Why Is Child Marriage So Prevalent In West Africa?

One in five girls globally is married before she reaches 18, and COVID-19 has made things worse.

BY GIDEON FAKOMOGBON

School girls walk on the streets in Yola, Nigeria, Feb. 25, 2019. | School girls walk on the streets in Yola, Nigeria, Feb. 25, 2019. | Sunday Alamba/AP

Even though child marriage is a violation of human rights, it remains incredibly common worldwide, with 1 in 5 girls globally being married before they reach 18. Child marriage refers to the marital union of a child, either to an adult or to another child, and according to UNICEF, it "threatens the lives, well-being, and futures of girls around the world."

Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, it was projected that more than 100 million girls would be married before their 18th birthday in the next decade. Now, due to the pandemic, it's believed that up to 10 million more girls are at risk of becoming child brides.

Sub-Saharan Africa has one of the highest rates of child marriage in the world, with six of the world’s 10 countries where the practice is most common situated in West and Central Africa, including Niger, the Central African Republic, Chad, Burkina Faso, Mali, and Guinea. In all six of these countries, more than half of girls are married before 18.

 
Why Is Child Marriage So Prevalent in West Africa?

A 2018 UNICEF survey showed that rural areas and poor communities have higher rates of child marriages than rich or urban communities. This remains true across Central and West Africa, where child marriage is more than twice as common in rural areas compared to urban areas. Meanwhile, it's over three times more common among the poorest wealth quintile compared to the richest.

According to a 2015 survey by Plan International on child marriage in Asia, severe poverty, extreme gender inequality, inadequate access of girls to quality education, a lack of economic empowerment, and poor health and legal services were the “primary reasons for the high rates of child marriage.”

Similarly in West Africa, reasons for child marriages range from building family and communal ties, to helping relieve household poverty through dowry payments, to, with one member of the household joining another family, having "one less mouth to feed."

Alongside the above reasons, according to research by Plan International, another significant driving factor behind child marriage is a "fear of shame and stigma" connected to pregnancy outside of marriage.

International nonprofit Girls Not Brides also found that in the region, “child marriage laws are not always widely known, understood, or upheld” by members of the community. Even when girls impacted by child marriage are aware of legislation, Girls Not Brides reported that a lack of trust in police and justice systems can limit accountability and put girls off reporting their case due to worry about backlash from their family or community, and the stigma of escaping a marriage.

4 Key Facts About Child Marriage in West and Central Africa

Across West and Central Africa, 4 in 10 (41%) of girls are married before they reach 18 years old.
The West African country Niger has the highest rate of child marriage in the world, with about 76% of girls married before 18 — and 28% married before 15.

 
Nigeria, as the region's most populous country, is home to the highest number of child brides — 22 million, or 40% of all child brides in the region.

As a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, up to 10 million more girls are at risk of child marriage.

How Does Child Marriage Impact Women & Girls Globally?

Child marriage is deeply entrenched in gender inequality and disproportionately affects girls, with UNICEF highlighting that six times more girls are impacted than boys.

Child marriage threatens the well-being and health of affected girls, depriving them of a regular childhood. According to UNICEF, child brides are more likely to experience domestic violence — particularly those with adult spouses —and can also force girls to drop out of school. These children are robbed of their right to an education and the opportunity to decide what they want for themselves in the future. Their economic and health status is adversely affected, often further leading to a similar generational ripple effect on their own children.

Child brides often face childbirth and pregnancy complications because their bodies are not yet fully developed and ready for them to give birth, resulting in both their and their infant's lives being put at risk.

 
How Does Eradicating Child Marriage Relate to Ending Global Poverty?

Undoubtedly, child marriage does a lot of harm to the health, well-being, and future of girls and young women across the globe. It also poses a big threat to the development and prosperity of countries most affected by the harmful tradition.

Child marriage significantly hampers several of the United Nations’ Global Goals, which work together in the mission to end extreme poverty globally. These include Goal 2 for zero hunger, with girls subjected to poverty, increased food insecurity, and malnutrition; as well as Goal 3 for health and well-being, Goal 4 for education, and Goal 5 for gender equality.

How Can We All Take Action Against Child Marriage?

In West Africa, child marriages take different forms across different countries and communities. In Niger, for instance, according to Girls Not Brides, “many girls have a say in who they marry and are generally not coerced — although their opportunities are limited. Their families do not necessarily benefit financially from the marriage.”

Whereas in Mali, a girl to be married is only informed after negotiations have taken place; while in Senegal, some girls self-arrange their marriage to gain independence.

So to fully address the issue, it is crucial for all initiatives locally or nationally to be tailored to the prevailing needs of the targeted regions. Governments should develop comprehensive national action plans to end child marriage, but communities too also have a vital role to play in combating the issue.

According to a recent "Ending Child Marriage in Africa" brief by Girls Not Brides, to combat child marriage, governments and communities need to:

 
Empower girls to develop skills, and know their values and rights.

 
Mobilise families and communities as agents of change, by raising awareness of the challenges of child marriage and the important roles girls and women play in society.

 
Provide adequate health, education, justice, and other services, to remove the structural barriers that push girls into child marriage and prevent them from accessing support within marriage.

 
Provide an enabling legal and policy framework, including legislation that sets 18 as the minimum age for marriage and removes legal loopholes related to parental consent or customary laws.

Former UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, while launching the global 16 Days of Activism campaign to end gender-based violence in 2008, said: "There is one universal truth, applicable to all countries, cultures, and communities: violence against women is never acceptable, never excusable, never tolerable."

