Monday April 8, 2024 {HMC}  Somali Prime Minister Hamse Abdi Barre appointed new members to his cabinet, including the ministers of internal affairs, security, and foreign affairs, on Sunday.

Prime Minister Hamse appointed Ahmed Moalim Fiqi as the Minister of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation. Fiqi previously served as the government minister of internal affairs.

Ali Yusuf Ali Hoosh, a member of the Lower House of Parliament, has been appointed the federal government’s Minister of Internal Affairs.

The security minister, Gen. Abdullahi Sheikh Ismail Faratag, and the minister of energy and water, Abdullahi Bidhan Warsame, have also been appointed.

Prime Minister Hamse appointed Mohamed Adan Moalim as the Minister of Posts and Communications of the Federal Government, while Ahmed Omar Mohamed was appointed the Minister of State for Environment and Climate Change.

These appointments come a few days after the Somali Cabinet of Ministers reappointed Abdullahi Mohamed Ali Sanbaloolshe as the new director of the National Security and Intelligence Agency of Somalia (NISA) during its weekly meeting in Mogadishu.

The newly appointed Director, Abdullahi Sanbaloolshe, has previously held the position of Director of NISA twice and has also served in other roles, including Minister and Ambassador.

Monday April 8, 2024 {HMC} Rwanda’s president said the international community “failed all of us”, as he marked 30 years since the 1994 genocide that killed around 800,000 people.

President Paul Kagame addressed dignitaries and world leaders who had gathered in Rwanda’s capital, Kigali, to commemorate the bloodshed.

“Rwanda was completely humbled by the magnitude of our loss,” he said.

“And the lessons we learned are engraved in blood.”

On this day in 1994, extremists from the Hutu ethnic group launched a 100-day killing spree, in which members of the Tutsi minority and Hutu moderates were slaughtered.

The mainly Tutsi forces who took power following the genocide were alleged to have killed thousands of Hutu people in Rwanda in retaliation.

On Sunday, Mr Kagame and a group of dignitaries placed wreathes on mass graves at the Kigali Genocide Memorial – where more than 250,000 victims are believed to be buried. The president also lit a remembrance flame.

In a speech later, Mr Kagame thanked fellow African countries including Uganda, Ethiopia and Tanzania for their assistance in accepting Tutsi refugees and ending the genocide.

“Many of the countries representing here also sent their sons and daughters to serve as peacekeepers in Rwanda,” he said.

“Those soldiers did not fail Rwanda. It was the international community which failed all of us. Whether from contempt or cowardice.”

The failure of other nations to intervene has been a cause of lingering shame.

Former US President Bill Clinton, who was among the visiting leaders present, has called the genocide the biggest failure of his administration.

In a video message recorded for the memorial, French President Emmanuel Macron acknowledged that his country and its allies could have stopped the genocide but lacked the will to do so.

France, under then-president François Mitterrand, was a close ally of the Hutu-led government of Juvenal Habyarimana prior to the killings, and Rwanda has accused France of ignoring or missing warning signs and of training the militias who carried out the attacks.

France has consistently denied complicity, but a report commissioned by Mr Macron three years ago concluded that France bears “heavy and overwhelming responsibilities”.

French Foreign Minister Stéphane Séjourné attended the ceremony in Kigali in place of Mr Macron on Sunday. Other visiting dignitaries included Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed, South African President Cyril Ramaphosa, and Israel’s President Isaac Herzog.

Sunday’s events mark the beginning of a week-long mourning period across Rwanda. Music, sport and films will be banned from broadcast on radio or TV and national flags will be flown at half-mast.

The streets of Kigali have been unusually quiet, according to the BBC team there, with no traffic, many shops closed, and few pedestrians.

The genocide was sparked on the night of 6 April 1994, when Hutu President Juvenal Habyarimana was assassinated – the plane he was on was shot down.

Hutu extremists blamed the Tutsi RPF rebel group, and launched a well-organised campaign of slaughter.

Their victims were shot, beaten or hacked to death in killings fuelled by vicious anti-Tutsi propaganda spread on TV and radio.

Thousands of Tutsi women were abducted and kept as sex slaves.

After 100 days of violence, the RPF rebel militia, led by Mr Kagame, succeeded in overthrowing the Hutu authorities and ending the genocide.

Human rights groups say RPF fighters killed thousands of Hutu civilians as they took power – and more after they pursued Hutu militia members who had fled into the Democratic Republic of Congo. The RPF denies this.

Scars from the violence still remain, and new mass graves are still being uncovered around the country.

In the months that followed the genocide, the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda was set up in Tanzania.

Dozens of senior officials in the former regime were convicted of genocide – all of them Hutus.

Within Rwanda, community courts, known as gacaca, were created to speed up the prosecution of hundreds of thousands of genocide suspects awaiting trial.

According to Rwanda, hundreds of suspects remain at large, including in neighbouring nations such as DR Congo and Uganda.

