It’s not.

Suicide bombing and targeting aid workers purposely shred the principle that war is between armed combatants. Rules of war or fighting aren’t an intellectual exercise. Protecting civilians is a vital principle if there is to be a nod to humanity and human rights in a battle zone. Bystanders to war should not become legitimate targets of war. Yet, it is happening more and more as these two stories from Devex indicate. And another looking at why aid work is risky.

What may be most scary about these attacks is that it’s hard to see how to restore the notion of civilians’ right to protection and need to be differentiated from combatants. Former U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan’s attempt to spread a Responsibility to Protect Civilians always will be limited because it is aimed at heads of state and governments, not at rebels and militias who also commit these atrocities. The easy accessibility of weapons gives the smallest band of thugs the ability to inflict damage that make foes and a larger public take notice. Thugs like the attention, like the destruction — that is victory enough for them. Any ideas on how to stem attacks on civilians?

Nate Henn

Nate Henn, 25, was one of the victims in yesterday’s bombing in Kigali, Rwanda of a rugby field where the World Cup final was being televised on a giant screen. Nate listed himself as a 2007 graduate of the University of Delaware. When I was on the Inquirer’s editorial board writing about Northern Uganda from about 2005 through 2007, a group of students from UD was extremely passionate about and active in efforts to raise US awareness about the war in northern Uganda in which children were targeted and terrorized. A number of them walked in Philadelphia’s portion of the first, national Gulu Walk, in an effort to teach people around the world about that conflict. I suspect Nate was one of those participants, since he was in Uganda working with the NGO, Invisible Children, which seeks to help the kids of northern Uganda who still feel the aftereffects of a war in which they were kidnapped and forced to become soldiers and sex slaves.

A surge of activism beginning around 2005, helped propel the end of that war in northern Uganda, though the Lord’s Resistance Army, led by international war-crimes suspect Joseph Kony, continues to wreak bloody havoc on children and other bystanders throughout that region of Africa.  While the LRA’s continued existence is troubing, today let us simply herald the role individual activists who coalesce into a larger group, can play in an issue, no matter how big or small or how far away it may be.

One person can make a difference. Nate Henn made a difference. My condolences to his family.

Your computers' bloody contents

The Enough Project has produced this great spoof of the Mac-PC commercials to educate the public about how computers, yes, the ones in our homes and offices, are made with conflict minerals from the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Militias do the mining and then use the considerable profits to finance the continued fighting in DRC that has been going on since 1998. It’s a helluva good, worthy public-awareness campaign — let’s even call it a public health campaign, since the violence there has hurt and killed so many. Kudos to Enough for the idea and the creative execution of it.  As, Nickolas Kristof mentioned in his Sunday column on the topic, these minerals also are used in the fabrication of cell phones and digital cameras. Western consumers especially, since we are the ones who consume so much, need to be aware of this and demand that manufacturers of these products use resources that can be verified as coming from clean, legitimate sources, not bloody ones such as Congo’s. For more information on the topic and the campaign visit the Enough Project. Read Steve Job’ response on WIRED’s Gadget Lab blog.

Photo: Anthony Morland/IRIN

Sense of security… but the LRA has even infiltrated towns where UN and Congolese forces are based

NIANGARA, 5 May 2010 (IRIN) - They may number as few as 100 men, women and adolescents, but Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) units scattered across the forests of northeastern Democratic Republic of Congo’s Orientale Province have sown sufficient terror to make some 318,000 people take flight, abandoning their homes and fields, in many cases to the uncertain sanctuary of urban centres.

Their fear is far from misplaced, for extreme brutality is a tactic in the survival strategy of the northern Ugandan rebel group, which has killed almost 2,000 people in Orientale since December 2007, mostly in the districts of Haut- and Bas-Uele.

Lacking supply lines and widely dispersed since a botched air raid in December 2008, the small groups of LRA fighters operate independently of each other and live off the land; that is to say, off the local population’s produce and livestock. Since this population has no desire to share what little they have with a rebellion in which they have no stake at all, they are made to leave.

“The violence of its attacks and the suffering it causes are intended to frighten villagers into not giving its pursuers the information they need to wage a counter-insurgency campaign and to frighten civilians away so they can move with less chance of being spotted,” the International Crisis Group said in a recent report on the LRA.

Such calculatedly brutal logic is hard to explain to the victims of violence.

“What can you tell a woman who’s had her lips and ears cut off for nothing?” UN humanitarian chief John Holmes said after visiting the Haute-Uele town of Niangara, the geographical centre of Africa, during a tour of DRC’s most troubled areas.

Though the crisis group’s press release doesn’t say it, it is always important — and accurate — to emphasize the enormous damage the LRA always, always wreaks upon kids. Children are LRA chief Joseph Kony’s favorite target because they are so vulnerable and, therefore, more easily manipulated. Ending the LRA is a children’s rights issue foremost. Here’s the press release.

INTERNATIONAL CRISIS GROUP - NEW REPORT

Nairobi/Brussels, 28 April 2010: To make an end of the brutal Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) once and for all, national armies, the UN and civilians need to pool intelligence and coordinate their efforts in new and creative ways.

LRA: A Regional Strategy beyond Killing Kony, the latest report from the International Crisis Group, examines how what was once an insurgency in northern Uganda has become a regional humanitarian and security problem that requires a regional solution. Operation Lightning Thunder, the Ugandan army’s latest attempt to crush the LRA, has been a military fiasco. After the initial attack on their hideout in a Congolese national park in December 2008, small groups of fighters dispersed more widely in the Congo (Democratic Republic), South Sudan and the Central African Republic (CAR). They immediately committed a series of massacres of villagers to show they retained their power and continue to survive by preying on civilians.

