France announced that 66-year-old Marie Dedieu, who was kidnapped on October 1 from her beach house in Kenya, and taken to Somalia, has died in the hands of her captors, most probably because they had refused to provide her medication.
The kidnappers seem to have tried to sell the remains. “It could not be more despicable,” French Defence Minister Gerard Longuet said.
“Those who committed this unspeakable act are nothing but a gang of barbarians,” President Nicolas Sarkozy told AFP.
Links to: Yahoo News
PARIS, FRANCE – The French foreign ministry has announced the death of Marie Dedieu, 66, who was kidnapped the night of 30 September from her home on the small island of Manda, then taken to Somalia. Dedieu, who used a wheelchair, was taking medication to treat a cardiac problem and cancer; the wheelchair and the drugs were not taken by her kidnappers and the French government has surmised that she died as a result.
Foreign ministry spokesperson Bernard Valero said in a statement Wednesday 19 October that her kidnappers had refused to pass along the medicine the French government had supplied, and this most likely resulted in her death. Foreign Minister Alain Juppé called her death an act of “barbarism, violence and unspeakable inhumanity.”
Le Monde reports that she was an active and militant feminist in the 1970s in France. She moved to Kenya in the 1990s.
© 2011 MSF / Brendan Bannon
GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – Two women, Medecin Sans Frontieres (MSF) staff, were kidnapped at 13:20 Thursday 13 October from the Ifo extension area of the Dadaab refugee complex in Kenya. Their driver is undergoing urgent medical treatment after being shot.
Dadaab is the world’s largest refugee camp, with 463,739 Somali refugees, more than 190,000 of whom have fled Somalia this year.
MSF issued the following statement, saying that in the interests of the safe return of the woman, it will not issue further statements:
“Two international staff, both Spanish, were taken. As yet, MSF has not been able to re-establish contact with the two staff taken. A crisis team has been set up to deal with this incident, and the families have been informed.
“‘We strongly condemn this attack,’ says José Antonio Bastos, the president of MSF-Spain. ‘MSF is in contact with all the relevant authorities and is doing all it can to ensure the swift and safe return of our colleagues. Meanwhile, our thoughts are with them and with their families in this difficult time.’”
International agencies expressed their outrage. “These MSF colleagues were working to rescue lives, says UN High Commissioner for Refugees, António Guterres. “It is wholly unacceptable that they should be made targets for kidnap. I appeal to those responsible to facilitate their immediate and safe return.”
ICRC, the International Red Cross, has been increasingly vocal about the dangers facing international independent aid workers.
Special envoy Joli can help draw attention to “some of the world’s most difficult refugee situations”
UNHCR Goodwill Ambassador Angelina Jolie at the annual meeting of the refugee agency's governing body.
GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – Actress Angelina Jolie was asked Tuesday 4 October by the head of the UN refugee organization UNHCR to take on a new role as special envoy, in the wake of several new emergency refugee situations this year.
The invitation was extended by High Commissioner for Refugees António Guterres, who recognized her 10 years of service with the agency by asking her to take on an expanded role in some of the world’s most difficult refugee situations.
His request came just as news reports began to flow in of a bomb blast in Mogadishu, the capital of Somalia. Seventy people were reportedly killed and 150 injured, according to Somalia’s President Sharif Sheikh Ahmedhe.
Al-Shabab, which is fighting the government, took responsibility for the suicide bomb. The news is the latest evidence of the rising level of violence in the country, from which people are fleeing in growing numbers.
The Dabaad camps in Kenya, across the border from Somalia, now have nearly half a million people, with 1,000 arriving daily. Some 200,000 Somalis have fled to these camps in the past four months.
UNHCR Goodwill Ambassador Angelina Jolie at the annual meeting of the refugee agency's governing body.
Jolie is in Geneva for the annual meeting of UNHCR’s executive committee, which oversees funding for the organization and its projects.
She has become one of the best-known goodwill ambassadors for a UN agency, through her regular and frequent visits, on average four a year, to refugee camps around the world, including some in very remote regions. She took on the ambassadorial role in August 2001.
“Today, three-quarters of a million people are at risk of death in the next four months in the Horn of Africa,” she told the executive committee. “The work we are doing needs to scale up to meet the needs of these individuals. How we continue to respond to this period of malnutrition and famine is going to define the work of those NGOs, governments, and international organizations working in the Horn of Africa. It will, quite starkly, determine whether a huge number of people live or die.”
