Democracy & Governance – Page 3

Civil Society, Democracy & Governance, Elections, Governances, Originally posted on the GBI Portal

2011: A revolutionary year in democracy and governance

"Mohamed suffered a lot. He worked hard. But when he set fire to himself, it wasn't about his scales being confiscated. It was about his dignity." —Mannoubia Bouazizi, Tunisia Photograph by Peter Hapak for TIME

2011 will be remembered as the year that democratic awakening occurred in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region. Activists used information and communication technology (ICT) tools to organize and coordinate political demonstrations that brought an end to long-standing regimes and paved the way to landmark elections.

Time Magazine fittingly awarded the “Person of the Year” accolade to the protester. What would come to be known as the “Arab Spring” began in Tunisia’s under-developed town of Sidi Bouzid, where the late Mohamed Bouazizi, a street vendor whose wares were confiscated by the police, set himself on fire outside of a government building in December 2010. Few would have predicted that Bouazizi’s actions would trigger an uprising that brought an end to Zine El Abidine Ben Ali’s 23-year-old regime on January 14th.

Video clips of the first protests, including demonstrations at the spot where Bouazizi set-himself on fire, were recorded on mobile phones, posted on YouTube, and spread across Tunisia and in the Arab world when they were shared on Facebook before news media outlets such as Al Jazeera began running their stories, reports Robert Mackey in the New York Times.

The Tunisian revolutionary spirit spread in neighboring Egypt. Inspired by events in Tunsia, political demonstrations began in January as thousands took to the streets in anti-government protests against poverty, rampant unemployment, corruption, and demanding an end to the 30-year autocratic rule of President Hosni Mubarak, writes Cara Parks in The Huffington Post.

Aware of the potent effect that social media had in Tunisia’s uprising, the Egyptian government blocked Facebook, Twitter, and later Internet services to lead a crackdown on the largest protests the country had witnessed since 1970s, according to Parks. Despite violent clashes with the riot police, protests kept going not only in Cairo, the capital, but also in Alexandria and Suez, and two other major cities.

Photo Credit: Huffington Post

The revolution’s main goal was achieved with the resignation of President Mubarak on February 11th. Activist Wael Ghonim, a marketing manager for Google who played a significant role in organizing the January 25 protests by reaching out to young Egyptians on Facebook, credited the social networking site for the success of the Egyptian people’s uprising, says Catharine Smith in The Huffington Post.

“[…] This revolution started on Facebook. […] We would post a video on Facebook that would be shared by 60,000 people on their walls within a few hours. I’ve always said that if you want to liberate a society just give them the Internet. […],” Ghonim told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer in an interview that Facebook and the Internet were responsible for the uprising in Egypt.

After Egypt, it was the turn of Syrians to protest against President Bashar al-Assad’s regime. Pro-democratic demonstrations began in January and young Syrians, inspired by the ousting of Ben Ali in Tunisia and Mubarak in Egypt, began organizing protests online and then took them to the streets.

In this citizen journalism image made on a mobile phone, Syrian men carry bread loaves during a protest against Syrian President Bashar Assad's regime, in the coastal town of Banias, Syria, May 3, 2011 Photo Credit: AP

Syrian activists have been working their computers and mobile phones, updating Facebook pages, sending out messages over Twitter, and uploading videos onto YouTube to inform the outside world of what was taking place in their surroundings since foreign reporters were banned, reports Margaret Besheer for VOA news.

Libya was the revolution’s next stop in North Africa . Protests broke out in February in the eastern city of Benghazi and escalated to an armed conflict as forces loyal to Muammar Gaddafi clashed with anti-government rebels. Gaddafi was captured and killed on October 24 bringing an end to four decades of autocratic rule.

Libya Crisis Map illustrates how ICTs can be applied in a conflict situation. This web-based platform was created by the Standby Task Force, and used the Ushahidi crowdsourced crisis reporting system to map latest news from Libya gleaned from Twitter and traditional news sources.

The LibyaCrisisMap platform was activated by the request of the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) to the Standby Task Force (SBTF). The platform was fully handed over to OCHA supervision in April 2011, and continued to be supported by a team of volunteers until June 4th of 2011.

