Archive for the tag 'Sudan'

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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Humanitarian aid analysis Part 2 – Where does the money go?

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.
WFP delivers to Madagascar
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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Africa the worst continent for water insecurity

June 26th, 2010

Five of the ten countries in the world with the least secure supplies of water are in Africa.  And Africa has the unpleasant honour of taking the top four places in a new report, ‘Water Security Risk Index’ published this week by Maplecroft, a firm specialising in corporate risk intelligence.

The top ten countries with the least secure supplies of water – shown in dark blue on the map below -  are 1. Somalia, 2. Mauritania, 3. Sudan, 4. Niger, 5. Iraq, 6. Uzbekistan, 7. Pakistan, 8. Egypt, 9. Turkmenistan and 10. Syria.

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New sad record set as 27 million are recorded as displaced

May 19th, 2010

At the end of 2009 an astonishing 27.1 million people around the world were displaced within their own countries by conflict or violence – the highest number since these records began in the mid 1990s.  This is the conclusion of the annual report from the Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre (IDMC).

IDPs_Goma

Since 1997 the number of internally displaced people (IDPs) has grown from 17 million to more than 27 million.  Over the same period, the number of refugees has remained fairly stable, fluctuating between 13 and 16 million.

Africa now has 11.6 million of the total 27 million IDPs (43%), and nearly seven million people globally were newly displaced in 2009, many more than in previous years.
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Oil wars will give way to water wars

April 29th, 2010

As a world, we rely massively on two liquids – oil and water.  Wars have already been fought over diminishing supplies of the one and it will not be long before wars are fought over the diminishing supply of the other.  And whilst it is relatively easy to see how we could replace oil – renewable energy sources, principally solar, changes in economic patterns, the death of globalisation – it is impossible to replace water.

Nile at Alexandria

Cue a row that has broken out over the ‘rights’ to the water that flows down the Nile.  River basins are one of the planet’s major communal assets – one of the great Commons, like the air – and also politically one of the most fraught.
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Measuring the Humanitarian sector

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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Do we really want to stop natural resource wars?

February 6th, 2010

Africa is poor.  Africa is rich in natural resources. Some Africans are rich.  Africa is rent by wars over natural resources.

This is not a logic puzzle, but a series of true statements that are inter-connected.  Back in September last year this blog covered a lecture on the management of natural resources given by Professor Paul Collier at the LSE.  Now campaigning group Global Witness has produced a report titled ‘Lessons Unlearned – How the UN and Member States must do more to end natural resource-fuelled conflicts’.  You can download it here.

Advance Aid’s primary interest in this subject relates to the massive displacement of civilian populations that takes place as a result of Africa’s wars – many (but not all) of which are being fought over natural resources.  The ongoing multi-player war in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) is a classic example both of where the UN and its member states need to do more and of the displacement and human suffering that these wars can cause.  And, of course, it is a prime example of the wealth that can accrue to some individuals as a result of these wars and the control of valuable natural resources that they bring.
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MSF lists Top Ten humanitarian crises of 2009

December 23rd, 2009

Civilians attacked, bombed, and cut off from aid in Pakistan, Somalia, Yemen, Sri Lanka, Afghanistan, and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), along with stagnant funding for treating HIV/AIDS and ongoing neglect of other diseases, were among the worst emergencies in 2009, the international medical humanitarian organization Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) reported today in its annual list of the Top Ten humanitarian crises.

The list, the twelfth that MSF has produced, is drawn from its operational activities in close to 70 countries, where the organization’s medical teams witnessed some of the worst humanitarian conditions.
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