Stop Civil War In Africa!
Target:
Everyone
Sponsored by:
There are currently fifteen African countries involved in war, or are experiencing post-war conflict and tension. In West Africa, the countries include Cote d'Ivoire, Guinea, Liberia, Nigeria, Sierra Leone, and Togo. In East Africa, the countries include Eritrea, Ethiopia, Somalia, Sudan, Uganda. In Central Africa, the countries include Burundi, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Rwanda. In North Africa, the country is Algeria and in South Africa, the countries include Angola and Zimbabwe.
At the base of these wars is the rich natural resources each of these poor countries hold of timber, oil or diamonds, compounded in many cases by the foreign extractive industries presence, their opaque, unreported payments to the governments and the governments' opaque, unreported use of the money to create and fund wars. The wars serve the purpose of creating a distraction, as the countries and their fleeing, displaced citizens are robbed of their countries' natural resources, easily converted to cash, for the personal use and fortunes of ruling parties. Tribal conflict is deliberately antagonized, so it can be blamed for the conflict.
At the base of these wars is the rich natural resources each of these poor countries hold of timber, oil or diamonds, compounded in many cases by the foreign extractive industries presence, their opaque, unreported payments to the governments and the governments' opaque, unreported use of the money to create and fund wars. The wars serve the purpose of creating a distraction, as the countries and their fleeing, displaced citizens are robbed of their countries' natural resources, easily converted to cash, for the personal use and fortunes of ruling parties. Tribal conflict is deliberately antagonized, so it can be blamed for the conflict.
A necessary first step in the prevention of future atrocities, human rights abuses and mass waves of human displacement in Africa, it is imperative for multinational extractive industries to make public the net taxes, fees, royalties and other payments they make to the governments of the countries in which they have operations.
Not too mention there are over 200,000 child soldiers in Africa forced against their will to kill and torture their own people and even their own families.
There are currently fifteen African countries involved in war, or are experiencing post-war conflict and tension. In West Africa, the countries include Cote d'Ivoire, Guinea, Liberia, Nigeria, Sierra Leone, and Togo. In East Africa, the countries include Eritrea, Ethiopia, Somalia, Sudan, Uganda. In Central Africa, the countries include Burundi, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Rwanda. In North Africa, the country is Algeria and in South Africa, the countries include Angola and Zimbabwe.
At the base of these wars is the rich natural resources each of these poor countries hold of timber, oil or diamonds, compounded in many cases by the foreign extractive industries presence, their opaque, unreported payments to the governments and the governments' opaque, unreported use of the money to create and fund wars. The wars serve the purpose of creating a distraction, as the countries and their fleeing, displaced citizens are robbed of their countries' natural resources, easily converted to cash, for the personal use and fortunes of ruling parties. Tribal conflict is deliberately antagonized, so it can be blamed for the conflict.
At the base of these wars is the rich natural resources each of these poor countries hold of timber, oil or diamonds, compounded in many cases by the foreign extractive industries presence, their opaque, unreported payments to the governments and the governments' opaque, unreported use of the money to create and fund wars. The wars serve the purpose of creating a distraction, as the countries and their fleeing, displaced citizens are robbed of their countries' natural resources, easily converted to cash, for the personal use and fortunes of ruling parties. Tribal conflict is deliberately antagonized, so it can be blamed for the conflict.
A necessary first step in the prevention of future atrocities, human rights abuses and mass waves of human displacement in Africa, it is imperative for multinational extractive industries to make public the net taxes, fees, royalties and other payments they make to the governments of the countries in which they have operations.
Not too mention there are over 200,000 child soldiers in Africa forced against their will to kill and torture their own people and even their own families.
This is a big deal! It's not just a realistic-like plot for a movie like "Blood Diamond" or "Hotel Rwanda" these are actual events! These are real wars! Their are real children being forced against their will to carry around illegal weapons, and taught to hate, torture and kill their own people, even their own families! We can help save people in Africa living in Civil war conflicts by one signature at a time! Please help me, please sign!
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We signed the "Stop Civil War In Africa!" petition!
