AU collective withdrawal plan from ICC suffer setback (Read full details)

PHOTO: Missionaries of Africa

The plan by members of African Union (AU) to collectively withdraw from the International Criminal Court (ICC) may suffer a setback as Nigeria and some other countries objected the proposal.

The Minister of Foreign Affairs, Geoffrey Onyeama, said this in an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) on Friday in Addis Ababa.

Onyeama explained that there was a strategy adopted by AU for collective withdrawal from the ICC which Nigeria did not subscribe to.

The minister said that when the issue came up during a meeting, several countries kicked against it.

He said Nigeria and others believed that the court had an important role to play in holding leaders accountable, hence Nigeria fully stood by it.

“Nigeria is not the only voice agitating against it, in fact Senegal is very strongly speaking against it, Cape Verde, and other countries are also against it.

“What they (AU) do was to set up a committee to elaborate a strategy for collective withdrawal.

“And after, Senegal took the floor, Nigeria took the floor, Cape Verde and some other countries made it clear that they were not going to subscribe to that decision,” he said.

According to him, a number of countries also took the floor to say that they needed time to study it before they acceded to that position.

He said that Zambia, Tanzania, Liberia, Botswana and host of others were not willing to withdraw from the court.

While faulting AU position on ICC, Onyeama stressed that each individual country willingly acceded to the 1998 Rome Statue on the setting up of the court.

“Each country free and willingly acceded to the Treaty, and not all of the members of the AU acceded, each country acceded individually exercising its own sovereign right.

“So each country, if they want to withdraw has the right to do that individually,

“The issue is that the AU which was not a party to the Rome Statues which established the court, should not be developing a strategy for a collective withdrawal for something that each country entered into individually.

“Those who feel they want to withdraw should do that individually.”

NAN reports that in what seems to be a continental domino effect, three African states in 2016 publicly declared their intention to withdraw from the court.

The countries include Brundi, South Africa and The Gambia, with the reports that Namibia, Kenya and Uganda were contemplating withdrawing from the ICC

The court has repeatedly been criticized by African states as an inefficient, neo-colonial institution of the Western powers to try African countries.

This argument is supported by the fact that nine of the ten situations under investigation, with three others under preliminary investigations, involve African countries.

However, as noted from a social shorthand by the European Centre for Development Policy Management (ECDPM), “the rift is often caused by a neat difference in priorities.

“Where one gives more importance to peace processes, while the other gives more weight to obtaining [international] justice.”

African state parties to the Rome Statute make up the biggest regional membership, comprising 34 of the 124 members.

From 2009, African countries have called for collective withdrawal from the ICC but some countries have pushed back.

AU collective withdrawal plan from ICC suffer setback

Pope axes Knights chief in condoms row (Read full details)

Pope Francis waves from the balcony of St Peter's basilica during the traditional "Urbi et Orbi" Christmas message to the city and the world, on December 25, 2016 at St Peter's square in Vatican. PHOTO: ANDREAS SOLARO / AFP

Pope Francis has ended a bitter dispute with the Knights of Malta by demanding and obtaining the resignation of the ancient Catholic order’s top official in a row over condoms.

The resignation of Grand Master Matthew Festing, confirmed by the order on Wednesday, follows a month-long stand-off that had become a test of the reforming pope’s authority over Church conservatives.

“The Grand Master was received on Tuesday by Pope Francis who requested his resignation, which the Grand Master agreed to,” a spokesman for the Order told AFP.

In theory, Briton Festing was in the job for life. His resignation will have to be approved by the Order’s sovereign council.

The unprecedented and very public dispute between the Vatican and the Knights was seen by Holy See watchers as a proxy war between Church liberals and conservatives.

It erupted last month when Francis appointed a five-strong team to examine the circumstances in which the Order’s number three was forced out of his job.

The Order, a Church-linked charity body descended from the crusading knights of the Middle Ages, refused to cooperate.

They said the December dismissal of Grand Chancellor Albrecht von Boeselager was an internal affair.

Festing subsequently claimed in a leaked letter that three of the Vatican’s appointees had a conflict of interest because of links to a Geneva-based fund in which the Order also had a stake.

That unprecedented defiance of papal authority appears to have been the last straw.

Von Boeselager’s dismissal had been seen as being the result of him being too liberal for the tastes of Raymond Burke, the American cardinal who has acted as the Vatican’s liaison with the Order since being sidelined from more important roles by Francis.

