TAN – The Afro News

Women of Zimbabwe Arise!

Mobina Jaffer The Afro News Ottawa ,On June 6th I had the privilege of meeting Jenni Williams who is a strong and courageous woman who has selflessly devoted her life to fighting for the rights of her brothers and sisters in Zimbabwe. During our meeting Jenni spoke to me about her successes as the executive director of Women of Zimbabwe Arise (WOZA). Read the full story

Place Without People

AI Film Festival turns 15 this fall and features five films on Africa

The Amnesty International Film Festival in Vancouver celebrates its 15th anniversary this year, with an exciting line-up of award-winning documentary films that includes five films focused on Africa. The films celebrate peace and justice activism, explore the role of international laws, and reveal the human rights violations that remain to be challenged. The festival runs November 18 to 21 and takes place at Vancity Theatre, 1181 Seymour Street.

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Population below poverty line AF

by Lansana Gberie :

(A review of Combating Poverty: Structural Change, Social Policy and Politics: A Report by United Nations Research Institute for Social Development, UNRISD, August 2010)

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EU / ZACRO

ByPatrick Musira

: HARARE – The European Union has committed €500,000 (US$700 000) towards improving conditions in Zimbabwe’s prisons through a grant agreement with the Zimbabwe Association for Crime Prevention and Rehabilitation of the Offender (ZACRO).

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Overloaded Ghana Police Service

By Kofi Akosah-Sarpong The Afro News International Ghana Africa

Nowhere in Ghana’s budding democracy have any of its institutions being critically tested for fuller scrutiny than its police service.

The examination runs in an African atmosphere where indiscipline is an increasingly serious social issue, where states had collapsed and politics paralyzed, where threats of civil wars sometimes flicker, where the tarnished Big Men overly make threats and incites the desperate youth, where armed robbery is a rising menace, where civic virtues are weak and destruction-minded traditional juju-marabou spiritualists support criminals, and some ancient traditions resist to reason with modernity for law and order.

It is in such climate that the chair of research at the Kofi Annan Peace Keeping Training Centre, Emmanuel Kwesi Aning, has observed that “there is a dangerous increasing sense of insecurity…there is a systemic failure somewhere and that systemic failure is beginning to be so widespread that people just don’t respect the law anymore because the security system has broken down basically…Because those who are at the front-lines are badly trained, the recruitment is poor, is looked at through the political lens, their ability even to analyze and then suggest responses is also looked at through the political lens and because there is an ulterior motive in securitizing problems in Ghana that does not look at these problems through the Ghana lens”

“The response mechanisms are always very narrow, focused on attaining particular narrow needs and is not put in a more holistic response strategy…This narrowness and this parochial approach at understanding security and responding to the challenges that arise…is what is leading to the breakdown…lack of confidence in the state’s ability to adequately protect the citizenry.”

Touted as the healthiest democracy in a difficult West Africa, how the Ghana Police Service significantly handles Ghana’s burgeoning democracy by rigorously enforcing the rule of law, freedoms and human rights would tell how democratic institutions would grow and help refine some of the inhibitions within traditional values that have been entangling progress. More critically is how the police service manages the challenges of traditional values that conflict with modernity. The Asantehene-Techiman-Tuobodom traditional quarrel that has caused some deaths, among others, more mired in ancient traditional allegiances than modern practices, reveals the tension between certain antique traditions and modernity. The Ghana Police Service, as the key frontline security institution, has to deal with this conundrum.

For the past months, the police have come into the forefront of public discourse, some bordering on its internal sins. While the police problems may emanate from larger Ghanaian moral troubles, some like Augustine Gyening, head of the Tema Regional Police Commander, echoing security connoisseur Kwesi Aning, “blamed the worrying but rising numbers of policemen involved in robberies on poor recruitment exercises engaged in by the police administration.” The Joy FM has reported that “six policemen and their four civilian accomplices were in November of 2009 sentenced to 20 years jail terms each for robbing a businessman of his money, at gun-point, while another policeman was arraigned before court at Techiman for selling three AK47 assault rifles belong to the police.”

