keralamonitor.com

At least 60 die of heat stroke in Nigeria

Religious leaders meet to discuss action against HIV-AIDS

NGOs alarmed by high rates of child sex abuse cases in Uganda

NAIROBI, 11 June (IRIN) - A Ugandan child advocacy group has expressed
alarm at the results of a recent survey indicating that over 50 percent of
children in Uganda below the age of 10 years have experienced various
forms of sexual abuse.

The New Vision government-owned newspaper reported on Monday that most
cases of child sexual abuse involved direct involvement in sexual acts,
exposure to pornographic material or witnessing adults having sex in slum
areas, where parents often sleep in the same room as their children.

"Cases of child abuse have become rampant. People like aunties, uncles,
brothers and sisters abuse the children," the paper quoted Basil
Kandyomunda, chairman of the Uganda Child Rights NGO Network (UCRNN), as
saying.

According to Rebecca Jiga, UCRNN's advocacy and information officer, a
recent survey by the Uganda Society for Disabled Children showed that
several interrelated factors are responsible for the sexual abuse of
children.

The major factors stemmed from poverty, which pushed children into
unsuitable work, into streets, to live away from their parents, or into
other vulnerable situations, Jiga told IRIN on Monday.

"The survey found out that 50 percent of children have been abused one way
or the other," she said. "Children are exposed to all kinds of situations,
and some of them to these abuses."

The UCRNN survey was prepared as part of preparations for the Day of the
African Child, an annual event marked on 16 June to draw attention to the
plight of children on the continent.

Activities for this year's Uganda celebration of the Day of the African
Child will centre on Gulu District, northern Uganda, one of the areas most
affected by the rebel Lord's Resistance Army's (LRA) continuing
insurgency. Children were experiencing more sexual abuse in Acholi areas
of northern Uganda comprising Gulu, Kitgum and Pader districts, where the
LRA has been most active, than in any other region of the country,
according to Jiga.

The LRA has fought the Uganda government since the late 1980s, from bases
in southern Sudan. The low-intensity war has resulted in severe
humanitarian consequences in northern Uganda, where the LRA has abducted
about 12,000 children and caused the displacement of hundreds of thousands
of people, according to humanitarian sources.

The Uganda People's Defence Forces (UPDF) spokesman, Shaban Bantariza,
told IRIN on Monday that child abductions and subsequent sexual abuse by
rebels in northern Uganda were part of LRA leader Joseph Kony's ideology
of "producing a new Acholi" generation that would obey him better than the
current generation.

"Kony said he had been betrayed by the old generation Acholi. He wants to
produce a new generation of Acholi who will not betray him," Bantariza
said. "He wants to produce as many children as he can. With this kind of
strategy, you can imagine the levels of sexual abuse."

A research study on adolescents in northern Uganda between May and July
2001 found that most young people in Gulu, Kitgum and Pader lived in
constant terror of sudden attacks and abduction or re-abduction by the
LRA, and the accompanying forced labour, killing and sexual slavery.

According to the study, Against All Odds: Surviving the War on Adolescents
(a publication of the Women's Commission for Refugee Women and Children),
most of the girls abducted were repeatedly raped and many bore children in
the harsh conditions of the bush, besides acting as domestic slaves of
commanders and other fighters.

Children and adolescents have also been prime targets of rape, sexual
assault and sexual exploitation in and around most of the "protected
camps" for displaced people, refugee settlements and other non-camp
settings, according to the report.

In nearly every interview, adolescent girls described personal knowledge
of rape and defilement, either against themselves or their peers, the
report added.

The Agency for Cooperation and Research in Development has also warned
against an excessive focus on abducted children, saying that children in
general in northern Uganda live in extreme fear and "experience a daily
catalogue of major forms of abuse", including violence, sexual abuse,
prostitution, abduction and under-age marriage to UPDF soldiers.

Street children and HIV/AIDS orphans are also at particular risk in
Uganda, with many forced into situations such as prostitution, according
to the Uganda Women's Effort to Save Orphans, a Kampala-based indigenous
NGO. [http://www.uweso.com/index.htm

"Children need guardians when they grow up," according to Geoffrey Kalebbo
of World Vision (Uganda). "Our challenge is to struggle and fill the gap,
and give them guidance, and help them grow with self-dignity. That is the
call."--keralamonitor.com.

At least 60 die of heat stroke in Nigeria

LAGOS, 11 June (IRIN) - At least 60 people have died of heat stroke in one
week in Nigeria’s northeastern city of Maiduguri, 875 km from the capital
Abuja, state-owned Radio Kaduna reported on Tuesday.

The radio quoted Ibrahim Kida, chief medical director of the University of
Maiduguri Teaching Hospital, as saying an intense heat wave, with
temperatures of between 55-60 degrees Celsius, had claimed lives in the
region of Nigeria nearest to the encroaching Sahara Desert.