Yemenis also took up the streets in February to protest against President Ali Abdullah Saleh calling for his resignation. Saleh agreed a deal, in which he will transfer power to his deputy by February 2012, ahead of elections. Young Yemeni Activists are however angry that the deal guarantees immunity for Mr Saleh and his allies, reports the BBC.

The Kingdom of Bahrain, with financial, equipment and manpower backing from its Saudi neighbor, is the only government in the MENA region to have successfully crushed pro-democracy demonstrations, reports Adrian Humphreys in the National Post.

Revolutions in the spring paved the way to landmark elections in the fall.

Tunisian politicians engaged voters via YouTube ahead of the October 23rd elections of representative for the new Constituent Assembly, which will ratify a new constitution and appoint a new transitional government that will schedule elections for a permanent government. Tunisia Live, a startup news portal, launched Tunisia Talks on YouTube where citizens asked questions to politicians.

Egyptians also queued up in numbers at polling stations in the country’s first democratic elections. Citizens took up the responsibility to monitor the electoral process blogging and Tweeting about irregularities and fraudulent activities. Parliamentary elections will end in March and Presidential elections are scheduled for mid-2012.

ICTs in form of social media platforms, cell phones, and the Internet played a significant role in the push for democracy and governance not only in the MENA region but also throughout the world.

December 29, 2011/by actualize

Democracy & Governance, Eastern Europe, Elections, Originally posted on the GBI Portal, Where we work

From the Arab Spring to the Russian Winter?

In another case of authoritarian regime vs. public protesters, information and communication technologies (ICTs) seem to have fueled the fire. Russians took to the streets last weekend in social media-driven demonstrations against alleged election fraud committed by Prime Minister Vladimir Putin’s United Russia Party, in the biggest protest the country has ever witnessed since the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991.

Russian opposition activists have used Twitter, Facebook, and other social media platforms to uncover electoral fraud and organize protests. Such is the case of Danila Lindele, 23-year-old citizen activist, described by VOA News as a “new breed of Russian activist, one more likely to reach for an iPad than a bullhorn.”

Despite conceding that irregularities did occur during the electoral process, President Dmitry Medvedev criticized the protests using his official Facebook page.

“I agree neither with the slogans, nor the statements voiced at the protests,” President Medvedev said. Russians responded with insults such as “shame” and “pathetic”, according to VOA News.

BBC reports that at least “7,000 comments had appeared under his post by 20:00 GMT on Sunday, a day after the biggest anti-government protests since Soviet times. An early random sample showed the comments were equally divided between hostility, support and neutrality.”

Authorities carried out over 1,000 arrests, mostly in Moscow, and key protester, blogger and anti-corruption campaigner Alexei Navalny was jailed, the BBC said.

Global Voices, an online platform for bloggers from around the world who report on how citizens use the Internet and social media to make their voices heard, often translating from other languages, features posts by prominent Russian bloggers such as Navalny in their Russia 2011 Elections Special.

“The time has come to throw off the chains. We are not cattle or slaves. We have a voice and we have the strength to defend it,” Mr. Navalny blogged.

Navalny also posted a video of Putin’s speech at the Olimpiysky Sports Complex to illustrate the Prime Minister’s declining popularity as evidenced by boos he received from segments of the crowd.

http://youtu.be/ZxQslFifQBw

Blogger Sean Guillory points out that election fraud is not novel practice in Russian politics and refers to Leontii Byzov, a senior sociologist from the Institute of Sociology of the Russian Academy of Sciences to explain why the largest anti-government protests is taking place now.

“There are several overlapping factors. First, the rise of a new generation of young people who don’t remember the ‘trauma of the 1990s’. They are not afraid of change, it is more attractive to them than the ‘gilded cage’ of Putinist stability. Young members of the middle class want social mobility and dream about meteoric careers,” said Byzov.

“Another factor is the swelling internal opposition within the Russian elite. In the 2000s, Putin served as a certain guarantor of balance between elite groups with completely opposite interests,” added Byzov. The tensions between the Putin-backed siloviki and liberals supporters of Medvedev are entangled in a power struggle over the control Gazprom and other state corporations.

