Latest Posts Page

Missionary Reflection. Religious and social transformation.

Sunday, 1 December 2019 8:00

Evangelisation is transformation at two levels: religious and social. The ultimate end of evangelisation is the Kingdom of God, thus, it must be holistic, impacting upon both the internal and external human realities.

Evangelisation is interactional, that is, it is an encounter between Christians and people of other faiths. Indeed, it blossoms in the context of deep interaction between people. Thus, it can never be abstract, even though it has spiritual components. Evangelisation is always experiential, forming part of the practicalities of life, behaviour and relationships.
Therefore, evangelisation is a positive interaction between two sets of people: proclaimer and recipients of the Message. In this engagement, the pillars of one’s life—emotions, convictions, and individual and collective modes of living—are touched upon.
All human groups have their own particular religious insight into the world, coupled with rites, songs, stories, and symbols. Religion is an important component of human culture, holding it together in an organic way. In fact, the Latin root of “religion”, “religio”, means “to link together”. Through religions, humans give meaning to life’s occurrences, offering a point of reference by which direction is given.

This importance of religion was acknowledged by the Second Vatican Ecumenical Council, in the innovative document Nostra Aetate: Declaration on the Relation of the Church to non-Christian religions. Each religion is here interpreted as holding a certain amount of mysticism, spirituality, and ethical orientation which involve the presence and the action of the Holy Spirit. From the perspective of the Vatican II Council Fathers, all religions are deserving of both respect and attention. Although some may contend that non-Christian religions lack the theological depth of Christianity, the Council’s position remains that these faiths are no less valid nor are they un-important for people of faith.Re-interpreting local religious experience. Evangelisation is not the substitution of one faith for another.
Indeed, evangelisation is the revelation, proclamation and actualisation of the Good News whose bounty is to be clearly understandable and that must touch all of the recipients’ lives.
The first element of the Good News is to assert God’s Divine presence and action in the history of each human grouping, as St Paul emphasised in Lystra (Acts 14: 8–18) and Athens (Acts 17: 16–34). God’s providence was not dependent on the arrival of Paul or any other missionary. God is mercifully present and active from the beginning of time.

Therefore, the first dimension and novelty of evangelisation is the revelation – to the recipients of missionary action – of God’s presence and action in the history of each human group that was present before the missionaries’ arrival. Thus, evangelisation is not a replacement of local religion – earlier labelled as “pagan”- with Christianity but, rather, a reinterpretation, a deepening, a transformation of a people’s religious orientation without forcing it to lose its originality and uniqueness. The novelty of the Risen Jesus. Does the missionary make any contribution to the radicality of the religious novelty? The novelty is the proclamation and making provision for access to the experience of Jesus’ Resurrection. In the Acts of the Apostles, a record of the first missionary witnesses—Peter, John, Paul, Barnabas— called themselves witnesses of the Resurrection. Their concern was to make the transforming faith in and sacramental contact with Jesus accessible, through the signs of healing, joy, forgiveness, courage, and liberation from fear. Evangelisation brings religion to its fullness, fulfilment, and plenitude, found in the Risen Christ.

Hence, evangelisation is, in itself, a process of transformation with continuity (previous religious experience should be affirmed and upheld) and discontinuity (Christ’s novelty should be appreciated with all its challenges). How can we merge original, local religious experience with openness to the originality and uniqueness of the encounter with Jesus? No advance planning can be made on this score. Rather, the organic processes of situational and contextual exploration, experiment, and discernment are needed, accompanied by the teaching of the Universal Church. The possibility for a given Church to be authentically local (Redemptoris Missio, chapter 3) lies in grafting the religious experience of the Risen Jesus onto the indigenous religious experience in its completeness. “Catholicity” entails pluriform inclusivity.

Social Transformation
Religion is an important dimension of life, but not the only one; therefore, to be holistic, evangelisation should penetrate all aspects of life, not only being concerned with sacred days. Evangelisation should seek to transform and penetrate all time: family, market, work, politics, governance and relationships. This is apparent in the Church’s Social Teaching—since Pope Leo XIII’s Rerum Novarum in 1891 and the Magisterium’s insistence on social transformation in the light of scripture for the anawim, the little ones: children, handicapped, sick, destitute and the poor. “Action on behalf of justice and participation in the transformation of the world fully appear to us as a constitutive dimension of the preaching of the Gospel… of the Church’s mission for the redemption of the human race and it liberation from every oppressive situation” (Justice in the World, 6).

All popes, from Pope John XXIII, amply elaborated on the social teaching to make it more relevant for transformation in different historical eras. St Pope John Paul II, for example, proposed that this link is indivisible: “The ‘new evangelisation’, which the modern world urgently needs … must include among its essential elements a proclamation of the Church’s social doctrine… [T]his doctrine is… suitable for indicating the right way to respond to the great challenges of today… [There] can be no genuine solution of the ‘social question’ apart from the Gospel…” (Centesimus Annus, 5). Pope Francis is even more explicit on the unavoidable social dimension of evangelisation, as he sees its avoidance as a distortion of the Gospel (Evangelii Gaudium, 176, 258). Proclamation of the Kingdom. Evangelisation cannot happen without local social transformation.

Undeniably, the “localness” of a Church can be measured by its social impact, because a Christian community can be an efficient and effective sign of the Kingdom of God if it is grafted onto the daily life and sufferings of God’s people. The social dimension of evangelisation reflects and is constituted by the Gospel’s being brought to a given time and place, within that milieu. Once the missionary has intertwined the Gospel with the pre-existing beliefs of a community, the social dimension of the Gospel has the potential to touch the lives of people. Without this extension to social commitment, evangelisation is pointless. The proclamation of the Kingdom simply cannot happen.
Fr. Francesco Pierli

Hare and the Hyena.

Sunday, 1 December 2019 8:00

0ne day, a long time ago when there was a famine in a certain part of Africa, Hare met Hyena. “How thin you are looking,” said Hare. “You look as though you would not say ‘No’ to a good meal either,” replied Hyena.

The two animals continued on the road together until they came to a farmer, who was grumbling because all his servants had left him. “We‘ll work for you if you will feed us,” suggested Hare.

The farmer willingly agreed, and, giving the two animals a pot of beans to cook, showed them the part of his farm where they must weed.
First of all they made a fire, and fetching three large stones, they rested the pot on them to cook their meal while they set to work. When the sun was high in the sky and it was time for the mid-day rest, Hyena told Hare to keep an eye on the cooking-pot while he himself went down to the river to wash.

Hare sat by the pot, stirring it with a stick and longing to begin his meal, while Hyena, as soon as he was out of sight of Hare, stripped off his skin. He looked the most horrible spectacle, and ran back to Hare uttering strange cries. Poor Hare was terrified. “Help! Help!” he squealed, as he ran for his life. “Never have I seen such a terrible creature! It must be a very bad juju.”

Hyena quickly sat down and ate all the food, which was scarcely enough for one in any case, and then he went back to the river, found his skin and put it on again. He strolled slowly up the bank to the place where the cooking-pot stood, and found Hare retuning cautiously.

“Oh, Hyena! – Gasped Hare -. Did you see it too?”. “See what? “Asked the deceitful animal. “That terrible demon,” explained Hare. “I saw nothing. But come, let us eat now,” said Hyena calmly, as he walked towards the cooking-pot and looked inside it.

“Where is it? Where is my food? What has happened to it?” cried Hyena, pretending to be in a fine rage. Hare looked at the empty pot. “It was that horrible demon – he explained -. It frightened me away so that it could eat our food.”

