━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 【About Africa Alert Magazine】 ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ In the first issue, we took up major subjects which the African people are facing today in terms of humanity, Civil Society, Japanese Assistance, and Africans living in Japan. This edition, with regard to the meeting of the G8 summit(from 6th July ~ 8th July in Gleneagles, Scotland), will focus on African Issues as a main topic. In particular, we are focusing on life and poverty, from which African citizens seriously suffer today. In addition, as a sequel to the previous volume, we focus on “the viewpoint of civil society which plays an important role in the life of developing countries”, and take up voices of civil society (CSO) from Africa and Japan. The whole text of “Africa Alert Magazine Vol. 2”（16 page-long） is on the TCSF website. Please read it here---＞　http://www.ticad-csf.net ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 【１．Africa alert 】　・・・The War which continues in the Darfur region　of western Sudan ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ In this confused situation、the people in Darfur still feel under threat. The word ”Safety Water” concerns not only cleanness of water but also safety of women and children who have to go to draw water in the disastrous areas. (Interview from a member of ADRA JAPAN, which operates in Darfur http://www.adrajpn.org/ ） (1) The situation reported in the previous issue, namely, the situation in Darfur in the Republic of the Sudan, was still chaotic and getting worse even after the cease-fire agreement, was reported. It concerned on the cause of the conflict and support of International organisations, NGOs, and the Japanese government. (2) The current situation While many people have died in the Darfur Conflict over the past 2 years, the conflict is on the way to a resolution through a ceasefire. Although a state of emergency exists, the situation is now more stable with the prospect of peace. However, the situation is complicated by such factors as security, the shortage of water and the refugee camp situation. (3) Response of the International community. How the International community, especially the African Union will deal with obstacles is an enduring test. The obstacles facing the AU are intertwined with the international problems. The hurdles are therefore quite high. The Japanese Government support provided via the United Nations ranks ninth among the donors. The government has also launched their contribution program to the NGO recently. ・AU ・NATO and EU ・the government of Japan ・United Nations (4) A Voice from Africa: ■ Adora Japan ”Africa is a melting pot of problems” “Currently, Darfur suffers endless chaos and we can do nothing but treat the symptoms as they appear.” ■ Japan International Volunteer Center （JVC） ”The unequal aid deliveries inside and outside the Camp for internally displaced persons in Darfur has become a serious issue.” ●Future Prospects… and Japan People in Darfur still live in fear of brutal attacks under the unstable circumstances. In order to stop deterioration of complicated situation, restoring peace must be the top priority. Regretfully, Japan still shows little interest in the crisis in Darfur. How will Japan be part of the solution in Africa? The NGO in Darfur are constantly forced to wage a struggle. We believe that the Japanese civil society should become more aware of and takes action in the conflicts in Darfur, as well as in the rest of Africa. It will create deep and widespread humanitarian support, and furthermore will foster relations of mutual trust with Africa. ■ (Shimizu - Researcher) ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 【2. Africa CSO Alert】 “Listen to the voice of Africa!” 　　The G8 Summit (Debt Write-Off) & Genetically Modified Food Products ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ ‘Africa CSO Alert’ introduces the views of the African civil society concerning the recent international movement of support, such as UK’s proposal of AU Reports and Debt Write-Off, to the G8 summit, by means of: 1) Africa CSO’s statements, 2) E-mail correspondence with the Africa CSO based on the TCSF mailing list, 3) Messages given to TCSF. The Alert also covers the Genetically Modified Food Products. (1) Opinions from the Africa CSO prior to the G8 summit. ▲Statements of Africa’s civil society regarding the G8 summit and the African committee. 　＜Statements issued by the environmental bureaus of Mozambique and Kenya＞ 　(We will update the names of all supporting groups soon) ‘’We, the local and the grass root Africa NGO recognize that Africa is the major issue in the G8 summit talk held this July. We appreciate all the efforts of the G8 members, but we would have been more grateful if the members listened more closely to Africa’s real voice in the talks. ○ We request that the world leaders and partners in the development of Africa will take specific actions on the following issues: ・ good governance ・ debt relief and aid ・ trade and investment ・ environment and land ・ food and culture In conclusion, our hope is for the world leaders of the G8 summit to have serious discussion of the issues African nations face, and to understand that the solutions rest on the African people themselves.” ▲【Overview】 The G8 meeting of the financial ministers and central bank governors agreed upon 100% debt reduction for the most impoverished countries. ●Africa CSO perspectives on the ‘Debt Write-Off’ which were sent to TCSF. ◇Mr. Pole Ukiwi: Kenya Volunteer Development Service（Kenya） Debt relief can’t necessarily bring a better life to the poor. Good governance is yet to be established in almost any country of Africa. Therefore, even if debt is relieved, it is unlikely to generate tangible results unless corruption and embezzlement of public money are under control. ◇Mr. Lucas Amosse：Inter-Religious Council of Mozambique (Mozambique） Civil Society should play a role in delivering benefits from debt relief to people. This is a commitment we, civil society of Africa, should make. We need cooperation from Japan so that our voice can be heard more widely. ◇Ms Mary Bankungeri：Rwanda Women Network（Rwanda） We are very pleased to hear of debt relief. We look forward to the possible benefits from debt relief to the community we support. ◇Mr. Barenba Gbanja：Congolese Union of debt relief for development（Republic of the Congo） Debt relief is a major concern of donors in the North, but