But it wasn't until an 80-year-old woman from Walikale in North Kivu was brought to Masika that the full weight of what was happening became clear, galvanizing her resolve. In the war that was sweeping the region, rape was being used as a weapon not only to degrade women, but to humiliate their husbands and whole communities, too. Masika realized the women and girls of eastern Congo needed organized, pro-active help—and Synergie des femmes pour les Victimes de Violences Sexuelles was born.
Its mission, says Masika, its director, is threefold: to raise awareness about sexual violence toward women, to take care of those who have been sexually abused, and to push for the perpetrators to be brought to justice. Since 2003, the organization, an Oxfam partner, has worked with 7,018 women—women like the one from Walikale, who so desperately needed help and for whom there was none available. Raped and left dumped in a field, she was rescued by a hunter and eventually brought to Goma, the capital of North Kivu. But she was penniless, and despite her serious injuries, the hospital would not treat her. And there she died.
Hers is just one of too many stories of sexual abuse and abandonment—of violence that is still rippling through the remote hills of the eastern provinces, that continues to torture its victims with shame, and that now, in a newer twist, has begun to corrode the core of traditional communities, too.
In a small mudbrick building propped on the edge of a dirt road in Kilungutwe, a crowd of villagers has gathered. It's dark and sweltering inside, but every inch of every bench is taken, and more people crowd at the door and window. They have come to discuss the troubles in their village—the extortion they face at the hands of soldiers, the difficulty they have in getting enough to eat—and now the talk has turned to sexual violence.
With anger still in his voice, Elisha Ezigobe, one of the local chiefs, describes the abduction of his 12-year-old daughter. A soldier took her for his wife—without Ezigobe's consent. As soon as he learned what had happened, he headed for the soldier's camp, dismissing any concern about the repercussions he might face in confronting armed men. He was determined to rescue his daughter.
"I took my girl and left," Ezigobe said through an interpreter. "I had my machete. I was going to fight back." His outrage scared the soldier off, and Ezigobe returned his daughter—unharmed—to their home.
But the man sitting next to Ezigobe was not so lucky. His daughter, too, was taken by a soldier. A night passed before he was able to find her and bring her home. Now, at 15, she is pregnant.
There are many stories like this, says Ezigobe, and some fathers are afraid to stand up to the soldiers.
But it's not just military men who are the perpetrators, say others in the roadside hut. Community members have turned into culprits, too—with few serious consequences for their crimes. If the abused girl is 17 or 18, the solution is often to have her marry the rapist. If she's younger, the local chief could order the man to make some kind of reparation—such as a goat—to the girl and her family.
Why is all of this happening now?
"They're asking themselves that question," says Jacqueline Tshilemba, a community educator for APIDE, one of Oxfam's local partners that is working with the people of Kilungutwe. "What they can see is this culture has happened since the war. It happens all over the place and no one gets punished."
At the root of the problem, says Josee Lotsove, is a society that views women as inferior. Lotsove is the coordinator for a local women-based organization called Association des Mamans Anti-Bwaki, or AMAB, an Oxfam partner headquartered in Bunia. Along with those traditional attitudes about women, she says, is the Congo's weak judicial system, which often fails to hold offenders accountable.
When perpetrators are arrested, adds Marie Kanyobayo, it's possible for them to pay a little money to the authorities and buy their freedom. Kanyobayo is the head of another women-based organization called Union des Femmes pour le Developpement, also an Oxfam partner.
It's at this foundation of impunity that Masika, the head of Synergie, is chipping away. Part of Synergie's work involves educating village chiefs and other local opinion leaders—teachers, pastors—about the nature of what has been happening to women, about the catastrophe that it has become, and about the importance of villagers accepting survivors back into the community fold.
But the work comes with great risk.
For speaking out about a problem that has devastated the lives of so many women, Masika and her family have themselves become targets. Last September, six military men came to her house in the early evening and tortured her two daughters, 22 and 20. Masika has since sent them to live in Nairobi, and an aid organization has paid to surround her house with barbed wire to protect her.
Masika admits that sometimes the challenges are so daunting that she's not sure she can continue with her advocacy. But she knows that her voice—and the voices of all the volunteers who work for Synergie—are essential in helping to protect the rights of women who cannot, or dare not, speak out for themselves.
