Africa crisis warning

Some months ago I wrote this blog post expressing concern that Africa may not be doing enough in preparation for the world's changing climate. Events have come to light which vindicate those like me who have been crying out for a long time about the need for us to take heed of what the climate scientists have been saying for years. Millions of people across East Africa are already facing starvation and dire poverty as rising food prices and a drought leave them without food.

Oxfam are warning that aid is needed urgently across Somalia, Ethiopia and Kenya, where many people who rely on imported food have seen prices go up by as much as 500 per cent.

Lindsey Hilsum Channel 4 News's International Editor was based in Kenya between 1982 and 1989. She wrote this report on returning to parts of Northern Kenya recently, after 20 years.

Among other things, she writes:

"It’s a world away from Nairobi, where Kenyan MPs – who are, incidentally, paid more than their British counterparts – drive around in fancy cars and plot for the next election."

"Climate change scientists say northern Kenya, Ethiopia, Sudan and Somalia can expect more extreme weather events like this. Later this month heavy rains associated with El Nino are expected, but they may not improve the pasture so much as cause erosion by flooding. The aid agencies call this a “climate and poverty hotspot”, a desperate conjunction of misfortune. The people here need money to build dams to conserve water when the rains come. They need new laws on land tenure to minimise the risk of conflict between different groups and tribes over scarce resources. They need alternative employment opportunities, or they’ll end up leaving pastoralism, which remains the best way of using this arid land, and add to Kenya’s growing population of unemployed slum-dwellers.

"Aid agencies, both foreign and national, can help alleviate the worst of the suffering but in the end a government is responsible for the welfare of its people.

"As we drove south I thought how China has lifted 400m people out of poverty in the last 30 years. That’s the population equivalent of 10 Kenyas. What has the Kenyan government done in that time? It hasn’t even built a decent road from Baragoi to Maralal."

This doctor's blog from Kenya is worth reading..

Climate Change at the UN

As a global ambassador for Oxfam, Djimon has travelled in sub-Saharan Africa and seen the direct links between climate change and human suffering. "I've witnessed firsthand devastation with drought," Mr Hounsou told reporters after he helped to kick off the UN Summit on Climate Change. "Year after year, local farmers are still expecting rain to come pretty much as it used to. Its not coming, so they adapt, with their crops and plantings."

I share Djimon's opinion about the human cost of climate change and I too am passionately aware of the enormity of the problem that it poses to mankind and to our home, the Earth. I applaud him for the good work he has been doing as a humanitarian and as a climate activist. He has let people know what the rich industrialised nations need to be doing to help the less rich developing nations adapt to and mitigate the effects of climate change, a very real problem that is creeping up on us slowly but surely. "Climate change threatens to roll back years of development gains", the UN Secretary General said during his address to the General Assembly at the UN climate change summit. The entire continent of Australia has been in the grip of a drought for the best part of a decade.

Parts of East Africa have experienced successive years of failed rains. In West Africa, desertification is a serious problem in the arid Sahel regions, causing the migration southwards of large numbers of people; whereas flooding is becoming more frequent in the coastal regions. Africa is the continent that is least prepared to deal with the effects of climate change, yet the people of Africa are those who will suffer most severely from its impact. And this is already being felt in many parts of the continent.

This is a global problem, the cause for which the rich industrialised nations must accept responsibility. It is a problem that we must work together to tackle, rich and less rich nations alike. However, it is trite that because the rich industrialised nations bear a greater responsibility for the problem, they ought to be providing assistance more actively to the less well-off countries in the fight against climate change. The idea being mooted that Western nations should pay for investment in technologies designed to reduce the greenhouse gas emissions of emergent economies such as India and Brazil is encouraging. It is important that people recognise the seriousness of this problem that our generation has on its hands.

For C'est Moi

Untold suffering of children in Kenya, victims of sex tourism

I was taken aback by this news report this evening. I'm lost for words.. Please read the report on the Channel 4 website, its quite informative. The New York Times carried this opinion on the same subject earlier this year..

