AdvanceAid

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.

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Tags: Climate change, Djibouti, Drought, Ethiopia, Floods, Global warming, IFRC, Ivory Coast, Japan, Kenya, La Nina, Libya, Namibia, OCHA, Red Cross, Somalia, Uganda, UN, WHO

• East Africa , News , Southern Africa
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admin 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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Tags: CERF, Crown Agents, DFID, HERR, ICRC, Lord Paddy Ashdown, NGOs, OCHA, Red Cross, Save the Children, UN, UNDP, UNHCR, UNICEF, WFP

• News
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admin 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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Tags: Angola, Botswana, Floods, Madagascar, Malawi, Mozambique, Namibia, natural disasters, OCHA, Okavanga, Red Cross, South Africa, UN, Zambezi, Zambia, Zimbabwe

• Southern Africa
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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 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 July 29th, 2010

Opinion is growing that a La Niña phenomenon has officially arrived and this means that disaster response teams probably need to brace themselves for heavier monsoons, bigger and more frequent hurricanes, and angrier cyclones.

“There is global consensus that we are at the beginning of a La Niña, but we cannot pronounce the intensity of the event yet – we have to wait for it to evolve,” Rupa Kumar Kolli, Chief of the World Climate Applications and Services Division at the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) told IRIN News.

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Tags: Afghanistan, Australia, Climate change, DRC, Floods, IDPs, Indonesia, Kenya, Madagascar, Malaysia, Mexico, Mozambique, NASA, Pakistan, Red Crescent, Red Cross, Somalia, South Africa, Sudan, Tanzania, Uganda, WMO

• Americas , East Africa , Great Lakes , Latin America , North Africa , South Asia , South East Asia , Southern Africa
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admin July 19th, 2010

Total humanitarian aid worldwide was $15.1 billion in 2009 according to a new report by Global Humanitarian Assistance.  In Part 1 we looked at how much was given.  In this part we are going to look at where the money goes.

By region, in 2008, it went largely to Africa (52% – $5.9 billion) and Asia (42% – $4.8 billion).  And six of the top ten recipient countries in 2008 were African – Sudan (first place), Ethiopia (fourth), Somalia (fifth), DRC (sixth), Zimbabwe (ninth) and Kenya (tenth).  Even tenth placed Kenya received $304 million.  Sudan got $1.4 billion.
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Tags: Africa, Asia, DRC, Ethiopia, Haiti, Kenya, NGOs, Red Cross, Somalia, Sudan, Zimbabwe

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admin July 19th, 2010

Total humanitarian aid worldwide fell by 11% to $15.1 billion in 2009 according to a new analysis of the available data by Global Humanitarian Assistance, a monitoring service provided by Development Initiatives.  The 2008 total was $16.9 billion, a record high.  But 2009’s total was the second highest on record.

Humanitarian aid from donors reporting to the Development Assistance Committee (DAC) has grown massively through the 2000s, from $5.5 billion in 2000 to an estimated $13.3 billion in 2009 – a growth of 142% across the decade.

The DAC represents the OECD countries and speaks for well over 90% of all humanitarian aid.  But overall 112 countries gave humanitarian aid in 2009 – many of them being recipients as well as donors.
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Tags: Africa, Asia, Humanitarian assistance, NGOs, Red Cross, UN

• News
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admin May 16th, 2010

The Kenya Red Cross Society has launched a Floods Emergency Appeal, seeking to raise $7 million to assist over 125,000 people affected by floods in the country. Rains and floods have caused destruction of property, loss of lives and displacement of thousands of people, leaving many thousands in dire need of humanitarian assistance.

A number of rivers in Kenya have burst their banks following a torrential beginning to the annual ‘long rains’ in March.  The Red Cross says that the death toll due to floods, landslides, lightning and storms since the onset of long rains has risen to 81.  This torrential rainfall follows drought or near-drought conditions that hit East Africa last year.

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Tags: Floods, Kenya, natural disasters, Red Cross

• East Africa
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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

• News
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