A new report from Human Rights Watch says the M23 rebel group in eastern Congo continues to receive significant support from neighboring Rwanda despite ongoing abuses including killings, rape and forced recruitment of children. …read more
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Fox World News
From the air, lines of trailers and tents stretch across the Jordanian desert. Welcome to Camp Zaatari, home to thousands of Syrian refugees and fast turning into a small city.
The camp was opened just a year ago as Jordan faced the nightmarish task of caring for and sheltering an exodus of people from Syria, traumatised by long months of war, and fleeing for their lives.
Now it houses around 115,000 dispossessed, who are resiliently determined to get back on their feet, even as the sound of artillery fire from just across the border echoes around the camp at night.
Tents are mostly being replaced by container homes made of plastic and aluminium. Each costs about $2,500 and the camp holds 16,500 of them, with hopes that soon there will be 30,000.
“Home sweet home,” camp manager Kilian Kleinschmidt of the UN refugee agency told US Secretary of State John Kerry during a visit on Thursday with no hint of irony.
He highlighted the stark fact that, with no end to the 28-month-old conflict in sight, camp residents are increasingly resigning themselves to a protracted stay and are trying to pick up the pieces of their disrupted lives.
Many come from the border province of Daraa, cradle of the March 2011 uprising against President Bashar al-Assad’s rule that escalated into armed rebellion,
“People of Daraa are traders. They have it in their blood,” said Kleinschmidt, an aid worker who is a veteran of world hotspots from Bosnia to Rwanda to Somalia.
“It’s incredible what they will trade, they’ll trade anything,” he told journalists.
Front courtyards are being cemented to keep out the mud, some families are even putting up little fountains outside their doors — “a symbol of home,” said Kleinschmidt.
The ever resourceful refugees are even tapping into the camp’s electricity network, leaving Kleinschmidt with a monthly bill approaching $500,000.
Most of the stolen power goes to run some 3,000 shops and 580 restaurants and food stalls which now dot the few asphalted roads — earning them the nickname the “Champs Elysee”, after Paris’s most famous street.
Here refugees can sip tea, buy shoes, or haggle for an air conditioning unit for their home, many of which now bristle with satellite dishes. And 10 taxis charge high prices to ferry people around.
Some of the money is carried out with the refugees. More comes from remittances from relatives working in Gulf or the West.
Others, including the children, scavenge for work. Smuggling is a problem, and every possession is for sale. Even the container homes are rented out or sold or used in schemes not sanctioned by the UN refugee agency.
There are three hospitals, a couple of schools, a main food distribution point and others just for bread, handing out some 5,000 loaves a day. There are also five football pitches and playgrounds with slides and swings.
“It’s important to keep some 60,000 children busy,” said Kleinschmidt, lamenting however that out of 30,000 of school age, just 5,000 have resumed their lessons.
Twelve to 15 babies are born into this no-man’s land every day, and …read more
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Fox World News
By Steve Forbes, Forbes Staff Daniel Isenberg is Professor of Entrepreneurship Practice at Babson Executive and Enterprise Education. He formerly taught at Harvard Business School and is author of a new book, Worthless, Impossible and Stupid: How Contrarian Entrepreneurs Create and Capture Extraordinary Value. I recently sat down with Dan to talk about failure, the importance of sales in entrepreneurship and lessons from nations ranging from Rwanda to Israel. Part II of our conversation follows in a video and transcript. …read more
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Forbes Latest
An estimated 5,000 Syrians are dying every month in the country’s civil war and refugees are fleeing at a rate not seen since the 1994 Rwanda genocide, U.N. officials said Tuesday.
“In Syria today, serious human rights violations, war crimes and crimes against humanity are the rule,” said Ivan Simonovic, the assistant secretary-general for human rights, told the U.N. Security Council on Tuesday.
He added that “the extremely high rate of killings … demonstrates the drastic deterioration of this conflict.”
U.N. refugee chief Antonio Guterres said two-thirds of the nearly 1.8 million Syrian refugees known to the agency have fled since the beginning of 2013, an average of over 6,000 daily.
“We have not seen a refugee outflow escalate at such a frightening rate since the Rwandan genocide almost 20 years ago,” he said.
U.N. humanitarian chief Valerie Amos said at least 6.8 million Syrians require urgent humanitarian assistance and accused the government and opposition of “systematically and in many cases deliberately” failing their obligation to protect civilians.
