AdvanceAid

admin December 4th, 2011

The population in war-torn Somalia received another blow last week as Al Shabaab banned 16 aid agencies from territory that it controls, including UNICEF, the World Health Organisation, UNHCR, Norwegian Church Aid and others from Denmark, Sweden, Italy, Germany, and France.

These aid agencies were banned, according to Al Shabaab, because they were “fostering secularism”, “amplifying the refugee crisis”, “financing, aiding, and abetting subversive groups seeking to destroy the basic tenets of Islamic penal system” and “undermining the livelihoods and cultural values of the population.”

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Tags: Al Shabaab, Baroness Amos, Dadaab, Denmark, Drought, Famine, France, Germany, Italy, Kenya, natural disasters, Norway, OCHA, Somalia, Sweden, UNHCR, UNICEF, WHO

• East Africa , News
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admin January 17th, 2011

We write a lot on this blog about disasters that are perceived not to have happened because they are not covered on CNN – or in the British papers.  Amongst the pernicious effects of this ‘not on CNN’ syndrome are not just the under-resourcing of smaller (and not so small if they are in Africa) emergencies, but the over-funding of the ones that do generate all of the media coverage.

But last week Valerie (Baroness) Amos, who took over as head of OCHA in July last year did something about this by allocating around $84m, as part of the first round of allocations for 2011 from the Central Emergency Response Fund (CERF), to assist people affected by hunger, malnutrition, disease, displacement and conflict in 15 ‘neglected’ emergencies around the world.

Nearly three quarters of the $84m is going to ‘neglected’ emergencies (as defined by OCHA) in Africa.  And, to some extent, the locations of these emergencies will not surprise – Somalia receives $15m, the largest single allocation, with $11m going to Ethiopia.  Agencies working in Chad will receive $8m, while humanitarian partners in Kenya will receive $6 million to start up programmes for 2011.
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Tags: Baroness Amos, Burundi, Central African Republic, CERF, Chad, CNN, Colombia, DFID, Djibouti, Ethiopia, Iran, Kenya, Madagascar, Myanmar, North Korea, OCHA, Palestine, Somalia, Sri Lanka, UN, Zimbabwe

• East Africa , Great Lakes , Latin America , Middle East , South Asia , South East Asia , West Africa
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admin July 21st, 2010

One Brit, Baroness Amos, is about to take over from another, Sir John Holmes as the head of OCHA.   Her full title will be Under Secretary-General in charge of the Office of the Co-ordination of Humanitarian Affairs.  She moves to the UN from what sounds a much more comfortable role as British high commissioner to Australia.  She spent four years in Tony Blair’s cabinet between 2003 and 2007, first as leader of the House of Lords and then as international development secretary in charge of DFID.

IRIN News, which is an OCHA project, has polled a number of  NGOs and NGO networks to draw up a list of tasks for her once she takes over.  Here’s a digested version of the list recommended:

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Tags: Baroness Amos, OCHA, Sir John Holmes, UN

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