“Rubbish! You ate it yourself while I was washing at the river,” shouted Hyena, and no amount of protestations by poor Hare had any effect. “Well – said Hare -. I know what I shall do. I shall make a fine bow and arrow and if the creature comes again I shall shoot it.”

The next day the farmer again gave them a pot of beans, but instead of working while it cooked, Hare took a supple branch and began to make himself a bow. The cunning hyena watched him as he shaped the wood with his knife, and when it was almost finished, he said: “Give me your bow, Hare. My father taught me a special way of cutting bows to make them better than any others. I’ll finish that for you.”

The unsuspecting Hare gave up his bow and knife and Hyena began cutting it in a special way, making it so weak in one place that it was bound to break as soon as it was used. “There you are! Keep this beside you while I go and wash, in case that creature comes again, “said Hyena, as he bounded off to the river, to remove his skin once more.

Hare, waiting beside the pot of food, was just considering whether he could take a mouthful, so great was his hunger, when once again the most repulsive-looking animal he had ever seen bounded towards him.
Seizing his bow, he put an arrow in it and pulled. Snap! It broke in his hands, and as the horrible creature came closer and closer, Hare fled.

So, of course, Hyena had all the food once more, and then went back to the river and put on his skin.
He returned to accuse Hare of stealing the beans.Hare denied having even a taste of food, but looking closely at Hyena he thought he saw a little piece of bean stuck in his teeth as he spoke.

“Aha! – Said Hare to himself -. If that’s the way it is, I shall be ready for you tomorrow, my friend.”

That night while Hyena was sleeping, Hare made another bow. It was a good strong bow with no weak spots at all, and had three sharp arrows to go with it.
Then the hare, feeling ravenous by now, crept to the spot where they cooked their food, hid the bow and arrows in some nearby long grass and, returning to find Hyena still asleep, he lay down close by him.

The next day, everything happened as Hare had expected. The two animals worked hard all the morning while the cooking-pot boiled nearby, and at mid-day Hyena went to the river to wash.

Hare waited, his new bow in his hand. Presently the loathsome-looking creature came towards him. Hare raised his bow and shot. Straight into the creature’s heart went the arrow and Hyena fell dead on the ground. Hare bent over the body and was not surprised when he saw it really was Hyena.“Oh well – he remarked, as he ate the first good meal he had had for days – ‘my mother always told me that greed did not pay, and now I know she was right.”

Folktale from Central Africa Republic

Africa. The Sea is theirs.

Sunday, 1 December 2019 8:00

Fishing rights sold off by governments to foreign companies. Illegal fishing and how it damages the environment. Drug trafficking.
Factors that impoverish and render insecure the waters of many African countries.

The continent has 38 coastal countries, 13 million km² of maritime zones and owns 17% of global water resources. Economically speaking, 90% of African trade travels by sea. As regards food security, many African countries derive much of their protein from fish which makes fishing a primary activity in the survival of the inhabitants.

Maritime control is important to Africa for three reasons: it helps economic development, is an integral part of security and defends its nutritional integrity. Piracy, one of the most serious threats to the security of the African coasts, has for two years now, again begun to weigh heavily on the waters off the coast of Somalia and the Gulf of Guinea. There are other serious problems such as trafficking in arms, fuel, drugs and human beings, apart from the different crimes against the environment and illegal fishing. It is worth noting that the conflict in Yemen has caused an increase in criminal activities in the Red Sea using remotely controlled boat-bombs and unmanned submarine drones which constitute a threat to maritime trade and infrastructure with implications affecting the entire region.

One of the most widespread and worrying of the crimes is drug trafficking, especially in western Africa which, in the last decade, has become one of the main transit routes for South American cocaine destined for Europe, as well as being a strategic centre for the production, distribution and wholesale trading of narcotics. One of the more negative aspects of these illegal activities is that their proceeds have made it possible for the drug dealers to co-opt political powers in some countries of the region (e.g., Guinea-Bissau), thereby weakening the progress achieved in democracy and economic development. Fishing rights are also sold off by governments to foreign companies.
There is illegal fishing with consequent damage to the environment and the drug trade. All of these are factors that impoverish and render insecure the waters of many African countries. Another series of threats involves illegal fishing that is made legal.
Foreign companies, not infrequently Chinese, have succeeded in many governments of coastal countries to sign contracts which, in reality, allow them to plunder the fishing resources.

According to Ian Raby, head of research in maritime law at the African Centre for Strategic Studies based in Washington, “Many African countries have compensated for the serious shortcoming of ignoring their own maritime dominion but continue to pay little attention to the protection of their limited maritime resources”.
In the strategy pursued by African countries to guarantee maritime security, it is worth mentioning the Lome Accord, adopted in October 2016, at the conclusion of an extraordinary summit of the African Union in Togo. It is an important document for safeguarding the security and development of the seas around Africa and it has been placed within the Integrated Maritime Strategy for Africa up to 2050, and adopted on 6 December 2012 by the African Union to value the enormous potential of the African maritime sector.

The main point of the document is the recognition that no country by itself is capable of facing such challenges to transnational maritime security and it is therefore planning for coordinated action between African states. The only problem, and it is not a small one, is that, to come into force, the Lome Accord requires ratification by at least 15 of the 33 countries that have adopted it. Up to now, it has been approved only by Togo. Nevertheless, regional cooperation has shown its effectiveness through key agreements already in force, such as the code of conduct of Yaoundé for the suppression of illegal maritime activity in the Gulf of Guinea.This code was adopted during a summit of heads of state and government of the Economic Community of Western African States (CEDEAO) and of the Economic Community of Central African States (CEEAC), that took place in June 2013 in the capital of Cameroon. The agreement represents an important model for cooperation between African countries in matters of maritime security that has now become one of the dominant factors in the general development of the continent.
(M.C.)

Africa. Environmental Degradation and Climate Change Migrants.

Sunday, 1 December 2019 8:00

Environmental degradation will make the planet face up to challenges unknown until now. As a consequence of the deterioration of the environment, Africa is experiencing the phenomenon of climate-driven migration.

Africa is currently home to more than 1.3 billion people, a figure that could double by 2050, according to UN forecasts. The African population is mainly living in a context of social inequality, with worrying indicators about gender equality, access to health and education. The expected population growth implies the need for a larger quantity of food.

According to an FAO study on the incidence of climate change on agricultural production, this is expected to decline in different areas of the world, particularly in Africa. Furthermore, land grabbing practices for non-food uses, which contribute to environmental degradation, are on the rise in Africa, while more agricultural land is needed.

Water and soil
Food is and will be an even more critical issue as the population grows. Agriculture and livestock require water that, in some African regions, especially in the Sahel, is scarce. The dams that have been built to facilitate the irrigation of certain crops, sometimes prevent the natural processes of seasonal flooding of wetlands, affecting inland fishing and livestock grazing. This is happening in such countries as Mali and Senegal. It is commonly believed that there is high availability of arable land in Africa, but potential new crops affect ecosystems, and deforestation exposes the soil to high temperatures which break down the organic matter and make the soils vulnerable to erosion. The productivity of these new arable lands, in areas that were previously forested, declines after a few decades of agricultural exploitation.