“This is a regional crisis not a crisis in Syria with regional consequences, requiring sustained and comprehensive engagement from the international community,” Amos said by videoconference from Geneva.
“The security, economic, political, social, development and humanitarian consequences of this crisis are extremely grave and its human impact immeasurable in terms of the long-term trauma and emotional impact on this and future generations of Syrians,” she said. “We are not only watching the destruction of a country but also of its people.”
Simonovic said that since U.N. human rights chief Navi Pillay reported last month that at least 92,901 people had been killed between March 2011 when the conflict began and the end of April 2013, government forces and militias have moved to uproot the opposition in many areas including Qusair and Talkalkh, Aleppo, Damascus and its suburbs.
“Government forces carry on with indiscriminate and disproportionate shelling and aerial bombardments, using among other weapons tactical ballistic missiles, cluster and thermobaric bombs, all causing extensive damage and casualties if used in densely populated areas,” he said.
“As a result, hundreds of civilians, including women and children were killed, thousands injured, and tens of thousands displaced,” Simonovic said. “Many displaced in the parts of Homs …read more
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Fox World News
Amid searing testimony by survivors of the Rwanda genocide, a New Hampshire woman sentenced to 10 years in prison after she was found guilty of lying about her role in the 1994 atrocity has said nothing.
Through two trials, 43-year-old Beatrice Munyenyezi (moon-yehn-YEH’-zee) of Manchester sat silently. She chose not to speak on her own behalf at her sentencing Monday in federal court in Concord. The Rwanda native also declined requests for interviews.
The judge who sentenced her said she participated in the deliberate and hateful mass murder of hundreds of thousands of Tutsis in the African nation.
Her lawyers say the maximum sentence she received will spare her from imminent deportation to Rwanda — a move they say would amount to a death sentence.
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Fox US News
A New Hampshire woman who lied about her role in the 1994 Rwanda genocide has been sentenced to 10 years in prison, a fate her lawyers say is tantamount to a death sentence.
Rwanda native Beatrice Munyenyezi remained stoic as U.S. District Judge Steven McAuliffe sentenced her to the maximum prison time. She declined her right to address the court.
Munyenyezi, 43, was convicted in February of entering the United States and securing citizenship by lying about her role as a commander of one of the notorious roadblocks where Tutsis were singled out for slaughter. She also denied affiliation with any political party, despite her husband’s leadership role in the extremist Hutu militia party.
McAuliffe acknowledged she has led a crime-free and productive life since her arrival in New Hampshire in 1998 but said it was a life lived under false pretenses.
Federal prosecutors had sought the maximum prison sentence, saying she’s as guilty as if she wielded the machete herself.
During the 1994 genocide, at least 500,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus were killed in a campaign of mass murder orchestrated by Hutu extremists.
Munyenyezi’s lawyers say they will appeal her conviction to the 1st Circuit Court of Appeals — a move that is expected to delay deportation proceedings.
Through two trials and the three years since her indictment in 2010, Munyenyezi has remained silent. She did not testify and declined an Associated Press request for an interview in the wake of her first trial ending a mistrial in 2012.
She has spent most of those three years in custody and apart from her three daughters, ages 18-20.
Her lawyers portrayed her as the victim of lies by Rwandan witnesses who never before implicated her through nearly two decades of investigations and trials — even when testifying against her husband and his mother before the International Criminal Tribunal on Rwanda.
Prosecutors maintained that she was a liar who “gamed” the immigration system to fraudulently obtain the “golden ticket” of citizenship. She swore on immigration and naturalization forms that she persecuted no one, had no affiliation with any political party and even cast herself as a victim of the genocide by saying family members “disappeared.”
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Fox US News
Rwanda’s military spokesman said two mortar bombs were fired into the country from neighbouring Democratic Republic of Congo on Monday.
He said the bombs, which caused no injuries, were fired in mid-afternoon “deliberately” and blamed the DRC army – the FARDC – and the UN force MONUSCO on the grounds they were fired from territory they control.
“Two bombs landed at Kageshi and Gasiza,” Joseph Nzabamwita said in a statement, referring to two villages in Rubavu district in northwestern Rwanda which borders the troubled eastern DR Congo.
Nzabamwita said the attack was a “provocative and deliberate act by FARDC and MONUSCO since there was no fighting nearby between the warring factions.”