The reasons reflect not only the current security situation of Ghana, which had being suppressed under the long-running one-party and military regimes of yesteryears and the unhelpful threatening utterances of some Big Men, but the fact that Ghanaians are yet to come to terms with the police service in relation to their existence since the police institution is a colonial creation that didn’t factor in Ghanaians traditional values and institutions. Kwesi Aning has touted the “need for the security systems to be restructured so they shed their colonial mentality.”

This is part of the main challenge between the police service and certain traditional values/institutions – how to situate the police service into traditional values/institutions in such a way that it will reflect Ghanaians’ core values and simultaneously help refine antiquated traditional practices that impinge on modern rule of law, freedom and human rights. When the Asantehene threatened to kidnap the Techimanhene if he sets foot on Ashanti region for publicly kidnapping and disgracing the Tuobodomhene, who owes allegiance to the Asantehene, he was talking traditional have been clashing with modernity. Here the police become entrapped in the schisms between tradition and modernity.

This may be part of the reason why, say, the Ghanaian or the Nigerian who have experienced myriad security problems will tell you despicable stories about the police, yet they have no clue how the police works and the problem the police go through everyday to secure their lives in their respective countries in a complex and fragile region.

The dangers the police faces in attempting to protect Ghanaians was echoed in 2004 by The Ghanaian Chronicle: “If the average citizen knew how difficult the work of the police is, perhaps he would then begin to appreciate and respect the men and women who have opted to maintain law and order as peace officers. Particularly in a country such as ours where illiteracy is dominant and ignorance of the law is considered the norm, the police service has an unenviable and uphill task making sure that the rule of law is upheld.”

For the rationale that the Ghana police have been used by different political regimes to their whims and caprices, Ghanaians do not trust the police much. In a nascent multiparty democracy mired in multi-faceted tribalism any police action is interpreted by those of the divide as “politically motivated.” In Sierra Leone the police was tribalised under the Siaka Stevens one-party regime, making it mistrustful, ineffective and an easy run-over by Foday Sankoh’s rebel group, the Revolutionary United Front.

In the heavily messy up Democratic Republic of Congo, the police under President Mobutu Sese Seko was so unprofessionally politicized that it blinded their objectivity in a profoundly complicated nation. No doubt today the country has over 20,000 UN security forces (the largest in the world) trying vainly to maintain law and order in a mucky and multi-sided ancestral atmosphere that resemble Colonel Kurtz’s drugged out slaughters in Apocalypse Now.

This is against the security fact, which defies any police operations that Congo-Kinshasa is so helpless in policing itself that, under Washington’s reasoning, as the BBC reports, Kinshasa has “invited” the militaries of three foreign countries, Uganda, Rwanda and South Sudan, to control “in or around” Congo-Kinshasa’s “edges”. The disturbing fact, security-wise, or more appropriate, police-wise, is that despite having the “trappings of sovereignty” Congo-Kinshasa do “not” have “much modern government or control outside the main cities.”

Just imagine the police in such complicated security algebraic equation and have the feel, as a human being, how overloaded the police are.

It is in such broader development that in 2004, a Ghanaian commentator wrote that, “Under the Provisional National Defence Committee (PNDC) and later under the government of the National Democratic Congress (NDC, of the Rawlings presidency) nobody trusted the police…” The police service was almost paralyzed to the delight of the tyrant and undemocratic Jerry Rawlings in the name of his convoluted military security apparatus that created more security predicaments and saw the police service effectively paralyzed for long time and saw the Ghana Armed Forces wrongly taking over some police duties.

No doubt, throughout Ghana and Africa, people’s misunderstanding of their civic responsibilities in relation to the police has gone as far as attacking the police in the course of undertaking their duties. In states like Nigeria, Congo-Kinshasa and Cote d’Ivoire gratuitous people have found it a fair game to attack police stations, and fatally assaulted the police in the course of doing their constitutional jobs. This shows that African citizens, after almost 50 years of independence from colonial rule, have weak grasp of the civic duties of the police, especially in dangerous and poverty-stricken places like Bawku and Yendi.

