Essential The Africa the Media Doesn't Tell You About

[Yehuda]

Morocco bans forced marriage and sexual violence

12 September 2018

Morocco's law criminalising violence against women has come into force.

The law includes a ban on forced marriage, sexual harassment in public places, and tougher penalties for certain forms of violence.

It has been criticised by Human Rights Watch for not explicitly criminalising marital rape and lacking a precise definition of domestic violence.

A government survey found that 63% of women between the ages of 18-65 had been victims of violence.

• Africa Live: Find out all the latest news from the continent
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Samira Raiss, one of the main Moroccan campaigners for a law criminalising violence against women, said: "We will not stop here. This law is an asset but it has shortcomings that we have to work on."

The law - known as the Hakkaoui law after Women's Minister Bassima Hakkaoui, who drafted it five years ago - has been criticised for requiring victims to file for criminal prosecution to obtain protection.

Bassima Hakkaoui first drafted the law in 2013

"We lack the appropriate tools to implement this law," Ms Raiss said.

"In case of marital violence it is difficult to provide proof and we don't even have shelters for victims."

How to be invisible

By Mouna Ba, BBC Arabic

I perfected the art of being invisible while growing up in the Moroccan city of Rabat - or so I thought.

All I had to do was:

• Dress down, preferably in baggy jeans and a loose, unflattering shirt
• Always look down (if I don't see them, then maybe they won't see me)
• Hunch my back

When I started secondary school, my parents decided that I was old enough to do the 15-minute walk by myself to school. That was my first brush with the reality of being a girl on a Moroccan street.

One day, two young men blocked my way. One flashed a knife hidden under his shirt and said I had to follow them. I told them I had to take a test and would be in big trouble if I was late to school… and they let me go. It was a lucky escape and it could have ended very differently.

Another incident was when a boy began hurling verbal abuse at me. I stopped, looked at him in the eye and said: "You don't even know me. Why are you insulting me?" He was so taken aback by my reaction that he apologised.

But I wasn't always that brave. I usually pretended not to hear the cat calls and insults. The battle wasn't worth fighting.

Morocco's new law on violence against women is a long time coming.

Its provisions include penalties ranging one to six months prison sentence to up to a $500 fine for cases of sexual harassment against women in the street and public spaces.

It is music to my ears, although I will have to see how seriously it will be implemented.

Human Rights Watch said the law has some positive aspects, "such as a definition of violence against women to mean 'any act based on gender discrimination that entails physical, psychological, sexual, or economic harm to a woman'."

But it contains "major gaps and flaws that leave women at risk of domestic violence, including a lack of provisions to finance the reforms," HRW says.

Bouthaina Karouri, a member of the parliamentary committee that drafted the law, says the law can be changed in the future to remedy any oversights.

"No law is perfect" Ms Karouri said.

"Its effectiveness will depend on the approach adopted by the police and the judicial body. As it goes into effect, it is normal to discover some gaps but they can be amended in the future."

Khadija said her captors forcibly tattooed her and burnt her with cigarettes

The law comes into effect following last month's massive outcry over the alleged rape, torture and kidnapping of a 17-year-old girl named as Khadija.

Many went on social media, sharing the hashtag #JusticePourKhadija to describe their disgust and horror and calling on the authorities to take action.

In 2014, Morocco's parliament amended an article of the penal code that allowed rapists of underage girls to avoid prosecution by marrying their victims.

Morocco bans forced marriage and harassment

 

[loyola llothta]

US Bio-warfare Laboratories In West Africa Are The Origins Of The Ebola Epidemic.

By Aggeliki Dimopoulou

Could Ebola Have Escaped From US Bio-warfare Labs? American law professor Francis A. Boyle, answers questions for tvxs.gr and reveals that USA have been using West Africa as an offshore to circumvent the Convention on Biological Weapons and do bio-warfare work.

Is Ebola just a result of health crisis in Africa - because of the large gaps in personnel, equipment and medicines - as some experts suggest?