Monday Jolie shared the spotlight with Nasser Salim Ali Al-Hamairy, founder of Yemen’s Society for Humanitarian Solidarity: she co-presented with Guterres the 2011 Nansen Refugee Award, given to the SHS. The prize, widely considered the refugee world’s highest honour, was awarded to the founder and the 290 staff of SHS, a non-governmental organization, for their life-saving work in helping thousands of refugees and migrants who arrive on Yemen’s shores each year.
The staff comb the Yemeni coastline year round, pulling people from the sea and helping them find safety and assistance.
GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – The rescue of a French woman kidnapped last week in Kenya failed Saturday 1 October and 2 Kenyan Navy officers died in the attempt.
In the Philippines, there was good news as Filipino-American Gerfa Yeatts Lunsmann was released early Monday 3 October after two months. Abu-Sayyaf rebels still hold her 14-year-old son and her 19-year-old nephew. Zamboanga Mayor Celso Lobregat, who is credited by US authorities with playing a key role in her release, told local media there was no talk of ransom. Yeatts Lunsmann was born in the Philippines but adopted by a family in the US, where she was raised. She works as a veterinarian in Virginia, where she and her husband and son live.
French woman Marie Dedieu, 66, who is disabled, was kidnapped from her Mandu Island cottage and Kenyan authorities believe she is now in Somalia, taken there by al Shabaab militia members. A rescue attempt at sea by the Kenya Navy failed. Some of the naval officers were in a fishing boat which capsized in an accident and two of them remain lost at sea.
Dedieu’s kidnapping comes less than a month after two British citizens, David Tebbutt and his wife Judith were kidnapped in Kiwayu, near Lamu. He was killed and she was taken to Somalia by the same militia group, authorities say.
Links to other sites: BBC, MSNBC (family photo), Sun Star, Philippines, The Nation, Kenya
GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – A petrol pipeline burst in Nairobi, Kenya’s poor and heavily populated Embakasi area, and the fire that spread rapidly burned to death more than 100 people, with numbers continuing to rise. Homes were built up against the pipeline, according to the Guardian. The pipeline runs between the city centre and the airport in the Sinai slum.
The fire appears to have started when a fuel tank spilled petrol into an open sewer and, as people tried to scoop up the petrol, someone threw a cigarette into the sewer, which then caught fire. The area is filled with corrugated houses packed tightly together.
Links to other sites: Evening Standard, Guardian
GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – The Ikea Foundation has donated $62 million to the UN refugee camp in Dadaab, Kenya, working with the UNHCR. The camp, which is a focal point for Somalians fleeing fighting, drought and famine, now hosts 440,000 refugees from Somalia, 152,000 of whom have arrived this year.
“The donation, which will be staggered over three years, is the largest private donation that the UN refugee agency has received in its 60-year history, and the first time that a private body has chosen to directly support a major refugee complex. UNHCR is working with the staff of the Foundation on the development of a detailed submission for how these funds will be used, but in the short-term the immediate focus will be helping the needs of up to recently arrived 120,000 refugees, with a particular focus on refugee families and children,” the UNHCR says.
AFRICA – An unnamed UN Food and Agriculture Organization’s representative in Kenya has said to the Associated Press that the situation in Somalia could become “simply unbearable” in the coming weeks if people continue to abandon their homes in search of food.
The food crisis in the Horn of Africa is escalating, with 12 million people in Djibouti, Ethiopia, Kenya, Somalia and Uganda requiring emergency assistance, said FAO.
Parts of southern Somalia are suffering from famine.
Over the past year, the region has faced two poor rainy seasons, resulting in one of the driest years since 1950. In addition, high local cereal prices, excessive livestock mortality, conflict and restricted humanitarian access in some areas is worsening the situation for Somalis.
A high-level operational meeting has been called for 18 August 2011 at FAO’s Rome headquarters to agree on urgent measures in response to the worsening crisis in the Horn of Africa.