At the UN

Oxfam global ambassador & actor Djimon Hounsou and Oxfam International spokesperson David Waskow speaking with the press at the UN Summit on Climate Change. UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon said actor Djimon Hounsou is doing a dramatic reading to "set the tone."

An apology long overdue

British Prime Minister Gordon Brown offered a posthumous apology today for the "inhumane" treatment of Alan Turing, the World War II codebreaker who committed suicide in 1954 after being prosecuted for homosexuality and forcibly treated with female hormones. The mathematician helped crack Nazi Germany's Enigma encryption machine — a turning point in the war — and is considered a father of modern computing. In 1952, however, Turing was convicted of gross indecency for having sex with a man and offered a choice between prison and "chemical castration" — the injection of female hormones to suppress his libido. His security clearance was revoked and he was no longer allowed to work for the government.
Two years later, he killed himself at age 41 by eating an apple laced with cyanide. Gordon Brown’s statement came in response to a petition posted on the Number 10 website which has received thousands of signatures in recent months.

Gordon Brown's statement

2009 has been a year of deep reflection - a chance for Britain, as a nation, to commemorate the profound debts we owe to those who came before. A unique combination of anniversaries and events have stirred in us that sense of pride and gratitude which characterise the British experience. Earlier this year I stood with Presidents Sarkozy and Obama to honour the service and the sacrifice of the heroes who stormed the beaches of Normandy 65 years ago. And just last week, we marked the 70 years which have passed since the British government declared its willingness to take up arms against Fascism and declared the outbreak of World War Two. So I am both pleased and proud that, thanks to a coalition of computer scientists, historians and LGBT activists, we have this year a chance to mark and celebrate another contribution to Britain’s fight against the darkness of dictatorship; that of code-breaker Alan Turing.

Turing was a quite brilliant mathematician, most famous for his work on breaking the German Enigma codes. It is no exaggeration to say that, without his outstanding contribution, the history of World War Two could well have been very different. He truly was one of those individuals we can point to whose unique contribution helped to turn the tide of war. The debt of gratitude he is owed makes it all the more horrifying, therefore, that he was treated so inhumanely. In 1952, he was convicted of ‘gross indecency’ - in effect, tried for being gay. His sentence - and he was faced with the miserable choice of this or prison - was chemical castration by a series of injections of female hormones. He took his own life just two years later.

Thousands of people have come together to demand justice for Alan Turing and recognition of the appalling way he was treated. While Turing was dealt with under the law of the time and we can’t put the clock back, his treatment was of course utterly unfair and I am pleased to have the chance to say how deeply sorry I and we all are for what happened to him. Alan and the many thousands of other gay men who were convicted as he was convicted under homophobic laws were treated terribly. Over the years millions more lived in fear of conviction.

I am proud that those days are gone and that in the last 12 years this government has done so much to make life fairer and more equal for our LGBT community. This recognition of Alan’s status as one of Britain’s most famous victims of homophobia is another step towards equality and long overdue. But even more than that, Alan deserves recognition for his contribution to humankind. For those of us born after 1945, into a Europe which is united, democratic and at peace, it is hard to imagine that our continent was once the theatre of mankind’s darkest hour. It is difficult to believe that in living memory, people could become so consumed by hate - by anti-Semitism, by homophobia, by xenophobia and other murderous prejudices - that the gas chambers and crematoria became a piece of the European landscape as surely as the galleries and universities and concert halls which had marked out the European civilisation for hundreds of years. It is thanks to men and women who were totally committed to fighting fascism, people like Alan Turing, that the horrors of the Holocaust and of total war are part of Europe’s history and not Europe’s present.

So on behalf of the British government, and all those who live freely thanks to Alan’s work I am very proud to say: we’re sorry, you deserved so much better.

Gordon Brown