CAR: " In the paper wars that tie the red tape tight "

DW Germany reports

Christian militias 'cleanse' Muslims from western CAR, UN says

Christian militias have driven out most Muslims living in the western Central African Republic (CAR), according to the UN refugee chief. CAR's foreign minister has called for a surge of peacekeepers to halt the violence.

Christian militias have already "cleansed" most Muslims from the western Central African Republic, the UN high commissioner for refugees told the Security Council on Thursday.

Something I am sure the Security Council was completely unaware of I am sure. This situation is a bloody shambles. The UN had more than ample warning, Lesley Warner at Lesley on Africa blogged in November:

"The question is, after this crisis has been unfolding for almost a year, why is an international response only coming together now?"

Some four months later after France had warned of a genocide the Security Council finally notices that a genocide is actually occurring, a second in fact following the Seleka genocide inflicted on the Christian community a revenge genocide is now under way on Muslims.

"Tens of thousands of them (Muslims) have left the country, the second refugee outflow of the current crisis, and most of those remaining are under permanent threat," Antonio Guterres said.

The UN refugee chief went on to say that some 15,000 people were trapped in 18 locations in western CAR, where they were surrounded by Christian "anti-Balaka" militias.

It would seem to be fairly clear unless those people are protected they will be dead soon.

"International forces are present in some of these sites, but if more security is not made available immediately, many of these civilians risk being killed right before our eyes," Guterres said.

"The demon of religious cleansing must be stopped now," he told the Security Council.

Demon indeed. So should the usage of of words such as cleansing, killing people is not cleansing. Call it what it is. Murder, Genocide or even hate crimes but please not cleansing.

Robust UN peacekeeping plan

The Security Council met on Thursday to consider a plan, drafted by UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, that would deploy 12,000 UN peacekeepers to CAR.

"We would roll out the red carpet for them tomorrow," said CAR's foreign minister, Toussaint Kongo-Doudou. "There are no alternatives in terms of survival."

Wouldn't it have been a better idea to have deployed them before thousands died. It would seem that the Muslim population is now largely eliminated and in exile, one would have to doubt that there is a reconciliation possible after this madness. I can see little point in deploying peacekeepers several months from now. If the Security Council can't react to problems such as this with speed then it  might as well be replaced, if it isn't it will become even more redundant.

France has already deployed troops to its former colony and has promised to beef up its force to 2,000 soldiers. The African Union has 6,000 soldiers stationed in the country, while the EU has committed another 1,000 troops to the planned peacekeeping force in CAR.

The EU and the AU seem to be taking over the UN's mandate.

So far, the international troops stationed in the country have failed to stop the violence there, leading to calls for additional peacekeepers under a UN mandate.

'Ethnic-religious violence'

CAR has been gripped by violence since last March, when Muslim "Seleka" rebels overthrew the president. Vigilante factions within the group then went on a raping, killing and pillaging spree, provoking Christians to form the self-defense militias.

Since December, the Christian militias have gained the upper hand, targeting Muslim civilians. UN officials have described the violence as "ethnic-religious" cleansing.

According to the UN humanitarian chief, more than 650,000 people are internally displaced in CAR, while 300,000 have fled to neighboring countries. CAR has a total population of just over five million.

With thousands more facing starvation.

Around 50 percent of the country identifies as Christian, while 15 percent of the population identifies as Muslim. The rest of the population practices indigenous beliefs.

CAR: " Why should I feel pity when you kill your own and feel no shame "

Human Rights Watch reports

A lot of this I have covered in previous blogs but the motivation of the Chadian " Peacekeepers "  has long been suspected and really the African Union needs to dismiss the Chad contingent.

Central African Republic: Seleka Fighters Regroup in North 

Bangui:  Armed Seleka commanders and fighters are leaving their bases in Bangui, the capital of the Central African Republic, regrouping in northeastern towns, and engaging in a new wave of horrific attacks against civilians. In some cases,Chadian peacekeeping troops have facilitated the movement of armed Seleka leaders complicit in grave abuses.

In late December Radio France International reported that Chadian troops were to be pulled out of the south of the CAR and sent to secure the north, this obviously didn't happen. At the time I blogged that there was considerable disquiet about the activities of  those troops and the role of Chad in the Seleka rebellion.

" Chadian troops are to be pulled out of the Central African Republic's capital, Bangui, after clashes with demonstrators and Burundian soldiers. The Chadians, who are the largest contingent of the African peacekeeping force, Misca, will be redeployed to the north."