The occupation and conversion of these lands must also be considered under several aspects. Those lands destined for cotton farming are increasing in Africa, but cotton is not intended to create a local textile industry, since it is destined for export. The oil palm provides biodiesel and oil for domestic consumption and various energy uses. Its cultivation is spreading in large areas, which is causing the usual degradation of the soil, in addition to the expansion of the Palm weevil disease which infests and kills palms.
But climate change does not only affect agriculture in the African continent. Fishing in Africa, whether in rivers, lakes, or in the sea, employs mainly artisanal techniques. The a fore-mentioned alterations in rivers and wetlands, or those that climate change will likely cause, will affect these activities. Millions of Africans depend on fish caught by local fishermen (more than half a million people live on artisanal fishing in Senegal), but as a consequence of over fishing by the European or other foreign fleets, stocks are further decreasing.

Local fishermen are now forced to fish further out to sea because the accessibility to stocks close the coast is diminishing. Mining is another threat to African resources; mining activities in fact destroy soil, pollute waters and, in some cases, leave ditches of sterile rock that usually leak contaminated water, with the consequent risk of breakage and toxic spills. Many raw materials, such as copper, bauxite, gold, coltan or the increasingly popular rare earth metals are extracted in Africa, and Nigeria and Algeria are the two main suppliers of oil and gas in the continent. Oil extraction in Nigeria has caused extreme environmental degradation in the Niger Delta and in the Gulf of Guinea.
In many African countries, energy is obtained by burning firewood and other biomass fuels, generating significant deforestation. Petroleum-exporting countries, such as Nigeria, do not have refineries, so they must import the petroleum products they consume. European and Chinese companies acquire – legally or otherwise – huge tracts of land in many African countries to grow crops for agro-fuels such as oil palm and other crops like cassava, which would appear as sources of agro-fuels. These crops are being grown at the cost of food crops, which that continent needs because dying of starvation and hunger is still a stark reality for the African population.

Consequences of climate change.
According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the projected minimum temperature is expected to increase by more than 2 °C above the 1981–2000 average by the end of 21st century. An increase in temperature would affect evaporation. Basically, the higher the temperature the higher the rate of evaporation and as a consequence there is less water on the earth’s surface. The Inner Niger Delta is the inland delta of the Niger River. It is an area of fluvial wetlands, lakes and floodplains in the semi-arid Sahel area of central Mali, just south of the Sahara desert. This food zone covers 50,000 Km^².

During the wet season, which lasts from July to September the swamp floods into a lake and naturally irrigates the land. When the dry season comes, the Inner Niger Delta area turns into a network of lakes and channels. Cattle, pearl millet, and rice are its important agricultural products. The area of inland delta also provides water and fish for the several million people living there.
To the east of the Inner Niger Delta there is Lake Chad, also in the north of the Sahel. Over the last fifty years the area of Lake Chad has reduced drastically leading to significant imbalances resulting in an increased vulnerability of the hydro- socio-ecosystem with multiple results also affecting fishermen and ranchers living in that area. The difficult situation has also caused tensions and clashes between the groups that live in the area around the lake. A tree-planting project has been proposed in order to slow down the process of desertification. Fast-growing trees, mainly eucalyptus, could be planted in the area between the Sahara and the Sahel.

Greenhouse gas
According to a new study, global sea levels are set to rise dramatically even if the strictest greenhouse gas emissions targets are met. Researchers say oceans will rise by over one metre even if the world sticks to the Paris agreement, adding that if emissions are not curbed as soon as possible the rise will be even greater. The sea level rise would deteriorate the coasts, for example in mangrove areas, which are a source for the marine fauna development, and which also constitute a barrier for the population living close to the sea.
A rise in sea levels also implies the salinization of fresh groundwater in coastal aquifers affecting agricultural areas such as the Nile Delta or coastal cities like Lagos (Nigeria), where 15 million people live and where oil pollution is also a serious issue.

Environmental migrants
Today climate-driven migration is a phenomenon that occurs in several corners of the planet, but the poorest regions of the global South, such as the African continent, are those where the number of climate migrants is the highest. This is a clear example of climate injustice since Africa is responsible only for 7% of total greenhouse gas emissions. In different regions of Africa, climate-driven migration is already a reality and the numbers of environmental migrants is expected to increase.

According to the new World Bank report “Groundswell”, published in 2018, more than 86 million people are expected to move within their countries’ borders by 2050 in the African continent due to environmental changes. In the Sahel and the Gulf of Guinea, the periodic effects of droughts and variations in rainfall patterns have influenced the migration of rural populations.
Climate change is one of the main causes of human migration. Climate-driven migration is an even more evident reality in Africa where the most vulnerable people are the most affected.
Emilio Menéndez – Marina Tortosa García de Ceca

West Africa, bridgehead for cocaine trafficking.

Sunday, 1 December 2019 8:00

The region has acquired a key role in the drugs trade, becoming the major platform of intercontinental trade in cocaine, not only because of its strategic location but also because it is fertile ground for creating local groups interested in what they can gain from this commerce.

The Atlantic coast, composed of Guinea-Bissau, Guinea and, to a lesser extent, Senegal, is the main bridgehead for the drugs trade in the region. The narcotics, despatched to Guinea-Bissau from South America by sea or air, are redirected both to the surrounding international airports (Dakar, Conakry and Bamako) from where it is sent to Europe, and overland to the north of Mali where it joins with the Sahel route. This route follows the borders between Mauritania, Mali, Algeria, Niger and Libya and depends on familiarity with the land on the part of the Tuareg and Tebu tribes, the main agents providing transport services or armed escorts in the region. The Sahel route is divided into two parts: the so-called ‘short route’ and the ‘long route’.
The first passes through the Malian regions of Timbuctoo and Kidal and reaches the south of Algeria where local criminal gangs operate, while the second follows an easier but longer road, passing from northern Mali to Niger, Chad, Sudan and, finally, Libya, from where it reaches the ports of Europe, mainly in Spain and Italy.

Data provided by the INCB give us to understand that the problem of drugs is becoming very serious in Western Africa. In that area, in recent years, there has been an exponential increase in the consumption of narcotics, especially among young people. This phenomenon is due to the fact that this geographical area represents the main sorting-house for the transit of the routes originating in South America and bound for Europe. This trade in drugs has been increasing for years now and has already reached impressive dimensions.
For a better understanding of the importance of the phenomenon, it is useful to recall what happened in 2013 in Guinea-Bissau (a despairing nation in West Africa) through the work of the DEA which successfully carried out one of the biggest international operations ever. An agent, passing himself off as a Colombian FARC guerrilla, invited aboard his yacht José Américo Bubo Na Tchuto, former head of the Guinea Bissau army (he was later arrested and imprisoned off the coast of Cape Verde). In exchange for the protection of the drug route, the Guinean received one million dollars for every ton brought to his country from Latin America, especially from Venezuela and Colombia.

This episode shows how Guinea Bissau, one of the points on the African continent closest by sea to the American continent, transformed itself into the first ‘Narco-State’ in Africa. It is an underdeveloped country in which the institutions are corrupt and poverty is so extreme that it is easy to corrupt just about anybody. Corruption is widely used by the drug traffickers and it is therefore no surprise if it is found that the illegal trade involves such personalities as the Chiefs of Staff of the Navy and Army.Violence and corruption have constituted the red thread of an institutional compromise which, together with military interventions, has had a devastating effect on the population. Political instability has brought about the considerable impoverishment of Guinea Bissau, together with the expansion of illegal trading.
The commonest narcotic passing through the western part of the continent is cocaine, part of which stays in the territory, helping to increase consumption, especially by the better off among young people, while the rest is sent to the European markets.

