This calls into question the credibility of the entire electoral commission.

Further, Buhari has just appointed Amina Zakari as the new collation officer. Zakari will oversee the committee responsible for the national collation centre from where results of the presidential election will be announced. But Zakari has been alleged to have a family relationship with the president. This has raised suspicion within opposition circles that the government intends to rig the polls.

To make matters worse, the behaviour of the electoral commission in previous elections hasn’t always been above reproach. This has lent credence to the criticisms bout the body’s impartiality. In the run up to the 2007 general for example, the Supreme Court ruled that the commission had no power to disqualify candidates in the eleventh hour as it had purported to do in the case of opposition candidate Atiku Abubakar.

The opaque nature in which recent gubernatorial elections have been held has also added to the fears of a rigged presidential poll. The September 2018 gubernatorial election in Osun, for example, was panned by election observers as being riddled with voting irregularities like voter harassment, and interference by “inappropriate persons”. These irregularities were reinforced by the high number of security officers deployed to the state during the election period.

The involvement of the security apparatus in tilting this tightly contested election in favour of the ruling All Progressives Congress is considered to be an indicator of how things could pan out in the general election.

Role of outsiders

Observers like the European Union and the US also exert a measure of influence on Nigerian elections. By ramping up the rhetoric on the importance of free and fair elections they play into the hands of the opposition who have historically appealed to foreign powers to umpire the electoral process.

Incumbent governments, on the other hand, have typically been on the other side of the argument. Nigerian governments have often cited what they call the “neo-imperialism” of countries like the UK and the US and decried their interference in Nigeria’s sovereignty. This resistance to foreign interference was most recently evidenced in comments made by Kaduna State governor, Nasir El-Rufai, who threatened foreign observers with death if they engaged with local politicians.

Former president Goodluck Jonathan also trotted out the “foreign interference” trope when he claimed in his recently published memoir that the US played a hand in ensuring that he lost the 2015 election.

And a few weeks ago the ruling All Progressives Congress joined the bandwagon when they issued a statement telling the EU to not undermine Nigeria’s sovereignty.

Not all grim

Despite all of the above, it’s not all grim. There are some positive precedents that can be built on.

For example, despite predictions that there would election violence during the 2015 poll, Jonathan did the honourable thing by conceding defeat to Buhari.

His concession reinforced the notion that elections need not be a “do or die” affair. This peaceful transition after just one presidential term in office also set a positive trend for elections across Africa.

But with the slim margin between the incumbent, Buhari, and his main contender Abubakar of the People’s Democratic Party – this narrative might need to be reinforced when Nigeria goes to the polls again on February 16.
 

Ini Dele-Adedeji, Teaching Fellow, Politics & Development Studies, SOAS, University of London

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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Millions of children throughout Africa don’t have access to justice that’s needed to realise their rights.

Many children don’t receive the treatment they deserve. Shutterstock

Simply put, they don’t receive the treatment they deserve as victims, witnesses, children with welfare needs, children in conflict with the law, the subject of parental disputes about care, contact and maintenance, and as potential claimants for redress when their rights have been violated.

There are several reasons for this. For instance, African justice systems are often hard to reach; courts are usually situated in large towns. Another barrier is that in most countries children cannot approach a court in their own right.

On the continent, only South Africa has a widespread legal aid system that’s available and accessible to children.

We know what child-friendly justice looks like. Its key elements were identified at a conference in Kampala, Uganda in 2011. The conference led to the formulation of Guidelines on Action for Children in Justice Systems in Africa.

But one important area has been largely overlooked: the role that informal justice systems can play in realising justice for children. People often choose these informal and largely traditional systems over more formal processes. That’s because they don’t trust the formal justice system, struggle to access it, cannot afford the travel costs to get to court and find the long delays in adjudication off-putting.

A recent study that I was involved in set out to understand how much children interact with informal justice systems in selected African countries. Our findings were instructive.

It appears that when children are drawn into their countries’ informal justice systems, their human rights are often threatened.

That’s not to say informal justice mechanisms must be entirely abandoned. They play an important role in communities, often focusing on restorative justice and taking a conciliatory approach which serves to rebuild relationships and secure peace in communities. They are also close to the communities they serve, and familiar with local issues.

The answer to these human rights concerns is to strengthen communities’ capacity to access and navigate the formal justice system. Only then will formal court structures become the preferred option for seeking justice.
 

What the study found

We know that informal justice systems are working in several countries, as shown by case studies undertaken in Egypt, Sierra Leone and Tanzania as part of the broader research report.
But there are issues with these traditional, informal settings. For instance, gender power imbalances may be reinforced so that girls in particular get a raw deal.

As an example, sexual offences may be dealt with through mediation between a young victim’s family and that of their abuser. This does not secure any justice for the violated child.
Children will not enjoy legal representation or the right to an appeal. Their voices may be muted, as others speak for them (such as elders). This denies their right to participate in proceedings affecting them.

It’s not entirely negative, though. One particular advantage of informal justice outlined in the study is that it does not resort to deprivation of children’s liberty through detention or incarceration. In this way it upholds the injunction in the Convention on the Rights of the Child that deprivation of liberty be used as a last resort. Instead, sanctions include reparations, restitution and fines.
 

Some positive steps

It would be incorrect to tar all African countries with the same brush when it comes to child justice. Many have made noteworthy advances. Many, among them Malawi and Mauritania, have launched specialised children’s courts.

Specialised police units dedicated to dealing with offences against children have also been set up in places like Zanzibar and Namibia. These ensure that dedicated services (including forensic services) are on hand, and that the child victim’s inevitable trauma is reduced. Another promising practice is the introduction of child rights focused modules in police training programmes, as seen in Namibia and Zambia.

