CONGOMA letter suspending dialogue

The text of the letter from Council for Non-Gov organisations (CONGOMA) suspending dialogue between themselves and the government has been made available available here

It basically sets out that dialogue could not continue with the atmosphere of violence and intimidation that is being directed towards civil society leaders. They call for the Head of State to insure their safety and to denounce violence before they return to the UNDP facilitated talks. Pigs are more likely to fly before that will happen I think...

The letter is signed by Voice Mhone, the dialogue team leader and chair of CONGOMA

CONGOMA pulls out of UN led dialogue

Malawian Civil Society Organisations (CSO's)- an umbrella body of NGOs as coordinated by the Council for Non Governmental Organisations (CONGOMA) have pulled out of the UN facilitated dialogue that had previously halted the proposed August 17th vigil while talks were ongoing between the CSO's and government officials. CSO's were asking for specific matters to be dealt with during the talks that had been presented on July 20th. They had previous called for the nationwide August 17th vigil to protest Mutharika's rule. 

CSO leaders have been recently targeted by violet attacks including attacks on property. Some commentators have said that the CSO's were justified in pulling out of talks after they had previously sent a letter on September 2nd to UN representative, Richard Dictus, threatening withdrawal from the process after setting out the CSO members were being personally targeted due to what they termed President Mutharika's "war" threats.  Sample comments include:

I can arrest you if I wanted, but I believe in democracy. But I will deal with you and I am threatening you that I will arrest you this time around

The CSO's spokesperson, Billy Mayana of the Human Rights Consultative Committee said today that the planned September 21 protests would now go ahead, although I think there may currently be an injunction in place preventing any demonstrations on the grounds of a breach of democratic/civil rights being held...I'm not sure if that is still in place as there is so many injunctions and counter injunctions in place it is hard to keep track. The CCJP (Catholic Commission for Justice and Peace) an organisation we have been working with the last few weeks and who are a part of the organisation of the vigil have stated that they will wait for a statement on further action by CONGOMA before taking any action.

“Boomerang aid” study by EURODAD

A decade since donor governments agreed to stop tying development aid to lucrative contracts for their domestic companies, a major new study reveals that most aid contracts worth billions of dollars continue to be awarded to firms in rich developed nations.

A two-year study by the EuropeanNetwork on Debt and Development (quite disconcertingly shortened to Eurodad, which sounds like a really terrible superhero) on selected countries including Namibia, Ghana, Bolivia, Bangladesh, Nicaragua and Uganda on donor aid effectiveness found that donor aid is not benefitting recipient countries as the donations are largely tied to billion dollar contracts that are awarded to companies from the donor countries. The report was released on 6^th September in the presence of EU Development Commissioner Andris Piebalgs, ahead of the High-Level Forum in Korea that will gather world’s governments to agree on actions to make aid more effective. The study found that two thirds of all aid contracts were awarded in such a manner. Eurodad comprises 58 NGOs and 19 European countries. The report stated that the Paris Declaration and Accraeffectiveness agreements by the international community were the first major attempts to make aid work better fir poverty eradication and sustainable development in poor countries however it noted that little attention has been paid to how aid can enable poor people and poor countries to help themselves and become independent from aid. In successive international agreements, donor governments have committed to untie aid and allow poor country firms to compete for aid contracts. But although aid tying is estimated to raise costs by up to 40 percent, the rich countries continue to favour their own companies. “Currently, even when aid is not formally tied, donors continue to procure in a way that favours big firms from rich countries. This is a crucial reason why aid does not work as well as it could.” said Eurodad Director Nuria Molina

The findings of this report are highly relevant to Malawi. The Malawian government depends heavily on outside aid to meet development needs, although this need (and the aid offered) has decreased since 2000. However donor funding still accounts for more than 40 percent of the government's receipts. Britain being Malawi's single largest bilateral donor. This leaves the country at the mercy of donor countries. This has been most relevant over the past few months where a number of donor countries including the Uk and the US have pulled large donations from the country.  The United States had approved a $350 million grant for Malawi's dilapidated electricity network that had been delayed because of concerns about human rights abuses.

Central to the findings of the study were that procurement procedures which decide which private firms will undertake aid funded contracts generally result in firms from aid donor countries reaping the benefits of such contracts as in many contracts aid is tied to the condition that all purchases are made from firms from such donor countries. This is turn sends the funding right back to the donor countries and doesn’t add in the development of local capacity. the report states that

Around USD 69 billion a year, half the total official development aid, is distributed through public procurement tenders to private companies for aid projects such as building roads, supplying drugs or delivering schoolbooks to poor countries

Eurodad will join over 1000 campaigning organisations globally under the BetterAid coalition, campaigning for donors to finally make good on a decade of commitments and make aid work when they meet at the international conference on aid effectiveness starting late November in Busan, South Korea.

Mchinji Homicide Trials

Last week I paid a visit to Mchinji in order to assist with a number of murder trials that were set to run for the week. Mchinji is a district in Malawi, about an hour and a half from Lilongwe, for those of you who are into such things it is the district in which Madonna adopted her two children.  

