POVERTY: MALI: Rebellion claims a president

BAMAKO, 22 March 2012 (IRIN)

 Photo: Eskinder Debebe/UN Photo
Just-ousted President of Mali, Amadou Toumani Touré

Former Malian President Amadou Toumani Touré, overthrown this morning by mutinous soldiers, said recently that tackling recalcitrant Tuareg rebels in the north is going to be an ongoing task for future governments.
“The problems of the north have been with us for 50 years now… Our elders dealt with them; we are tackling them, and the younger generation will continue to do the same. This is not going to be over tomorrow,” he told Radio France Internationale.
Touré’s successor government, the Comité national pour le redressement de la démocratie et la restauration de la démocratie et la restauration de l’état (CNRDRE), led by army captain Amadou Sango, has dissolved state institutions, suspended the constitution, reportedly arrested several ministers, taken over the state broadcaster, and announced a curfew.
CNRDRE says it has brought an end to “an incompetent regime” and singled out Touré’s “incapacity to manage the crisis in the north of the country… and to fight terrorism”.
There have been persistent complaints from soldiers of inadequate supplies and military hardware, poor direction and strategic planning and a sense of abandonment for those on the frontline, fighting a war that could and should have been prevented.
Touré, 63, having first taken power aged 42, had planned to retire gracefully, leaving after a second-five year term, as stipulated in the constitution. Until recently, he had been adamant that presidential elections scheduled for the end of April would take place, that there was no question of the military situation forcing an emergency transitional government, and that he was looking forward to retirement and more time with his family.
The current situation has an ironic symmetry. Touré’s first period in office after overthrowing military ruler Moussa Traoré in March 1991 began against a background of revolt in the north and ended in June 1992 just after a Pacte Nationale was signed by the government and representatives of Tuareg resistance movements fighting for a separate territory.
Twenty years later, the long-term solutions put forward in that agreement - decentralization, reconciliation and bringing resources and development to some of the country’s most isolated regions - have not taken hold.
Many Malians from different communities believe Touré responsible for the current crisis, alleging that the promises did not turn into concrete developments, too many projects were left on the drawing board, and too much of the funding was never accounted for.

Arsenal from Libya
Having dealt messily with an earlier insurgency, signing an inconclusive peace agreement in February 2009, Touré’s beleaguered army found itself up against a much better organized rebel movement, flush with an arsenal taken from Libya.
The new, largely Tuareg force, the Mouvement National pour la liberation de l’Azawad (MNLA), initiated hostilities with an attack on Ménaka in the far east of the country on 17 January, following this up with a series of strikes on small towns spread across a vast expanse of the north: Léré, Niafunké, Aguel-hoc, Tessalit.
While Touré reorganized his senior command, and military communiqués pointed to a rapid recovery of lost territory, there has been little evidence in recent weeks of the national army gaining ground.
There was a serious warning for the government when widows of soldiers killed in the north demonstrated in the garrison town of Kati, 15km outside the capital, on 1 February, marching with the clear support of sections of the military.
Civil society activists have talked of the need for Malians to come together and draw on a long history of peaceful coexistence, but have warned the situation is much more complex than before, not least because parts of the north now dominated by a flourishing illicit economy that appears strongly linked to Islamist “terrorist” networks, notably Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM).
“This only confirms what I have believed all along”, said Mohamed Ag Ossade, reacting to the overnight coup in Mali. “All Mali’s children have to come and sit down together. We need to talk to each other now more than ever.” For three years, Ag Ossade has run TAMUST, the Tuareg Cultural Centre in Bamako, the capital.
TAMUST plays host to curious visitors, but has also been a successful concert venue and the site is dominated by a vast tent housing Tuareg cultural artefacts, swords and jewellery.

Mixing
Ag Ossade is proud of his Tamsheq heritage, but also a firm champion of the concept of `brassage’ (mixing), pointing out that Mali’s ethnic groups have lived together and intermarried for centuries, and that one of the country’s abiding strengths is its diversity. “No culture can thrive in isolation,” Mohamed told IRIN. “People have to know each other.”
He says he has found the events of the past few months distressing and frustrating. “I have friends and family fighting on both sides. They should put an end to this wretched piece of cinema now.”
One of the major fears since even before the conflict began is that revived tensions in the north would lead to inter-ethnic violence in the south. Both Tuareg and Arab communities in the capital have expanded significantly in recent years, partly because of the prevailing poverty and lack of opportunities in the north. Many have fled, Mohamed acknowledged, but stressed that: “nobody has been killed as far as I know and people should be wary of rumours and exaggeration”.

 Photo: Nancy Palus/IRIN
A Tuareg clinic in Kati, outside Bamako, that was recently ransacked. Turmoil erupted 21 March in Mali when Defence Minister Sadio Gassama visited a military camp in Kati

There were ugly demonstrations in early February, particularly in Kati, as anger over government troop casualties spilled over into attacks on prominent Tuaregs. Malians have bitter memories of rebellions in the 1960s and 1990s, and of how easily armed attacks in one location could bring on a cycle of reprisals and counter-reprisals in another.
People watch out for echoes of the mid-1990s when Ganda Koye (“masters of the land”), a self-defence militia drawn mainly from the Songhai community, took up arms, targeting Tuaregs and Arabs. The latest rebellion has not, so far, triggered that kind of confrontation, although there have been hints of an anti-Tuareg backlash in areas like Gao with a past history of inter-ethnic tension.
Politicians from Touré down spoke out against `les amalgams’, or half-truths that can be used by troublemakers to stir up hate campaigns, using the rebellion as a pretext for ethnic pogroms.
Presidential candidate Ibrahim Boubacar Keita, known to Malians as IBK, made sure that his condemnations of the rebellion were combined with appeals for moderation, pointing out that “the overwhelming majority of communities in the north live in peace and want to contribute to the development of the nation”. IBK called for a special conference on the north, a proposal which has been endorsed by other politicians, religious leaders and civil society organizations.
The faith in dialogue is shared by some outsiders. Prior to the events of 21 March, a Western diplomat confidently observed that: “sorting things out, finding a consensus, that’s in Mali’s DNA”.
But there were concerns too about the potential for breakdown.”People often say: “enough is enough, no more peace conferences, we must see this thing through until the end”, said Jean de Dieu Dakouo, Director-General of the Centre Djoliba, in Bamako, which specializes in conflict resolution. “But they don’t think through what they are saying”.
With a curfew in place and the capital in shutdown mode, it is difficult to gauge the impact of the coup. “Our main priority for now is working out what is going on”, a Bamako-based diplomat acknowledged.

Displacement and food insecurity
Watching with particular concern are aid agencies. The coup comes at a critical time in terms of food assistance. The north, west and several other parts of the country are experiencing severe food insecurity due to erratic rains and a poor harvest in 2011.
As the conflict goes into a third month, relief organizations like the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR), the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) and Médécins Sans Frontières (MSF) have consistently highlighted the need for food, shelter, water and medical care for the 100,000 who have fled across the borders, while stressing the pressure placed on the regions taking in the influx. Northern Burkina Faso, southern Mauritania, western Niger and parts of Senegal are all grappling with serious food insecurity and malnutrition that are likely to escalate in the coming months.
But there has also been massive internal displacement inside Mali, with 93,500 making it to provincial centres, like Gao, Tomboctou and Kidal, while others remain on the fringes of conflict areas, like Aguel-hoc and Tessalit, according to UNHCR.
Germain Mwehu of the ICRC, speaking to IRIN from Niamey, capital of Niger, Mali’s southern neighbour, cited the example of Ménaka, in eastern Mali, the first target of a rebel attack on 17 January and now held by the MNLA.
“Many people made for the border with Niger,” Mwehu told IRIN. “Many of those who stayed are living on the periphery of the town. Food and shelter are our priorities and this in an area very vulnerable to drought.” The ICRC has serious concerns about access to people in the more isolated areas and for the security of its staff. Mwehu also talked of the psychological burdens facing the target population.
“People in Ménaka are very stressed about not knowing what to do. Should they try to leave for Niger? Should they stay put? Will the conflict resume? Will the government look to stage an offensive?”