These are positive steps in the right direction. But more work is needed. For instance, specialised children’s courts tend only to be located in capital cities and a few big towns. They are not readily accessible by the majority.

And, although specialised courts ought to be staffed by specialised personnel, this is not always the case. The support of social workers is also vital, but social workers are in short supply in most African countries. Those who are in the system tend to be overworked and under-trained.

The jury is out on whether informal justice systems have a role to play here. Some see informal justice as entrenching human rights violations but a necessary player – for now. Others view informal justice more benignly and can tolerate its coexistence with formal systems. My view is that while informal systems have a role, access to formal justice should be improved.
 

Way forward

This can be done in several ways.

Children need adequate information about their rights and role in justice processes. This can happen in a variety of ways and formats, including at school. Another important step is to constantly train justice and police officials, probation officers and social workers about children’s developmental and other needs.

Judicial proceedings, where these are necessary, should be adapted to enable children’s meaningful participation. Children should also be informed of the outcome of justice processes, and what implications a ruling or decision might have.

Children’s rights are generally not embedded in African countries’ justice systems. Our recent study highlights the need for services that are truly child sensitive to be progressively augmented, and for laws and institutions that are meant to protect children’s rights to be properly resourced.
 

Julia Sloth-Nielsen, Professor, Department of Public Law and Jurisprudence, University of the Western Cape and Professor of Children’s Rights in the Developing World, University of Leiden, University of the Western Cape
 

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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Ghana’s goalkeepers, Stephen Adams (L) and Fatawu Dauda ®, pray before a 2014 World Cup match. Robert Ghement/EPA

But the excitement and euphoria come with a unique challenge to the continent’s religions. Africa remains firmly devout across different faiths.

The Pew Research Center believes Christianity’s future lies in Africa. By 2060, more than four-in-10 Christians will call sub-Saharan Africa home, up from 26% in 2015, according to a new analysis of demographic data. The Centre also projects that sub-Saharan Africa will be home to a growing share of the world’s Muslims: that between 2015 and 2060, the share of all Muslims living in the region is projected to increase from 16% to 27%.

Religion, as a result, colours the way Africans see the world. Generally they don’t listen to politicians, because politicians are aloof and distant. They however listen to religious and traditional leaders because Africans believe that they are human representations of the divine horizon – the realm of truth.

But football challenges this and poses a religious dilemma in Africa. Citing its ability of uniting people of all backgrounds around a common cause, football has been described as “an African religion”. The sport demands attention. It requires devotion. It provides ecstasy. And this makes religious leaders nervous.

Religion and sports serve different purposes. Religion is meant to provide people with spiritual well-being, while sport serves aesthetic needs and entertainment. Nevertheless, they share common audience and cultural values, such as the value of fairness, discipline and commitment, which can be used to address African challenges.

A religious dilemma

There are many in the religious community who view football with contempt and disdain.

One issue of concern is that African football has the habit of attracting witchcraft. Individual players as well as national teams often subscribe to a religious technique known as “juju”, to imbue players with spiritual power before games, protect them from the rival spirit of their opponents, and more importantly, to influence the result. It’s not surprising that religious leaders have issue with this, seeing that players rely on the supernatural as a shortcut instead of hard work and discipline as constituted in their Holy Scriptures.
Secondly, for some believers football is threatening to become a religion in its own right. According to this block of believers, football demands allegiance and excessive emotional devotion.

Cristiano Ronaldo at the 2018 World Cup. Paulo Novias/EPA

The media use of hyperbolic religious imagery to portray sports stars adds to this negative perception of sports. This includes calling Lionel Messi “The Messiah” and dubbing Cristiano Ronaldo “a god”.

This sentiment is not entirely unfounded, when one considers the general background of the invention of sport. For example, Olympic games started in the temple of Olympia. On this occasion, ancient Greeks would offer sacrifices and took oaths with Zeus – the Greek high god. Given this, combined with the eager idolisation of modern stars, it’s not surprising that religious leaders are so opposed to the impact of the game.

A political space

For millions of people sport is an important dimension of their lives. Beyond entertaining them, it gives them identity and a sense of belonging. It offers them happiness and a rare sensation of ecstasy (depending on the result, of course). It’s also a source of catharsis in Africa. It creates an important distraction from the problems that ordinary people feel they can’t change.

And football is one of the rare places where an African child can find African heroes of international standing. Samuel Eto’o of Cameroon, Didier Drogba of Ivory Coast, Nwankwo Kanu of Nigeria, to mention a few, are individuals who gave African youth a reason to aspire.

Former Ivorian player Didier Drogba with young fans in Colombia, 18 March 2018. Ricardo Maldonado Rozo/EPA

Lastly, in many countries football is the only place in which Africans practice free speech without fear of retribution. They can criticise Arsene Wenger, chastise José Mourinho and thoroughly scrutinise Pep Guardiola, and they can go to bed without worrying about security forces raiding their houses in the middle of the night for being critical of those football managers.

Shared territory

Africa is a deeply divided continent along ideological, ethnic and territorial lines. Religion and football can produce consensus and conflict depending on the way they are applied.

They also have a unique ability of crossing borders and gluing people of diverse cultural, political and ideological commitments. While football can bring together people from different religious groups, religion can bring people together from different political and cultural backgrounds.

The are other ways in which the two can complement each other. In African culture an individual (and individuality) is hardly recognised. In order to be recognised and find their standing in the society individuals have to take on family or ethnic identity. For its part, football is about a balance between teamwork and individual creativity while religion is about serving fellow humans with a sense of individual accountability to their God. Both approaches can help people on the continent create a space for individuals to discover their talents.