All Global Citizens, especially men and boys, governments, and organizations around the world can take much-needed action to protect and promote the rights of girls and young women globally. Join us and start taking action to demand equity and uplift women and girls around the world, here.

Celebration And Protests Mark Tunisia’s New Revolution Day

BYFRANCESCA EBEL 

An image of Mohammed Bouazizi is depicted on the facade of the post office building, in Sidi Bouzid, Tunisia, Friday, Dec. 17, 2021. President Kais Saied changed the anniversary date of Tunisia's 2011 revolution – when former autocratic ruler Zine el Abidine Ben Ali fled the country – to Dec. 17 to mark the day in 2010 when fruit seller Mohammed Bouazzi set himself alight, setting off the series of uprisings in Tunisia that led to what is now known as the Arab Spring.in Sidi Bouzid, Tunisia, Friday, Dec. 17, 2021. (AP Photo/Riadh Dridi)

TUNIS, TUNISIA (AP) — Official observances took place at the birthplace of Tunisia’s 2011 revolution, while opponents and supporters of the country’s president held rival demonstrations in the capital Friday, the new date the leader chose to mark Revolution Day.

A few hundred demonstrators gathered in Tunis on Friday morning to protest Tunisian President Kais Saied’s consolidation of power over the summer and his subsequent actions that have raised fears of democratic backsliding.

A smaller counter-protest in support of the president was held nearby.

Saied announced Monday, almost five months after his power grab, that he would prolong the suspension of parliament until an election in December next year. He also set a date for a national referendum on political reform for July 25, exactly a year since Saied took on sweeping powers.

The president’s opponents slammed his announcement.

Former parliament speaker Rached Ghannouchi, the leader of Tunisia’s largest Islamist party, Ennahdha, called Saied’s moves “unconstitutional and illegal” and said the president had “deepened the political crisis in the country…and exacerbated Tunisia’s international isolation.”

The secretary-general of the country’s main trade union, the UGTT, said Saied’s announcement did not address the country’s economic and social problems. The coronavirus pandemic exacerbated Tunisia’s deteriorating economy, and the country has an 18% unemployment rate.

Following nationwide antigovernment protests in July, Saied abruptly froze parliament, dismissed his government and assumed greater executive powers. In September, he partially suspended the country’s post-revolutionary Constitution and gave himself the power to rule by decree.

Though Saied’s measures have proven popular, welcomed by a public weary of political elites and economic turmoil, critics say Saied’s actions amount to a coup.

Among Saied’s recent announcements was his decision to move the country’s official Revolution Day from Jan. 14 – commemorating the date when former autocrat Zine el Abidine Ben Ali fled the country amid unprecedented mass protests – to Dec. 17.

The new date marks the day in 2010 when fruit seller Mohammed Bouazizi set himself on fire in frustration over corruption, joblessness and repression. His desperate act set off an uprising across Tunisia that spread to other countries in what became known as the Arab Spring.

In the decade since, an annual celebration has always been held on Dec. 17 in Sidi Bouzid, Bouazizi’s hometown and the site of the revolution’s first protests.

Over Ethiopia’s Objections, UN Rights Body Backs War Monitor

BY JAMEY KEATEN

Nada Al-Nashif, center, UN Deputy High Commissioner for Human Rights, reads documents prior to the Human Rights Council special session on "the grave human rights situation in Ethiopia", at the European headquarters of the United Nations in Geneva, Switzerland, Friday, Dec. 17, 2021. The U.N.'s main human rights body is opening a special session Friday to discuss rights violations in conflict-torn Ethiopia, with many Western countries trying to set up an international team of experts to boost scrutiny of the situation despite a lack of support from African nations and amid accusations from Ethiopia’s government that it's politically motivated. (Salvatore Di Nolfi/Keystone via AP)

GENEVA (AP) — Over Ethiopia’s objections, the U.N.’s main human rights body voted Friday to create an international team of experts to boost scrutiny of rights abuses in the devastating yearlong war between Ethiopian government forces and fighters from the country’s Tigray region.

Ethiopia’s government decried a “neocolonialist mentality” after the European Union and other Western countries sought a special session of the Human Rights Council to ratchet up attention on the conflict that has left tens of thousands dead.

A resolution that won the council’s approval on a 21-15 vote with 11 countries abstaining creates a three-person team with a one-year mandate to monitor and report on rights abuses in Ethiopia.

The push from EU and other Western countries demonstrates their frustration that a joint investigation between Ethiopia’s human rights commission and the U.N. human rights office, which culminated with a report last month, didn’t go far enough.

“The conflict has continued with ongoing fighting beyond the borders of Tigray. Our office continues to receive credible reports of severe human rights violations and abuses by all parties,” the U.N. deputy high commissioner for human rights, Nada al-Nashif, told representatives at Friday’s session. “The humanitarian impact of the conflict is increasingly dramatic.”

Nearly 10 million people in northern Ethiopia face acute food insecurity, and at least 2 million have been forced to flee their homes. Humanitarian workers have little access and face hostility. Ethiopia’s government has sought to restrict reporting on the war and detained some journalists, including a video freelancer accredited to The Associated Press, Amir Aman Kiyaro.

Between 5,000 and 7,000 people swept up under Ethiopia’s new state of emergency remain detained, most of them Tigrayans, al-Nashif said: “Many are detained incommunicado or in unknown locations. This is tantamount to enforced disappearance, and a matter of very grave alarm.”