Aid agencies
Even before the rebellion, international and national NGOs operating in the north faced security scares and access issues, sometimes being forced into a temporary suspension of activities or the withdrawal of expatriate staff.
Médecins du Monde (MDM) was forced to scale down its activities in response to worsening security in February 2012, but was able to resume in early March.
François Fille, MDM’s Security Focal Point, says his organisation, like other NGOs in Mal, is still taking stock of the coup.
“At the moment, our teams in displacement camps in the north are working”, File emphasized. “There has been no harassment. They are able to access our beneficiaries. That is the situation as of now”. But he said nothing could be taken as guaranteed. "We are very concerned about the situation and what could happen now with the coup in Bamako."
MDM has been able to run its nutritional and medical activities unimpeded, gaining access to populations in both MNLA and government-held areas. "Until now, we haven't noticed extra controls from both sides and hope it won't change in the future".
NGOs often have to prioritize humanitarian operations ahead of development work, and there are longer-term concerns too: how will the costs of military campaigns affect government budgets in a year of huge food security problems? “There are going to be three million people affected by the food security problems in Mali come April [2012],” warned Abdoulaye Samoura, advocacy officer with Oxfam in Bamako. “There is a danger that the government will put all its political, financial and decision-making capacity into sorting out the crisis in the north.”
Numerous small-scale development projects, covering everything from irrigation to governance, operate in isolated, war-affected zones like Kidal. “If there is no security in the north, how can the projects they need there be made to work?” asked Mohamed Ag Ossade. “Resorting to arms will never help a country to develop.”
http://www.irinnews.org/Report/95127/MALI-Rebellion-claims-a-president

POVERTY: SAHEL: Thousands of Touaregs flee into Burkina Faso

OUAGADOUGOU, 10 February 2012 (IRIN)

 Photo: Tugela Ridley/IRIN
A group of Tuareg men in traditional dress silhouetted on the crest of a sand dune at an oasis, west of Timbuktu, Mali

At least 8,000 Touaregs fleeing fighting in neighbouring Mali have found refuge in Burkina Faso, having arrived “in a dire humanitarian condition”, the government said yesterday.
It said it would set up a coordination committee to bring the refugees - currently spread between the western and Sahelian parts of the country - to a centralized location and provide education and sanitation.
“The humanitarian situation is alarming because most of them are sleeping in the open air despite the hospitality of their host,” said Modeste Konkobo, humanitarian officer with the Burkina Faso Red Cross.
“With the current bad weather [harmattan winds] this means looming health problems when added to the precarious food, sanitary and drinking water situation for such a huge group,” Konkobo said.
He said the refugees needed immediate “survival assistance” since they had arrived empty-handed. Other needs included blankets, cooking materials, mats and tents. The Red Cross is deploying some 40 volunteers.
Konkobo said refugees were still arriving in “large numbers” in Inabao and Deou (Oudalan Province), and Mentao (Soum Province). Some 4,000 refugees arrived in the region on 8 February.
“We are afraid this will aggravate the already bad food situation with the deficit we are facing,” said Boureima Yiougo, governor of Sahel Region.

The Touareg
The Touareg are nomads who once controlled ancient caravan routs across the Sahara Desert. They inhabit the Southern regions of North Africa – Algeria, Burkina Faso, Libya, Mali, Niger and Nigeria. Touareg is an Arabic term meaning abandoned by God. However, they call themselves variously Imohag (translated as free men), Kel Tamasheq or Kel Tamajaq. No one knows where they came from or when they arrived in the Sahara. Their true numbers are unknown but estimates vary between 300,000 and 1.5 million.
The government said 146 of the country’s 350 communes had experienced much lower rains this year and could face “famine”, and that it would subsidize cereals to lessen the impact on residents of the region.
The National Commission for Refugees and the local UNHCR office are due to conduct a joint assessment mission in Sahel Region, which borders Mali.
“They urgently need shelter since they caught us by surprise. We have only five tents,” said Hima Barke, a UNHCR official in Soum Province. “Just a week ago there were 40 refugees in the province, now there are 1,127.”

Mali
Meanwhile, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) reported on 9 February that at least 30,000 displaced people in Mali were in a dire condition because of fighting in the north of the country since mid-January.
In Aguelhoc (150km northeast of Kidal in northeastern Mali), it said, fierce fighting had forced some 4,000 people to flee their homes. Most had little food and were living in improvised shelters in the semi-desert region. A few have been sheltered by host families.
The ICRC said it and the Mali Red Cross were preparing to distribute millet, rice, oil and salt; as well as tarpaulins, blankets, sleeping mats, buckets, kitchen utensils and hygiene items to the displaced.
“The Mali Red Cross has already made an emergency delivery of food for 600 displaced people whose situation was particularly worrying,” the ICRC said.
In Ménaka, Gao Region, clashes prompted almost 26,000 people to flee their homes in search of safety, both within and outside the town, according to ICRC and Mali Red Cross estimates. The ICRC is also assessing the situation in Tessalit (Kidal Region) and Léré and Niafunké (Timbuktu Region), which have also been affected by fighting in the north of Mali. ICRC quoted “local sources” as saying there could still be 20,000 displaced people in these areas.
The fighting that took place in Ménaka and Andéramboukane also prompted over 15,000 people to seek refuge in Niger, in the northern Tillabéry Region just across the border from Mali.
http://www.irinnews.org/report.aspx?reportID=94829

POVERTY: SAHEL: Displaced Malians burden food-insecure hosts

BAMAKO/DAKAR, 6 February 2012 (IRIN)

 Photo: ReliefWeb
Map of areas affected by fighting and subsequent displacement

Some 12,000 Malians have fled fighting in the towns of Ménaka and Anderamboucane in northern Mali and reached already food-insecure villages around Tillabéri in western Niger, according to the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) in Niger’s capital, Niamey.
The Malian refugees are spread across the villages of Mangaizé, Chinégodar, Koutoubou, Yassan and Ayorou in Niger, according to the Malian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, with the bulk of them - an estimated 7,000 - in Chinégodar, which is usually home to 1,500, according to Franck Kuwonu at the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) in Niamey.
Fighting broke out between Touareg rebels and former soldiers from Libya, and the Malian army in mid-January. Rebel groups and former Libya fighters have reportedly acquired fresh weapons as a result of the Libya conflict and have launched a new movement, the National Movement for the Liberation of Azawad (MNLA), which calls for the creation of an independent state encompassing the regions of Gao, Kidal and Timbuktu in northern Mali.
Niger’s Tillabéri region has been hardest hit by the 2011 drought and poor harvest and many inhabitants are already facing severe food insecurity, according to the government and aid agencies. Though assessments are still under way, the government estimated late last year that just under half of Niger’s population would be short of food this year.
“Chinégodar doesn’t even have enough grain to feed its own small population,” said Kuwonu, noting there are three tons of millet in the cereal bank. Millet prices in the area are 24,000 CFA francs (US$50) per 100kg bag, up from 19,000 CFA francs ($40) this time last year.
The ICRC and NGO Médecins Sans Frontières have been quickest to respond to refugees’ needs, the former having repaired water pumps in stressed host towns and distributed some blankets, shelter materials and food; the latter sending a nurse with basic medical supplies to help those in need.
However, logistics are slow said Kuwonu, and more food and shelter is needed. The ICRC spokesperson in Niamey, Germain Mwehu, told IRIN there is enough aid to meet immediate needs but not over the long-term.
An inter-agency UN mission evaluated the area last week and agency representatives are meeting tomorrow to discuss their response. Oxfam has also assessed the situation. All agencies will closely coordinate with the government on their response, said Kowonu.

Heading for Mauritania, Burkina, Guinea
According to PANA Press, some 6,000 Malians have also fled fighting in Léré, Niafunké and Goundam in Mali’s northern Timbuktu region, and are sheltering in Fassala Néré in Mauritania, some 1,260km east of the capital Nouakchott. A number of the children among them are allegedly severely malnourished, according to local NGO Association for Research and Development in Mauritania.
The local authorities and UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) are currently assessing the situation in more detail, UNHCR spokesperson Elise Villechalane told IRIN from Nouakchott. An unknown number of Malians have also fled east to Burkina Faso and western Guinea, says the ICRC in Mali.
Meanwhile, an unknown number of Malians are fleeing south to Mopti, some 640km north of the capital Bamako, and to Bamako itself.
Amina Coulibaly, a producer with national radio in Gao, eastern Mali, told IRIN from the capital: “Fighting has not yet broken out in Gao [town] but given that it is one of the places the Touaregs want to make part of their republic, I prefer to leave now.”
Mali has been struggling for several years to contain rebel groups in the north, the rising power of Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) factions, and widespread contraband traffickers in its northern regions.
http://www.irinnews.org/report.aspx?reportID=94803

POVERTY: MYANMAR: Landmine survivor needs outstrip aid

BANGKOK, 7 December 2011 (IRIN) -

 Photo: Zin Win/IRIN
Zaw Lwin, 42, lost his leg to a landmine 12 years ago in the eastern part of Myanmar's Bago Region

Myanmar has one of the world's highest casualty tolls by landmines, but for years the country has received little international aid for survivor assistance, risk education and other mine action. The numbers are changing, however.
"Myanmar gets very, very little funding compared to any other country that has a landmine victim population of its size," said Yeshua Moser-Puangsuwan, with the Geneva-based International Campaign to Ban Landmines (ICBL).
While international donations for mine action worldwide have doubled over the past decade, contributions have remained low in Myanmar because the government has refused humanitarian groups access to mine-affected areas, and the country has not signed the 1997 Mine Ban Treaty, according to NGOs.
Of the 4,191 recorded landmine casualties in 2010, 274 occurred in Myanmar - the fifth highest in the world after Afghanistan (1,211), Colombia (512), Pakistan (394), and Cambodia (286).
Those countries, respectively, received US$102.6 million, $12.1 million, $3.4 million, and $24.3 million in 2010 from international donors - versus Myanmar's $36,000 from Norway's government, according to ICBL's 2011 Landmine Monitor.
This figure excludes monies not reported to ICBL, which for Myanmar included funds from the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) and the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR), said Moser-Puangsuwan.
The Norwegian government backed a study in 2010 on the humanitarian impact of landmines and has increased its contribution to about $500,000, said Arne Jan Flølo, the Myanmar desk officer at the Norwegian embassy in Bangkok.
The US government has pledged $200,000 to help survivors.