In the Congo, the consequences of rape are far-reaching and affect whole families. Rape heaps shame upon its victims. Women often find themselves cast off by their husbands, and forced into complete self-dependence. Young girls who have been raped lose their chance for marriage and for having a family of their own—and the position of honor that being a mother brings.
At a medical center in Goma where Synergie carries out some of its work, women who are recovering from sexual abuse confront its ugly legacy: possible HIV infection and lives of hardship, including the need to find ways to support themselves. Here, they are learning to weave baskets from long strips of plastic, a skill that will help them earn a living when they are well enough to return to their villages.
But for some, the psychological wounds are so deep they don't want to leave the security and support in which Synergie has wrapped them. For others, the road home is crowded with obstacles that may prove insurmountable. One 36-year-old woman tells of in-laws who are trying to turn her children against her, accusing her of being promiscuous after she was abducted and held as a sex slave and later, in a second round of horror, raped and left pregnant by a government soldier.
For Amina, a volunteer who has been working with Synergie since its founding, the stories she hears from women and girls who have been abused weigh heavily on her. Many of them have become her friends, and she knows that Congolese culture will dictate the future they face—likely one of great difficulty.
Given how sweeping the problem of rape and sexual violence now is, might that culture become more understanding, and even forgiving?
Amina sits quietly for a moment before she replies. A weariness seems to frame her answer. Women are speaking out more, she says. In the past, they kept silent. But as for real change, she can't say when that will come.
]]>But not so long ago, he was a boy fighting a war in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
It's dark inside his shop: He works only with hand tools, as there is no electricity. But it's darker where he came from, and through memories spun from a tangle of languages—Swahili, French, English—the boyhood of Egiba Sango emerges. His real name is being withheld to protect his safety.
Sango's case is one of about 3,000 that the Concert d'Actions pour Jeunes et Enfants Défavorisés, or CAJED, has worked on since 1997. CAJED is based in Goma and is funded by Oxfam and UNICEF. Its mission is to help child soldiers recover from the trauma of their combat experiences and return to normal lives—a challenge in a place where years of conflict have left an estimated 5.4 million people dead since 1998. Between that year and 2003, about 33,000 children were among the ranks of various armed groups.
Successfully reintegrating them into community life will be essential to ensuring the lasting peace villagers in the eastern provinces long for.
And that's where Sango is now—joined again with everyday people doing everyday things—in a wooden shed perched on a heap of volcanic rock. A new bedstead and table stand in the dirt outside, announcing his wares and skills.
With a tool kit provided by CAJED—planes, saws, a drill, a vice, a square—Sango is making his living and paying $15 a month rent for this shed that he shares with a partner. A piece of cardboard, printed in a careful hand with project dimensions, is tacked to the wall, a counterpoint to the chaos in the shop—tools scattered on the ground, the blade of a giant knife glinting through the wood chips, a pile of chairs heaped along the back wall.
He speaks softly, his face nearly blank, as he tells a small crowd of visitors from Oxfam about the years he spent with the military—a choice he made as a very young boy to escape a life of misery.
The oldest of five children, he was 8 when his parents died—poisoned, he says, by neighbors who were jealous of his parents' efforts to improve themselves. Sango was sent to live with an uncle whose wife decided she didn't like him and treated him badly. Determined to find a better alternative, he joined a military group—and that's when his real trouble started.
Sango was just 10 at the time, and life among the soldiers was brutal. He told about how he was made to walk day and night, sometimes without food. He was forced to carry heavy loads and bore frequent beatings. One time, the soldiers punished him by cutting his leg. Pulling up his pant leg, Sango reveals an ugly scar on his right shin.
Five times he tried to run away—once getting as far as 80 kilometers from his unit before stumbling into soldiers who recognized him and forced him to return. Finally, on his sixth attempt, he escaped for good. That was in 2005.
For two years, Sango was on his own, surviving by his wits around Goma with two other boys who had also fled their military units. They would beg for food from house to house and when one received a handout, he shared it with the others. Occasionally, they would steal to stay alive.