That isn’t true at all. This is just propaganda being put out by everyone. It seems to me, that what we are dealing with here is a biological warfare work that was conducted at the bio-warfare laboratories set up by the USA on the west coast of Africa. And if you look at a map produced by the Center of Disease Control you can see where these laboratories are located. And they are across the heart of Ebola epidemic, at the west coast of Africa. So, I think these laboratories, one or more of them, are the origins of the Ebola epidemic.

US government agencies are supposed to do defensive biological warfare research in these labs. Is there any information about what are they working on?

Well, that’s what they tell you. But if you study what the CDC and the Pentagon do… They say it is defensive, but this is just for public relation purposes than anything. It’s a trick. What it means is what they decide at these bio-warfare labs. They say, “well we have to develop a vaccine”, so that’s their defensive argument. Then what they do is to develop the bio-warfare agent itself. Usually by means of DNA genetic engineering. And then they say, “well to get the vaccine we have to develop the bio-warfare agent” - usually by DNA genetic engineering - and then they try to work on the vaccine. So it’s two uses type of work. I haven’t read all these bio-warfare contracts but that’s typical of the way the Pentagon CDC has been doing this since at least the 1980’s. I have absolute proof from a Pentagon document that the Center of Disease Control was doing bio-warfare work for the Pentagon in Sierra Leone, the heart of the outbreak, as early as 1988. And indeed it was probably before then because they would have had to construct the lab and that would have taken some time. So we know that Fort Detrick and the Center for Disease Control are over there, Tulane University, which is a well-known bio-warfare center here in USA - I would say notorious for it - is there. They all have been over there.

In addition, USA government made sure that Liberia, a former colony of the USA, never became a party to the Biological Weapons Convention, so they were able to do bio – warfare work over there - going back to 1980’s - the USA government, in order to circumvent the Biological Weapons Convention. Likewise, Guinea the third state affected here - and there is an increase now – didn’t even sign the Biological Weapons Convention. So, it seems to me, that the different agencies of the US government have been always there try to circumvent the Biological Weapons Convention and engage bio-warfare work. Indeed, we had one of these two lab bio-warriors admit in the NY Times that they were not over there for the purpose of either screening or treating people. That’s not what these labs are about. These labs are there in my opinion to do bio-warfare work for different agencies of the US government. Indeed, many of them were set up by USAID. And everyone knows that USAID is penetrated all up and down by the CIA and CIA has been involved in bio-warfare work as well.

Are we being told the truth about Ebola? Is that big outbreak began all of a sudden? How does it spread so quickly?

The whole outbreak that we see in the west coast of Africa, this is Zaire/Ebola. The most dangerous of five subtypes of Ebola. Zaire/Ebola originated 3500 km from the west coast of Africa. There is absolutely no way that it could have been transmitted 3500 km. And if you read the recently published Harvard study on the DNA analysis of the west Africas’ Zaire/Ebola there is no explanation about how the virus moved there. And indeed, it’s been reported in the NY Times that the Zaire/Ebola was found there in 1976, and then WHO ordered to be set to Porton Down in Britain, which is the British equivalent to Fort Detrick, where they manufacture all the biological weapons for Britain. And then Britain sent it to the US Center for Disease Control. And we know for a fact that the Center for Disease Control has been involved in biological warfare work. And then it appears, at least from whatever I’ve been able to put together in a public record, that the CDC and several others US bio-warriors exported Zaire/Ebola to west Africa, to their labs there, where they were doing bio-warfare work on it. So, I believe this is the origins of the Zaire/Ebola pandemic we are seeing now in west Africa.

Why would they do that?

Why would they do that? As I suggested to try to circumvent the Biological Weapons Convention to which the US government is a party. So, always bio-warriors do use offensive and defensive bio-warfare work, violating the Biological Weapons Convention. So effectively they try to offshore it into west Africa where Liberia is not a party and Guinea is not a party. Sierra Leone is a party. But in Sierra Leone and Liberia there were disturbances which kept the world from really paying attention of what was going on in these labs.

USA sent troops to «fight» Ebola. What do you think about that move?

