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MILLENNIUM DEVELOPMENT GOALS
Related to country: Eritrea


As we speak of Millennium Development Goals,we have to remember what it comprises: End Poverty and Hunger,
Universal Education, Gender Equality, Child Health,Maternal Health, Combat HIV/AIDS, Environmental Sustainability,and Global Partnership. How can we achieve these goals if our Leaders are Dictators and Corrupt? Speaking of the
Sub-Saharan Africa am afraid we are left behind thanks to our Dictators.
My country Eritrea is known for disturbing the horn of Africa and Yemen. As of the MDG,Eritrea is far behind. If we are going to achieve the MDG,we have to invest highly in Education, our leaders have to believe in accountability, transparency, and the rule of law.

August 10, 2010 | 2:52 PM Comments  0 comments

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Human Rights in Eritrea
Related to country: Eritrea


Report of the Secretary-General on Eritrea

UN Security Council S/2010/327

June 22, 2010

I. Introduction

1. In paragraph 22 of its resolution 1907 (2009), adopted on 23 December 2009, the Security Council requested me to report within 180 days on Eritrea’s compliance with the provisions of the resolution.

2. A note verbale was subsequently transmitted to the Permanent Mission of Eritrea to the United Nations on 22 April 2010 outlining the provisions of Security Council resolution 1907 (2009) and requesting information from the Government, by 7 June 2010, on the fulfillment of the provisions contained therein.

3. On 9 June 2010, the Government of Eritrea submitted a report on its compliance with resolution 1907 (2009) to the Secretariat.

This report is saying that Eritrea is moving to the right direction but this is just a game, Eritrea will never go to the right direction.We know the President Isaias and his group.
UN Security Council has to find out more on the Human right issues in Eritrea.
The Human rights issue in Eritrea has become beyond any one can understand.
Hundreds of people are detained in various detention centers across the country. There is no rule of law here. People are being detained for indefinite period of time. There are people i knew who has been detained for the last 9 years without charge. Children from the age of 10 are being detained, tortured and killed.I am sure this seems unbelievable, but even worse things are happening here in Eritrea. The International Community do have only a birds eye view of the situation. The government of Eritrea is doing all this Human right violation because the International Community is not responding accordingly. We hear people being killed here and there on international media but the situation in Eritrea and the suffering of the Eritrean people is not being discussed and broadcasted. Here we are loosing a generation.The situation in Eritrea is beyond any one can think of……..We are loosing a generation. People are being detained undergrounds where some of them are as small as a grave and with no ventilation, this is just like burying a person alive.
I have been there myself(in detention) for about 3 years.
I have witnessed rape, torture and death. Our people is suffering and dying. The International Community has to listen and respond to the pain and suffering of the Eritrean people.
Please spread the word.
Thank you for taking your time to read this.

Yours
Baynor


July 14, 2010 | 8:45 AM Comments  0 comments

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Coordination Towards Youth Development
About this event: 2010 International Youth Forum


http://nueyseritrea.wordpress.com/2010/05/18/coordination-towards-youth-development/



Daniel Semere

There is an ever increasing need and a wide support for youth engagement in all communities nowadays. Youth engagement is advocated on the conviction that youth have assets and are therefore capable of making meaningful contributions to their communities. While it is important to examine outcomes related to youth engagement, it is equally important to determine successful practices to understand how such outcomes can be achieved. Effective youth engagement requires a ceaseless investment on developing the youth to capacitate any community to achieve its short and long-term goals. And this requires a coordinated effort at a community, national, and international level.

Youth development is the ongoing growth process in which all youth are engaged in order to meet their basic personal and social needs. It also involves building skills and competencies that allow them to function and contribute in their daily lives. This definition describes youth development as a process that all young people go through. As the definition implies, it is a process that automatically involves all of the people around the youth, which mean family, youth organizations, government and international community as a whole. A young person will not be able to build essential skills and competencies unless these bodies provide them with the supports and opportunities they need along the way. Thus, youth development is also a process in which these bodies must actively participate so that the end product will be the ideal youth we all want to build and develop.

In Eritrea youth development involves people, places, supports, opportunities and services that most of us inherently understand that young people need to be healthy and successful. There are many efforts to define the outcomes of youth development, and most express the results that we want for our youth. However, people, programs and institutions should involve in a coordinated manner in youth development toward positive results in the lives of our youth. Some like the National Union of Eritrean Youth and students (NUEYS) have clearly defined these desired positive results or outcomes in an attempt to more effectively work toward the youth. The union has identified those outcomes to be comprehensive as to include the physical, mental, and intellectual health of our youth with the intention of securing their employability and involvement in the civic and social affairs of the nation. It also acknowledges the need to engage with regional and international youth organization in trying to address this issue. Towards this end, the first task is of course identifying and meeting the challenges we face.

Most of the problems challenging our youth have a global nature. Needless to say, we are living in a world where interdependence is not a choice any more. No country can make it in its own with out a proper interaction with the rest of the world. As such, most of the challenges we face as an individual nation are also interdependent and the solution needs a concerted and coordinated effort as a global community. The challenges youth globally are facing are of such nature.

A young person today has many reasons to be grateful: greater contact with the rest of the world, more educational opportunities, and a longer life than previous generation. On the other hand however, youth worldwide are facing growing levels of unemployment, poverty, armed conflict, epidemic diseases, illiteracy and substance abuse – among other social and economic challenges -despite global advances made in technologies, entrepreneurship development, medical research, and leisure and recreation facilities. This typifies the experience of a young person growing up in a developed country, and is increasingly the experience of many young people growing up in developing countries as well. But these experiences are not universal and youth living in certain nation or part of the world are undoubtedly facing a much stronger challenge. Addressing the challenges of the global youth should therefore have the needs of these youth at the center of the effort to overcome. Coordination here becomes indispensable.

