For Peace in the Congo, Rwanda and Uganda Must Be Brought to Justice, Says Activist

Editor’s Note: This article originally appeared in Peoples Dispatch.

At the COP 27 climate summit, an explosion of fossil fuel lobbyists was observed with over 600 such delegates present at the venue in Sharm el Sheikh, Egypt. With this number of registered delegates, this year’s COP has seen a rise of 25 percent among fossil fuel lobbyists compared to last year.

Notably, the fossil fuel lobbyists outnumbered any single community that has been at the frontline of populations affected by the climate crisis.

Three organizations, namely, Corporate Accountability, Corporate Europe Observatory, and Global Witness (GW), have analyzed the provisional list of attendees to the UN event. The finding reveals the scale at which the corporate actors directly linked to fossil fuel burning enjoy access to the critical climate summit of COP 27. Notably, the lobbyists are affiliated with some of the world’s largest polluting oil and gas companies.

There were 503 such lobbyists at the Glasgow summit of last year, and then also, this figure outnumbered the delegation from any single country. This year in Egypt, the only country that outnumbers the number of lobbyists, who are linked with the largest polluting corporates, is the United Arab Emirates (UAE) with 1,070 registered delegates. The UAE will host COP 28 next year.

An activist group named ‘Kick Big Polluters Out’ said in a statement, “The influence of fossil fuel lobbyists is greater than frontline countries and communities. Delegations from African countries and Indigenous communities are dwarfed by representatives of corporate interests directly at odds with the level of systemic change needed to slow the climate crisis.” They added that fossil fuel lobbyists were working openly through several country delegations.

Researchers belonging to Global Witness, Corporate Europe Observatory, and Corporate Accountability counted the number of registered individuals who are directly affiliated with fossil fuel giants like Shell, Chevron and BP (British Petroleum) or representing the fossil fuel industry as members of delegations that act on behalf of these industries. Some of the salient points that the analysis found are the following:

As many as 636 fossil fuel lobbyists are registered at COP 27; there are more fossil fuel lobbyists registered than delegations from Africa, and this is despite it being the ‘African COP’ this year; 29 countries have fossil fuel lobbyists within their national delegates; last but most important is that there are more lobbyists than representatives of the 10 countries that are most impacted by climate change, including Myanmar, Haiti, Pakistan, and Bangladesh.

The researchers also mentioned that activists from the Global South (developing countries) along with Indigenous communities that are in the most vulnerable conditions due to climate crisis have been kept at bay from attending the summit by high costs, challenges in getting visas and repressive actions implemented by the hosting country.

Civil society groups have raised apprehensions that with the increasing presence of fossil fuel lobbyists, the negotiations may get stymied, that too at a crucial time when the efforts of keeping the global temperature within 1.5 degrees Celsius should take center stage.

It’s worth mentioning that many environmental groups that work on the transition away from fossil fuel argue that including private players in the negotiations could be beneficial. However, the sheer size of the lobbyists at the negotiations can outweigh the benefits of their inclusion. Thus, the fear that their presence can actually slow the negotiations rather than limit their industries.

“The explosion in the number of industry delegates attending the negotiations reinforces the conviction of the climate justice community that the industry views the COP as a carnival of sorts, and not a space to address the ongoing and imminent climate crisis,” commented Kwami Kpondzo of Friends of the Earth Togo, the non-profit organization working to protect the environment and sustainable development.

In addition, a coalition of civil society groups recently made a submission to the UNFCCC (United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change), the wing that supervises COP summits, saying, “ Climate action would continue to fail to meaningfully address the climate crisis as long as polluting interests are granted unmitigated access to policymaking processes and are allowed to unduly influence and weaken the critical work of the UNFCCC.”

MAMFE, Cameroon—One Saturday morning in March 2021, 17-year-old Beatrice* and 19-year-old Patience* stepped out of a single-room apartment they shared to buy food near the Adagom refugee settlement in Nigeria’s southeastern Cross River State.

That’s when a young man they knew as “Mr. Patrick” approached them.

He asked the teenagers if they were interested in moving to the United States to work as caregivers for a monthly salary.

The two wasted no time in accepting the offer, which came with the condition that they would have to work in a bar in Cameroon, their home country, for at least a year to earn enough to make the journey.

“We immediately began to pack our bags and, after two days, we left for Cameroon,” Beatrice, now 19, said. “We were excited to hear that our stay in Cameroon was temporary and, after a year, we would be traveling to America.”

