AdvanceAid

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.

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Tags: Addis Ababa, Dadaab, Djibouti, Drought, Dubai, Ethiopia, FEWS, Horn of Africa, Humanitarian Futures Programme, Kenya, Kuwait, Nairobi, Pakistan, Randolph Kent, Somalia, Uganda, UNHCR

• East Africa , News
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admin November 16th, 2010

So it would appear that it takes the inundation of 160,000 square kilometres of land, an estimated 1,600 deaths and 20 million people affected by flooding for Pakistan – a tiny emitter of greenhouse gases – to decide that it needs a climate change strategy to mitigate the effects of extreme weather events caused by global warming.

What, therefore, is it going to take for the major emitters of CO2 – China, the US, Russia, India, Japan and Germany in total tonnage rank – to do the same and really start to get to grips with the emissions that they are generating?  After all, it is these emissions that are the root cause of the melting glaciers in the Hindu Kush.  And it is the meltwater from these glaciers that, along with unusually high rainfall, caused the flooding.
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Tags: Cancun, China, Copenhagen, Floods, Germany, Global warming, India, Japan, natural disasters, Pakistan, Russia, USA

• Americas , South Asia
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admin October 27th, 2010

Largely unnoticed by the rest of the world – and certainly invisible when competing with stories from Pakistan or even Haiti, where cholera has now raised its ugly head – the West African state of Benin has been devastated by floods over the past two weeks.

Just over a week ago UNICEF reported that it was responding to mass flooding that had covered more that two thirds of the country.  Unseasonably heavy rains had caused the Oueme and Mono rivers to overflow and the resulting floods destroyed homes, schools and health centres, claiming 43 lives and leaving nearly 100,000 homeless.
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Tags: Benin, Floods, Haiti, natural disasters, Pakistan, Plan International, Red Cross, UNICEF

• Americas , South Asia , West Africa
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admin 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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Tags: ActionAid, British Red Cross, CAFOD, Care International UK, Chad, Christian Aid, Concern Worldwide, DEC, Help the Aged, Islamic Relief, Merlin, Niger, OCHA, Oxfam, Pakistan, Save the Children, Tearfund, UNICEF, World Vision

• South Asia , West Africa
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admin September 1st, 2010

Job creation and enterprise development are one of the key elements of Advance Aid’s mission in Africa and we have been delighted to be able to assist with the establishment of a new tarpaulin factory in Athi River, outside Nairobi.

Owned and run by Reltex Africa, the factory opened earlier this summer and is already employing 200 people, with 300 employees the target.  What is more, it is now exporting tarpaulins to Pakistan to help with the relief effort there.

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Tags: Floods, Kenya, Pakistan, Red Cross

• East Africa , South Asia , South East Asia
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admin 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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Tags: Chad, China, Drought, Floods, natural disasters, Niger, OCHA, Pakistan, UN

• South Asia , South East Asia , West Africa
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admin August 19th, 2010

Today, August 19th, is the first World Humanitarian Day, nominated by the UN to honour all those humanitarian workers who had lost their lives in the cause of duty and in the promotion of the humanitarian cause.

Sadly, the day itself is marked by one of the world’s largest-ever natural disasters in Pakistan where it is highly likely that more humanitarian workers will lose their lives in the service of others.
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Tags: natural disasters, Pakistan, UN

• News
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admin 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.

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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Tags: Chad, Floods, Haiti, Indian Ocean Tsunami, Myanmar, natural disasters, Niger, OCHA, Pakistan

• Americas , South Asia , South East Asia , West Africa
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admin August 3rd, 2010

The complexities of global warming and the interconnectedness of world markets have been starkly illustrated this week.  And, as so often, the people to suffer from these random events are the poor in general and the African poor in particular.

As the worst famine for several years stalks Niger and Chad, IRIN News reports that the 2010 rainy season in West Africa has opened with hail storms in Guinea and the heaviest rain in 50 years in northern Chad.  Floods have killed at least 80 people and destroyed homes, bridges, septic tanks, livestock, crops and food stocks; dams have broken, and wells and latrines and have been submerged.
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Tags: Chad, Climate change, Drought, Floods, Global warming, natural disasters, Niger, Pakistan, Russia, UNICEF

• Europe , South Asia , West Africa
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admin July 31st, 2010

In Thursday’s post we reported that floods were affecting Pakistan – possibly brought on by the La Niña effect.  Today the BBC is reporting that one million people in Pakistan are affected by these floods, and that the city of Peshawar, with three million inhabitants, is cut off.
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Tags: Floods, La Nina, OCHA, Pakistan

• South Asia
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