The government-created Ethiopian Human Rights Commission acknowledged in a statement this week that there was “value-added” in encouraging the joint investigation to continue, but said creation of a new body “is repetitive, counterproductive to ongoing implementation processes, and further delays redress for victims and survivors.”

Ethiopia’s ambassador in Geneva, Zenebe Kebede Korcho, said his government rejects the draft resolution the Human Rights Council is considering. At Friday’s session, he called the resolution a “deliberate destabilization effort” and said the government “will not cooperate with any mechanism imposed on it.” The Africa group of nations at the council backed his position in a separate statement.

“Multilateralism, after all these years, is once again being hijacked by a neocolonialist mentality. Ethiopia is being targeted and singled out at the Human Rights Council for defending a democratically elected elected government,” the ambassador said. “The council is being used as an instrument of political pressure.”

The Ethiopian ambassador said Ethiopia’s government had set up an “inter-ministerial task force” in response to the human rights report issued last month, and it has begun work.

The joint report decried the “terrible toll on civilians” in the conflict in the Tigray region, and human rights violations and abuses committed by all sides. The rare collaboration by the U.N. human rights office with the Ethiopian Human Rights Commission was hampered by authorities’ intimidation and restrictions, and didn’t visit some of the war’s worst-affected locations.

The U.N. human rights chief, Michelle Bachelet, has said all sides in the war in the Tigray region have committed brutal abuses that could amount to war crimes and crimes against humanity.

The investigation broke little new ground and confirmed in general the abuses described by witnesses throughout the war. But it gave little sense of scale, saying for example that the more than 1,300 rapes reported to authorities were likely far fewer than the real number.

The government has insisted the report cleared it of allegations that genocide was happening in Tigray.

The conflict erupted in November 2020 after a political falling-out between the Tigray forces that long dominated the national government and Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed’s current government. Ethnic Tigrayans across the country have reported being targeted with arbitrary detentions, while civilians in Tigray have described gang rapes, human-caused famine and mass expulsions.

The Tigray forces now face a growing number of allegations of abuses after taking the fighting into Ethiopia’s neighboring Amhara and Afar regions in recent months. The joint investigation didn’t examine that period.

For a special council session to take place, the support of one-third of its 47 member states is required.

Cara Anna in Nairobi, Kenya, contributed to this report.

CULINARY CORRECTNESS: Nigeria Breeze Carrying West African Cuisine To National City

BY CANDICE WOO

NATIONAL CITY, CA (SAN DIEGO EATER) Nigeria Breeze is aiming to open by the end of the month in National City and hoping to widen the spotlight on West African cuisine. This will be owner Maria Onisemo’s first establishment in the United States although her family has operated restaurants in their native Nigeria.

After having run a private catering business together for several years, Onisemo and her mother, who is the restaurant’s head chef, are looking forward to sharing their regional family recipes for traditional West African food. Their menu will include jollof rice, a tomato-based rice dish paired with chicken and plantains, a spinach and pepper stew called efo riro, egusi soup, thickened with ground melon seeds and served with starchy pounded yam, or fufu, and asara, a savory yam porridge.

Though she’s starting with this 1,788-square-foot space in the South Bay, Onisemo says she would eventually like to franchise the business and see it open in malls and hotels to help bring Nigerian food more into the mainstream.

Nigeria Breeze will be open from 10 a.m. to 9 p.m. and plans to offer beer and wine in the future.

The South Bay restaurant should open by the end of December

The Black Vanguards Who Inspired Us In 2021

BY STEPHANIE LONG 

Image combo courtesy of Refinery 29

Black Is The New Black is R29Unbothered’s celebration of Black trailblazers who are changing the game. Black trailblazers who are reminding the world that we are not a trend or 'a moment.' We’re here — and we’ve been here.

“I know the world is bruised and bleeding,” Toni Morrison once said. “And though it is important not to ignore its pain, it is also critical to refuse to succumb to its malevolence.” Because it’s from that very chaos, she noted, that wisdom is born. And it’s this sort of poetic alchemy that art comes from.

For decades, Black people have transformed fear into fortitude, pain into perseverance, despair into decadence, and oppression into opulence. We have healed civilizations through paint strokes and poems and photo-chemical manipulations of light. We’ve danced across stages not built for us and made them ours. And through such radical creative expression, we’ve addressed the inequities that have plagued us while simultaneously lifting ourselves from under them.
For Black folks, art is a means of deliverance. Authors like Akwaeke Emezi have used words to birth worlds in which Black identities exist from behind masks and beyond binary. Rappers like Noname have sparked movements in the fight for literary liberation. And artists like Gio Swaby have used canvases to write love letters of Blackness and womanhood when we needed them most. For this year’s Black Is The New Black, R29Unbothered is honoring these three vanguards not only for their work, but for the life it so crucially breathes into us.

Akwaeke Emezi

Featured on the cover of TIME Magazine as a 2021 Next Generation Leader, Akwaeke Emezi is best known for their stirring debut novel, Freshwater, which is in early development as a TV series at FX. Inspired by Emezi’s own life, the autobiographical memoir details Emezi’s experience as an ogbanje, a “trickster” Igbo spirit born into a human body. Freshwater was a resounding success, garnering accolades like being named a New York Times Notable Book in 2018 and becoming a finalist for multiple other prestigious honors.

