admin January 22nd, 2012
Welcome to 2012. However, this year is unlikely to be better than 2011.
The thing about major disasters is that whilst we don’t know exactly where the next one is going to hit, we can be certain that there will be a next one – and even take some well-informed guesses about where it might hit.
admin July 18th, 2011
‘Communication problems’ meant that warnings one year ago forecasting a drought in the Horn of Africa were ignored by planners who could have prepared a timely response. The result is a massive airlift costing huge sums of money.
No one is in any doubt that the drought that is hitting the Horn of Africa at the moment is a major humanitarian crisis but compare and contrast these two stories that relate to it.
admin April 19th, 2011
Extreme weather events continue to hit Africa, with more than eight million people affected by drought in East Africa and 60,000 displaced by floods in Southern Africa, floods that are not likely to dissipate for up to six months. Both are said to be tail-end effects of the latest La Nina – which should start to fade in May this year.
Drought, food shortage and water shortage follow on from the failure of the rains in late 2010 across Djibouti, Ethiopia, Kenya, Somalia and the Karamoja region in Uganda. The UN’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) is reporting that the drought has led to substantial harvest failure, deteriorating pasture conditions, decreased water availability and livestock losses. Lack of access to affected areas, high food prices, human and livestock diseases and the ongoing insurgency in Somalia are all exacerbating the situation.
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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admin May 20th, 2010
The situation in Somalia seems to be going from worse to even worse. According to a recent UN report, 3.4 million Somalis – 43 percent of the population – need humanitarian assistance, including some 1.4 million within Somalia displaced by fighting. This infighting between Islamist insurgent groups Al-Shabab and Hisbul Islam and the transitional government further weakens a country that has been without an effective government since 1991.
Over the past few weeks: UNHCR has appealed for an additional $60m for IDPs within Somalia as well as those refugees now in neighbouring countries; a UN committee has said that as much as half of the food aid sent to the country via the World Food Programme (WFP) is diverted corruptly; and the breakaway enclave of Somaliland has finally set June 26th as its long-delayed presidential election date, which will probably be a further step in the break-up of the country.
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