The US military just invaded Liberia. They send in the 101st Airborne Division to Liberia. That’s an elite division of combat and they have no training to provide medical treatment to anyone. They are there to establish a military base in Liberia. And the British are doing the same in Sierra Leone. The French are already in Mali and Senegal. So, they’re not sending military people there to treat these people. No, I’m sorry.

Weren’t they afraid Ebola’s going to go out of control even in the USA or EU in a massive way?

It’s already gone in the USA and the European Union. So, there it is. Which raises the question: Was this Zaire/Ebola weaponized at any of these labs? I don’t have an answer to that question. I am trying to get an answer. And therefore it is much more dangerous than the WHO and the CDC are telling everyone. The WHO and the CDC are up to their eyeballs in this. They know all about what ‘s going on. It was the WHO that ordered the original Zaire/Ebola in 1976 to be sent to Porton Down for biological warfare purposes. So this could be more dangerous than the WHO and the CDC are saying.

And you can’t believe anything they telling you because they are involved in that. But certainly I can’t say it has been weaponized. I don’t know that yet for sure. I have the Harvard genetic analysis of it. When I was in college I had very good courses in genetics, and biochemistry and population biology but I am not a professor of genetics. I have a friend who is a professor of genetics and he is going to take a look at this and try to figure out if there’s been DNA genetic engineering perpetrated or performed on the Zaire/Ebola. Is there a genetically modified organism at work, a GMO? I don’t know. But if a GMO is at work that’s a pretty good sign it’s been weaponized. But in anyway, it is far more dangerous than the CDC and the WHO are telling anyone, because it’s clearly transmitted for a certain distance - we don’t know how far - by air. Breathing and coughing and sneezing. So, anyone treating people, seems to me, are going to need not only a protective suit but probably a breathing apparatus, at minimum. And you saw what happened to that Spanish nurse and that Spanish priest that were brought in, infected with Ebola. So right now the WHO and the CDC are telling healthcare workers that in addition to suits they need breathing apparatuses. So, again, I don’t believe you can trust anything the WHO or the CDC are telling you. And I really don’t know about the European Health Agency… If they‘re believing the WHO and the CDC then, in my opinion, they ‘re not properly protecting the health of the European people. And it’s simply bizarre that the CDC and WHO are relegating the screenings to the people in west Africa. It’s just bizarre. They need to be protecting health of their own people and they aren’t doing that. I read some of the European press but I’m not sure precisely what the European Health Agency is recommending but they certainly can't rely upon the WHO and the CDC. As for Greece, I know you have your own Health Ministry there and they cannot rely upon them at all, as well.

Some experts told recently the Forbes magazine that even ISIS could use Ebola as a biological weapon. I would like to have your comment on that.

This is total propaganda. These people are trying to distract public opinion from the fact. My opinion is that the origins of the current pandemic came out of the USA bio-warfare labs in west Africa. That’s what is going on here. ISIS has nothing to do with this. That’s just propaganda which is trying to scare and distract public attention away of what really is going on here. They doing the same thing here in USA. That’s what we need to concentrate on. Number one. And number two? We have to find out: was this Zaire/Ebola GMOed by either Porton Down or CDC or these US bio-warfare labs? It is far more dangerous than it currently appears. That’s the real issue. And I don’t have an answer to that question. It was the US government labs that research here. I’m not saying that Ebola was released deliberately by these labs. I have no evidence to that. It could have escaped. But this is really what we need to be focusing on. Not ISIS. It’s ridiculous, it’s preposterous.

What do you think should be done?

I would encourage the Greek government to convene an emergency meeting of your top health science people and to look into this on comprehensive bases and figure out what to do under these circumstances to protect the health of people of Greece. In particular they must not believe anything they are being told by the WHO and CDC. There is a need of open objective minds here about what is really going on. I think this needs to be done.

Back in 1985, I was down in Nicaragua investigating atrocities of the Contras there and all of a sudden the country was hit with an outbreak of a hemorrhaging Dengue Fever which is similar to Ebola. And it seemed pretty suspicious to me. So I met with some of the highest level officials of the Nicaraguan government and said: “you know, this very well could be US bio-warfare against Nicaragua. They did the same thing to Cuba. And my advice is you convene health care medical experts, not politicians, to look into this. And if you agree with me and that’s the result, file a complaint with the UN Security Council for violation of the Biological Weapons Convention against the USA”. And eventually that is what they did. Here I am not recommending the Greek authorities to file a complaint against the USA. What I am recommending is the same thing I did to the Nicaraguans. That you need to convene some of your top experts geneticists, doctors, etc.