In a Ghana and Africa where poverty is widespread, influence of traditional spiritualists a daily affair, moral decay on the prowl, crime on the increase, youth let loose and threats of civil wars real and present danger, just imagine being a police officer. Just imagine being a police officer in Congo-Kinshasa with its intractable and complex conflicts involving numerous countries and factions that have claimed 5.4 million people between 1998 and 2008 with a continuing average of 45,000 deaths per month.

Or just picture being a police officer and confronting frustrated youth attackers in Bawku, Dadgon or Jos. This shadow self of African cities, where the police repeatedly clash with armed robbers and angry youth over varied issues, some realistic and others unrealistic, is Africa’s own disintegration self, the awful pointer of what will happen when the worst transpires, as when the Ivorien police woke up one day and found their once peaceful country divided into two by rebel-soldiers. In such apparent peril the police left their duties for the deadly rebels.

African civilization under blockade from dim-witted African Big Men, hypothetically, will come unstuck. Anarchy will break loose in Bawku and weeds pushed up the Bawku wasteland, and the police will slide into a paramilitary tribe at war with either rebel groups or gangsters or senseless youth or the youthful armed robbers that go howling through the Accra wastelands like the phenomenal African military coup makers, AK47 runners.

This hypothetical dream contains some few serrated elements of truth. Some African cities have come to look dangerously like their anti-selves: the proverbial African Big Men threats, civil wars and grimy, multi-sided conflicts, homelessness, growing slums, increasing armed robbery, joblessness, homicides, prostitution, debts deepening, revenue shortage, services disintegrating, poverty, crime and drugs showing their open, permanent reality.

As for the clannish African police, they have been at war for some time in Freetown, in Bawku, in Jos and in other cities, though not in the better parts of African cities’ neighbourhood. In Accra, the police, for years, are increasingly being dared to find those who have been killing women in juju/marabou-inspired ritualistic ways. This and other clashes like that in Bawku and Jos reveal the lawlessness that the African nightmare predicts: stunning, granular, and bizarre.

Watching Ghanaian and African police in action in places like Bawku, Yendi and Jos and thinking about other police brutality incidents – the police conniving with rebels groups or armed robbers, for example – Africans felt wonder, horror or, in some African cases, disgust at the police. In such situations, Africans side with the mass media for putting searchlight on the police. The African police do not have good relationship with the African media – there is always love-hate relationship.

The lasting reaction to the Ghanaian and African police, say, melting rough justice to demonstrators in Bawku, Nairobi, Jos or Bamako, besides outrage of one kind or another, may have been a sense of being in the presence of mystery. How is a group of people given such power? In places like Sierra Leone, where rebels mixed easily with non-rebel civilians, it was difficult for the police not to be paranoid, when sifting through who is a rebel and who is not. The Ghana Police Service is experiencing same between its officers turned armed robbers. But, yet still, the average Ghanaian do cry out against police for gross, offhanded brutality, dealt out by the guardians of the law, seemed strange enough and disturbing on a fairly deep emotional and moral level.

The beating of the student demonstrators in Accra in 2004, under Ghana’s developing democracy, the police not acting on some impulse of the moment, seem desultory and methodical at the same time. Police stroll around the streets of Accra. It looks like an impromptu RUF social occasion, where limbs are flying in the sky and the evil self let loose on innocent people but yet society appears helpless. In such a situation, there is future shock and an odd familiarity in the streets of Bawku, Kivu or Lagos in the scene: it has some of the feel of a colonial police teaching the “uncivilized” Africans sense – an African throwback migrated to the slave trading era of armed raids.

The police service in the African traditional sense did not exist in Africa (the traditional African community was itself a police service, everyone a police officer); it was brought, like most structures existing now, by the colonialists. The mystery is how can a group of people be given such power, for what? For law and order: to teach the people where power lies. How does a group of otherwise normal people turn into a mob capable of killing people (as in Bawku), beating people (as in Yendi) and brutalizing people (as in Tuobodom)? Among the police they will tell you they are gentle people going about their business like any other responsible citizen. The police have families like any other citizen, and do come from within the same people who have been clashing and insulting the police.

