Sierra Leone: Fighting for Women’s Right to Land

Shortly after her father died, Sia Bona’s husband’s family took over her father’s oil-palm plantation and rice paddies, and drove her and her mother from their home. “I came from riches, but now I am poor,” said the 45-year-old teacher from Koidu town in eastern Sierra Leone.

Like many African countries, Sierra Leone has a dual land tenure system, with aspects from the colonial era and customary ownership varying in proportion, depending on location. This creates confusion regarding land rights for women, says Catherine Gatundu, natural resource rights coordinator at NGO ActionAid International.

The 2007 Devolution of Estate Act criminalizes depriving a woman from inheriting her husband’s property after his death. It recognizes customary marriage, the rights of polygamous spouses, and imposes penalties for evicting a spouse or child from the marital home.

The inheritance should be shared among surviving family, with 35 percent going to the spouse, 35 percent to the children, 15 percent to parents and 15 percent in line with any customary laws.

But the act only recognizes an individual’s right to land, not a family’s, and the vast majority of Sierra Leonean women live under traditional land tenure structures that do not recognize a woman’s right to own property.

While statutory law governs the capital, Freetown, and its surroundings, customary law – under the heads of ruling families known as paramount chiefs – governs the provinces. Paramount chiefs, the “custodians of the land”, are generally men and most ethnic groups do not allow women to inherit land and property.

Customary law applies in 12 of Sierra Leone’s 14 districts.

As the government looks to reform land policy ahead of presidential elections in November, gender activists are pushing to make women’s right to land a reality, calling the current set-up “discriminatory”.

“The land tenure system in the rural areas actually affects women the most,” said Gladys Brima, the founder of Women’s Partnership for Justice and Peace, a local non-profit organization. “Women use the land more. But when it comes to ownership, women do not own the land.”

According to the US State Department’s 2011 Investment Climate Statement, agriculture accounts for over half of Sierra Leone’s income, up to 80 percent of the country’s agricultural workforce are women, and women farmers directly affect 40 percent of the national revenue.

Read more: IRIN

Nigeria Sends 140 Police to Guinea Bissau for Peacekeeping

The Nigerian police have deployed 140 personnel to Guinea Bissau for peacekeeping operations, the deputy Police Force Public Relations Officer, Mr Frank Mba said.

Mba said in a statement on Sunday in Abuja that the personnel were from the Formed Police Unit (FPU) who were being supported by modern crime fighting and peacekeeping equipment, including five Amoured Personnel Carriers (APCs), 12 patrol vehicles, arms and ammunition and crowd control equipment.

"The Nigeria police officers are expected to assist the government and people of Guinea Bissau in restoring peace and stability in the country.

"The deployment is in fulfillment of Nigeria’s pledge and commitment to assist ECOWAS in restoring rule of law and general orderliness in Guinea Bissau and ECOWAS sub region,” the statement said.

The statement also said that the contingent was equipped to be self sustaining in terms of food rations and medical equipment.

The contingent was accompanied by a team of medical personnel, comprising two doctors and six nurses.

The statement said that unlike what obtained in the past, all the deployed officers had been paid three months allowances in advance on the orders of the Inspector- General of Police (IG).

"This gesture is to boost the morale and allow the Formed Police Unit (FPU) personnel to take care of the welfare of their dependents before departure,’’ the statement said.

The statement said that the contingent had since arrived in Guinea Bissau and were received by that country’s Minister of Internal Security and the police chief.

The deployment to Guinea Bissau brings to nine the number of countries where Nigerian police officers are currently serving in international peacekeeping operations.

The other countries are Liberia, Haiti, Sudan, South Sudan, Somalia, East Timor, Cote D’Ivoire and the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Source African Press Agency

Increasing Password Leaks, Hacking Reports - Tips and Ideas

Reblogged from @lissnup:

It's more than just an annoyance to see the growing number of reports of password files being "leaked" or web based services being compromised by hackers. It is a serious security risk for many people - and we can't be sure how many might be affected.

What can we think about doing that might reduce the risks? Here's a few tips and ideas:

Read more… 301 more words

Telecomix: DIY Drones for Peace – Virtual Reporting

This past Saturday at the Salon des Solidarités in Paris, a meeting of ‘Hackers and NGOs‘ took place. There, between a Médecin du Monde stand and a stall selling fair trade jewellery, attendees gathered around a strange humming machine. A miniature drone, straight from Brittany in north-west France, where a handful of members of the hacktivist collective Telecomix have been hard at work on its development. But this particular drone has not been designed to roam in the clear French skies, but rather to assist Syrians in their fight against Bashar al-Assad’s dictatorship.

The initiative was launched by KheOps, a nickname behind which a young man with long blond hair operates. KheOps had been shocked this winter by the deaths of the journalists Marie Colvin and Rémi Ochlik.

It’s better to lose a drone than a journalist.

In the do-ocracatic realm so dear to hackers, intentions are of little significance; only concrete actions count. So for the past several weeks KheOps, aided by other self-described Telecomix “agents”, has set out to construct a customised surveillance machine.

With this project, Telecomix are adding another brick to the solidaristic edifice of 1’s and 0’s they began constructing during the Arab revolutions. In the words of Tomato, a German agent, the informal collective “is an idea. The idea of free communication. Any type of communication“. InTunisia, Egypt and  Syria, again and again the group has helped to eductate people in how use the Internet safely. With Syria this week appearing to have launched a new crackdown^{Documenting the project}

The drone must be able to collect and disseminate information, while evading a sniper ambush. Adhering to these specification was an imperative therefore, as KheOps explained.

The person should take the least risk possible. It must be able to be piloted manually, by sight, via a camera.

