admin February 17th, 2012
Just over a year ago the whole world was fearful of war, death and displacement in Sudan. The referendum in early January had gone off remarkably smoothly and the South was set to secede, but still there was fear of war at any time between January and July – when South Sudan was due to become Africa’s newest state.
All of that went off pretty smoothly, with limited disruption. The world breathed a sigh of relief. But now the border tensions between Sudan and South Sudan, not to mention the troubled question of oil, has seen war break out, with heavy fighting between the Sudanese Armed Forces and the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement-North in South Kordofan and Blue Nile states that has driven more than 130,000 Sudanese refugees into Ethiopia and South Sudan.
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Tags: Blue Nile, Ethiopia, Famine, Sahel, Somalia, South Kordofan, South Sudan, Sudan, UN, UNHCR
admin January 25th, 2012
Another famine is looming in Africa’s Sahel region – the third drought in the area in the last 10 years. And the big question facing the international community is whether the lessons of not responding soon enough to the drought in the Horn will be learned – and acted upon – here.
We know already that the European Union has taken a lead. And DFID has announced that it is sending therapeutic food to help 68,000 children in Chad, Mali and Niger, three of the countries worst affected by poor harvests.
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Tags: CERF, Chad, DFID, Drought, Ethiopia, EU, Famine, Kenya, Mali, natural disasters, Niger, Sahel, Somalia, UNICEF, WFP
admin January 19th, 2012
A report this week by Oxfam and Save the Children has concluded that many lives were lost, livelihoods unnecessarily ruined and a lot of donor money wasted because the early warnings about the famine in the Horn of Africa were not heeded and not acted upon.
Readers of this blog will not be surprised by this conclusion, as we wrote back in July how the early warnings had been ignored for a year by the international community with the result that food aid had to be flown in by the 747-load, when other, more cost-effective and more life-saving, procedures could otherwise have been followed.
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Tags: Drought, Ethiopia, Famine, FEWS, Kenya, natural disasters, Oxfam, Save the Children, Somalia
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
admin November 9th, 2011
It’s not very often that a simple analogy can capture and dramatise a complex phenomenon. But we were offered one yesterday at PA International’s ‘Combating Malnutrition through Sustainable Interventions’ conference in Brussels.
Amir Mahmoud Abdulla, Chief Operating Officer of the World Food Programme, turned the dry statistic that 3.5 million children die each year from malnutrition into a gripping and moving story.
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Tags: Drought, Famine, natural disasters, WFP
admin September 16th, 2011
African-produced emergency kits sourced for World Vision by Advance Aid are now being distributed to the refugees flooding into the Dadaab refugee camp in Kenya.
Kits for distribution
Each kit is designed to provide the basics for a family of five and contains a tarpaulin for shelter, blankets, a family-size mosquito net, a kitchen set, a hygiene kit and one bucket for clean water and another for washing.
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Tags: Dadaab, emergency kits, Famine, Kenya, natural disasters, Refugees, Somalia, World Vision
admin August 4th, 2011
Advance Aid is delighted to be partnering with Catholic Relief Services (CRS) in Nairobi to provide African-made goods to supply the refugees streaming into the country as a result of the famine in the Horn of Africa.
Container being packed with jerrycans
We are providing jerrycans to help with the carrying and storage of water and tarpaulins for shelter. Both products are locally-made.
Jerrycans for CRS
This partnership follows on from the one established earlier this year with World Vision.
Tags: CRS, Famine, Horn of Africa, Kenya, Local manufacturing
admin August 2nd, 2011
Sadly for the people suffering in the Horn of Africa, the famine there is destined to become a case history of international inaction in advance of a known disaster, a ‘How not to do it’ of emergency preparation and response. And all of the key players – governments, aid agencies, UN organisations – are already lining up to say that it was not their fault, even before the much-needed aid has really begun to arrive.
The first jolt to the emergency relief system was delivered by the Tsunami at Xmas 2004 when the existing systems were found wanting. In particular, too many organisations turned up to help with little or no coordination. Chaos ensued.
Some progress had been made on this front by the time the earthquake hit Haiti in January 2010, but there was still a fair amount of chaos.
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Tags: Al Shabaab, Andrew Mitchell, BBC, DFID, earthquake, Ethiopia, Famine, FEWS, Haiti, Kenya, Mogadishu, Somalia, tsunami, WFP
admin June 21st, 2010
As famine closes in on Chad and Niger (and Save the Children says that nearly 400,000 children under the age of five in Niger are facing starvation) ActionAid is asking whether the G8 countries have made good on promises made last year to give $22 billion to help small farmers in developing countries.
Key to this proposal was that the money should go not in emergency food aid, or in aid to boost production of cash crops for export, but to help smallholder farmers. The importance of smallholders is that they grow food to feed themselves and their families, with surpluses generally sold in local markets. So this is an important step towards increasing food security and self-sufficiency in food at the local level in developing countries.
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Tags: ActionAid, Australia, Chad, EU, Famine, G8, Germany, Italy, Japan, natural disasters, Niger, Save the Children, Spain
