Archive for the tag 'Sudan'

Refugee numbers – and fear of war – build in South Sudan

December 14th, 2011

A year ago, in the run up to the independence referendum and then to independence itself, there was widespread fear that there would be war between Sudan and the new state of South Sudan.  But in the event things passed off relatively quietly.

Since July’s independence, there has been ongoing, but relatively low-level, fighting and disturbances in the South Kordofan province of Sudan where the largely Nubian and Christian population is unhappy about being part of the largely Arab and Muslim state of Sudan.

SPLM-N fighter in Blue Nile state

But now, a year on from the initial concerns, the refugee numbers in South Sudan are building and there is a very real fear that there will be a border war between the two Sudans.

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Good news! Africa doesn’t come bottom in corruption

December 3rd, 2011

Good news for sub-Saharan Africa – it’s not as corrupt as some other parts of the world according to the latest Corruption Perceptions Index produced by Transparency International (TI).  Although there’s still quite a lot of work to be done if you have a look at the colourful map on page four of the TI report.

Unlike the recently-published 2011 version of the Human Development Index, in which the bottom places were packed with sub-Saharan African countries – and Afghanistan – there are a mere four African countries in the bottom ten of this global table.  Somalia comes equal bottom with North Korea, and the other African countries in the Highly Corrupt group are Sudan, Equatorial Guinea and Burundi.

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Hundreds of thousands displaced in Sudan as North and South move towards separation

June 22nd, 2011

Two and half weeks before South Sudan’s independence – due on July 9th – hundreds of thousands of people have been displaced, minor wars and disputes are simmering, and yet there has so far been less violence – and, surprisingly, less displacement – than once feared.

That said, over 60,000 people have fled violence in South Kordofan and more than 100,000 have fled Abyei for a similar reason.  One beacon of hope is that North and South Sudan signed a deal earlier this week to pull their troops out of the disputed Abyei region and bring in Ethiopian peacekeeping forces – a deal brokered by former South African President Thabo Mbeki at a conference in Addis Ababa.
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Violence flares in Sudan’s Abyei province with fears growing for a major man-made disaster

May 25th, 2011

Since the referendum went through peacefully in January there has been – at least as far as the main news organisations are concerned – an eerie quiet about Sudan in general and South Sudan in particular.  But it would appear that a major, man-made, humanitarian disaster is brewing there.

With independence for the South just over a month away, violent confrontations are taking place in the critical region of Abyei – the one part of the South that did not have a referendum in January and home to a large part of Sudan’s oil reserves.  Abyei is claimed by both north and south Sudan and the referendum to decide its future did not go ahead in January due to disagreements over which groups would be eligible to vote.
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Heavy weaponry begins to converge on Sudan’s Abyei province

April 7th, 2011

South Sudan does not become independent until July, but some of the signs of imminent trouble are already apparent.

Reuters AlertNet is reporting today that tanks and attack helicopters are being moved by the North into the Muglad base that is close to Abyei.  Abyei is the oil-rich province that straddles the border between the North and the about-to-become-independent South and is considered the most likely region to reignite decades of violence between the mostly Muslim Arab north and the south, which mostly follows traditional beliefs or Christianity.

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Africa tops the charts with 11 million displaced people in 2010

March 24th, 2011

Africa still has more than 11 million displaced people, and accounts for 40% of all displaced people around the world according to the latest annual report from the Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre (IDMC).  The IDMC says that globally, “the recorded number of people displaced within their country due to conflict or violence rose to 27.5 million in 2010, which is the highest in a decade.”

The number displaced in Africa at the end of 2010, 11.1 million, was the lowest for four years, although sadly recent events may well mean that that number – and indeed the four-year downward trend – is already out of date.
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500,000 Ivorians in ‘forgotten’ emergency – with more in southern Libya

March 23rd, 2011

We’ve written often in this blog about ‘forgotten’ crises, emergencies that don’t make it to the Ten O’Clock News and so somehow don’t exist.  The knock-on effects of this are terrible – a failure to respond, driven often by a failure to raise the money needed to buy the necessary goods.

Now, with Japan dominating the natural disaster headlines and the war in/on Libya dominating the man-made disaster headlines, events in Ivory Coast are being almost completely overlooked, not to mention the plight of Africans fleeing south out of Libya.  And then there’s the looming prospect of conflict over oil between Sudan and (come July) newly-independent South Sudan.
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DFID review leads to increased Africa focus

March 2nd, 2011

DFID yesterday announced the results of its bilateral aid programme and the decision that has been made is that it will be focussing its money on 27 countries, many of them in East Africa.  The review says that it wants to target support “where it will make the biggest difference and where the need is greatest”.

These 27 countries, according to DFID, account for three quarters of global maternal mortality and nearly three quarters of global malaria deaths.  And seventeen of them are in Africa: Democratic Republic of Congo, Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya, Liberia, Malawi, Mozambique, Nigeria, Rwanda, Sierra Leone, Somalia, South Africa, Sudan, Tanzania, Uganda , Zambia and Zimbabwe.
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Exodus starts in Sudan – more than one million may become homeless or stateless

January 7th, 2011

UNHCR is reporting today that more 120,000 people have already left northern Sudan and are heading for their ancestral homes in South Sudan ahead of Sunday’s referendum on independence.

Advance Aid is working with one of the major aid agencies to provide pre-positioned emergency kits to help refugees who are made homeless as a result of any post-referendum disturbances – or simply as a result of ‘southerners’ moving back home either to vote or as returnees to any newly-formed state.
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La Niña phenomenon leads to Asian flooding with threat of more disasters to come

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.

Flooding_Phillipines_Ondoy

“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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