Both young women and young men today benefit from a global and coordinated effort to improve the well being of the world’s poor through the Millennium Development Goals, a framework for poverty reduction forged by world leaders in 2000. Six of the eight Millennium goals address issues raised here: reducing poverty, achieving universal primary education, promoting gender equality and empowering women, reducing child mortality, improving maternal health, and combating HIV/AIDS and other diseases. While not all the goals are likely to be reached by the year 2015, and although the goals are not aimed only at youth, they do promise better lives for today’s youth if and when they are attained. Accordingly, youth organizations, governments, and international organizations should seek to work with a broad range of the youth population, both those organized through formal youth organizations and those who are not. Cooperation and exchanges should be used to develop the capacity of young people by facilitating the interchange of information among them. Working together in various areas of quality services can and should also be an effective part of such coordination. In fact no development can be complete without services in such areas as education, health, and employment, which should incorporate relevant instruction, and information in our social and national priorities. These services should also create challenging opportunities for the youth to express themselves, to contribute, to take on new roles, and be part of a larger group so as to direct and merge our effort toward the aforementioned priorities.

Youth development is about people, programs, institutions and systems that provide youth with the supports and opportunities they need to empower themselves. This requires youth development at all levels to be vigorously and tirelessly pursued so that it will endure and become a global culture. And in the end these effort toward youth development, all the supports and opportunities, could only be meaningful and have the impact we desire as long as and only when all youth can be able to take advantage of it. In many societies the ultimate challenge is to make such supports and opportunities the rule rather than the exception for all youth.

The National Union of Eritrean Youth and Student (NUEYS) as a representative and agent of youth, has been playing an enormous part in this huge task and has been doing a great effort in various ways. But it also understands the need to learn from other’s experience and work in partnership with different regional and international organizations. There is no doubt that the NUEYS has been and can play a crucial role in coordinating the hard work made toward the youth nationally but it is only the engagement with the rest of the world that will ultimately have a decisive contribution in its task of building a healthy youth. And the International Youth Forum NUEYS is hosting is another step ahead in this task.

May 29, 2010 | 6:19 AM Comments  0 comments

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Eritrea: Partner in Peace Politics
About this event: 2010 International Youth Forum


http://nueyseritrea.wordpress.com/2010/05/17/eritrea-partner-in-peace-politics/

Mehari Ukbalidet

Peace is the prerequisite for the wellbeing of humans. Without peace sustainable economic prosperity or socio-cultural wellbeing of nations and societies cannot be attained. The fact that the absence of peace in a country doesn’t influence only the one on the spot, divulges that peace is in fact a collective treasury, necessitating everyone’s inputs. Conflicts and political instabilities transcend to victimize a range of populations and regions. In this respect, the quest of bringing peace to favor humans’ development requires concerted and collective efforts and commitments. The bottom line: while living in peace is every individual’s indispensable right, making peace is however a collective responsibility.

Eritrea’s struggle for liberation has been part of this greater human aspiration for peace. Eritreans, after exhausting all possible grounds, shifted from negotiations for a peaceful solution to arms’ combat, thus fighting a bloody war for decades in search of peace. And consequently, Eritrea had a costly victory. Put simply, the hard won liberation makes Eritrea a peace loving nation.

That is why Eritrea is committed to a negotiated comprehensive solution to the range of conflicts across the Horn of Africa, from Darfur to Somalia. Besides, its foreign policy rests on the rationale that regional stability guarantees national stability. As one can’t breathe fresh air in a polluted environment similarly a country can’t live peacefully in a war-torn region.

Despite the above fact, it has become a habit for some parties to blame Eritrea on what goes wrong in the region. Some peace brokers are so naïve to disregard Eritrea’s effective peace approach, which emphasizes on domestic solutions to national problems. But nowadays the tables have turned: Eritrea’s proposal that nations should govern themselves is on top of all peace proposals.

The idea that people should govern themselves has historical genesis. The Eritrean People’s Liberation Front (EPLF) since its inception as a front to fight for Eritrea’s right to self-determination is guided by this. Peace can prevail if only all inclusive consensuses could be reached. This was the stand in the 1980s when the EPLF proposed a referendum. Although the front got the upper hand in the military fields, they determined for political solutions.

Similarly, after winning the game through the bullet of gun, EPLF didn’t impose itself as a governor of Eritrea. Instead people were given the chance to decide where their interests lie. As a result of the people’s vote for independence Eritrea emerged as a sovereign state. This belief that people should be left free to handle their issues continues to dictate its policies.

As a manifestation of such political mellowness, Eritrea is a law abiding county. It accepted the international community’s decision two times both on the border cases of Yemen and Ethiopia. It didn’t accept them for it got the lion’s share in the mediation.

Unfortunately, today the region enjoys less peace and blaming Eritrea on what went wrong in the region continues. The foremost accusation is the alleged Eritrea’s role on fragile Somali politics. The sheer distance between Eritrea and Somalia hardly makes any link possible. Besides, Eritrea is a country pre-occupied with its people’s needs and necessities, that it has no money or time to squander ignoring people’s aspirations.

Today, Eritrea is a key partner and actor in the Horn peace politics. Eritrean efforts to bring peace to Somalia and Sudan can be cited here. The nation supported a genuine political process, not encumbered by external interference and that respects the choice of the Somali people. It has provided all concerned Somali national leaders with a ground to discuss the future of Somalia. Similarly, Eritrea’s diplomatic assistance has been crucial at enabling Sudan to resolve its eastern problems.

Eritrea’s firm position is domestic solutions for national problems. Coinciding with the UN principles and a benchmark of the UN charter itself, this concept stresses that the will and decision of locals should prevail over those of the peace brokers. The role of mediators is only facilitating the gathering of nationals so they can reach a consensus.

