GOVERNANCE & CONFLICT (Tunisia)

"Burned wreckage in the main square of the town Sidi Bouzid where Mohammad Bouazizi set himself on fire and sparked the Tunisian revolution." (Reuters)

Bouazizi: The Man Who Set Himself and Tunisia on Fire
By Rania Abouzeid and Sidi Bouzid
Time.com, January 20, 2011
"He is now famous throughout Tunisia and the Arab world, a legend in fact. But Mohammad Bouazizi never set out to be a byword. His aunt Radia Bouazizi says his dream was to save enough money to be able to rent or buy a pick-up truck. 'Not to cruise around in,' she says, 'but for his work.' Her nephew was a vegetable seller. 'He would come home tired after pushing the cart around all day. All he wanted was a pick-up.' Instead, he started a revolution. Mohammad Bouazizi was like the hundreds of desperate, downtrodden young men in hardscrabble Sidi Bouzid. Many of them have university degrees but spend their days loitering in the cafes lining the dusty streets of this impoverished town, 300 kilometers south of the capital Tunis. Bouazizi, 26, didn't have a college degree, having only reached what his mother says was the 'baccalaureate' level, which is roughly equivalent to high school. He was, however, was luckier than most in that he at least earned an income from selling vegetables, work that he'd had for seven years. But on December 17 his livelihood was threatened when a policewoman confiscated his unlicensed vegetable cart and its goods. It wasn't the first time it had happened, but it would be the last. Not satisfied with accepting the 10 Tunisian dinar fine that he tried to pay ($7, the equivalent of a good day's earnings), the policewoman allegedly slapped the scrawny young man, spat in his face and insulted his dead father. Humiliated and dejected, Bouazizi, the breadwinner for his family of eight, went to the provincial headquarters, hoping to complain to local municipality officials, but they refused to see him. At 11:30 a.m., less than an hour after the confrontation with the policewoman and without telling his family, Bouazizi returned to the elegant double-storey white building with arched azure shutters, poured fuel over himself and set himself on fire.

GOVERNANCE & CONFLICT (Somalia / Germany)

"Accused Somali pirates and their lawyers in the Hamburg court at the start of the trial on Nov. 22, 2010." (Getty Images)

"I Am Deeply Sad and Don't Know How to Go On"
By Beate Lakotta
Spiegel Online, January 11, 2011
"Two out of the 10 Somali pirates on trial in Hamburg for hijacking a German container ship testified for the first time this week. Their stories provided a glimpse of the hardships of life in their lawless homeland. The accused, Hussein Carab M. politely thanked the court and those present for their attention before describing the hardships that led him to join up with pirates. He claimed that he was six years old when his parents were killed by a grenade in the chaos of Somalia's civil war, and then spent his childhood traumatized, and on his own. Now a father himself, M. said he fears most for the safety of his son, given the mortal danger in which they have constantly lived. He claimed his son was kidnapped by a man to whom he owed about $1,100 (€848). He said he wanted to pay the man off using his cut from the ransoms he and fellow pirates planned to demand for the hijacked ship and crew. Instead, M. and nine others were arrested by a Royal Dutch Navy special-forces unit after a failed raid on the German container ship, Taipan, and brought to Hamburg for trial. That was nine months ago. On Monday, M. and one of his fellow accused pirates had their day in court. Since his arrest, M. said he has been living with the uncertainty about his son's fate, making him depressed and unable to eat. He said he could even give the court the name of the man who is holding the child. When prison officials noticed his condition, he said, they asked him if he was thinking about taking his own life, but they could not understand his reply. M. asked the court on Monday to give him the chance to make a phone call so he could inquire about his son. 'I am deeply sad and don't know how to go on,' he said, beginning to cry. [...]"

FAMILY & SEXUALITY (Afghanistan)

"British officers requested the study to help them understand the sexual behaviour of locals and Afghan comrades." (AFP/Getty)

Paedophilia "Culturally Accepted in South Afghanistan"
By Ben Farmer
The Telegraph, January 14, 2011
British forces were advised by a military study that paedophilia is widespread and culturally accepted in southern Afghanistan. Older, powerful men boosted their social status by keeping boys as sexual playthings and the practice was celebrated in song and dance, a military study claimed. British officers in Helmand requested the study to help them understand the sexual behaviour of locals and Afghan comrades after young soldiers became uneasy they were being propositioned. American social scientists employed to help troops understand the local culture reported that homosexual sex was widespread among the Pashtun ethnic group in southern Afghanistan. Strict separation of men and women, coupled with poverty and the significant expense of getting married, contributed to young men turning to each other for sexual companionship. 'To dismiss the existence of this dynamic out of desire to avoid western discomfort is to risk failing to comprehend an essential social force underlying Pashtun' the report said. The study, called 'Pashtun Sexuality', said that as well as willing sex between young men, 'boys are appreciated for physical beauty and apprenticed to older men for their sexual initiation'. The practice of 'bache bazi' or boy play, is known throughout Afghanistan, but is particularly renowned in the city of Kandahar next to Helmand, where prepubescent boys are widely admired.