That success would lead to Emezi publishing not one, but another three books in the following years: PET (2019), a young-adult novel about a Black trans girl (the book would later become a National Book Award finalist); The Death of Vivek Oji (2020), a New York Times bestseller about a family who loses a child they never really knew; and Dear Senthuran (2021), a powerful Black spirit memoir exploring gender, body, survival, and stepping into one’s power.
A National Book Foundation 5 Under 35 honoree and recipient of many other acknowledgments, Emezi has three additional works being published in 2022: Bitter, Content Warning: Everything (their debut poetry collection), and You Made a Fool of Death with Your Beauty (their debut romance novel). Publishing seven impactful bodies of work in a four-year span is an impressive feat for anyone. But for Emezi, it's simply their calling. “My work is just channelling something that other people gifted me,” Emezi told TIME this year. “My job in the revolution is as a storyteller, to take those possibilities and shape them into stories [that] disseminate.”

Gio Swaby

“We don’t have enough images of Black bodies experiencing joy. The media feeds us so many images of Black people in moments of suffering, and it affects you because you see yourself reflected in that,” 29-year-old Gio Swaby told Artnet in June. “I wanted to create a space where we could see ourselves reflected in a moment of joy, celebrated without expectations, without connected stereotypes.”

In a time when systems of oppression continue to threaten our existence, Swaby’s work arrives as a timely reprieve. The Toronto-based Bahamian artist has built a shining reputation off her compelling, life-sized representations of Blackness and women. Created through the masterful manipulation of thread and textiles, Swaby’s art is in high demand by some of the most prestigious museums in the U.S. after the success of her first solo show, “Gio Swaby: Both Sides of the Sun,” at Harlem’s Claire Oliver Gallery this year. Swaby may have only been in her first year of grad school at the time of the show, but the work speaks for itself; some of her pieces are selling to galleries for as much as $25,000.
“There’s over 100 people on the waiting list,” Claire Oliver told Artnet. “It’s in the gallery’s mission statement to find the correct custodians of the work, who will care for it. That includes a lot of museums that will put this work on view for the greater public.”

Other fans and collectors include author Roxane Gay and actor Hill Harper. ​​“I didn’t have these kinds of expectations,” Swaby shared. “It’s a lot to take in, but I’m feeling more excited than anything else.” We’re just as excited for her.

Noname

Noname is perhaps one of the most prolific emcees of our time. And like many of the influential wordsmiths before her, she is also a steadfast advocate for the advancement of Black people, especially within the literary space. This year, she opened The Radical Hood Library, the headquarters of Noname Book Club, an online group she’s organized since 2019 to create space to discuss Black radical texts. The club was launched after Noname organized a mass library card registration movement to counteract corporate efforts to privatize access to books.

"We're trying to incentivize people to shop locally,” she shared with Trevor Noah in 2019. “Yes, you can participate in the book club online, but we really encourage our readers to shop at these POC-owned bookstores that we have in our directory. It's a little bit of a f**k you to Amazon and kind of a f**k you to the FBI ... COINTELPRO and what they did to destroy Black bookstores."

In 2020, Noname also launched the Prison Program, an effort to have books by Black, Indigenous and POC writers sent to incarcerated people nationwide. Through this program, people behind bars are offered the opportunity to educate themselves on social issues. “The cost of calls, letters, commissary, and packages add up really fast,” Noname Book Club writes on their site. “Which is one of the reasons we are working with community members like you to connect folks inside with radical books.”

Access to Black books means Black liberation, and many important Black texts are hard to find in state libraries. “Their books are curated to service the largest demographic in the US... whites,” Noname noted on Twitter. The next revolution starts here.

Stories That Changed Us In 2021: The COVID-19 Pandemic And The Vaccine Rollout

ASSOCIATED PRESS 

FILE - In this March 26, 2021, file photo a member of the Philadelphia Fire Department prepares a dose of the Johnson & Johnson COVID-19 vaccine at a vaccination site setup in Philadelphia. Image: Matt Rourke/AP

THE BACKGROUND: The year started with a lot of promise. The world had vaccines.

And even as the planet reached 2 million dead by the middle of the month of January, people in many of the hard-hit countries, including the United States and Britain, began rolling up their sleeves and receiving the life-saving shots.

The rollouts were rocky at times — production problems delayed deliveries and rich countries received the lion's share of the vaccines. But cases began to fall sharply in February, raising hope that a return to normal was near.

Then came delta. A highly transmissible variant of the virus swept across the globe as too many people remained unprotected. Some never had access, others, beset by rampant misinformation about the vaccines, refused to get the shots. Cases and deaths skyrocketed. Despite having vaccines, more people died in 2021 from COVID-19 than in 2020, the first full year of the pandemic. Many thousands of those deaths could have been prevented.

And even as the delta surge slows, we have a new variant: omicron, perhaps even more transmissible.

Here, some Associated Press journalists involved in the coverage reflect on the story and their own experiences.

LAURAN NEERGAARD, medical writer, Washington, D.C.:

The year started with an immense sense of hope because the vaccines were just beginning to roll out. Not only did one vaccine work, several different kinds worked and they worked incredibly well. It was a huge scientific achievement. And at first the story was about demand, how many people desperately wanted to get their shots while multiple companies were struggling to increase supplies of different vaccines made in different ways in different countries.

