admin March 16th, 2010
This blog has written several times about the refugees who have had to leave the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and are currently in the Congo Republic. Now the UN is asking Northern countries to help raise $59m to help these refugees.
As with so many problems in the DRC, natural resources, in which the country is rich, are the cause of the refugee problem. The area that they have fled from is cobalt-rich and has been the site of armed clashes that originated in inter-communal disputes over farming and fishing rights.
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Tags: Congo Republic, DRC, natural resources, OCHA, Refugees, UN
admin February 26th, 2010
Haiti, of course, dominates the disaster-related news, and with good reason. But it also dominates the public perceptions of disasters and this means that donations are heavily skewed in a way that is probably helpful neither to the Haitians themselves, nor to the aid agencies that receive money specifically for Haiti, nor above all for the hundreds of thousands of people involved in other disasters around the world who get overlooked.
They get overlooked when it comes to money, and overlooked when it comes to the provision of relief services – so much time and effort is tied up in helping the people of Haiti.
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Tags: DRC, Haiti, natural disasters, OCHA, UN, Yemen
admin February 10th, 2010
‘How big is the humanitarian sector?’ is a question that is probably of most interest to those who work in it. But it has been a question to which it has been very hard to get a definitive answer. And if you are involved in the disaster business at all – as a worker, a donor or even as a beneficiary – it’s something that would be at least ‘nice to know’.
Now a pilot study from ALNAP has gone some way to answering this question. On one point there is a clear answer – the sector employs 210,800 people worldwide and has grown at a rate of 6% a year for the past ten years. On another it is not so clear – resources spent on humanitarian initiatives were somewhere between $6bn and $18bn in 2008. The report can be downloaded here.
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Tags: ALNAP, Cadbury, CARE, Catholic Relief Services, DRC, Haiti, International Organisation for Migration, Oxfam, Red Cross, Save the Children, Sudan, UN, Unilever, World Vision
admin February 6th, 2010
Africa is poor. Africa is rich in natural resources. Some Africans are rich. Africa is rent by wars over natural resources.
This is not a logic puzzle, but a series of true statements that are inter-connected. Back in September last year this blog covered a lecture on the management of natural resources given by Professor Paul Collier at the LSE. Now campaigning group Global Witness has produced a report titled ‘Lessons Unlearned – How the UN and Member States must do more to end natural resource-fuelled conflicts’. You can download it here.
Advance Aid’s primary interest in this subject relates to the massive displacement of civilian populations that takes place as a result of Africa’s wars – many (but not all) of which are being fought over natural resources. The ongoing multi-player war in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) is a classic example both of where the UN and its member states need to do more and of the displacement and human suffering that these wars can cause. And, of course, it is a prime example of the wealth that can accrue to some individuals as a result of these wars and the control of valuable natural resources that they bring.
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Tags: Angola, DRC, Global Witness, Ivory Coast, Liberia, LSE, natural resources, Paul Collier, Sierra Leone, Sudan, UN
admin January 20th, 2010
The eyes of the world are, quite rightly, fixed on Haiti at the moment. But emergencies carry on happening elsewhere and it has to be a worry that donors and aid agencies are (or will be) so stretched by what is going on in the Caribbean that they will be unable to respond in other parts of the world.
That is especially worrying for Africa, many of whose ongoing wars and displacements of people are already under-reported and over-looked.
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Tags: Central African Republic, Congo Republic, DRC, Haiti, Refugees, UNHCR
admin December 23rd, 2009
Civilians attacked, bombed, and cut off from aid in Pakistan, Somalia, Yemen, Sri Lanka, Afghanistan, and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), along with stagnant funding for treating HIV/AIDS and ongoing neglect of other diseases, were among the worst emergencies in 2009, the international medical humanitarian organization Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) reported today in its annual list of the Top Ten humanitarian crises.
The list, the twelfth that MSF has produced, is drawn from its operational activities in close to 70 countries, where the organization’s medical teams witnessed some of the worst humanitarian conditions.
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Tags: Afghanistan, Civil War, DRC, Pakistan, Somalia, Sri Lanka, Sudan, War, Yemen
admin November 27th, 2009
As an example of the chaos and disruption that goes on in Africa without people in the North really noticing, two stories on Reuters’ AlertNet caught the eye. In the first it was reported that the World Food Programme (WFP) next week will start distributing food aid to more than 50,000 people driven out of their homes by ethnic violence in northwestern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).
This outbreak of fighting, which is unrelated to simmering rebel violence in the mineral-rich east, erupted at the end of last month and has forced more than 38,000 people to flee across the border into neighbouring Congo Republic and displaced 14,000 others internally, according to the WFP.
All of these people are likely to be needing shelter as well as food aid.
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Tags: Congo Republic, DRC, IDPs, natural resources, Refugees, WFP
admin October 16th, 2009
According to a report published yesterday on IRIN, Africa hosts at least 11 million of the world’s 25 million conflict-affected internally displaced people (IDPs) and millions more are displaced annually by natural disasters.
For example, Sudan has an estimated 4-5 million IDPs, thanks to the recent civil war in the south, and violence in Darfur and the east.
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Tags: Central African Republic, Chad, DRC, IDPs, Somalia, Sudan, Uganda