Archive for the tag 'OCHA'

Al Shabaab bans 16 Western aid agencies from areas it controls in famine-hit Somalia

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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Drought in the North East, floods in the South West as La Nina tail wags hard across Africa

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.

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Where DFID’s £528 million of humanitarian spending goes

April 4th, 2011

The Ashdown Committee’s report, amongst other things, provides a breakdown of where DFID’s spending on humanitarian aid goes.  The sums involved are substantial – £528 million in 2009/10 – that was spent as follows:
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Southern Africa braces itself for major flooding as river waters rise

January 22nd, 2011

Southern Africa is bracing itself for major flooding as heavy rains and some localized flooding across southern Africa from Angola to Madagascar are raising fears that the devastating floods of 2000 will be repeated.

An update produced last week by the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said that, “All countries in contiguous southern Africa are expected to receive normal to above-normal rainfall between January and March 2011 – northern Zimbabwe, central Zambia, southern Malawi, central Mozambique and most of Madagascar are expected to receive above-normal rainfall.”
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Baroness Amos gives $84m to ‘neglected’ emergencies

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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Floods hit Chad, making 70,000 homeless

September 17th, 2010

Floods have been everywhere in the news recently, and UNHCR is now reporting that 150,000 people in Chad have been affected by flooding in recent weeks, including 70,000 who have become homeless because their homes were destroyed.

They are suffering from the heaviest rains to hit that part of the country for 40 years – this rain following on from a fierce drought.  UNHCR says that, “Humanitarian access to affected areas across Chad remains a challenge due to destroyed roads and bridges in areas where populations are in need of help.”  Early in August, northern Chad was hit by what were reported to be the heaviest rains for 50 years.

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Two cheers for DEC, the least bad model for emergency funding

September 6th, 2010

The “UK provides a model for private funding of emergencies” according to a story today on IRIN News.  IRIN is a UN OCHA project.

Well, as Evelyn Waugh famously wrote in Scoop, “Up to a point, Lord Copper” which, for those uninitiated in the wonders of Scoop, was his hero’s way of saying ‘No’ to the particularly monstrous newspaper proprietor for whom he worked.

Although maybe it would be fairer to say that the UK’s Disasters Emergency Committee (DEC), for that is the ‘private model’ to which the story refers, is one of the least bad ways of organising private responses (i.e. responses by individuals) to emergencies.  DEC has thirteen member agencies and they are: ActionAid, British Red Cross, CAFOD, Care International UK, Christian Aid, Concern Worldwide, Help the Aged, Islamic Relief, Merlin, Oxfam, Save the Children, Tearfund and World Vision.
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Will compassion stretch as far as the Sahel?

August 30th, 2010

The eyes of the world, of course, are on Pakistan and the terrible damage and displacement that the floods there are causing.  But in West Africa a crisis of similar proportions is affecting just as many people – but generating only a tiny percentage of the column inches (or the donor dollars) that accrue to Pakistan.

First, drought led to crop failures and the threat of famine – especially in Niger and Chad, where more than seven million people are affected.  Now the drought has broken, but it has been replaced by torrential rain, which has created further problems by causing flooding and destroying crops.
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DEC comes out with Pakistan appeal as 15 million are affected. But what about the starving millions in the Sahel?

August 10th, 2010

Shortly after we published the last entry on this blog, where we asked why there had been no DEC appeal, DEC announced that it was mounting a coordinated appeal for money to help the estimated 15 million people now affected by the floods in Pakistan.  You can donate here.
Pakistan floods_Aug10
The 15 million figure comes from Maurizio Giuliano, a spokesman for the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) who said on Monday that, if the Pakistan government’s calculations are correct, the scale of the disaster could be worse than Haiti’s January earthquake, the 2004 Tsunami, and the 2005 Pakistan earthquake combined.
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More war in eastern DRC displaces 90,000 people

July 31st, 2010

The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) is reporting that almost 90,000 people have been displaced in the Beni Territory of the North Kivu Province in the eastern DRC following armed confrontations there.  It says that the displaced people are in need of protection, food, water, shelters, medicines and non-food items.  The 90,000 include unaccompanied children as well as other vulnerable people.

IDP camp in Minova, DRC

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