Eventually, one of the outreach workers from CAJED found Sango on the streets and convinced him to come to the center. Sango said he knew he needed a way to become self-sufficient. The first stop was a three-month stay at a transit center in Goma, the capital of North Kivu, where staff members work with youngsters on psychosocial issues and help prepare them to return to their families. They also track down those families and work with them to be ready to welcome their children back.
But Sango had no parents—and no place to go. Instead, he enrolled in CAJED's training program and after six months had gained enough skill to launch his own small furniture-making business.
He finishes his story, and for the first time in nearly an hour of talk, life seems to return to his face when one of the visitors asks if Sango could make him a table.
Sango flashes a smile. He's back—in his shop, in control of his life, his boyhood behind him for now.
On the hilltop behind Sango's shop, how many other stories like his can be found among the children and teenagers learning to be carpenters or bakers or any of several other skills CAJED is imparting through its training programs there?
Rain pelts the metal roofs of the workshops as Gilbert Munda, CAJED's coordinator, leads a tour from the wood-fired brick oven to the electronics-repair room and into the room where girls are learning to sew on big black sewing machines.
The reality of many of the trainees' lives becomes clear in a visit to CAJED's infirmary housed in a small wooden shack with a concrete floor. There Dorotheé Mushesha, one of two nurses in a dark room with plywood walls, is pounding a root into powder. She says when the center runs out of modern medicines, she treats her patients with traditional ones from plants, and she keeps a small garden right behind the infirmary for that purpose. The root she is pounding helps the kidneys, she says.
About 20 children a day come for care. Malaria, typhoid, worms, respiratory illnesses, skin issues—Mushesha sees the gamut among the young patients.
In his office, Munda talks about the pressures that have pushed kids into the arms of military men willing to exploit their loyalty for murderous ends of their own.
Many children don't have the opportunity to go to school, he says. Poverty has a stranglehold on their families, and often the kids are unable to find work.
Human rights advocates says the recruitment of child soldiers stems from a host of deeply ingrained attitudes that hold little respect for the lives of individuals, including those of children. And compounding that is a widespread lack of basic services and social support networks.
But Munda is optimistic that with the kind of help programs like CAJED offer, children swept up in the horrors of war can recover their old lives and become productive community members.
The rain has stopped by the time the Oxfam visitors take their leave of Munda. On their way home, they again pass Sango's shop. The table and bedstead are still there. But now they are beaded with rain. No one thought to bring them in, or cover them with plastic. Maybe there was none to spare.
]]>"He insulted us and beat me up," she says, tears welling up with the memory. Ortiz recounts the ordeal in her dirt-floor house in the department of Ahuachapan, sitting on a simple wood chair, holding her four-year-old daughter Melissa—her youngest. "One of my children said to me, 'Mama, let's get out of here,' so we went outside."
That spring night, outside their blue concrete house, the threats continued. "He insulted me so much... saying I was worthless, I had no future, and that it was better for him to kill me and the children."
Ortiz had to take action because her husband was a police officer and had a firearm. The family took shelter at a neighbor's house, and Ortiz called the police. Her husband was arrested the next morning. She and her children were safe for the moment, but in his drunken rage he had burned all their clothes.
The hills in Ahuachapan are bright green after a rainy summer. Blue and yellow butterflies fly lazily among the coffee trees along the dirt roads, and the sun is warm and comforting. It looks peaceful, making the violent confrontation Ortiz describes seem out of place. But in this small country of six million, widespread violence tends to be particularly deadly for women.
El Salvador is still recovering from a 13-year civil war that saw 75,000 people killed and nearly 8,000 "disappeared." It is a politically polarized society, torn between a small business elite, which dominates commerce and the government, and the majority struggling in poverty. Socially, men are dominant: It is a machista culture that holds many women in submissive roles in the family, raising children and doing other work in the home. Roughly half of Salvadorans live in poverty, and women head about 25 percent of households, so the abuse of and discrimination against women contributes directly to keeping them poor and in their subservient role in society.