can African leaders sit in a negotiating table for that ? How can debt relief be ensured without reducing the current level of ODA ? Africans should be more active in this issue. ◇Professor Denis Brutus：Jubilee（South Africa） ◇Mr. Ibrahim Yakoba：RNDD debt relief and development national network (Niger) ◇Mr. Aminata Tore Bary：CAD alternative debt and development union (Mari) ‘Our biggest concern is that some countries whose debt will be cancelled are required to follow the conditionality that is based on the interest of the business-leading global policy. These countries would be forced to accept considerably disadvantageous trade rules by the more powerful trade partners. We therefore should not applaud this agreement’. △Today’s African civil society’s response to the proposal for debt cancellation (translation of selected passage) (2) Alert about GMO PELUM Tanzania, a Tanzanian NGO, objects to the introduction of GMO, unless it is certified that GMO is safe and beneficial for peasants, and doesn’t harm the environment’. We should be cognizant to these voices, and the donors’ actions have to take this view into account for every food aid and agricultural support. [ 3. Japanese Support – Bandung Conference -] (1)Taking the opportunity at the Bandung Conference, TCSF submitted a joint statement with AJF on the 21st April 2005. Here, the statement supports the Japanese civil society movement and opinions and the world movement, which are becoming more active with the imminent G8 summit. The Japanese civil society movement is focusing on the campaign of ‘hottokenai’ (cannot let there be) concerning poverty in the world. This campaign, in which TCSF also participates, is a Japanese campaign for the Global Call to Action Against Poverty (G-CAP) organized by a number of Japanese NGOs, and NGOs network programmes with the links to the worldwide campaign. (2) A vision on G-8 Summit (Main points) http://www.hottokenai.jp/blog/archives/005_campaign_column/000056.html ・”Is it possible to improve the quality of the aid -and not just the amount?” （Views expressed by Kiyotaka Takahashi） We have received a comment concerning the amount and quality of aid from Mr. Takashi who has been studying the Japan’s ODA issues for many years.（JVC・ODA Reform Network）. ”With an increase in aid, it is essential that a system is constructed for the Japanese people to watch and understand the Africa’s movements.” （3）Recent Movements The action taken by EU has been drawing attention. EU has given a positive response towards a plan proposed by the Commission for Africa (CFA) in March to provide additional aid of $25,000,000,000 per year. Moreover, as EU countries also have a goal to increase their ODA to 0.7% of their GNP by the year 2015, the significance of this long term goal of 0.7% is growing in the international society. The international society, at least EU, is taking action to reach its goal by the year 2010. （4）About Japan’s ODA The amount of Japanese ODA is still small in GNP ratio, and the impact towards the MDG is low. TCSF has made a proposal to increase Japan’s ODA to 0.7%of GNP, together with improving the share for Africa to 35% and the expansion of involvement of civil societies. ●Time for African Civil Society to be the centre of development (statement by TCSF Representative, Prof. Minoru Obayashi) The increase in the total amount of aid and the debt cancellation are important. However, the involvement of civil society is essential in order to make sure the effects of such policies reach to the grass-roots and the public, and to empower those people. The message we have received from the CSOs of Africa to the Africa Alert Group of TCSF this month vividly illustrates the concerns of African society. Unfortunately, such issue is not being discussed enough even between the donor governments. As an organization that acts to strengthen a development process led by African people, we the TCSF like to propose to pay more attention to enhance their voices and capacity building of the civil society. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ ◇ ◆Editorial◆◇ ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ We have received some comments about the February issue of ”Africa Alert Communications” being too big in its volume. Therefore, we have focused our attention on main points from this issue. However, reflecting the critical time of the year, the issue is about the same size as the last edition. With an establishment of a new network with African Civil Society, we have gathered many comments. We also have three researchers and two interns working on Alert WG from this issue. The website has been updated as well. Visit our website----＞　http://blog.livedoor.jp/ticad_csf/ If you have any feedback, please feel free to write to us.（Funada） ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 【For Inquiries】 ”Africa Alert Communications” is gathering “Alert information” from citizens and organizations of civil society. If you have any issues you have become aware of or topics you would like to share and discuss with Japanese people who have interests towards Africa, don't hesitate to let us know. If you have any questions or comments about “TCSF E-mail Magazine”, Contact us here info@ticad-csf.net ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ ◆Donations For Details---＞http://www.ticad-csf.net/ ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ ■Publication■ ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Name: TICAD Civil Society Forum (TCSF) Location: 〒 160-0023 408 Hainesu Rowaiyaru, 26-7-3 Nishi Shinjuku, Shinjuku-ku, Tokyo Tel: 03-3345-3234 E-mail：office@ticad-csf.net　　Homepage：http://www.ticad-csf.net/ Publisher：Masao Yoshida Edited by：TCSF　Alert Working Group TCSF E-mail magazine　<back issue> 　---＞http://www.ticad-csf.net/mailmagazine.htm ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ ▲Publish system：”Magu magu” http://www.mag2.com/ ▲subscribe or unsubscribe ：　http://www.ticad-csf.net/mailmagazine.htm This E-mail has been optimized for mono-spaced font. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Copyright(C)：TICAD Civil Society Forum Japan === Viva！ Africa -People's network across continents === TICAD Civil Society Forum Japan（TCSF） Noriko Watase E-mail：noriko-ww@mua.biglobe.ne.jp mobile:090-4004-4423(Japan) Applications ~ to know, to connect, and to expand - building Africa’s future together~ 【We invite people to work with and support us. 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