President Kagame has been hailed for transforming the tiny, devastated country he took over through policies which encouraged rapid economic growth.

But his critics say he does not tolerate dissent and several opponents have met unexplained deaths, both in the country and abroad.

Kigali’s usually bustling Kimironko Market was empty as Rwandans observed genocide commemorations The genocide remains a hugely sensitive issue in Rwanda, and it is illegal to talk about ethnicity.

SOURCE  BBC

Monday April 8, 2024 {HMC} Education and immigration advocates say African students face high denial rates when seeking visas to study in the United States, and they are pushing for changes.

Visa rejection rates are higher than elsewhere in regions of the Middle East, South America and Africa, with Africa experiencing the highest levels of disproportionate refusals, according to a Presidents’ Alliance on Higher Education and Immigration report released in July 2023.

“Whenever we see that sort of data for any country, let alone a region of the world, it gives us pause,” said Fanta Aw, executive director of NAFSA: Association of International Educators.

Aw told VOA that NAFSA and other institutions met a few times with U.S. State Department officials in 2023 to ask questions and push for visa adjudication changes. She said an investigation still is needed to understand what is happening.

They are expected to meet again in the coming months.

“They’re very committed … and do not want to see inconsistencies in different parts. … We had conversations about staff training at the country level and consular affairs level, and we had assurances that these things are being constantly monitored,” she said.

Data collected through public records requests show that in 2022, half of the students from African countries who applied for a student visa were denied.

In 2023, the trend continued. Ethiopian students had a 78% denial rate, followed by Nigeria at 75%, Kenya at 74%, Congo at 69%, Ghana at 63%, Zimbabwe at 47%, and South Africa at 17%.

“What is the root cause here?” Aw said. “There needs to be assurance that [consular officers] on the ground are fully trained in the way they make determinations around this, that there is consistency in that. We need more visa appointment slots, because with the demand, if people are not even able to get a visa appointment, and when they get the rejection is this high, you can imagine the compounding effect of that.”

In European countries, for instance, one in 10 students was denied a visa during the same time frame.

The student visa, or F-1 visa, allows international students to enroll full time in U.S. government-certified institutions, and it is required for all international students.

“For the past few years, we’ve been tracking this,” Washington-based immigration lawyer Leon Fresco told VOA. “And we happened to notice there’s this weird African disparity here. … Is this happening by inertia? Is this happening because [U.S. officials] wanted it to happen? … We just want people to know there’s this disparity. … [And] start the process of fixing it.”

Word goes around

Advocates say a high rate of visa denials discourages students from applying to U.S. institutions.

“Word goes around, ‘Don’t bother, because you’re never going to make it,’” Aw said. “And that is not the message any of us want to see. … International education is one of the most effective bridge-building, because these are future engineers, future business, future scientists, future artists, future politicians.”

Aw said countries like China and India are actively recruiting in parts of the African continent, and the United States is losing talent.

“Don’t get me wrong — if students want to go to China or India, there’s nothing wrong with that or any other place. But it shouldn’t be because they couldn’t get here,” she said.

Top priority

U.S. officials told VOA that international students are a top priority for the Department of State and that all visa applications are processed on their individual merits according to U.S. immigration law.

A State Department spokesperson told VOA that EducationUSA, a network supported by the U.S. government, is actively promoting U.S. higher education in Africa.

“Demand for student visas has skyrocketed across many regions in recent years. Our missions in Africa, South and Central Asia, and the Western Hemisphere all issued more student and exchange visitor visas in [fiscal year] 2023 than ever before,” a State Department official wrote in an email. “With sharp increases in demand, a commensurate increase in denials is expected.”

Aw recognizes that U.S. officials are working on visa adjudications. She praised the change announced in December by the State Department, which waived in-person interviews for student visa renewals.

Students can now apply for renewal without traveling to their home country, as long as their visa was issued within 48 months and they meet other criteria such as never having been refused a visa.

“We were pleased. … We see progress. … But even with that, it’s at the discretion of the consular affairs [official],” Aw said.

In 2023, more students from Africa got visas to study in the U.S. than ever before, the State Department says.

Compared to 2019 — before the pandemic — there is a 61% increase. Countries like Nigeria, Ghana, Zimbabwe, Uganda, Eswatini, Ivory Coast and Madagascar saw the highest number of student visas issued in the past 20 years.

In a January letter to Secretary of State Antony Blinken, some congressional leaders urged greater attention toward equity in student exchange programs and visa adjudication. They emphasized its pivotal role in fortifying diplomacy and bolstering the U.S. economy.

“Because of these benefits, it is critical that foreign students from Africa are treated similarly to foreign students from other parts of the world. There should be no reason that the State Department data should reflect such disparities among similarly situated countries,” they wrote.

The next report on international student visa issuance and denials is expected in October.

By ABDULKADIR KHALIF
Sunday April 7, 2024

Somalia has, since the start of February, been trying to rewrite the Constitution, redirecting focus on a document that could encompass the basic principles and laws and determine the powers and duties of the government and its citizens.