Religion can also help football and other social spheres to transcend the momentary sensation and translate material success into something that offers sustaining satisfaction.

All this suggests that religious leaders and ordinary believers don’t need to feel threatened by the beautiful game. Instead of insularity and criticising sports from afar, they need to find a space in which they can weave together overlapping values for the service of society. There are a number of virtues they can apply from football to the way they live their lives. Africans need to re-imagine success not with the lens of “juju”, which promotes shortcut and trickery, but with the values of discipline, hard work and endurance that sports offer.

Mohammed Girma, Visiting Lecturer at London School of Theology and Research associate, University of Pretoria
 

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

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In his first address on the state of Ghana in February 2017, President Nana Akufo-Addo declared a new vision: “A Ghana beyond aid.”

President Nana Akufo-Addo of Ghana addresses the United Nations General Assembly, at U.N. headquarters in September 2017. (AP Photo/Richard Drew)

This vision seeks to ensure that Ghana becomes self-sufficient by “mobilizing domestic resources” rather than depending on foreign aid for development. The president extended his vision to other African countries during an event hosted by the Royal African Society in London a few months later. While speaking on the theme Africa Beyond Aid, he declared:
 

“It is time to build our economies that are not dependent on charity and handouts … we are not disclaiming aid, but we do want to discard a mindset of dependency… it is unhealthy for both the giver and the receiver.”

While the proposed renaissance primarily focuses on “mobilizing domestic resources,” no attention has been paid to the religious resources available.
 

What are religious resources?

The Dutch scholar of religion and development, Gerrie ter Haar, categorizes religious resources into religious ideas (what people actually believe), religious practices (rituals), religious organizations (how religious communities function) and religious experiences (such as the subjective experience of inner transformation).

The potential role of these dimensions of religion in regard to development in Africa has been discussed extensively by many scholars and by international development institutions — notably the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. Scholars have even postulated that “Africa’s development in the 21st century will be shaped largely by religion.”

Ghana’s government envisions a strong bureaucratic system for taxation by implementing tax identification numbers for all citizens. Ghana has a tax population of about six million, but only 1.5 million Ghanaians are formally registered with the Ghana Revenue Authority (GRA).

The GRA faces organizational and structural inefficiencies amid the apparent hostility of citizens towards paying taxes. Tax evasion in Ghana is also high among urban dwellers because of the prominence of the underground economy and the high population density in cities.

The Makola Market in Accra, Ghana. Many city dwellers in Ghana do not pay taxes. Ariel Manka/Flickr

Interestingly, the challenges faced by the Ghanaian government in raising revenue from its own population through taxes stands in sharp contrast to the tenacity of religious organizations to “tithe” their own members for projects.

Many urban religious organizations, often Pentecostal-Charismatic, survive largely from the payment of tithes, offerings and donations. A tithe is one-tenth of a church-goer’s monthly income given to the church. An offering includes voluntary monies given by congregants at worship services. Regular offerings may sometimes be followed by special offerings designated for specific purposes that go beyond the frequent church expenditure.

Donations, in cash or material gifts, are sometimes called seed-sowing, and are also given to religious leaders — men or women of God who mediate the religious experience of believers.
 

Ghanaians more receptive to giving to churches

It’s evident many Ghanaians respond positively to financial appeals from churches compared to how they respond to government taxation measures.

For example, in July 2017, at a Pentecostal-Charismatic event in Accra with a crowd of about 50,000 people, screen shots of “special offerings” went viral on social media, causing a huge public stir. The screen shots featured many types of offerings, namely, “millionaire status offering” ($5,000), the “seed of 1,000 times more” offering ($1,000), and the “24-hour miracle” offering ($240).

While event organizers did not reveal the amount of money generated, an estimated 2.25 million Cedis (US$505,000) was reportedly raised.

Many Ghanaians respond positively to financial appeals in churches. Ock So Park/Flickr

Why are government agencies in Ghana unable to efficiently generate taxes in areas where religious organizations seemingly flourish via tithing?

Are religious organizations in Ghana better at mobilizing financial resources than government agencies? Many answers can be provided, but I suggest three.
 

Rewarded for giving?

First, the act of giving in African Pentecostalism is rationalized with religious/theological foundations so that tithing is understood as transactional or reciprocal. When seeds of money and gifts are sown, the faithful are taught to expect different forms of divine harvest such as money, employment, good health and good fortune in life.

Second, tithing assumes a sociological implication by which adherents identify themselves as belonging to religious communities, not just believing.

Third, the failure of government to deliver on its promises of development compels many people to turn to religious organizations that “claim to possess answers to Ghanaians’ most pressing need – socio-economic transformation.”

Perhaps moving Ghana beyond aid might not be so much about developing new policy instruments, but rather identifying a new strategy to implement those policies. Considering the inefficiencies with taxation, there is certainly the need to bring all potential stakeholders on board — chiefly, religious organizations.

This is not to say that conforming to religious ideas and the operations of religious organizations will lead to better development outcomes. Neither am I arguing for a greater or lesser role of religion as Ghana moves beyond aid. It is also not a recommendation for government to renounce the apparent separation of church and state.

The point here is to acknowledge that religion conspicuously appeals to many people in Ghana in ways that governments do not, and to encourage dialogue between development partners, religious organizations and government — for the good of all Ghanaians.
 