That is for the fact that peace brokers imposed solutions are failing to accommodate the will and choices of local nationals. In this regard, the ill-fated situation of the Horn is a clear illustration. Several of such attempts attested nothing than disaster and humiliation. Ethiopia’s invasion of Somalia in late 2006 and the imposed government is aggravating existing problems.

Eritrea’s peace approach is well recognized and appreciated by some regional peace brokers like the EU, the region’s neutral peace broker. This is for the fact that Eritrea’s policy of resolving conflicts is bearing fruits, as in Sudan for instance where the imposed resolutions failed to bring peace.

When it comes to peace building, Eritrea believes in partnership and diplomatic assistance, as reflected by Eritrea’s role in Sudanese and Somali problems. Though lasting peace cannot be achieved if not everyone is committed for it, Sudanese people signed the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) in 2005 with Eritrea as a mediator.

Among disagreeing parties sustainable peace is unattainable unless conflicting parties respect the interest of one another aside from their differences. Eritrea’s diplomatic efforts enabled Sudanese conflicting parties to reach each other and thus it attained relative peace and sustaining that peace is up to the Sudanese people.

All these, to mention the least, emanate from Eritrea’s will for a peaceful coexistence and belief that now is the best time to foster people’s solutions for the good of the region.

May 29, 2010 | 6:18 AM Comments  0 comments

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Mutual Understanding for Peace, Security and Sustainable Development
About this event: 2010 International Youth Forum


http://nueyseritrea.wordpress.com

Welcome to the official page for the 2010 International Youth Forum to be held in Asmara, Eritrea from 21 – 23 July 2010. NUEYS recognizes that 2010 is the beginning of the International Year of the Youth!

Following the Eri-Youth Festival, NUEYS will be conducting an international youth forum with the goal of bringing together representatives of youth and student organizations to discuss creating partnership through the themes of inclusive dialogue and exchange for mutual understanding, peacebuilding, sustainable development, active citizenship and public interest diplomacy.

We would love for you and your organization to join us! Below is a link to the application form, please fill out and send back to the NUEYS Foreign Affairs Central Office here in Asmara, Eritrea.

Link to PDF Application: Download the application form for the 2010 International Youth Forum.

May 29, 2010 | 6:14 AM Comments  1 comments

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My impressions of the Sawa Festival and Zura Hagerka from 2008
About this event: 4th Eri-Youth Festival


After seven long years, so my mom had finally managed to persuade me to go back to our dear country. I was initially very skeptical of the whole trip ... especially the trip to Sawa and the tour. Before this trip, my contact with my Eritrean brothers and sisters was very minimal. The knowledge I had about Eritrea was also "SWEDISH". I can without a doubt tell you right now , that this trip was the best out of all my trips around the world !

After five days of presence in Eritrea, so it was finally time for "niklo" (departure) to Sawa. The trip itself was at a first glance … different, it took us a total of 10-11 hours, the bus was not stable by itself, car path was not direct European standard and the extremely hot weather did not help either. Lemon in your mouth,was the deal at all times. But those above mentioned things are the things forgotten rapidly over the years. What I take with me will be those 10 hours I sat and got to know new people, the incredibly beautiful countryside, those very nice animals and the food that was so very different as "Fuul" with bread.

The journey
We spend a total of five days in Sawa. The days were long, endless in hours and extremely hot also. If it was something we learned there was that water = life. The toilets were ... not so fresh as we had hoped for and the simple things like a shower might not have been the easiest of things. But while I noticed these differences, problems, important factors ... call them what you want so, I noticed something else. I saw 10 000 young people from nine different ethnic groups … converse, marching, laughing and dancing together. Each group had its language, its traditions, its culture ... every group and every youth unique in itself, yet no distinction between one another. All in a common purpose and goals as a common people. That kind of community is not easy to find if not impossible. That's when I noticed that Sawa and all those thousands of young people who had been there, who was there and that would come was and is the country's backbone.

The days of Sawa was filled with activities such as fashion shows, competitions and seminars. and we simply had to choose where we would want to spend our time. Of course, I was in a quiz contest. Then we had a lot of free time, so I got to know lot of new and different people.

After four days in Sawa the number of youth got reduced drastically to 150. A round trip ”Zura hagerka” would finally start and our first destination was the remote town of Teseney. Near to the Sudan, teseney was like an oasis in the middle of the desert. The city looked like an Arab city. The reception we got there was incredibly special. They opened the doors to their best restaurant (which was an incredibly beautiful place). The variety of food was as much as the number of days we where away from home. Surely, we were all happy when we were there for both lunch and dinner with guajla as dessert. Unfortunately I did not have time to explore the city.

Our next destination was very special, since we were among those few people who got to see it in close up. The area is called Bisha and it is one of Eritrea's many prides. There are miles of land with gold. Few people have seen this and to be part of it makes me incredibly proud. I saw a piece of Eritrea's future. Just two years after the Bisha mining can begin exporting gold and so increase the degree of the Treasury, and we got to be there in the beginning.

After several hours of bus travel, we arrive at Keren. One of Eritrea's larger cities. The landscape around Keren was so green and so beautiful. The actual city itself was so full of life. Serina Hotel which was the name of our hotel, was among the best in the country. From the balcony you could see how the city was partially surrounded by high mountains. Then when you also add our evening's entertainment with one of Eritrea's great comedians Sandiago , the evening could not have been any better. Disappointingly it was my last night.

In closing, let me just say that this trip has helped me answer the question I asked myself several times through the years ... where do i come from? ... I can now surely say that I am a proud Eritrean! and if you haven’t gotten it yet ... I recommend the trip! Awet N'hafash!

