Day: July 20, 2021

In a report released Tuesday, Human Rights Watch accused the Kenyan government of failing to properly handle a cash transfer program intended to help the poor during the COVID-19 pandemic. The rights group says the money instead went to people connected with officials and politicians.

Anette Okumu, 42, lost her business due to COVID-19. She and her neighbors in the Kibera section of Nairobi registered for a government cash support program in April to help her feed her nine children.

Okumu says her husband was jobless, and she really needed that money because she has a child who has sickle cell anemia and the disease requires her to feed her child healthy food. Okumu says she was hopeful that she would receive help from the government. She says she did not get the money — but others did.

In May of last year, President Uhuru Kenyatta ordered the Treasury to release some $100 million to support the country’s most vulnerable people for at least eight months.

The head of Human Rights Watch in East Africa, Otsieno Namwaya, says that money never served its intended purpose.

“Most of the households that were supposed to have received support from the government never received anything,” he said. “The few who received something did not receive the amount the government said it had sent to them. The majority over a period of eight months received 3,000 – 4,000 shillings. The government was saying it was sending a total of 35,000 for the period of eight months.”

The Washington-based rights group says its investigators spoke to 136 government employees and Nairobi residents for its eight-month study.

The researchers found that the cash transfer program lacked transparency in multiple ways, from the registration process to the distribution of funds.

A report released by the Office of the Auditor-General in April 2021 said that some $4 million was dispersed to help nearly 100,000 Kenyans in a poor section of Nairobi for one month.

But the investigators said they could not verify the identities and addresses of more than 97,000 alleged recipients. Their report concluded “the lawfulness and utilization of the $4 million could not be confirmed.”

Namwaya says most of the money instead went to friends and family of officials and the employees of certain government agencies.

“Politicians and government officials actually ensured that official aides, people working offices and relatives were benefiting from the money when the evidence suggests that these people did not deserve to get the money. While the people who really deserve the money, people who were going hungry for even as far as four days a week were not getting the money,” he said.

The program was run by the Ministry of Labor and Social Protection. VOA reached out to the principal secretary of the ministry for comment but received no response.

Human Rights Watch is calling on Kenyan authorities to investigate the issue and extensively review and strengthen internal mechanisms for implementing such programs in the future.

Source: Voice of America

Somali commandos coming under attack from the al-Shabab terror group got some help from above, for the first time in months, in the form of a U.S. airstrike.

The Pentagon late Tuesday confirmed U.S. forces were behind the single strike near Galkayo, about 580 kilometers north of the capital of Mogadishu, which was first announced by Somali officials earlier in the day.

A Pentagon official told VOA the strike was authorized under existing authorities to defend U.S. partner forces and came even though no U.S. troops were on the ground.

“U.S. forces were conducting a remote ‘advise and assist’ mission in support of designated Somali partner forces,” U.S. Defense Department spokesperson Cindi King said. “There were no U.S. forces accompanying Somali forces during this operation.”

Tuesday’s airstrike targeting al-Shabab is the first such strike in six months, and the first carried out since U.S. President Joe Biden took office.

U.S. officials declined to elaborate on why this strike was approved or whether U.S. Africa Command will start conducting a more intensive air campaign in support of Somali forces, like those the U.S. has deployed in previous years.

The U.S. carried out 63 airstrikes against al-Shabab in 2019 and 53 airstrikes in 2020.

Another seven airstrikes were launched in the first two-and-a-half weeks of 2021, before former U.S. President Donald Trump left office.

U.S. officials explained the slowdown by citing on a Biden administration review of the military’s airstrike policy. Still it, sparked concern among senior Somali officials, causing some to warn the change would allow al-Shabab “to come out of hiding.”

Since then, Somali officials have repeatedly called for the resumption of U.S. airstrikes.

Somali Army spokesman Colonel Ali Hashi Abdinur told VOA earlier this week he hoped the U.S. would resume the strikes, especially to target the al-Qaida-linked fighters in areas where the Somali infantry can’t reach.

“We have good cooperation and collaboration with the U.S.,” he said. “There are hard-to-reach areas in the forests where the airstrikes used to target their leaders.”

Somali officials have also said they would like to see expanded support from the U.S., not just airstrikes.

Last week, the U.S. military gave Somali special forces six armored personnel carriers (APCs), doubling the number of vehicles capable of protecting their elite Danab units from improvised explosive devices (IEDs).

But Somali military officials say they need more.

“We have AK-47s (automatic rifles),” one senior Somali military officer told VOA. “We need extra weapons like heavy machine guns, mortars … RPG (rocket-propelled grenades).”

“We also need medical support, uniform, camps for troops to sleep and rest, and rations,” he added.