James Kwateng-Yeboah, Ph.D Candidate in Cultural Studies, Queen’s University, Ontario

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

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A silent protest by women in Nairobi about women’s representation in politics. Photo: Jerry Riley. All rights reserved.

Many years ago, just before I became a teenager, my mother and my aunt rescued an 11-year old relative who was being forced into “marriage.” I don’t remember the full details of what happened but there were many conversations in my family about it.

The girl’s mother was my mother’s cousin. My relatives talked a lot about what her father’s relatives were planning to do. Her parents had died when she was a baby and she had lived with them since then.

My mother and my aunt decided to intervene. They made the journey from Nairobi to Lamu and literally stole her during the night. She was then delivered to her older sister’s house, where she lived until adulthood.

When I think about my feminism, and try to identify when I became a feminist, I remember this incident. I remember looking at my mother, in awe of her boldness. She was like a fierce warrior, ensuring that a young girl was not forced into marriage. I remember feeling that that’s who I wanted to be too.

I remember looking at my mother, in awe of her boldness.

This feeling stayed with me and grew when, years later, in high school, our english teacher Mrs. Ondiek wrote a poem called “Equality, change the slogan” for us to perform at a drama festival of schools in Nairobi.

The poem, and our dramatised performance of it, was so good that we became high school drama champions of Nairobi, and third nationally. It challenged us to go beyond women’s equality slogans to policy-making and system-changing, and noted that the goal is not a reversal of gender roles.

Feminism came slowly to me, through years of experiences which led to questions about the state of the world around me and my place in it. As a young woman, reading and talking about these issues helped me to stitch together the language I needed to understand and explain what feminism is and what it meant to me.

Finally, I chose to consciously identify as a feminist, which has since been a journey of re-discovery, unlearning, and learning that has now rooted my feminism in actions and interactions with other people and with the systems I exist and move in.
‘Feminism came slowly to me, through years of experiences and questions about the state of the world and my place in it.’

This is not uncommon; feminism has come to many African women over periods of time, through similar moments with their mothers and grandmothers, teachers, neighbours and other women they observed growing up.

Many of these women, despite performing socially-prescribed gender norms, still found small and big ways to resist them and to build small stepping stones that led to the boulders we stand on now. Sometimes, grandfathers also helped imagine what it meant to be a full human as an African woman on the continent.

While not always identified as such, feminism is as much a part of who we are as being African is. The only difference is that being African was considered an innate thing, something you are from the moment you’re born.

African history is a complex tapestry of events that over days, years, and centuries have connected to bring us to the Africa of today. The diversity of the continent’s peoples, cultures and histories make it difficult to pinpoint just one specific thing and say “yes, this black spot here is what makes you an African.”

Likewise it would be unfair and disingenuous to try and pinpoint just one thing, or just one moment, to define African Feminism. This revolution is a multi-generational and multi-layered movement. It’s also single moments, words and actions that, even on their own, are complete, complicated and valid expressions of this movement.

We are the accumulation of past words and actions. We are also how we define ourselves. We cannot dictate the authenticity of a movement which by its very nature is ever-evolving and changing to accommodate the new and discard the no longer useful.
It is impossible to say that feminism is un-African when African women right now are feminists.

In numerous debates, articles and conversations on social media I have heard the mistaken idea that ‘feminism is un-African’. But in order to claim something as ‘un-African,’ I believe that you must have to prove, beyond a doubt, that there is no history of Africans doing that thing and that there are no Africans doing it right now.

It is easy to claim that something has never been done by Africans. We know that history is distorted and has been shaped to suit its narrators’ interests. As women know intimately, it is easy to erase the memory of our existence, contribution and participation in history. Relying on such distorted historical accounts is difficult.  

However, it is impossible to claim something is non-existent when there are people, in the right here and now, doing that thing. It is impossible to say that feminism is un-African when African women right now are feminists. And African Feminism right now does not exist in a vacuum – it was borne by African Feminism in the past.

It is impossible to disconnect us from African women of the past; the mothers who rescued girls, the teachers who taught us about equality, and many others. To do so is to erase them and to also erase us.

We African women, right now, are carriers of culture, in our own right. And culture is dynamic. If every African, on the continent and in the diaspora, can ‘claim’ Africa in some way, then African women have a right to redefine and recreate African cultures.
Our validity does not rest on a connection to the past. We exist right now, as those single moments of the movement that do not require explanation or justification. African Feminism exists because African feminists exist. It is impossible to separate one from the other without violently separating African women from Africa. 

Aisha Ali Haji is a Kenyan writer and feminist activist. Her writing has been published in publications including This Is Africa and The Journalist, South Africa.

Courtesy: https://www.opendemocracy.net

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You investigated humanitarian operations in the Great Lakes region between 1990 and 1997. This was a period of extreme violence against Rwandophone populations. You specifically looked at the records of Doctors Without Borders in Paris. What did you hope to learn?
Marc Le Pape: The actual day-to-day work of humanitarian teams in situations of extreme violence is generally little known and understood. That’s why our investigations focussed on messages from the field, while most studies are far more concerned about getting the macro-political or macro-humanitarian picture. Taking a “micro” perspective meant we could observe the long-term evolution of operations: how, and with whom, did teams need to negotiate to launch and maintain operations?

So we looked at how these teams got information and communicated with political and military authorities, various local authorities, UN agencies in the Great Lakes region, local and international NGOs, religious leaders and people at emergency sites, in medical facilities and camps.
We also looked at the relationship between the field of operations, national capitals and the various Doctors Without Borders head offices. We tracked field accounts transmitted up the chain of command, how the organisation’s head offices reacted to the stories of violence, intimidation and prohibitions, and the way these were then framed and talked about publicly.