Columnist DOĞU ERGİL argues that ICT tools in the form of social media platform, the Internet and cell phones can compensate for a lack of an opposition to an authoritarian regime, pointing to the power to connect millions and allow individuals to share messages and act in relative concert, that these platforms and networks possess.

“The Tahrir Square protest are the best example of what a virtual community can create in the absence of organized opposition,” he said.

As it was the case in Egypt and Tunisia, Russia has a strong, authoritarian leadership. ICTs are helping challenge the authoritarian state structure, as evinced by the recent anti-government demonstrations, and despite the Kremlin’s crackdown and control of the media, ERGİL argues.

In fact, two-thirds of Russians are said to be utilizing ICTs, especially the mobile phone network and blogging. The political space created by these tools enable exchanges that narrows the ideological divides and strengthen opposition to a government determined to sustain its grip on society as long as it can.

According to the BBC, “as many as 50,000 people gathered on an island near the Kremlin to condemn alleged ballot-rigging in parliamentary elections and demand a re-run” “The protesters alleged there was widespread fraud in the December 4th polls though the ruling United Russia party did see its share of the vote fall sharply.”

December 15, 2011/by actualize

Democracy & Governance, Originally posted on the GBI Portal

“Human rights went viral in 2011”

In the words of United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay, 2011 will be remembered as the year human rights went viral. Activists used the Internet and social media platforms to claim their rights and drive political change through peaceful protests despite violent repression.

As the global community commemorates 63 years since the creation of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the United Nations invites people worldwide to celebrate Human Rights Day on 10 December by launching a social media-driven campaign. The campaign draws on from the instrumental role played by Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and other new media tools during the popular uprisings in the Arab world as millions demanded greater rights and freedom and toppled long-standing regimes in Egypt and Tunisia.

“Our social media human rights campaign focuses on the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and aims to help more people know, demand and defend human rights,” said Pillay.

According to the UN News Centre, the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) has an ongoing online discussion on Facebook and Twitter beginning on 10 November called “30 Days and 30 Rights,” which counts down to Human Rights Day with a daily posting about one specific article of the Declaration each day.

Meanwhile, questions are pouring in via different social media platforms for global conversation on human rights hosted by Pillay today at 9:30 a.m. New York time, which will be webcast and streamed live.

December 9, 2011/by actualize

Anti-corruption, Civil Society, Democracy & Governance, Elections, Governances, Originally posted on the GBI Portal, Women in Development

ICT4Democracy in East Africa

Launched in June, ICT for Democracy in East Africa is a network of organizations seeking to leverage the potential of information and communication technologies (ICTs) to enhance good governance and strengthen democracy.

This initiative is funded by the Swedish Program for ICT in Developing Regio ns (SPIDER) and aims to promote collaboration amongst democracy actors in Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda. Member organizations in the network are Kenya’s iHub, the Kenyan Human Rights Commission (KHRC), the Collaboration on International ICT Policy for East and Southern Africa (CIPESA), Women of Uganda Network (WOUGNET), Transparency International Uganda (TIU), and Tanzania’s Commission for Human Rights and Good Governance (CHRAGG).

iHub, an open space for the tech community in Kenya, hosted a governance workshop in October. The event brought together stakeholders in academia, government, civil society and the tech community to identify governance challenges—such as an uninformed or misinformed citizenry about their basic rights and an entrenched culture of corruption. The take away from the session was that ICTs—particularly mobile phones—provide citizens with the platform by which they can engage in governance solutions in a discreet, personalized way, anytime, anywhere.

In the wake of 2012 Presidential elections, citizens need to be better educated, informed and engaged in the political processes to avoid post-elections clashes as it was the case in 2007. To this end, KHRC plans to tap into the potential of ICTs to increase citizen participation, monitor human rights violations, monitor the electoral processes, monitor government fulfillment of promises, carry out campaigns and also inform and educate its constituents and the public on various human rights and governance issues.

Civic participation and democracy monitoring is relatively weak in Uganda given that only 59% of registered voters cast their ballots in the February 2011 presidential elections, according to SPIDER. The proliferation of ICT tools, their potential to enhance communication and improve access to important information creates an opportunity for improved citizen engagement and advocacy towards increased transparency and accountability.

