Several Chadian rebel and political groups have said they are resuming peace talks with the country’s military government in Qatar after pulling out last week.
Around 50 groups have been negotiating for more than four months in Doha, with the aim of holding an inclusive national dialogue to pave the way for elections.
But a host of them withdrew from the talks on July 16, accusing the government of seeking to destabilise peace efforts.
On Saturday, Colonel Adoum Yacoub, a spokesman for 19 groups that had pulled out, told AFP their concerns had been addressed.
“We had discussions with the mediator with whom we shared our grievances in writing and we received all the answers,” he said.
Brahim Hissein, a spokesman for Chad’s main armed opposition movement, the Front for Change and Concord in Chad (FACT), said they had spoken to the mediator on Thursday and decided to “give the talks a new chance”.
Government spokesman Abderahman Koulamallah praised “the foresight of (his) brothers”.
On Thursday, the Qatari mediator handed a draft peace agreement to the rebel groups and the Chadian government.
Mahamat Mahdi Ali, the leader of FACT, told AFP: “There are two or three points to discuss… but it’s a good start.”
The impoverished Sahel state was buffeted in April 2021 when its veteran president, Idriss Deby Itno, died fighting rebels, including FACT.
His son, Lieutenant-General Mahamat Idriss Deby Itno, immediately took over at the head of a junta.
He dismissed the government, dissolved the parliament and repealed the constitution, vowing to hold “free and transparent” elections in 18 months — a deadline that he said could be postponed once if “certain conditions” were not fulfilled.
The rebel groups who withdrew on July 16 did so less than 24 hours after the younger Deby’s administration announced that a national peace dialogue ahead of elections would start on August 20.
The rebels said the new date had been set without any consultation, describing it as an attempt to “exclude” many of the armed groups and their political allies from the dialogue.
Armadillo, a multi-chain impermanent loss (IL) protection solution powered by the Crypto Volatility Index (CVI) from COTI, will be using Chainlink Keepers on Polygon to automate IL protection payout.
CVI operates a basket of volatility products, including Armadillo’s impermanent loss protection.
The CVI team developed a toolbox of decentralized risk management solutions that are applicable and relevant in today’s highly dynamic crypto markets. Armadillo’s impermanent loss protection is just one recent addition to this toolbox and looks to be one of the most promising solutions for liquidity providers.
CVI + Chainlink Keepers
Chainlink Keepers supports secure and cost-efficient automated payouts to liquidity providers (LPs) for their incurred impermanent loss. As a result, the payout of impermanent loss protection can be made in a fully automated way, without any manual action required from LPs.
In order to help automate payouts and further decentralize Armadillo, a dependable solution was needed. Chainlink Keepers is a decentralized service purpose-built to manage tasks on behalf of smart contracts that “wake” up smart contracts when they need to perform critical on-chain functions.
In this case, Chainlink Keepers monitors Armadillo’s impermanent loss protection platform to check if any protection periods have passed. Whenever a user’s protection period has ended, Chainlink Keepers request the payout on behalf of the user, enabling a seamless user experience.
Crypto Volatility Index (CVI)
Using the Black-Scholes option pricing model, the Crypto Volatility Index (CVI) computes the implied volatility of bitcoin and ethereum option prices and then analyzes how markets anticipate future volatility.
CVI is a full-scale decentralized platform that brings the popular “market fear index” to the crypto market, which is created by computing a decentralized volatility index from cryptocurrency option prices and analyzing the market’s expectation of future volatility.
CVI provides a reliable DeFi tool suitable for analyzing volatility, hedging portfolios, and earning from being a liquidity provider.
Armadillo is a protocol that offers:
Multi-Chain Protection — Protects selected pairs staked across any chain, DEX, or platform.
Non-Custodial — The liquidity does not have to be moved in order to purchase the protection.
Customized — Each user sets the pair, amount, and timeframe to protect.
Decentralized On-Chain Protection — On-chain oracles and smart contracts are used to ensure security and manipulation resistance.
Check out Armadillo’s Whitepaper to learn more about the platform.
“We decided to decentralize the payout function of impermanent loss protection using Chainlink Keepers because it is operated by the same pool of time-tested, provably reliable node operators that currently help secure tens of billions of dollars across DeFi, even during record levels of network congestion and extreme volatility. The proven infrastructure of Chainlink helps ensure that every USDC payout for Armadillo’s impermanent loss protection is executed on time in a trust-minimized manner.” – The CVI Team
Some unique features of Chainlink Keepers include:
Decentralized Execution — Chainlink Keepers provide reliable, trust-minimized automation with no single point of failure, mitigating risks around manual processes and centralized servers.
Increased Efficiency — Projects that use Chainlink Keepers are able to reduce time spent on DevOps, minimize operational overhead, and streamline development workflows.
Easy-To-Use — Developers are able to schedule time-based automation jobs in seconds using the Chainlink Keepers Job Scheduler’s no-code UI.
