Just Africa

What are the Real Issues in Somalia?

The recent hijacking of a Ukrainian arms ship off the coast of Somalia has thrust the world's most notorious "failed state" into the spotlight of mainstream Western media. While what appears to be a major weapons shipment to South Sudan is certainly noteworthy, it's unfortunate that it takes such a dramatic, sensational incident to get Somalia in the news. At today's critical political and humanitarian moment, the people of Somalia deserve attention for more than just this "pirate ship."

Here are some other less high profile Somalia stories to take your understanding of Somalia deeper than the pirate drama:

1) October 6: Fifty-two aid agencies working in Somalia released a damning statement urging a stronger international response to the deteriorating humanitarian crisis: "The international community has completely failed Somali civilians. We call on the international community to make the protection of Somali civilians a top priority now." 37,000 people have fled Mogadishu in the past few weeks. 870,000 have been displaced so far in 2008. The city is emptier than it was during the 1994 botched international intervention.

2) May 5: Somalis protest the deaths of civilians after the U.S. launches airstrikes into Somalia, targeting al-Qaeda-affiliated terrorists. Since January 2007, the U.S. has intervened with cruise missile assaults and air attacks multiple times in Somalia, with little success in eliminating key terrorist targets.

The world is talking. Are you listening?

As a web surfer looking out for independent voices beyond the mainstream media, it’s hard not to feel overwhelmed by the millions of blogs from all over the planet. Global Voices makes your job easier by acting as a crossroads of the most relevant blogs out there. Its crew consists of hundreds of blogger -authors, -editors and translators who point you towards the most interesting grassroots perspectives and conversations online. They do this by selecting passages from a wide array of online citizen media posted in their region and interconnecting them on the Global Voices website, using a variety of technologies: weblogs, podcasts, photos, videos, wikis, tags, aggregators and online chats. Their criteria for selection include respectability and credibility of the original bloggers, as well as contextual relevance of the information and analysis.

In essence, Global Voices makes the dialog happen. It promotes freedom of expression by advocating against internet censorship and developing tools and relationships that expand the scope of influence of voices speaking from everywhere. It encourages the world’s citizens to put their voices forward by providing online tutorials and publicizing ways in which they can safely express themselves with open-source and free tools. Global Voices is available in sixteen different languages and addresses preoccupations that are often ignored by the international English-language dominated media, but are important to communities behind the scenes. Check out the Special Coverage section for blogposts ordered by major news events such as the 27th Annual AIDS Conference or the global food crisis. Or just peruse the links, roundups and featured stories from Cape Verde to Lesotho in the sub-Saharan Africa section.

Global Voices is a project of the Harvard Law School's Berkman Center for Internet and Society, a research think-tank concerned with the relationship between cyberspace and civic activity.

Dennis Brutus Decries Corporate Injustice in South Africa

Last Friday, I sat down for an intimate brownbag discussion here in Washington, DC with Dennis Brutus, an outspoken social justice activist  who gained renown in the 1950s for his heroic work against racisim and apartheid. An ex-political prisoner in Robben Island, poet, and political writer, Brutus was in exile from his home country of South Africa between 1966 and 1990. In 1987, he was the first non-African American to receive the Langston Hughes Award. Brutus has long been involved in the Jubilee movement and speaks around the world on the current injustices of the international financial institutions and their policies in the Global South.

His main focus last week was the lawsuit now in play in a U.S. federal court against two-dozen banks and corporations that had conducted business in apartheid-era South Africa. In 2002, the Khulumani Support Group, representing South African victims of human rights abuses, filed this suit for reparations, contending that the corporations' dealings in the country furthered the apartheid system, making these businesses complicit in the human rights abuses of the regime.  The suit was filed in the U.S. under the Alien Torts Claims Act, which holds U.S. companies and individuals responsible for crimes committed against foreigners abroad.

Both the U.S. and South African administrations oppose the lawsuit and its premise of corporate reparations, maintaining that it would challenge South Africa’s sovereignty. A deeper underlying interest for their opposition, however, may be fears that the lawsuit would damage the foreign investment friendly business climate that officials from both governments have keenly promoted in South Africa since the end of apartheid.

Dennis discusses the corporate apartheid reparations lawsuit (via jobidooda):

Picture an End to Global Poverty

Staff and interns from Africa Action show support for our friends and allies at Jubilee USA Network and their current "Picture New Leadership on Global Poverty and Debt" campaign. They're collecting photos of activists like you holding signs like this until October 21. Send them a really creative picture, and you might be featured in an upcoming Jubilee USA newspaper advertisement asking presidential hopefuls John McCain and Barack Obama to step up the fight against international poverty and crippling debt.

Get involved here.