Selam T.welday,Sweden

May 29, 2010 | 5:25 AM Comments  0 comments

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rahel   rahel Rahel's TIGblog
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My impressions of the Sawa Festival and Zura Hagerka from 2008
Related to country: Eritrea


After seven long years, so my mom had finally managed to persuade me to go back to our dear country. I was initially very skeptical of the whole trip ... especially the trip to Sawa and the tour. Before this trip, my contact with my Eritrean brothers and sisters was very minimal. The knowledge I had about Eritrea was also "SWEDISH". I can without a doubt tell you right now , that this trip was the best out of all my trips around the world !

After five days of presence in Eritrea, so it was finally time for "niklo" (departure) to Sawa. The trip itself was at a first glance … different, it took us a total of 10-11 hours, the bus was not stable by itself, car path was not direct European standard and the extremely hot weather did not help either. Lemon in your mouth,was the deal at all times. But those above mentioned things are the things forgotten rapidly over the years. What I take with me will be those 10 hours I sat and got to know new people, the incredibly beautiful countryside, those very nice animals and the food that was so very different as "Fuul" with bread.

The journey
We spend a total of five days in Sawa. The days were long, endless in hours and extremely hot also. If it was something we learned there was that water = life. The toilets were ... not so fresh as we had hoped for and the simple things like a shower might not have been the easiest of things. But while I noticed these differences, problems, important factors ... call them what you want so, I noticed something else. I saw 10 000 young people from nine different ethnic groups … converse, marching, laughing and dancing together. Each group had its language, its traditions, its culture ... every group and every youth unique in itself, yet no distinction between one another. All in a common purpose and goals as a common people. That kind of community is not easy to find if not impossible. That's when I noticed that Sawa and all those thousands of young people who had been there, who was there and that would come was and is the country's backbone.

The days of Sawa was filled with activities such as fashion shows, competitions and seminars. and we simply had to choose where we would want to spend our time. Of course, I was in a quiz contest. Then we had a lot of free time, so I got to know lot of new and different people.

After four days in Sawa the number of youth got reduced drastically to 150. A round trip ”Zura hagerka” would finally start and our first destination was the remote town of Teseney. Near to the Sudan, teseney was like an oasis in the middle of the desert. The city looked like an Arab city. The reception we got there was incredibly special. They opened the doors to their best restaurant (which was an incredibly beautiful place). The variety of food was as much as the number of days we where away from home. Surely, we were all happy when we were there for both lunch and dinner with guajla as dessert. Unfortunately I did not have time to explore the city.

Our next destination was very special, since we were among those few people who got to see it in close up. The area is called Bisha and it is one of Eritrea's many prides. There are miles of land with gold. Few people have seen this and to be part of it makes me incredibly proud. I saw a piece of Eritrea's future. Just two years after the Bisha mining can begin exporting gold and so increase the degree of the Treasury, and we got to be there in the beginning.

After several hours of bus travel, we arrive at Keren. One of Eritrea's larger cities. The landscape around Keren was so green and so beautiful. The actual city itself was so full of life. Serina Hotel which was the name of our hotel, was among the best in the country. From the balcony you could see how the city was partially surrounded by high mountains. Then when you also add our evening's entertainment with one of Eritrea's great comedians Sandiago , the evening could not have been any better. Disappointingly it was my last night.

In closing, let me just say that this trip has helped me answer the question I asked myself several times through the years ... where do i come from? ... I can now surely say that I am a proud Eritrean! and if you haven’t gotten it yet ... I recommend the trip! Awet N'hafash!

Selam T.welday,Sweden

May 29, 2010 | 4:59 AM Comments  0 comments

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Coordination Towards Youth Development