The camera is equipped with a transmitter, allowing images to be broadcast live within a theoretical radius of several kilometres. The small working group has inspired many projects under development in recent months, in the same spirit of sousveillance, such as the Occupy Wall Street demonstrators’ Occucopter. Construction is not a question of reinventing the wheel, as the hacktivists explain. “We stuck the bitsand pieces of the drone’s brain together with duct tape,” said Okhin, a skinny fast-talking agent. “The  controller, for example, already exists, and it’s then a matter of patching² it based on our experience.”

In truth, Saturday’s demonstration was something of a disappointment. “It’s not working yet, it worked ok yesterday,” KheOps apologised. “We don’t know (how it will work), we learn as we go.” The goal is to finish the project by late June. The most important step is to provide clear documentation, so that the drone can be easily reproduced. That fact also has another, more unfortunate consequence, of which they are extremely conscious: the drone could also be used for repressive purposes. Moving the equipment remain an unresolved problem; drones and cameras are not a habitual sight in Syria. It’s there that the links Telecomix has forged with a number of NGO’s may prove useful, as agent Ksa explained.

We’re going to get them back in using NGO networks, via Turkey, Lebanon and Jordan. We don’t necessarily need the NGO’s, but it’s better.

While those unfamiliar with the hacker world may find it surprising, the link with NGO’s in conflict zones makes sense. The imperative of DIY; freedom of communication as a sacred principle; the need to protect one’s identity in certain circumstances; an acute awareness of the fragility of technical infrastructure, and thus resilience: all are shared foundational values of the hacker and the NGO activist. Hackers have a long tradition of active engagement. The Hacktivismo collective, for example, an offshoot of the legendary Cult of the Dead Cow, who first coined the term hacktivism back in 1996. “Some wear two hats, hacker and NGO,” noted one of the agents.

“We have already worked with RSF³,” KheOps recalled. “We know them, we get along well.” A collaboration with the International Federation of Human Rights (FIDH) was organised “as soon as Ben Ali fled, when Telecomix began supporting organisations,” said Nicolas Diaz, webmaster and head of IT for the FIDH. “After assessing needs, we set up a digital safe to store the archives.” With his long hair rivalling that of KheOps or Okhin, Diaz does not look out of place, and is in familiar territory. “We have developed encrypted communication tools with members of Ubuntu and Telecomix,” he explained. Sharp, hyper-reactive, a little protective of their time, the hacktivists sometimes need a little “level-headedness, in the face of technical requirements,” he suggested.

This strong relationship has already resulted in the project Syrian Stories, launched in March. The platform draws together a selection of videos and puts them in context, drawing on documents from the Telecomix Broadcast System (TBS), a database posted online at the same time. The whole project forms a sort of timeline of memorial, a much more polished and produced version of the quite raw (in every sense) material from the TBS. And later, insha’Allah, these images can be used as evidence in any trial.

The Pony Pirate Box

They also plan to adapt the concept of the Pirate Box, itself originally a hack. The initial Pirate Box was an open source tool as big as a lunch box that emits a wi-fi signal and allows the user to share files with anyone, without the need to reveal their identity. It offered an invitation to rediscover the joys of sharing culture and the culture of sharing. Under the guise of music sharing, the on-the-ground version of the tool could be used to communicate within a critical perimeter, a bombed building for example. The Pirate Pony Box, as they’ve humorously baptised their version, is equipped with an anonymised chat module. Inexpensive and powered by solar panels, several Pirate Boxes could form a mini-network grid, which would pass information from relay to relay.

Lulz and honour

In just one year, Telecomix has acquired an impressive notoriety that its agents could never have anticipated. “Hype”, encouraged by an aura of technical wizardry, has led to the hacktivists being solicited from all sides. “We can’t help everyone,” interjected Okhin. “NGO’s should not depend on hackers but be autonomous. We post the documentation online, use it! Anyway, it would be bad for our ego if we became James Bond.”

With lulz in their DNA, we can likely trust these young men in baggy pants and sneakers to avoid that fate. While aware of the grave seriousness of current events, they retain a sense of fun in their approach. The taste for the technical challenge is inherent in hackers. A philosophy summarised in a phrase, delivered amid a burst of laughter by a highly caffeinated Okhin.

The only extraordinary thing we do is not sleeping. If it pissed us off to save the world, we wouldn’t do it.

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Text: Sabine Blanc / Images: Ophelia Noor

OWNI.eu

Kidnapped Aid Workers Rescued By NATO in Afghanistan Home and Safe

The Kenyan aid worker, Moragwa Oirere, rescued by NATO special forces from her kidnappers in Afghanistan last week arrived home safely on Sunday night, local media reported on Monday.

Moragwa Oirere arrived aboard Emirates flight EK721 at 7pm (local time) and was received by the parents and officials from the British High Commission, Daily Nation online newspaper reported.

Ms Moragwa was kidnapped on May 22 in Afghanistan together with three of her colleagues. They were all freed on Saturday morning in a Special Forces raid.

British and American Special Forces conducted the helicopter raid in Badakhshan province, north of Afghanistan where the four -Helen Johnson, Moragwe Oirere, and the two Afghans -were being held.

They worked for Medair, a humanitarian non-governmental organization based near Lausanne, Switzerland.

The four had hired horses to reach a remote village in the Yawan district where they were kidnapped by a small, armed band.

Meanwhile, President Mwai Kibaki has thanked the British Government and NATO coalition forces for rescuing the 4 humanitarian aid workers held in a cave in a remote province in north-west Afghanistan.

"Kenyans are delighted and grateful to the British Government and all parties involved for freeing Moragwa Oirere and all her colleagues," said the President on Sunday.

Kibaki described the rescue operation which was authorized by Prime Minister David Cameron and U.S. General John Allen, the top commander of U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan, as "impressively swift, ingenious and heroic."