And don’t get anyone in this group who has ever done any type of research for any agency of the US government. They are completely unreliable. Get Greeks experts completely independent of the US government or the British government. It’s funny here in the USA when the media want to get experts on this, all the experts they talk to are people who have done biological warfare work for the USA. And they are up to their eyeballs on this Ebola. And doing research on this Ebola. Of course they’re not going to give you proper advice. So, find this experts and make sure they never done any research for USA or Britain on any of this stuff but are qualified and can give you a qualified opinion of what is really going on and how dangerous this stuff is. And then aim to protect the health of Greek people. You definitely don’t have to wait for the European Union in Brussels to do it for you. I’m not telling Greece what to do. I’m just telling you how to do it. And this should be done immediately. It should have been done already. But ok, better late than ever.

Francis A. Boyle is a leading American professor, practitioner and advocate of international law. He was responsible for drafting the Biological Weapons Anti-Terrorism Act of 1989, the American implementing legislation for the 1972 Biological Weapons Convention. He served on the Board of Directors of Amnesty International (1988-1992), and represented Bosnia - Herzegovina at the World Court. Professor Boyle teaches international law at the University of Illinois, Champaign. He holds a Doctor of Law Magna Cum Laude as well as a Ph.D. in Political Science, both from Harvard University.

He is also the author of "Biowarfare and Terrorism". The book outlines how and why the United States government initiated, sustained and then dramatically expanded an illegal biological arms buildup.

Read the Greek version of the interview here

 

[The Odum of Ala Igbo]

US Bio-warfare Laboratories In West Africa Are The Origins Of The Ebola Epidemic.

Where's this from?

 

[loyola llothta]

Where's this from?

Spoiler

US Bio-warfare Laboratories In West Africa Are The Origins Of The Ebola Epidemic.:  Information Clearing House - ICH

 

[Red Shield]

EU wants continental free-trade deal with Africa

 

[The Odum of Ala Igbo]

EU wants continental free-trade deal with Africa

 

[Red Shield]

Wonder how many countries have signed those epa's already

 

[Frangala]

EU wants continental free-trade deal with Africa

Whenever it's free that means you cannot compete. Africa will serve as a customer or consumer base (1+ billion consumers and growing) for European foreign goods with no tariffs or local industries to compete with imports. EU knows most African countries do not produce value added goods so this deal does not threaten the existence or serve as competition to European companies. That's why they are doing it. It is a one way street where European companies will make money from African consumers and not the other way around.

 

[Frangala]

Teodorin Obiang: '$16m seized' from E Guinea leader's son

• 6 hours ago

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Image copyrightAFP
Image captionMr Obiang has been known to share his flamboyant lifestyle on social media
Authorities in Brazil have seized more than $16m (£12m) worth of cash and luxury watches from a delegation accompanying Teodorin Nguema Obiang, vice-president of Equatorial Guinea, local media report.

The 48-year-old, known for his lavish taste, is the son of the oil-rich Central African country's president.

Brazil limits people from entering the country with more than $2,400 in cash.

About 76% of Equatorial Guinea's 1.2m population live in poverty.

President Teodoro Obiang Nguema, who is Africa's longest-serving leader, and his son, have been accused of misusing the country's oil revenue. They both deny any wrongdoing.

Human rights groups have also accused the president of systematic repression of opponents.

• Africa Live: More on this and others from the continent
• Find out more about Equatorial Guinea
• Who is President Teodoro Obiang Nguema?

The Equatorial Guinea embassy in Brazil reportedly told police that Mr Obiang was in the country for medical treatment.

What was the money for?
The 11-man entourage - travelling on a government plane - landed in Viracopos International Airport in Campinas in Sao Paulo on Friday, according to media reports.

