World Tour - Elections in India and rain in Australia

NICK EICHER, HOST: Coming up next on The World and Everything in It: World Tour with Africa correspondent Onize Ohikere. 

ONIZE OHIKERE, REPORTER: African Union holds summit—We start today here in Africa.

Leaders from across the continent met in Ethiopia this week for a summit focused on resolving conflict in the region. The ongoing civil war in Libya was at the top of the list.

Smail Chergui is the African Union’s commissioner for peace and security.

CHERGUI: We want as Africa Union to join UN in an assessed mission in Libya to evaluate what is necessary to oversee, to make sure that the cessation of hostilities is respected by everybody and we want also to be part of the observer deployment mission in Tripoli and elsewhere in the country where it’s needed.

South African President Cyril Ramaphosa is the African Union’s new chairman. He has says the union should be focusing on economic development on the continent. Poverty is one of the root causes of conflict, especially the rise of terror groups. But Ramaphosa says countries must have peace and stability before they can address economic issues as a whole.

Indian elections—Next we go to India.

AUDIO: [Sound of chanting at rally]

The anti-corruption Aam Aadmi Party won a major victory in local elections over the weekend. That dealt a serious blow to Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s ruling Hindu nationalist party.

Aam Aadmi won 62 of the 70 seats up for grabs in the New Delhi election. The party has focused on policies supporting the poor, including fixing public schools and providing healthcare and electricity subsidies.

But its win is largely seen as a rejection of Modi’s continued push to make secular India into a Hindu nation. Protests over a new citizenship bill that excludes Muslims continue despite government efforts to discourage them.

Brazil’s indigenous people protest—Next to South America.

AUDIO: [Sound of people singing]

Indigenous groups in Brazil are protesting last week’s appointment of a former evangelical missionary to lead a department tasked with protecting the nation’s isolated tribes.

Ricardo Lopes Dias worked as a missionary in the Amazon between 1997 and 2007 with the Florida-based Ethnos360. The group’s mission is to evangelize unreached people around the world. Critics say Dias has no interest in preserving the tribes’ way of life or of continuing Brazil’s policy of “no contact” with indigenous people.

Anger over the Dias appointment comes amid ongoing protests over proposed legislation that would allow mining in indigenous lands. It would also open the lands to agriculture and tourism.

Rain lashes Australia, extinguishes wildfires—And finally, we end today in Australia.

A strong storm system dumped record rainfall on the eastern part of the country this week. The deluge ended a three-year drought in the region. It also helped put out or reduce many brushfires in the area.

Jane Golding is with Australia’s Bureau of Meteorology.

GOLDING: That tropical moisture that’s really been feeding those high rainfall amounts is still circulating over New South Wales and not really expected to go anywhere for the next week.

Although welcome, the heavy rain did cause some flash flooding in Sydney and other coastal areas.

That’s this week’s World Tour. For WORLD Radio, I’m Onize Ohikere reporting from Abuja, Nigeria.

EICHER: You can find more World Tour at wng.org/world-tour. The words world and tour separated with a hyphen. What you hear here each week is a small sampling of Onize’s work. She writes a World Tour roundup each week at wng.org/world-tour.

(AP Photo/Altaf Qadri) Incumbent Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal, center waving, and Aam Aadmi Party, or “common man’s” party leader Manish Sisodia, second right, leave after a visit to Hanuman temple following their party’s victory in New Delhi, India, Tuesday, Feb. 11, 2020. 

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