Day: October 12, 2021

The U.N. human rights office has condemned a recent escalation of violent, deadly attacks and abusive treatment of migrants and asylum seekers, allegedly by both Libyan state and non-state agents.

This month, the U.N. agency says at least five people were killed and many injured during a series of heavy-handed security operations and raids against migrants and asylum seekers.

It says mass expulsions of people to countries in sub-Saharan Africa have taken place. The rights office says that violates laws against the forcible deportation of individuals to places where their lives could be at risk.

U.N. human rights spokeswoman Marta Hurtado says last week, Ministry of Interior personnel raided an informal settlement near the capital, Tripoli. Among the inhabitants, she says, were hundreds of migrants and asylum seekers registered with the U.N. refugee agency.

“Women, children and men were arrested and handcuffed. Security forces used unnecessary and disproportionate force to detain them, including shooting and beating those who resisted or tried to escape," said Hurtado. "As a result, at least one person died, five were injured, and more than 4,000 were detained.”

Hurtado says those arrested have been taken to an overcrowded, unsanitary, government-run detention center in Tripoli, where they have little access to food or water. She says similar scenarios have been repeated since then.

On October 6, 500 migrants escaped from the Gheriyan Detention Centre in Tripoli. Hurtado says they were chased by guards, who opened fire using live ammunition. She says preliminary information indicates at least four people were short and killed and many others injured.

A recent report by the Independent Fact-Finding Mission on Libya said the widespread and systematic violations suffered by migrants could amount to crimes against humanity.

Hurtado says the government justifies raids against the migrants as a necessary measure to tackle crime.

“What we are saying is if you want to tackle crime, try to go against the traffickers," said Hurtado. "Do not go and pick up the migrants and detain the migrants that are quite often the victims of these traffickers. Having said that, the government has acknowledged as well that maybe what happened last week was not the best way forward.”

Hurtado says the government has promised to free some of the migrants.

The U.N. human rights office is calling on authorities to conduct a prompt and impartial investigation into the violent events and to hold perpetrators of crimes and abuse accountable. It says authorities also should stop criminalizing people solely for their migration status and end their policy of forcible deportation.

Source: Voice of America

Medical aid groups are welcoming plans by U.S. drug maker Moderna to build a plant for manufacturing vaccines in Africa. The groups say the plant, the first from a company making a COVID-19 vaccine, will help in fighting vaccine inequality.

African countries are facing a shortfall of nearly 500 million COVID-19 vaccines according to the World Health Organization.

The shortage has left most countries unable to vaccinate even the most vulnerable 10 percent of their populations.

Last week, U.S. drug maker Moderna announced plans to build a plant on the African continent. Its statement is raising hope Africa will have a sufficient supply of COVID-19 vaccines in the future.

Medical aid groups say although the plan will boost Africa’s vaccine manufacturing capacity, the continent still needs an immediate solution to shortages. Dr. Githinji Gitahi is the chief executive officer at Amref Health Africa.

"As significant as it is because of the high financial commitment of 500 million dollars, there are several other factors to consider," said Gitahi. "One, that factory will not be a solution to the current challenge of vaccine access in Africa. If the factory is going to be ready in 2-4 years Africa wants to vaccinate at least 70% of its population by the end of June next year. Therefore, Africa still demands the most important step in redistribution of doses earmarked for rich countries to come into Africa."

Although Moderna has yet to say where it will build the factory, at least 10 countries, among them Kenya, Morocco, South Africa and Senegal, have expressed an interest in hosting the facility.

Dr. Willis Akhwale, the chairman of Kenya's vaccination task force, says Moderna will need to look at the project as a partnership with the host country.

"If Moderna is coming to open, they should come with an open mind that they are bringing technological transfer, not just setting up a factory," said Akhwale. "Therefore, they need to transfer that technology to the host country. The other thing is capacity building of the local people beyond just the COVID-19 vaccine towards the whole human vaccine manufacturing.”

The Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention welcomes the idea of manufacturing the COVID-19 vaccine on the continent.

Dr. Bernhards Ogutu, chief research officer at the center's office in Kenya, says although the process is likely to take a long time, it's a promising sign for making health care more available in Africa.

"If we really want health care affordable and accessible to all, then we must start doing a lot of production of health commodities in the region," he said.

By September, an estimated 5.2 billion COVID vaccine doses had been administered globally but only 2 percent of those were in Africa. African medical groups say they hope that the manufacturing of such vaccines on the continent will prevent such unequal distribution in the future.

Source: Voice of America

The United Nations' migration agency has recalled a staff member identified by two U.N. sources in Addis Ababa as the head of its mission to Ethiopia over audio recordings containing criticism of senior U.N. officials.

In the recordings, two women who say they work for the U.N. in Ethiopia but do not give their names tell a freelance journalist that some top U.N. officials globally sympathize with forces from the northern Tigray region that are fighting Ethiopia's government.

Reuters heard the women's comments after the recordings were released online but could not independently verify the authenticity of the recordings.

In a letter dated October 11, the head of the International Organization for Migration (IOM) said a staff member had been recalled to headquarters and put on administrative leave pending an investigation into the recordings.

"The opinions attributed in the audio recordings to the staff member do not correspond to IOM's principles and values," IOM Director General Antonio Vitorino wrote in the letter, seen Tuesday by Reuters.