# 112:
7:30 pm PDT, Sep 2,
Jessica Main, Indiana
# 111:
2:19 pm PDT, Aug 28,
Sara DeRuyter, Wisconsin
# 110:
12:16 pm PDT, Aug 21,
Jan Vetulani, Poland
# 109:
11:07 am PDT, Aug 21,
Laurel Watson, Arizona
# 108:
7:53 am PDT, Aug 18,
Srishti Kapoor, India
# 107:
9:39 pm PDT, Aug 11,
Tazmin Shariff, Canada
# 106:
6:41 am PDT, Aug 8,
Roy Lindquist, Norway
# 105:
3:20 pm PDT, Aug 1,
Greta Malkotzoglou, Greece
# 104:
10:16 am PDT, Jul 28,
Nick McGuire, Ohio
# 103:
5:58 am PDT, Jul 25,
Name not displayed, Colorado
# 102:
6:16 am PDT, Jul 23,
Thomas Kristan, Canada
# 101:
8:45 am PDT, Jul 19,
Glenda Jasper, California
GIVE PEACE A CHANCE
GIVE PEACE A CHANCE
# 100:
3:48 am PDT, Jul 19,
Eternal Optimist, Australia
# 99:
9:30 pm PDT, Jul 6,
Hubert Delgrange, France
# 98:
9:40 am PDT, Jul 4,
Jennifer Gardner, Florida
# 97:
9:16 am PDT, Jul 4,
Leanne Vines, United Kingdom
# 96:
1:24 pm PDT, Jul 2,
Jillyanne Michelle Cape, Missouri
# 95:
12:19 pm PDT, Jun 30,
Jonathan Mccormack, New York
# 94:
6:36 am PDT, Jun 26,
Fabiane Neubert, Brazil
# 93:
1:43 am PDT, Jun 26,
Veronika Brezováková, Slovakia
The big brute facts is the civil war is heavily concentrated in countruies with low income in economic decline and depended upon natural resources. Africa is the one region where such economic characteristics are the norm and this fully explains Africa’s distinctive incidence of civil war. Yes, Africa is riven by ethnic differences, so that where civil wars flare up they will invariably be fought along ethnic lines. But this does not mean that the ethnic differences are ‘causing’ the conflict. Globally, ethnically diverse societies are no more at risk of civil war than other societies. The only exception to this pattern is where the largest ethnic group is in a majority – that does indeed increase risks and we can think of examples in Africa. But Africa is so ethnically diverse that in most societies no group is in a majority. Fewer African societies have ethnic majorities than other regions. How African Societies Can Help Themselves If I was a citizen of an African natural resource economy I would want to know how to become Botswana and to avoid the fate of Sierra Leone. I think that the magic ingredient that makes the difference is scrutiny of government by the country’s citizens. Unfortunately, scrutiny is a ‘public good’ – that is, if it is provided, the whole society benefits. The incentives for individual action are thus all wrong – basically, the smart thing to do is to sit back and hope that someone else goes to the trouble of providing public goods such as scrutiny. Societies need ‘collective action’ to overcome the public goods problem and because Africa’s societies are so highly diverse –more ethnically diverse than anywhere else in the world - they find it unusually difficult to supply public goods at the national level. Of course, people and groups lobby the government, but overwhelmingly this lobbying is not for the national interest but for individual or group advantage. But there are ways around this problem. In an ethnically diverse society it is probably much easier to organize scrutiny at the local or regional level than at the national level – at the local level ethnicity is likely to unite people in collective action, just as at the national level it is likely to divide them and frustrate collective action. If the rents from natural resources could be transparently and fairly distributed to sub-national levels of government there is some hope that such governments would come to face serious citizen scrutiny. The challenge is to get to this stage where rents accruing at the national level are seen to be fairly distributed to the regions.The Right Agenda for Outsiders This is where the rest of us come in – those of us who are not African citizens and so have little basis to tell African governments what they should and shouldn’t be doing. What we can legitimately do is to make it easier for African citizens to get to the stage at which they can overcome their collective action problem and scrutinize how resource rents are used at the local level. Specifically, we can help to make natural resource rents transparent at the national level. This has been the agenda of NGOs such as Global Witness – now picked up by the British government’s Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative – and I think that it is the right agenda. At least, it is the right agenda for us. Transparency in reporting revenues is itself only an input into scrutiny – it makes domestic scrutiny easier. It doesn’t make it happen automatically, but without transparency in revenues there can be no scrutiny of how