Coordination Towards Youth Development

http://nueyseritrea.wordpress.com/2010/05/18/coordination-towards-youth-development/
Daniel Semere
There is an ever increasing need and a wide support for youth engagement in all communities nowadays. Youth engagement is advocated on the conviction that youth have assets and are therefore capable of making meaningful contributions to their communities. While it is important to examine outcomes related to youth engagement, it is equally important to determine successful practices to understand how such outcomes can be achieved. Effective youth engagement requires a ceaseless investment on developing the youth to capacitate any community to achieve its short and long-term goals. And this requires a coordinated effort at a community, national, and international level.
Youth development is the ongoing growth process in which all youth are engaged in order to meet their basic personal and social needs. It also involves building skills and competencies that allow them to function and contribute in their daily lives. This definition describes youth development as a process that all young people go through. As the definition implies, it is a process that automatically involves all of the people around the youth, which mean family, youth organizations, government and international community as a whole. A young person will not be able to build essential skills and competencies unless these bodies provide them with the supports and opportunities they need along the way. Thus, youth development is also a process in which these bodies must actively participate so that the end product will be the ideal youth we all want to build and develop.
In Eritrea youth development involves people, places, supports, opportunities and services that most of us inherently understand that young people need to be healthy and successful. There are many efforts to define the outcomes of youth development, and most express the results that we want for our youth. However, people, programs and institutions should involve in a coordinated manner in youth development toward positive results in the lives of our youth. Some like the National Union of Eritrean Youth and students (NUEYS) have clearly defined these desired positive results or outcomes in an attempt to more effectively work toward the youth. The union has identified those outcomes to be comprehensive as to include the physical, mental, and intellectual health of our youth with the intention of securing their employability and involvement in the civic and social affairs of the nation. It also acknowledges the need to engage with regional and international youth organization in trying to address this issue. Towards this end, the first task is of course identifying and meeting the challenges we face.
Most of the problems challenging our youth have a global nature. Needless to say, we are living in a world where interdependence is not a choice any more. No country can make it in its own with out a proper interaction with the rest of the world. As such, most of the challenges we face as an individual nation are also interdependent and the solution needs a concerted and coordinated effort as a global community. The challenges youth globally are facing are of such nature.
A young person today has many reasons to be grateful: greater contact with the rest of the world, more educational opportunities, and a longer life than previous generation. On the other hand however, youth worldwide are facing growing levels of unemployment, poverty, armed conflict, epidemic diseases, illiteracy and substance abuse – among other social and economic challenges -despite global advances made in technologies, entrepreneurship development, medical research, and leisure and recreation facilities. This typifies the experience of a young person growing up in a developed country, and is increasingly the experience of many young people growing up in developing countries as well. But these experiences are not universal and youth living in certain nation or part of the world are undoubtedly facing a much stronger challenge. Addressing the challenges of the global youth should therefore have the needs of these youth at the center of the effort to overcome. Coordination here becomes indispensable.
Both young women and young men today benefit from a global and coordinated effort to improve the well being of the world’s poor through the Millennium Development Goals, a framework for poverty reduction forged by world leaders in 2000. Six of the eight Millennium goals address issues raised here: reducing poverty, achieving universal primary education, promoting gender equality and empowering women, reducing child mortality, improving maternal health, and combating HIV/AIDS and other diseases. While not all the goals are likely to be reached by the year 2015, and although the goals are not aimed only at youth, they do promise better lives for today’s youth if and when they are attained. Accordingly, youth organizations, governments, and international organizations should seek to work with a broad range of the youth population, both those organized through formal youth organizations and those who are not. Cooperation and exchanges should be used to develop the capacity of young people by facilitating the interchange of information among them. Working together in various areas of quality services can and should also be an effective part of such coordination. In fact no development can be complete without services in such areas as education, health, and employment, which should incorporate relevant instruction, and information in our social and national priorities. These services should also create challenging opportunities for the youth to express themselves, to contribute, to take on new roles, and be part of a larger group so as to direct and merge our effort toward the aforementioned priorities.
Youth development is about people, programs, institutions and systems that provide youth with the supports and opportunities they need to empower themselves. This requires youth development at all levels to be vigorously and tirelessly pursued so that it will endure and become a global culture. And in the end these effort toward youth development, all the supports and opportunities, could only be meaningful and have the impact we desire as long as and only when all youth can be able to take advantage of it. In many societies the ultimate challenge is to make such supports and opportunities the rule rather than the exception for all youth.
The National Union of Eritrean Youth and Student (NUEYS) as a representative and agent of youth, has been playing an enormous part in this huge task and has been doing a great effort in various ways. But it also understands the need to learn from other’s experience and work in partnership with different regional and international organizations. There is no doubt that the NUEYS has been and can play a crucial role in coordinating the hard work made toward the youth nationally but it is only the engagement with the rest of the world that will ultimately have a decisive contribution in its task of building a healthy youth. And the International Youth Forum NUEYS is hosting is another step ahead in this task.

May 28, 2010 | 1:56 PM Comments  0 comments



piasa   piasa Marat's TIGblog
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All success to the youth conference!
About this event: 4th World Youth Congress - Quebec City 2008

Translations available in: English (original) | French | Spanish | Italian | German | Portuguese | Swedish | Russian | Dutch | Arabic

Greetings

I had an opportunity to participate at a regional youth conference held from 22 upto 24 July,2008 in Eritrea.
Youths from Sudan, Kenya and Ethiopia came and shared their expriences and plights with us.

And I came to understand that such conferences, off course far from talk shows, really have an impact on youth lives if there is a commitment and hard work.

And in this occasion, I want to urge everybody to really hear youth concerns and come up with tangible and practical solutions.

Thank You

August 4, 2008 | 9:25 AM Comments  0 comments

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Arsiema   Arsiema Meron's TIGblog
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These men are from Moon
Translations available in: English (original) | French | Spanish | Italian | German | Portuguese | Swedish | Russian | Dutch | Arabic


On May 25, 1961 John F. Kennedy launched what he admitted was “the most hazardous and dangerous and greatest adventure on which man has ever embarked” a manned expedition to the Moon.

Between 1968 and 1972, nine American spacecraft would go on that great adventure, most famously Apollo 11, crewed by Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins.

The men of the Apollo programme who have been interviewed for a remarkable documentary, In the Shadow of the Moon remain the only human beings to have visited another world.

Even today, as America and China eye a return trip, their achievement remains utterly breathtaking.

Yet Apollo almost never got off the ground. In 1967, during the build-up to the launch of Apollo 1, Gus Grissom, Ed White and Roger Chaffee were testing the command module that sat atop the spacecraft.

Just after 6.30pm, a voltage flicker was recorded, caused by a spark in the highly pressurised, pure oxygen environment.

Chaffee yelled: “We’ve got a bad fire! Let’s get out! We’re burning up! We’re on fire! Get us out of here!” Witnesses saw White on the television monitors, reaching for the hatch release handle.

Seconds later, the transmission ended abruptly with a scream. All three died.

“We’re burying our guys at Arlington and I wasn’t sure if we were burying the entire Apollo programme,” recalls Gene Cernan, who would be the last man to walk on the Moon.

But by December 1968, the Saturn V rocket was ready to carry a crew for the first time in an orbit around the Earth.

However, Nasa heard from the CIA that the Russians were preparing to send a manned spacecraft around the Moon to upstage them.

So the flight plan was hurriedly changed. “It was a bold move,” says Jim Lovell, who would later command Apollo 13. “It had some risks to it. But it was a time when we made bold moves.”

His team was mesmerised by their lunar encounter. “We were just 60 miles above the craters and we were like three schoolkids looking through the candy store window.

"We took photographs as much as we could and, of course, we took the photograph of the famous Earthrise around the Moon.”

On Christmas Eve, as they emerged from the Moon’s shadow, the astronauts began to read from the Book of Genesis, which they had stored on fireproof paper in their flight manual.

Ready to land

After two further test flights, Nasa felt ready to attempt the first landing in July 1969.

Aldrin felt a pang of sympathy for Collins, who would have to remain in the command module as he and Armstrong — described by Charlie Duke of Apollo 16 as “the coolest under pressure of anyone that I had ever had the privilege of flying with” — descended.