Progress report
Campaigners against landmines point to recent developments in the country as signs the time has come to "be more brave" in fighting landmines in Myanmar, noting its participation in a recent gathering in Cambodia of signatories to the mine ban treaty.
"There seem to be openings," said Katherine Kramer, Asia's programme director for the NGO Geneva Call. "There are venues to start a dialogue with the government... by offering assistance for humanitarian mine action."
U Win Naing, Myanmar's deputy director-general in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, said "careful consideration" was the most appropriate way forward on the issue of landmines, during an address at the annual Meeting of States Parties from 28 November to 2 December in Phnom Penh, Cambodia.
"Myanmar also believes that the legitimate right of every state to self-defence in matters of its national security must be recognized and respected in considering this issue," he said, according to a transcript of the speech.
It was the first time a Myanmar official had addressed the gathering.
"I'm really hoping that, with the government's presence at this meeting, they [the government] might be more open to humanitarian mine activity, and then I'm sure funds will increase," said Kramer.
"If you can't do activities openly, then it becomes much more difficult to put large amounts of funds into projects."
An "extremely significant" development came in November when a government minister met five major armed groups to discuss a ceasefire, said Moser-Puangsuwan. Since then, the government has signed a formal ceasefire agreement with the Shan State Army-South, according to local media.
Any ceasefire agreement must prohibit landmine use and allow NGOs access to mine-affected communities, said Moser-Puangsuwan.

Non-state armed groups must sign on, too.
"For the people living in the conflict areas, not much has changed," Moser-Puangsuwan said. "Until there's an end to armed conflict in that country, there's still going to be mine use."
Myanmar was one of four countries worldwide where government forces used anti-personnel landmines in 2011 and the only country where both state and non-state armed groups used them in 2010-2011, according to ICBL.
Since 1999, at least 2,861 people in Myanmar have been injured or killed by landmines but the actual figure is believed to be much higher, campaigners say.
http://www.irinnews.org/report.aspx?reportID=94417

POVERTY: SOMALIA: Aid agencies gain access to Al-Shabab areas

MOGADISHU, 26 July 2011 (IRIN)

 Photo: Mohamed Gaarane/IRIN

The situation in the Al Shabab-controlled regions of Bakool and Lower Shabelle is getting worse, according to aid officials (file photo)

 Amid reports of rising child deaths due to malnourishment, Somalia's opposition Al-Shabab group has granted several aid organizations access to some of the south-central areas under its control, including Lower Shabelle, one of two regions the UN recently declared to be famine-stricken.

Since 24 July, officials of an international NGO, Kuwait Direct Aid, as well as those from the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), have distributed food in Lower Shabelle.
The UN declared a famine in Bakool and Lower Shabelle regions on 20 July, saying that across the country, 3.7 million people – half the population - were in crisis, an estimated 2.8 million of whom are in the south.
Malnutrition rates are at 30 percent across the south, rising to 50 percent in parts of Bakool and Lower Shabelle. The highest death rates exceed six deaths in 10,000 per day, according to UN Children's Fund (UNICEF) data.
In most southern regions, UNICEF says, one in five children is severely malnourished, with one in three severely malnourished in the worst-affected regions, such as Bay.
The number of acutely malnourished children has risen from 476,000 in January (103,000 severely malnourished and 373,000 moderately malnourished) to 780,000 (340,000 severely malnourished and 440,000 moderately malnourished), according to UNICEF, with 82 percent of all acutely malnourished being in the south, representing 640,000 (310,000 SAM and 330,000 GAM).

Feeding centres
Mohamed Bashir Ibrahim, the managing director of Kuwait Direct Aid, told IRIN the NGO had opened two feeding centres in Lower Shabelle, catering for 24,000 children younger than 15. The agency now has feeding centres in three regions in the south, he added.
"With the collaboration of several other organizations, we went to Lower Shabelle in May 2011 to assess the situation in the area; we focused on 15 villages of 4,800 families," Ibrahim said. "We found that 70 percent of the children under five were acutely malnourished. Later, we contacted the area's administration and expressed the need to open the feeding centres.
"We were referred to the regional administration of Al-Shabab, who later allowed us to open two feeding centres in Lower Shabelle. Initially, we expected to feed at least 500 children daily in each of the feeding centres located in Kurtunwarey and Bulo-Mareen but the number increased to about 1,800 children of every age, including pregnant women and breast-feeding mothers. On average, at least 800 people now come to these feeding centres daily."
On 22 July, Ali Mohamed Rage (Ali Dhere), the Al-Shabab spokesman, told a press conference in Mogadishu that the situation in south-central Somalia was not as bad as was being reported. He said some aid agencies had agreed to operate in the areas under the group's control.
"The organizations we have banned from working in the areas we control are not included [among] the aid organizations we [have] allowed to work because they are not doing humanitarian [work]; on the contrary, they are doing political affairs," Rage said.
On 24 July, ICRC officials distributed food to 24,000 people in Bardhere, Gedo region, in south-central Somalia.

 Photo: Contributor/IRIN

Livestock carcasses in Lower Shabelle: The UN has declared the region famine-stricken (file photo)

Assessment
The Civil Society Council said in a statement: "In an assessment we have been carrying out in the past two months, we have found that at least 10 to 15 people, mostly children, die daily in the south-central drought-affected areas. About one-third of the drought-affected people have already reached Mogadishu, another third has crossed the borders into Ethiopia, Kenya and Yemen, while the majority of the remaining third are dying or are remaining in their homes too weak to move to other areas."
The group appealed to aid agencies to prioritize help for the latter group.
According to Ibrahim of Kuwait Direct Aid, the situation in Bakool and Lower Shabelle, both under the control of Al-Shabab, was getting worse.
"We are now planning to open new feeding centers in Sablale, Dacaraha and Qoryolay and the villages near the river to feed about 12,000 vulnerable people in these areas," Ibrahim said. "We feed about 150 malnourished children daily in Dhobley centre which we opened last week.”
In Mogadishu, a local journalist, Mohamed Abdi Hussein, told IRIN that an NGO, Muslim Aid, last week distributed relief to 5,000 families, comprising cooking oil, rice, sugar and flour. Most of the families live in Al-Shabab-controlled parts of the city, mostly in Km50 internally displaced persons camps.

Refugees queue at the UNHCR field office for tents allocation at Ifo camp, Dadaab, northern Kenya

http://www.irinnews.org/report.aspx?reportID=93333

MALNUTRITION: Somalia: Malnutrition rate of Somali kids highest in the world: ICRC

14 July 2011 00:55

GENEVA: Malnutrition rates for children under five in Somalia now stand as the world’s highest as the country struggles with persistent violence and an unprecedented drought, the international Red Cross said yesterday.
“The nutritional state of children under five years of age in central and southern Somalia is a cause for great alarm,” said the International Committee of the Red Cross in a statement.
“Levels of malnutrition have reached a new peak and are currently the highest in the world,” it added. Data from 39 clinics and 18 therapeutic feeding centres show that in some parts of Somalia, the number of children with severe acute malnutrition has almost doubled since March.
http://www.thepeninsulaqatar.com/middle-east/158837-malnutrition-rate-of-somali-kids-highest-in-the-world-icrc.html

