CONCEPT: Just-In-Time

Just-in-Time (JIT): Almost inextricably associated with Japanese manufacturing and transportation industries, the JIT principle is a crucially important component of savvy logistics management in war and peace -- and during all sorts of emergencies and disasters. The underlying idea is to reduce to near zero the temporal and financial costs of warehousing or storing of supplies, components or finished goods -- and of getting them to the intended recipients or users. 

JIT relies massively on the soundness of established transportation routes, modes and means -- and related systems. Moreover, the forms of social overhead capital (SOC) ideal for specific large-scale deliveries and other kinds of response are usually beyond the control of those directly involved in sending and receiving goods and/or services. It is for such reasons that Government Service Packages (GSPs), for example, have been set up. They mitigate barriers to the timely delivery of humanitarian services during extremely large emergencies -- such as we saw during the 1994 genocide in Rwanda and, a decade later on 26th December 2004, the "Indian Ocean Rim" Tsunami. 

CONCEPT: Government Service Packages (GSPs)

Government Service Packages (GSPs): The idea of GSPs, which had been tried before in Sarajevo and elsewhere, really took off during the Rwanda genocide of 1994. As their name suggests, GSPs (sometimes called simply "Service Packages") were conceived of as "a last resort in exceptionally large emergencies" justifying the use of "military and civil defence assets" (UNHCR, 2000: 359). 

It was argued that the scale of GSP missions, such as the one in Rwanda, was so large as to restrict involvement to UN member states with the requisite logistical and related material capacity for 'extra-budgetary donations in kind'. The mobilizing and coordinating functions of GSPs were assigned to UNHCR's top management in Geneva, obviously with allowance for behind-the-scenes consultations with the UN's most influential member-states. 

However, as the Rwanda crisis quickly and amply showed, the host-government's 'organic' involvement in the operations of a GSP intervention was too critical a requirement for success to wish away (Kent, 1996: 64-85; Wright, 1996: 54-56). That was a hard lesson learnt on the ground. On the other hand, built into GSP operations from the start was a formal undertaking that operations (a) would be of 'limited' duration; and, (b) would not "replace the traditional response capacity of NGOs". 

There are now over 20 GSPs (a number of them looking from a distance like nation-building propositions). Prior to 2004, these  included: Air Operations Cell, Strategic Airlift, Theatre Airlift, Airport Ground Handling, Warehousing/Storekeeping, Road Transport, Field Hospital, Hydrological Survey, Water Tanker Operation, "Surface Water", Borehole Drilling, Water Treatment, Water Distribution, Water Storage, Latrine Construction, Vector Control, Solid Waste Management, Waste Water System, Site Development and Road Construction (UNHCR, 2000: 359). The hugely destructive Indian Ocean Tsunami of December 26, 2004 brought rise, in actual practice (if not formally, to two or three new GSP: The Field/Tented Mortuary, DNA Identification and related Forensic/Tracing Services.


REFERENCES

Humanitarian Practice Network (1996) 'Service Packages': The Role of Military Contingents in Emergencies

Kent, Randolph (1996) "The Integrated Operations Centre in Rwanda: Coping with Complexity", pp. 64-85, in Jim Whitman and David Pocock, Eds., After Rwanda: The Coordination of United Nations Humanitarian Assistance. London: Macmillan Press Limited.

Wright, Neill (1996) "The Hidden Cost of Better Coordination", pp. 54-56, in Jim Whitmann and David Pocock, Eds. After Rwanda: The Coordination of United Nations Humanitarian Assistance. London: Macmillan Press Limited.

Omar al-Bashir, Surrender Thyself to the ICC!

I was in the reception area of a downtown office in Nairobi yesterday afternoon when the International Criminal Court (ICC) based at the Hague made a live announced of its warrant of arrest against Omar al-Bashir, Sudan's current President. I watched it on CNN. The charges against him include being "personally responsible" for directing armed attacks that led to the death of over 300,000 civilians and the displacement of millions of people in Darfur Province, over a five-year period beginning in 2003. He was also accused of pillaging, but was spared, for now, an indictment for genocide, but that might still come. The five counts of crime against humanity for which he is charged include: murder, extermination, forcible transfer, torture and rape. [Click HERE for details of the indictment]

Al-Bashir thus becomes the first sitting head of state to be so indicted. In a world of globalized justice, others will follow. Talk of national sovereignty in these circumstances is nonsensical talk. So is the talk about Al-Bashir's indictment as picking on Africa. In today's world, bad leadership (the negation of the "Good Leadership" that Nyerere championed) will increasingly pick itself up -- helped along by the disenchantment of ordinary citizens. I can already see that disenchantment in Kenya, and it has nothing to do with Al-Bashir himself; rather, with petty Al-Bashir look-alikes. Life will continue without missing a drum-beat, when eventually they are out of the way.

