Day: June 26, 2021

The U.N. World Food Program says southern Madagascar is in the throes of back-to-back droughts that are pushing 400,000 people toward starvation and have already caused deaths from severe hunger.

Lola Castro, WFP’s regional director in southern Africa, told a news conference Friday that she witnessed “a very dramatic and desperate situation” during her recent visit with WFP chief David Beasley to the Indian Ocean island nation of 26 million people.

Hundreds of adults and children were “wasted,” and hundreds of kids were skin and bones and receiving nutritional support, she said.

In 28 years working for WFP on four continents, Castro said she had “never seen anything this bad” except in 1998 in Bahr el-Gazal in what is now South Sudan.

The U.N. and Madagascar’s government are launching an appeal for about $155 million in a few days to provide lifesaving food and prevent a major famine, she said. Thousands of people have left their homes in rural areas and moved to more urban environments in search of food, she added.

Beasley tweeted Friday that 400,000 people are “marching towards starvation,” 14,000 are “in famine-like conditions,” and “if we do not act ASAP, the number of people facing starvation will reach 500,000 in a few short months.”

“Families have been living on raw red cactus fruits, wild leaves and locusts for months now,” he said Wednesday.

“This is not because of war or conflict, this is because of climate change,” Beasley stressed. “This is an area of the world that has contributed nothing to climate change, but now, they’re the ones paying the highest price.”

According to WFP, 1.14 million people in southern Madagascar don’t have enough food including 14,000 in “catastrophic” conditions, and this will double to 28,000 by October.

Madagascar is the only country that isn’t in conflict but still has people facing “Famine-Humanitarian Catastrophe” in the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification known as the IPC, which is a global partnership of 15 U.N. agencies and international humanitarian organizations that uses five categories to measure food security, Castro said.

Source: Voice of America

NAIROBI – Kenyan authorities say at least 350 young people who joined the Somali Islamist militant group al-Shabab have surrendered this year and will be reintegrated into society.

Security agencies in Kenya’s coast region say fewer youth are crossing to Somalia to fight for the group in a sign that counterterrorism measures are working.

Kenyan counterterrorism officials are in the county of Mombasa this week to help sensitize the community against violent extremism and to assist former al-Shabab fighters.

Their efforts are targeting six counties directly affected by the terror group’s activities along the Kenya-Somalia border.

Canon Harun Rashid, chief officer in charge of preventing violent extremism at Kenya’s National Counter Terrorism Center, said the center is processing more than 300 former al-Shabab fighters who are seeking to re-enter society.

Understanding the crimes

“It’s not just a blanket returning program,” Rashid said. “All these individuals who are coming in, there is a process of filtering them and understanding the kind of crime they have committed, and the legal system is also waiting to see prosecutable areas once these returnees are put into such a program. Then there is the sensitization part of it, the deradicalization part of it.”

For more than a decade, the militant group has used local and historical grievances to get Kenyan young people to join its violent activities.

A few thousand Kenyan youths are still fighting alongside al-Shabab in Somalia, but increased security operations and awareness campaigns inside Somalia and Kenya’s northeast and coastal areas have reduced youth recruitment.

Rashid said the counterterrorism programs now target security officers who are involved in fighting terrorism, so they can understand the process of radicalization.

The security officers need “to understand the radical drivers, to understand the legitimacy behind the radicals calling for their agenda,” Rashid said.

Nairobi-based security analyst Richard Tuta said Kenyans who joined al-Shabab could return to Kenya if the government accepted them.

Some sought income

“Remember, some of these young people did not go there because they were radicalized,” he said. “They went there because of other factors — like, for instance, to get a source of income, because one of the ways used to induce them to cross over is because they are promised even to be paid in dollars. So when the government gives them an amnesty, it makes it easier for them to make a comeback.”

Munira Hamisi, head of youth affairs and community empowerment in the county of Mombasa, said her county was ready to provide economic opportunities to more than 100 youths who return from Somalia.

“As a department, we have a Mombasa County revolving fund that has an economic stimulus package for our young people, where youth-led business licenses have been waived,” she said. “We also have a revolving fund where we are giving out soft loans to businesses that are owned by young people and women.”

The counterterrorism center campaign plans to expand and target 12 counties in all in the hope of encouraging more Kenyan youths to forsake terrorism.

Source: Voice of America