BERN, SWITZERLAND – UN specialist workers are being given, for work in the Republic of Congo, 300 systems to safely remove arms stockpiles from a distance. The systems are being supplied by the Swiss federal government at the request of the United Nations.
Switzerland is taking part in the UN’s Emergency Response Mission to rid the country of munitions following a deadly explosion 4 March in the capital, Brazzavile. The blast killed 250 people and left another 1,500 injured.
African Bakongo dog statue sold for CHF255,000
"Yeti" skin sold for CHF18,200
GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – The tempting Yeti skin at last week’s auctions at the Hôtel des Ventes netted a cool CHF3 million, but the hottest item on the block was an African artwork, the statue of a Congolese Bakongo dog that had belonged to an old Geneva family. It went for 255 times its estimated value of CHF1-1,500, selling to great surprise for CHF255,000 at the end of heated bidding in increments of CHF5,000.
The Yeti skin, really a blue bear skin, sold for CHF18,200. It had been estimated at CHF3,000 and was sold to a Belgian resident in Switzerland, a collector.
Other prize items at the sale included two Louis Vuitton vintage trunks that went for CHF10,900 and CHF12,100, an 1839 Appenzell wedding chest that sold for CHF19,500 (estimate CHF1,500-2,000) and a Dior bag for CHF200. The latter was part of the 500 items the auction house put on sale for under CHF300 to make the sales affordable to a wide public.
Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – Thirty-two of the 33 passengers and crew on a United Nations plane died when it crashed while trying to land at the Kinshasa Airport in DRC (Democratic Republic of Congo) Monday afternoon 4 April. The plane was carrying UN staff, most but not whom all of worked for Monusco, the UN’s stabilization mission in Congo, but the UN news service reports that there were also five people on board who worked for humanitarian organizations.
The plane was trying to land in heavy rain, according to the UN, when it overshot the runway at 13:30, after a flight from Kisangani in the northeast.
The United Nations says it has now received information that 240 females of all ages, from babies to old women, were raped by Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR) and Congolese Mai-Mai militias, in the Walikale region of eastern DRC’s North Kivu Province. The UN says it was not told of the rapes until more than a week after the militia’s four-day stay in the area ended. It has come in for heavy criticism from several governments for not doing a better job of protecting the villagers, given that the UN has a base only 10 km from the area, according to International Medical Corps, the aid group that reported the rapes. The FDLR denies any involvement. UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has sent two senior advisers to the region and the UN Security Council held an emergency session earlier this week to discuss the situation.
Links to other sites: allAfrica, Aljazeera, BBC, UPI, UN news service
Refugees from Equator province, November 2009, when number reached 100,000 http://www.flickr.com/photos/unhcr/4271338608/ (photo: BB Diallo/UNHCR)
Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – Several United Nations offices appealed Tuesday morning 9 March in Geneva for an urgent infusion of aid money to meet the needs of 110,000 refugees in northern Republic of Congo’s Likouala province. Eighty-two percent are women and children who fled fighting in Democratic Republic of Congo’s Equateur Province. UNHCR is asking for $20 million.
The request is part of a broader appeal by UN agencies, who say they have received only $17.3 million of the nearly $59 million the need for refugees from the Equator region in the country in 2010. Partners in the appeal are: the World Food Programme, Unicef, the World Health Organization, Unesco, the UN Development Programme, the UN Food and Agricultural Organization and the UNFPA.
The refugees fled from Equator province in late October 2009 “when Enyele militiamen launched deadly assaults on ethnic Munzayas over fishing and farming rights in the Dongo area,” the UNHCR says.
Bern, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – Switzerland could soon have a law that would help avoid fiascos like the Duvalier funds legal case, where the Swiss have spent 23 years unsuccessfully trying to return to the people of Haiti money that was pocketed by the Duvalier family dictators. Switzerland has, in the past 15 years, returned more than CHF1.7 billion in such stolen dictators’ funds to other countries – the only country to do so.
If Parliament passes the law soon after the consultation period ends, it could be used to return some CHF6 million to Haiti. The assets have been frozen since 1986.
The Swiss Federal Council Wednesday 24 February opened for consultation a proposed law on “the restitution of illicit assets”, to ensure that Switzerland’s hands are not tied if a state is unable to conduct national criminal procedures against its own former leaders. The consultation, open to cantons, political, legal and business groups who have an interest in the change of law, closes 16 April 2010.
Problems in the cases of the Democratic Republic of the Congo and former leader Mobutu as well as Haiti and the Duvalier assets, prompted the government to decide in early 2009 that Swiss law would need to change, a process that has taken nearly a year.
Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – The UN Human Rights Council in Geneva will reopen a debate Thursday 15 October on the conduct of both sides in last winter’s brief war in Gaza, Palestine, between Israel and Hamas, the Gaza strip’s political authority. A report by former South African judge Richard Goldstone suggests both armed groups may have committed war crimes. It recommends that they conduct their own impartial investigations within six months or have the case referred to the International Criminal Court. A call by Libya for the UN in New York to take up the report by strongly rebuffed by Israel which said late Wednesday 14 October that as long as the report is “on the table” there can be no peace negotiations with Palestine.
The Palestinian Authority (PA), the nominal representative of the Palestinians, initially asked for the debate on the report to be deferred, but it came under sharp criticism from Hamas, which has controlled the Gaza strip since elections in 2007 forced out Fatah and the PA.
Southern African nations meeting in Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of Congo,8 September called for an end to Western sanctions on Zimbabwe. Sanctions have been in place since before a unity government was formed in 2008 with President Robert Mugabe’s Zanu-PF and opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai’s Movement for Democratic Change (MDC). The call to lift sanctions is seen as a significant victory for Mugabe, who says that the country urgently needs $10 billion in development aid. Tsvangirai has called for the full implementation of the accords before sanctions are lifted.
Jacob Zuma, president of South Africa and a key member of the Southern Africa Development Community (SADC), said at the beginning of the conference that he hoped the Zimbabwe government’s divisions could be healed quickly in order for foreign aid to be resumed. At the end, he said that he now sees no reason why conditions should be imposed before lifting sanctions. BBC, Reuters, AllAfrica
To those of you who subscribe to our Google/Feedburner rss e-mail feed, please note that it failed to include several articles from Wednesday 15 July. We’re sorry that you missed them and unfortunately have no explanation for this, but here they are: EPFL mathematicians crack elliptical curve encryption problem, Vaud and Schumacher agree to small dock, shoreline group opposed, Alinghi accused by US club of secretly plotting with Intl Sailing Federation, C0ngo people fail to get Mobutu money, Soldier killed, another injured, in parachute crash
Donations: UNHCR site or Facebook
Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – Geneva’s city buses will offer riders a new and more worthy than usual distraction from 15 April to 30 June: Gimme Shelter, a 30-second film by a short film directed by Ben Affleck and filmed by John Toll, both Academy Award winners, will be shown on 200 TPG buses, trams and trolleys that have Innova screens.
Ben Affleck, filming at UNHCR refugee camp
The film is the centerpiece to a UNHCR (United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees) campaign to raise money during 2009 for clean water and emergency humanitarian assistance kits for displaced persons in the eastern part of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC).
According to the UNHCR, “There are currently 1.3 million displaced people in the DRC. The effects of the conflict have claimed as many as 5.4 million lives in the last 10 years, with an estimated 1,000 people dying every day.
Refugee camp, DCR (image for UNHCR 2009 ©Zalmai, reproduced with permission)
“In some areas, two out of three women have been raped. Abductions persist in all brutal forms and children are forcefully recruited to fight. Outbreaks of cholera and other diseases have increased as the humanitarian situation deteriorates.”
Months of wrangling behind it, the first International Criminal Court (ICC) case opens in The Hague, to try Thomas Lubanga Dyilo for recruiting and enlisting children under the age of 15 in his FPLC militia between September 2002 and August 2003 to perpetrate the war in the DR Congo. This is also the first time under international law that victims will participate fully in a trial. The ICC was established in 1998 by a treaty signed by 108 countries. It “is an independent, permanent court that tries persons accused of the most serious crimes of international concern, namely genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes. . . It is a court of last resort.” Related: BBC
The International Herald Tribune runs a damning feature on a series of shooting deaths that took place just a mile away from a UN peacekeeping base in Kiwanja, DR Congo, in October, saying “the events are . . . a textbook example of the continuing failure of the world’s largest international peacekeeping force, which has a mandate to protect the Congolese people from brutality.”
A ceasefire appeared to be holding after rebels took large parts of the Eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), but European diplomats are warning of a looming crisis amid growing concern for the 1.6 million people displaced by the fighting, many of whom fled their homes last week and who have been without basic necessities.
The continuing rape of girls and women in the Democratic Republic of the Congo as part of the ongoing war and internal strife there, and the lack of global interest and attention, combine war and racial prejudice in a way that bodes ill for the country’s future, argues one of the group’s working to help the victims. CNN