The surprise amid all of this hope was how quickly misinformation turned into its own epidemic. We expected some of that, of course. It is natural for people to ask questions, especially when they've been busy living their lives and not hanging onto every scientific development. But there was a firehose of information that required sorting the real, quality science from the baseless claims. And the amount of active disinformation was stunning. I hadn't ever imagined having to write, "No, there are no chips inside the needles to track you." And over time the false claims grew more sophisticated than that. So with the complexity of reporting the international rollout, at the same time, you had to address outright lies that were turning people away with potentially deadly results.

We had to find new ways to do the job. ... Paralleling the pandemic was an epidemic of not just misinformation but disinformation. You couldn't just say, "Well, I fact-checked that," and move on. There's a public responsibility to make sure that we give every opportunity for our readers and our viewers to get the right information, to get the facts. Because the facts are critical not just to making choices about vaccines and other safety measures for yourself or your family, but to ending the pandemic.

So the challenge was figuring out how to tell the story again, and again and again and be fresh and you know, maybe try different ways that might get people's attention.

HEATHER HOLLINGSWORTH, reporter, Kansas and Missouri:

I live just 3 miles into Kansas, and Kansas and Missouri have both had their issues. They've got a lot of rural sections of the state, a lot of Evangelicals who've been sort of reluctant to get vaccinated and also to mask because the issue is of course, very political.

I first got involved in the national virus coverage in the fall. I have three children, but I felt like that sort of personal experience of struggling through this hot mess, honestly, kind of helped me. At first, I thought, "I don't know how to do this." What are we going do with these kids? This is awful. But in some ways, I think it was an asset to live the same mess that everyone you're interviewing was living through.

What I noticed when I started was, you can tell in the voices of the people and the doctors. The worst of it, I think, was December, January, there were weeks where I felt like every third person I talked to started crying. I talked to a mother who lost her 20-something-year-old daughter, a man who had recently adopted three kids and then his wife died. I talked to a hospital CEO who teared up on the phone, doctors who teared up on the phone.

I would talk to these people and would say "you know you're the third person who's cried today on the phone, it's okay." Then it kind of got better and we were all so excited, you know. In May and June people took their masks off. But then the vaccination numbers in Missouri had really stalled at a remarkably low level, some of the lowest in the country. In the Southwest section of the state vaccination rates were in the teens and 20s and 30s. Like really, really low levels. And there's always that nagging feeling that this is not great.

Then the Delta surge started, and it ... spread through the South and I helped find doctors and nurses who were dealing with it and those stories were awful. There was one nurse in Georgia who talked about — they call it extubating when they're taking them off life support — and she talked about people collapsing. This one mom, her son was in his 40s and was taken off life support and she talked about her just yelling at him., "I told you to get vaccinated!" So it was just really wrenching to have these interviews with these people. But I felt really honored that they were willing to open up to me. It's been one of the most interesting years of my life, or I guess two years of my life.

SEBABATSO MOSAMO, video journalist, Johannesburg:

I was in Port Elizabeth (South Africa), and we were covering the vaccine train that was going all over the country trying to get people vaccinated. And it was in Port Elizabeth at this point. From a visual perspective, I needed somebody who was coming to get vaccinated instead of getting people who were already there.

So we met a lady who had come to ask about what this train was all about. She had seen it on her way to work and stopped and asked what was going on. And they told her, "We're here to vaccinate people, we'll be here for the next x number of days." And she was very keen to get vaccinated and she said, "Can I come?" and they said, "Okay."

So I spoke to her and we arranged that she would come the following day on her way to work, and she would get vaccinated. We arranged that we would follow her from her home. Because from a visual perspective, following her and telling the story through one person instead of just showing lots of people getting jabbed, I thought that would be a good way to tell the story, and we agreed.

We woke up very early the following day, met up with her at her home and suddenly her entire demeanor and attitude had changed. ... She started getting very short with us and very irritated. Eventually we made the whole trip and when she got there she told the staff that she was really sick and tired of me. And it really was a bit of a shock for me. ... I was told to stay back, which I did, and she decided not to get vaccinated after all.

I think that was the hardest thing for me, because there's still a part of me that feels like maybe I may have influenced her, that my presence somehow affected her decision. And that broke my heart because I had no way of knowing and she never did tell me. She kind of just sort of slipped out of the line and disappeared. And when I asked the nursing staff, they said she decided not to get vaccinated after all, and there's still a little part of me that kind of feels like somehow my presence may have had an impact.

It's not a nice feeling. So, if it comes to a story that touched me personally, that would be it.

Amazon Signs First Content Deal With African Studio, Teaming With Nigeria’s Inkblot

BY ALEX RITMAN

 

Inkblot founders Zulumoke Oyibo, Damola Ademola and Chinaza-Onuzo (L-R) COURTESY OF INKBLOT

The exclusive licensing agreement will see several films land on Amazon Prime Video after their theatrical run and further underlines Africa as one of the emerging battlegrounds for streaming subscriber growth.

(HOLLYWOOD REORTER): AMAZON PRIME VIDEO has made its first foray into African content, signing a multiyear licensing agreement with Nigerian production house Inkblot Studios.

The pact — Amazon’s first on the continent — follows a rush of similar deals as Africa becomes ones of the major new battlegrounds for subscriber growth. Last year, Netflix signed its first multi-title arrangement with Nigerian producer Mo Abudu’s fast-rising banner EbonyLife, which has also extended a TV deal with Sony.

Under the new agreement, Prime Video will launch upcoming Inkblot films to its global streaming audience following their theatrical release. Features include The Set Up 2, Moms at War 2 and New Money 3, as well as new titles such as Charge and Bail, Superstar and The Blood Covenant.