There is a paucity of data on violence against women in El Salvador, but what few details are available tell a brutal story: In a country about the geographic size of Massachusetts, the rate of "femicide" in El Salvador was 11.15 per 100,000 women in 2005, far exceeding Guatemala's rate (population nearly 13 million) of 7.96 for that same year, according to a 2006 report by the Inter-American Institute of Human Rights. The same report shows the numbers of women murdered in El Salvador inching up slowly from 2001, when there were 211 women killed, to 260 in 2004, before jumping to 390 in 2005. The 2006 total was 437, according to Yanira Argueta, director of the Association of Salvadoran Women. "The situation is critical," she says at a meeting in her office in San Salvador. "Public officials are not sensitive to the problem, and there is no good application of the laws."
Part of the problem is public perception. A 2006 poll by CS Sondeo found that only about 83 percent of people in El Salvador believe that rape is a crime—which means that more than 15 percent don't consider it a criminal act.
Whether rape, murder, assault, or even psychological abuse, violence against women is more than an injustice or a human rights violation: it is an investment in the social status quo that keeps men on top and women below them. And it prevents women from fully contributing to the two changes El Salvador desperately needs: an end to poverty and the building of democracy.
]]>Molina de Vasquez worked hard to get the group established because she wants women to have opportunities to work outside their homes so they can broaden their horizons. "So many women are mistreated by their husbands," she says. "They need to know about their rights and feel capable of doing things."
"I would like to get women to know about their rights and duties, and to increase their self-esteem. We can help ourselves and our families, care for our children, and earn income to change our lives."
When asked why helping other women is so important to her, she says, "Let me tell you a little about my own life; then you will know."
The details come spilling out; she's like someone who walks away from a serious car accident, describing how lucky she is just to be alive. Mistreated by her father, her mother abused, Molina de Vasquez was married at 14 to a soldier. "I thought it was a way to escape," she says, "but my life got worse." Her husband was violent, and his family "used to tell me that my job was to have children and take care of my husband." When she failed to deliver a child for the first three years of their marriage, "I was useless to them," Molina de Vasquez says with a sigh.
But others could see that she was a leader. When their first child went to kindergarten, she was chosen to be the president of the parents' board at the school. "When I told my husband, he was angry. He told me I was not capable of it. I accepted this; he always told me I was good for nothing. For 11 years it was like that."
Eventually they moved to a rural area and things started to improve. Her husband became an agricultural laborer. They had a son. But Molina de Vasquez wanted to do more activities outside their home, like joining a health training program. Although reluctant to allow her to participate, her husband said she could host training sessions at their home. As part of this training, one of Oxfam's partners, AGROSAL, taught the women about their rights and how to prevent domestic violence. It was part of the Vida Diferente campaign to prevent gender violence.
"I started to listen to talks about preventing violence in the home," Molina de Vasquez says. "I learned about my rights." Since her husband allowed her to hold the meetings at their house, Molina de Vasquez took a risk: "I invited him to the talks and training sessions, and he became more sensitive." Together, she and her husband questioned the gender roles and attitudes in the machista culture in El Salvador, and they recreated their relationship. "Now my husband and I solve problems through dialogue, not violence," Molina de Vasquez says. He now recognizes how important it is for her to use her leadership skills. "If someone asks me to do something, I will do it because I know my husband will not say no."
Molina de Vasquez is committed to the new women's organization: "First I would like to get women to know about their rights and duties, and to increase their self-esteem." She says there are practical reasons for this, which leads to the second goal: "We need jobs for all the women. We can help ourselves and our families, care for our children, and earn income to change our lives." For Molina de Vasquez, respect for women and fighting poverty are part of the same struggle.
The changes in Molina de Vasquez's family are hard to compare to the earlier, oppressive days. "I have overcome it—so why can't I help other women? That is my goal: to help many other women."
]]>One of the goals of the campaign is to increase the number of women who understand their rights and can effectively defend them as Adelina Ortiz did. To help educate the next generation, the campaign developed a program for teachers and schoolchildren in 2007 that teaches young people about how to prevent gender violence and what to do if they are attacked.
"We used to talk about gender equity here," says Patricia Jovel. "But never gender violence." Jovel is the director of a school participating in this new initiative in El Progreso, a village perched on the impossibly steep Quetzaltepeque volcano outside San Salvador. The school, where 850 students from 6 to 16 years old attend classes in two half-day groups, is a collection of six cinderblock classrooms topped by metal sheet roofing on either side of a terraced concrete courtyard sloping down the mountainside. It is a beehive of activity after classes, as without any level area for a playground, the students play tag around the central courtyard in the brisk mountain air. Jovel says the young women who sometimes have to walk home in the dark after school are now better equipped to fend off the young men offering drinks and cigarettes to them. "Thank God there have been no rapes," she says.