Through the strategic use of ICTs, Women of Uganda Network (WOUGNET), aims to improve access to public services, increase efficiency, transparency and accountability of government and political processes to ensure that citizens are informed about government functions and promote efficient service delivery.

WOUGNET will particularly target women, in community based organizations (CBOs) located in the rural districts of Northern Uganda. WOUGNET aims build the ICT capacity of these (CBOs) to monitor public service delivery as part of its anti-corruption strategy.

Similarly, Tanzania’s CHRAGG is implementing a project that will create a system that will enable citizens to file complaints, check the status of already filed complaints and receive feedback through SMS. The project will help poor Tanzanians forego the transportation lodging costs involved in filing complaints in far off regional offices.

December 6, 2011/by actualize

Agriculture, Democracy & Governance, Mobile, Originally posted on the GBI Portal

7 Apps to Combat Modern-Day Slavery

The United Nations recognizes December 2 as the International Day for the Abolition of Slavery, which marks the date of the adoption of the United Nations Convention for the Suppression of the Traffic in Persons and of the Exploitation of the Prostitution of Others. According to the agency:

“The focus of this day is on eradicating contemporary forms of slavery, such as trafficking in persons, sexual exploitation, the worst forms of child labour, forced marriage, and the forced recruitment of children for use in armed conflict.”

Though the problem of modern-day slavery is vast (with some estimates as high as 27 million people in slavery today), ICTs have a critical role to play in ending slavery practices. They can be used to monitor and report cases, raise awareness, and help grassroots groups implement anti-slavery activities.

Here is a sampling of some cutting edge ways that groups are using ICTs to fight slavery.

Slavery Footprint

How many slaves work for you? Find out by taking this website and app’s lifestyle survey, which averages how many forced laborers have contributed to making the products you consume, from shoes to electronics. The questionnaire asks about what food you eat, clothes you wear, and your hobbies after investigating what goes into producing around 400 everyday items.

Phone Story

This game for smartphone devices attempts to provoke a critical reflection on its own technological platform. It brings to light that behind many consumer electronics hides the product of a troubling supply chain that stretches across the globe. Phone Story represents this process with four educational games that make the player symbolically complicit in mineral extraction in the DRC, outsourced labor in China, e-waste in Pakistan and gadget consumerism in the West. The controversial app was banned from Apple stores in September, but is available on Android.

Slaveryfootprint.org

Knowmore.org

This website empowers consumers to purchase products and support companies that promote fair trade, human rights, and democracy. The site makes it easy to determine which corporations use unethical (or ethical) practices through its Firefox browser extension that alerts consumers on where companies stand on particular issues as they browse the company websites.

Change.org Human Trafficking Campaigns

The site that helps individuals or groups run online social change campaigns has a special section dedicated to anti-human trafficking efforts. There have been hundreds of campaigns started, though the one with the most signatures (103,155 and counting) is the International Labor Rights Forum’s “Tell Walmart: Intervene Before Labor Activists Are Sentenced to Death.”

SMS: SOS Survivor Line

Survivors Connect empowers survivors and grassroots movements against slavery, trafficking and violence by leveraging the power of ICTs. The SMS: SOS system is a basic text-message based crisis and response referral hotline. The system can support any texter to receive immediate emotional support, non-emergency transportation, risk assessment, referrals to community agencies, short-term counseling, self-help information and the like. There are several variations to this model, such child-specific helplines, women’s violence/DV hotlines, trafficking and others. Survivors Connect will help any organization design its own system as needed.

Knowmore.org

Organizations are continuing to develop new ways to leverage ICTs for anti-trafficking and slavery efforts. Below are several apps to look out for.

GBI Stop Human Trafficking App

The winner of GBI’s own Stop Human Trafficking App Challenge is a smartphone app with a device that helps prevent people from becoming victims of human trafficking. It will provide users with a means to verify potential employers that offer them jobs outside of Russia and eastern Europe and help them to mitigate situations where they are subject to being preyed upon. Implementing NGOs on the ground, such as World Vision, are working to make sure the data on the app is valid and up-to-date.