For example we examined all the documents, from internal alerts to public statements, demonstrating the gradual realisation of humanitarian workers in Rwanda in 1994 that they were witnessing the systematic, organised extermination of the Tutsi people.

Did humanitarian workers witness extreme violence?
Jean‑Hervé Bradol: It’s shocking to see, from 1994 onwards, the extent to which humanitarian workers became regular eyewitnesses to violence, murder and large-scale massacres. It is generally rare for humanitarian workers to witness these kinds of events. They typically work at a distance from mass killing sites and the perpetrators remain largely anonymous. This was not the case in Rwanda.

The situation in April 1994 was extreme and basically unprecedented, at least for Doctors Without Borders. Humanitarian workers where present when the decision was made as to who would die and who would be spared. Some Rwandan staff members were among the victims. Others were complicit, or even participated in these crimes.

Can you give a few examples of the violent situations Doctors Without Borders workers witnessed and what kind of lessons were learned – or not?
Jean‑Hervé Bradol: In April 1994 I was working in Kigali. In the first few days following the assassination of former president Juvénal Habyarimana, we braced ourselves for a massive eruption of violence. We thought there would be reprisals against the Tutsi, but never imagined that the order would be to “kill them all”.

Our team quickly realised that, at least in Kigali, the extermination of the Tutsi did not arise from chaos; instead, it was organised. Others also rapidly grasped the situation, in particular the head of the International Committee of the Red Cross delegation. It was awful. We knew the army was providing arms to the militia groups manning the road blocks. This made it extremely dangerous to evacuate wounded Tutsi adults to the Red Cross hospital: when they were caught, they were executed.

Later, Doctors Without Borders workers also witnessed first-hand the horror of the prisons in Rwanda. Between September 1994 and May 1995, they worked in Gitarama, where 3,000 prisoners were incarcerated in a complex built for 400 detainees. Some 800 prisoners died during this period. These people were arrested based solely on hearsay. We were their doctors, so we could not escape the realities of the new regime’s policy and the crimes committed by the former rebels.

Among other shocking crimes committed by the new authorities was the Kibeho massacre in April 1995. The new Rwandan (formerly rebel) army killed several thousand people in an internally displaced persons refugee camp in front of a Doctors Without Borders medical team. People convinced themselves that one mass crime, the Tutsi genocide, could hide other mass crimes committed by the new government.

As a sociologist, did you learn things that you had not realised were important to aid NGOs?
Marc Le Pape: I learnt the extraordinary importance of counting populations: the numbers of people in camps and on the run, of victims and of people being treated.

Conducting frequent counts is of course crucial for humanitarian organisations, especially when they need to know how many supplies to bring to the field. In the case of emergency NGOs, counts are also politically important to back up first-hand accounts, ensure that the murders they have witnessed are documented, and oppose competing statements that claim to be based on figures.

This interview is published as part of the work of the “Violence and exiting violence” platform (Foundation Maison des sciences de l’homme), of which The Conversation France is a partner. It was translated from the French by Alice Heathwood for Fast for Word.

Marc Le Pape, sociologue (Institut des mondes africains), École des hautes études en sciences sociales (EHESS) and Jean-Hervé Bradol, Médecin, Fondation Maison des Sciences de l’Homme (FMSH) – USPC

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

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Illicit firearms and small weapons recovered during security operations being destroyed in Nairobi. REUTERS/Thomas Mukoya

This was a bold departure from the traditional emphasis on economic aid as the bedrock of development efforts in African countries. To many, and for most African states, her statement sounded like a contradiction in terms because spending on arms can divert funds from vital areas such as food security, health care and education.

Over the past 20 years Africa has been transitioning from a focus on economic integration to one on security. Until the late 1990s the emphasis in many regions was on economic integration. This was clear from the consolidation of a number of regional economic integration communities like the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS).

But since the turn of the century, there has been a much bigger focus on security and fighting radical Jihadist groups typically affiliated to Al-Qaeda and the Islamic State. As of May 2015, there were nine UN Peacekeeping missions in Africa. The big shift towards security started in 2002 when the United States Africa Command (AFRICOM) was formed. This was followed by a security partnership being agreed between the African Union and the EU. And then there are sub-regional security forces like Economic Community of West African States Monitoring Group and the Sahel G5 states’ counter-terrorism force.

As a result of the growing threat from terror groups, a number of countries, with the help of major powers, have boosted their military capabilities. These include Mali, Nigeria, Cote d’Ivoire to name a few.

Merkel’s statement was made in the context of many African countries experiencing economic growth while, at the same time, battling militant and terrorist groups.

The view seems to be that by helping Africa contain instability, growth rates will be enhanced, and Europe relieved of mass migrations.
 

Increase military capability

Increased securitisation – the emphasis on a militarily strong state at the expense of basic human needs and a strong civil society – started after the 1998 Al-Qaeda attacks on the US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. These led to the creation of AFRICOM which included putting active American troops on the continent. Djibouti serves as a forward base for AFRICOM. It also included a commitment from the US to train and advise African countries that request it. Current key beneficiaries of US military assistance are Djibouti, Ethiopia, Uganda Chad, Cameroon, and Mauritania.

In addition, French troops have become more active in Africa. In Mali they are helping the government contain Jihadist organisations in the north of the country.

There are also regional international efforts, such as the security partnership between the European Union the African Union, and the UN Mission established to contain terrorist attacks in the Sahel region. Known as the G5 Sahel force, it includes troop contributions from Burkina Faso, Chad, Mali, Mauritania, and Niger.