The questions about the Ghanaian/African police are both social and personal. Sociologists will tell you, in Freudian terms, that the law is supposed to perform the function of the superego, policing the wild of Bawku, Yendi, Techiman or Accra and the violent id in the plains of Dafur and Tuobodom. The police principle goes to work when the id takes over from the superego and put on a green or blue or khaki uniform (as the various African police services/forces uniforms show), when police authority goes wild.

My paternal aunt, Paulina Adutwum, a sergeant in the Ghana Police Service, will tell you that most African police officers are decent men and women doing honourable work in a very dangerous period in Africa’s transition, where arms and drugs are easy to get in Bawku, Kivu or Soweto today than Kwame Nkrumah’s era. The civil wars, porous borders, globalization, and political paralysis have made the Ghanaian/African police work more precarious. It is partly for that reason that the Ghanaian police’s transformation from group to mob, as in Bawku, when the police are chasing armed tribal attackers, is hard to understand. And as Adutwum would again tell you, the dangerous work the police do, for modest salaries and poor conditions, is also brutalizing.

African criminologists say the homicide rate in Africa has jumped over the years. In big cities like Lagos, Accra or Abidjan most felony offenders have been arrested before, and some have at least one prior conviction. Robbers and drug gangs are often armed with automatic weapons more sophisticated than the handguns the African police carry. How can, say, the police in Kivu deal with lethally armed tribal gangs? Or as the Ghanaian police is finding out in post-Rawlings Ghana, how can they deal with proliferation of AK47s?

A career of dealing with such situation of vicious, conscienceless criminal-enemy frightens and frays the nerves. It drives the African police deeper into the solidarities of their professional tribe. There they find the support and understanding they feel they do not get from the ignorant citizenry. The African public prefers their innocence, does not want to know the violent lengths to which the African police sometimes go when trying to contain armed attackers in Bawku or Yendi to enforce the law.

Security expert Aning argues “the need for the authorities to pursue a paradigm shift in the manner in which the security services are treated, reminding the president (John Atta Mills) that the buck stop with him, so he must make sure the police in particular are properly funded, resourced and trained so as to help them maintain the Ghana’s peace and security.” In a Ghana with over 23 million people, the Ghana Police Service’s problems are made worse by the fact that while the “police service had a numerical strength of about 37,000 in 1991, that number had dwindled to about 19,000 in 2010, juxtaposed with increasing population,” revealed Aning.

Nigerian or Ghanaian police will tell you that the terms “war against crime” and “war on drugs” encourage, and sometimes, demand an all-out attack by the African police upon criminals – no quarter given. But like the progressing culture of armed robbery in Nigeria, which has prompted joint police-military operations, the African police are fighting an unwinnable war, assuming large social responsibilities that belong more to the much-hated African politicians than to African police service: and as in the Nigerian campaigns of war against crime, atrocities are being committed in both sides.

The African police, like any African group, have a life its own that is far more than the sum of the individuals in it. They belong to different moral order from the individual. It has sensibilities and impulses and appetites and mind of its own. It has its collective will and its personality and its voice and its emotions. It has its shared values and thoughts that can be frightening and incomprehensible, like domesticated species, that may sometimes turn erratically vicious, doing wild-species things no one could foresee.

In such an African police culture, the ordinary African’s judgment may differ to the collective judgment in a police group, where individual responsibilities get diffused, scattered among them. And so when the police in Ghana or Nigeria decide how to contain youth demonstrations or growing armed robbery, normal inner standards give way to group will. The policeman becomes less self-focused. It will take a strong, poised character of a policeman to go against current of group will. Those koti, as the police are called in Ghana, who confront deadly armed robbers in Accra allow themselves to go with current of their police tribe, against their individual inner standards.