Police found $1.5m in cash and watches worth an estimated $15m in two bags, the other 17 bags had clothes, says local news site Globo.

Global reports that Equatorial Guinea's embassy told the Brazilian police in a statement that the money was for Mr Obiang's use on an onward trip to Singapore, while the watches - engraved with his initials - were for his personal use.

Brazil's foreign ministry told news agency AFP that it was "in permanent coordination with the federal police and the customs service over the case and to decide what measures should be taken".

Mr Obiang was the only member of the delegation who had diplomatic immunity as the group was not on an official mission, Globo reports.

Police searched other delegation members as Mr Obiang waited outside in a car, it added.

Who is Teodorin Nguema Obiang?
Last year The Economist reported on Mr Obiang's flashy lifestyle in a report titledInstagram playboy is also the vice-president of Equatorial Guinea.

It featured pictures of the vice-president showing off his expensive cars and mansions.

Image copyrightAFP
Image captionSwitzerland seized 11 luxury cars belonging to Mr Obiang last year
In 2017, a French court handed him a three-year suspended jail term for corruption.

The court ruled his assets in France be seized, including a mansion on Avenue Foch in Paris. He also got a suspended fine of 30m euro (£27m; $35m).

In the same year Swiss prosecutors seized 11 luxury cars belonging to Mr Obiang. They said he had plundered his country's oil wealth to buy luxuries, including a private jet and Michael Jackson memorabilia.

In 2015, Mr Obiang reportedly paid a samba dance group some $3.5m to adopt an Equatorial Guinea theme during Brazil's annual carnival.

A spokesperson for the Beija-Flor samba group denied that they had received the money but said it had received "cultural and artistic support", the UK Guardian reported.

More about Equatorial Guinea:

• Population: 1.2 million
• Rich in oil and gas
• About 76% of the population live in poverty
• President Teodoro Obiang Nguema, 76, seized power from his uncle in a 1979 coup
• The capital, Malabo, is on an island in the Atlantic Ocean, 235km (147 miles) from mainland
• Building a new city in the rainforest called Djibloho, a "city of the future"
• Africa's only Spanish-speaking country

UN, World Bank

Related Topics

• Equatorial Guinea

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More on this story

• Equatorial Guinea's VP Obiang's cars seized in Switzerland
  3 November 2016
• Who is President Teodoro Obiang Nguema?
  23 December 2014
• Equatorial Guinea government moves to new city in rainforest
  8 February 2017
• Equatorial Guinea country profile
  8 May 2018

 

[The Odum of Ala Igbo]

Whenever it's free that means you cannot compete. Africa will serve as a customer or consumer base (1+ billion consumers and growing) for European foreign goods with no tariffs or local industries to compete with imports. EU knows most African countries do not produce value added goods so this deal does not threaten the existence or serve as competition to European companies. That's why they are doing it. It is a one way street where European companies will make money from African consumers and not the other way around.

Europeans will never eliminate their subsidies which prevent African farmers from exporting their non-solely tropical products to Europe...but they expect Africans to agree to such nonsense.

That trade deal will be the end of Africa. It surely will be.
Tufiakwa gi!

 

[Red Shield]

Whenever it's free that means you cannot compete. Africa will serve as a customer or consumer base (1+ billion consumers and growing) for European foreign goods with no tariffs or local industries to compete with imports. EU knows most African countries do not produce value added goods so this deal does not threaten the existence or serve as competition to European companies. That's why they are doing it. It is a one way street where European companies will make money from African consumers and not the other way around.

I know that chief

 

[Yehuda]

East African plastic manufacturers step-up recycling after China ban

September 18, 2018 | 15:15

Coca-Cola has given itself 12 years to recycle the equivalent of every bottle it sells around the world.

In East Africa, the beverage giant is attempting to self-regulate while faced with a government threat to ban plastic bottles and restrictions on plastic waste imports in China.

Coke which currently produces about 250 million plastic bottles annually in the region aims to recycle 25 percent of plastic waste by the end of 2018 and 70 percent by 2030.