France and the US are also active in the Sahel region providing training and equipment to the militaries of Chad, Burkina Faso, Mali, Naiger and Mauritania, and engaging in joint exercises with the G5 forces.

Merkel’s proposal is aimed at taking these engagements even further. What’s she’s put on the table is a compact with Africa and the G20 which includes weapons transfer as development aid.
 

Implications

Merkel’s suggestion would mean more weapons on a continent that is already awash with small arms and light weapons. It can’t be denied that Africa as a secure continent would benefit Europe. But weapons as development aid sounds like a contradiction. Do weapon transfers in fact contribute to development?

There are studies that show that the acquisition of weapons by developing countries doesn’t contribute to development.

I believe that more weapons on the continent would have the opposite effect. The African continent already has a great deal of weapons which exacerbate civil strife. Evidence points to the fact that weapons transfers are responsible for conflicts in the Democratic Republic of Congo, South Sudan, the Central African Republic and Somalia, among others.

More weapons and an increased military presence for incumbent African regimes could have negative consequences.

Firstly, it could lead to even more violations of the rule of law as incumbent regimes become militarily stronger.

Secondly, it would improve the changes of regimes surviving longer. They would have the wherewithall to violate human rights even more, as well as suppress opposition voices. And finally, weapons could be diverted to rebel groups through political corruption or for personal selfish objectives.

In conclusion the G20 Compact with Africa is very encouraging. But when it comes to the transfer of more weapons, donors and investors should make sure that this is done under strict rules and regulations. Conditions for receiving aid should also be based on strict adherence to the rule of law, and in particular democratic processes.

In the end the biggest emphasis should be on private investments – as set out in the compact – which will generate millions of jobs for the unemployed.
 

Earl Conteh-Morgan, Professor of International Studies, University of South Florida

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

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Women from Casamance on a march for peace in Senegal. Credit: USOFORAL.
 
we have stood in defense of lands, of waters,
for our sons,
for our daughters
for something bigger than ourselves
 –      Beginning of the poem ‘For the Mamas on the Frontlines’

Helen Knott is a human rights activist from Prophet River First Nations in Canada. With the words above she welcomed international feminist activists to the second day of the Nobel Women’s Initiative gathering in Dusseldorf, Germany. Throughout the day, indigenous women at the conference reminded the participants from around the world that learning to live in harmony with the land is not just something that accompanies human rights activism, but is co-constituent. How, delegates asked themselves, can we learn from indigenous communities and environmental activists to cultivate democracy in our different spheres?

Khadijeh Moghaddam, a woman’s rights and environmental activist from Iran joined Helen in paying homage to intergenerational activism in her presentation to delegates. It was her mother, she explained in a powerful speech, who inspired her to become involved in the environmental movement. Her mother is now 100 years of age, and still fighting for climate justice. This is not an easy space to occupy in Iran, Khadijeh explains, “it’s like walking on a tightrope. You have to be vigilant for you could be pushed off at any time.” In this context, working collectively is not just an ethical choice, it is the only way to stay safe.

Participants at the conference bring a wealth of knowledge when it comes to environmental activism and collective struggle. Yanar Mohammed, an Iraqi activist, began her speech yesterday by lamenting that it is natural resources (the oil) that has been the source of all the country’s problems. “75% of oil from Iraq goes to the multinational companies and 25% goes to our corrupt government.” The Iraqi oil, she insists, was never “ours”. "There’s always a colonial power that comes and sucks up our resources and leaves us poor.”

Julienne Lusenge from the Democratic Republic of the Congo nods as Yanar speaks. It’s the same story. Congo began its independence under the reign of Leopold II when citizens were forced to extract resources for exportation to Belgium or face violence. “He cut the arms off our ancestors because of the resources there”, she explains, “now our women experience brutal rapes, violence, executions.” Like the oil of Iraq, she laments, “the resources don’t belong to Congo. They nourish the kids of everywhere else except the Congo.”

She asks us to picture kids with mobile phones and technologies harbouring the precious minerals, unaware of their bloody origins. “Sometimes,” Julienne reflects, “we wonder if we are suffering because of these riches that we have.” An estimated 6 million people have been killed since 1998 in this well-documented economic war over resources. “Can we not develop trade and business cooperatively?” she asks.

In the green Senegalese region of Casamance it is not just war but also agribusiness that is threatening the land and natural resources, agricultural activist Mariama Songo explains to me later during a break in the proceedings. International companies are seizing land, family plots, and breaking the local cooperatives.

“They take our seeds and sell them back to us as 'intellectual property’,” she explains. “We try to tell them you didn’t create that, that it is inherited, it belongs to us, in the plural. For us seeds don’t belong to anyone. They’re common property.”

She describes how the seeds that farmers are sold by big business, and the chemicals required to grow them, are poorly adapted to the local environment. They can contaminate the whole ecosystem.
 
Mariama tells me she identifies with the threat to food sovereignty facing indigenous women in Canada. In her intervention, Helen Knott outlined a similar dynamic of contamination among her community where the unfettered advance of new industries – yes, even under Trudeau, she stressed – is stealing land from communities and causing new forms of pollution. “There's a contamination of food" she lamented, "you worry you’re contaminating your kids giving them moose meat or fish from the river.” The river near where Helen lives currently has two big dams, and a third is under construction. But the spaces to resist such developments are shrinking. She is currently facing legal charges for her role in a land defense camp.

