Day: May 14, 2022

Humanitarians continue to call for scaling up assistance in the Horn of Africa, where the worst drought in 40 years is affecting some 15 million people across Kenya, Ethiopia, and Somalia.

The drought follows four consecutive failed rainy seasons, and the fear is the number could jump to 20 million if the current below-average rains fail.

UN Humanitarian Coordinator Martin Griffiths was in the region this week on a two-day mission to Kenya to raise awareness of this climate-induced emergency, which is happening at a time when global attention is focused on numerous crises.

Last month, he released $12 million from the UN’s Central Emergency Response Fund (CERF) to respond to the drought, while another $17 million was allocated from the Ethiopia Humanitarian Fund.

Families in misery

The relief chief was in remote Turkana county, northern Kenya, on Thursday to show solidarity with local communities and underline the need for more funding and food aid.

The UN and partners require $480 million to support the humanitarian response through October.?

“The world’s attention is elsewhere, and we know that,” he said. “And the world’s misery has not left Turkana. And the world’s rains have not come to Turkana.”

Mr. Griffiths spoke to families in Lomoputh who have nothing left. Their animals have died and there is no way to make money.

‘Impossible choices’

Although children can sometimes get food at school – often the only thing to eat available – this requires walking six kilometres to fetch water for the children to take with them.

As a result, mothers are being forced to make “impossible choices”, he said.

“One of them said to us that some of them even have children who are of the age to go to secondary school… but to pay the fees to go to a secondary school in this area, you need to sell livestock. Sell a goat, as she said. There’s no more goats. There’s no more livestock. They’ve gone.”

Malnutrition and migration

Some 3.5 million people in Kenya are severely food insecure and acute malnutrition rates in some areas are more than double the emergency threshold, according to the UN humanitarian affairs office, OCHA, which Mr. Griffiths heads.

Across the three countries, roughly 5.7 million children are acutely malnourished,

Additionally, more than three million livestock—which pastoralist families rely on for sustenance and survival —have died.

Mr. Griffiths concluded his mission to Kenya on Friday, meeting virtually with people in Ethiopia’s Somali region.

The severe drought is affecting more than eight million people across the country. More than 7.2 million need food aid, and some four million require water assistance.

At least 286,000 people have migrated in search of water, pasture, or assistance, but others, often the elderly or the sick, have remained behind.

In a post on Twitter, Mr. Griffiths urged the international community not to ignore the rapidly escalating crisis in the Horn of Africa.

“We need urgent action to help these communities survive now, and increased investment in their ability to withstand future shocks,” he wrote. “We need to give them a future.”

Source: United Nations

WEISSENHAUS, GERMANY — Group of Seven foreign ministers vowed on Saturday to reinforce Russia’s economic and political isolation, continue supplying weapons to Ukraine and tackle what Germany’s foreign minister described as a “wheat war” being waged by Moscow.

After meeting at a 400-year-old castle estate in the Baltic Sea resort of Weissenhaus, senior diplomats from Britain, Canada, Germany, France, Italy, Japan, the United States and the European Union also pledged to continue their military and defense assistance for “as long as necessary.”

They would also tackle what they called Russian misinformation aimed at blaming the West for food supply issues around the world due to economic sanctions on Moscow and urged China to not assist Moscow or justify Russia’s war, according to a joint statement.

“Have we done enough to mitigate the consequences of this war? It is not our war. It’s a war by the president of Russia, but we have global responsibility,” Germany’s Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock told reporters at a closing news conference.

Key to putting more pressure on Russia is to ban or phase out buying Russian oil with EU member states expected next week to reach an agreement on the issue even if it remains at this stage opposed by Hungary.

“We will expedite our efforts to reduce and end reliance on Russian energy supplies and as quickly as possible, building on G-7 commitments to phase out or ban imports of Russian coal and oil,” the statement said.