On this issue of Al-Bashir's indictment, Russia and China -- and the African Union before them -- must quickly change their stands before they appear to the average African to be hopelessly self-serving, hopelessly out of touch with true African aspirations, and irredeemable accessories to one of the most heinous crimes of the new millennium.

In defining social action, sociologists have known, at least since Max Weber, that complicity and guilt include failure to act against crime or horror, and "passive acquiescence to the [criminal] actions of others". To this we may add: failure to raise consequential and sustained Voice. But the voices we are hearing from our leaders are voices which, incredulously, ask that Al-Bashir be left alone lest worse things happen to the Darfurians! That kind of voice is more than acquiescence -- it is active participation in the horror.

Any additional acts of horror that may befall Darfurians, as from yesterday, must perforce be laid squarely at Al-Bashir's door!

They say that you can run but you cannot hide. This seems to be particularly apt in the circumstances in which "Omer" (as I saw in some placards on CNN last night) finds himself "right now". Bluster just won't do. Al-Bashir's AU peers do not have any muscle to help him, but incriminating voices. One or two may even be headed in the same direction. So he will have company.

Here's what's likely to happen in the next six to twelve months:

1. Al-Bashir will (should) surrender to the ICC at the Hague on his own volition. This would be the most honourable thing to do.
2. Some entity in the Sudan, emboldened by the indictment, might just hand him over against predictable protestations.
3. His plane might just make an unscheduled landing at an airport in which his arrest warrant is executed.
4. We may wait for what seems to be a long time, but what goes around comes around.
5. Or the hand of God might show itself before our collective, humble hands get a hold of him.

Laurent Nkunda: The Rogue that Africa Does not Need

Nkunda terrorizes Eastern Congo like a spoilt brat who thinks the world owes him -- owes him something he knows deep down he cannot say in front of grown men ; grown men who will not hesitate to tell him what they think. Obasanjo is such a man. Obasanjo says he does not know what Nkunda really wants, and has gone to Eastern Congo to find out. Let Nkunda not waffle, and let Obasanjo not let him get away with it!

Of course, Nkunda knows what he really wants, but he dare not speak its name lest he and whoever his godfather(s) are be publicly exposed at long last for what they really are (and have been): self-aggrandizing plunderers disguised as the region's conscience, and using as their calculated cover the world's enduring sense of guilt regarding the Rwanda genocide of 1994. But the world, it seems, is gradually turning around to the view that Kigali itself (like Nairobi) is providing spirited cover for one or two of the genocide culprits.

What Nkunda really wants, most discerning observers believe, is this and more of this: Click here. But that wealth belongs to DRC, which no "hot pursuit" excuses can detract from.

I think before they left Nairobi last week, the African leaders gathered here should have asked President Kagame point blank what he really wants in Eastern Congo. They did not invite him here for nothing. They should have proceeded to tell him, as diplomatically as possible, that neither he nor Nkunda will get it. They should have told him that DRC has its owners, the people of the Congo -- disorganized and demoralized as they may presently be. He is not one of them! They should have told him that a peaceful and prosperous DRC (a "lung of the earth") would be more consequential to Africa's future prosperity than Rwanda will ever be -- much as we love Rwanda.

What Obasanjo should tell Nkunda to his face, after he hears what is likely to be a fudged answer, is to get out of the Congo and to behave himself. Perhaps only he, an ex-military man, can tell off Nkunda in that fashion -- and get him back to common sense.

Kenya's Vernacular Radio Stations: To Ban Or Not To Ban?

Kenya’s ex-President, Daniel Arap Moi, wants the Government to ban the country’s “mushrooming” crop of vernacular radio stations, according to Saturday Nation of May 31, 2008. His reasons for this are that they are giving rise to “tribal chiefs”, and are fanning ethnic animosity by serving as vehicles for divisive politics. He justifies his call with the example of Rwanda in the early nineties, when broadcasts from such stations prompted anarchy and a genocidal orgy. The catalytic factor there, however, was not the existence of the stations per se but rather the assassination of the Rwandese President, Juvenal Habyarimana, when his plane was downed as it approached Kigali. The culprits remain at large still; as well camouflaged now, perhaps, as when they carried out their murderous act in 1994.