The students have learned their lessons well: Karla Sanchez, 15, says it is a matter of her basic rights. "Everyone must respect our rights as children, girls, youth. We all have the same rights, and no one can violate them. And if something should happen, we know we can tell our parents, our teachers, or adults we trust. They are here to help us," she explains patiently. And if these people can't help, she knows where to go. She lists a number of institutions where she can turn for protection: the Human Rights Office; the National Police; and the Salvadoran Institute for the Advancement of Women, known as ISDEMU. As she leaves, Sanchez articulates one essential idea about reporting gender violence: "We should not be afraid of what people say."
In 2007, this pilot project in 53 schools exposed 25,000 students to the key messages of the campaign and trained 1,000 students and 1,000 teachers. The teachers now have incorporated violence prevention into their curriculum, and they work with the trained students. The pilot was supported by the Ministry of Education and was such a success that the minister decided to incorporate it into the public school curriculum nationwide.
Sustained pressure to change societal attitudes toward women is a slow process. One effective way to question long-held ideas and beliefs is to educate those entrusted with defending the rights of women, protecting them in the community, and helping them if they are attacked or injured. These include public officials like police officers, judges, public health officials and doctors, and social workers. The campaign organized a formal training program at the University of Central America (UCA) in 2005, and 45 people attended.
Maritza de Vasquez, a psychologist at the family court in the city of San Marcos, just outside San Salvador, says this training has helped her assist the many women who come through her office. De Vasquez says that women are hearing the messages of the campaign and are taking action to protect themselves. In the steady stream of domestic violence and divorce cases she sees, there is a different attitude. "Women take the opportunity to come here and talk about their situation they come here right away to denounce it," she says. "They are expressing their rights more openly now."
Back in Ahuachapan, Ortiz grows corn and raises sheep to support her children and grandchildren. He husband is in jail awaiting a hearing. "I'd rather see him in prison than anywhere else," Ortiz says. It was her participation in a sheep-raising program run by one of Oxfam America's partners, Association of Salvadoran Agriculturalists (AGROSAL), that exposed Ortiz to the human rights training that helped her defend her own life and protect her children. She points out that in all her training to become a health worker, no one ever educated her about domestic violence or how to prevent it. "The training taught me that women have rights and people are obligated to respect them," Ortiz says. "This made me act, to look for help, and thank God I found it."
]]>There can be no way forward for Darfur until all parties to the conflict stop fighting and stop attacks on civilians. Yet, at the moment, the violence continues, causing untold misery for millions of people—with thousands more attacked and fleeing their homes every week the conflict goes on. People across the world must let their politicians know that the suffering of so many Darfur citizens will be tolerated no longer. The international community must put greater sustained pressure on all parties to immediately cease hostilities and return to the negotiating table.
For five years the world has promised the people of Darfur that it will protect them from violence—yet there is still no peacekeeping force capable of giving civilians the protection they need and deserve. The new United Nations-African Union force, known as UNAMID, deployed at the start of 2008 but is still woefully under strength, with only a third of its 26,000 personnel on the ground and a lack of equipment, training, and political backing. The force urgently needs more international support. Getting UNAMID on the ground took 18 months of enormous political effort, but this will be wasted unless the force is made strong enough to actually protect people.
The humanitarian response in Darfur is among the largest in the world and has had an enormous impact on people’s lives. Early in the crisis, large numbers of people died of malnutrition and disease, but over time the mortality rates have been cut and people now have greatly improved access to vital services such as water, food, and healthcare. Yet daily targeted attacks on humanitarian workers are making Darfur an increasingly dangerous and difficult place to work. Oxfam’s staffers are still managing to assist over 400,000 people – but it is becoming ever harder to do so. The international community must ensure that all the many parties to the conflict respect international humanitarian law and allow aid to reach those who desperately need it.