The drugs are not brought in by sea alone but also aboard commercial flights. This is demonstrated by the many confiscations carried out at the airports of Lagos (Nigeria) and Lomé (Togo).
Another country in West Africa constituting a narcotics crossroads about which we have reliable statistics regarding the increase in cocaine trafficking is Ghana. According to a leading member of UNODC, the drug trafficking organisations tend to have the drugs pass through West Africa because, hitherto, the European and United States customs authorities have been less thorough in inspecting luggage from Africa than that from Latin America. Moreover, Ghana is a large synthetic drugs producer (after Nigeria) of a type of high quality marijuana, as well as being a transit zone for the despatch of cocaine being sent to England.
With reference to synthetic drugs, we must state that, in recent years, in Western Africa there has been an increase in the production of such drugs. Many centres of production have been discovered in Ivory Coast, Guinea and Nigeria where, between 2011 and 2015, no less than ten clandestine laboratories have been dismantled.
In these centres, substances like methamphetamines are produced to be smuggled to Eastern Asia and South-East Asia. This is a new phenomenon, given that, up to a short time ago, the African region had never played an important role in this trade.
Researchers also believe that the increase in online dealing in these countries has paved the way for this phenomenon, since it is harder for the forces of law and order to identify the drug pushers and consumers.

Douala is the economic capital, as well as the biggest city in Cameroon.

As regards Central Africa, we have Douala, the capital of Cameroon, which is becoming an important trafficking centre. Here, too, part of the drugs in transit is kept for local consumption and the use of synthetic drugs is widespread. In particular, we find that Kobolo is widespread among the young and iboga, containing a tryptamine which, in high doses, produces devastating hallucinogenic effects. This drug is extracted from the plant of the same name cultivated in Congo, itself also a transit country for imported drugs. In the Central African regions, among the various gangs dedicated to crime and drug trafficking, there are those who were formerly the Mai Mai militias in the Congo, as well as the Huto paramilitaries of the Interahamwe who were among the more ferocious executors of the Rwanda genocide. (F.R.)

Young Indios: “The world must listen to us”.

Sunday, 1 December 2019 8:00

During the Synod for Amazonia, we heard stories of young Indios who struggle against environmental exploitation, in recognition of their own identity, and they want to create an alliance with the young people of the West. The earth is not a good to be milked dry but an inheritance to be handed down.

Marcivana Rodrigues Paiva, an ethnic Sateré-Mawe, is from Manaus, and the youthful leader of Indigenous Peoples Coordination, (COPIME), the first organisation in Brazil to concern itself with the indigenous people in the urban context, participated in the Synod as an observer.

Speaking of indigenous peoples in cities she says: “The problem of the indigenous peoples in the urban context is destined to become a brutal reality that can no longer be kept hidden. The lack of recognition of our presence in the cities denies us our rights, approved by Brazilian law. For the indigenous peoples forced to flee to the cities, the greatest danger is invisibility: those who cannot be seen have no rights”.

“Over the past five years, the exodus from the aldeias, the villages of the entire state of Amazonia, has greatly increased. Today, 52% of the indigenous population is to be found in Manaus: they number 40,000 people of 45 different ethnic groups. Without land, we have no right to our identity. Finally Marcivana launches an appeal “to assist indigenous populations who come to the cities” by means of an “indigenous pastoral” suitable for them.

Delio Siticonatzi, 28, is from Peru. He belongs to the Ashaninka people. He studied at the Catholic University of Nopoki, the centre for third-level studies created with the backing of the Vatican in the Vicariate of San Ramón en Atalaya (Ucayali), where studies are done in six different languages by young indigenous people from eighteen different ethnic backgrounds.

He speaks to us of his difficult journey of ethnic discovery. It began when he was 13 year-old and his parents sent him to school in Atalaya since his own community, Junín, had no middle school. “It was then I first had to face discrimination. I put up with the comments in silence until I could stand it no longer and I decided to stop dressing like an Ashaninka, speaking like an Ashaninka and just being and Ashaninka. I wanted them to stop despising me”.

The turning point comes when he enrols in Nopoki (I am coming). “Nopoki taught me to rediscover the beauty of being indigenous. My belonging to the Ashaninka, which I first saw as a burden, became a plus for me”. Delio has decided to dedicate himself to teaching in the native communities. “I wanted to help other boys to understand that it is cruel to deny one’s self”. When, in 2017, Nopoki offered him a post as a teacher, he left the civil service. While at the Synod, which he attended as an observer, he made the voice of the young people heard. “I proposed an alliance between us Indios and the young people of the North of the world. They, too, are concerned about the environment as the global warming strikes show. By ourselves we cannot achieve our aims. Only if we work together can we succeed”.

Yesika Patiachi proudly displays a waterfall adorned with the traditional images of his people, the Harakbut, ancient inhabitants of the Peruvian region of Madre de Dios. Yésica is a bilingual teacher of the Harakbut ethnic group. He lives in the Apostolic Vicariate of Puerto Maldonado. “We could have died out. We almost disappeared because of the “caucheros”, the natural rubber traders. If it had not been for Apaktone….” And so Yesica starts to tell us, in her calm teacher’s voice, of the trauma of the Harakbut who were massacred, in the late eighteen hundreds, by the men of the great rubber baron Carlos Fermin Fitzcarrald. “At that time there were fifty thousand of us; now we are less than a thousand”.

The thirty-three-year-old woman combines stories of the massacres with that of the intrepid Dominican, José Alvarez, who defied both smugglers and prejudices to defend the Harakbut. “For us he is Apaktone, “our wise father”». For the people of Madre de Dios, Pope Francis is, instead, “Wamambui”, the brother. “I always call him Wamambui Francesco”, Yesica insists.
She met the Pontiff on 19 January 2018 when Pope Francis went to Puerto Maldonado. “On that occasion, I was chosen to make the welcoming speech. I told him about the great fear we indigenes have of dying out, ignored by a system that does not accept us.
Before I spoke, I was very excited but then I calmed down as I thought of my duty not to make mistakes, out of respect for my ancestors whom I was called to represent”.

“It was with that same sense of responsibility that I accepted the invitation to take part in the Synod as an observer. Wamambui Francesco listens to the indigenous people. He understands that human life on this planet is in danger. We asked the Pope that we be represented in national and international institutions, so that they will not allow us to die out as a people but allow us to live independently. It is we who feel the brunt of the crimes against the common home: no journalist has taken up the cause of our protests or that of the mothers who were hunted down and killed. We have no tribunal where we can denounce these crimes. We want our cause to make a breakthrough into human consciousness, without endangering humanity”, she said

“Personally – Yesica emphasises – I do not trust the environmentalist movements: they often speak without ever having paid personally the cost of extractionism. For this reason I say this to the young people who took part in the climate: get informed. Come and see what is happening in Amazzonia. We are also fighting for you. Do not leave us alone “.

Paulinha Meireles, 21, a Law student, was born and grew up in the outskirts of Manaus, the largest metropolis in Amazzonia, says that there is too much prejudice against the culture of the Indios. The Church is the last hope of the Amazonian peoples. Only the Church has the moral authority to bring their cries to the attention of the world. No one else; the parties and movements are accused of being partial.
Paulinha remembers that also in Manaus, the schoolchildren went on strike against climate change. “I would never have thought it possible. Hitherto, there has been little interest in the environment. This reawakening is something beautiful. And it would be nice to create an understanding between two mutually distant parts of the world. We young people are the driving force for change and this gives me great confidence for the future”. (L.C.)

DR. Congo. What it means to be a doctor and a missionary.