Chad is widely believed to be have been behind the Seleka rebellion and having troops from there is not all that smart. The feeling in the Christian community is that the peace keepers from Chad are actually protecting Muslim and particularly Seleka interests.

"The whole Chadian contingent will be sent to secure the north in the next few days," Misca spokesperson Lieutenant Colonel Ndong Toutoune told the AFP news agency."

Seleka forces in January 2014 tortured and killed civilians in and around the town of Sibut, where the former rebels have been regrouping, Human Rights Watch said. Seleka forces were able to leave bases to which they had been confined by African Union peacekeepers by using bush roads to circumvent checkpoints or by traveling with Chadian troops in heavily armed convoys.

“If the African Union is truly going to protect civilians in the Central African Republic, it needs to rein in the rogue activities of the Chadian peacekeeping troops,” said Peter Bouckaert, emergencies director at Human Rights Watch. “The Chadian forces should not be enabling the Seleka to prey on civilians.”

The issue is not about reigning them in any more, they are part of the problem and are obviously under the orders of Chad President and not the African Union. They need to be removed from the AU MISCA forces.

The predominantly Muslim Seleka include numerous Chadian and Sudanese mercenaries. The African Union peacekeeping force deployed to protect civilians, known as MISCA, which officially became operational in December 2013, also includes Chadian troops. The United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights reported in January 2014, following a December 2013 monitoring mission, that it had received “multiple testimonies of collusion” between some Chadian peacekeepers and Seleka forces.

I wouldn't be in the least bit surprised to find that there are active or more likely temporarily " former " members of the Chad army operating as part of the Seleka alliance and if that is the case there should be no surprises that there is a large degree of collaboration between the Chad peacekeepers and the Seleka bandits.

                                                                           21-year-old Abraham Ngieri

" On January 28, a group of eight Seleka fighters detained 21-year-old Abraham Ngieri and two other young men, Michel Ngodji, 31, and Franku Mois, 24, in Sibut and took them to the main Seleka base, at the mayor’s office in Sibut. In front of the gathered Seleka commanders, the fighters tied up the three men, tortured them, and stabbed them with knives over a five-hour period, in an effort to make them reveal the location of anti-balaka bases in the area. When it became clear that the men did not know the location of the bases, the Seleka commander of Sibut, General Rakis, ordered his soldiers to take the three men away and kill them.

Ngieri, who, despite being seriously wounded, survived this attack, told Human Rights Watch:

The zone commander himself gave the order to take us away and kill us. About nine of them took us in a 4x4 blue pickup. We were still tied up, in the arbatasher way [with arms and legs tied behind the back], and they took us to a house a few kilometers from town. Then they stabbed us again, and put the house on fire over our heads. I only managed to escape because the ropes burned and I was able to free myself, but the others burned to death."

The testimony included a report that on December 5 they went together, door-to-door, looking for members of the anti-balaka – Christian militias that have formed to respond to the Seleka, but often have targeted Muslim civilians – and indiscriminately killed at least 11 people. Those killed included elderly women and people who were ill or had mental disabilities, the report found.

It is not my place to defend the actions of the Christian anti-balaka militias by the same token it is very hard to condemn them given the brutality that the Seleka alliance has inflicted on the Christian community. On 9 January 2014 I blogged about this from Voice of America.  

"The Muslims knocked on our door and asked us, 'do you have any guns?," she told me. "We said no, but they took my son out and they shot him. They shot all of our sons, one by one."

" However, aid workers with long experience here believe that power is seeping away from the Seleka, partly because some are from neighbouring Chad and are returning home.

One aid worker spoke of a growing Christian backlash against the Muslim population (a minority here) threatening truly awful bloodshed on a scale not yet seen."

The number of reports of atrocities committed against Christians i have read number in the hundreds, there are over 10 accounts of atrocities in the Human Rights Watch report this blog is about. It is no wonder that the Christian community is taking revenge.

Since December, MISCA, alongside the French force Sangaris, had worked to diminish the violence in the Central African Republic by containing the Seleka and their weapons at bases in Bangui. But in late January, Human Rights Watch documented movement by the Seleka on their own and in the company of Chadian troops, which coincided with a new wave of abuses.

In late December ( I read and blogged the article on Christmas day ) the ABC carried a story about Muslim citizens of the CAR protesting about the French Forces who were then bringing the Seleka gangsters to heel, it was incredible to think even then the fools couldn't see that the French would soon become their only hope of surviving the inevitable Christian backlash that is now occurring.