Despite the vast humanitarian effort and the need for a stronger protection force, the only sustainable solution to the conflict is a political one. The peace process has stalled again recently and world leaders must provide sustained, coordinated leadership to reinvigorate efforts to unite the countless factions and bring all parties back to negotiations. Greater effort must be made to ensure such talks are truly representative of the people of Darfur, by increasing the involvement of civil society and marginalized groups, and reflecting the needs and concerns of all Darfur’s many ethnic groups.
While soldiers and militia fight, it is the ordinary people of Darfur who suffer. They want nothing more than an end to the conflict and to be able to get back to their normal lives – but they need our help to make this happen. People all over the world can help ensure their political leaders do not allow attention on Darfur to fade after five years. Darfur must not be allowed to become yet another “forgotten crisis.” To do so would condemn millions of its people to years more suffering.
]]>"We had no choice, but to evacuate our staff from N'Djamena where the situation has become extremely insecure," said Raphael Sindaye, Oxfam's acting regional director for West Africa. "Some of the evacuated staffers will work from Dakar to support teams continuing to provide life saving humanitarian relief to refugees and internally displaced people in the east of the country."
Oxfam still has its field teams in eastern Chad that continue to supply aid to more than 100,000 people.
The security situation remains very tense and uncertain, and Oxfam teams are closely monitoring the events.
"The movements of our staff have been limited, but we are continuing to deliver our programs in Goz Beida and Goz Amir in Eastern Chad," added Sindaye."We are concerned that if the fighting in N'djamena drags on it could increase insecurity in eastern Chad and hamper the aid effort. N'djamena is an essential supply route for humanitarian goods."
There are nearly half a million people displaced in Eastern Chad. The majority of them are refugees from the conflict in neighboring Darfur, Sudan. Oxfam's aid effort has been reaching more than 100,000 people in Chad with clean water, safe sanitation, food and public health promotion.
]]>Charupá does not seem particularly worried, as he is used to the uncertainties of raising cattle. Moreover, he is confident about the long-term prospects of his community: in June of 2007, the president of Bolivia announced that the Chiquitano people had successfully completed all legal requirements to attain title to a vast area of Santa Cruz's eastern forest known as Monte Verde.
The indigenous people took advantage of an agrarian reform law passed in 1996 that allowed them to claim "original community territories" known by their Spanish initials as TCOs. The Monte Verde TCO has immense significance for the Chiquitano people. Their ancestors were moved out of Monte Verde in the 1700s by the Spanish and relocated to communities run by Jesuit priests. Chiquitanos were enslaved on haciendas and eventually forced to tap rubber trees in the early 20th century. The area near Charupá's village is part of San Antonio de Lomerío, a place of refuge for escaped slaves. Their descendents organized groups to work on the legal claim for their territory, while illegal logging decimated their forests.
It took more than a decade of hard work and sustained Oxfam support for the Chiquitano people to achieve their goal. Oxfam helped three local organizations, in Lomerío, San Javier, and the village of Monte Verde to coordinate their work and collaborate with the Center for Legal Studies and Social Research (known by its Spanish initials CEJIS) to get the technical training to gather satellite positioning data on the TCO borders and investigate 158 land claims by ranchers and other nonindigenous people trying to grab a piece of the territory. Only a small number of these claims were legitimate, and it was only through the legal support, technical data, and satellite photos gathered by the community members and CEJIS that the Chiquitanos could defend their claim from these interlopers, some of whom were using forged documents.
Violence has been a continuous threat to the Chiquitano people for the last 200 years. Individuals forced into slavery were murdered if they tried to escape, and later when the ancestors of escaped slaves in Lomerío organized to win back their territory, their leaders were intimidated and attacked. "We heard of incidents in other communities where entire families had been pulled out of their houses and hung by their wrists under trees," Juan Soqueré, leader of the indigenous Chiquitano community in San Lorenzo said.
Opposition to the land investigations and the legal process from civic committees, representing nonindigenous business and ranching interests opposed to the indigenous people, became violent. When the land investigations exposed fraudulent claims, there was a strong reaction. One of the worst incidents involved Leonardo Tamburini, now 41 and the director of CEJIS. In 2001 while investigating one fraudulent claim, he was kidnapped.