His accusation came amid fierce clashes across the border between the DRC army and M23 rebels, which flared again Sunday around the flashpoint Congolese city of Goma, leaving at least 130 dead, according to a government spokesman.
Rwanda, along with neighbouring Uganda, has been accused of backing the M23, a charge both countries have denied.
Meanwhile Kigali has accused the DRC of co-operating with Rwandan Hutu rebels from the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR) whose leaders are wanted for their alleged involvement in the 1994 Rwandan genocide.
Nzabamwita said the army had “credible information” that FDLR rebels were “currently embedded” in the DRC army.
The M23 briefly seized control of Goma, the capital of DRC’s North Kivu province last November but then pulled out.
The rebel group has since been weakened by an outright split into two factions and ensuing internal fighting that resulted in heavy casualties and a wave of desertions.
Talks in the Ugandan capital Kampala destined to restore calm to North Kivu started in December but have made little headway.
Since the talks started the only outbreak of fighting recorded between M23 and the army was in May.
The M23 however is just one of a myriad of armed groups operating in eastern Congo and other groups are involved in skirmishes and abuses against the civilian population on a regular basis.
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Fox World News
A New Hampshire woman who fled Rwanda and obtained U.S. citizenship a decade ago faces up to 10 years in prison for lying to U.S. Customs officials about her role in the 1994 Rwanda genocide.
Beatrice Munyenyezi (moon-yehn-YEH’-zee) was convicted in federal court in February of masking her role at one of the notorious roadblocks where Tutsis were singled out for slaughter.
Federal prosecutors are seeking the maximum prison sentence — 10 years — saying she’s as guilty as if she wielded the machete in the killing fields of Butare.
Her lawyers intend to seek a sentence of less than a year to give the 43-year-old mother of three a better chance of avoiding being deported. They say deportation would amount to a death sentence.
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Fox US News
African Nations Championship (CHAN) holders Tunisia were eliminated this weekend in the first qualifying round.
They drew 0-0 away to Morocco in the second leg, but fell 1-0 on aggregate after losing at home last Saturday.
Packed with stars from CAF title-winning clubs Esperance, Etoile Sahel, CS Sfaxien, Club Africain and CA Bizertin, Tunisia were expected to advance.
But a last-minute breakaway goal from striker Abdessamad Mbarki in Mediterranean resort Sousse proved decisive over two defence-dominated games.
Tunisia won the second edition of the tournament for home-based footballers with a 3-0 drubbing of Angola in Sudan two years ago.
But coach Nabil Maaloul chose only goalkeeper Farouk Ben Mustapha from the title-winning squad to confront the Moroccans.
The 16-nation 2014 tournament is scheduled for January 11-February 1 in South Africa and Morocco will appear at the finals for the first time.
South Africa qualify automatically as hosts and Ghana and Libya have secured places after opponents Benin and Algeria withdrew.
Uganda are set to join them after building a 1-0 away advantage over Tanzania in an east Africa derby.
Midfielder Brian Majwega was the architect of the 48th-minute winner, setting up defender Denis Iguma to fire across goalkeeper Juma Kaseja into the net.
Tanzania had more possession in the eagerly anticipated Dar es Salaam showdown, but were let down by woeful finishing.
Mrisho Ngasa was repeatedly off target with long-range shots and striker John Bocco also disappointed when offered scoring opportunities.
It was the third consecutive victory for Serb coach Milutin Sredojevic since succeeding sacked Scot Bobby Williamson as Uganda coach last month.
He guided the ‘Cranes’ to World Cup qualifying wins over Liberia and Angola, and a victory over Senegal during September would take them to the play-offs.
However, Sredojevic cautioned against premature celebrations, especially given the Ugandan habit of snatching defeat from the jaws of victory.
“By winning the first leg we have got only the passports for South Africa and now we need to get the visas by winning the return match,” he told reporters.
Ethiopia host Rwanda later on Sunday in the remaining fixture this weekend with second-leg fixtures scheduled for late July.
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Fox World News
Nearly two decades after the Rwandan genocide, thousands of refugees living in a camp in Uganda say they fear being forced to return to their home country.
The ethnic Hutu refugees told The Associated Press from a refugee camp in Nakivale, Uganda that they consider Rwanda unsafe for them.