The secret of the transformation of the Bawku youth or any of the others in the riverine areas of Nigeria who have been clashing with the police over environmental and oil matters is that a few leaders incite the rest, tying them, throwing the rope over a palm tree, and they become a mob. The others automatically allow themselves to be carried passively by the group purpose. When the African police encounter demonstrators in Abidjan, it does this with its own atmosphere and triggers its tribal antipathies and peer-group expectations.

In such an atmosphere none of the police officers express objections. And the result can be rough justice against the enemy – rebels or youth demonstrators or armed robbers. It is for this reasons that the overloaded Ghanaian and African need our understanding.

Moving Towards a Sound Immigration Policy

By David Jones and Frank T. Scruggs ; Presently debate over immigration continues in many parts of North America in the U.S., Canada and Mexico in the government and the private sectors. In many cases misinformation and sound-bites skew the actual information which clouds (the discussion regarding who is illegal and who rightfully is entitled to the rights of being called an American. The issue for policymakers and constituents (voters) alike is to determine criteria by which we decide this debate on immigration. A major consideration policy makers in every country should review is the Universal Declaration of Human Rights adopted by the United Nations in December 1948 which specifically addresses immigration and migration. Articles 13 states that:

• (1) Everyone has the right to freedom of movement and residence within the borders of each state.

• (2) Everyone has the right to leave any country, including his own, and to return to his country.

and Article 14 states:

• (1) Everyone has the right to seek and to enjoy in other countries asylum from persecution.

• (2) This right may not be invoked in the case of prosecutions genuinely arising from non-political crimes or from acts contrary to the purposes and principles of the United Nations.

There are also those people determined to use the immigration issue for political favor, or as a vehicle for public office. There politicians stir up fear and controversy over immigrants and people seeking employment opportunity. There are only but a few of the reasons that are actually beneficial to their cause but still will continuously provide the public hype. Typically, fear revolves around losing jobs; increased taxes, etc. are often designed to fuel resentment and backlash against new immigrants, especially from Latin American countries.

In regards to legal immigration, Asia has the largest number of legal immigrants; Vietnam, Thailand, China, Japan, India, Pakistan, etc. are all Asia countries. Approximately 34.9% of all legal immigrants come from Asia (Refer to Figure 1) as shown in Table 1.

Table 1: Source of Immigrants to the U.S.

Country/Geographic Percentage of Legal Immigrants (%) Africa

Asia

Canada

Caribbean

Central America

Europe

Mexico

Oceania

South America

7.00

34.90

1.60

9.40

7.40

13.50

18.50

.06

7.60

Source: U.S. Census Bureau, 2006

North America has an immigrant heritage which consists of 35 Million people of 12% of the American population is foreign born. Africans first came to the America in 1620 (the first twenty were indentured servants). During the slave trade era Africans were imported or forced immigration as chattel slaves until January 1, 1808 as restricted by U.S. legislation; after 1808 all African slaves were either American born or illegally smuggled into the U.S. In the U.S., immigration policy is the responsibility of the federal government.

Table 2 shows the present and projected composition of the U.S. population:

Table 2: : U.S. Population Projected Ethnic Changes

Race/Ethnic Group Percentage Year 2000 Percentage – Year 2050 (projected)

Native American

Asian

Black (Non-Hispanic)

Hispanic

White (None-Hispanic)

0.70%

3.90

12.30

12.70

70.80

0.90%

0.82

13.60

24.50

52.80

Source: U.S. Census Bureau, 2006

Congress passed the first restrictions on immigration in 1882 (1808 for Africans) and restricted all persons alleged “undesirables” and virtually all Asians. In 1921, a Comprehensive Immigration Act was passed establishing the maximum number of immigrants each year and set a quota for each foreign country at 3% later changed to 2%.

Restrictions of the Immigration Act of 1921 were in response to the wave of Southern and eastern Europeans, Catholic and Jewish immigrants (Poland, Russia, Hungary, Italy, Greece) that entered the U.S. prior to World War I. Quotas were not abolished until the Immigration & Nationality Act of 1965—Replace with categories for relatives, family members and those with professional and skilled trades.