“I discovered later that I was described as the loneliest man ever in the universe ... ,” Collins says, “which really is a lot of baloney. I had Mission Control yakking in my ear half the time. Everything was going well with the command module, I had my happy little home, I had the bright lights on and everything was fine.”

The men knew they were going to make history. “I don’t think anybody slept too well the night before,” Aldrin says. “You’re just wondering whether you can get enough rest for what you need to possibly do.”

But once the mission was under way, there was no time to dwell on its wider significance.

Collins describes the frenetic initial stages: “You go up into Earth orbit and go around the Earth once. That’s a busy time because you want to make sure that everything on board is working properly before you set sail for the Moon.

"Then you get word that you’re going for TLI [trans-lunar injection], and that means you can ignite the motor and head off to the Moon. You do, you go, and that’s it.”

As he tells it, there was no fear, but lot of worry. “You’re not sure all these things are going to work properly ... a lot of them in a very fragile daisy chain. You don’t want any of those links to break, because downstream from that broken link they are all useless — so yes, you are worried.”

Once in orbit around the Moon, he still felt a sense of foreboding. “When the Sun is shining on the surface at a very shallow angle, the craters cast long shadows and the Moon’s surface seems very inhospitable. Forbidding, almost.”

Watching from above as the lander descended, Collins sensed something more — there was a problem.

“It seemed like Neil was having a difficult time finding a suitable spot to put it down. I got a little worried then because they didn’t have a lot of extra fuel.”

The guidance system was carrying them into a boulder field, so Armstrong had to traverse the landscape rapidly. “Some of these boulders were the size of Volkswagens. It was a little iffy right there at the very end.”

The world held its breath, but four days, six hours, 45 minutes and 39 seconds into the flight, the lander reached the surface safely. “Stand by,” Mission Control said.

Armstrong said: “I’m at the foot of the ladder. The LM [lunar module] foot pads are — only depressed about one to two inches, although the surface appears to be very, very fine-grained ... OK, I’m going to step off the LM now.”

Then, that famous phrase: “That’s one small step for man. One giant leap for mankind.”

More pressing concerns

Aldrin’s response to reaching the lunar surface was altogether more down to earth.

“I decided to take that period of time … to take care of a bodily function ... so that I wouldn’t be troubled with having to do that later on. Everybody has their firsts on the Moon, and that one hasn’t been disputed by anybody.”

Collins was by now anxious about the next step: “I didn’t have any great feeling of ‘We’ve done it’ — I was a lot more worried about getting them up off the Moon than I was about getting them down … If something went wrong [with the motor on the lunar module] they were dead men: There was no other way for them to leave.”

Indeed, a speech had been prepared in case the module failed to lift off. Collins recalls the words: “Fate has ordained that the men who went to the Moon to explore in peace will stay on the Moon to rest in peace.

"These brave men, Neil Armstrong and Edwin Aldrin, know that there is no hope for their recovery, but they also know that there is hope for mankind in their sacrifice.”

But the launch from the lunar surface was flawless and Collins watched as the module returned to the mothership.

“Oh God, it’s beautiful ... you see the module, a little golden bug among the craters, and it gets slowly bigger and bigger…. Finally they got back into the command module and I grabbed Buzz by both ears and was going to kiss him on the forehead ....” Although he settled for a more manly greeting, there were few congratulations: “You don’t have time to sit around and reminisce, because you’ve got TEI [trans-Earth injection] coming up.”

There was one more critical point: during re-entry, when the command module roared back to Earth at up to 26,000 miles an hour.

“Your heat shield is on fire and its fragments are streaming out behind you. It’s like being inside a gigantic light bulb,” Collins says.

After the flight, the three went on a round-the-world trip. “Instead of saying ‘You Americans did it’, everywhere they said ‘We did it — we, humankind’,” Collins recalls.

“I’d never heard people in different countries use this word ‘we, we, we’ as emphatically… I thought that was a wonderful thing. Ephemeral, but wonderful.”

Directed by David Sington, In the Shadow of the Moon premiered at the 2007 Sundance Film Festival, where it won the World Cinema Audience Award.


June 28, 2008 | 2:17 AM Comments  0 comments

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First lady of headlines, beyond frontiers
Translations available in: English (original) | French | Spanish | Italian | German | Portuguese | Swedish | Russian | Dutch | Arabic

Christina Lamb is no ordinary reporter. The foreign correspondent for The Sunday Times and long-time friend of the late Benazir Bhutto has the honour of having been declared an “enemy of the state” by Robert Mugabe’s regime in Zimbabwe.

For her work as a journalist she has won several prizes, including Foreign Correspondent of the Year on four occasions.

And that is not all. Lamb is also an author and has written five books. Her latest offering, Small Wars Permitting: Dispatches from Foreign Lands, is a look back at her reporting from distant and often exotic corners of the globe.

As a child, Lamb had not thought of going off to be a journalist. At her home, what the neighbours were doing generated greater interest than what was in the paper.

“The only newspaper we got was the Daily Mail, which was for my dad to follow horse racing and to do the crosswords,” she says.

It was at the library that she discovered Hemingway and she started to write. At that stage, though, she was more interested in being a novelist than a journalist.

Life, however, had its own way of planning things. She went to study chemistry at Oxford University but realised she hated it.

So she switched to philosophy, politics and economics and ended up joining, and later editing, the university paper, Cherwell.

Later she worked as an intern at the Financial Times. There she was once sent to attend a lunch of South Asian politicians.

One thing led to another and Lamb managed to land an interview with the young and exiled Benazir Bhutto. And so began their famous and long friendship.

Off to Pakistan

“Benazir had a huge influence on my life,” she admits. Sometime after they had met, Lamb began work for the Central News in Birmingham.

"One day when she came home, there lay on her mat a gold inscribed letter that was the invitation to Benazir’s wedding. “It was something out of the Arabian Nights,” she says.