SMS Helpline Network

Enslavement Alliance of West Africa (EPAWA) and Internews began working on a project in August to build an SMS Helpline Network using mobile phones, a laptop and easy‐to‐use desktop software to combat human trafficking. The technology will connect a network of professionals who can respond in a crisis and facilitate timely exchange of information to parents and communities. EPAWA will train community members to report on human trafficking activity in their own communities and EPAWA will investigate the veracity of employment offers.

survivorsconnect.org

Fortunately, this list is just the tip of the iceberg for innovations in anti-slavery initiatives. Has your organization developed or is in the stages of developing an ICT project that fights slavery? Be sure to post a comment here or join the GBI Portal to tell us about it!

December 2, 2011/by actualize

Democracy & Governance, Originally posted on the GBI Portal

World AIDS Day: Human Rights Count!

"Fight AIDS, not People with AIDS"

As we observe World AIDS Day, it is important to be aware that people living with HIV (PLHIV) are victim of human rights abuses, despite available evidence many governments are yet to develop effective strategies to deal with this problem.

The stigma and discrimination associated with PLHIV have “a serious negative impact on prevention efforts and the accessibility and effectiveness of treatment, care and support,” says a report by the Global Network of People Living with HIV (GNP+).

Findings of pilot studies conducted in Kenya, Nigeria and Zambia reveal that “the rights of PLHIV are being violated in various settings with complaints ranging from murder (in one case in Kenya) and torture to discrimination at work; in healthcare facilities and within the family.”

“After being diagnosed and found HIV positive by the health authority my husband sent me away from our matrimonial home,” said a female PLHIV in Kenya.

“I lost my job and my wife deserted me while in Luanshya (town in Zambia) and admitted in the hospital. She hired a vehicle and collected all goods and said we were shifting to a bigger house…After the loss of employment due to my sickness, I had no money and had to sell the remained properties,” added a Male PLHIV in Zambia.

To address this issue, GNP+ initiated Human Rights Count!, an evidence gathering program which documents HIV-related human rights violations against PLHIV. The initiative is the first of its nature to be driven by PLHIV. Information collected are used in advocacy campaigns that aim to raise awareness about these violations and instigate changes at the local and national level.

PLHIV around the world will be able to submit human rights violations in their community, city, and country electronically or by mail. GNP+ works with focal points at regional and national networks of people living with HIV to research, verify and analyze these violations.

GNP+ has developed a structured form used to elicit quantitative and qualitative data regarding the violations, which will be available as an online questionnaire and as a writable PDF. Individuals or networks can also print the questionnaire and fill it out by hand.

By collecting the information through focal points in the region, there will be a strong link to regional and national campaigns. In addition, working through communities of PLHIV will increase the level of understanding of rights and through this empower people to assert their rights. Reporting forms will shortly be available both online and at selected focal points.

The first training of trainers using the Human Rights Count questionnaire took place in Zambia in 2009. Over 20 participants have now returned to the respective towns and villages to train others to use the tools. The project has also been piloted in Kenya, Nigeria, Nepal and Indonesia.

December 1, 2011/by actualize

Democracy & Governance, Elections, Originally posted on the GBI Portal

Egyptians queue up for second-day of landmark elections in post-Mubarak era

Voters are turning out in numbers at polling stations in major cities for the first elections since President Hosni Mubarak was overthrown. So far, the electoral process has been peaceful with few reported security concerns amid fears that polling could be delayed due to the deadly protests against the interim military regime.

Some Internet activists chose to boycott elections in protest of military rule whilst others have taken up the responsibility to monitor elections using social media tools. Tardiness of judges, missing allots, and inadequate security have led to delays causing long lines at polling stations, and there has been reports of apparent violations of the election code by some political parties. However, these expected shortcomings have not dented voters’ enthusiasm.

“They’re trying to make it delayed so that we get angry and go home,” a man cried outside a still-closed polling center in the poor, mixed neighborhood of Shoubra, an hour after it was meant to open, reports Joshua Hersh of the Huffington Post. “But we’ll show them. We will stay here and we will vote.”

Another voter exclaimed, “I am so happy; this is the first true election in the history of Egypt!” The old man added, “I am doing this for my sons and my grandsons.”

