Day: July 1, 2021

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Storms Render Thousands of Ethiopian Refugees in Sudan Homeless

Aid agencies are racing against time to provide temporary shelter for more than 16,000 Ethiopian refugees in Sudan whose tents were swept away during violent storm surges over the past few weeks.

The storms, which began in late May and gathered intensity in June, have demolished nearly 4,000 out of 10,000 individual family tents in Sudan’s eastern refugee settlements of Um Rakuba and Tunaydbah.

Strong winds, heavy rains, and hailstorms have destroyed much of the camps’ infrastructure, emergency latrines and other facilities. U.N. refugee agency spokesman, Boris Cheshirkov says the personal belongings of thousands of Ethiopian refugees have been swept away.

He says the refugees who fled to Sudan to escape the conflict in northern Ethiopia’s Tigray province require emergency assistance.

“What we expect over the coming two or three months, because the rainy season will continue until October, is that these rains will intensify, that the flooding may worsen. And that is why it is essential that we take measures now including to rehabilitate some of the roads and build new ones,” he said.

Cheshirkov says the roads are becoming flooded and soon might become impassible, making it difficult to get humanitarian aid to people in need.

Consequently, he says the UNHCR, and partners are rapidly constructing and rehabilitating some 60 kilometers of roads to the two refugee camps and local host communities. He says they also are digging drainage systems to mitigate the risks of further flooding.

“Partners are constructing semi-permanent schools, as well as permanent latrines and showers… More permanent shelters are also planned but the building can only start once the rainy season stops… A total of 10,000 emergency shelter kits are planned for distribution with an additional 5,000 in reserve,” he said.

The UNHCR along with 31 U.N. and private aid agencies are revising an earlier appeal upwards to reflect the current emergency. They are calling for $182 million, an increase of $33 million.

The additional money will allow the agencies to improve the camps’ infrastructure and meet the protection and basic needs of the Ethiopian refugees until the end of the year.

Source: Voice of America

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Burkina Faso’s President Sacks Defense Minister

Burkina Faso’s President Roch Kabore has dismissed the country’s defense minister in the wake of widespread protests Saturday against insecurity.

Cherif Sy had been defense minister since the country’s conflict with domestic terror groups started in 2015. His replacement is the president himself, along with a minister delegate, Colonel Major Aimé Simpore, who has been appointed to assist.

At the beginning of June, Burkina Faso saw its worst terrorist attack on civilians since the conflict with armed groups linked to al-Qaida and Islamic State started. At least 138 people were killed in the village of Solhan.

The attack triggered a wave of protests against insecurity that swept the country last weekend. Sy’s departure was one of the protesters’ major demands.

Sy was sacked Wednesday, as was Security Minister Ousséni Compaoré, who was replaced with Maxim Kone, a foreign affairs deputy.

Will changes bring calm?

So what does this reshuffle in leadership mean for the country?Burkinabe analyst and activist Siaka Coulibally said public opinion was mixed, and even if some accepted the ministers’ departures as a concession, it’s dubious as to whether it’s enough to reverse the negative effect of terrorism across the country. Whether the reshuffle will be enough to calm the anger depends on whether there are new attacks, he said.

The fighting in Burkina Faso is at its most intense in the east of the country and in the northern province of Sahel. Izidag Tazoudine, a local official from the tri-border region of Sahel province, where Burkina Faso’s border meets with Mali and Niger, said he was hopeful that things would change after the reshuffle.

Since Sy has been in office, Tazoudine said, there have been attacks and discontent, such as that in the northern communities of Solhan, Markoye and Barsalogho, where insurgents ambushed and killed 11 police officers in late June. That’s why people wanted the president to change the ministers of defense and security. Tazoudine said that because those moves have been made, it’s believed that things will change now.

Smockey, a local hip hop artist and co-founder of Citizen’s Broom, a civil society group that played a central role in ousting the country’s former dictator in 2014 as well as in organizing last weekend’s protests, said the recent actions weren’t enough for virtuous governance. It is necessary, he said, to tackle problems at all levels of the state and not only these two key ministerial posts.

No risk of coup seen

Philippe M. Frowd, an associate professor at the University of Ottawa and an expert on security in the Sahel, was asked whether he thought the protests could escalate into a coup, as happened in neighboring Mali recently.

“I don’t sense a strong similarity with Mali in the sense of fragmentation within the armed forces or very strong inter-elite tensions that would typically be what goes into the recipe for a coup,” he said. “So I don’t think Burkina Faso is immediately in that risk zone.”

Meanwhile, opposition leader Eddie Kombiego said the reshuffle would not be enough to return security to the country. The opposition is determined to push ahead with further protests this weekend.

Source: Voice of America

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WHO Says Africa Facing Third COVID Wave, Driven by Variants

The World Health Organization (WHO) warned Thursday that the African continent is facing a surging third wave of COVID-19 cases, driven by new and faster variants of the coronavirus that causes it.

During a virtual briefing, WHO Regional Director for Africa Dr. Matshidiso Moeti said new cases have increased by an average of 25 percent in Africa for six straight weeks, to almost 202,000 in the week ending on June 27. She said deaths rose by 15 percent across 38 African countries to nearly 3,000 in the same period.

Moeti said this wave is being driven by more contagious COVID-19 variants, “raising the threat to Africa to a whole new level.” She said among the 14 African countries now in resurgence, 12 have detected variants of concern, including nine with the Delta variant, originally identified in India.

Meanwhile, she said the Alpha and Beta variants have been reported in 32 and 27 countries respectively.

Moeti said hygiene, social distancing and mask wearing can certainly help slow the spread, but globally, it has been shown that vaccines offer the best path toward ending devastating surges.

Just over 1% of Africans are now fully vaccinated, compared to 11% of people globally, and over 46% of people in the United States and Britain.

Earlier Thursday, in interviews with the Associated Press, African Union Vaccine Envoy Strive Masiyiwa blasted Europe and international suppliers for failing to deliver promised vaccine.

Masiyiwa said that while Europe has promised to sell vaccines to Africa, so far, it has not followed through. He said, “The fact of the matter is the EU has vaccine factories. It has vaccine production centers across Europe. Not a single dose, not one vial has left a European factory for Africa.”

African CDC Director John Nkengasong said the WHO-managed international vaccine cooperative COVAX had promised to deliver 700 million vaccine doses to Africa by December. But to date, Africa has received just 65 million doses overall and fewer than 50 million doses have arrived through COVAX.

However, both leaders did announce that the first shipments of the single-shot Johnson & Johnson and the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccines, with U.S. support, will begin arriving next week.

Source: Voice of America