Uganda hosts thousands of Rwandan refugees. But 8,000 Rwandans will cease being refugees with legal protection in just over two months. Hutu refugees say they fear reprisal attacks by Tutsis inside Rwanda. During the 1994 genocide, at least 500,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus were killed in a campaign of mass murder orchestrated by Hutu extremists.
Rwanda‘s government said in a statement Friday that refugees who hesitate to return home lack information on the current situation in Rwanda.
From: http://feeds.foxnews.com/~r/foxnews/world/~3/HNpTMJ0d8Mk/
By Neal Colgrass 
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Newser – Great Finds
The U.N. Security Council was set Thursday to authorize a new “intervention brigade” for Congo with an unprecedented mandate to take military action against rebel groups in order to help bring peace to the country’s conflict-wracked east.
U.N. diplomats, speaking on condition of anonymity because negotiations on the brigade have been private, said they expect the council to unanimously approve the draft resolution.
Russia’s U.N. Ambassador Vitaly Churkin, the current council president, told a news conference that “we shall be adopting a long awaited resolution” that will reconfigure the U.N. peacekeeping mission in Congo, “recognizing the necessity of decisively countering the destructive” violence that has left eastern Congo in turmoil since the 1994 Rwanda genocide.
The intervention brigade would be unprecedented in U.N. peacekeeping because of its offensive mandate. But the draft resolution states clearly that it would be established for one year “on an exceptional basis and without creating a precedent” to the principles of U.N. peacekeeping.
The French-drafted resolution would give the brigade a mandate to carry out offensive operations alone or with Congolese army troops to neutralize and disarm armed groups “in a robust, highly mobile and versatile manner” to ensure that they can’t seriously threaten government authority or the security of civilians.
The brigade would be part of the U.N. peacekeeping mission in Congo, known as MONUSCO, within its troop ceiling of 19,815. The United Nations currently has more than 17,700 U.N. peacekeepers and more than 1,400 international police in Congo.
Churkin said “it is of the utmost importance that the new resolution confirms the basic principles of U.N. peacekeeping, and the mandate of the brigade and the military component directly under it are divided.”
The proposed resolution would extend MONUSCO‘s mandate until March 31, 2014. The “intervention brigade” headquarters would be in the key eastern city of Goma. U.N. officials say it will probably include between 2,000 and 3,000 troops.
Mineral-rich eastern Congo has been engulfed in fighting since the 1994 Rwanda genocide, in which at least 500,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus were slaughtered by Hutu militias before a Tutsi-led rebel army took power in Rwanda. More than 1 million Rwandan Hutus fled across the border into Congo, and Rwanda has invaded Congo several times to take action against Hutu militias there.
The exploitation of Congo‘s mineral …read more
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Fox World News
A spokesman for the Congolese rebel movement M23 says warlord Bosco Ntaganda ended up at the International Criminal Court because of his “stupidity” in believing he could control the rebel group.
Rene Abandi, who heads a delegation of M23 fighters that has been negotiating peace with the Congolese government, said Thursday that Ntaganda was a schemer whose violent expulsion from eastern Congo left the group feeling more secure but undermined prospects for peace.
Abandi said Ntaganda tried to “influence the chain of command” but went too far when he challenged the M23’s Gen. Sultani Makenga.
Makenga’s side gained the upper hand in clashes earlier this month with a faction loyal to Ntaganda, who then fled to Rwanda and turned himself in at the U.S. Embassy.
A police official in Rwanda says a grenade blast has killed one person and wounded eight.
The attack happened in a busy area of Kigali, the capital, as people returned home from work Tuesday evening.
A police spokesman, Theos Badege, called the blast an isolated incident and not the act of a terror network. Badege said one person was killed and eight were wounded.
Rwanda saw a series of grenade blasts in 2010 but the capital hasn’t seen any since then.
Bosco Ntaganda’s surrender to the International Criminal Court marks an important day for international justice and the people of the eastern regions of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. As a leader of various armed groups, including most recently the M23, Ntaganda is accused of war crimes and crimes against humanity involving rape, murder, sexual slavery, and the forced recruitment and use of thousands of Congolese children as soldiers. He has eluded justice for nearly seven years. Bringing Ntaganda to justice will be an important step toward ending the cycle of impunity that has fostered violence and instability in the Democratic Republic of the Congo for far too long. The United States thanks the Rwandan, Dutch, and British governments for their cooperation in facilitating the departure of Bosco Ntaganda from Rwanda to The Hague. We hope that today’s positive development will add further momentum to efforts to devise a comprehensive political agreement that addresses the region’s underlying security, economic, and governance issues.