As we had only gotten to view the last trial from the point where the Defence opened their case I was interested to see the whole process from start to finish. The trials were held in the Mchinji Magistrates court sitting as the High Court in the court room photographed below.  I have taken the photo from outside the court as the two side walls are almost fully open to the public and as soon as the cases started we had quite a large crowd leaning in order the windows to try and get a look, in addition to the courtroom being packed out. The vast majority of the spectators being young men.  In was told the court was so packed as the crimes were alleged to have been committed in this area and so many of the persons present would have known the deceased and the accused personally. Again it was positive to see that it was the lawyers and the judge who had to travel from Lilongwe rather than the people from the area in which the crime was alleged to have been committed, given the cost of traveling that distance for someone with a farmers income.

On the morning in question there were 5 cases listed for hearing, generally all would be expected to have been run and heard by the end of the week. The High Court judge called all lawyers in on the morning to their chambers and asked what the delay was. It was about 9.30am at this stage and I wondered if there were any Irish High Court justices looking to have cases heard so early. The prosecuting lawyer explained that a number of the accused had to be committed to the high court (in a process similar to arraignment) and this what was holding up the process. The Court noted that an accused should be committed 21 days before their hearing as this rule was for the accuseds benefit and was there to protect them. This was a surprising intervention on behalf of the court as many of the accused at the previous murder trials had been committed on the day itself so it was heartening to see the judge query why it was being done so late and to push for the defendants rights. However there would be no real benefit to the defendants in adjourning the trial as many of them would still be held in custody and some had brought witnesses who had to walk/travel a long distance in order to be present at the case. 

Three defendants were called at the start of the list and in turn the defendants were read their rights and asked if their language was Chicewa and then they entered a plea of not guilty. The Prosecutor then made an application in which he noted that he had gone through the evidence available against the accused in the cases and found it be only circumstantial in nature and that the evidence was so weak that it could not sustain a conviction on such circumstantial evidence. Based on this the State applied for the case to be discontinued under s.77 1 (a) of the CPEC and discontinued the case against the accused noting that the state had up to 6 months to retry them from that date if further evidence arose. I was surprised to find no reaction from any of the accused to this news. This process was repeated for the second set of defendants  in which the state stated that a:

...perusal of the file shows there is no evidence to link any of the accused to the death of the accused. The only evidence that could link them is that on the same day the suspects drank beer in the same place as the deceased...

The same application was made and the case discontinued. This was a case-file I had gone through in the office the week before in preparation and the police office prosecuting the case had written on the case summary that the accused were not linked in anyway to the case and were charged as the relatives of the deceased had insisted that they were troublesome. These men has been held in custody in prison for 7 months without bring granted bail.

This process  was done for one final case with one defendant who was not in court at the time as he had arrived a number of hours earlier with a letter from the prosecution stating his case had been discontinued 5 months ago. The court held as his case had already been discontinued and as such would make no order. This defendant had been granted police bail.

One further case ended with a plea of Manslaughter after a plea bargin between the prosecution and defendant before court and after a plea in mitigation was made the Defendant received a ten year sentence.

This left just one case to try for Murder out of a potential 5, 3 of which could have been dispensed with almost immediately if the case file had been examined in advance of the trials. This will be an area in which Carolann, our lawyer who will be based in the prosecutors office, will be working on and could be an effective way of cutting costs for the state and reducing the numbers of people sitting in prison awaiting a trial which could never result in a conviction due to a lack of evidence.

I will discuss the full murder trial process for the case that ran in a following post.

Kuti at Sunset

UNDP Malawi

UNDP Malawi run a democratic governance programme which has focused on focused on three operational programme components

1) Participatory democracy;
2) Local governance; and
3)  Development management and access to justice.

Their access to justice programme focused on improving formal and informal justice systems strengthened through a unified program - based approach to justice. Their access to justice project sheet is viewable here

The major achievements made by the end of 2010 are summarised as follows on their website: 

With UNDP support through a Trust Fund amounting to US$ 21 million, the Malawi Electoral Commission (MEC) was able to computerize the voters roll and register 94 percent of eligible voters for the 2009 national election. 74 percent of registered voters turned out on the polling day compared to 59 percent in 2004. Following such success, UNDP also developed a new programme to assist MEC to conduct the Local Government Election to be conducted in April 2011.

UNDP continues to support the Malawi Human Rights Commission (MHRC) to ensure that human rights are protected and promoted through sensitization on human rights and their responsibilities to influential local leaders like chiefs, village headmen and other community leaders. In 2010, a total of 52 cases from various districts in the country on allegations of violations of rights were investigated with 26 cases litigated. Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR) was conducted to identify the appropriate remedies on the major human right issues.

UNDP also supported the Malawi Parliament to formulate a Code of Conduct for Parliamentarians. The Code of Conduct is instrumental in facilitating the good conduct and behavior of parliamentarians.

On access to justice, UNDP has helped in strengthening the coordination mechanisms in the justice system. The justice coordination consultations and meetings have been placed within the Malawian context of institutionalizing Sector-Wide Approach (SWAp) and Sector Working Groups in the area of governance.

Mediation process starts with a bang

On the opening day of the UN backed Mediation process the President decided to ignore recommendations of the Mediators that government and civil society leaders refrain from public discussion on contentious issues and said the following:

I have instituted a committee on dialogue but you are saying no. What the hell do you want? If you are not ready for the talks, make your position known. Inform me of the day that we can start war

He followed that up with:

Let this country go on fire if you want but enough is enough, I cannot tolerate this anymore... the fact that my government is not responding does not mean it cannot react. I can arrest all those misbehaving. I am quiet because I believe in democracy. I am saddened that when some people are drunk, fe nfe nfe they are going about talking nonsense...