" On Tuesday the crowds making their way down the deserted city streets were holding signs that said: "We say No to France!" and "Hollande = Liar." Other signs had a hand drawn map of this nation located at the heart of Africa, but showed it split into two, with a Muslim homeland penciled in in the country's north."

Splitting the CAR into separate Christian and Muslim nations is I suspect the objective of the Chadian troops and why they are enabling the Seleka Alliance to carry on the slaughter of the Christian community. 

" It doesn't take a geopolitical genius to draw a line on map and I suspect that that is something that isn't too far from the front of President  Idriss Déby Itno's mind."

Shades of Rwanda and the DR Congo.

The African Union should immediately suspend and investigate, with the support of the United Nations (UN), any Chadian MISCA troops credibly implicated in serious abuses, including assisting Seleka to carry out abuses, Human Rights Watch said.

I think the situation has moved well beyond that. The UN Security Council have screwed up this situation in a manner that only the UN Security Council could. I think that it is time to point out to President  Idriss Déby Itno that invading and fostering invasions of sovereign nations has consequences. It might also be time for the Security Council to wake up and understand that the reports that their experts are filing, reporting on the presence of Arabic speaking bearded men operating in sub Saharan Africa might point to a coordinated attempt export Jihad to region.  

" The ominous convoy rode into Sibut on Wednesday night, the fighters speaking only Arab, and began committing atrocities against civilians, a paramilitary police source said.

Killers " speaking only Arab(ic)" is starting to become a very unwelcome pattern in the Central African region. The ADF Ugandan rebels ( also Muslim ) operating in the neighbouring DR Congo seem to have some Arabic speakers as well. 

Again from the UN Experts report:

The Group determined that during 2013, foreign, Arabic-speaking men have conducted military training courses and operations with ADF; however, the Group was not able to firmly establish the nationalities of these foreigners or their organizational affiliation(s).

I have seen other reports describing them as bearded Arabs. It isn't all that hard to connect the jihadi dots, or rather disconnect them in a final and terminal way."

The UN, regional organizations, and countries assisting MISCA should carefully review their support to ensure it does not benefit Chadian troops that either commit human rights violations or assist the Seleka in the commission of abuses.

“To be effective, peacekeepers should be impartial,” Bouckaert said. “The African Union should rigorously investigate whether Chadian peacekeeping forces are putting civilians at risk by supporting the Seleka.”

I think they are operating under orders that are diametrically opposed to the objectives of the AU Mission.  

Chadian Troops Assist Seleka LeadersOn January 26, at 4:30 p.m., Human Rights Watch researchers witnessed and filmed a heavily armed convoy of Chadian peacekeeping troops about 60 kilometers north of Bangui. The convoy included at least eight pick-up trucks carrying Seleka fighters including some leaders, such as General Mahamat Bahr, the head of military intelligence for the Seleka, whom Human Rights Watch had met the day before he fled.

On January 31, General Bahr contacted Human Rights Watch by phone to say that he had traveled with the Chadian peacekeeping convoy to Bossangoa, a key town in the country’s northwest. The Chadians were to relieve peacekeeping troops from the Republic of Congo who had been stationed in Bossangoa for months. Upon taking over peacekeeping responsibilities in Bossangoa, the Chadian troops allowed another Seleka leader, Colonel Saleh Zabadi, to leave with his troops from their base, where they were ordered to remain, and to go with General Bahr and other Seleka commanders to the northern cities of Sibut, Kaga Bandoro, and Kabo, where Seleka leaders were regrouping with their forces.

There is a major problem here. " The Chadians were to relieve peacekeeping troops from the Republic of Congo who had been stationed in Bossangoa for months."

 This report was made on the 27 December 2013.   

" The Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) information minister says 850 peacekeeping troops from the national army, the FARDC, will be sent next week to neighboring Central African Republic (CAR) to help with efforts to stabilize the security situation there."

In a December 2013 report, “They Came to Kill,” Human Rights Watch documented how Colonel Zabadi, then the Bossangoa deputy commander, ordered the drowning on November 18 of seven farmers who were wrongfully accused of being anti-balaka militiamen. The farmers were bound and thrown into the Ouham River; three survived. Human Rights Watch met with Zabadi and Bahr in December to confront them with the evidence and warn them they could be held criminally responsible for such crimes.