POVERTY: .Somalis displaced by drought hit by Mogadishu rains

15 July 2011



Somalis displaced by the drought find flooded camps in Mogadishu

People who have fled the drought in Somalia to camps near the capital Mogadishu have now been hit by days of heavy rain.
Aid workers say five people, including three children, had died of exposure. A doctor told the BBC that people could not find shelter from the cold rain.
The victims have been displaced by a drought that has devastated large parts of the Horn of Africa.
Some 10 million people are said to be affected across the region.
Osman Duflay, a Mogadishu doctor, told the BBC's World Update programme that camp residents were facing "disaster".
Extended drought is causing a severe food crisis in the Horn of Africa, which includes Kenya, Ethiopia, Djibouti and Somalia. Weather conditions over the Pacific means the rains have failed for two seasons and are unlikely to return until September.
Food shortages are affecting up to 12 million people. The UN has not declared a famine but large areas of the region are now classified as in crisis or emergency, with malnutrition affecting up to 35-40% of children under five.
The humanitarian problem is made worse by ongoing conflicts, which means that until July militant groups had only allowed aid organisations limited access to large parts of southern Somalia and eastern Ethiopia.
Since the beginning of 2011, around 15,000 Somalis each month have fled into refugee camps in Kenya and Ethiopia looking for food and water. The refugee camp at Dadaab, in Kenya, has been overwhelmed by 370,000 people.
Farmers unable to meet their basic food costs are abandoning their herds. High cereal and fuel prices had already forced them to sell many animals before the drought and their smaller herds are now unprofitable or dying.
The refugee problem may have been preventable. However, violent conflict in the region has deterred international investment in long-term development programmes, which may have reduced the effects of the drought.
Development aid would focus on reducing deforestation, topsoil erosion and overgrazing and improving water conservation. New roads and infrastructure for markets would help farmers increase their profits.
The result of climate conditions, conflict and lack of investment is that 6.7 million people in Kenya and Ethiopia are currently existing on food rations, and relief agencies estimate 2.6 million in Somalia will need assistance a new emergency operation.
 "Especially the under-fives and the pregnant women, they're suffering from malnutrition and communicable disease like the measles, diarrhoea and pneumonia," he said.
Earlier this week Mark Bowden, the UN humanitarian affairs co-ordinator for Somalia, told the BBC that the country was close to famine.
"The next few months are critical," he said.
Last week Somalia's al-Shabab Islamist militia - which has been fighting the Mogadishu government - said it was lifting its ban on foreign aid agencies provided they did not show a "hidden agenda".
The drought is said to be the worst affecting by the Horn of Africa's in 60 years.
The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) is reporting a dramatic rise in malnutrition rates even in the part of Somalia normally considered to be the breadbasket of the country.
Somalia, wracked by 20 years of conflict, is worst affected.
Some 3,000 people flee each day for neighbouring countries such as Ethiopia and Kenya which are struggling to cope.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-14165509

MALNUTRITION: Somalia: Child malnutrition at dire levels - ICRC

By Stephanie Nebehay : 13 Jul 2011 : Source: reuters // Reuters

Somali refugees and their children wait to enter a camp in the Ethiopian town of Dolo Ado, about 1 km north of the border with Somalia, July 9, 2011. REUTERS/Stringer

GENEVA, July 13 (Reuters) - One in 10 children in parts of drought-hit Somalia is at risk of starving to death, twice as many as recently as March, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) said on Wednesday.
Malnutrition rates were believed to be significantly higher in other conflict-torn parts of central and southern Somalia, where few aid groups have been allowed to bring food relief.
"Levels of malnutrition have reached a new peak and are currently the highest in the world," the ICRC said in a statement.
The independent aid agency, one of very few with access to Somalia's worst-hit areas, said that even in the Bay and Lower Shabelle regions, the traditional breadbaskets, nearly 11 percent of children under five had severe acute malnutrition.
This meant they were at risk of starving to death. Rates were believed to be significantly higher in other areas.
"In some parts of Somalia, the number of children with severe acute malnutrition has almost doubled since March."
The disturbing findings were based on data from 39 clinics and 18 therapeutic feeding centres run by the Somali Red Crescent with its support. The ICRC said it was opening 10 new feeding centres in Bakool, Gedo and the Afgoye corridor.
The United Nations said on Tuesday it was struggling to keep up with an exodus of hungry Somali refugees. Emaciated children were dying of malnutrition along the way or after arriving in neighbouring Kenya and Ethiopia, it said. [ID:nLDE76B1JU]
More than 11 million people in the Horn of Africa now need assistance to survive the crisis sparked by the worst drought in decades, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said.

SECURITY GUARANTEES
Somalia has had no effective central government for two decades, worsening the impact of recurring droughts. Islamist al Shabaab rebels have refused to allow food aid to be delivered in areas under their control, saying it encourages dependency.
The world body is looking into security guarantees to return to southern Somalia following an unexpected announcement by al Shabaab last week that it was lifting its ban. [ID:nN1E765198]
The World Food Programme (WFP), in a statement on Wednesday, said it could return to the south "if conditions allow and if the necessary security clearance from the United Nations is granted".
The U.N. food agency withdrew from areas under al Shabaab control in southern Somalia in early 2010 "because of threats to the lives of our staff and the imposition of unacceptable operating conditions, including the imposition of informal taxes and a demand that no female staff work for us there", WFP said.
The WFP said it had continued to provide food to 1.5 million people in Mogadishu and central and northern Somalia.
In the south, the hardest hit groups are rain-fed farmers and pastoralists unable to gain access to alternative pastureland, Andrea Heath, the ICRC economic-security coordinator for Somalia, said.
"Significant crop failures, very high livestock losses, increased food prices, recurrent fighting and the absence of humanitarian aid are the main reasons that an already desperate situation has become even worse," she said in the statement.
http://www.trust.org/alertnet/news/child-malnutrition-in-somalia-at-dire-levels-icrc/

POVERTY: AID POLICY: Classifications questioned in protracted crises

MEDFORD, USA, 8 June 2011 (IRIN)

 Photo: Marion Doss/Flickr
More creativity needed in responding to crises

Classifying aid as "relief", "early recovery" or "development" does little to help countries that have been troubled for years.
This was the key message from the Second World Humanitarian Studies Conference this month during a discussion on food security response in protracted crises such as Somalia.
The UK's Overseas Development Institute (ODI) reckons there are at least 22 countries in protracted crises, by which it means countries where a large population is vulnerable to disease, death and disruption of livelihoods over a long period, with the state having limited capacity to help those affected.
"Food insecurity is the most common manifestation of protracted crises," according to Prabhu Pingali, deputy director of Agriculture Development at the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, and Luca Alinovi, the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) representative for Somalia. About 20 percent of the world's undernourished people (or more than a third of the global total if China and India are excluded) - 166 million - live in countries in protracted crises.
The problems of engagement in such countries are linked to the way "development" is perceived and how aid is used to respond, said Alinovi.
In the aid world, "development is viewed as a gradual improvement in the quality of life. Disasters or acute emergencies briefly interrupt this trend, but the expectation is that there will be a return to normality, hence the use of terms such as 'disaster', 'recovery' and 'sustainable development'," he said.
Aid responses even in protracted crises tend to be short term. "We cannot work with funding that is reviewed every year as at times there are breaks in funding, which does not help projects which have long-term development objectives," said Alinovi. "If we want to help the country emerge from the crisis we have to make a long-term commitment with no interruption in spending."

"Wrong" emphasis
Principles for Good International Engagement in Fragile States and Situations set out by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) put too much emphasis on building state institutions, said Daniel Maxwell, a food security expert at Tufts University and one of the authors of a joint FAO and World Food Programme (WFP) report on food insecurity in protracted crises.
Most developed countries and major aid donors are among OECD's 34 members. The OECD should better focus on efforts to strengthen livelihoods and local institutions that support livelihoods, he said.
"We have to become more creative in how we seek to respond to a crisis - and not with the traditional humanitarian mindset," said Maxwell.
ODI researcher Sarah Bailey in a forthcoming paper on the Democratic Republic of Congo, another country in a protracted crisis, says: "Aid architecture is divided into humanitarian and development compartments. The choice to use aid mechanisms is a political decision related to how donor governments want to engage with the state, and there is a lack of programming strategies for shifting between shorter-term and longer-term assistance approaches.
"As addressing state fragility has become an important international concern, so too has the focus widened from linking relief and development to integrating aid and security.
"Many policies and interventions now seek to `stabilize' fragile and conflict-affected settings through assistance and security responses. 'Early recovery', meaning laying foundations for recovery at the earliest opportunities, has also emerged as a framework in recent years. "
But rather than coming up with frameworks such as "early recovery" intended to plug a theoretical distinction between relief and development, the aid community should try to understand the opportunities and limitations offered by existing approaches, she says.