In Senegal, Mariama works with youth and women to inspire them to see sustainability as a nobel pursuit; she teaches them to grow food and make a living from agriculture. For her, farming is inherently linked to collectivism. As girls in Casamance they would form seasonal collectives, she reminisces, and go around the different households helping with various tasks: the harvest, composting, fertilising. Mariama had the idea that the girls could pool the pocket money they received for the tasks and do something together. “We held parties,” she jokes, “amazing parties". They also pooled their resources to buy school materials.

Mariama explains her passion for farming as a way to both survive and thrive. “In the war-ravaged landscape of Casamance, growing your own food gives you a crucial sense of autonomy.” 

She tells me with pride how she recently worked with an older woman to find a natural treatment for a microscopic worm in the earth that was destroying plants and aborting the growth of new seeds. “We didn’t need outside help,” she explains, “it’s about expertise and experience, pratique et savoir.” Mariama, whose husband was murdered in the Casamance war, calls farming a “practice in democracy."

The idea of working with nature as a practice of autonomy and democracy is an idea that echoes throughout the day. Veronica Kelly, a peace activist from Ireland remarks that in Ireland now the concept of meitheal is making a resurgence. The word describes the way at harvest time people gather together to help one another. It’s the literal ‘hay day’. “The weather is so changeable that when a fine day come everyone has to rush and help from place to place,” Veronica explains.

It’s a tempting metaphor for the network created by the Nobel Women’s Initiative, formed ten years ago to promote peace with justice and equality.

Jennifer Allsopp is a regular contributor and Commissioning Editor at openDemocracy 50.50. She has worked on a number of research projects at the universities of Exeter, Birmingham and Oxford including on asylum, youth migration, gender and poverty. She has also worked with a range of refugee and migrant organisations. She is a PhD candidate at the Department of Social Policy and Intervention at the University of Oxford.

This article was first published on opendemocracy.net.

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South Sudan refugee camp, 2011. Maximilian Norz/DPA/PA Images. All rights reserved.

Judging by the millions protesting against president Trump’s policies on behalf of the vulnerable and voiceless, empathy is alive and well. Or is it? Trump’s recent immigration ban exempts Christians from Muslim-majority countries, recognizing their status as the world’s most persecuted faith. But how much empathy do Christians feel for their brothers and sisters in Africa? And why do Muslims who care about the plight of the Palestinians lose so little sleep over the systematic elimination of their black African co-religionists in Darfur? Is skin colour still a significant stumbling block to empathy?
 

Who exactly is my neighbour?

For years, African Christians have been persecuted for their faith. For the purposes of this article, persecution is not litigation against bakers who refuse to make cakes for gay weddings, or pharmacists declining to sell contraceptives. Rather, persecution is the deliberate and deadly targeting of Christians because of their religious identity, whether it is the terrorist group Boko Haram bombing churches in northern Nigeria, or the Sudanese armed forces killing their non-Muslim citizens, or Islamic State brutally erasing 2000 years of Middle East sectarian diversity. 

Occasionally, the western media reports on Egyptian mobs destroying Coptic Churches, or ISIS beheading Syrian and Iraqi Christians. But coverage of Africans being subjected to massive ethnic cleansing is relatively rare. African Christians are left wondering if their co-religionists in the comparatively wealthy white world take the commandment about loving their neighbour so literally that they empathise only with people like themselves, as Richard Dawkins suggested in The Selfish Gene.

The Africans interviewed for this article do not come from the ranks of intellectuals who blame colonialism for the continent’s problems. Yet, they believe that even though most westerners deny it, at a subconscious level a black African Christian life isn’t quite as valuable as a white one.

“Christians in Europe and America are not talking much about the killings of fellow Christians in Africa because to some, Africans do not matter, just like during the genocide, when our people were killed,” a survivor of the Rwandan genocide explained to me. “The west did not care much, but when they are attacked by terrorists they make measures to stop terrorists and it is in the world news”. In the words of another Rwandan, who provides training for genocide survivors: “My take on this? It is pure racism, and there has never been any brotherly love”.

A retired British bishop recalled attending a conference at Lambeth Palace (home of the Anglican Church worldwide) where an American bishop said the African Anglicans were, “only just out of the jungle.” “He failed to realize that more of the African Bishops had earned doctorates than he or most of those American Bishops who complained!” The retired bishop continued: “I was a bit shocked when Archbishop Justin Welby said he lost sleep over homophobia, at the same time as fellow Christians were being massacred in Northern Nigeria, which he didn’t mention”.

According to Bill Andress, an American who has been campaigning against the persecution of Sudanese Christians for decades, “whether consciously or subconsciously, we do not value the lives and welfare of black people as we value those of white people, and we assume that tragedy in Africa is just part of the picture and cannot be stopped”.

Another American campaigner, Marv Steinberg, of Genocide No More, believes Christians in the US are split in their interpretation of the commandment to love thy neighbour, “meaning your immediate neighbour, if he agrees with you. I really think race enters into it”.  

And Rod Brayfindley, a pastor in northern California, blames “the difficulty of overcoming both deep and latent racism in the western press.” He adds, “news rooms argue African conflicts are too expensive and risky to cover, but if a similar group of white folk were being attacked, they would absolutely have the funds to cover them”.

Many European and American Christians insist people of faith should be concerned about all humankind, and not just their co-religionists. Yet, this does not account for the widespread ignorance among western Christians about black African Christians who are being killed precisely because they practise their faith, rather than converting to Islam or agreeing to live by Islamic rules.

According to Ann Buwalda of the Jubilee Campaign, a UK charity which advocates for persecuted Christians worldwide, “when I speak or share in American churches, I find there is interest in the suffering in Africa. But when people are not given anything to do in response to hearing the horrors, they will shut down and tune out because of the emotional side of learning and then not knowing what to do with the information”.