I think that more substantive action than a warning from a non governmental organisation such as Human Rights Watch might be in order. This is a war crime Zabadi and Bahr should be arrested if possible but failing that the ICC should issue warrants for them.

MISCA, which has a mandate to protect civilians, has worked to stabilize the Central African Republic by ordering Seleka fighters to remain on their bases and by trying to prohibit them from circulating with weapons. An official with the peacekeeping force told Human Rights Watch that the Chadians were operating outside of its command and mandate by providing escorts to armed Seleka leaders.

The African Union is doing the best it can, the EU with far greater resources is making a half assed effort and once again the UN is doing sweet bugger all.

CAR: " To this orphan of heartbreak, disillusioned and scarred A refugee "

New Vision Uganda reports

Hiding in the bush after C.Africa rebel attack

                     

               There is an overall sense of desperation among many people who have been affected by the crisis. 

BANGUI - When a heavily-armed convoy of former Seleka rebels zeroed in on his Central African town, Albert took his children and his livestock and fled into the bush.

This is the first report on situation outside of Bangui that I have seen published and it sounds as though the Seleka killers ( lets stop with the pretence they are rebels ) are retreating in the bloodiest way possible.

Like the majority of the residents of Sibut, a strategic town linking the capital Bangui, 180 kilometres (110 miles) away, with the north of the country, Albert was not going to stick around for the terror the rebels have wrought across the strife-torn nation.

"As I speak to you, I am hiding in the bush, about 10km from Sibut. Ninety-nine percent of the inhabitants are in the bush, there is no one left in town," he told AFP by telephone.

I suspect that there is not only nobody left in town but there is probably very little of the town left. Before Christmas I blogged about an Amnesty International report that include some satellite shots of the war crimes inflicted on the villages, there is no reason to expect that the Seleka criminals will behave any differently this time.
"We fled with our livestock, our goats, but they followed us to steal our chickens," Albert explained. "We have settled in under a big tree... we sleep on the ground with our children like animals."

Amongst all the killing that has occurred in the CAR it is hard to get a balanced perspective on losing some chickens and having to sleep under a tree. The truth is that Albert has had to flee with his family the alternative being death at the hands of Seleka, his house and possessions he couldn't carry have in all probability been stolen or destroyed and those chickens while seeming insignificant might well yet come to be the difference between life or death for Albert and his family. The CAR is now facing famine. 

The ominous convoy rode into Sibut on Wednesday night, the fighters speaking only Arab, and began committing atrocities against civilians, a paramilitary police source said.

Killers " speaking only Arab(ic)" is starting to become a very unwelcome pattern in the Central African region. The ADF Ugandan rebels ( also Muslim ) operating in the neighbouring DR Congo seem to have some Arabic speakers as well. 

Again from the UN Experts report:

The Group determined that during 2013, foreign, Arabic-speaking men have conducted military training courses and operations with ADF; however, the Group was not able to firmly establish the nationalities of these foreigners or their organizational affiliation(s).

I have seen other reports describing them as bearded Arabs. It isn't all that hard to connect the jihadi dots, or rather disconnect them in a final and terminal way.

 
At their head was Mamadou Rakis, who has been deputy police chief under former rebel-turned-president Michel Djotodia who was brought to power in a coup by his mostly Muslim Seleka rebel group in March last year.

One hopes that the ICC has issued indictments against Mamadou Rakis.

Djotodia then disbanded the Seleka group, but the fighters went rogue, spreading terror and violence across the nation and prompting Christian communities to form militia to defend themselves.

The resulting cycle of often horrific tit-for-tat violence has brought the country to its knees.

Djotodia's resignation on January 10, and the installment of a new interim government, have failed to stem the violence which has spread from the capital into the interior.

I suspect the violence will end when the Muslim community has either been wiped out or gone into exile. Djotodia it would seem had very little idea what he was unleashing. 

" The boot is now clearly on the Christian foot it may well be that the surviving Muslim community will be exiled if they are not killed. This was always going to be the outcome and to some degree it is understandable. The Muslim community allowed the Seleka rebels to massacre the Christians now the situation has been reversed the most that the peacekeepers can hope to do is provide safe zones while a solution is arrived at." 

Seleka "have flocked to all corners of the countryside, from Bangassou, Bambari, Grimari, Bria to Ndele," said Albert, naming a string of Central African towns.

"They have committed destruction, robberies in broad daylight, they break down doors, they loot, they clean out suburbs. Bad luck for you if they find you!" he added.

"They take money, cellphones. They rule the roost."