“In the last one week at least 60 people died of heat stroke caused by
intense heat…between 55 degrees and 60 degrees centigrade,” Kida was
quoted by the radio as saying.

The situation has been linked to the late arrival of rainfall. The first
major rain in the area was reported on Monday, two months later than in
the preceding years.

Apart from the death toll from intense heat in Maiduguri, late rains in
much of northern Nigeria have raised fears of likely crop failure and food
shortages in the region. In recent weeks, religious leaders in the
predominantly Muslim region have led prayers for rains in order to avert
what they considered a looming disaster.

Much of the northern fringes of Nigeria, bordering Chad and Niger, have in
recent years been under the threat of an ever-encroaching Sahara Desert.
Border states in this region include Borno, Yobe, Jigawa, Katsina, Zamfara
and Sokoto.

Last month President Olusegun Obasanjo launched a tree planting campaign
in the northern town of Katsina, with the aim to re-green huge swathes of
the region made vulnerable to desertification by decades of indiscriminate
felling of trees.

AFRICA: Religious leaders meet to discuss action against HIV-AIDS

NAIROBI, 11 June (IRIN) - Religious organisations are "better placed" to
change the prevailing negative attitudes towards HIV/AIDS which have
undermined efforts to contain the pandemic in many African societies, and
served to accelerate its growth, Carol Bellamy, head of the United Nations
Children's Fund (UNICEF), has said.

Addressing 120 African religious leaders meeting in Nairobi, the Kenyan
capital, on Monday, to discuss the plight of African children affected by
HIV/AIDS, Bellamy said that although campaigns had made hard-won gains in
bringing the pandemic to the attention of decision-makers across the
continent, there was a "wall of silence" at the family and community
levels, which was undermining education efforts being made to combat AIDS,
and promoting the stigmatisation of people affected.

"We may have broken a wall of silence among policy makers and
decision-makers. But there is a second wall of silence out there - a wall
that is keeping young people from learning about HIV, and stigmatising
those who have it. And unless that second wall of silence is brought down,
all the hard-won gains of recent years will have been for nothing,"
Bellamy said.

Nearly 14 million children under age 15, almost all in Africa, have lost
their mothers or both parents to AIDS, according to UNICEF.

"You have trusted personal relationships and the confidence of the people
you serve. You have moral authority. And you are on the front lines of
this pandemic," Bellamy told the religious leaders.

"You can spread the word about what it takes to confront and beat this
terrible disease through your mosques, temples and churches, through your
lay people and your women's groups and youth organisations. When it comes
to caring for the children and families affected by HIV/AIDS, religious
communities are major leaders at the local and national levels... The
bottom line is that you have a unique power within your organisations,
which, if mobilised, could change the face of this epidemic," she
stressed.

Jointly organised by the Hope for African Children Initiative (HACI), a
community-based pan-African organisation seeking to address challenges
faced by children orphaned by AIDS, and the World Conference on Religion
and Peace, the interdenominational meeting in Nairobi is the first of its
kind to focus on the role of religious communities in responding to the
impact of HIV-AIDS on children in Africa.

The conference hopes to "formulate a strong message" on children and AIDS
and also to gain support from the G8 leaders meeting in Canada at the end
of June, according to the organisers.

About 95 percent of the more than 13 million AIDS orphans live in
sub-Saharan Africa, according to a statement issued by the organisers on
Monday. It said studies showed that children who lose their parents to
AIDS were more likely to suffer from abuse than children orphaned by other
causes, largely as a result of the stigma and discrimination often
associated with AIDS.

The religious leaders attending the conference, a quarter of them women,
include Winston Njongonkulu Ndungane, the archbishop of Cape Town; Abune
Paulos, the head of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church; and Sheikh Shaban
Mubajji, mufti of Ugandan Muslim Supreme Council.

Tanzanian former President Ali Hassan Mwinyi, and Stephen Lewis, the UN
secretary-general's special adviser on AIDS, were among other notable
individuals who joined the religious leaders.

Addressing the gathering, William Vendley, the secretary-general of the
World Conference on Religion and Peace, which is one of the five core
partners of the HACI, said the assembly was "a rare opportunity for
African religious leaders to make their collective voices heard on a
matter as devastating as HIV/AIDS", the joint statement quoted him as
saying.

Ndungane, who is also an outspoken anti-HIV/AIDS action advocate, said:
"When religious leaders work together on a major issue such as AIDS, they
not only improve their own capacity to respond but are in a better
position to leverage increased commitment from other leaders."

Pat Youri, the head of HACI, noted that religious leaders had "a
tremendous influence" throughout Africa, and particularly at the community
level, where they had "moral authority" to advocate for compassionate care
and support for those who were HIV-positive.

The religious leaders are expected to adopt a declaration and plan of
action outlining the commitment of religious communities to address the
rights and needs of children affected by HIV/AIDS.