Flexibility key
In perhaps the most protracted crisis of all, FAO and other agencies have had to be creative in trying to help communities in Somalia. Humanitarian agencies there engage with whichever local authority holds sway, and many dispatch funds through "hawala" money transfer systems, global networks of trusted brokers, with some success, says Alinovi.
Francois Daniel Grunewald, chair of Groupe URD, a research centre, said another reason why FAO had made inroads is "because it responds to a crisis in agro-ecological zones, so it can set up those relationships in a decentralized way - which is the way to respond for aid agencies and donors even in countries like Afghanistan - and not have to spend vital time engaging with an ineffective central government". Grunewald worked in Somalia for some years when he ran the agriculture rehabilitation unit of the International Committee of the Red Cross.
ODI's Bailey suggested that donors, rather than responding to the needs of a crisis from one year to the next, should consider aid money pledged over a period of time in totality and then decide how best to spend it.
Donors and the aid community perhaps needed to better understand the impact of their assistance in terms of helping communities back on their feet. Instead of asking the question, "How can humanitarian action support recovery?" Bailey suggested they ask: "What is the most appropriate assistance given the needs, context and capacities? How can it have the greatest impact?"
http://www.irinnews.org/report.aspx?reportid=92928

MALARIA: Nigeria research provides insights on bednet use—and misuse

Marcy Erskine, International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies; Toju Maleghemi, WHO Cross River State; Iyam Ugot, Special Advisor to the Governor of Cross River State, Community Health
Nigeria’s Cross River State Roll Back Malaria team is tasked with “finding” 500,000 previously distributed bednets to determine how many are still being used and why.
In Nigeria, the Cross River State Government has been a leader in public health, providing free primary health care to pregnant women and children under five* and working to improve health indicators and protect its residents from malaria-related illness and death. In 2008, the State Government, with support from the Canadian Red Cross and USAID, distributed over half a million nets—enough for each child under five attending a vaccination site during an integrated measles campaign.
In 2010, Nigeria’s Cross River State Roll Back Malaria (RBM) team was tasked with “finding” these previously distributed long-lasting insecticide-treated nets (LLINs) to determine how many were still “good” and how many new nets were needed in the next distribution cycle. A “good” net was defined by age: a net distributed in 2008 or later was considered good, while older nets were considered non-viable. The physical condition of the LLIN was not taken into account given the subjective nature of assessing hole size and viability of the net. Given that the estimated lifespan of the distributed nets is three years, it was expected that the majority of the nets distributed in 2008 would still be in use. However, the results of the household census undertaken by Nigeria Red Cross volunteers throughout the State to assess household LLIN needs “found” only 52 percent of the LLINs distributed during the campaign. Similar results have been seen in Senegal, where the National Malaria Control Program (NMCP) is leading a rolling distribution of a similar nature with support from NetWorks.
In Cross River State, the results of the household registration led the State project team to question why such a low number of nets was found and, subsequently, the Nigeria evidence-based health information system (NEHSI) staff were contacted. NEHSI, supported by the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) and the World Health Organization (WHO), conducted a qualitative study to find out what had happened to the previously distributed nets.
The results of the study were of immediate relevance to the net distribution and hanging program currently being rolled out. It was assumed that some people would not be honest about receiving or owning nets from the previous distribution, including ones not yet hung and used, and the survey found that this was actually the case in a number of surveyed households. Another interesting discovery was that more than two-thirds of people surveyed would only sleep under the bednets for about 6–12 months, at which point the nets were considered to be expired or no longer “good” and were either burned or used for another purpose, such as covering a kiosk or screening a window. About half of the survey respondents also believed that once a net had been washed more than twice, it was no longer effective, and nearly one-third of respondents believed that washing the net in cold water would destroy the insecticide and reduce its effectiveness.
This study was relatively inexpensive and easy to implement, and it provided new critical information that is already being used to inform Cross River State’s next phase of mosquito net distributions. It will also be useful to other countries trying to account for nets that are still “good” in households. The study raised concerns about not only the validity of planning net replenishment campaigns based on the age of the net alone, but also the potential difficulties with quantifying net needs when moving from low or moderate to high LLIN coverage based on assumptions of “existing” nets.
In Cross River State, targeted messaging is being developed to encourage residents to use their mosquito nets for the full three years (or longer) and to repair them when they are torn or damaged. A net awareness campaign is being considered to improve knowledge and practice regarding LLIN use, maintenance, and repair. An end process monitoring exercise is currently taking place to ensure that universal coverage has actually been achieved where distribution has taken place. The campaign used a house-to-house distribution and hanging method, with volunteers equipped with hammers, nails, and string in addition to LLINs. The effectiveness of this approach for ensuring LLIN utilization will be assessed later in the year.
In Nigeria as a whole, the progress to date is staggering. The country bears approximately 25 percent of the malaria burden in Africa among its population of 153 million. Under the leadership of the Government and the Federal Ministry of Health, and with support from partners, the country has distributed close to 30 million LLINs and plans to distribute another 28 million this year. Nigeria’s success is reflective of strong leadership, effective partnership, and an excellent coordinating mechanism. In addition to the strong role of the NMCP, State ownership is crucial. Cross River State’s Government has played a key role in the coordination of the current campaign to move from targeted to universal coverage. This qualitative study to “find” previously distributed nets was one of the first of its kind, and provides critical information for Nigeria and other countries seeking to undertake similar activities. The study also demonstrates the importance of regular quantitative and qualitative data collection and analysis to modify project planning.

* This is the overall health policy in Nigeria, but is not yet implemented by all states.
http://www.macepalearningcommunity.org/newsletter_nigeriabednet.htm

POVERTY: COTE D'IVOIRE: Crisis could hit drinking water supply

20 April 2011 (IRIN)
 Photo: Nancy Palus/IRIN
Children in front of the western regional office of water company SODECI

Hundreds of thousands of urban residents in Côte d’Ivoire could be hit by drinking water shortages in the coming weeks, as the post-electoral violence interrupted the supply of chemicals used at treatment plants throughout the country.
The risk of shortages is particularly worrying given the cholera outbreak in neighbouring Ghana, with more than 6,000 cases to date, said François Bellet, water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) specialist in the UN Children’s Fund’s (UNICEF’s) West and Central Africa regional office.
Between January and March Côte d’Ivoire’s main city Abidjan saw at least 515 cases of cholera, with 12 deaths, according to Kadjo Yao of UNICEF’s WASH team in Abidjan. It is unclear whether cholera is still infecting people, as surveillance systems are down, the agency says.
“The situation [of drinking water supply] is extremely uncertain - we’re on a razor’s edge,” said Bellet, who is currently in Côte d’Ivoire.
UNICEF and the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) are working with the water company SODECI - which provides water in urban centres - on immediate and mid-term solutions to avoid shortages. ICRC helped SODECI deliver treatment products to parts of Abidjan during the severe violence which has paralysed the city in recent weeks, and is helping move needed chemicals to plants around the country.

Treatment chemicals running out
The main western town of Man is one of the urban centres facing shortages. The current stock of treatment chemicals will last till the end of April, according to SODECI’s western regional office.
Man has about 14,000 households connected to the water supply network, but for each household one must reckon on at least 15 users, according to Tondossama Broulaye, SODECI regional director for the west. Beyond that, tap water is resold, UNICEF water experts noted.
“Our supplier in Abidjan closed when the crisis hit and the banks closed in January,” SODECI’s Tondomassa told IRIN. Normally treatment chemicals are shipped to Côte d’Ivoire from Europe and distributed throughout the country via the Abidjan-based supplier.
Tondossama said SODECI’s logistics base in Abidjan’s Adjamé District was ransacked during the post-electoral violence. “There is not a single computer left,” he said.
SODECI’s Tondossama said if chemical supplies are not replenished in time the company would have to start rationing water, so consumers would have piped water for about six or seven hours a day instead of the normal 22.
UNICEF is looking at how to expedite the needed products - primarily chlorine and sulphates - through the newly opened port in San Pedro, but transport and security problems remain significant challenges.
Recently a truck driver delivering a cable for a water plant in the western town of Duékoué was highjacked en route.
Chlorine is highly flammable and so the large quantities needed cannot be transported by aircraft.
As in immediate measure UNICEF has begun regular treatment of household wells and education campaigns to show people how to treat water at home with locally available means, including bleach and solar disinfection. UNICEF treated wells in Bouaké at the end of March for some 250,000 people, Bellet said.
http://www.irinnews.org/report.aspx?reportID=92533

POVERTY: Sphere Handbook 2011 edition

 (Photo: David Ohana/AVMU)
UN Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs Valerie Amos receives a copy of the Sphere Handbook 2011 edition from Sphere Board member Gillian Dunn.