Sunday, 1 December 2019 8:00

Comboni Brother Juan Carlos Salgado, a medical doctor, has the joy of serving the poor and needy at Bondo hospital in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Bondo is a small city towards the north of the country in the province of Bas-Uelé, about 200 Km North-west of the capital Buta. It has about 40,000 inhabitants and is located in a very isolated region. The roads are poor and one can only travel by motorcycle or bicycle. Since consumer goods are transported by motorcycle and there are many military road-blocks where payment is necessary, the products are very expensive.

Bondo is a multi-ethnic city, with communities of Azande, Ngbandi, Benges or Nandes. Many people come here in search of gold. For the most part, they are Congolese and the majority come from Bas-Uelé and the surrounding provinces. The mines are rudimentary. The miners dig in the sand until they find gold which they then sell by weight. The market price here of a gram of gold is around 45 euro.In Bondo, a great deal of money changes hands but since the local authorities show no interest in the infrastructure and do not build good roads, the city is not developing. There is no electricity and solar panels are in use.
There are four of us here in the Comboni community of Bondo. We provide pastoral service in a parish a few kilometres from our house.

I am Mexican and, having taken first vows, I studied nursing at Monterrey in my home country. In 1998, I went to Nairobi, the capital of Kenya. That was my first contact with the African continent. Four years later, when I had finished my religious training, I was appointed to the Democratic Republic of Congo where my first mission was in Duru. I worked there for four years in a dispensary. In 2003, in order to improve my knowledge of tropical diseases, I went to study medicine at the University of Gulu, Uganda, for six years. I wanted to complete my education in an African environment.
In 2009 I was sent to work at Mungbere Anualite Hospital. It belongs to the diocese of Wamba where it was founded in 1980 and it is managed by the Comboni Missionaries. It has 140 beds in five departments: Medicine, Surgery, Obstetrics, Paediatrics and Maternity. Seven dispensaries located between 10 and 54 Km from Mungbere ensure medical assistance to a large portion of the people of the region. My work was to supervise the work of the seven dispensaries. I spent hours moving from one dispensary to another due to the bad roads. Besides that, there are also the many military road-blocks.
They knew I was a doctor and sometimes let me pass but on other occasions they would ask me for money.

After about a year I was transferred to Bondo. As well as my usual medical work, I spend a lot of time coordinating the work of the dispensaries and meeting the nursing personnel. My day begins very early. I meet with the night-shift nurses and then I see each one of the patients and I see to the people who come for medical consultations. If there are cases that need surgery, they are scheduled according to urgency. We carry out at least two operations every day, even though ours in a small hospital and our resources are few. We are two doctors and 18 nurses and we have 70 beds for admitted patients.
For me this experience is very meaningful and enriching. Through my work I am able to do my best as a missionary and professional. I learn a great deal from the people. I believe it is a reciprocal enrichment. My greatest benefit is to see patients returning home cured. It always gives me great pleasure to meet someone on the road who greets me. When I ask them where we met they tell me how I was the one who assisted them on the birth of one of their children or that I was the doctor who operated on their appendix. This is beautiful and gratifying.

Mexico.The Circus as a Life Project.

Sunday, 1 December 2019 8:00

In the Nahuatl language, spoken in the central region of Mexico, Machincuepa means somersaults or ‘pirouette’. For hundreds of adolescents and young people in the outskirts of Mexico City, Machincuepa also means relaxation and recreation, but, at the same time, a school of life in circus artistry that transforms them from living a life of crime and vice.

A majestic tent for the Cirque du Soleil was set up in the wealthy part of Mexico City. A few kilometres away, in the Las Águilas quarter, among the houses built into the hills, another sort of circus, born from the Cirque du Soleil, is transforming the lives of the poorest and neediest young people in the outskirts of the Mexican capital.
The Cirque du Soleil is the largest circus company in the world. It started in Canada in 1984. With more than 4,000 employees of whom 1,300 are artistes from various countries, it tours the world bringing wonder, excitement and enthusiasm to the public with the magic of its colours, music, acrobatics and stories. The shows are characterised by extraordinary ability and beauty.

The same aim of awakening the senses and exciting the emotions of the public inspired the Cirque du Soleil to create, together with the Canadian NGO Jeunesse du Monde, a social project aimed at helping children, adolescents and young people in situations of vulnerability such as poverty and crime, women victims of abuse, prisoners, mentally and physically challenged people, drug and other addicts. Consequently, in 1995, the Cirque du Monde (Circus of the World) emerged as a form of intervention that employs circus artistry as an alternative pedagogy for young people living in difficult or uncertain conditions who need to grow in self-esteem and re-make themselves by breaking free of their life of crime. This programme, called Circus Social, rapidly spread to the five continents and has centres in 16 countries and 46 cities, one of which is Machincuepa Circo Social A.C, in the Mexican capital.

A Circus of Life

‘The circus is a metaphor that helps us to understand life. There are risks, challenges, surprises, fears, desires, satisfaction and apprenticeship’, writes Juan Carlos Hernández Vázquez, who founded Machincuepa in 1999, in a guidebook that explains how it works. He adds: ‘The circus has a lot to offer young people. Besides being an enjoyable activity, it gives them the opportunity to take the risk and channel their adrenalin in a safe context’.
Machincuepa is not just an academy for training circus artistes but a school of life that is based upon a balance between two disciplines: circus artistry and social sciences. The execution of the first is enriched by the second. And it is taught by practice. In short, a social circus may be defined as a grouping of formative activities that transmit circus values to the pupils aged from 9 to 18 years.

One way of teaching the value of teamwork is, for example, forming a human pyramid. The importance of the group, solidarity and the weighing of risks is learned when one is responsible for holding a partner on the trapeze and, in the entire process, to avoid injury. Self-esteem grows when a young boy or girl learns to do things they never before dreamt of doing, such as balancing on a wheel or juggling three or four balls.
When learning to walk on stilts, learners are at first paralysed by fear but then they have the opportunity to see life from a different perspective. The trainers help them to walk while, at the same time, they work on their fear, helping the young people to exercise the instruments of prudence in daily life such as foreseeing danger, a correct balance, the ability to give and to receive advice. Falls, criticism, being laughed at and the lack of the resources help to better oneself reflect daily life. The aim is for every boy and girl to become aware that their efforts and their work are sufficient to gain positive results, and that giving up or being violent are no solutions.

The making of costumes and materials used for the show, such as doing make-up, are part of the pedagogical process. They are a means by which the young people articulate what they have learned; reinforce their self-confidence; change the image which others and they themselves have created; and add something new to the inheritance transmitted to them.In the personal construction of the personality, Machincuepa Circo Social unites the five principles of the circus: cooperation, security, joy, perseverance, and discipline. This is because those who make up the circus do not see themselves as functionaries but as a family in which each member has his own work to do and in which all are leaders.
Juan Carlos Hernández Vázquez points out: “ We have children who come to us shy, uncertain and afraid of taking part in any activity whatever. In the course of their training we see impressive changes, both in the way they express their emotions and in their physical attitudes as well as the way they start to understand more, are more courageous and learn faster. We have courses to help the children overcome the marginalisation, exclusion and violence that characterised the lives of many of them, having been repressed by poverty or by gangs connected to drug trafficking and prostitution”.
Just seeing their pride and satisfaction when they take part in a show in front of the public is one of the great joys of the formators.