Burke is a prominent conservative figure who has been outspoken in his criticism of Francis’s efforts to reform Church teaching on questions related to the family, marriage and divorce.

Reports in the specialist Catholic press suggested Boeselager was targeted because he authorised Order charities to take part in programmes distributing free condoms to prevent the spread of AIDS.

Conservatives say any use of condoms violates Church teaching but Francis and his predecessor Benedict XVI have both said they can be acceptable as a means of containing AIDS.

Pope axes Knights chief in condoms row

At least 7 killed in Shabaab attack on Mogadishu hotel (Read full details)

At least seven people were killed after two car bombs exploded outside a popular Mogadishu hotel Wednesday and gunmen forced their way inside the building and opened fire, police said.
The attack, claimed by the Al-Qaeda aligned Shabaab insurgent group, began when a car loaded with explosives rammed the gate of the Dayah Hotel near the Somali parliament and state house.
Gunmen then stormed the hotel and exchanged fire with security guards, according to police official Ibrahim Mohammed.

A second massive blast went off after ambulances and journalists had rushed to the scene, leaving at least four reporters injured, including an AFP photographer who received shrapnel wounds to his shoulder and leg.
“So far we have counted about seven dead, most of them civilians and security guards. There are also many people who were wounded in the two blasts,” said Mohammed.
“Two gunmen were killed and the area is under control of security forces,” he said.
The Shabaab group claimed responsibility in a statement distributed on its Telegram messaging account.
“The mujahideen fighters have attacked a hotel and have managed to enter the hotel after detonating a car loaded with explosives,” read the statement.
The Shabaab is fighting to overthrow the internationally-backed government of Somalia and regularly stages deadly attacks on government, military and civilian targets in the capital and elsewhere in the war-torn country.

At least 7 killed in Shabaab attack on Mogadishu hotel

Gambia’s new government mired in controversy (Read full details)

Fatoumata Jallow-Tambajang is often described as the woman who persuaded The Gambia's divided opposition parties to club together and field a single candidate in the December 1 election Barrow eventually won. PHOTO: YOUTUBE

Gambian President Adama Barrow’s administration faced a backlash Tuesday after admitting its new vice-president may be constitutionally barred from serving and confirming ex-leader Yahya Jammeh will be permitted to keep a fleet of luxury cars.

One day after naming Fatoumata Jallow-Tambajang as deputy leader, an outcry broke out after local media alleged she was 67 years old, two years over the legal maximum to serve in the post.

Barrow spokesman Halifa Sallah told journalists he was aware of the reports and advisors were recommending a parliamentary vetting process be put in place to avoid a similar situation, without confirming Jallow-Tambajang’s true age.

Several phone calls to Jallow-Tambajang by AFP went unanswered on Tuesday.

“I have spoken to President Barrow that many concerns are being raised,” Sallah said.

“The president has been carefully advised that he constitute a vetting committee,” Sallah added, while asserting that “the appointment was done in good faith based on the facts that were available”.

Barrow was in “final discussions with west African leaders “in order to announce the hour of coming,” Sallah said, adding that he would arrive “very soon”.

Barrow is currently living in Senegal until his safety can be guaranteed by thousands of soldiers from five African nations currently deployed in The Gambia, but unease is growing over his prolonged absence.

Equatorial Guinea Tuesday for the first time confirmed the presence of Jammeh in the small west African country, where he had been offered refuge as “a political exile”.

President Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo, another long-serving African leader, had convinced Jammeh “to avoid any situation of armed confrontation”, government spokesman Eugenio Nze Obiang said.

– Bentley and Benz –
The news came on the same day it was confirmed that ex-leader Jammeh had struck a deal with Barrow to keep a fleet of luxury cars in exchange for leaving the country on Saturday for exile in Equatorial Guinea.

An airport source who saw the cargo being prepared on Saturday night when Jammeh flew out of the country said “two Rolls Royces and one (Mercedes) Benz” were loaded onto a Chadian cargo plane, while 10 others await shipment.

“The government was fully prepared and supportive of ex-president Jammeh to leave and as a result they found it is better to leave with all his properties,” his spokesman said.

The airport source even reported a tussle over whether to take Bentleys or Rolls Royces onto the cargo flight, before settling for the latter.

The news is likely to anger Gambians who have also learnt Jammeh took off with $11 million of state funds, according to one of his Dakar-based advisors, leaving the coffers nearly empty.