Last year Kenya implemented a disruptive ban on plastic carrier bags and manufacturers expect legislation against bottles will be next.

Plastic bottles litter urban areas East Africa’s biggest economy and frequently clog storm drains, exacerbating floods before some of it ends up swirling around the ocean.

Coke says it is working on plans to open a recycling plant in the country.

In neighbouring Uganda, the company is already operating a recycling plant in Kampala employing over 40 people and recycles waste bottles collected from as far as Rwanda and South Sudan.

James Ongwech is the productions manager at Coke’s Uganda Plastic Recycling Industries.

“So the major aim of this plastic recycling is to collect all that we submit there in the field so the target is to get 100 percent of what we send to the environment, what the consumer consumes from our plastic, we get them back, recycle and put them to use,” he said.

Until recently, a few Asian countries were the biggest buyers of plastic waste globally, but after China restricted waste imports due to environmental concerns, developing countries have had to find alternatives.

The Ugandan recycling factory has found buyers abroad who are manufacturers of plastic fiber and polyester looking for cheap raw materials.

“Last year the world was stunned when China put a ban on the important of certain types of plastic flakes, that was our biggest export destination from Uganda. Uganda was actually exporting up to 4 million dollars a year in plastic flakes made from wastes such as these but China made that change and other countries have quickly snapped up the market. Right now we are exporting to India, Turkey, we have customer enquiries from Canada,” said Coca Cola Uganda communications director, Simon Kaheru.

According to a report on the recycling industry by the International Labor Organisation (ILO), approximately 15-20 million people work as informal waste pickers in developing countries.

Formalization and organization of workers can turn waste collection and management into a very significant opportunity for social inclusion.

Francis Makau works as a waste picker for Mr Green Africa, a start-up recycling factory in Nairobi.

The average price of waste plastic bottles is 0.16 US cents per kilogram, in addition the company pays him a premium to operate this collection depot in Nairobi’s Kangemi slum.

“In short, plastic to us is not waste, we see it as beneficial. When I see it, I don’t see it as a problem, I know this is what feeds me and I know it feeds a lot of people. So I don’t see it as a problem, I’m happy,” said Makau.

For now, China’s ban on trash highlights the need for plastic manufacturers, particularly in developing countries to recycle and accept more responsibility for their products which pollute the environment.

East African plastic manufacturers step-up recycling after China ban

 

[Yehuda]

African lives improve but inequality runs deep

14 SEPTEMBER 2018

Cape Town — The level of human development in Sub-Saharan Africa, judged by how long people live for, how well they are educated and how much they earn, has improved by more than a third in the past three decades, according to a United Nations report published today.

The UN Development Programme's 2018 Human Development Index (HDI) shows that although sub-Saharan African nations still dominate the list of the world's least developed countries, the average improvement in quality of life has grown by 35 percent since 1990.

The index measures human development by three indicators: "a long and healthy life, being knowledgeable and having a decent standard of living". The UNDP says it was created "to emphasize that people and their capabilities should be the ultimate criteria for assessing the development of a country, not economic growth alone".

Thirty-two of the 38 countries in the UNDP's "low human development" rankings are African, with Niger, the Central African Republic, South Sudan, Chad and Burundi at the bottom of the list.

But these countries' rates of improvement, coming off a low base, are generally higher than those in more developed countries. Fifteen of them show growth in human development averaging more than one percent a year since 1990. Rwanda, Mozambique and Mali improved on average by more than two percent a year.

At the other end of the scale, seven countries in Africa as a whole (including North Africa) now fall into the index's second-highest ranking of nations – those with "high human development". They are the Seychelles, Mauritius, Algeria, Tunisia, Botswana, Libya and Gabon.

Over the past five years, Botswana has shown the most impressive progress, improving its position in the rankings by eight places. Other African countries which have improved their position relative to others in the past five years include South Africa, by six places, Senegal (five places) and Togo (five places).

Although Libya remains highly developed relative to nearly half the world's countries, its position has plunged 26 places in the past five years. The UNDP points out that the countries which show the steepest declines are those at war: Syria fell 27 places and Yemen 20 places.