So Lamb took all the holiday she could, packed her bags and flew off. “It was an amazing introduction to Pakistan,” she says, describing the wedding in Karachi.

“Every evening after the ceremony was finished we would have all these discussions late into the night about how to deal with martial law because Pakistan was under General Zia.”

The trip to Pakistan had such an impact on Lamb that on her return to England she resigned from her job at Central News, flew back to Pakistan and based herself in Peshawar.

Those were the days of the Soviet invasion and she used to cross the border into Afghanistan to report for papers back in the United Kingdom.

And that is how Lamb entered the world of foreign reporting. Since her early days in Peshawar, she has reported from Brazil, Iraq, Nigeria, Bolivia, Argentina, Zimbabwe, South Africa ... the list goes on.

Fortunately (or unfortunately) for Lamb, major world events unfold in the places she travels to. Not long after she had been in Pakistan, General Zia was killed.

When she went to India on holiday, Rajiv Gandhi was assassinated. When she was in Brazil, a huge story broke as its president became the first in the country to get impeached.

Her first trip to Zimbabwe was in 1994 for a holiday when it was a success story, Lamb says. During a long weekend in Morocco, there was a bombing in Casablanca.

“You do start to think after awhile to not go where I go,” she adds.

Lamb, who has written a book on Zimbabwe, says she is determined to keep reporting from the country despite the threats from the Mugabe regime.

“It is very important that we still keep going into the country and reporting on what’s happening,” she says.

She was in Zimbabwe before the recent controversial general elections and says she never sleeps easy when she is there.

“I stayed the last couple of nights at a lodge that belongs to a friend in Harare,” she says. “The first morning there, she said to me that she has had phone calls from the secret police asking if there are any foreigners staying. She gave me the back-door keys so I could make an escape if I needed to.”

Lamb has interviewed many famous and fascinating personalities, including the late Princess Diana. “She went to Angola for the land mine issue,” she remembers.

“I thought she was very superficial and I was not very happy about going and covering her. Actually I changed my opinion because she was so impressive on that trip and she really worked very hard and I saw that she had something that I really saw with Nelson Mandela (another of her interviewees) — a kind of empathy with people terribly ill in hospital. She could bring a smile to people’s faces.”

Another well-known personality she interviewed was the acclaimed writer Paulo Coelho. The Brazilian author of the bestselling The Alchemist was so inspired by Lamb that he ended up writing a book about a female foreign correspondent in Kazakhstan.

“I am used to being somebody that writes for other people and I think I got a taste of my own medicine,” she confesses.

“One day I was in Portugal on holiday and got this e-mail from him with a long attachment and it was this book and it said I want you to read this because you inspired the main character.”

The book is called The Zahir and that was the first time she found out about it.

“I think it is a great advantage being a woman journalist because women are better listeners,” she laughs. Lamb is, in fact, optimistic and encouraging about being a female correspondent reporting from male-dominated societies.

“The great advantage in Islamic countries such as Afghanistan and others is that I can go and speak to women whereas my male colleagues are not able to go and speak to half the population,” she says.

Lamb takes care to dress in accordance with local customs and says she tries to respect different cultures. “I like wearing the salwar kameez — actually, very comfortable — and I think it looks good too,” she says.

She narrates an amusing incident that took place when she was living in Pakistan during the 1980s. She got an opportunity to interview General Zia but later realised her recorder had not picked up anything.

“So I had to phone his military attaché and say there were lots of bits I couldn’t hear. ... I think he realised I hadn’t got anything burnt. Fortunately — the advantage of it being a military regime — they had taped it too, so they sent me their copy.”

Besides being a foreign correspondent, Lamb is also a mother. Last October, when Benazir returned to Pakistan after an eight-year exile, Lamb was with her during the journey from Karachi airport when blasts occurred.

Her husband and son in England were very worried. “That was very difficult,” she says. “My husband told me that Lorenzo [her son] had asked: ‘Do you think mommy survived?’ It is horrible for a mother that you are putting your child in that position — when they are watching something and thinking my mother has been killed. I seriously thought about quitting over that.”

Benazir and Lamb once fell out over critical reporting of Benazir’s government but Lamb managed to keep in touch with the Pakistan prime minister.

On Lamb’s wedding, the former Pakistani prime minister sent her a present.“That was like a peace offering almost and then we became friends again,” she says.

Recently two of Benazir’s friends were in London and they met Lamb. “We went to her apartment in Kensington and to a restaurant where she used to go and where I have had lunch with her. We were all talking about previous times. And that felt very strange — it really hit me that she was dead.”

On the mention of Afghanistan, Lamb’s eyes seem to light up: “I love Afghanistan,” she says. It is as if Afghanistan represents a gateway into another world. “The very proud but hospitable and noble people,” she says.

“The love of beauty and the way you see a soldier with a flower tied around the Kalashnikov. The values they still have that I think is forgotten a lot in the West. Respect for old people. Oral traditions.”

“It is the first place I went to as a foreign correspondent. It is like your first love affair that you always sing quite fondly of,” she says.


June 28, 2008 | 2:13 AM Comments  0 comments

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Arctic Could See First Ice-Free Summer This Year - Experts Worry About a Disturbing Trend at the North Pole
Translations available in: English (original) | French | Spanish | Italian | German | Portuguese | Swedish | Russian | Dutch | Arabic

The distinct possibility that the North Pole could be free of sea ice -- for the first time in recorded history -- may become a cold reality this summer.

The Arctic's thick, resilient multiyear sea ice (frozen sea surface), which usually accumulates and lasts through the annual melting season, has started to give way to thinner, vulnerable first-year ice.

Satellite data gathered by the University of Colorado's National Snow and Ice Data Center showed that young sea ice, which is no more than about 60 inches deep and much more susceptible to melting away, now makes up only 72 percent of the Arctic ice sheet. Using that estimate, scientists at the center see a 50 percent chance that ice at the highest point in the Arctic will melt by the summer's end.