 “The Sphere Standards have become the gold standard for humanitarian assistance,” said the UN Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs Valerie Amos at the launch of the Sphere Handbook 2011 edition in New York City. The English version of the Handbook was released in about a dozen countries on 14 April.
From the United States to India to South Africa to Pakistan, and from Australia to Kenya to Switzerland the Sphere Handbook: Humanitarian Charter and Minimum Standards in Humanitarian Response was launched in nearly 30 venues worldwide.
“We need to better demonstrate our accountability to affected populations and donors alike,” said Amos. “If we champion the rights of those in need, then our work needs to be able to withstand close scrutiny. [The Sphere] standards provide a minimum benchmark we should all strive to uphold”, she added.
“With this updated edition, Sphere remains at the forefront of thinking on accountability,” said Matthias Schmale, Under Secretary General of the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies at the Handbook launch in Geneva.
Schmale stressed the value of the Sphere minimum standards as “key input for dialogue with new actors in humanitarian response who are not necessarily driven by the humanitarian imperative, such as the military and the private sector”. “We are committed to applying them as best as we can, and urge all other humanitarian actors to do likewise for the benefit of vulnerable people in need of support,” he added.
Ton van Zutphen, Chair of the Sphere Project Board and Emergency Response Director at World Vision International, told participants at the Geneva launch about his recent experience in Haiti, where in the aftermath of the earthquake tens of thousands of people were engaged to do humanitarian work.
“I have just come back from Haiti, where I have been involved with a number of training sessions on Sphere standards,” said van Zutphen. “It was a real pleasure to see how eager these men and women were to be informed” about how to undertake humanitarian response “in a more accountable and transparent way, and also to achieve better quality.”
Van Zutphen highlighted the fact that the revision of the Sphere Handbook was a wide collaborative and consultative process. “I remain confident that with this new edition, we are providing an important service to a growing group of practitioners who wish to improve the quality of their work in emergency responses,” he affirmed.
“The revision of the Handbook is timely as the humanitarian landscape is changing fast,” said in Jorge Nuño Mayer, Secretary General of Caritas Europa. Speaking in Brussels, Nuño Mayer pointed out that “humanitarian aid and its underlying principles of independence, non-discrimination and impartiality – as stipulated in the Sphere Humanitarian Charter – are more and more threatened and undermined by comprehensive political and security approaches to crisis and disasters.”
“Sphere is normative for Caritas and the humanitarian community and marks a dramatic improvement in the standard of humanitarian responses over the last 10-15 years,” Nuño Mayer said. “From now on, the challenge will be to make active use of the learning which has been so widely shared in the sector and incorporated into this Handbook and to stay firm on the humanitarian principles, which guide and underpin our approach,” he added.

Additional language versions to follow
The launch of the Arabic, French, Spanish, Russian and German versions of the Handbook is scheduled for 23 June 2011 or the following week. A tentative list of launch events can be consulted here. Please contact the Sphere secretariat if your organization is interested in hosting a launch event in your country.
Agreements to have the Sphere Handbook translated into other languages are being worked out. It is foreseen that it will be available in Portuguese, Hindi and Bahasa among other languages.

What's new in the 2011 edition?
The Sphere Handbook establishes shared principles and a set of universally acknowledged minimum standards in four life-saving areas of humanitarian response: water and sanitation, food, shelter and healthcare.
The cornerstone of the Handbook is the Humanitarian Charter, which describes core principles that govern humanitarian action and asserts the right of populations to life with dignity, protection and assistance. The minimum standards are a compilation of best practice in this sector and a practical expression of these core principles.
In the 2011 edition, the Humanitarian Charter has been completely re-written, while chapters on minimum standards have been significantly restructured.
This edition incorporates a new chapter on the protection and safety of affected populations. It considers emerging issues like climate change, disaster risk reduction, disasters in urban settings, and education as well as early recovery of services, livelihoods and governance capacity of affected communities. Understanding and supporting local responses to disaster is a priority reflected in the whole Handbook, as is reinforcing the capacity of local actors.
The extensive revision that led to the 2011 edition involved more than 650 experts from over 300 organizations from the humanitarian sector, including several United Nations agencies.
The Sphere Handbook was created by a group of humanitarian non-governmental organizations and the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement. Since its first trial edition in 1998, it has been translated into more than 20 languages, becoming the most widely known and internationally recognized set of standards for humanitarian response.
http://www.sphereproject.org/content/view/698/32/lang,english/

TUBERCULOSIS: Peru: Fighting tuberculosis in Lurigancho Prison

22-03-2011

Tuberculosis kills more than 50% of its victims if left untreated. The disease thrives in crowded, stuffy, dark environments such as prisons. TB used to be almost 50 times as common in Lima's Lurigancho Prison as it was elsewhere in Peru. The ICRC is helping the management of Lurigancho Prison and other prisons across Latin America to eradicate the disease.
 
ICRC film

http://www.icrc.org/eng/resources/documents/film/01071-w3-peru-tb-prison-film-2010.htm

POVERTY: Is urban the new rural?

  Most population growth in the next decades will be in towns and cities of low- and middle-income countries. (p-BRA0032)





For the first time in the history of mankind, more people live in an urban environment than a rural one and in just 20 years, over 60 per cent of the world’s population will live in cities and towns.
A fortunate minority will live in places like Turin, Tokyo or Toronto, where if your home catches fire or floods, you can call for emergency help and expect to collect on the insurance. Everyone in the house or apartment probably has their own space and clean water is on tap. You are connected to the sewage system and your garbage is collected.
A slum household is one where all of these things are absent. There is neither water nor sanitation. The living space is cramped and comprises poor quality building materials. And the inhabitants have no security of tenure.
In a slum, your house will burn down in front of you because the municipal government does not provide emergency services to ‘illegal’ settlements. And even if they did, there would probably be no access road. Your children are more likely to pick up a disease because there is no drainage system for the floodwater and nobody will have cleared the streets of garbage.
The childhood experiences of the Brazilian president, Lula da Silva, as quoted in this year’s World Disasters Report, are pretty typical for the 1 billion people who live in urban slums today:
“When our house flooded, I sometimes woke up at midnight to find my feet in water, cockroaches and rats fighting over space, and various objects floating around the living room … Every time it rained, we used to nail another piece of wood across the doorframe and dump another truckload of earth to reinforce the barricade. But the water level rose further. And the authorities never did anything.”
The real crisis in disaster risk reduction revolves around the so-called ‘vulnerability gap’ in urban communities where the authorities often lack the finance, the knowledge and the will to ensure a well-functioning urban environment and the communities have few resources and lack political influence.
Many of the 50,000 people who can die in an unexceptional year from earthquakes, or the majority of the 100 million people who might annually expect to have their lives turned upside down by floods, live in squalor on dangerous sites with no hazard-reducing infrastructure and no services.
Given the already large deficit in infrastructure and services that exists in Latin America, Africa and Asia, the urban risk divide is only set to grow wider as climate change brings on ever more severe disaster impacts in some of the world’s most vulnerable locations. Millions of people will be regularly marooned on rooftops in cities such as Dhaka competing for space with snakes. In Alexandria, Egypt, a 50 cm rise in sea levels will make 2 million people homeless.
Most population growth in the next decades will be in towns and cities of low- and middle-income countries. This urban expansion is conducive to more disasters because of the failure of governments, and many large international agencies and NGOs to adapt to the reality of urbanization.
The truth is that too many aid agencies lack urban policies and are slow to make the necessary shift from rural development, which is still very essential, to finding ways to better support vulnerable urban communities.
One of the great challenges of the 21st century for the humanitarian aid community is to learn how to work with the untitled, the undocumented, the unlisted and the unregistered that live on the edges of our cities in the flood plains and seismic zones of cities like Managua and Istanbul.
Forcible eviction is a constant threat to the urban poor who live from generation to generation without security of tenure. When disaster strikes and they lose everything, they are all too often at the back of the queue.
Fortunately, there are some examples of how good urban governance can support communities in slum upgrading projects which lead to disaster risk reduction. In Thailand, for instance, the Community Organizations Development Institute has channelled government funds for upgrading slums to over 2 million households over the last 18 years, an impressive achievement by any standards.
Much of the future direction of aid in urban settings could depend on the success or failure of the enormous humanitarian and political commitment to Haiti in the wake of last January’s catastrophic quake. A new universal way of working with the urban poor must emerge from the rubble of Port-au-Prince, which will ensure that building back better in the wake of disaster means treating owners, tenants and informal dwellers equally by emphasizing security of tenure.
If widely adopted, such an approach would be a huge contribution to risk management and a good first step towards motivating communities on the frontlines of disaster zones around the world to concentrate their energies on disaster risk reduction and climate change adaptation.
http://www.ifrc.org/docs/news/opinion10/10092101/index.asp

POVERTY: AFGHANISTAN: Humanitarian situation likely to worsen in 2011 - aid agencies

  Photo: Akmal Dawi/ IRIN : Wounded in conflict at an ICRC hospital in Kabul





KABUL, 15 December 2010 (IRIN) - The war in Afghanistan shows no sign of abating and conflict-related misery such as internal displacement, lack of access to essential health services and civilian casualties, is set to rise in 2011, aid agencies and analysts warn.
“We are growing increasingly concerned about the conflict, which is into its ninth year. It’s spreading and intensifying and we’re [likely] to see another year of conflict with dramatic consequences for civilians,” Reto Stocker, president of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) office in Afghanistan, said on 15 December.
Civilian deaths and injuries resulting from the conflict have continued to rise over the past two years and civilian communities have been forced to take sides in the war, the organization said.
“Mirwais Regional Hospital in Kandahar, serving around four million people, has admitted over 2,650 weapon-related patients so far in 2010, compared with just over 2,110 in 2009,” the ICRC said.
In the first six months of 2010, the UN Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) reported 3,268 civilian casualties (1,271 deaths and 1,997 injuries) - up 31 percent on the same period a year ago.
With more than 1,750 staff in 15 local offices, Afghanistan is the ICRC’s largest operation worldwide, with a budget of US$89 million to assist conflict-affected people in 2011.