One of the courses is exclusively for young women, to impart to them leadership abilities and to reduce their exposure to violence in the family, to prepare them for courtship, marriage and the workplace.
The prevention of leaving school early and empathising with the teachers and the school community are other topics of formation.
Formation is carried out in four phases. The first is the welcoming. The students are fascinated by the magic of the circus and by the desire to get involved in a particular act that the circus has awakened in them. At the same time, they acquire a sense of belonging to the group. The second phase consists in their becoming integrated into the group and being presented with the principles of the circus. In the third phase, the students learn how they should regard their community: family, parents and neighbours. The fundamental values of family and social life are explained: friendship, respect, loyalty, cooperation, teamwork, creativity, responsibility etc.
The fourth and final phase is the one that defines the life project. The apprentices learn how to recognise the abilities they have acquired so as to become builders of their own future. They learn how to juggle, perform acrobatics, how to walk the tight rope, how to be responsible on the trapeze … these exercises are ways of facing up to life and the dangers of the difficult and perilous environment in which they live.

Fernando Felix

The Mafias.The Sea routes for drugs.

Sunday, 1 December 2019 8:00

The drug-mafias have become experts in organization and logistical planning for the management of the dispatch and distribution of drugs by sea. The Sea Route 10, the Narco-Highway.

The international drugs trade uses, for the most part, a means of transport that has been in use since time immemorial, that of maritime vessels, used today to transport 90% of the world’s commercial goods. The mafias have become part of this by setting up an increasingly sophisticated network that has evolved through the use of the most varied technologies and vessels and especially through the study and planning of the sea routes that prove more profitable in this most lucrative of illegal businesses.

The drug-mafias have become experts in organization and logistical planning for the management of the dispatch and distribution of drugs by sea. Using part of their enormous income, they have hired experts in logistics, information technology and telecommunications. The drugs cartels (in particular those of Mexico, Colombia, China, Italy and Afghan-Pakistan) have become extremely efficient organizations in the management of drug trafficking both by land and by sea towards Africa, Europe, Russia, Asia, the United States, Canada, South America and Oceania. The Atlantic, Pacific and Indian Oceans are vast, immense areas where it is very difficult to intercept cargos of drugs firstly, because of the large number of vessels loaded with drugs, secondly, the vastness of the area and thirdly, the countless ports of departure and arrival that need to be watched.

Route 10

There is one particular route that is frequently used by drug-carrying ships called Sea Route 10 that crosses the great Atlantic and Pacific Oceans from one end to the other. Route 10 takes its name from the line of latitude 10 degrees north of the Equator, known to both drugs traders and police as the ‘Narco Highway’. In her most recent detailed book, ‘The Cocaine Seas-the drugs sea-routes’, Ana Lilia Pérez, one of the most brilliant minds in Mexican journalism, describes it well. Pérez writes: “Starting in 2004, due to increased controls, Route 10 is being increasingly used to avoid the police launches so that the ships loaded with drugs can come close to the African or European coasts where smaller boats take the cargo on board.

These smaller boats are ingeniously disguised”. Latitude 10 crosses the planet from one side to the other, from Colombia and Venezuela to Nigeria and Chad, then Sudan, Somalia, India, Thailand, the Philippines, Micronesia and the most remote Marshall Islands. Are the Polynesian islands involved in drug trafficking? Yes. Perez tells of dozens of boats belonging to Mexican drug cartels that fly the Marshall Islands’ flag and so exploit a classical measure of convenience to conceal their illegal cargos. Such places of natural beauty as the Marshalls, Palau and Vanuatu are themselves outlet markets for drugs which are, of course, sold in the larger markets of Oceania, Australia and New Zealand, two markets coveted by all the drug mafias since the price of drugs in these are the highest in the world. The Chinese gangs are also trading towards Australia and New Zealand using, among other things, large yachts.

The Mexican cartels, with the help of the cartel of Arellano Felix group, may boast that they were the first to plan a fruitful and efficient distribution of cocaine using the sea routes to construct a vast and widespread logistic structure, using all sorts of vessels, even resorting, like the Colombian dealers, to mini-submarines. In the year 2016 alone, the US Coast Guard discovered six boats loaded with drugs. They were like mini-submarines able to sail close to the surface, built in such a way that only the partially windowed turret is visible above the water, enabling them to be steered. The most travelled sea route is that from North West Mexico to the coast of California. Even the Brazilian drug gangs have copied the Colombian and Mexican cartels, creating their own improvised mini-subs. It seems that the creativity of the drug traders is apparently unlimited in light of the discovery, in Calexio in August 2016, of a small, complicated tunnel, 45 metres long, used to send small parcels of drugs by letting them be carried by the current. In Calexico: a series of channels built on the Mexican side connected, on the other side of the Mexico-USA border, with the All-American Canal which was constructed to irrigate land using the water of the Colorado River. The parcels of drugs were driven by the current of the small tunnel and collected by accomplices at Calexico.

Tons of drugs from South and Central America reach the coast of northern Spain and Portugal on their way to European markets. The same happens along the coasts of many countries of Western Africa. In fact, the western face of the immense African continent has become an integral part of drug trafficking by sea. Trafficking has greatly increased in countries such as Guinea-Bissau, Guinea, Cape Verde, Gambia, Senegal and Benín where the local gangs receive about 30% of the goods unloaded from the drug ships. Crossing the Sahel, cocaine, heroin and opium traffickers exploit the vast desert expanses devoid of controls that characterise the region. The drugs provide finance to terrorist groups such as the various branches of Al-Qaeda and Isis now rooted in those regions, as is also the case with Afghan opium, the main source of finance of the integralist Taliban extremists. Guinea-Bissau especially, is a perfect base where drug ships can dock.
Despite the anti-drugs war waged by President Duterte, the Chinese Triads have no hesitation in continuing to bring meth drugs to the Philippine market. As reported by the DEA (American Drugs Enforcement Agency) and by the PDEA (Philippine National Police and the Department of Justice), a select group of Chinese traffickers is dedicated to sending the chemical precursors to the Philippines. More precisely, according to the investigators, it is the Triads, the Chinese mafia, which is behind the enormous and extremely lucrative trade. The meths are transported by vessels of all sizes, among the tourist yachts; the dispatches are usually sent towards the north of Luzon, the largest of the Philippine Islands.

The drugs are unloaded at sea, far from any of the infrequent patrols of the Philippine Coastal Guard, where accomplice fishermen are waiting to take it ashore and hand it over to local gangs who take it to laboratories where, as they say in the drugs jargon, it is ‘cooked’. The same tried and tested method is used to transport and transfer the drugs from the Mexican coast to that of the United States. One of the ports for precursors on the Pacific coast, well known to the Mexican authorities is that of Lazaro Cardenas, in Michoacàn.
The port areas of Acapulco, Puerto Vallarta, Mazatlan and Culiacan are among the localities where illegal business between the Chinese Triads and the drugs cartels takes place.

Marco Leofrigio

Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed. Nobel Peace Prize 2019.

Sunday, 1 December 2019 8:00

In February 2018, in the midst of ongoing political turmoil, few could have predicted the radical political change of direction Ethiopia would experience within a matter of weeks.

The election in March 2018 of Abiy Ahmed as Chairman of the ruling Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF) and consequently the country’s Prime Minister heralded the beginning of a major shift in leadership style and approach in one of Africa’s most authoritarian polities.

Within his first 100 days, Abiy had released thousands of political prisoners, liberalised press and freedom of speech, legalised various once-criminalised opposition groups, placed his own stamp on Ethiopia’s military-security complex, committed the country to genuine multi-party democracy and ended 18 years of latent conflict with neighbouring Eritrea.
Many expect Abiy, who at 42 is the continent’s youngest leader, to be announced as the next Nobel Peace Prize laureate.