“We know Prime Video customers around the world love movies and this new deal with Inkblot Studios will deliver some of the best Nigerian and African films available for our customers,” said Ayanna Lonian, Prime Video’s director of content acquisition and head of worldwide major studio licensing strategy.

“Nigerian stories are truly some of the most exciting and thrilling in the world. The Inkblot deal will allow us to deliver great Nigerian movies, post their theatrical release in Nigeria, to our global audience, and will continue to build upon Prime Video’s catalog and goal to delight Prime members.”

The deal comes just a month after a Prime Video delegation attended the Africa International Film Festival in Lagos in November, where international head of local originals James Farrell and chief marketing officer Ukonwa Ojo gave a keynote at the opening session, outlining the company’s intention to start developing, producing and licensing content with African content makers.

“At Inkblot Studios, we produce some of the biggest and most creative, original films in the Nigerian film industry,” said Chinaza Onuzo, co-founder of Inkblot Studios. We are very excited about the opportunity to showcase our films to Amazon Prime Video’s over 200 million members. We believe that Nigerian films have a truly global appeal and are thrilled to be working with Amazon Prime Video to deliver the very best in entertainment worldwide.”

Nigeria To Reject Vaccine Donations With Short Shelf Lives

BY CHINEDU ASADU

 

Yunusa Bawa, a community health worker, rides on a motorbike with a box of AstraZeneca coronavirus vaccines, in Sabon Kuje on the outskirts of Abuja, Nigeria, Monday, Dec 6, 2021. As Nigeria tries to meet an ambitious goal of fully vaccinating 55 million of its 206 million people in the next two months, health care workers in some parts of the country risk their lives to reach the rural population. (AP Photo/Gbemiga Olamikan)

LAGOS, NIGERIA (AP) — Nigeria will no longer accept COVID-19 vaccines with short shelf lives after 1 million doses have expired in Africa’s most population nation before the shots could be used, a government official said.

While some of the doses given to Nigeria were within a few months of expiring, authorities have said that other donated vaccines had just weeks left to be given to people before becoming unusable.

Faisal Shuaib, head of Nigeria’s National Primary Health Care Development Agency, told reporters that expired vaccines not used in time now will be destroyed. He did not specify what Nigerian officials would consider to be too short of a shelf life.

Nigeria has only been able to fully vaccinate 1.9% of its 206 million people. While at least 30 million doses are currently available, authorities say the rush to distribute almost-expired ones has created an additional burden.

Other African countries also have struggled to use donated doses in time. Malawi burned nearly 20,000 expired vaccines earlier year and South Sudan also said it had to destroy tens of thousands of doses.

Matshidiso Moeti, the World Health Organization’s regional director for Africa, said Tuesday that the problem of expiring vaccines is a global one. The number of doses that have gone unused in Africa has represented less than a quarter of 1%.

“It is necessary to dispel the impression that even as we are expressing concern about access to vaccine supplies, there are millions of doses being wasted, expiring in Africa,” she said. “That is not the case.”

Two weeks after Nigeria recorded its first omicron variant case, the country is starting to see an increase in the number of new infections, Shuaib said. However, there has been no evidence so far of increased hospitalizations, he added.

Follow all AP stories on the pandemic at https://apnews.com/hub/coronavirus-pandemic.

Libya’s Election Faces Uncertainty Amid Towering Challenges

BY SAM MAGDY

Demonstrators protest in Tripoli, Libya, on Sept. 24, 2021, in opposition to parliament passing a vote of no-confidence in the transitional government. The motion represented a challenge to planned December elections and impedes efforts to unite the oil-rich North African nation after a decade of turmoil. The country's presidential election, meant to help unify it after a decade of civil war, is supposed to take place in just over a week, but calls are mounting for a delay. Either scenario — holding the vote on time or postponing it — could turn into a destabilizing setback. The vote, scheduled for Dec. 24, is to choose Libya’s first president since the ouster and killing of Moammar Gadhafi more than a decade ago. (AP Photo/Yousef Murad, file)

CAIRO (AP) — Libya’s presidential election, meant to help unify the nation after a decade of civil war, is supposed to take place in just over a week, but calls are mounting for a delay.

Either scenario — holding the vote on time or postponing it — could turn into a destabilizing setback.

The vote, scheduled for Dec. 24, is to choose Libya’s first president since the ouster and killing of longtime dictator Moammar Gadhafi more than a decade ago.

For nearly a year, the election has been the lynchpin of international efforts to bring peace to the oil-rich North African nation, and supporters fear a dangerous void if it is not held on schedule.

But critics warn that going ahead with the vote now could throw the country into new violence. They say Libya remains too bitterly divided among armed factions that are likely to reject any victory by rivals in the election. The presence of some of Libya’s most polarizing figures in the race — including one of Gadhafi’s sons — only makes it more explosive.

Nearly 100 people have announced their candidacies, but the election commission has still not announced a final list of candidates because of legal disputes. It should have announced the list earlier this month. The rules governing the election are also in dispute, with western Libya politicians accusing the east-based parliament of adopting them without consultations.

Libya plunged into chaos after Gadhafi’s death during a 2011 uprising backed by a U.S.-led NATO military campaign. Control splintered among a myriad of armed militias. For years, the country was split between rival administrations in the east and the west, each backed by militias and foreign governments.

The current political process emerged last year after the latest round of brutal fighting.