In his letter, Vitorino did not name the person who had been recalled.

Two U.N. staff members in Addis Ababa identified one of the women in the recording as Maureen Achieng, the IOM's chief representative in Ethiopia.

An IOM spokesperson did not immediately respond when asked whether the person recalled to headquarters was Achieng. Achieng and the journalist could not immediately be reached for comment.

The U.N. says Ethiopia's government is preventing aid from reaching hundreds of thousands of people experiencing famine in Tigray, where war has made nearly 7 million people dependent on food aid. The government denies it is blocking aid. Ethiopia last month decided to expel seven senior U.N. officials, accusing them of meddling in internal affairs.

Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed's spokesperson, Billene Seyoum, criticized IOM on Twitter on Tuesday. She said Achieng – whom she referred to by linking to Achieng's verified Twitter account -- had told "the unvarnished truth on institutional bias with the U.N. system."

War broke out in November 2020 between the Ethiopian government and the Tigray People's Liberation Front (TPLF), the political party that controls Tigray.

In the recordings, the two women say - without citing evidence - that World Health Organization chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus is among the U.N. officials who sympathize with Tigrayan forces. Tedros, who is Tigrayan, has repeatedly denied taking sides in the conflict.

Source: Voice of America

The International Court of Justice has drawn a maritime boundary between Kenya and Somalia after the countries failed for years to reach agreement on the issue.

The court’s ruling Tuesday, seen as favorable to Somalia, is almost certain to be rejected by Kenya. The ruling concerns about 100,000 square kilometers of Indian Ocean waters off the east coast of Kenya and Somalia.

The area, believed to hold oil and natural gas deposits, has been a source of dispute between the East African neighbors for years.

The court awarded Somalia the bulk of the territory, while adjusting the border slightly northward to address Kenya’s security and economic interests.

The ICJ rejected one of Kenya’s key arguments, that Somalia had previously agreed to a boundary, saying there was no proof to show that from the documents Kenyan lawyers supplied to the court.

The Hague-based court also rejected Somalia's demand for compensation for Kenya’s past economic activity in the area.

Somalia filed a complaint against Kenya in the International Court of Justice in 2014, saying it had exhausted all other avenues of finding a solution to the dispute.

It remains to be seen if the ruling will have a real-world impact, as Kenya boycotted the hearing Tuesday and said it would not respect the ICJ verdict.

Source: Voice of America

The United States is sending more than 3.5 million doses of the two-shot Pfizer vaccine to Nigeria, Africa’s most populous nation, a White House official told VOA on Tuesday.

“We are sharing these doses not to secure favors or extract concessions,” the official said. “Our vaccines do not come with strings attached. We are doing this with the singular objective of saving lives.”

The 3,577,860 doses, which the White House said began shipping to Nigeria on Tuesday, follows a July donation of 4 million doses of the two-shot Moderna vaccine. The donation was processed through COVAX, the global vaccine-sharing initiative.

Nigeria has reported at least 2,747 deaths from the virus and some 208,000 confirmed cases, according to the World Health Organization. However, medical officials in Africa and overseas have expressed concern that the African continent’s true COVID-19 situation has been underdiagnosed and underreported.

On the continent, South Africa remains at the epicenter, with at least 88,317 deaths counted by WHO, and more than 2.9 million confirmed cases of COVID-19, the disease caused by the highly contagious coronavirus.

With more than 206 million people, Nigeria is a lower middle-income country, according to World Bank data. Nigeria has also accepted donations of vaccines from Russia, plus donations of diagnostic and treatment equipment, and test kits from China and South Korea, its Ministry of Health said.

As of this month, just over 7.2 million vaccine doses have been administered, according to WHO. That’s a far cry from the goal shared by Nigerian authorities to vaccinate 40% of its population — about 80 million people — by the end of 2021.

The nation appears to be emerging from a third viral wave, with a height of about 5,000 daily reported cases. The second wave, the nation’s worst, peaked in January, with nearly 12,000 new cases reported in one day, according to WHO data.

In September, U.S. President Joe Biden announced the U.S. would donate 500 million additional doses of the Pfizer vaccine to low-income and lower-middle-income countries. In all, the United States has now pledged 1.1 billion doses.

But aid groups say this is not enough, coming from the world’s wealthiest nation.

“Despite its claim to be a global leader on COVID-19, the U.S. is hoarding nearly 500 million excess COVID-19 vaccine doses — more than any other country,” said Dr. Carrie Teicher, director of programs at Doctors Without Borders’ U.S. branch. “It’s reckless and dangerous for the U.S. and other high-income countries to be sitting on excessive stocks of COVID-19 vaccines while others — including in many places where MSF (Doctors Without Borders) is battling surges of COVID-19 — are desperate to provide their most vulnerable people with even their first dose.”

U.S. officials have been criticized for urging booster shots for vulnerable Americans while vaccination rates are low in the developing world. The White House casts the controversy over booster shots as a false choice, claiming the U.S. can help vaccinate the world while also protecting Americans.

According to projections by the Oxford University COVID-19 database Our World in Data, only one nation in sub-Saharan Africa — the tiny enclave nation of Lesotho — is on track to meet the target of inoculating 40% of its population with at least one dose of the vaccine by the end of 2021.

Source: Voice of America