"They beat me so badly they almost killed me," Tamburini said. "They put me in a pick-up truck, and took me to the Cattlemen's Association headquarters in San Javier—which is next door to the church. They had me there for about an hour. There was a cattlemen's congress going on, and they paraded me around the patio of the restaurant, all beat up and bloody, saying 'This is what we do to the people who want to take our land away from us.'"
Tamburini refused to sign a document recognizing the cattlemen's claim to half the territory of Monte Verde, and after the mayor of San Javier intervened he was released. "They didn't accomplish what they wanted," he said.
Juan Soqueré said that gaining the legal title to Monte Verde has brought peace for the Chiquitano. "There are no more threats. And those that threatened us before have left the territory, and now we are all calm, living in peace."
There are 33 communities, comprising roughly 5,000 people living in or near the Monte Verde TCO. They are now looking to the future and envisioning the best ways to manage and enjoy the roughly 3,830 square-mile territory.
Lorenzo Charupá says such planning will be essential for the future. "We are deciding together what areas are for crops," he says. "We are setting aside areas for grazing, hunting, and to preserve trees. We have a map showing all the different areas and what we will do there. Everything has its place."
José Luis Rivera, president of the indigenous organization of San Javier, says they have several ways of making more money:
With the legal title in hand, the community has the confidence to make proposals to development organizations that might have otherwise been reluctant to support agricultural projects on lands the community did not legally own. "These institutions will have no doubt we can do these projects on our own land," Rivera says. "We have the right to our land and can respect our culture."
Outside Rivera's temporary office, his compañeros are building a new office to replace the one burned down by thugs last December. The walls are up, and the smell of sawdust mixes with the wood smoke and cooking scents from a nearby restaurant. Pablo Solis Chuviru, 57, is looking at the new building and reflecting on the struggle to gain the legal title to Monte Verde and what it means for the future for his small village, Turuxnapez, which means "Heaven's Door" in the local Bésiro language. "I hope we can hunt and fish, and use our trees in an orderly way," he says, resting in a chair in the winter sun. "Now we are using a forest management plan so that our children will benefit from the forest. This is the future for them; they can see the fight we won. For them it is a treasure."
]]>These were the questions taken up by the Organization of American States' Inter-American Commission on Human Rights in a special session to discuss "Human Rights Violations and the Responsibility of International Financial Institutions."
Financial institutions like the Inter-American Development Bank loan huge sums to governments and companies in Latin America. In 2006 it provided more than $6 billion for 112 projects. World Bank lending in the region was more than $5 billion in 2005. Yet despite the power to affect the lives of millions across the region, these bodies have always claimed they are not bound by international human rights law.
"This was the first time the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights has held a hearing on this topic, and they seemed quite enthusiastic about becoming more engaged on the issue," said Ian Gary, Oxfam America's policy advisor on extractive industries. He delivered remarks specifically on the $1.7 billion Camisea gas pipeline in Peru, which benefited from $135 million in financial support from the Inter-American Development Bank. Broader legal arguments regarding the need for international financial institutions to comply with human rights norms in their projects were made by representatives of the Indian Law Resource Center and the Center on International Environmental Law.
Critics of the pipeline charge that it runs through national parks and environmentally sensitive areas of Peru without the proper consultation of indigenous communities living there, a violation of the International Labour Organization's Convention Concerning Indigenous and Tribal People in Independent Countries. The five spills since the pipeline was completed in 2004 have affected the right to a livelihood of indigenous communities – communities say project impacts have contributed to a decline in fish stocks and access to wild game.. A delegation of NGO representatives led by Oxfam America visiting the pipeline area in 2006 were told by local groups that little of the gas royalties given to local government had been used for social programs, such as schools or health clinics, to help the indigenous people in the area.
"This hearing was an important first step to bring public agencies like the World Bank or the Inter-American Development Bank within a system of accountability to address human rights abuses," Gary said. "Our prospects for sustainable reforms are greatly enhanced when we support local partners to defend their rights and, at the same time, make these arguments in important venues such as this."
Oral Presentation by Ian Gary, Policy Advisor for Extractive Industries, Oxfam America, March 1, 2007
Indigenous groups, Peruvian and international environmental and human rights NGOs expressed serious concerns about the project prior to the IDB's decision to co-finance the project. Unfortunately, many of the concerns related to the rights of indigenous peoples and environmental damage have been borne out.