Abiy was a relative newcomer until shortly before becoming Prime Minister. A technocrat within the then Oromo People’s Democratic Organisation (OPDO, one of the four members of the EPRDF coalition), his emergence owed much to two key interlinked elements of the polity built by the EPRDF since May 1991. The first was ethnic federalism: the rationale behind ethnic federalism was to embed the rights of different ethnic groups and peoples within the state, preventing a single ethnic group dominating the rest.

To that end, the 1995 Constitution of the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia provided for a federal political system based on nine regions, whose shapes and boundaries derived from the ethnicity of the majority of citizens living there. The second key element was the leadership style of one of Abiy’s predecessors, Meles Zenawi, who turned into an authoritarian strongman at the beginning of the new century.

To secure his position, Meles and his allies purged the TPLF of critics and detractors, and forced out figures in the other three parties who had sided with his opponents during the crisis.
In doing so, Meles re-shaped the EPRDF coalition into a body whose leaders owed their loyalties directly to him. The post-2001 Meles government also sought to impose stricter and more personalized control over state and party machinery nationwide.

Meles died in August 2012, leaving a vacuum. With no appointed successor and plenty of rival candidates, a power struggle ensued within the EPRDF. A compromise saw Hailemariam Desalegn, viewed within the movement as a political “neutral”, elected Prime Minister as the various factions plotted their next move. Without a strongman directing from the centre, regional administrations and power-brokers saw an opportunity to flex their muscles.

This growing free-for-all also opened up new space for regional leaders and citizens to reassess their relationships with one another and with the TPLF-dominated government. Several critical flashpoints emerged in this regard during 2015 and 2016 in Ethiopia’s two most populous regions, Amhara and Oromia. In Amhara, the arrest of activists agitating for a reallocation of territory from Tigray to Amhara led to mass protests in mid-2016.

Six months earlier, in Oromia, a federal ‘master plan’ to expand the Ethiopian capital, Addis Ababa, into Oromia state had produced a similar result. Over time, and partly in response to the government’s heavy-handed and violent response, the protests spread and shifted from being about the integrity of the country’s internal state boundaries to wider opposition to perceived political and economic marginalization and human rights abuses by an authoritarian TPLF-controlled system. It was in this context that Hailemariam eventually resigned in February 2018.

Abiy’s rise can be explained to some extent by his work in Oromia realigning the OPDO with Oromo aspirations and acting to tackle Oromo grievances against a federal government perceived to be oppressive, anti-Oromo and chauvinistic.

Before becoming Prime Minister, Abiy himself was little known as a leader as opposed to an administrator. He followed a path well-trodden by many other Meles-era technocrats and gave little indication that his premiership would be transformative. Instead, he has taken significant risks. He has also shown himself to be a leader with mettle – facing off against some of the most embedded vested interests in the EPRDF state within months of taking office. He has not, however, demonstrated significant interest in building wider alliances to secure a more stable political trajectory for his government, preferring to rely on his own image and message as a mobiliser.

A major criticism leveled at Abiy by some of his opponents is that he is ‘all talk’. While there is some truth to this, the Ethiopian leader has generally proved decisive when necessary. He has taken critical decisions, which have profoundly disrupted the status quo. Within weeks of taking office, for example, Abiy dispatched the two most fearsome TPLF securocrats in the nation – the army chief of staff (Samora Yunis) and the national intelligence chief (Getachew Assefa), two of Meles’ most longstanding and effective enforcers.

Moreover, Abiy has shown himself magnanimous, releasing thousands of political prisoners and decriminalizing opposition parties and armed groups once labelled terrorists, including the Oromo Liberation Front (OLF). His record with individuals, however – particularly those most strongly associated with the Meles era – is somewhat more ambiguous and in line with the more traditional EPRDF approach. Indeed, Abiy’s medemer posture has not been built only upon uplifting words, progressive acts and reformist pledges. It has also rested upon a more cynical and somewhat irresponsible positioning as the un-doer and opposite of everything EPRDF that had come before.

Cynical, because Abiy was himself a part of the EPRDF machinery throughout the 2000s and a senior figure in an intelligence agency. Irresponsible, because in some of his speeches he has deliberately blurred critiques of the Meles/Hailemariam regimes with attacks on the TPLF and, most significantly, slurs on Tigrayans themselves. This has served not only to stoke further tensions between Tigrayans and their Amharic and Afar neighbours but – ironically – to strengthen the TPLF’s legitimacy and support in Tigray at a time when the party’s popularity had been in terminal decline.

Abiy has demonstrated much less interest in building coalitions and networks with the multitude of power players inside and outside the EPRDF than he has in appealing over their heads directly to the people. In the latter regard, he has managed to cultivate genuine affection and support from wide and diverse populations. Shortly after taking office Abiy undertook a tour of the country, where his appeals for unity, reconciliation and change resonated widely and inspired many.

The love of the crowd alone is, however, an unstable foundation for genuine progressive change in a country as multi-faceted as Ethiopia. This is particularly so as Abiy’s honeymoon period comes to a close and citizens begin to judge him by his achievements as well as his rhetoric. Moreover, ever since a rally in Addis Ababa was targeted by Abiy’s opponents with grenades in June 2018, with one death and over 100 injuries, these affairs have been more and more tightly policed and uneasy. Increasingly, the Ethiopian leader appears in public behind bullet-proof glass.

Abiy appears to have increasingly retreated into a highly personalized approach to government. Some of his most significant policy decisions were made without reference to wider government stakeholders and were implemented through informal or ad hoc mechanisms. Following the assassination of the Amhara Regional State President Ambachew Mekonnen in June 2019 Abiy replaced him with one of his own closest security aides, Temesgen Tiruneh, while EPRDF officials have openly speculated that the Prime Minister will either transform the EPRDF into a unitary, pan-Ethiopian party. Certainly, the next phase of Abiy’s premiership will require more institutionalization of “Abiymania” if it is to produce sustainable results.

The same is true for Abiy’s leadership in foreign policy, the arena where he has undoubtedly achieved the most in the shortest amount of time. Securing peace with neighbouring Eritrea after an 18-year cold war was a major triumph for the Abiy government, and has profound implications for regional security, stability and cooperation. The normalization of Ethiopian-Eritrean relations has relied heavily on the maintenance of friendly personal relations between Abiy and Isaias, who have undertaken numerous trips to each other’s capitals and beyond. The changed relationship between the two states remains, however, largely bound up with this personal relationship, rather than in a more formal, bilateral arrangement.

Despite a declaration of intent signed in Asmara and Jeddah in 2018, numerous key issues including trade, tariffs, currency, security and citizenship remain outside any formal legal arrangement. More generally, a resurgent Eritrea carries both opportunities and risks for Ethiopia, particularly given the growing significance of Gulf powers in the Horn. There is no guarantee that this mutually beneficial arrangement will last, particularly without a more formal legal basis.

Unlike Isaias, though, Abiy enjoys the support and confidence of Western aid donors, who continue to finance a significant part of Ethiopia’s national budget, and its security complex. While to some extent he inherited these ties from his predecessors, they are also founded on a genuine optimism in Western capitals regarding the Ethiopian leader. For decades, Western donors to Ethiopia have awkwardly balanced a stated foreign policy commitment to promoting democratization and respect for human rights with unfailing support to authoritarian regimes in the name of security and stability. Abiy represents an opportunity for donors to support a reformer and a force for regional stability.