A little over three years ago, both women, who used to live close to each other, fled their homes in the southwestern Cameroonian town of Akwaya after soldiers stormed their compounds and began to burn houses as the war between English-speaking separatists and government forces in Cameroon’s Anglophone regions intensified. After spending days struggling through thick forests and grasslands, they arrived in Nigeria in November 2019, quickly seeking refuge in the Adagom refugee settlement, where about 5,000 Cameroonians now live. The site is on the outskirts of Ogoja town in Nigeria’s southeastern Cross River State.

For the two days this reporter spoke with the petite women, they were dressed in the same outfit: Blue jean trousers and faded t-shirts. They also appeared emaciated.

According to sources this reporter interviewed, trafficking of adults and children has become rampant as a war rages in Cameroon between the Francophone government and Anglophone forces.

‘We Just Had to Leave’

Both women fled Cameroon on their own, leaving behind relatives, some of whom later fled to Internally Displaced Persons (IDP) camps in Cameroon’s southwest and to other refugee settlements in southeastern Nigeria.

An Emergency Food Security Assessment that the United Nations conducted a year ago found more than 80 percent of Cameroonian households in refugee settlements and those in host communities are “severely or moderately food insecure.” Three in four refugees may be engaging in child labor and survival sex, according to the UN.

Beatrice and Patience, who spent three years at Adagom on a $2-per-day allowance they earned, jumped at the chance of paid jobs in Cameroon and an eventual trip to the United States.

“At Adagom, we only earned money during planting and harvesting seasons and, once these seasons are over, we go back to begging for survival,” Beatrice said. “When we heard there was something better waiting for us outside Nigeria, we just had to leave.”

Beatrice and Patience had no time to tell anyone they were going.

They arrived in the southwestern Cameroonian town of Mamfe alongside Mr. Patrick, who drove them in his red Volkswagen Passat car. That is when the women said they met a couple of other girls from the same refugee settlement in Nigeria at a bar where they quickly began to work as waiters. Later, they labored as cooks when a restaurant was added to the bar, which was run by three young men, including Mr. Patrick himself, according to the women.

“Behind the bar is a three-bedroom apartment, where everyone who worked there lived,” Patience said. “At some point it was only us (Beatrice and Patience), who remained as workers at the bar. The other two girls we met there were taken away from the apartment one morning.”

Less than a week after they arrived, each of the three men began to make advances at them, demanding sex and threatening to lie to Cameroonian authorities that the teenagers worked for the Ambazonia Defense Forces (ADF) one of the two biggest  armed English-speaking separatist groups.

“They said if we didn’t do what they asked us to do, they’d make our lives miserable,” Patience said. “We had to choose between doing what they wanted or having our lives turned upside down.”

Fearing that they could lose everything that was offered to them and even end up in jail, they gave in. Within weeks, the teenagers were pregnant. But after they gave birth to two boys in February, the traffickers took away their babies. They told the women that they needed to prepare for their trip to the United States and that U.S. authorities wouldn’t admit them if they went with children.

But the trip never happened. Instead, the bar closed in April and its owners fled with the babies.

“They sent us to the market one afternoon to buy baby toiletries and when we returned, we found that both the bar and our apartment had been locked,” Patience said. “The men had left with our children.”

Not having anywhere to stay, a Mamfe trader whom Beatrice and Patience often bought baby toiletries from took both of them into her home, where they remain for now.

‘No Mother Can Rest Until She Finds Her Child’

The women have solicited help from local activists and a Nigerian NGO to find their babies.

“We reported the incident to the police in Mamfe but haven’t heard anything positive from them since then,” Beatrice said. “We also informed [local] pastors and human rights activists, and they’ve been going ‘round the [southwest] area, asking people if they know anything about the men who took the children.”

A senior police officer, who was unauthorized to speak on the matter, told Toward Freedom human trafficking is growing in the city and traffickers are hard to track.

“They receive protection from armed groups,” the officer said. These groups control certain areas in the southwest. “[The police] isn’t equipped enough to engage these elements.”

In Nigeria’s Cross River State, from where Beatrice and Patience were trafficked, authorities explained policing in Adagom is difficult because of its distance from the state’s capital, Calabar, about 304 kilometers (188 miles) south of Adagom.