they are used. Another key area for international action is that banks should be required to cooperate in tracking down misappropriated natural resource rents. For example, the Nigerian government has recently abandoned the attempt to repatriate the vast Abacha wealth from London banks because the process was proving to be an unending legal nightmare. What is the incentive for African societies to scrutinize their leaders if corrupt wealth is so well-defended by Western legal systems? A further area for international action is the acquisition of natural resource contracts. Too often Western corporations have connived with African political leaders to reach deals that were mutually profitable at the expense of the country. Transparent competitive tendering must become the norm. When North Sea oil concessions were awarded we would not have tolerated an oil company concluding a secret private deal with a minister; we should not tolerate such a practice in Africa. The magic ingredient that makes the difference is scruting of government by the countrys citizens.This, to my mind, is the agenda for corporate social responsibility in Africa: transparency in bidding for resource concessions; transparency in revenue payments to governments; and cooperation by banks in tracking misappropriation of rents. Sadly, it is far from the currently dominant agenda. International resource extraction companies live in terror of two powerful forces – Western consumers who may boycott their products; and the local people living around their installations, who may kidnap employees and damage equipment. They have responded to Western consumer pressure – itself based on a lazy, teenage misdiagnosis of Africa’s ills – by trying to look like good employers and good environmentalists. They have responded to local extortion rackets by providing health and education facilities in the neighborhood of their installations. Frankly, both of these are at best irrelevant. High wages mess up the labour market and so cost jobs; it is governments, not companies, that should be supplying basic social services. What has got lost is the legitimate, indeed essential role that companies can play in helping African societies to scrutinize their governments. Corporate social responsibility in Africa must be radically redefined.
The big brute facts is the civil war is heavily concentrated in countruies with low income in economic decline and depended upon natural resources. Africa is the one region where such economic characteristics are the norm and this fully explains Africa’s distinctive incidence of civil war. Yes, Africa is riven by ethnic differences, so that where civil wars flare up they will invariably be fought along ethnic lines. But this does not mean that the ethnic differences are ‘causing’ the conflict. Globally, ethnically diverse societies are no more at risk of civil war than other societies. The only exception to this pattern is where the largest ethnic group is in a majority – that does indeed increase risks and we can think of examples in Africa. But Africa is so ethnically diverse that in most societies no group is in a majority. Fewer African societies have ethnic majorities than other regions. How African Societies Can Help Themselves If I was a citizen of an African natural resource economy I would want to know how to become Botswana and to avoid the fate of Sierra Leone. I think that the magic ingredient that makes the difference is scrutiny of government by the country’s citizens. Unfortunately, scrutiny is a ‘public good’ – that is, if it is provided, the whole society benefits. The incentives for individual action are thus all wrong – basically, the smart thing to do is to sit back and hope that someone else goes to the trouble of providing public goods such as scrutiny. Societies need ‘collective action’ to overcome the public goods problem and because Africa’s societies are so highly diverse –more ethnically diverse than anywhere else in the world - they find it unusually difficult to supply public goods at the national level. Of course, people and groups lobby the government, but overwhelmingly this lobbying is not for the national interest but for individual or group advantage. But there are ways around this problem. In an ethnically diverse society it is probably much easier to organize scrutiny at the local or regional level than at the national level – at the local level ethnicity is likely to unite people in collective action, just as at the national level it is likely to divide them and frustrate collective action. If the rents from natural resources could be transparently and fairly distributed