“We’ve been using Chainlink Keepers to help rebase our volatility tokens, so the smart contract automation solution has already saved us a lot of operational costs and development time. With this new integration, Chainlink Keepers help ensure that payouts in our impermanent loss protection feature are executed autonomously, further establishing a high standard of security and decentralization for our platform.” – Shahaf Bar-Geffen, CEO, COTI
A royal delegation from Western Cameroon’s Bangwa region made physical contact with a looted sculpture for the first time in more than 100 years on Saturday. The artifact — known as a lefem — is one of many commemorative sculptures that was taken during Germany’s colonial conquest of the Central African nation.
“Taking this artifact into captivity far from its environment deprived us of the natural and spiritual protection which we were provided by our ancestors,” said King of Bangwa Asabaton Fontem Njifua of Bangwa at the ceremony.
“Its return is the beginning of ending the agony of collective punishment which generations of our ancestors endured and are still enduring.”
Cologne’s Rautenstrauch Joest Museum on Saturday held a ceremonial event for the artifact’s return with the delegation. But they left empty-handed.
While the museum wishes to restore the sculpture to community leaders, the restitution of looted artifacts held by Germany’s museums is governed by a bureaucratic process. The final decision rests with the City of Cologne and its council.
Lefem’s absence felt for generations
The sculpture is one of many lefem sculptures crafted to embody the spirit of Bangwa chiefs. It was stolen from the Bangwa around 1898 by a German military lieutenant during a violent raid.
He donated it to a museum in north-central Germany in 1902. It was later obtained by a collector in Düsseldorf in 1955 and given to the Rautenstrauch Joest Museum in 1966.
The lefem’s absence has been felt by each generation. Western Cameroon is at the heart of a prolonged war and the Bangwa region is a particularly hard-hit area. Bangwa leaders say that the absence of the statue serves as a constant reminder of the chaos and devastation felt by the community.
“What we want is that these artifacts will go back to its natural environment. It will go back to people who suffered the loss. People who suffered the collective trauma over the years. It is not a matter of politics,” said Chief Fuatabong Achaleke Taku, a royal member of the Bangwa and a key figure behind the sculpture’s restitution.
“It is a matter of fundamental human rights that the artifact will go back to the community.”
Members of the Bangwa grew up understanding the history of artifacts looted during German colonization of Cameroon, Chief Taku told DW. This helped inspire him on his path for the lefem’s return.
Although those memories came with pain, this historical knowledge was the key necessary to reclaim the Bangwa’s looted works from German museums.
Bureaucracy behind restitution in Germany
There has been a stated mission for the restitution of looted objects held in Germany since 2019. In the years that have followed, Germany has added transparency to the restitution process by setting guidelines for museums on the repatriation of stolen artifacts.
While the path to return is clearer than before, the process is still not easy.
In order to make a request for a return a country or community member must first identify what the object is and where it is being held. While some museums digitize their collections so they can be better identified, others do not.
The requester of the artifact must then prove ownership of the object through provenance research. This research investigates creation and the transfer of ownership throughout the object’s life. Some museums keep provenance records. However, the manifest does at times contain information gaps. In this case, the burden to prove ownership falls on the requestor.
One of the last barriers in Germany’s restitution process is the federal states or local authorities who oversee the museums in Germany. It is up to them to make the final OK for return.
One OK is not enough
Museum Director Nanette Snoep and her team is dedicated to seeing the sculpture go back the Bangwa community, but her OK is not enough.
A key holdout in the return of the lefem is the City of Cologne, the municipality that oversees the museum indicated the director.
“It is up to the city of Cologne to decide … I am trying to convince the city that this sculpture will be returned to the Bangwa,” said Snoep. “The question is, what is the political will of the City of Cologne?” she added.
Germany’s museums have to negotiate with the delicate powers shared between them and municipal bodies in the country for restitution claims.
A city official who attended the meeting said that he would also like to see the statue and other relics the museum holds, like more than 90 Benin Bronzes, returned as well — but the city is still at the beginning of the process.
Cologne’s city council to decide
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“At the end it is the decision of the council,” said Stefan Charles, Deputy Mayor of Fine Arts and Culture for the City of Cologne. “I will prepare the council as well as I can. I will bring up the pros and cons.”
While negotiating the return of the Benin Bronzes held at the museum is currently a top priority for the council Charles said he was “convinced that we will agree to the restitution of the Benin bronzes and whatever follows.”
However, he added, the council is also bound to partners and the government who are tasked with checking legal aspects of return.
“We are not making this decision on our own. We have partners with museums in Germany and beyond and also on a governmental level in Berlin,” said Charles.
To the royal Bangwa envoy return of the lefem sculpture is imminent. They see the letter of invitation given to them by the museum for Saturday’s ceremony as a clear indication that it will finally come home.
“The wording of the letter of invitation from this museum and from the mayor showed that there was a realistic opportunity that if we came with the king we could regain the humanity that was stolen from us. That is what motivated me and that is why we are here,” said Chief Taku.