That will change as we have seen in Bangui, Seleka may have wanted to create a Muslim state in the CAR but with 85% of the population being Christian that was never going to happen. Sectarian violence that will destroy their co-religionists will be the lasting Seleka achievement.

The Red Cross based in Bangui confirmed Friday that Seleka had stormed Sibut and that residents "are holed up in the bush."

None of the 1,600 French troops in the country were present in the town of some 20,000 people when the former rebels arrived.

A Gabonese contingent from the African Union force MISCA was surrounded and then fled, according to several sources.

When the European Union forces arrive their airpower will be the game changer. It seems to be taking an awfully long time for them to arrive though.

The fighters "have moved into two bases in the town, one is at the mayor's office. They are armed to the teeth," said Albert, who said about 20 people had been killed.

"The only vehicles circulating belong to Seleka or the Red Cross. We are cut off from everything."

The attack seemed to take both the French and African troops by surprise, with spokesmen from both sides initially saying they were unaware of what was happening in the town.

However hope appeared Friday night as the French force launched an operation in the town, according to an army spokesman.

This was confirmed by a defence official in Paris who said French aircraft had been flying over the town since the afternoon.

The reconnaissance aircraft will probably move the Seleka forces on. I doubt they will want to tangle with the French troops.

CAR: " Wearing bracelets of smoke, naked of understanding "

The BBC reports

Bodies burnt in street in Central African Republic

                                         Aid workers in Bangui rushed to remove the burnt bodies of the Muslim men

A Christian mob in the Central African Republic capital Bangui has killed and burned two Muslims in the street, in the latest sectarian clash.

The gangs told the BBC they would carry on killing Muslims in their area.

It was predictable that a backlash against Muslims would occur I blogged a couple of weeks ago that after the brutality inflicted on the Christian community the only way to stop it was getting peacekeepers on the ground in far greater numbers

" The peacekeepers will soon have the job of protecting the Muslim population from annihilation, the Seleka rebels will decamp to the north with the inevitable collapse of the Djotodia regime. This from the BBC: 

"The Muslims knocked on our door and asked us, 'do you have any guns?," she told me. "We said no, but they took my son out and they shot him. They shot all of our sons, one by one. "

There is a certain irony to this report from late December:  

" Several thousand Muslims backing former Seleka rebels protested in the Central African Republic's capital on Sunday against French soldiers conducting a disarmament operation, AFP journalists in the city witnessed.

The demonstration swelled after some Muslim residents said three ex-Seleka fighters were killed in clashes with French troops. French officials have not confirmed that information."

French and African Union soldiers are struggling to contain sectarian violence that erupted after largely Muslim rebels took over the country.

The Muslim community allowed their coreligionists from the rebel Seleka to brutalise the Christian community without so much as a murmur of protest, when the French troops attempted to put a stop to the Seleka deprivations the Muslim community protested against the French.  If the Muslims had placed a higher  any value on the lives and wellbeing of their Christian neighbours rather than supporting the largely foreign ( Chad & South Sudan ) Seleka rebels I doubt that they would be in this situation now. What goes around comes around.

MPs are due to select a new interim president on Monday, a week after rebel leader Michel Djotodia quit the post.

Mr Djotodia became CAR's first Muslim ruler after his rebel group Seleka overthrew the government in March last year.

The coup helped plunge CAR into sectarian conflict between the majority Christians and the minority Muslims.

It wasn't a coup it was a rebellion, they are very different beasts. The sectarian violence was a direct result of the behaviour of the Seleka rebels, it is very hard not to feel a certain degree of, if not sympathy at least understanding of the Christian community position with regard to the Muslims that remain.   

He quit on 11 January having failed to stop the violence.

Although the clashes seemed to die down immediately after he quit, reports emerged later in the week of more violence.

Radio France International quoted a French General saying the situation was improving again I blogged about it at the time.

"The situation is improving - slowly, but it is improving," the commander of the French troops in the CAR, General Francisco Soriano, said on Thursday.

It is improving insomuch as we have taken a step forward, the two steps backwards have yet to come. Unless the international community can get its shit together very fast then those backwards steps are days if not hours away."

On Friday, aid agencies said at least 22 people were killed in an attack on a convoy evacuating Muslims to neighbouring Cameroon.

In Sunday's attack, a Christian mob killed two Muslims and set their bodies alight at a roundabout in the capital.

They told the BBC's Thomas Fessy that they were avenging the murder of a Christian overnight. It is unclear whether the men had any part or were targeted simply for being Muslim.