Approximately 1 million people are legally admitted to the U.S. as lawful permanent residents. An additional 32 million people are awarded visa annually to enter the U.S. for study, pleasure or business. There are five categories of noncitizens admitted into the U.S. These five categories include the following:

1. Legal Immigrants (Lawful Permanent residents, Permanent Resident aliens)

2. Refugees and Asylees

3. Parolees (Persons enjoying Temporary Protected Status) – Humanitarian or medical reasons, etc.

4. Legalized Aliens (Amnesty Aliens)

5. Non-Immigrants (Nonresident Legal Aliens)

The U.S. Coast Guard may even intercept boats at sea and return people to their country of origin. Aliens do not have a constitutional right to enter the United States however once someone is in the U.S., whether or not they’ve entered legally or illegally, each and every one of them is entitled to due process of law and the equal protection of the laws. Therefore once an immigrant set foot into America (specifically on U.S. soil) they’re entitled to a fair hearing prior to any attempt by the government to deport them. Provided that the United Nations’ Universal Declaration of Human Rights really matter, aliens should be entitled to apply for asylum and present evidence at their hearing of well-founded fear of persecution if returned to their country of origin.

Unfortunately this happens in the cases where political will exists as is the case with Cuba for example. The political climate allowed for years the acceptance of certain high profile Cuba athletes to flee. The same often held true for Chinese and/or Russian scientists whom the West wanted in order to embarrass their country of origin by taking in potential exiles ( obviously for political gain).

Presently, economic status often determines who will get into America; especially the U.S. Many Western Europeans have access to resources necessary gain access either through legal or either extra legal methods such as marriages of convenience. Education is another access route as witnessed by the computer engineers from Asia who proliferate the Silicone Valley of California. One other thing to consider is the role of race/color. Africans tend to have to lowest immigration and asylum rate than any other group. Although the continent is known for war, genocide and AIDS as factors deserving humanitarian concern; clearly European immigrants are favored over black and Latin immigrants.

The language one speaks also becomes an issue when looking at current policy of who is in the U.S., while the majority language is English; Spanish has become necessary for North Americans due to the high number of people whom speak only Spanish. This is clearly a problem in employment, education, legal and health care settings making blending more difficult for Africans, Haitian and Latin immigrants than for European immigrants. English as Second language classes required often burden cash-strapped school districts seeking to make cuts rather than incur additional expenses. What has being dubbed the Spanglish dialect is really a true dialect in many places. Still despite many Americans resistance to immigration of Mexicans, many Americans go south to get a good deal on a vacation in Mexico at upscale resorts yet barely understanding the culture or the people.

Mexicans and Latin Americans in general come north of the border into Canada and the U.S. to make money and improve their standard of living. This has created these parallel worlds of two competing interest. One for economic bargains and relative deals of cheap fun in the sun, and the one of needing to make dollars and improve ones quality of life, and find decent housing while Both are legitimate needs and can be met, but only at the expense of acting as if somehow there has to b control on one side of the border. Americans are free to enter Mexico, but Mexicans are not so free to do like wise. The irony being one class of people is poor and the other is relatively well off, if not rich. Herein lies the problem; money allows for some Mexicans to come and go, but they often go to Europe instead of America, because they don’t want to be humiliated by coming to the U.S. and being seen as just another poor Spanish speaking immigrant

The U.S. has 5,000 miles of border and share a 2,000 mile border with Mexico (hundreds of international air and seaports). The U.S. government estimates about 400,000 illegal immigrants enter the U.S. annual while unofficial estimates go as high as about 4 million per year. The U.S. government estimates about 4 million illegal aliens reside in the U.S. and unofficial estimates claim as many as 12 million or higher. As a free society the U.S. is not prepared to undertake the massive roundups and summary deportation of illegal residents. The 5th and 14th amendments require that every person (not just citizens) be afforded due process of law however; the INS may turn back people at the border or even hold them in detention camps raising questions about whether or not America really is that free country standing as a shining beacon on the hill for the poor and the oppressed.

David Jones, an international conflict specialist is also co-founder of Siloam International, a Portland Oregon-based organization that provides culturally based programs for international projects in Europe, India, Africa, Latin America and North America.