“National security forces are too weak to protect their own people, while the Ugandan army, with U.S. support, is focused on hunting Joseph Kony, the group’s leader”, says Edward Dalby, Crisis Group’s Central Africa Analyst. “The Ugandans have eroded the LRA’s numbers and made it difficult for scattered groups to communicate. But, even if they eventually kill or capture Kony, LRA fighters will remain a terrible danger to civilians in this mostly ungoverned frontier zone”.

The LRA has exploited the inability of the Congo, South Sudan and the CAR to control their border areas and benefited from insufficient coordination between their armies. Small, fast-moving groups of fighters attack unprotected villages to resupply with food and clothes and abduct new recruits before heading back to the cover of the forest. Killing and mutilating are part of a strategy of terror to dissuade survivors from cooperating with the Ugandan and other armies. The weakness of all three state security forces where the LRA now operates and the limited capacity of the UN missions in the Congo and South Sudan have left civilians no choice but to fend for themselves. The UN Security Council must ensure that the planned and gradual drawdown of MONUC (UN Mission Congo) leaves sufficient forces in the LRA-affected areas in the Congo.

“To put an end to what has become a causeless and homeless rebellion, a new strategy is required that prioritises civilian protection, as well as a united effort among military and civilian actors within and across national boundaries”, says Thierry Vircoulon, Crisis Group’s Central Africa Project Director. “Because the need for security is urgent, flexible and innovative forms of cooperation between international, state and non-state actors are needed to counter the threat that operates in and exploits this semi-stateless zone”.

But not even a complete military victory over the LRA would guarantee an end to insecurity in northern Uganda. To do that, the Kampala government must treat the root causes of trouble in the area from which the LRA sprang more than twenty years ago, namely northern perceptions of economic and political marginalisation, and ensure the social rehabilitation of the north.

It is not necessarily healthy to spirit them away from their country, from the language they speak and from the remaining relatives, neighbors and friends who constitute their support system. Nor is it accurate to assume — as illustrated by the recent case of the group detained by Haitians authorities for trying to leave the country with children said to be orphans — that children who survived the earthquake have no living family left. Or that if they do have family, those relatives would not want to take care of these children. That is an assumption that dehumanizes Haitians and make the children into little more than commodities to be shuttled around to other adults in other locations.

Again, many people may approach helping children in Haiti and other poor or battered countries with heartfelt intentions to do good. But intentions are not the best basis for deciding how to aid these kids in a positive way.

On a different note from the same story, let me also emphasize the point that children are still waiting for a variety of services, the reopening of schools chief among them. Few things are healthier for kids in a time of disaster, chaos or instability than the children being able to attend classes every day. Education is — or should be — a child’s right no matter the locale or circumstances. I know there is enormous need in Haiti after the earthquake — piled on top of the needs that existed before it — and that relief and development programs are never executed as fast as we all would like. Still, here’s hoping that schools for as many Haitian children as possible are organized and running as soon as possible.  

Now the IRIN story:

PORT-AU-PRINCE, 22 March 2010 (IRIN) - Mami George, a retired teacher, sits in a courtyard at the small orphanage she manages in San Marie, Port-au-Prince. The area, once home to 2,000 residents, now accommodates some 6,000 people who lost their homes in the January earthquake.

 George began feeding the orphans living on the streets near the site and within days found herself caring for more than 50 children aged between three and 15.

 Only 500 orphans have been registered with the different local and international agencies in Haiti since the quake, not including the ones living in orphanages before the disaster. According to local caretakers, most children who had one living relative were taken in by them, explaining the relatively low number of orphans. The children in George’s care, however, have no one.

 In a small compound, living in tents donated by French volunteers, these children are cared for by a team of local helpers. Food is distributed daily by the UN World Food Programme (WFP) kitchen in the camp, with 1,300 calories crammed into each serving of porridge or rice and beans - enough to keep these children alive but not enough to drive away the hunger pangs.

 Another 900 meals are distributed to school children on the site as part of a WFP food distribution scheme. It plans to provide hot meals to some 170,000 school children nationwide. State schools are closed until 1 April, but local NGOs operate makeshift schools in some areas. In the interim some 2.5 million children remain without access to classes.

 More than two months after the quake, nobody has come to claim any of the children in Mami George’s care.

 The children are stressed, says George, pointing to several mattresses drying on a nearby roof. The children have gone back to bed-wetting after the quake.

 Volunteers from different countries visit the orphanage compound once or twice a week and are an instant attraction for the children. With no toys or playground, every visitor is a welcome distraction. “We cope with what we have, but we need plastic bed sheets, clothes, snacks, toys,” George told IRIN.

 Nineteen volunteer caretakers work in 12-hour shifts, every day of the week, but are unable to address the children’s psychological needs, and local Haitian psychologists are a rarity.

 The International Organization for Migration has opened a psycho-social cluster for NGOs dealing with post-traumatic stress but it is difficult to access 1.3 million people living in 400 temporary sites. The children will have to wait - for assistance, for clothes, for schools to re-open.

 Donors! You read it. Now pay for it:

http://www.irinnews.org/donors.aspx

Aid workers in Haiti have sent home all but one of the 33 children that US missionaries tried to take out of the country after the January earthquake.

One child is still waiting at the SOS Orphanage on Port-au-Prince’s outskirts for further verification of her parents’ identities.