Health, judged by life expectancy at birth, has improved considerably, says the UNDP. On average Africans live 11 years longer than they did in 1990. But differences across the world are still "massive", it says in a press release.

"A child born today in Norway, the country with the highest HDI, can expect to live beyond 82 years old and spend almost 18 years in school, while a child born in Niger, the country with the lowest HDI, can expect only to live to 60 and spend just five years in school. Such striking differences can be seen again and again...

"In Sub-Saharan Africa there are on average 39 primary school pupils per teacher, followed by South Asia with 35 pupils per teacher. But in OECD* countries, East Asia and the Pacific, and Europe and Central Asia there is an average of one teacher for every 16 to 18 primary school pupils.

"And, while in OECD countries and East Asia and the Pacific there are on average 29 and 28 physicians for every 10,000 people respectively, in South Asia there are only eight, and in Sub-Saharan Africa not even two."

The UNDP report accompanying the index notes that progress since 1990 has not been steady: "Some countries suffered reversals due to conflicts, epidemics or economic crises.... Sub-Saharan Africa...had losses in the 1990s, when conflict and the HIV/AIDS epidemic caused life expectancy to drop dramatically."

But over the next decade, from 2000 to 2010, the region went from the second-slowest to the fastest-growing region in the world.

"In sum," adds the report, "there have been significant advances in human development [across the globe] over the past few decades, especially in low human development countries, up 46.6 percent on the HDI since 1990.

"But some countries have suffered serious setbacks—sometimes erasing in a few years the gains of several decades. And the gaps in human development across countries, while narrowing, remain huge."

More detail: Human Development Reports - 2018 Statistical Update

* Members of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, which include the world's richest nations.

African lives improve but inequality runs deep

 

[Secure Da Bag]

 

[Yehuda]

Liberia passes landmark law to secure ancestral land rights

By CGTN Africa - 5 hours ago

President of Liberia, Mr. George Weah [ Photo – AFP]

Liberia has passed a landmark law that will help communities fight foreign land grabs by giving them ownership of ancestral territory, officials and activists said on Thursday.

President George Weah signed the Land Rights Act into law on Wednesday after four years of debate in the legislature, his office said in a statement.

The topic has been contentious since most of the population has no formal rights to their land, and the state has signed away more than 40 percent of national territory in concessions for logging, mining and agriculture, according to rights groups.

“This is a landmark victory not only for the government, but for the entire citizenry of our country,” said James Otto, a campaigner at Liberia’s Sustainable Development Institute (SDI).

“For the first time in our history, a law is finally saying that communities that have lived on their land forever and ever are now owners of that land,” he told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

Following the West African nation’s second civil war, which ended in 2003, the previous government accelerated policies that granted natural resource concessions to foreign companies.

Foreign palm oil concessions were at the heart of reforms which were credited with making Liberia attractive to agricultural investors – but also caused violent conflict.

The Land Rights Act was one of Weah’s first major moves since being elected in December. In a statement, the president called it a “key component” of his plans to develop the country.

However, the head of the government agency in charge of land policy said implementation would be difficult.

“The Liberia Land Authority has been given the authority to implement the act but we do not have resources, we do not have the technical expertise to implement this law,” said executive director Stanley Toe.

“The excitement will soon go but the biggest work lies ahead.”

Under the law, communities can claim ownership of customary land by presenting evidence such as oral testimonies, maps, and signed agreements with neighbors, the government said.

A maximum of ten percent of the customary land in each community will be set aside as public land, it added, and a nationwide survey will be conducted within two years.

Another section of the law grants limited land ownership rights to foreigners, missionaries, educational and charitable organisations as long as the land is used for the purpose given at the time of purchase.

Previously, the Liberian constitution provides that only “people of colour” can become Liberian and only Liberians can own property.

Weah, in January described these clauses as ‘unnecessary, racist and inappropriate for the 21st century’, pledging to push for all races to apply for Liberian citizenship and for foreigners to be allowed to own property.

Liberia, Africa’s oldest republic, was established by freed slaves from the United States and declared independent in 1847.

Liberia passes landmark law to secure ancestral land rights