A critical appraisal of Abiy’s leadership must also take into account the immense challenges of governing a state as diverse and complex. Ethiopia today faces an acute political and humanitarian crisis, which have made Ethiopia the country with the largest number of internally-displaced persons on the planet.

The Ethiopian leader’s hopeful rhetoric and progressive policies provide much-needed hope and optimism for the following years. Abiy’s early successes as a regional trouble-shooter are impressive, and his preparedness to challenge and overturn some of the most vicious and problematic features of the EPRDF polity shows courage and decisiveness.

That being said, a review of his record cannot help but leave one with the impression that he is contending with forces the magnitude and shape of which he has yet to fully grasp. There are pressing issues, however, which will force the matter. The first is the ongoing ethnic violence and the wider political crisis.
The second is the forthcoming election, due to be held in 2020. This will be a major test of Abiy’s leadership.

Jonathan Fisher
University of Birmingham

Music. Noa. Seeds of peace.

Sunday, 1 December 2019 8:00

Deeply rooted in the land and culture of his ancestors, Achinoam Nini, known in the world of art as Noa, is still sending out a message of peace that involves all of us.
The western world came to know of her when, in 1994, with her own special grace and simplicity, she performed her own very personal version of the Bach-Gounod Ave Maria, on live worldwide television in St. Peter’s Square, for Pope John Paul II. Accompanying this Yemenite Jewess from Tel Aviv, was guitarist Gil Dor as she wove musical Arabesques in that immortal melody to which she had added a somewhat pacifist text. That same music occupied the final spot on her first international album produced together with her mentor Pat Metheny.

A star was born. However, that Ave Maria and that performance gave rise to an avalanche of criticism from the ultraorthodox. And that criticism is still active today and, despite her worldwide popularity, has resulted in her being practically prevented from performing in her own country where her concerts are few and far between. Nevertheless, that same Ave Maria concludes her first album, ‘Letters to Bach’: in confirmation that neither time nor extreme views have calmed her desire for intercultural dialogue, or her desire to communicate, through her art, universal values of peace and brotherhood.

In this performance we discover her extraordinary voice, the faultless guitar-playing of Gil Dor, and nothing other than the immortal genius of Bach which she reinvents in her own way, adding her own words, like twelve timeless flowers, sung at times in English and at times in Hebrew: a risky project from which the woman emerges with her usual class – a result due also to the mythical producer Quincy Jones – confirming, on the one hand, her eclecticism of expression and, on the other, showing that certain musical treasures continue to speak to us and inspire us even beyond the confines of time and cultures.

The mother of three young children, and deeply rooted in the land and culture of her ancestors, Achinoam Nini, known to the world of music as Noa, continues to send out messages that involve all of us and, despite coming from a perennially disturbed country, has reached her fifteenth album (in a career lasting almost thirty years). She has also received a number of awards testifying to her intercultural humanism such as the Franciscan Pilgrim of Peace and the Crystal Award of the World Economic Forum and has been for years the FAO Ambassador and is also involved with a number of humanitarian organisations.

Despite the criticism of many of her compatriots, Noa continues her struggle for dialogue, especially between Israelis and Palestinians: “If we refuse to recognise the rights of both parties and to accept our obligations – she wrote some time ago in her blog – if each of us sticks to their own version, holding that of the others in contempt, if we continue to prefer the sword to dialogue, if we sanctify the land and not the lives of our children, we will all soon be forced to seek a colony on the Moon, given that our earth will be soaked in so much blood and covered with so many stones that we will no longer have anywhere
we can live”.
Franz Coriasco

Nigerian gangs.

Sunday, 1 December 2019 8:00

A large part of the drugs coming from Latin America and Asia is controlled and managed by gangs of Nigerians (such as the Area boys known as Agberos, other gangs of young boys called Bakassi and the fearsome violent confraternity of the Black Axe) dominated by the powerful Nigerian mafia which, with its centres in Europe and the rest of the world, exports drugs together with the trafficking of women.

The establishment of such groups worldwide has been facilitated by the Nigerian diaspora, present in many parts of the world as well as by Nigeria’s membership of the Commonwealth. This latter fact, in particular, has made possible close commercial relations with the Indian sub-continent, a producer of opium and heroin, and with the world of the Anglo-Saxon consumer. Such aspects, together with the qualitative leap by the Nigerian mafia in recent years, both economically and technologically, have made it a real nerve centre, capable of governing and managing a large part of the African drugs trade.

The important increase of the area, as a strategic hub for narcotics, had its beginnings in the eighties when the country became one of the main distribution points for the trafficking of cocaine coming from South America and of heroine coming into the country from Central and South-East Asia that were destined to end up in the European markets. It reached its peak in the nineties when, in 1992, the discoveries of cocaine at Lagos airport were so great that they led the Nigerian authorities to suspend direct flights to Rio de Janeiro. The trafficking was being managed by a great trans-national network with its main fulcra in Nigeria. The organisation was moving large amounts of drugs which, after leaving Colombia, were transferred to Brazil and later reached Nigeria from where they were forwarded to the main European centres. The organisation was led by Nigerian citizens and the lower levels were occupied especially by Ghanaians.

Since then, the Nigerian traffickers have been considered the main vectors of drugs, a real industry at the service of heroin and cocaine trafficking. They are present in all the key points of production and trafficking and, through their compatriots living abroad, they have formed criminal gangs comparable to those of Colombia, Turkey or China. These organisations, like others, base their strength on the tribal system and the ethnical solidarity that exists between clans and families.
The transfer of narcotics to the western markets takes place mainly through a large number of couriers who hide the drugs in their luggage or, more often, swallow them, after wrapping them in condoms or some other plastic material.
This method is so widespread in Nigerian gangs that, between 2006 and 2008, the years in which the phenomenon began to assume considerable proportions, of 1,400 couriers discovered, 57% of them were Nigerian. It is not unusual to have more than one courier on the same flight: during the previously mentioned period, more than thirty couriers were discovered on a flight to Amsterdam.

As early as 1995, the US authorities estimated that 50% of the heroin circulating in their country was brought there by Nigerians. Organised Nigerian crime, as has been emphasised several times by UNODC (United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime), has for some time been active beyond Nigerian borders and is now widespread in various areas of the world, led by Italy, Canada, Germany, Spain, Portugal, Belgium, Russia, Brazil and Japan.
The Nigerian mafia for the transit of drugs, both in Nigeria and its bordering countries, is compelled to ally itself with the fierce Islamic groups of Boko Haram at the height of its power in the region. In the nineties, a group was formed with a centre for studies of religious questions for the purpose of introducing Sharia Law into Nigeria.

However, in 2002, led by Mohammed Yusuf, it changed its form and its mission and its guerrillas, camped in the jungle in the north east of Nigeria, began to launch attacks on institutions and those peasant villages which resisted their extortionate demands. The turning point came in 2009 following a clear and heavy defeat in an offensive against the police which resulted in the death of about 700 insurgents and the capture and execution of Mohammed Yusuf. This situation demanded a change in leadership, assumed by Abubakar Shekau, and in strategy which led the group to carry out real terrorist attacks. According to reliable analysts, Boko Haram is not so much an expression of radical religion as of internal divisions within Nigeria where the south is rich in petroleum and the north is extremely poor. (F.R.)

Photo Gallery – Brazil. COP 30. “It’s time to act”

Advocacy

Baobab

Youth & Mission