Andy Mahoney, a center researcher, has pinpointed this year in particular as having the "greatest chance" of being ice-free.

Such a scenario, however, will depend on the weather during the next couple of months. "It will probably come down to how cloudy it is this summer," Mahoney says. "If there's clear skies and if atmospheric patterns resemble last year's, you're going to see a lot more melt."

Increased rates of Arctic melt have altered the region in unprecedented ways. Arctic sea ice dwindled to a record low in September, clearing a route through the fabled Northwest Passage that runs from Greenland to Alaska. Opening of the path has provided ships a shorter, more direct route between Asia and Europe.

"It's got a shock level for people because there's always ice at the North Pole, but there are also real implications," Mahoney said. "If the North Pole melted out, the shipping industry would be paying very close attention to that."

Wieslaw Maslowski, who conducts Arctic ice research from his base at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, Calif., told ABC News last summer that there was a chance that the Arctic's entire ice sheet could vanish for the first time in just four or five years.

Such a statement was considered a daring projection at the time, given that climate prediction models estimated a few years before that it would take at least another 40 or 50 years before such a scenario is likely to occur.

But now, Maslowski says that "whether the Arctic sea ice disappears for the first time this summer or four or eight summers from now may be beside the point."

"The point," he noted, "is that we may well be passing through the sea-ice tipping point now. We'll just have to see what July and August weather have in store for the

The disappearance of Arctic sea ice may mean an even hotter planet, since the region's ice pack helps cool the earth by bouncing the sun's rays back into outer space. This reflective property, known as albedo, also prevents the rays from reaching the ocean, where heat is absorbed.

Less sea ice means more dark open water to absorb the heat, which melts the sea ice even further.

"Losing the ice sheet means losing an important way of cooling down," Mahoney said. "As a result, global warming would accelerate as the ice retreats."


June 28, 2008 | 2:04 AM Comments  0 comments

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Primitive Alien Life May Exist, Stephen Hawking Says
Translations available in: English (original) | French | Spanish | Italian | German | Portuguese | Swedish | Russian | Dutch | Arabic

Alien life may well exist in a primitive form somewhere in our corner of the galaxy, famed astrophysicist Stephen Hawking said Monday.


Given the size of the universe, it is unlikely that Earth is the only planet to develop some sort of life, Hawking told an audience at George Washington University in Washington, D.C. He added that humanity must embrace space exploration, if only to ensure its long-term survival.


"While there may be primitive life in our region of the galaxy, there don't seem to be any advanced intelligent beings," said Hawking during a lecture as part of a series commemorating NASA's 50th anniversary this year.


The lack of success by the Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence (SETI) project to discover signals from an alien civilization suggests that none exist within several 100 light-years of Earth, Hawking said, though he offered three theories on the dearth of interplanetary communications.


The probability of primitive life developing on a suitable planet may be extremely low, or it may be high, but aliens intelligent enough to beam signals into space may also be smart enough to build civilization-destroying weapons like nuclear bombs, he said. More likely, he added, is that primitive life is likely to develop, but intelligent life as we know it is exceedingly rare.


"We don't appear to have been visited by aliens," Hawking said, adding that he discounts reports of UFOs. "Why would they only appear to cranks and weirdoes?"


Alien life aside, Hawking said humanity must pursue a long-term effort of space exploration that would span hundreds of years in order to ensure the survival of the species. He likened those opposed to spending money on space science and exploration to those who wrote off Christopher Columbus' trans-Atlantic Ocean voyage in 1492 as a waste of money.


"The discovery of the New World made a profound difference on the old. Just think, we wouldn't have had a Big Mac or KFC," Hawking said.


"Spreading out into space will have an even greater effect," he added. "It will completely change the future of the human race, and maybe determine whether we have any future at all."


Hawking, 66, is a renowned theoretical physicist and cosmologist who suffers from the neurological disorder amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS). He uses a wheelchair, communicates with the aid of a computer, and co-wrote a children's book about science - "George's Secret Key to the Universe" - with his daughter Lucy in the hope of inspiring youth to pursue studies in science and technology.


"We live in a society that is increasingly governed by science and technology," Hawking said. "Yet fewer and fewer people want to go into science."


Sending astronauts back to the moon, establishing a lunar base with a clear target of going on to Mars would do much to restore the public's support for spaceflight, he added.


"If the human race is to continue for another million years we will have to boldly go where no one has gone before," Hawking said.



April 23, 2008 | 6:29 AM Comments  0 comments

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Smallest extrasolar planet discovered: Spanish researchers
Translations available in: English (original) | French | Spanish | Italian | German | Portuguese | Swedish | Russian | Dutch | Arabic

Spanish astronomers Wednesday announced the discovery of the smallest planet discovered to date outside the solar system, located 30 light years from earth.

The planet, "GJ 436T", was detected through a new technique which "will allow us to discover in less than 10 years the first planet resembling earth in terms of mass and orbit," said Ignasi Ribas of Spain's CSIC scientific research institute.

It was discovered by a team led by Ribas through its gravitational pull on other planets already discovered around the same star in the constellation of Leo.

"GJ 436T" has a mass five times the size of Earth, which makes it the smallest extrasolar planet among the roughly 300 identified so far, Ribas said in announcing the discovery.

He said the new planet is uninhabitable due to the distance that separates it from its star, which is far less than that between the earth and the sun.

To sustain life, a planet must have a mass similar to that of earth, liquid water on its surface, an atmosphere and a similar orbital distance from its star as that of the earth from the sun.

Initial calculations by the team indicated that "GJ 436T" rotates in 4.2 earth days and orbits its star every 5.2 days.


April 10, 2008 | 6:42 AM Comments  0 comments

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