(left to right) Speaker Noel Kinsella, Senator Mobina Jaffer, and Senator Donald Oliver

By:the Honourable Mobina S.B. Jaffer, Q.C. Senator for British Columbia

My professional career has taken me to many different parts of the world, and has exposed me to the many challenges, and at the same time, the great beauty this world has to offer. I have also had the privilege to meet many people who are doing their part to make this world an inclusive environment, where populations are not scared by the differences in each other, but instead are curious about them…and in the end, enriched through shared experiences.

Along the way, I have also had the pleasure to work with individuals who are greatly committed to the issues we face together. Perhaps a common bond between those who advocate for a cause is their desire to create opportunity in our society.

During their careers, Speaker Noel Kinsella, and Senator Donald Oliver have served all Canadians with distinction. And through our working together, I have come to know just how important creating opportunity is to both Senators.

Speaker Kinsella – who has served as Speaker of the Senate since 2006 – has had a distinguished career in humanitarian work, and has been a champion of diversity and human rights. Beginning in 1967, Speaker Kinsella served as Chairperson of the New Brunswick Human Rights Commission, where he served for 22 years. As Chair of the Atlantic Humans Rights Centre, Speaker Kinsella played an integral role in expanding the resources of the Centre, helping to further its mandate to undertake, encourage and facilitate research in the fields of citizenship and human rights.

Presently, Speaker Kinsella is a member of the Advisory Council of the Canadian Museum for Human Rights – which will open its doors to the public in 2012, and makes its home in Winnipeg, Manitoba. The Museum – the only national museum located outside of Ottawa, Ontario – will give visitors a detailed view into the progression of human rights in Canada and elsewhere in the world.

When we think about our great country, there are many things of which Canadians can be proud. One such trait is the diversity of people we live and work amongst. For multiculturalism is Canada’s badge to wear proudly.

Throughout his life and professional career, Senator Oliver has continually promoted the importance of the study of Canadian black history and culture. Through his advocacy to fund a Chair on Canadian Black Studies at Dalhousie University, and also while serving on the Advisory Board for the Indigenous Black and Mik’Maq Program at Dalhousie Law School, Senator Oliver has spoken widely of the enduring contributions of black Canadians to our society.

In a paper delivered to the “Multiple Lenses: Voices from the Diaspora located in Canada” Conference, in Halifax, he noted that:

“For more than 400 years, Blacks have been an integral part of the warp and weave of Canadian society and Canada’s economy. For example, as an interpreter between the French and the Mik’Maq people in the early 1600s, Mathieu de Costa undoubtedly played a role in developing the fur-trade industry along the Atlantic seacoast. But, de Costa was a free man. Those who came after him, enslaved and brutally exploited during the largest shift of population that the world has ever seen, played no less an important role in shaping our country.”

Senator Oliver has also worked tirelessly to ensure that the Province of Nova Scotia play a role in officially recognizing the cultural contribution of its population. His work in this area lead to the creation of the Centre for Black Culture – an organization which opened on September 17, 1983 – which exists to promote the great history and legacy of Black Canadians in Nova Scotia.

Through its facilitation of cultural portrayals in the form of music, plays, concerts, as well as educational activities in the form of workshops, lectures and guided tours, the Centre is a window into over 400 years of black history in Nova Scotia.

However, Senator Oliver’s work on Canadian black history and culture is but one area of his interest in diversity in Canada. Senator Oliver is not only concerned with affording diversity a place in society, he also concerned with creating space for diversity in society.

Senator Oliver’s work on the issue of employment equity is a testament to this drive to create necessary space for diversity.

In 2006-2007, when the Public Service Commission’s annual report revealed that Canada’s public service was not a true reflection of our diversity, Senator Oliver challenged us in this chamber to think about whom our Public service will hire a decade from now. When those testifying before the National Finance Committee shared their concern that certain provisions of the Public Service Employment Act were not being used, Senator Oliver challenged us to think about what he called “make-it-happen” policies that would positively affect the hiring strategies of Canada’s public service.