Still, the ex-President has a valid example. This is reinforced by Kenya’s own experience in January and February of 2008, particularly in the expansive Rift Valley. Protests against the announced presidential election results quickly took a violent turn. The violence then quickly became inter-ethnic because, in the eyes of ODM supporters in the Rift Valley and parts of Western Province, the “stolen presidential election” meant that there was not going to be a resolution of the land issue this time either. There was not going to be a resolution, just as there had not been during the 24-year presidency of Arap Moi, himself a son of the Rift Valley -- a 24-year reign during which Moi was, indeed, l’état.

The land issue – precisely who (or which ethnic community) really was entitled to the land that colonial farmers left behind at independence, or soon thereafter? -- had remained unresolved for much longer than the 24 years, in fact; that is, since independence on December 12, 1963. During the 2007 campaign, ODM supporters had been promised by their political leaders, in subtle and not-so-subtle ways, that this time around the issue would at last be resolved, upon the much-anticipated victory of ODM’s presidential and parliamentary candidates. This time, the justice that Moi had failed or neglected to dispense for 24 years would e dispensed, with finality.

Needless to say, then, the inter-ethnic violence in Kenya was triggered by a disputed presidential election result, and by adverse message it signaled vis-à-vis the land issue, not by the existence of the radio stations as such. There have been claims, to be sure, that certain radio stations in the Rift Valley and elsewhere did prompt their listeners to xenophobic pillage and murder – and revenge. In Rwanda, fortunately, such urgings were recorded by those who would subsequently prosecute the perpetrators. I am not aware that similar recordings exist in Kenya to serve as evidence for the prosecution – perhaps I have not paid sufficient attention to the adduced evidence. If such recordings exist, they should be used in court without fear or favour.

The said Saturday Nation issue reminds the reader that Moi made a similar but unsuccessful banning call in August 2000, when he was still president, arguing that radio stations should broadcast only in English and Kiswahili – Kenya’s official and national languages, respectively. But his own Minister for Information at the time, Mr. Johnstone Makau, would hear none of it, arguing that “vernacular is part of the Kenyan culture.” It is intriguing that Moi allowed his minister to win that particular argument.

That “vernacular is part of the Kenyan culture” is precisely the point, but we can say more: These radio stations are the only viable, nearly always-on and commute-free channels of contact with the world beyond the confines of the village for a wide cross-section of Kenya’s rural communities, where English and Kiswahili remain at the margin of daily life. They are an indispensable source of broadcasts rich in locally relevant content: news (local, regional and national), announcements (including funeral announcements, the occasional obituary and visits by dignitaries and government officials), entertainment (particularly music, comedy and story-telling), radio-evangelism, language-teaching (particularly of urban youth, since many of these broadcasts reach urban areas as well) and the growth of the vernaculars themselves, as broadcasters struggle to domesticate new concepts or standardize usages arising from day-to-day local living or from farther afield. Lately, mobile phones (some 13 million Kenyans have them now, out of a population of 35 million) have emphatically arrived to challenge the vernacular radio stations as channels of communication, but not in the domain of impersonal or mass communication.

Vernacular radio stations are tailor-made avenues for reaching members of local communities during emergencies and disaster situations, and should be recognized as such in emergencies, scenario-building and disaster plans. When easily accessible and trusted information sources, and easily understood messages are at a premium, vernacular radio stations are an asset, not a liability.

What is more, these stations already offer sustainable jobs to more Kenyans than, I believe, are employed abroad in our embassies and high commissions. They also extend marketing and advertising channels to parts of the Kenyan market which manufacturers and service providers, usually based in the cities, would find it harder to reach than they now do. Viewed thus, they are an essential component of wealth-creation in the country. Demand for their services grows demand for radios and batteries, thereby further sustaining local industries and jobs, to the extent that these are not undercut by subsidized or cheaper imports.

The foregoing suggests that the use of vernacular radio stations in ways that subvert the national good tends to coincide with the onset of transitional periods, or periods of high anxiety that cut across ethnicities and regions to engulf a whole country – such as during general elections. If that is the case, then the challenge to policy-makers is how to put in place measures that effectively monitor and punish, early enough, errant stations in their specificities – during those periods of great risk. The policy solution should not be unimaginative and too unself-critical. We should not impose blanket punishment against vernacular radio stations as a generic category, in the mistaken calculation that one offender implicates and damns all. During periods of normalcy, live and let live is clearly the norm across the country – and should be the catch-phrase.

In conclusion, it needs to be said that to ban vernacular radio stations would be to ban the future, or certainly to attempt to do so. In the sense that these radio stations are almost by definition, given their foregoing characterization, an integral part of the African renaissance -- which several thinkers have been calling for or endeavouring to realize, in our time. That is, moreover, if one defines the African renaissance as the simultaneous re-flowering and re-configuration – indeed, the elevation (or levitation?) to a distinctly higher plane – of the African way of life, and of the associated modes of expressing it.