According to Robert Mackey in the New York Times, bloggers posted images of long lines at polling places. Kamal El Eid, 19, posted a photograph of the vast crowd inside her polling place in the Cairo district of Heliopolis. Ranya Khalifa, who also voted in Heliopolis, tweeted that it took her six hours to get to the front of the line.

Voters crowded into a polling place in Cairo’s Heliopolis neighborhood on Monday.

Bloggers also reported on voting irregularities such as breaking electoral law: campaigning in on Election Day.

According to Hersh, twitter was filled with reports, through the hashtag #egypviolations, that party workers for the Freedom & Justice Party (FJP), the political wing of the Brotherhood, were distributing campaign guides to voters in line.

Abdel-Rahman Hussein tweeted that several parties campaigned on Election Day by sitting with laptops outside polling places in Cairo offering to help voters look up the registration numbers they needed to cast their ballots and giving out flyers promoting their candidates.

http://youtu.be/52ziVn6A-Gg

The party responded that this was merely an attempt to assist voters who supported the party but were confused about the process, rather than attempt to campaign or coerce voters, Hersh explained.

Mosa’ab Elshamy, an activist at the heart of the Tahrir Square protests in February, witnessed “no significant violations in Zamalek,” an upscale part of Cairo and added that although few people from different parties were handing leaflets, most voters were “not interest” in the literature anyway, writes Mackey.

Bloggers also expressed concerns over the complicated voting process. Issandr El Amrani, the Moroccan-American journalist behind The Arabist, a Cairo-based blog, posted close-up images of the remarkably dense and confusing ballot papers voters were handed inside a polling station in the city’s Sayeda Zeinab district. Mr. Amrani explained that voters were asked to select two candidates from a list of 122 names who could only be distinguished by a small icon chosen by the would-be office holders.

This is the first of three separate polls over coming months, which includes the current elections of 508-memnber People’s Assembly or lower house set to end on 10 January 2012. Elections of 270-strong Shura Council or upper house will begin in 29 January and end on 11 March 2012. Presidential elections are due mid-2012. It is estimated that more than 40 political parties are set to compete, fielding more than 10,000 candidates.

November 29, 2011/by actualize

Democracy & Governance, Elections, Originally posted on the GBI Portal

Ushahidi maps Liberia’s electoral violence

Liberia’s November 8 Presidential runoff was marred by a rally turned violent as opposition supporters clashed with the riot police. The Ushahidi platform, a website developed to map reports of violence during the 2007 Presidential elections in Kenya, was once again in use to keep citizens informed on elections proceedings.

Incumbent Ellen Johnson Sirleaf won re-election clinching 90% of the November 8 run-off despite a relatively low turn out of 37%, prompted by the boycott of opposition candidate Winston Tubman from the Congress for Democratic Change (CDC) on the basis of electoral fraud.

Ushahidi provides maps on various aspects of the electoral process, including the violent protests that took place in the capital Monrovia in the lead up and after the runoff.

The rioting broke out after thousands of CDC supporters gathered outside party headquarters to urge voters to boycott polls. BBC confirms that at least one man has been killed and four others injured after shots were fired by the police.

Despite the runoff boycott, Tubman is willing to work with Johnson-Sirleaf’s government.

“I will stick with my party and maybe we can find someone in our party who can deal with the Unity Party government and Mrs Sirleaf to bring about reconciliation,” he told the BBC’s Network Africa programme.

Observers, including those from the Economic Community of West Africa States (ECOWAS), declared the election process to be credible.

“The mission wishes to state that it found no major irregularities in the voting process itself. It considers, on the whole, that the elections of 8 November met the acceptable conditions of being free, fair and transparent,” the ECOWAS observer team said in a statement.

These are the first elections organised by Liberians since the 14-year conflict ended. The previous ones were run by the large UN peacekeeping mission.

November 22, 2011/by actualize

Democracy & Governance, Originally posted on the GBI Portal

Syria: Virtual activism sustains global attention

Anti-government protesters have continued to take to the streets despite the crackdown

As international pressure mounts on the Syrian government to end the “bloody repression,” activists are using social media to ensure continued attention on events on the ground.

