Shanu Sarkar's Blog: All About Love at First Sight

Shanu Sarkar's Blog: All About Love at First Sight: At my first sight you have done a magic to my heart. After I met you that day I was lost my heart forever  and lost it to you. Who knows w...

Bahrain builds school for Syrian refugees in Jordan

The son of Bahrain’s king has opened a giant Bahraini-backed school at a Syrian refugee camp in Jordan. This move is aimed at helping and securing these a future for these children. The school, that has received backing from the United Nations, is located in Amman. More than a thousand children are likely to benefit from the 4 million dollar facility. This was the initiative of Royal Charity Organisation (RCO) and it was officially inaugurated by the Royal Charity Organisation Board of Trustees Chairman Shaikh Nasser bin Hamad Al Khalifa.

Dominique Isabelle Hyde, the United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund (UNICEF) representative in Jordan, described the facility as the best in the camp stating “These children have troubled memories and getting them into a quiet stable environment helps them get back to normal and draws their focus away from the living environment around them which is all thanks to Bahrain.” Set in a facility that spans an area of 4600 square meters, the school is said to have an intake capacity of 4200 and more than 3500 children have already registered with the school and it is expected that the school will reach capacity in around two weeks. Ms. Hyde stated that “After this school reaches capacity, UNICEF will build another school. But this one will be entirely funded by UNICEF, not to mention we will continue to pay the teachers’ salaries and provide the running costs for the existing school. That is going to happen sooner than we thought as we expect this school to reach capacity in about two weeks.”

It is truly a commendable effort taken by Bahrain and Sheikh Nasser said it was the responsibility of Bahrain and its neighboring countries to help each other in times of need. “This is the nature of the world,” he said, truly reflecting the way in which the Middle East is rising to the occasion of helping out school children.

Some parents however have decided to keep their children away from the school. Their biggest wish is to leave the camp, where conditions are harsh, and find better facilities for their families elsewhere. According to Jordanian officials, Jordan hosts more than 230 thousand Syrian refugees. Around forty thousand of those currently live in the Zaatari camp, about 15 kilometres from the border of Syria.

Uganda holds Somalia hostage in high-stakes diplomacy

It’s fair to say that the Ugandan government was not particularly happy with the contents of a United Nations report that unequivocally implicated it in the ongoing rebellion in the Democratic Republic of Congo. The report, compiled by a “group of experts” appointed to look into the issue, found that Uganda was assisting the M23 rebel movement “in the form of direct troop reinforcements in DRC territory, weapons deliveries, technical assistance, joint planning, political advice and facilitation of external relations”.

It was a damning conclusion, and caused diplomatic shockwaves throughout the region; with Rwanda also blamed for assisting the rebels, the conflict in North Kivu started to look less like a rebellion and more like a regional war.

Uganda denied wrongdoing in no uncertain terms, and Prime Minister Amama Mbabazi castigated what he described as a baseless, unfair and malicious report; one that was compiled without following due process and with minimal input from concerned stakeholders. This was two weeks ago.

Since then, the Ugandan government has got even angrier, until it decided to play its trump card. Fine, they said; if the international community insists on propagating these baseless accusations about Uganda, then they shouldn't expect Ugandan troops to keep on keeping the fragile peace in a country where the international community fears to tread Somalia.

Since 2007, Ugandan soldiers have been the backbone of the African Union Mission in Somalia (Amisom). At any one time since then, there have been at least 5,000 Ugandans on the ground in Somalia, and the number is often higher. Given the unwillingness of other countries to contribute troops (with the exception of Burundi initially, and now Djibouti, Kenya and Sierra Leone), it is no exaggeration to say it was the Ugandan military that kept Somalia's unstable transitional government in some semblance of power for so long, providing the foundation for the recent assault on Al-Shabaab that severely damaged the Islamist militant group.

Even in the wake of the recent successes, Somalia is a dangerous country, and its capital, Mogadishu, particularly so. With no real security forces of its own to rely on, the Somali government continues to be propped up by Amisom, which is still disproportionately reliant on Ugandan soldiers, which account for a full third of its troop contingent in Somalia. Take the Ugandans away, and it is likely that the entire fragile edifice will come crumbling down.

But that is what Uganda wants to do, according to Security Minister Wilson Mukasa. "We are tired of being maligned even after sacrifices have been made to ensure that our friends, our neighbours are okay. The 'thank you' we get is that you are now aiding this, you are this and that, so we are tired," he told reporters in Kampala. This has forced the government to conclude that it is safer and easier to forget about this business of international peacekeeping and intervention: "Let's stop all these initiatives. We will concentrate on ourselves. Whoever wants to cause us trouble, they will find us at our home." He added that Uganda had already despatched an official to New York to inform the United Nations of this decision.