Almost certainly it would be a case of being in the wrong place at the wrong time. I doubt that there are many Seleka left in Bangui. The Muslims that remain are probably locals with no place to run. The best option I can see in the short term is setting up secure areas or sanctuaries for the remainder of the Muslim community.

The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) said it had taken 25 very seriously injured people to hospital in Bangui.

In a statement issued from its headquarters in Geneva, it added that fresh inter-communal violence had flared up in north and north-western areas of the country. Red Cross workers had buried 50 bodies discovered over the past 48 hours in the north-west, it said.

The ICRC expressed concern that much of the population, fearing reprisals, was hiding in the bush with no-one to protect them.

There is very little in the way of reporting from the hinterland. I would expect that human toll has been very high.

The UN Security Council approved a French troop deployment to CAR late last year as part of a plan to restore order and hold an election by early 2015.

The temporary parliament finalised a list of eight candidates for interim president on Sunday.

Officials said the candidates met stringent criteria, including stipulations they had not been members of a militant group, and that they had never worked for Mr Djotodia or his Seleka rebel group.

The candidates include Bangui mayor Catherine Samba Panza, and two sons of former presidents, Sylvain Patasse and Desire Kolingba.

It would seem possible that some EU nations might decide to contribute troops alongside the AU / MISCA (Support Mission to the Central African Republic ), DW ( Germany ) reports

" EU foreign ministers were on Monday expected to discuss sending troops to the country to lend support to French and African soldiers who are seeking to restore order.French President Francois Hollande in December asked for a show of solidarity from fellow EU member states, but so far only Estonia has offered to send any troops to the country. Britain, along with Germany, has offered logistical support but has repeatedly made it clear that it will not send soldiers.Poland, the Czech Republic, Belgium and Spain are believed to be the next most likely to contribute troops."

Of course there remains the problem of food. 

" With the coming harvest threatened since farmers have fled their lands or lack seeds due to looting and because people have had to eat them instead of saving them for planting, the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and WFP have launched a 100-day response plan to boost nutrition and restore agricultural production through seed distribution and storage facilities."

Aquaculture potential

Mercopress reports 

UN aquaculture initiative to help low-income countries fight hunger

A United Nations-backed initiative that will form partnerships among governments, development agencies and universities has been launched to better understand how aquaculture can help low-income countries fight hunger.

“The project will work closely with fish farming communities and will focus on field research in many major aquaculture countries in the developing world,” said Rohana Subasinghe, a senior expert of the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) on aquaculture and coordinator of the project.

“It will develop tools and methodologies to help key partners to develop policies geared to improving aquaculture’s contribution to food and nutrition security.”

Aquaculture is a no brainer with regard to developing new sources of protein. From a New Zealand perspective aquaculture offers huge opportunities, something that seems to scare the crap out of our governments be they left ( Labour ) or right ( National ). Of course that is again down to the Greens who seem to view starvation in the third world as an environmentally friendly solution to, global warming, high exchange rates....

Aquaculture, which involves cultivating fresh water and saltwater populations of fish under controlled conditions as opposed to catching fish in the wild, is the world’s fastest growing source of animal protein, growing by more than 60% between 2000 and 2008, from 32.4 million tons to 52.5 million tons. Nearly 50% of the fish for consumption comes from this practice.

Think about NZ. A small country to be sure but with the fifth largest in the world oceanic territory. 

Although aquaculture is widely regarded to play a pivotal role in fighting hunger, little is known about its exact impact on food and nutrition security and poverty alleviation in developing countries. However, given population growth projections, aquaculture will need to expand to meet future demand for fish, FAO said in a news release.

The initiative –Aquaculture for Food Security, Poverty Alleviation and Nutrition (AFSPAN) – will examine low-income food-deficit countries in Africa, Asia and Latin America to develop sustainable fishing policies and support the livelihoods of millions of small-scale fish farmers.

There are some very innovative aquaculture initiatives happening in Zimbabwe independent I might add of the government of Zimbabwe.

AFSPAN will also develop new ways to quantify the contribution of aquaculture with systematic and quantitative assessments, and elaborate strategies for improving the impact of aquaculture on food and nutrition security and poverty alleviation.

The three-year project will be funded by the European Union (EU) with one million Euros, which will be managed by FAO in partnership with a global alliance of 20 development agencies, governments and universities.

I think an investment of just 1 million euros is a bit lame.