The UN estimates that more than 3500 people have died since protest started in March and there is a growing fear of civil war with the Free Syrian Army, formed in July, carrying out a number of attacks on government troops including ambushes. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov says that the international community hopes for a peaceful resolution and calls on all parties to end violence.

The popular Sham News Network, a grassroots news organizations that emerged during the Syrian revolution to aggregate and publish news footage–started an initiative that asks individuals to submit videos in solidarity with Syrian protesters, reports Global Voices.

A statement taken from one of the videos posted to the SyrianSitInYouTube account states, “I am in solidarity with the Syrian people. I reject the brutality and killing that the Syrian authorities are committing against the unarmed Syrian people. And because silence is participation in this crime, I declare my participation in the Syrian Sit-in on Youtube.”

So far the initiative has received 275 videos from across the Arab world, as well as from the United States, Germany, Iceland, and Canada.

For instance, Birgitta Jonsdottir, a member of Icelandic Parliament and NATO Parliamentary, contributed a video post, in which she says, “I wish to express my solidarity and my support to the brave Syrian people that have been protesting day after day, month after month, against all odds.”

At a meeting held in the Moroccan capital, Rabat, on Wednesday, the Arab League’s 22 members suspended the Syrian government and gave Bashar al-Asad’s regime three days to end the violent repression. The Arab League has urged Syria to allow an international contingent to monitor the process or face sanctions.

The Syrian government is increasingly isolated as key allies such as France have now withdrawn their ambassadors and neighboring Turkey is calling for immediate action from the international community. According to BBC, France, Britain, Germany and a number of Arab states are to submit a draft resolution calling for a vote in the UN General Assembly condemning the violence.

November 17, 2011/by actualize

Democracy & Governance, Originally posted on the GBI Portal

Mobile phones to lead a revolution in sub-Saharan Africa?

Social-media-driven Arab Spring uprisings brought an end to long-standing dictatorial regimes. If the movement is to spread south of the Sahara, it will be triggered by mobile phones.

A recent report by the GSM Association (GSMA), a global group representing the interests of mobile operators, claims that Africa is now the fastest growing mobile market and the second largest in the world with over 620 million mobile connections as of September, a figure expected to reach 735 million by the end of 2012.

“The mobile industry in Africa is booming and a catalyst for immense growth, but there is scope for far greater development,” said Peter Lyons, Director of Spectrum Policy, Africa and Middle East, GSMA.

The booming mobile industry is not only contributing to overall economic development but it is also empowering citizens.

For instance, the GSMA report estimates that the mobile ecosystem employs over 5 million Africans and contributes US$56bn to the regional economy, equivalent to 3.5% of total GDP.

Through m-Agri applications, farmers are able to access vital agricultural information, training, and advice on pests, diseases, weather, fertilizers, and best farming practices. According to the International Food Policy Research Institute, 65% of the population on the continent relies on subsistence farming. This underlines how crucial mobile connectivity can be to the livelihoods of most Africans.

Community Health Workers (CHWs) in UN’s Millennium Villages in Uganda, Rwanda, and Kenya receive professional training through m-Learning modules accessible on their mobile phones. CHWs do not have to travel in urban areas where they would have to pay exorbitant fees for an education.

Mobile technology is changing the way healthcare is delivered on the continent. In Rwanda, m-Health applications enable health workers in the field to use mobile phones in data collection related to outbreak of contagious diseases, for instance, and report the information in real time.

In Kenya, mobile phones have made money transfer as quickly and as easily as sending a text message. The most successful m-Banking initiative, and the first to operate on a large scale is, M-Pesa, a joint venture between mobile phone giant Vodafone and Kenya’s Safaricom. The M stands for mobile, and Pesa is Swahili for money.

The report credits market liberalization policies, foreign direct investment, rollout of mobile network infrastructure, affordability of mobile phones, and substantial regional economic growth for the mobile industry boom.

It is clear that a digital revolution is already underway and as mobile phones promotes information exchange within and among nations, and continue to empower citizens in the process, African will demand more from their leaders. That is a good enough reason to hope for revolutionary changes towards democratic governance.

November 14, 2011/by actualize

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