WORK (Georgia)

"A Nordmann fir tree for sale at a German Christmas tree market: Georgia is a major supplier of seeds for Nordmann firs." (DAPD)

Risking Lives for Christmas: The Human Cost of Georgia's Fir Tree Business
By Matthias Schepp
Spiegel Online, December 22, 2010
"Dato Chikhardze sets a plastic canister of water down beside his rusty Lada in front of his brick house. He has just drawn the water from a nearby river. Life is basic here in the mountains, and living conditions are tough. Dato, 44, is one of the lucky ones: He has a full-time, if low-paid, job as a teacher at the village school. Only 22 out of 300 residents in the village of Tlugi have full-time jobs. Every September, three months before Christmas, Dato and the other men from the village set off to make a little extra money. They go into the remote mountain forests around the small city of Ambrolauri to pick fir cones. The seeds from these cones are bound for Europe, to be grown into stately Nordmann fir trees that will eventually enhance the Christmas celebrations of wealthy Europeans. Well over half of all fir seeds that become household Christmas trees in countries such as Germany, Denmark and Great Britain originate in Tlugi and other villages here in northeastern Georgia. Georgian fir cones are considered to be especially high quality because they produce tall, long-lasting trees with soft needles. Christmas tree sales in Europe amount to €2 billion ($2.6 billion) annually -- the business generated €700 million in sales in Germany alone last year. It's a highly competitive market, and one that wouldn't be nearly as profitable without Georgian fir cones. Seven to 10 kilograms (15 to 22 pounds) of Nordmann fir cones are needed for a single kilogram of seeds. Middlemen in Georgia sell these for around €25 per kilo to foreign companies, who in turn resell them in Europe for more than €100 per kilo -- 50 times the amount earned by workers like Dato.

WORK (Djibouti)

Africans Brave Dangerous Water Crossing to Yemen, in Hopes of a Better Life
By Sudarsan Raghavan
The Washington Post, December 25, 2010
"They had walked for 10 days, across mountains and barren plains. In their hands, some carried small backpacks and yellow cans filled with water. In their minds, they carried the hopes of their relatives back in Ethiopia. 'We are running away from poverty,' said Mohammed Said, 17. 'We want to go to Yemen to send money back to our families. They are counting on us.' Said and 30 other young Ethiopians, including six women, crouched on the hard soil. Djiboutian border authorities had stopped them on a recent day in order to speak with a visiting UN delegation. Djiboutians consider such people illegal migrants, but they only occasionally enforce the law, especially if the migrants are passing through to another country. Less than a mile away, the turquoise waters of the Gulf of Aden shimmered in the sun. Two boatloads of Somali refugees had left the day before, the latest exodus of large numbers of African migrants -- mostly Ethiopians, Somalis and Eritreans -- who leave from Djibouti's coast to Yemen virtually every week. Each Ethiopian had scraped together $100 for the boat ride; many had taken collections from their relatives. Thieves had robbed some of them. None of them carried passports or any other travel documents. Now, they were waiting for dusk. That's when they hoped the smugglers would arrive with their boats along the beach and take them on the two-day journey to Yemen, the Middle East's poorest country, wracked by multiple crises. 'Are you fully aware of the dangers?' asked Antonio Guterres, the UN high commissioner for refugees, looking at the group, who were all Muslim. 'We know the risks,' replied Abdullahi Ibrahim, 28. 'But we are escaping hunger. If we had enough to eat, do you think we would leave our mothers, brothers and sisters?' [...]"

WORK (Uganda)

"Digging the salt from Lake Katwe involves standing waist or chest deep in toxic water for hours at a time." (James Ewen/Earthmedia)

Why the Salt Miners of Uganda's Lakes Are Dying for a Deal on Climate Change
By James Randerson
The Observer, November 21, 2010
"Didas Yuryahewa, bent double and waist-deep in water, holds his breath as he struggles to gouge out another shovel of stinking black mud. The air is thick with the bad-egg stench of hydrogen sulphide mixed with ammonia. The equatorial sun beats down on his naked back, leaving a salty sheen. In the good times, Yuryahewa -- and hundreds of other salt miners at Lake Katwe in western Uganda -- can make a reasonable living, but it is a casino existence. Salt production turns rapidly from boom to bust with the seasons, leaving the workers struggling to make ends meet, and climate change is starting to load the dice against them. The gathering of environment ministers and officials at UN climate talks in Cancun, Mexico, on 29 November may seem a world away, but development campaigners say progress towards a deal to raise $100bn (£62bn) a year by 2020 to help poorer countries such as Uganda adapt to climate change is essential. The climate change fund was seen as one of the few successes to come out of the ill-fated Copenhagen talks last December. Two weeks ago, leading economists, finance ministers and heads of state came up with a draft plan for how the money could be raised -- including a mixture of carbon taxes, aviation and shipping taxes, and the redirection of fossil fuel subsidies. At Cancun, negotiators are expected to inch closer to an agreement on finance, but progress on reducing the world's carbon emissions looks to be as far away as ever.

GOVERNANCE & CONFLICT (Uganda)

Museveni's NRA Raped Acholi Men in Revenge
By Timothy Nsubuga
Uganda Correspondent, September 27, 2010
"Powerful and heartbreaking allegations and testimonies by a number of human rights activists and ordinary people from northern Uganda suggest that Yoweri Museveni’s NRA soldiers gang-raped Acholi men soon after they captured power in 1986. The allegations, seen by Uganda Correspondent, are contained in an award winning 2008 documentary film called 'Gender Against Men' that was shot by the Refugee Law Project based at Makerere University-Kampala. The commentary, done by someone with a feminine sounding voice, says in the affirmative that, '... Acholi soldiers were largely blamed for atrocities committed in central Uganda while fighting the rebel insurgency of President Yoweri Museveni.  In northern Uganda, after Museveni’s National Resistance Army took power in 1986, some of his soldiers sought revenge by using sexual violence against Acholi men.' The NRA's revenge rape against Acholi men for crimes that Acholi soldiers allegedly committed in 'Luwero Triangle' and other parts of central Uganda were not one off isolated incidents either.  According to the documentary, '... it was widespread enough that the Acholi invented a new vocabulary to describe this new [NRA] tactic.' The Acholi, the documentary said, described the rape of men as 'tek gungu.' The explanatory subtitles in that specific part of the documentary translated 'tek gungu' to literally mean 'the way which is hard to bend.'