Links to: FAO, the Associated Press
GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – The UN High Commissioner for Refugees FRiday 8 July called on governments and other donors to come up with $136.3 million in emergency funds to help the rapidly growing number of Somali refugees. The funds should cover the needs of some 90,000 new refugees heading to Kenya, Ethiopia and Djibouti. They are fleeing what the UNHCR calls “deteriorating conditions and growing displacement from Somalia” due to drought and fighting.
GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – The UN High Commissioner for Refugees, António Guterres, is flying to Ethiopia for a two-day inspection of one of the areas where Somalis are fleeing: 25 percent of the population of 7.5 million is now displaced, the UNHCR warns, with 54,000 people fleeing violence compounded by severe drought, in June alone. Most are fleein to Ethiopia and Kenya.
“Malnutrition rates among Somali refugee children arriving in Ethiopia and Kenya are alarmingly high and on a scale not seen in decades,” the Geneva-based organization said in a statement 6 July.
Correction Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) - The US has granted Wipo, the World Intellectual Property Organization in Geneva, $50,000 for a six-month programme in Kenya, Morocco and the Philippines to help local authorities raise awareness about the risk of counterfeit products. The programme, to be administered by Wipo, which is matching the grant, will involve a series of seminars.
US Ambassador Betty E King, speaking at an event in Geneva with John Tarpey, head of communications for Wipo, said that “trademark infringement and counterfeiting raise very serious health and safety concerns, such as those attributed to counterfeit medicines, food, automotive parts and electrical products.”
Tarpey notes that half of all drugs sold on the Internet, for example, are counterfeit. The funding will allow Wipo to run workshops to develop a toolkit that will help intellectual property authorities in the three countries conduct more effective outreach campaigns, he says.
Innovation: behind the political and business buzzword, part 1
Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – Six million dollars have been put into savings account by 250,000 small savers in Kenya in just three months, thanks to a creative new project by mobile phone company Safaricom. The phone company’s customers can start with as little as $1, giving the poor a chance to save money in a meaningful way for the first time, says Michael Joseph, outgoing chief executive officer of Safaricom.
Joseph was in Geneva for an Economist Conference on Emerging Innovation, one of several globally active managers who shared what they have learned in order to sell their products in less developed markets.
A key thread which ran through the talks is that conditions in emerging markets are very different from those elsewhere, but companies can sell if they listen carefully to their customers, show flexibility in their corporate structure, and involve local talent in the decision-making processes.
Safaricom started a money transfer system called m-Pesa (pesa means money in Swahili) in 2007. It allows Kenyans in even the most remote parts of the country to transfer money and make small payments using their mobile phones, once they have deposited cash with an agent. M-Pesa today has 13 million customers, 20,000 agents throughout the country, and it moves the equivalent of $15m a day in mostly tiny transactions.
The mobile phone banking system is estimated to move almost 30 percent of Kenya’s GDP, says Joseph, although it contributes only eight percent to the company’s revenues.
Money for phoning, for sending, and now for saving
Three months ago m-Pesa started to offer its customers a new service, M-Kesho, a savings plan that also offers micro-credits and micro-insurance.
Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – Very icy road conditions and record low temperatures have race officials scrambling in their preparations for Saturday 4 December’s 33nd edition of the Course de l’Escalade, Switzerland’s most popular street race. More than 27,000 people of all ages participated in last year’s race, and organizers expect at least that many this year. Organizers are clearing the the route of snow and ice, especially in the Parc des Bastions, and are hoping it does not snow Saturday morning.
Some 5,000 foreigners are expected, most from neighbouring France but some coming from as far away as Great Britain, including top runners Kenyans Mike Niget and Linet Masai, according to the TdG.
There are 42 different categories for people of all ages, including those over 70 running distances of between 2 and 8km through the old town, down along the rue basses, and along past the university. Children’s races begin in the morning, and the races continue all afternoon.
Information about the race:
Tel: 022 700 59 02 (afternoons)
Fax : 022 700 59 52
E-mail : secr@escalade.ch
Foreign Minister Moses Wetang’ula stepped down 27 October pending an investigation into corruption at his ministry in which millions of dollars may have been overpaid for a new embassy in Tokyo, Japan. A parliamentary committee has found evidence of dubious financial transactions in other Kenyan embassies.
Wetang’ula has said he will be vindicated and that the minister does not sign cheques nor procurement orders. Kenya’s government has been criticized for not taking action against corruption, but several high-profile politicians have resigned or been charged in recent months.