In April 2019, the eastern-based military commander Khalifa Hifter launched an offensive aimed at capturing the capital, Tripoli, and bringing down the U.N.-recognized government based there. Hifter was backed by Russia, Egypt and the United Arab Emirates. Turkey and Qatar responded by stepping up support for pro-Tripoli militias, supplying them with advanced weapons and providing troops and Syrian mercenaries.

After 14 months of fighting, Hifter’s offensive collapsed. After a U.N.-brokered cease-fire in October 2020, a grouping of Libyan factions called the Political Forum drew up a road map that led to the creation of an interim government to run the country until the Dec. 24 election.

Those calling for a delay in the election say the mistrust between east and west remains too deep and volatile. The interim government has not been able to unify Libya’s institutions, particularly the military, dismantle militias or ensure the exit of foreign mercenaries and fighters, said one U.N. official.

“These issues should have been settled before going to elections. They need more time and effort to be resolved,” he said, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk to the press.

Tarek Mitri, a former U.N. envoy for Libya, warned that “without unified military forces, the election poses a threat to peace.”

“How can you win the argument in a democratic election when guns are loaded to the hilt on both sides?” he said.

In a last-minute effort to save the elections, U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres named American diplomat Stephanie Williams, who led the talks resulting in the October 2020 cease-fire deal, as his special adviser on Libya.

Williams met with Libyan officials in Tripoli on Sunday. She called for all sides to respect the “overwhelming demand of the Libyan people to elect their representatives through a free, fair and credible election.” She did not mention the Dec. 24 dateline in her public comments.

The United States and some others in the international community want the vote to go ahead. As he stepped down on Dec. 8, outgoing U.N. envoy Jan Kubis said the election must take place on schedule, calling it “a critically important step that opens doors to future solutions.”

The polarization around the election only grew hotter after both Hifter and Seif al-Islam Gadhafi, the son and one-time heir apparent of the longtime dictator, announced their candidacies.

Hifter, touted in the east as a hero, is hated by many in the west of the country.

“The entire western region will fight Hifter ... he will never rule Libya,” Islamist Khalid al-Mishri, head of the Tripoli-based Supreme Council of State, said in televised comments last month.

Seif al-Islam’s bid raised cries of an attempted return to the days of his father.

“Those who believe in the possibility of Libya’s returning to the era of dictatorship after all these sacrifices are delusional,” Abdel-Rahman el-Swahili, a lawmaker from Misrata, the western city that was one of the leading forces in the rebellion against the elder Gadhafi.

The prime minister of the interim government, Abdul Hamid Dbeibah, also caused an uproar when he announced his bid to enter the race. When he took his post, he had vowed not to run in the election.

Many Libyans are skeptical.

“All (the factions) say publicly they want elections, but in in fact, all worked against it,” said Ramadan al-Zawi, a 29-year-old teacher. “We are deceiving ourselves when we talk about elections while we are still in such an unchanged situation since 2011.”

‘I Cannot Escape’: New Abuses Alleged In Ethiopia’s Tigray

BY CARA ANNA

Refugees who fled the fighting in Tigray stand in line for supplies at the Um Rakuba camp near the Sudan border. Baz Ratner/Reuters



NAIROBI, KENYA (AP) — New witness accounts allege that thousands of ethnic Tigrayans have been forcibly expelled, detained or killed in one of the most inaccessible areas of Ethiopia’s yearlong war in the latest wave of abuses carried out with machetes, guns and knives.

Following a report by The Associated Press early last month citing people who fled, Thursday’s joint statement by Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International is based on interviews with more than 30 witnesses and relatives. It comes ahead of a U.N. Human Rights Council session Friday on Ethiopia, whose government objects to what it considers meddling by the West over the war that has killed tens of thousands of people.

“They said they will not be responsible for any beating and killing that would happen to us if we fail to go,” one witness told the AP late last month, saying even people who are part Tigrayan like him are targeted. Like others, he spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation.

“I cannot escape anywhere,” he said, noting the many checkpoints surrounding the western Tigray region. “There is no way out of this trap.”

Ethnic Tigrayans have been targeted throughout the conflict as Ethiopian and allied forces battle the Tigray fighters who long dominated the national government before Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed took office three years ago. Some of the worst abuses have been reported in the western Tigray region, which has been occupied by authorities and fighters from the neighboring Amhara region and soldiers from neighboring Eritrea.

The latest alleged abuses appear to be linked to the Tigray forces’ recent momentum, which Ethiopia’s government asserts has been blunted after the prime minister, a Nobel Peace Prize winner and former soldier, went to the battlefront himself. Witnesses told the AP that authorities in western Tigray warned in public meetings against supporting the Tigray fighters, who themselves have been accused of a growing number of abuses in the war.

The new joint statement by Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International says Amhara security forces are responsible for the latest wave of expulsions, detentions and killings, and it warns that Tigrayans in detention are “at grave risk.” It says security forces systematically rounded up Tigrayans in the communities of Humera, Adebay and Rawyan, separating families and expelling women and children.

“They separated the old from the young, took their money and other possessions. ... Older people, parents were loaded on big trucks (going) east. They let them go with nothing, while the young remained behind,” one witness in Rawyan told the human rights groups. In Humera, witnesses described seeing as many as 20 trucks carrying people away. It’s not often clear where they are taken.

“They said they will send the pure Tigrayans first and then send those are half Tigrayans,” one western Tigray resident told the AP.

“Tigrayans disappear all the time these days,” a Humera resident told the AP. “There is no way of finding out who took them, or where they are being kept or whether they are alive or not.” He asserted that different detention centers are run by Ethiopian, Eritrean and Amhara forces.