…read more
Source: FULL ARTICLE at The White House Press Office
By hnn
NAIROBI, Kenya — American officials on Wednesday said that a team from the International Criminal Court was on its way to Rwanda to collect a war crimes suspect who had turned himself in to the American Embassy and that they were hoping Rwanda would cooperate.
Rwanda has indicated that it would not interfere with the transfer of the suspect, Bosco Ntaganda, a rebel commander nicknamed the Terminator, to the International Criminal Court at The Hague, where he has been charged with war crimes and crimes against humanity.
…read more
Source: FULL ARTICLE at History News Network – George Mason University
Rwanda‘s justice minister says his government will not hinder the transfer of Congolese warlord Bosco Ntaganda from the United States Embassy in Kigali to the International Criminal Court.
Justice Minister Tharcisse Karugarama told The Associated Press Thursday that his government has no intention of blocking or hindering the impending transfer of Ntaganda, who has operated in eastern Congo for years. Ntaganda has been living in the U.S. Embassy since Monday.
The Rwandan minister said there is no need for speculation that Rwanda could stand in the way of a transfer to the ICC.
The top U.S. official for Africa, Johnnie Carson, said Wednesday he hoped Rwanda would ensure Ntaganda is able to move freely from the embassy to the airport, and that his transfer would “in no way be inhibited.”
The top U.S. State Department official on Africa is indicating that Rwanda has not assured the safe passage of the internationally wanted Congolese warlord now holed up at the U.S. Embassy in Kigali.
Assistant Secretary of State Johnnie Carson told reporters via conference call Wednesday the U.S. hopes Rwanda will cooperate with the request by Bosco Ntaganda to travel to the International Criminal Court in the Netherlands to face charges.
Carson said it’s important that Ntaganda’s movement from the embassy to the airport “in no way be inhibited.” Carson said the U.S. hopes ICC officials en route to Rwanda will be allowed into the country, another indication of U.S. concerns.
Ntaganda showed up at the U.S. Embassy in Rwanda‘s capital on Monday and asked to be transferred to the ICC.
By Kevin Chen, The Motley Fool
Filed under: Investing
Starbucks will launch a new agronomy center in Costa Rica to improve farming sustainability and provide insights into future Starbucks blends. The move is part of the company’s $70 million ethical sourcing program as well as its billion-dollar commitment to ethically sourcing 100% of its coffee by 2015.
Starbucks’ new agronomy center will be converted from a 240-hectare farm near Poas Volcano. The terms of the purchase won’t be disclosed until the final closing in May.
Specifically, the farm will further Starbucks’ Coffee and Farming Equity practices (C.A.F.E.), an ethical sourcing model that balances coffee quality with social, environmental, and economic impacts. Home to agronomists and quality experts, the center will also look into soil management processes and how it may affect future coffee varietals, or blends, for Starbucks. Researchers are also interested in how the farm‘s varied elevation may affect responsible growing practices.
The new Costa Rican facility will add to Starbucks’ global goals to directly improve farmer livelihoods and a long-term supply of high-quality coffee for the industry. Currently, the company has five other farmer support centers in Rwanda, Tanzania, Colombia, China, and San Jose (Costa Rica).
The article Starbucks Launches New Costa Rican Research Center originally appeared on Fool.com.
Fool contributor Kevin Chen has no position in any stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool recommends and owns shares of Starbucks. Try any of our Foolish newsletter services free for 30 days. We Fools may not all hold the same opinions, but we all believe that considering a diverse range of insights makes us better investors. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.
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A U.S. official in Rwanda confirms that a notorious Congolese general wanted for war crimes remains ensconced at the United States Embassy in Kigali, a day after he turned himself in, saying he wanted to be extradited to the International Criminal Court.
The official, who insisted on anonymity because she was not authorized to speak on the matter, said Bosco Ntaganda arrived at the embassy at 7:30 a.m. Monday. He remained at the embassy on Tuesday, as speculation mounted regarding his unexpected surrender.
Ntaganda was first indicted in 2006 by the International Criminal Court for conscripting and using child soldiers during a conflict from 2002 to 2003 in Congo‘s eastern Ituri province. A second arrest warrant, issued last July, accused him of a range of crimes including murder and rape.