This past February – which was also Black History Month – Senator Oliver addressed the issue of employment equity in the Federal Public Service to the Employment Equity and Diversity Advisory Committee of the Supreme Court of Canada.

During this speech, Senator Oliver pointed out that the Federal Public Service has an important role to play in setting an example for other employers, by maintaining the standards of diversity in its hiring practices. He noted that:

“The public service should and must set the standard for all employers: it is Canada’s largest employer, with 255,000 employees; it is Canada’s most national employer, with 1600 points of services across the country; and it is Canada’s most international employer with staff in more than 150 countries.”

He also noted that by 2017, members of the visible minority community could account for roughly one-fifth of the total population of Canada – echoing the necessity of the public service to make the changes needed to ensure the changing faces of Canada’s workforce are able to seek opportunities to better themselves, both professional and personally.

Where the view exists that such diversity is perhaps a threat, Senator Oliver reminds us that diversity is an extension of national wealth, and he has continually reminded us of the importance of embracing that diversity through the creation and facilitation of opportunity.

For their continuing efforts to promote cultural heritage, and for their invaluable advocacy of greater opportunities for visible minorities and humans rights, Speaker Kinsella and Senator Oliver can only be known as true champions of diversity and human rights.

CANADA’s GIFTS OF DIVERSITY Photo By KMG

By: Ryan Andrew Mitchell 

As a young university student, Grace Bonifacio knows particular women are responsible for major progress in human rights and great progress in other important sectors including family, and like many other women, she acknowledges specific figures that have touched her. Even with the recognition she has, she is concerned about the appreciation of future generations: Will society continue to appreciate the impact of female figures or take their actions for granted?

“The woman is the backbone of every family.” Wilma Bennett, a mother of two, states the reason why society needs to not only recognise the impact of famous women, but keep in mind the effort of individual woman. “It is important that women feel empowered, they are the nucleus of the family, [communities] need to make them feel aware that they important in order for them to continue with nurturing and providing for the family.”

There are obvious figures in North America that are known for empowering women of all ages and colours. Many have paved the road for women today and others have reached big roles in television and political movements. Thousands of organisations have been founded to inspire young girls to educate themselves and to pursue different careers.

Bonifacio thinks of the double standard women face on the business side “Women have to be more than just talent these days. In order to surpass the standard they have to work a bit [harder] in order to be remembered, if we don’t we will miss the standard.”

Even if it may seem impossible to forget the impact women have made on society, Bennett mentions the huge role single mothers play in society, “I greatly admire women who challenged themselves and progress with what little [support] they had.” Bonifacio agrees it is important for women to feel appreciated, since they play a critical role in humanity as Bonifacio states “It’s already implied, women are known to give life, and that’s just the start.”

Interviewees: Wilma Bennett ,Gracelle Bonifacio

The Afro NEWS New comprehensive study guide for Canadian citizenship

OTTAWA, ONTARIO – A new, more comprehensive study guide for Canadian citizenship was launched today by Citizenship, Immigration and Multiculturalism Minister Jason Kenney. Discover Canada: The Rights and Responsibilities of Citizenship includes information on common values such as freedom, democracy, human rights, the rule of law and the equality of men and women. It promotes to immigrants and Canadian citizens alike a greater understanding of Canada’s history, values, symbols and important Canadian institutions, such as Parliament and the Crown. It also highlights the contribution of ethnic and cultural communities in shaping our Canadian identity and the sacrifices made by Canada’s veterans for our country.

“People come from all over the world to seek Canadian citizenship. It is highly valued,” said Minister Kenney. “We expect people who want to become Canadians to have a good understanding of their rights and responsibilities, and the values and institutions that are rooted in Canada’s history. By strengthening the guide, we are increasing the value of Canadian citizenship.”In developing the study guide, Citizenship and Immigration Canada (CIC) consulted with a panel of prominent Canadians, including public figures, authors and historians. The new guide has also been reviewed by well-known organizations involved in citizenship promotion, such as the Historica-Dominion Institute, the Association of Francophone and Acadian Communities and the Institute for Canadian Citizenship.

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