A spokesman for the Amhara region, Gizachew Muluneh, and Abiy spokeswoman Billene Seyoum did not immediately comment.

The United Nations has estimated that 20,000 people were recently evicted from western Tigray, most of them women, children and the elderly. The U.N. has said more than 1 million have been displaced from there since the war began in November 2020.

But not all can leave. Witnesses have alleged that hundreds, if not thousands, of Tigrayans are held in makeshift, overcrowded detention centers in western Tigray, part of thousands being held elsewhere across Ethiopia amid suspicions fueled by hate speech by some senior government officials. The government has said it is targeting only the Tigray forces.

One detainee in Humera told the human rights groups he escaped last month while loading the bodies of fellow detainees onto a tractor, and asserted that he knew of at least 30 people who died in detention.

“They couldn’t handle the torture, that’s why they were dying,” he said. Witnesses described beatings with rifle butts and electric wires along with the denial of food and medicine.

Witnesses told the AP, and the human rights groups, that some people trying to flee the roundups in Adebay were attacked and killed, with some Amhara fighters searching house-to-house with axes. “The whole town smelled” with dead bodies, one man said.

The human rights groups are calling on Ethiopian authorities to end the attacks on civilians and immediately grant access to western Tigray for aid groups. They also call on the U.N. Human Rights Council to establish an independent mechanism to investigate the war’s abuses, including by Tigray forces, and urge the U.N. Security Council to put Ethiopia on its formal agenda.

“The global paralysis on Ethiopia’s armed conflict has emboldened human rights abusers to act with impunity and left communities at risk of feeling abandoned,” Human Rights Watch’s Laetitia Bader said.

Ethiopia’s government has sought to restrict reporting on the war, detaining some journalists including a video freelancer accredited to the AP and barring others from entering the country.

Follow AP stories about the war in Ethiopia at https://apnews.com/hub/Ethiopia

Ethiopia Arrests Associated Press Freelance Journalist

News agency calls for immediate release of Amir Aman Kiyaro, says he has done ‘important work on all sides’ of Ethiopia’s conflict.

Freelance video journalist Amir Aman Kiyaro [Handout via AP Photo]

Police in conflict-hit Ethiopia have arrested a freelance video journalist working for The Associated Press (AP), the United States news agency and state media said.

On Wednesday, AP called for the immediate release of Amir Aman Kiyaro, who it said was arrested in the capital, Addis Ababa, on November 28 after returning from a reporting trip.

Two other local journalists, identified by state media as Thomas Engida and Addisu Mulneh, were also arrested.

Journalists working in Ethiopia face restrictions under a nationwide state of emergency declared last month by the government, which has been locked in a brutal 13-month conflict with fighters from the country’s northern Tigray region.

The declaration, valid for six months, allows suspects to be detained without trial for as long as the state of emergency lasts and allows house-to-house searches without a warrant.

The emergency rules banned the sharing of non-official information about military movements and battlefield outcomes, with residents also barred from “using various types of media platforms to support directly or indirectly the terrorist group” – a reference to the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF), which is fighting government forces.

Ethiopian police inspector Tesfaye Olani accused the three journalists of breaching the state of emergency laws by seeking to disseminate “propaganda” about the TPLF and its ally, the Oromo Liberation Army. He said their actions could be punishable by prison terms of seven to 15 years.

Images of the three journalists, as well as their ID cards, were broadcast by state media in a video report on their arrest.

“The Associated Press is extremely concerned that AP freelancer Amir Aman Kiyaro has been detained by the Ethiopian government, accused of promoting terrorism,” AP Senior Vice President and Executive Editor Julie Pace said in a statement.

“These are baseless allegations. Kiyaro is an independent journalist who has done important work in Ethiopia on all sides of the conflict. We call on the Ethiopian government to release Kiyaro immediately.”

Separately, the state-affiliated Ethiopian Human Rights Commission said on Wednesday it was monitoring the situation of four other detained local journalists, including two whose whereabouts are unknown.

In a statement on Twitter, called for the immediate disclosure of the whereabouts of both detainees to their families and legal counsel and to guarantee their visitation rights.

“The commission also reiterates that the relevant authorities should closely monitor that the state of emergency proclamation is implemented in a manner that strictly adheres to human rights principles.”

Much of the conflict-affected zones in northern Ethiopia is under a communications blackout and access for journalists is heavily restricted.
Journalists behind bars

Meanwhile, in a new report on Thursday, Reporters Without Borders (RSF) said there are 488 media professionals imprisoned around the world, the highest since the NGO began counting more than 25 years ago.

“The number of journalists detained in connection with their work has never been this high since RSF began publishing its annual round-up in 1995,” the NGO, which battles for freedom of the press, said in a statement.

The number of journalists killed went down to 46, but the 20 percent increase in imprisoning media professionals is largely due to the government crackdowns in Hong Kong, Belarus, and Myanmar.

RSF said it had also never seen so many female journalists detained, with the overall number of 60 representing a third more than 2020.

The report follows the review by the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), who put the number at 293 reporters behind bars in its own report last week – a new global high.

According to CPJ, Ethiopia has imprisoned 14 journalists since declaring a state of emergency on December 2.

“The Ethiopian government should release all journalists detained for their work and stop using the state of emergency as a pretext to infringe on freedom of expression,” said CPJ’s sub-Saharan Africa representative, Muthoki Mumo.

SOURCE: AL JAZEERA