Links to other sites: All-Africa, Financial Times, New York Times
The German freighter, Beluga Fortune, has been captured by Somali pirates almost 2,000km off the coast of Kenya, authorities said 24 October. The raid comes a day after a Greek tanker ship was seized off the coast of Momabasa, Kenya with a crew of 17 aboard.
The Beluga Fortune was carrying a load from the United Arab Emirates to Richards Bay, South Africa when it was boarded. It was not immediately known how many crew members were on board.
Links to other sites: Press Association, RTT News
Early results from Kenya’s referendum indicate that the new constitution will be adopted. Kenyans voted in droves with some waiting hours to vote. Many were turned away as polling stations closed at 17:00, but there were few reports of violence.
The new constitution, the first written by Kenyan’s, aims to curtail the powers of the presidency and to distribute power more evenly among the country’s many ethnic groups. A fiercly contested presidential election in 2007 left more than 1,000 people dead and hundreds of thousands displaced, and led to a unity government.
Kenya is the country with the highest number of high seas piracy cases, with 123 people held to date, of whom 18 have been convicted, according to AllAfrica. A new high security courtroom in the port city of Mombasa, to try piracy suspects, has just been opened. The UN Office on Drugs and Crime and the government of Kenya funded the new centre to try to ease the burden on Kenya’s judicial system; most of the suspects were seized off the coast of Somalia. The number of cases of piracy off the coast of East Africa rose seven-fold from 2005-2009.
Kenya in 2009 overtook Sri Lanka as the world’s largest producer of tea, according to the government of Kenya. It says it shipped 342 million kg to 47 markets, accounting for 22 percent of world tea exports, reports AllAfrica. Sri Lanka, long the world’s top exporter of tea, sold 280m kg, according to Kenya’s Tea Board figures. Sicily Kariuki, managing director of the African country’s Tea Board, told AllAfrica that research has played a key role in rising sales, with Kenya now producing some 50 varieties of tea in seven growing regions.
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.
The US embassy in Pretoria and consulates and other offices, including development aid offices, were closed 22 September due to a security threat. The source of the threat was not revealed by embassy spokesperson Sharon Hudson Dean. South African national police commissioner Bheki Cele told reporters in Cape Town, “Our intelligence world is dealing with it. It is under control.” A state department spokesman in Washington asked US citizens to be vigilant when in the vicinity of US government offices.
US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania were bombed simultaneously in 1998 with the loss of 224 lives and many more wounded. US military forces last week killed one of the main suspects in those attacks in a helicopter raid in Somalia. Militant Islamists fighting the Western-backed government in Somalia vowed revenge on the US for that attack. BBC, Mail&Guardian, South Africa
A military raid on a car carrying suspected Islamist militants in southern Somalia has likely killed Saleh Ali Saleh Nabhan, a Kenyan-born man officials say was a senior member of al-Qaeda in Eastern Africa. Nabhan is believed to be responsible for a bomb attack on an Israeli-owned hotel in Mombasa, Kenya in 2002 which killed 15 people, and an attempt to shoot down an Israeli passenger plane flying out of Mombasa later that year. He may also have been involved in the US embassy bombings in Nairobi, Kenya and Dar-es-Salaam, Tanzania in 1998.