to sub-national levels of government there is some hope that such governments would come to face serious citizen scrutiny. The challenge is to get to this stage where rents accruing at the national level are seen to be fairly distributed to the regions.The Right Agenda for Outsiders This is where the rest of us come in – those of us who are not African citizens and so have little basis to tell African governments what they should and shouldn’t be doing. What we can legitimately do is to make it easier for African citizens to get to the stage at which they can overcome their collective action problem and scrutinize how resource rents are used at the local level. Specifically, we can help to make natural resource rents transparent at the national level. This has been the agenda of NGOs such as Global Witness – now picked up by the British government’s Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative – and I think that it is the right agenda. At least, it is the right agenda for us. Transparency in reporting revenues is itself only an input into scrutiny – it makes domestic scrutiny easier. It doesn’t make it happen automatically, but without transparency in revenues there can be no scrutiny of how they are used. Another key area for international action is that banks should be required to cooperate in tracking down misappropriated natural resource rents. For example, the Nigerian government has recently abandoned the attempt to repatriate the vast Abacha wealth from London banks because the process was proving to be an unending legal nightmare. What is the incentive for African societies to scrutinize their leaders if corrupt wealth is so well-defended by Western legal systems? A further area for international action is the acquisition of natural resource contracts. Too often Western corporations have connived with African political leaders to reach deals that were mutually profitable at the expense of the country. Transparent competitive tendering must become the norm. When North Sea oil concessions were awarded we would not have tolerated an oil company concluding a secret private deal with a minister; we should not tolerate such a practice in Africa. The magic ingredient that makes the difference is scruting of government by the countrys citizens.This, to my mind, is the agenda for corporate social responsibility in Africa: transparency in bidding for resource concessions; transparency in revenue payments to governments; and cooperation by banks in tracking misappropriation of rents. Sadly, it is far from the currently dominant agenda. International resource extraction companies live in terror of two powerful forces – Western consumers who may boycott their products; and the local people living around their installations, who may kidnap employees and damage equipment. They have responded to Western consumer pressure – itself based on a lazy, teenage misdiagnosis of Africa’s ills – by trying to look like good employers and good environmentalists. They have responded to local extortion rackets by providing health and education facilities in the neighborhood of their installations. Frankly, both of these are at best irrelevant. High wages mess up the labour market and so cost jobs; it is governments, not companies, that should be supplying basic social services. What has got lost is the legitimate, indeed essential role that companies can play in helping African societies to scrutinize their governments. Corporate social responsibility in Africa must be radically redefined.
# 92:
12:28 pm PDT, Jun 25,
Avak Norbert Kirchner, Germany
# 91:
6:19 am PDT, Jun 24,
Ms Williams, New York
this is disqusting black on black violence!!
this is disqusting black on black violence!!
# 90:
1:48 am PDT, Jun 23,
Cecy V. Aguirre López, Mexico
# 89:
12:40 am PDT, Jun 23,
Toni Sokoloski, Massachusetts
# 88:
6:11 pm PDT, Jun 22,
BiLL Fowlie, Maine
# 87:
2:24 am PDT, Jun 22,
Can Atik, Turkey
# 86:
1:34 pm PDT, Jun 21,
Niklas Marcev, Austria
Look around in north-east africa like Chad or Sudan - we should work all together and help the people in Sudan BUT not just to give money to the government or something... soldiers aren't the solution we need peace! africa needs us - in a peacefull way!!!
Look around in north-east africa like Chad or Sudan - we should work all together and help the people in Sudan BUT not just to give money to the government or something... soldiers aren't the solution we need peace! africa needs us - in a peacefull way!!!
Human help, for example by help them with technical things, building houses, schools, medical centers and so on. more international pressure! more of NGO's!