Top U.S. military commanders have likewise warned about the growing danger, some admitting that the decision by the Trump administration to pull out almost all U.S. forces from Somalia has made the situation worse.

“Since that time, we have been commuting to work,” AFRICOM commander General Stephen Townsend told lawmakers this past April. “There’s no denying the reposition of forces outside Somalia has introduced new layers of complexity and risk.”

“Our understanding of what’s happening in Somalia is less now than it was when we were there on the ground,” he added.

In the meantime, AFRICOM has been trying to make do, sending troops into Somalia for periodic training missions to supplement about 100 troops now working mostly out of the U.S. Embassy.

AFRICOM officials have also made their final recommendations regarding troop numbers in Somalia and all of Africa as part of the Pentagon’s ongoing force posture review, which is expected to wrap up around the end of August.

For now, however, warnings about the danger posed by al-Shabab continue to abound.

“Al-Shabab still enjoys a lot of freedom of action,” Vice Admiral Hervé Bléjean, director-general of the European Union Military Staff, said at a virtual defense forum last month. “You can really feel the atmosphere of the insecurity there.”

Yet there is some disagreement as to whether airstrikes, whether carried out by the U.S. or others, are the solution.

Records kept by the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project (ACLED), a U.S.-based nonprofit research group, suggest that the danger to civilians in Somalia from al-Shabab actually decreased in the absence of airstrikes.

ACLED said it found 155 incidents in which al-Shabab targeted civilians in the six months before Biden took office, and just 90 in the six months after he became president.

One former Danab officer, speaking on the condition of anonymity, also questions the dependency on airstrikes, even though he told VOA that “there is nothing that al-Shabab hates more.”

The officer said U.S. airstrikes have killed about 100 of the terror group’s commanders, including former leaders Ahmed Abdi Godane and Aden Hashi Ayro, almost to no avail.

“The strategy has failed,” he said. “We need to change the training. We need to change the dynamics and training. We have to have mobile forces, prepare the forces for guerrilla war, good at shooting.”

An Africa Union official who asked not to be identified because he does not have authorization to speak to media agreed.

“Airstrikes cannot have an impact until the ground forces are effective,” the official said. “Until you cripple the command and control, their capacity to regroup, to be organized to be led — that is when the airstrikes will be effective.”

“But they still have leaders replaced, so what you are doing is quite minimal,” he added.

Source: Voice of America

Hundreds of women displaced by recent inter-communal fighting in the Al Geneina town of West Darfur are suffering from anxiety and depression as they shoulder the responsibility of caring for their families without husbands, say women’s rights activists in Sudan’s western region.

The fighting that erupted in April left more than 200 people dead and a little more than 200 others wounded.

Thousands of families have been sheltering in government buildings, schools and mosques in overcrowded conditions with limited access to proper sanitation, according to Sumeya Musa, a women’s advocate with the local nongovernmental organization, Strategic Initiative for Women in the Horn of Africa.

“Some don’t have a place to sleep, some lose their job and property and everything. Some are suffering from social pressure, raising children alone, taking care of elderly and sick people and yet they don’t earn anything for life, so these economic and social pressures have really affected their lives,” Musa told VOA’s South Sudan in Focus program.

Sixty-five-thousand people — mostly women and children — were displaced in the wake of the violence, according to the United Nations.

Musa said some women reported being raped or sexually harassed but most incidents of sexual violence are covered up for fear of stigma.

“There are a lot of women who got miscarriages and they really are in need of psycho-social support. There are those who have unwanted pregnancy through rape cases and other forms of gender-based violence. We all know that during war time, a lot of things happen,” Musa told VOA.

Sudanese women are hoping peace will be restored soon so they can return to their homes, said Musa. She said many of the women know that a peace deal was signed between the transitional government and armed groups but are not clear on what it entails regarding women’s rights.

South Sudan’s President Salva Kiir mediated the talks between Sudan’s transitional government and the armed groups in the South Sudanese capital, Juba. The transitional government was created following the ouster of President Omar al-Bashir after three decades in power. Women were key players in the pro-democracy revolution in Sudan. Women helped organize protests that led to al-Bashir’s removal from office.

Several women in the gathering sites do not want to talk about the abuses they suffered during the recent fighting, believing they will not receive help or see justice in the court system, said Musa.

“The most important thing is to give full protection to women against all forms of violence. Especially at homes or on the streets against sexual harassment when they are going out to look for work or they are returning back to the camp,” Musa told VOA.

The United Nations Population Fund has set up five temporary spaces where social workers coordinate with midwives deployed by the state health ministry to provide sexual and reproductive health services and support victims of gender-based violence.

Musa says she hopes more social workers, psychologists and health care providers will be deployed so that the women of West Darfur get the help they need.

Source: Voice of America