Witnesses say six helicopters flew into the Barawe district in southern Somalia, 250km south of the capital Mogadishu, which is controlled by Al-Shabaab rebels fighting for supremacy in Somalia. Two fired missiles on the car. At least four bodies were removed and two wounded people were taken away by the helicopters’ crew. Al-Jazeera, AllAfrica, BBC, GaroweOnline
President Mwai Kibaki of Kenya has removed the country’s police commissioner, putting Mohammed Hussein Ali in charge of the postal service instead. He also removed seven top deputies, but the official statement on the changes gives no reason. Ali was brought in six years ago to clean up the police force, which had a reputation for corruption, but human rights groups in Kenya and outside, including Human Rights Watch and the Kenya National Commission on Human Rights, have accused the police of looting and raping during the 2007 election riots where more than 1,000 people died. The new man in charge is Mathew Iteere, who has headed what the BBC describes as the “elite General Services Unit – the feared police shock troops often called in to control civil unrest.” Initial reaction to the changes, inside and outside Kenya, appear to be cautiously positive. BBC World Service radio, Independent Online, South Africa and 28 August editorial in AllAfrica on reforms under discussion
A plane carrying 37 people reportedly remains under tight surveillance at Nairobi’s international airport in Kenya since it arrived late Saturday 5 September from the Seychelles, carrying what Kenya is calling pirates, and the government is negotiating with the Seychelles and Somali governments over the fate of the plane and its occupants. Kenya’s Daily Nation newspaper says the “pirates” had been released by the Seychelles government, but there is no explanation of why they were held by the Seychelles, and it notes that the passengers “were scheduled to disembark from the plane and enter Nairobi from where they would have either sneaked back into Somalia or remained in the country to enjoy their ill-gotten riches.” Background, “Who is fighting whom in Somalia”, Irin humanitarian news
Zurich, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) - The Weltklasse meeting saw a world record: but not in the event that the crowd was hoping for. Usain Bolt won the 100m, but his time of 9.81 seconds was some way off his Berlin record of 9.58. His fellow Jamaican Asafa Powell was second in 9.88. Jamaica showed the depth of its talent with a win for Dwight Thomas in the 110m hurdles sprint, and victory in the 4 x 100m relay but Kerron Stewart could only manage second in the womens’ 100m.
The record came in the women’s polevault, where Russian Yelena Isinbayeva beat her own record by one centimetre with a 5.06 metre vault.
Kenyan runners took the 800m, 1500m and the 3000m steeplechase. Ethiopian Kenenisa Bekele won the 5000m.
Related: swissinfo
Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – Chief Kisio and other elders of the Maasai community, at Il Ngwesi, Laikipia, Kenya, along with 200 members of the village, formally accepted digital recording equipment from Geneva-based Wipo (World Intellectual Property Organization) in late July, the organization said. Read more…
The UK government is reviewing its policy for people entering or transiting the country, and some individuals suspected of being involved in violence in the wake of Kenya’s elections in December 2007 may be on the list of those banned. Some 20 people have been refused entry since 2006, UK High Commissioner to Kenya, Robert Macaire, told a press conference Tuesday 4 August. “We are looking at our policy to conform to the global policy not to allow people who incite to violence from entering our country,” His comments followed a meeting with Kenya’s immigration minister. Macaire says most of those banned are business people who are suspects in corruption cases.
According to AllAfrica/DailyNation, his remarks come “in the wake of heightened activity” at the ICC (International Criminals Court) in The Hague, as it reviews the report of Kenya’s Waki Commission, which investigated the violence.
US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton flew to Nairobi, Kenya 3 August on the first leg of an African tour that underscores the importance the Obama administration attaches to engaging with Africa, a policy begun under the previous administration. It comes just three weeks after President Obama’s speech in Accra, Ghana. In addition to Kenya, Clinton will visit South Africa, Angola, Democratic Republic of Congo, Nigeria, Liberia and Cape Verde. All Africa, US Department of State
Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – Former UN secretary general Kofi Annan, who now heads the Geneva-based Global Humanitarian Forum, has sent a sealed envelope with a list of names of people suspected of having fanned ethnic violence following the 2007 presidential election in Kenya, to the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague.
Annan played a key role in mediating a settlement between opposing political forces.
Image ©2008 E Hockstein/UNHCR, on flickr.com
Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – Over 204,000 people have fled their homes in the northern suburbs of Mogadishu, Somalia to escape fighting since Islamist militants began their campaign eight weeks ago to gain control of the city, according to Geneva-based UNHCR (United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees). Local groups working with the UN agency say that fighting has claimed 105 lives and 380 wounded in the past week.
At least eight people died 17 June when a mortar landed on a building in Somalia’s capital Mogadishu and up to a dozen more deaths were reported elsewhere in the city in the latest wave of fighting. Government forces are battling some 500 fighters from the hard-line Islamist Shabaab group in the city. Mogadishu’s police chief was also killed in an offensive on rebel positions. Various rebel factions control most of the south of the country along the border with Kenya. Aid agencies have said that Somalia’s internally displaced population is the largest in the world and that the dire security situation makes it very difficult to provide help. BBC, Reuters, Oxfam
Background: UNHCR