There is widespread fear in affected communities that this could signal a lapse in the agreement and a return to violence. As negotiations appear to be at an impasse it is vitally important that the parties come together as soon as possible to reaffirm their commitment to the ceasefire. Peace talks must be resumed before it is too late and the apparent deadlock reaches the point of no return.
]]>So, three times a week, and sometimes more, women from the Abu Shouk and Al Salaam camps head out on four-hour treks to scavenge for fuel. If they don't come upon any trees, the women resort to clawing through the hard-packed earth to reach bits of root that they can burn instead.
But hard work is only part of their problem. Looming larger for these women is the constant threat to their safety: By venturing even a short distance outside of the camps they could face harassment, sexual assault, or even death. Since early 2003, conflict has wracked this region, forcing more than 2 million people from their homes. Many of them have sought shelter in camps like Abu Shouk and Al Salaam. But the demands of daily living—the need for wood, for jobs, for food—often require them to leave the safety of those camps.
Now, Oxfam America, together with the Sudanese Agency for Environment and Development Service (SAEDS), has launched a $132,000 program that will help thousands of displaced women stay safer in this volatile place. The agency is providing 4, 200 households with fuel-efficient stoves that, in many cases, will completely remove the need for women to hunt for wood. Two thousand of the stoves are kerosene-fueled; another 2,000 are efficient wood-burning stoves; and 200 of them use gas. The project will benefit about 25,200 people.
Women were excited about getting the stoves, said Sahar Ali, an Oxfam America program officer, who paid a monitoring visit to Abu Shouk in late January.
"Traditionally, the provision of firewood and fuel for cooking has been the responsibility of women," said Ali, in a report she filed after the visit. "There are few other sources of cooking fuel available to them."
But with the introduction of kerosene and gas, they now have other options. And the small round stoves that burn wood efficiently—as opposed to open fires—means women will need to make fewer of the dangerous scavenging trips.
Still, convincing women that gas is a smart way to cook has taken some doing, said Ali. They worried about its hazards.
"This is the first time for them using gas, and most of the houses are made from wood," said Ali. "If it burns, it burns all the camp. They said we prefer kerosene—not the gas."
The hesitancy about gas notwithstanding, the new stoves are bringing another important benefit to the region, too: some relief for the environment.
"North Darfur is mostly desert, and the few trees that provided a nearby source of cooking fuel when the camps were first created more than two years ago are all gone," said Ali in her report.
It's a trend that Ibrahim Suliman, a program coordinator for SAEDS, has watched for the past four decades as it's crept across the region.
"When I was a child, most of Darfur was covered in forest—even North Darfur," said Suliman, a native of Dar el Salaam, a small village about 30 miles south of El Fasher. But in the last 30 years, those trees and grasses have given way to desert. Why?
"Because of overgrazing," said Suliman. "Because there is no planning for animal breeding. And the firewood for cooking. And for houses—people build their houses from wood. And charcoal traders."
But with the introduction of the stoves, some of that degradation can be slowed since less wood will be needed for cooking. Suliman has even convinced his mother to switch to kerosene.
"She's very happy. It's clean," he said.
SAEDS is taking its concern for the environment a step further: It has launched a replanting project in Dar es Salaam and plans to begin a similar effort around the camps.
"Our philosophy is to restock the forest and all these things will be improved," said Suliman. "If we try to stop cutting trees and every year we try to plant many new trees, within four to five years we will be able to restock a big amount of trees. And we'll be able to at least make the environment more attractive than before and people can find grasses for their animals and be able to cultivate again. It might take a long time, but we have to start."
In Dar el Salaam, thanks to SAEDS, about 4,500 new saplings are now growing.
"In five to 10 years, I'm sure it will be green," said Suliman.
Near El Fasher, trees might also grow again. Oxfam's project with SAEDS calls for the planting of 10,000 seedlings around the camps. Families who have recently received the fuel-efficient stoves will be mobilized to do the planting.
]]>MONUC should not scale down its activities until the Congolese security forces--and in particular the army--stop posing a threat to their own populations and instead begin providing security and protection to the Congolese people.
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