# 85:
11:49 am PDT, Jun 21,
Ester Jackson, Germany
# 84:
8:14 pm PDT, Jun 20,
Barbara Bunton, Texas
# 83:
2:03 pm PDT, Jun 20,
Jeanie Buerger, Massachusetts
# 82:
1:03 pm PDT, Jun 20,
Dora Kassis, Greece
# 81:
11:32 am PDT, Jun 20,
Franziska Eber, Germany
# 80:
9:57 am PDT, Jun 20,
Carrie Rimes, Oklahoma
# 79:
11:50 pm PDT, Jun 19,
Animals Abuse Greece, Greece
# 78:
7:55 pm PDT, Jun 19,
Robert Redmon, Ohio
# 77:
4:28 pm PDT, Jun 19,
Justin Richardson, New Jersey
# 76:
8:54 am PDT, Jun 19,
ALPHA WI, Germany
# 75:
6:37 am PDT, Jun 19,
Tori Bush, Florida
# 74:
6:16 am PDT, Jun 19,
Prasoon Agarwal, India
# 73:
5:31 am PDT, Jun 19,
Name not displayed, Florida
# 72:
5:25 am PDT, Jun 19,
Chelsea VG, New York
The fighting should really just stop, everybody has enough problems and fighting makes it worse. The petition mentions the natural resources; ok great, thats wonderful, try sharing! I swear, humans that participate in pointless wars that they themselves have started are so immature! Get real! Tribal conflicts?? Share your traditions, and if you don't like it, walk AWAY. Don't go back with guns and say "We don't like the way you celebrate that tradition so we're gonna blow you to bits because we are morons." And child soldiers?? You guys are really pushing your luck. Act like adults, not 3 yr old babies. You're a bump on a pickle!!!
The fighting should really just stop, everybody has enough problems and fighting makes it worse. The petition mentions the natural resources; ok great, thats wonderful, try sharing! I swear, humans that participate in pointless wars that they themselves have started are so immature! Get real! Tribal conflicts?? Share your traditions, and if you don't like it, walk AWAY. Don't go back with guns and say "We don't like the way you celebrate that tradition so we're gonna blow you to bits because we are morons." And child soldiers?? You guys are really pushing your luck. Act like adults, not 3 yr old babies. You're a bump on a pickle!!!
# 71:
4:55 am PDT, Jun 19,
Janice Bergeron, Connecticut
# 70:
2:34 am PDT, Jun 19,
Tonya Hountingwolf, United Kingdom
# 69:
2:00 am PDT, Jun 19,
Steve Klein, Canada
# 68:
1:04 am PDT, Jun 19,
Laura Gamba, Italy
# 67:
12:30 am PDT, Jun 19,
David Dunkleberger, Pennsylvania
# 66:
12:16 am PDT, Jun 19,
Willow White, Idaho
# 65:
10:52 pm PDT, Jun 18,
B Mellor, Canada
# 64:
9:41 pm PDT, Jun 18,
Pam Boland, Georgia
# 63:
|
9:18 pm PDT, Jun 18,
Sophie Szeferowicz, France
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# 62:
9:13 pm PDT, Jun 18,
Name not displayed, Hawaii
# 61:
9:11 pm PDT, Jun 18,
Mark Smith, California
# 60:
8:31 pm PDT, Jun 18,
Erika Dyer, Wisconsin
# 59:
8:29 pm PDT, Jun 18,
Fraditia Anggreini, Indonesia
# 58:
7:20 pm PDT, Jun 18,
Bill McGlone, Connecticut
# 57:
6:19 pm PDT, Jun 18,
Name not displayed, Australia
# 56:
5:46 pm PDT, Jun 18,
Linda Heise, Canada
# 55:
4:03 pm PDT, Jun 18,
Laura Zanoli, Italy
# 54:
|
3:58 pm PDT, Jun 18,
Nicole Hill, Canada
Given the choice between war and peace, do you not agree that Africa's people would choose peace. It is not the peoples of African countries that we must address here, for they are the "commodity chips" in a brutal conflict derived and maintained by force and oppression. Multi national businesses are being allowed to continue their dirty businesses in full participation with established crooked governments. The crimes committed against its own people are permitted to continue and we who are not directly victimized by these wars are unwittingly witnessing the death of many proud and noble nations.If you want to know what I think, I am sick of thinking. I would like to see these big businesses shut down and the world in agreement to boycott all products that come from these countries who kill their own children, mothers, fathers and grandparents. I would like it all to stop. |
# 53:
3:38 pm PDT, Jun 18,
Nicole Hardin, Alabama
# 52:
3:16 pm PDT, Jun 18,
MASSIMO DI DIEGO, Italy
# 51:
3:10 pm PDT, Jun 18,
Susan Holmes, United Kingdom
What is the point in killing each other?
What is the point in killing each other?
