World turning blind eye to Sahel's tension

Press TV has conducted an interview with Kehinde Sonola, a human rights activist in London, about a recent UN statement that the number of people who have fled their homes in Africa’s Sahel has more than doubled in the past 16 months.

The following is a rough transcription of the interview.

Press TV: Looking at how worse the situation has gotten in just 2015, it seems that the world continually seems to forget the bottom billion that are in Africa particularly concentrated in the Sahel region?

Sonola: This is actually quite stunning; 3.5 million people, if we think about this, this is actually more than the population of, let’s say, Lithuania or Armenia in Europe. It is actually quite staggering and this situation has been allowed to fester. Again if we look at the psycho, whether it is neocolonialism, continued arming of militants - be they so-called Jihadists or Boko Haram - and then the world turning a blind eye and not even funding or providing the actual funds they pledge to the UN itself. For example there has been a short for this year of funding - I think 22 percent of the two billion that have been pledged so far actually has been delivered to the UN for the region. So it is more than a vicious natural psycho we have here. We have a psycho of basically indifference towards the Sahel region.

It is actually quite shocking when you think Nigeria is Africa’s most populous nation with 178 million people, a beautiful nation ... you find out the whole Sahel region is actually home to some of the most advanced civilizations in history, but what has happened is a systemic destruction by colonialism … and now neocolonialism and now also we have all of these conflicts going on and again the world is very happy fueling these conflicts by the sale of arms, by obviously scapegoating so-called Islamic Jihadists, which they helped to actually build up the ISIL or Boko Haram and then they are actually trying to stop a lot of these countries - be it Nigeria, Algeria or even southern Sudan from rising up and actually helping their people.

Press TV: How much of this has also become pounded by the fact that the citizens of the world have gotten used to the fact that Africa should be defined by endemic poverty, malnutrition, epidemics and basically instability?

Sonola: We are all responsible. Africa is home to some of the most advanced civilizations in history. Most people do not seem to understand this, which is why we see things like Marley’s legendary, Timbuktu library being destroyed.

Why is it the Jihadists always seem to go after these so-called historic centers of learning and why we do not ourselves look deeper into what is happening in Africa? We need more positive news coming out of Africa. We need to help the people not by arming them but actually by giving them the tools to irrigate their lands, to obviously educate themselves and to really, finally take up their mentor to bring some of the best people in the world.

AHK/HSN

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