More than money needed
In a humanitarian appeal launched on 5 December, 51 international and local aid agencies requested $678 million to assist the most vulnerable people in Afghanistan in 2011 through 134 projects.
The appeal expects the number of internally displaced persons (IDPs) to increase from 320,000 in 2010 to 440,000 in 2011.
“The toll of ongoing conflict and endemic natural disasters on Afghanistan’s people remains immense, requiring continued life-saving assistance,” Catherine Bragg, the UN Deputy Emergency Relief Coordinator and Assistant Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs, told reporters at the launch of the appeal.
However, money alone is not enough for aid agencies to save lives in Afghanistan. Access to people in insecure areas and immunity from attacks and intimidation are other key requirements.
More than half the country, including some of the worst conflict-affected areas, is inaccessible to UN agencies and other international aid organizations.
While deliberate armed attacks on humanitarian workers not perceived as aligned to military and political actors have shrunk steadily over the past year, according to the Afghanistan NGO Safety Office, the ICRC is increasingly concerned about the proliferation of armed actors, which often inhibit humanitarian work and pose serious risks to civilians.
“I think the critical test will be in spring 2011,” Ahmed Rashid, a Pakistani journalist and author of The Taliban, told IRIN.
“If we are going to see a resurgence in the Taliban violence in 2011 as we saw in 2010, then I think the whole situation will become very, very serious.”
Matt Waldman, an independent Afghanistan analyst, said more civilian Afghans would be caught up in the intensified conflict next year.
“All the evidence suggests that NATO's military escalation is more than matched by the Taliban,” he said, adding that conditions could only improve if there is political reform and a multi-layered peace process with the Taliban, which should be backed by the US.
“Neither can happen too soon,” Waldman said.
http://www.irinnews.org/report.aspx?ReportID=91381

MALNUTRITION: CLIMATE CHANGE: User-friendlier weather data

  Photo: IRIN
Mozambican women collecting water from a rudimentary well in Maputo province

CANCUN, 3 December 2010 (IRIN) - If central Mozambique is expected to get very little rain in the coming months, how should that information be shared with a small-scale farmer planting maize, the staple crop, in a remote village?
“Just simply providing the weather data that there will be 60 or 70 percent chance of less rainfall means nothing … to Ana, a small-scale farmer in Mozambique,” said Jan Egeland, co-chair - with Mahmoud Abu-Zeid, former Egyptian Minister of Water Resources and Irrigation - of the UN High-level Taskforce charged with developing guidelines for disseminating climate information.
“We ought to be able to tell her, ‘Don’t plant maize this season, plant cassava; or, plant your maize early,” Egeland told IRIN. Such information will become increasingly critical as natural events like rainfall, or the lack of it, grow more extreme, and the weather becomes more erratic as climate change takes hold in the coming years.
The guidelines for communicating climate data in a meaningful way to vulnerable people will be part of what the tool for climate action - called the Global Framework for Climate Services (GFCS) - will offer, as well as trying to address gaps in climate information gathering.
“We need the Mozambican government - with the help of UN partners such as FAO [Food and Agriculture Organisation], or NGOs such as the Red Cross - and national weather services to be able to interpret weather information [so that it] will help Ana to make a decision on how to adapt,” Egeland said.
Michel Jarraud, Secretary-General of the World Meteorological Organization (WMO), told reporters at the 16th Conference of Parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) in Cancun, Mexico, that so far 2010 was the one of the top three warmest years since instrumental climate records began in 1850. He said it was a sign that global temperatures were rising at a faster rate, as the other two warmest years -1998 and 2005 - were both recent.
Access to good quality weather data and forecasting capacity is essential if poor nations are to respond effectively to the threats that climate change presents to food security, human and animal health, and economic progress, but many are ill-equipped to gather or provide such information.
The WMO notes that there are only 744 weather stations in Africa, and only a quarter of them are of international standard – ideally, Africa should have at least 10,000 stations.
There could be a solution. Bernhard Pacher, an Austrian consultant to the World Food Programme (WFP), who also manufactures easy-to-use automated weather stations in his home country, said local municipalities made climate information easy for everyone to use.
"For example, if temperatures are going to soar and there is risk of infections, the municipality simply posts a message telling farmers to spray pesticide now, and they pin a red flag on the notice board outside so it catches the attention of farmers passing by, and they follow the instructions,” he said.
Mobile phones could be an effective tool for communicating messages to poor small-scale farmers in developing countries. "You would find at least one person with a mobile phone in a village; make that person the focal point and convey messages on actions to be taken through that person."
Pacher said Africa would need at least 30,000 weather stations to provide farmers with accurate data on micro-climates. Climatic conditions varied according to a range of factors, including the topography, amount of water, tree cover and altitude in an area.
"In many instances in Africa, the installation of weather stations does not take those factors into account, so the quality of data generated is not very credible. Often a weather station is installed in an area after taking into account whether it will be secure or not, rather than the other way round.'”
Improving the weather data in developing countries was commendable, said Pablo Suarez, associate director of the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Climate Centre, but the biggest challenge would still be to make it meaningful to the most vulnerable people. “The biggest benefactors of these efforts would be sectors such as commercial farmers - which is great - but we have to work on this a bit more.”
The need for a GFCS to address these gaps was raised at the third World Climate Conference in Geneva, Switzerland, in 2009.
While sharing information about the GFCS team’s work on the sidelines of the UN climate change talks in Cancun, Egeland said it would take an investment of only US$50 million to $100 million a year from 2010 to 2021 to improve the weather services in developing countries. “Our report will be released in January 2011 and submitted to the World Meteorological Congress in May 2011.”
http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?Reportid=91273

MALARIA: Sierra Leone - nets without the Global Fund

 Bill Brieger

28 Nov 2010
Widespread efforts to scale up insecticide treated net ownership to meet 2010 Universal Coverage targets are underway in most endemic countries of Africa. The majority have been using their Global Fund grants to make this leap, supplemented by contributions of other partners.
What happens when a country does not have Global Fund resources at this time? Current efforts in Sierra Leone to reach its nearly 6 million citizens provide a lesson on how to cope.
The AFP has reported on a “20-million-dollar campaign to distribute mosquito nets has been funded by the World Bank, the British Department for International Development (DFID), the Federation of the International Red Cross, the United Methodist Church and other health partners.” These partners are “attempting to get insecticide-treated mosquito nets into each household in the country and to ensure their proper use,” using a house-to-house campaign, which is challenged by poor road conditions.
VOA quotes Lianne Kuppens of Unicef in Sierra Leone who said, “”We have roughly 6 million people and we have 3.2 million bed nets already in the country as we speak. So it’s the first time ever that we are going for universal coverage of bed nets.”
Kuppens also noted that ITN use by children below 5 years of age was below 25%, a problem exacerbated by net mis-use - “nets often find their way into the marketplace or are used as fishing nets or shower scrubs. Vegetable growers use mosquito nets to protect cabbages and carrots from harmful bugs.”
VOA also reports that the campaign has a strong “hang up” component that is using “Street theatre, community radio and religious leaders (to) help convince people that hanging their nets over their beds is better in the long run than selling them or catching fish with them.”
But back to the Global Fund …
Sierra Leone’s experience with the Global Fund (GF) may certainly be influenced by its status as a post-conflict country. The Principal Recipient of the current Round 7 Grant, the Ministry of Health, has, according to GF progress reports, experienced some management challenges.
The Round 7 grant has been running for 2 years and just recently received a “conditional Go” for Phase 2 funding. ITNs were a small piece of this grant that aimed more at improving malaria treatment. By 30th April 2010 the grant had distributed only 277,093 of a targeted 312,498 nets for young children and pregnant women.
While the GF does not attempt to strengthen health systems directly, it certainly makes it possible for countries to use grants for their own health system strengthening efforts. More countries should take advantage of this potential. In the meantime, partners should continue to pull together as is the case in Sierra Leone to ensure Universal Coverage.
http://www.malariafreefuture.org/blog/?p=1089