It is an exercise that should have been done years ago but was delayed by fragile state institutions and the general security problem posed by the Al Shabaab.

On Saturday, the bicameral parliament passed certain amendments to several articles in the first four chapters of the provisional constitution of 2012.

But the move caused more cracks by smoothing over past divisions. Puntland, the semi-autonomous federal state and one of the oldest in the country, promptly rejected the reviewed constitution stating, “the constitutional amendments are a violation of the federal pact that historically unified the country.”

Puntland President Said Abdullahi Deni followed this with a decision to ‘suspend’ membership its in the Federal government, where four other federal states exist: Jubbaland, South West, Galmudug and Hirshabelle.

Omar Abdirashid Sharmarke, another former Prime Minister, and Abdirahman Abdishakur, a legislator, endorsed similar views to Hassan Ali Khayre, a former Prime Minister, rejecting the proposed review.

Somalia’s political actors are at loss as to choose either multiparty democracy or 3-party system as well as the powers the executive arm of government should have.

President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud promptly signed into formal law the parts the bicameral parliament amended on March 30 modifying the type of political system the country will play.

It changed to a presidential system whereby the President of the Republic is elected by popular vote with the faculty to appoint and dismiss the Prime Minister.

Currently, the President is elected indirectly by legislators voted in through a type of college system, based on clans. The new system will mean the Prime Minister will no longer need parliamentary approval and will have little powers in running government affairs. Today, the Prime Minister appoints and fires ministers and runs the government, answerable to the federal parliament.

The changes are being challenged by former Somalis presidents, former prime ministers, legislators and Puntland State who oppose the review process, underlining lack of consensus.

The original version of the constitution in use in Somalia was framed when Somalia adopted a federal government from the Somali Republic at the end of the Somali Reconciliation Conference at Mbagathi in Nairobi, Kenya, from early 2000s until it was adopted formally in 2012.

At the time, delegates seeking to rebuild Somalia from the civil war approved a multiparty democracy and a parliamentary system of government. They first wrote the Transitional Federal Charter in February 2004 that was finally endorsed as a Provisional Constitution in August 2012 in Mogadishu, Somalia.

On the governing system, the provisional constitution was not much different from the constitution of Somalia’s first civilian republic in the 1960s.

“Unlike the rest of Africa, Somalia had adopted the parliamentary system of government, meaning that the president of the Republic is elected by the parliament, not by the people, for the duration of six years,” Mohamed Issa Turunji, a Somali researcher, wrote in the book: President Aden Abdulla, His Life & Legacy, about the life and legacy of Somalia’s first post-independence president.

“By virtue of this system, the executive power was vested not in the President of the Republic but in the government led by the Prime Minister. The president had the role of representing national unity and guaranteeing that politics complied with the constitution.”

Somali politicians often speak of the ‘stages’ of their republic. The “First Republic” was formed in July 1960at independence, governed via a multiparty democracy and a parliamentary system. Its constitution was abolished when the military took power via a coup in 1969.

The military rulers introduced a pseudo-socialist constitution with one-party rule and a popular elective system where the President could appoint and fire a Prime Minister.

The stage lasted for two decades (1969-1990) and was labelled as the “Second Republic”.

When rebel groups defeated the military dictatorship of Siad Barre in 1991, followed by years of chaos, the rebirth of the republic came through a series of reconciliation conferences, the last being the one concluded at Mbagathi, Nairobi. The Somali politicians named the rebirth as the “Third Republic.”

Those who want and promote a parliamentary system base their argument that it is easy and more democratic. Abdirahman Abdishakur, an MP and former presidential candidate in 2022 elections, explained that electing the legislators by a popular vote is feasible, and said the MP and Senators electing the president is more controllable process.

“Let us leave the one-person, one-vote to handle the parliamentarians,” Abdishakur argued, referring to universal suffrage which has eluded Somalia since 1969.

He argued that that three-round voting system by a known number of legislators cannot yield mistakes.

“For the past two decades in state building the parliaments elected presidents six times through casting ballots in crystal-clear glass boxes,” he added, questioning, “Who had seen a president-elected being criticised for rigging?”

So, what next?

First, on the argument over governance system, some opponents of the presidential system say the government forming process in the “First Republic,” when the parliament had the power, meant the President could not overstep.

They argue that the President of the Republic could appoint the prime minister and parliament could veto it with a vote of no confidence.

That process was not cumbersome because the president would have no problem in picking a prime minister, belonging to the political party (or a coalition) commanding the majority of parliament.

For Somalia though, a new system, just as in the existing system, provides existential challenges. There are no political parties and most political games are run on clan-based influences. Recently, the presidents have appointed Premiers with no political track-records. In some instances, such as during the tenure of Mohamed Farmaajo, a president and premier bickered in public, indicating a broken executive.

Some have argued a prime minister needs political skill too as, whenever there is problem, the president and the premier have equal opportunity to advocate their policies and lobby to the legislators.