The awareness gap persists, despite the best efforts of several western NGOs like the Jubilee Campaign. It is unlikely many Jewish people have not heard of the Holocaust, or that most literate Muslims would not know about the Palestinians. Both ‘sides’ in the Palestine-Israel conflict have efficiently politicised their co-religionists across the globe. Arguably, some Muslims and Jews living beyond the Holy Land may pay lip service to the cause represented by their imperiled brothers, but, in contrast to Christians, they are at least aware of the issues.

Perhaps, as Barbara, an Anglican stalwart in California, put it, people feel so overwhelmed by the misery of Africa that they do not distinguish between the victims of famine, AIDS, natural disasters, civil wars and jihad. If this is the case, then, in the view of one British aid worker I spoke to, development charities and NGOs may be partly to blame for painting such a negative picture of the continent in order to raise money.
Andy Warren-Rothlin, an academic living in Nigeria, echoes this, when he argues that “western media has tended to present suffering Africans in ways which do not engender engagement (‘she’s just like me!’), but rather paternalism (‘I must help the poor thing’). The result is that western audiences don’t see a village in northeast Nigeria as somewhere they might live, or a Nigerian church as somewhere they might have been when Boko Haram rolled into town”.

It was not always like this, points out Sam Totten, an American academic with decades of human rights and humanitarian experience in Africa. Less than 20 years ago, the evangelical supporters of George W Bush pushed him to press the Sudanese regime to allow ten million southern Sudanese Christians to secede in 2011, forming South Sudan. That widely-shared concern seems to have shrunk to a few NGOs and activists.
One of president Obama’s final acts was to ease Sudanese sanctions. Yet, the Khartoum regime continues to bomb the Christian areas in what remains of Sudan. Villages, schools and hospitals have been targeted as recently as January 2017, while, according to Amnesty, Sudan used chemical weapons against its Muslim civilians in Darfur in September 2016. But instead of outrage at Obama’s appeasement of Sudanese leader Field Marshall Bashir, the only sitting head of state indicted for the crime of genocide, there has been near silence from American politicians who otherwise flaunt their Christian values.
 

The wrong kind of Muslim?

The Islamic world is similarly unmoved by the fate of Muslims in Darfur, prompting some Middle Eastern commentators to observe that black African Muslims suffer from the same indifference as black African Christians. “Are the people of Darfur not Muslim as well?” demands Tareq Al-Hamed of the Asharq Alaswat paper. And the former fundamentalist, now Washington think-tank expert Ed Husain asks, “Are Darfuris the ‘wrong’ kind of Muslim because they self-identify as black Africans rather than Arabs?”.

I spoke to a canon in northern Nigeria who believes that most Arabs still view Africans as slaves, even when they share the same Muslim faith. His view is supported by anecdotes from Sudanese who describe being routinely and publicly addressed as abid (slave) when working in North Africa and the Middle East. In Libya, Human Rights Watch has documented the alarming extent to which black African Muslims have been bullied, tormented, attacked and killed by Arabs. The Canadian academic Salim Mansur believes, “Blacks are viewed by Arabs as racially inferior, and Arab violence against blacks has a long and turbulent history”.

Andy Warren-Rothlin sees the situation differently. “This is clearly not a race issue, since it’s even harder to get interest from London-based southern Nigerians in the suffering of their northern Nigerian compatriots. Or if it is race (if you use such terms!), you must recognise that each of the 500 or so ethnic groups in Nigeria is one ‘race’.” His views are shared by American Christian activists who are disappointed by the lack of concern shown by southern Nigerian Christians towards their fellow Christians in the northeast of the country. “Nigeria is so delicately balanced between Muslim and Christian, that the Christians living in relative peace don’t want to stir up trouble,” admitted one campaigner.

Richard Cockett, a regional editor at The Economist, argues that the Rohingya people of Myanmar have, until very recently, suffered the same invisibility as African Muslims. Because the Rohingya are “mildly Sufi”, he tells me, they have not attracted support from Muslims further afield. Now, thanks to a recent UN report, their persecution has been noticed, but for decades they suffered ethnic cleansing in obscurity. They might not have been African, but it seems they were the wrong kind of Muslim.

Meanwhile, Muslim countries that consider themselves as defenders of the faith have been silent following the Trump Administration’s ban on Muslim immigrants. And it has been widely noted that three million Syrian refugees could be given shelter in the 100,000 air-conditioned tents standing empty in Saudi Arabia.

What can be done? Each time a Christian or Muslim leader or politician piously invokes their faith, they should be challenged by the faithful and the non-faithful alike in their community to make good on the pledges of equality and shared identity explicit in the roots of both religions. If a church or mosque does not have a partner or link with a church or mosque in Africa, then members of their community should ask why not. In addition, our governments should recognise the vital role played by African churches and mosques as arbiters of local reconciliation, because they often represent the only genuine civil society in repressive countries; and our aid programmes should therefore support those grassroots peace-building efforts.

Is it worth contacting our elected officials and faith leaders about these matters? The late American Senator Paul Simon said that if only he had heard from 100 constituents demanding action during the Rwanda genocide, he would have felt empowered to contact the Secretary of State. Politicians know that for every one person who makes a phone call or writes a letter or an email, there are hundreds of thousands who share their views but haven’t quite got around to taking action. It is never a waste of energy.

Rebecca Tinsley is the founder of Network for Africa, a charity that trains local people to become lay counsellors for the survivors of conflict and genocide. She also founded Waging Peace, an NGO campaigning for human rights in Sudan.

This article was first published on Open Democracy

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