“Things can only change if funding improves,” said Godwin Eyake, who heads the Cross River State command of Nigeria’s National Agency for the Prohibition of Trafficking in Persons (NAPTIP).

A local NGO is helping Beatrice and Patience find their sons by visiting orphanages and writing advertisements.

“It’s hard when you are not sure where the babies were taken to,” said Salome Gambo, a researcher at human-rights group Caprecon Development and Peace Initiative. “We are doing what we are doing just in case it happened that the children were trafficked to Nigeria.”

Gambo admitted recovering the children will be difficult.

However, for the mothers of the babies, there’ll be no stop in their search.

“We will not rest until we find our children,” Patience said. “No mother can rest until she finds her child.”

*Names have been changed

Philip Obaji, Jr., is a journalist based in Nigeria. He won the Future Awards Africa Prize in Education in 2014, and the Future Awards Africa Prize for Young Person of the Year in 2015. Follow him on Twitter at @PhilipObaji.

Editor’s Note: The following is excerpted from the Black Alliance for Peace’s AFRICOM Watch Bulletin.

African Liberation Day (ALD), celebrated on May 25, has its origins in the long struggle of African people to liberate themselves from European domination and white supremacy. It is a time in which we emphasize our oneness as a people with a common past, common set of problems and a common future.

The capture of millions of African people, who were enslaved and introduced into the Western Hemisphere as property and commodities, is the backdrop upon which we commemorate ALD. The colonial-capitalist system imposes a divide between the millions of Africans kidnapped to the Americas during the Transatlantic slave trade and those left on the African continent.

ALD is a vehicle to continue to highlight the problems, challenges and the future of African people everywhere. The challenges facing Africa and African people worldwide require that we remain dedicated to the cause of Africa’s liberation. We can continue to showcase that dedication by actively participating in ALD activities held throughout the world.

 

U.S. Out of Africa: Voices from the Struggle

Gamal Nkrumah is a Ghanaian journalist, a Pan-Africanist and an editor of Al Ahram Weekly newspaper. He is the eldest son of the first president of Ghana, Kwame Nkrumah.

AFRICOM Watch Bulletin: Could you speak about the history of African Liberation Day?

Gamal Nkrumah: May 25th is celebrated as African Liberation Day. The day marks the foundation of the Organization of African Unity (OAU) in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia in 1963. The formation of the OAU was a key moment in a centuries-long struggle against colonialism, capitalism, and imperialism.

For more than 500 years, African people have been dehumanized and degraded, with their bodies and labor commodified to enrich a ruling elite. From slave labor on cotton and sugar plantations to the extraction of gold and diamonds from the earth, the development of Europe and the Americas happened through the rapid exploitation of African people.

Through the collective experiences of deprivation, African people in the diaspora and continent developed a resistance movement. There were many milestones in this process: the formation of independent, maroon communities by former slaves and Afro-Caribbean people, the first Pan-African congress held in 1900, the fifth Pan-African Congress in Manchester, 1945.

Over the decades, political consciousness grew around the necessity to wage a revolutionary, Pan-African struggle against colonial and imperial rule in the 20th century. The revolutionary anti-colonial movements culminated in the mid-century with the independence of several African nations from European powers and the formation of the Organization of African Unity.

AWB: How does ALD relate to the struggles of African people today?

Gamal Nkrumah: African Liberation Day, as it came to be known, was born from the fierce fight for a new society. As Kwame Nkrumah said, “The African Revolution, while still concentrating its main effort on the destruction of imperialism, colonialism and neocolonialism, aims at the same time to bring about a radical transformation of society. The choice has already been made by the workers and peasants of Africa. They have chosen liberation and unification… for the political unification of Africa and socialism are synonymous. One cannot be achieved without the other.”

Today, capitalism continues to brutally ravage and exploit Africa and its people. The West, through their militaries as well as the IMF and World Bank, have consistently imposed a neocolonial agenda on the continent, and the Organization of African Unity, now known as the African Union, is a puppet of capital and elite interests.

African people on May 25 celebrate the victories of revolutionary Pan-Africanism. African Liberation Day recalls the long history of struggles against class exploitation, colonialism and imperialism.

Revolutionary Africans know that attaining full emancipation demands a revolution from below, in the interests of people over profit. The only antidote to this colonial-capitalist system that continues to impoverish African people is an organized force in Africa ready to pursue Pan-Africanism under scientific socialism.