“I am so sickened by the deal; but I guess saving just one life on either side is worth more than all of his wealth,” Twitter user @YesWeCan_Gambia wrote.

An “entry-level” Rolls Royce costs $250,000, and most Gambians live on less than $2 a day.

Meanwhile a top judicial official told AFP the country’s sole remaining Supreme Court judge has resigned following attempts by Jammeh to overturn the result of a December 1 election won by Barrow.

“It is true that the chief justice has resigned from his position. His resignation letter is dated 20th January. He is out of the country. He has gone back to Nigeria,” judicial secretary Landing Sanneh told AFP.

Emmanuel Fagbanle had deferred a decision on hearing Jammeh’s legal complaint over a lack of other judges to hear the case, but was known to be uneasy with the mercurial strongman’s use of the court system to pursue his personal grievances.

Jammeh’s defiance over the election result prompted more than 76,000 people to seek shelter in Senegal, the UN refugee agency said Tuesday, citing Senegalese authorities.

The agency said “more than an estimated 8,000 people, as of Monday, have returned to their native Gambia since the political crisis there ended” when Jammeh left the country on Saturday night.

Gambia’s new government mired in controversy

US scientists raise bar for sea level by 2100 (Read full details)

This handout photo taken on March 26, 2016 and released by NASA shows a perspective of the northeast coastline of Greenland, one of the world’s two great ice sheets, whose melting could contribute to rising sea levels (AFP Photo/Handout)<br />

In the last days of Barack Obama’s administration, US government scientists warned even more sea level rise is expected by century’s end than previously estimated, due to rapid ice sheet melting at the poles.

The report by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) set the “extreme” scenario of global average sea level rise by 2100 to 8.2 feet (2.5 meters), up half a meter from the last estimate issued in 2012.

“We raised the upper limit of our scenarios,” lead author William Sweet told AFP.

“It is possible. It has a very low probability. But we can’t discount it entirely.”

The figures are among the highest ever issued by the US government, and take into account new scientific studies on the disappearing ice cover in Greenland and Antarctica.

“Recent (scientific) results regarding Antarctic ice sheet instability indicate that such outcomes may be more likely than previously thought,” said the report, released on January 19.

It also revised the lower end of the anticipated range, saying nearly one foot (0.3 meters) is expected by 2100, up from four inches (0.1 meters) previously.

This put the NOAA report closer in line with the 2013 United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which said global sea levels would likely rise from one to three feet by the end of the century.

The US space agency NASA has also warned that significant sea level rise is “unavoidable,” given mankind’s continued burning of fossil fuels like oil and gas that contribute to warming the planet.

In 2015, NASA said the Earth is likely locked in to at least three feet of sea level rise, and probably more.

But the big question remains: how soon? Researchers do not know how soon the seas will rise, and whether they will hit these levels in this century or beyond.

“We are not projecting anything. Everything is dependent on the amount of future heating, ocean and atmospheric heating,” explained Sweet.

– Localized results –

Though experts warn that the past is not an accurate predictor of future sea level rise, global average sea level has climbed eight to nine inches since 1880, when modern record-keeping began.

Much of that has taken place in recent years, as global warming has accelerated. Seas around the world have risen an average of nearly three inches since 1992.

The NOAA report also pointed to regional dangers of sea level rise, with some portions of the US coast more likely to see above-average rise and increased flooding than other parts of the world.

“The world’s ocean is not going to rise like water in a bathtub,” said Sweet.

With the exception of Alaska and the Pacific Northwest, almost all US coasts are expected to see greater than global average sea level rise in the next eight decades.

Land in Alaska is rising, but in Louisiana and along the Gulf Coast and the mid-Atlantic, it is sinking.

Other factors, like changing ocean circulation in some parts of the planet, affect how much oceans mount in various places.

As ice sheets melts, the gravity around Earth will change as the planet loses mass, causing some areas to see higher or lower sea level rise than the global average.

Recent research has shown that about three feet of sea level rise “would permanently inundate areas currently home to two million Americans,” said the report.

Six feet would flood the homes of six million people in the United States.

Sweet said the report’s release was not planned to coincide with the end of the Obama presidency, or to precede the inauguration of Donald Trump, who has expressed doubts about climate change and pledged to increase fossil fuel extraction in the United States.

“The timing might look suspect,” Sweet said.

“But no, this has actually been in the works for over a year

US scientists raise bar for sea level by 2100