Archive for the tag 'UNICEF'

Will the lessons of responding to the famine in the Horn of Africa be learned for the Sahel?

January 25th, 2012

Another famine is looming in Africa’s Sahel region – the third drought in the area in the last 10 years.  And the big question facing the international community is whether the lessons of not responding soon enough to the drought in the Horn will be learned – and acted upon – here.

We know already that the European Union has taken a lead.  And DFID has announced that it is sending therapeutic food to help 68,000 children in Chad, Mali and Niger, three of the countries worst affected by poor harvests.

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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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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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DFID reviews support for multilateral agencies – four lose all funding and four go into ‘special measures’

March 3rd, 2011

Alongside the review of which countries the UK will continue to support with aid, covered in this blog yesterday, DFID has also been carrying out a review of the 43 multilateral agencies into which it will pour £3.7 billion in 2010/11.

The 43 have been ranked as Very Good, Good, Adequate or Poor.  At the extremes, nine are ranked as Poor and nine as Very Good.  In the middle, nine are Adequate and 16 are Good.
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Floods make 100,000 homeless in Benin – Sadly, not a lot of people know that

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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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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Floods, famine, fires and full markets create a confusing picture in Pakistan, Russia and the Sahel

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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Sir John Holmes highlights coordination failures in Haiti

February 19th, 2010

Just one week after an ALNAP report overwhelmingly cited ‘Poorly coordinated response efforts and lack of effective leadership’ as the key problem facing humanitarian relief efforts, Sir John Holmes, the head of the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) has attacked the Haiti relief effort for a failure of coordination.

In an internal email acquired by US title Foreign Policy Sir John especially picks out the cluster systems for criticism.  Foreign Policy carries the email in full together with its own commentary.

Sir John starts by praising what has been achieved, but he quickly gets to the nub of his argument, “However, it is also clear that there remain major unmet humanitarian needs, particularly in critical areas such as shelter, other NFIs, and sanitation.”  The upcoming rainy season, together with the threat of civil unrest if needs are not met, gives everything a particular urgency.
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