MALARIA: Sierra Leone to distribute three million mosquito nets

FREETOWN — Sierra Leone health workers Friday began a massive campaign to distribute three million mosquito nets in an effort to cut malaria by up to 40 percent in the country of six million people.
"It is the most radical move ever embarked on against the disease in Sierra Leone," Dr Foday Samai, a member of the campaign team, told AFP.
UNICEF Immunization Specialist Nuhu Maksha explained that "every household in the country will receive one to three long-lasting insecticide treated nets (LLIN) depending on the size of the family."
Each net costs some six dollars and lasts up to five years.
A 2009 epidemiological report published by the health ministry ranked malaria as the number one cause of outpatient visits to hospitals throughout the country.
It also indicated there was a high resistance among Sierra Leoneans to the malaria drug chloroquine.
According to health ministry statistics, the average Sierra Leonean suffers three to four bouts of malaria per year.
The 20-million-dollar campaign to distribute mosquito nets has been funded by the World Bank, the British Department for International Development (DFID), the Federation of the International Red Cross, the United Methodist Church and other health partners.
In Bo, the country's second largest city, distribution began early Friday with housewives opening their doors to the team.
"This is like giving us a Christmas present for our health," said 45-year-old Sarah Daramy who has three children.
"We cannot afford to buy the net as my husband is only a farmer. Now we can sleep in peace."
In Makeni, in the north, 200 miles (320 kilometres) from the capital Freetown, the distribution took on a carnival-like atmosphere as local bands and musicians moved around with the team.
http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5i-Oiu45HXWNU_qCYbNb1JvkKM8fQ

MALNUTRITION: MALI: Reducing vulnerability to future drought

Photo: Emilio Labrador/Flickr

Donors and governments must help herders in Mali to prepare for future droughts, say aid agenciesBAMAKO, 11 October 2010 (IRIN) - Drought is recurrent in northern Mali and many pastoralists will inevitably find themselves in crisis mode in the future, say aid agencies. Livestock and livelihoods specialists say donors, government ministries and aid agencies should tackle the following priorities to shore up pastoralists’ ability to face future shocks:
Pressure donors to fund early recovery projects to help pastoralists reclaim their livelihoods, says Oxfam’s West Africa disaster head, Philippe Conraud.
Build more wells for livestock along grazing routes to ease pastoralists’ and their animals’ passage across the borders of Niger, Chad, Nigeria, Togo and Benin, says Marc Chapon, head of NGO Agronomes et Vétérinaires Sans Frontières (AVSF) in Mali.
Work with communities to set up animal feed stores along grazing routes to keep healthy animals alive in the lean season; and let communities manage them, says Alice Martin-Dahirou, head of the World Food Programme in Mali. The Mali Livestock Ministry is considering setting up such stores. Vitamin A and animal fodder could be distributed through such a system, as drought warnings emerge.
Encourage pastoralists to keep smaller herds and the government and aid agencies to carry out preventative vaccination campaigns to keep animals healthy, says AVSF.
Organize more cattle markets in the north to enable pastoralists to sell animals in bulk, collectively set prices to accrue higher profits, and be more selective with their buyers. AVSF has helped set up such markets for the mainly Arab traders and pastoralist sellers in the Timbuktu region.
Regularly regenerate pasture land, says Christian Wabnitz, deputy head of the International Red Cross and Red Crescent (ICRC). ICRC will start a cash-for-regeneration project in 2011.
Encourage pastoralists to diversify their incomes to include farming or wage-labour, so between them, family members can better buffer blows, says the ICRC.
The state should better manage access to grazing lands to avoid conflicts between pastoralists, say aid agencies. Some 90 percent of court cases in Mopti, north-central Mali, are land-rights driven.
Speed up progress on an ECOWAS (Economic Community of West African States) emergency food stocks disaster prevention project. This would involve setting up food depots and emergency intervention teams across the region to speed up emergency response, says Col Mamadou Traoré, head of the Civil Protection Unit in Mali.
http://www.irinnews.org/report.aspx?ReportID=90730

MALNUTRITION: MALI: Cured meat as a cure

BAMAKO, 23 September 2010 (IRIN) - Destocking weak animals has long been considered part of the emergency and recovery response to help pastoralists survive, and protect their livelihoods in droughts, but experts say destocking must come sooner - before emergencies develop.
In northern Mali, 40 percent of herders' animals are believed to have died from starvation or disease due to lack of pasture this year - a stark statistic in a region where 80 percent of people rely on stockbreeding and agriculture to survive.
"The crisis has been known for a long time - since November 2009. If we had all responded a lot earlier [to livestock needs] we could have reduced pastoralists' stress movements, and remaining animals would have stayed alive," said Marc Chapon, head of NGO Agronomes et Vétérinaries Sans Frontières (AVSF), in Mali.
Aid agencies Oxfam and the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) have been leading destocking programmes in northern Mali to help inject cash into pastoralists' pockets; improve the prospects for the remaining healthy flock; reduce pressure on the fragile environment; and in ICRC's case, improve food security by redistributing slaughtered animals as cured meat.
ICRC staff buy sheep, goats and cattle at pre-crisis prices - US$ 40 for a sheep or goat, $150 for a cow - from herders with 50 animals or less, so they can buy grain to fill the hunger gap, said Christian Wabnitz, ICRC's deputy head in Mali and Niger. Thus far, ICRC has bought 36,000 animals in Agadez (northern Niger) and in Gao and Timbuktu (both in northern Mali); and given veterinary help and fodder to 60,000 stronger animals that remain.
"The main aspect is a cash injection, but the meat is also available which can boost nutrition," Wabnitz said. "And allowing weakened or sick animals to die can protect the health of the remaining herd."

The agency works with district vets to kill the weakened animals, and with women's cooperatives to cure the meat, before distributing it to beneficiaries, prisons, hospitals and schools.
Community members inform how the animals are killed, to ensure it is done in line with traditional practice, said Wabnitz. Women cure the meat by cutting it into strips which are then marinated in salt and dried in a protective cage.
"There are some other more advanced [curing] techniques, but we want to fine-tune our approach to suit cultural habits," he pointed out.

Resistance
But some herders are reluctant to give up their animals, despite their deteriorating health, says World Food Programme head in Mali Alice Martin-Dahirou. "Some nomads would rather keep their animals to the end, and see them die, rather than selling them en masse," she said.
Weakened goats and sheep were selling for just $10 at the height of the crisis; while in neighbouring Niger, cattle worth $300 were reportedly sold for as low as $6.
Herd size is an important cultural status symbol. "A large herd is like a large bank account - and it is a way to accumulate further wealth, as well as ensuring social functions can be acted upon, so some nomads will resist culling," Wabnitz told IRIN.

Resistance to destocking - with or without slaughter - is common in African pastoralist zones, said Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) animal production officer Nacif Rihani. "There is often confusion between the early and accelerated livestock off-take [culling], which is the main objective sought, and the distress sale of livestock, which herders fear the most," he said.

["Distress sales] can cause psychological and cultural shock, in addition to the loss of livestock assets, which are crucial for their livelihood, food security and social status," he said.

Reluctance can also come from bad past experiences in which agencies have taken a top-down, non-consultative approach, to destocking, said Rihani. Local and indigenous organizations must take the lead in selecting beneficiaries and stocks; organizing stock sales; and agreeing on pricing and meat preparation and preservation methods if destocked animals are slaughtered, he pointed out.

This approach is in line with the Livestock Emergency Guidelines and Standards, which were issued in 2009 to improve the quality of livestock relief interventions. [http://www.livestock-emergency.net/about-legs/index.html]
As the Sahel crisis deepened, reluctance among herders dissipated in northern Mali, said Wabnitz, which he says is "an indication of how bad the situation was". [[http://www.irinnews.org/IndepthMain.aspx?IndepthId=81&ReportId=89910]


Timing
Despite ample early warning, in northern Mali, destocking came late, said AVSF's Chapon: it should always be addressed in the first emergency phase of a crisis.
But FAO's Rihani says in slow-onset droughts destocking can get started even sooner. "Specific indicators can trigger the appropriate response, and [enable] adequate resources - such as a flexible local fund - to be put in place to start destocking," he said.
If done this early, animals will retain their market value.
Indeed, experts recommend continual destocking to regulate herd numbers and not over-pressure the fragile ecosystem. "In many pastoral and agro-pastoral zones in Africa, herd sizes expand to unsustainable numbers [encouraged by]. subsidies or direct aid through animal feed," explained Rihani.

Herders do regulate their herds to some extent, but complex social and ethnic issues are at play which can encourage herd-growth. An indirect approach is needed, says Rihani, involving a stress on improving milk production per animal; improving access to livestock markets; and helping herders attain fair prices for their animals, so they can get more out of a smaller herd.



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