While in New York, one suspects that this unnamed official will also have a few meetings with other unnamed officials from the United States, which has its own vested interests in Somalia. The US has been deeply concerned for a long time about the threat posed by Al-Shabaab, and in particular its links with al-Qaeda. This makes Somalia another front in the War on Terror, but one in which the US is reluctant to participate directly. A happy solution was found in which African countries – primarily Uganda – were supported, both technically and financially, to put non-American boots on the ground. If Uganda is thinking about deserting its position on the frontline of the War on Terror in Somalia, risking an Al-Shabaab resurgence, it is likely the White House or State Department will have a few things to say.

Chances are, however, that Uganda has no intention of actually going through with its threat of summary withdrawal. "It's just politics and playing to the gallery. They won't pull out," said analyst Hamza Mohamed, a specialist on Somalia. His sources in Mogadishu suggest there have been no plans to follow through on the threat, which is likely designed as a warning to the international community to ease its criticism of Uganda's Congolese adventures. "Things will be quietly settled behind closed doors with perhaps future reports not being so critical," he added.

It's hard to see any other outcome. With the international and African community happy to outsource the establishment of Somali democracy to countries like Uganda, which doesn't exactly have a wonderful governance record itself, it should come as no surprise when those countries demand their quid pro quo.
In this case, Uganda is asking the international community to choose between exposing the roots of the conflict in the eastern DRC and maintaining Somalia's tenuous hold on stability. There's no doubt that Somalia will win this particular trade-off, especially given America's heavy investment in a successful outcome there. It seems less likely, however, that Uganda's involvement in the DRC will be forgotten. If anything, the heavy-handedness of its response – coupled with the evidence in the controversial UN report – suggests that there is some truth to the accusations.

Over 60 million child laborers in India

India, an IT giant and the world's second-fastest growing major economy, has millions of Rajus: all under 14 years of age, some as young as 4 or 5, and all toiling hard just to get a square meal to keep body and soul from parting company. Child labor is a  dagger through India's soul. The country has the dubious distinction of being home to the largest child labor force in the world, with an estimated 30 percent of the world's working kids living here. A study conducted by the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions, says there are as many as 60 million children working in India's agricultural and commercial sectors. The condition of these kids is awfully appalling, they are paid mere Rs 300 to Rs 500 a month; sometimes they are given food to survive and no money at all.

Child labor is a dagger through India's soul. The country has the dubious distinction of being home to the largest child labor force in the world, with an estimated 30 percent of the world's working kids living here. These kids are forced to work to help their poor families, but this robs them of their right to childhood and all its associated joys. Child labor also crushes their right to normal physical and mental development, to education and thus to a healthy, prosperous life. Seven days a week, these children toil as hard as their tender bodies can allow them to, working in inhuman conditions in cramped, dim rooms, breathing toxic fumes, and every now and then being subjected to verbal and physical violence by their employers. These young children work for hours on end, suffering from constant fatigue.

Government statistics say that there are 2 crore (20 million) child laborers in India, a country that has ambitions of becoming a global superpower in a few years. Non-governmental agencies assert that the figure is more than 6 crore (60 million) including agricultural workers; some claim that the number could be 100 million, if one were to define all children out of school as child laborers. The International Labor Organization estimates that 218 million children ages 5-17 are engaged in child labor the world over. An estimated 14 percent of children in India between the ages of 5 and 14 are engaged in child labor activities, including carpet production. It would cost $760 billion over a 20-year period to end child labor. The estimated benefit in terms of better education and health is about six times that — over $4 trillion in economies where child laborers are found. Some children are forced to work up to 18 hours a day, often never leaving the confines of the factory or loom shed. Children trafficked into one form of labor may be later sold into another, as with girls from rural Nepal, who are recruited to work in carpet factories but are then trafficked into the sex industry over the border in India.

Child labor in India is mostly practiced in restaurants, roadside stalls; matches, fireworks and explosives industry; glass and bangles factories; beedi-making; carpet-making; lock-making; brassware; export-oriented garment units; gem polishing export industry; slate mines and manufacturing units; leather units; diamond industry; building and construction industry; brick kilns, helpers to mechanics, masons, carpenters, painters, plumbers, cooks, etc.

Thousands of affluent Indians hire youngsters for household chores and to look after their own kids, under the pretext of providing some money to the parents of the child laborers and of offering a better life than he/she would normally have had. 

The Indian Constitution says that child labor is a wrong practice and standards should be set by law to eliminate it. The Child Labor Act of 1986 implemented by the government of India makes child labor illegal in many regions and sets the minimum age of employment at 14 years. No wonder the barely 10-year-old Raju at the dhaba said he was 14. Exploiters threaten kids in many ways and the child has no way out but to lie to keep his “job.” Due to economic factors, many of the law's goals are difficult to meet. The law, for example, does nothing to protect children who perform domestic or unreported labor. In almost all Indian industries girls are unrecognized laborers because they are seen as helpers and not workers. Girls are thus not protected by the law.