The ministers said they would add further sanctions on Russian elites, including economic actors, central government institutions and the military, which enable President Vladimir Putin “to lead his war of choice.”

The meeting in northern Germany, which the foreign ministers of Ukraine and Moldova attended, also spotlighted food security concerns and fears that the war in Ukraine could spill over into its smaller neighbor Moldova.

“People will be dying in Africa and the Middle East and we are faced with an urgent question: how can people be fed around the world? People are asking themselves what will happen if we don’t have the grain we need that we used to get from Russia and Ukraine,” Baerbock said.

She added that the G-7 would work on finding logistical solutions to get vital commodities out of Ukraine storage before the next harvests.

Attention now turns to Berlin as ministers meet later on Saturday with Sweden and Finland gearing up to apply for membership of the transatlantic alliance, drawing threats of retaliation from Moscow and objections from NATO member Turkey.

“It is important that we have a consensus,” Canada’s Foreign Minister Melanie Joly told reporters when asked about Turkey possibly blocking their accession.

Putin calls the invasion a “special military operation” to disarm Ukraine and rid it of anti-Russian nationalism fomented by the West. Ukraine and its allies say Russia launched an unprovoked war.

“More of the same,” EU Foreign Policy chief Josep Borrell told reporters. “The one thing that is missing is pushing for a diplomatic engagement to get a ceasefire. It is missing because Vladimir Putin has been saying to everybody that he doesn’t want to stop the war.”

Source: Voice of America

The percentage of people fully vaccinated in the African Region increased from 13% at the end of March 2022 to 14.3% as of 30 April 2022. Six out of the 20 countries that had less than 10% of their population fully vaccinated in January 2022 have moved upward, surpassing 15% of their population fully vaccinated. These countries are Uganda, Côte d’Ivoire, Guinea, Ethiopia, Kenya and Sierra Leone. The highest increase in the percentage of people fully vaccinated in the past three months was seen in Uganda, Ethiopia, Côte d’Ivoire, Chad and Sierra Leone. These countries are among the priority countries for the multi-partner country support team initiative (Uganda, Ethiopia, Côte d’Ivoire and Chad) or for the global COVID-19 Vaccine Delivery Partnership (Sierra Leone).

Source: World Health Organization

BANGUI, CENTRAL AFRICAN REPUBLIC — Rebels killed 10 civilians during an attack hundreds of kilometers northeast of the Central African Republic capital of Bangui, the spokesperson for the U.N. peacekeeping force in the country told AFP.

“Armed elements of the Union for Peace in Central Africa (UPC) have committed abuses on populations, killing 10 people” in the village of Bokolobo last Monday, said Lieutenant Colonel Abdoul Aziz Ouedraogo, spokesman for the Minusca force.

They had previously attacked security force positions, he added, without elaborating.

“In response to these atrocities, the force immediately deployed Mauritanian blue helmets to protect the populations,” Ouedraogo added.

He said a second patrol from the Nepalese contingent had been dispatched to the scene, which is more than 400 kilometers northeast of Bangui.

In a statement released on Friday, Ali Darassa, military leader of the UPC and chief of staff of the Coalition of Patriots for Change (CPC), an alliance of rebel groups created in December 2020 to overthrow President Faustin Archange Touadera, condemned a massacre on Monday in the same village of “30 civilians of the Muslim faith, including 27 Fulani … by (Russian) mercenaries from the Wagner company, the FACA and the anti-balaka militia of the Touadera wing.”

The Central African Republic, the second least developed country in the world, according to the U.N., has been the scene of a civil war since 2013.

At the end of 2020, the most powerful of the many armed groups that then shared two-thirds of the territory had launched an offensive on Bangui shortly before the elections and Touadera sought help from Moscow for his impoverished army.

Hundreds of Russian paramilitaries then joined hundreds present since 2018 and made it possible, in a few months, to repel the rebels’ offensive and then to push them back from a large part of the territories and cities they controlled.

But they were unable to re-establish the authority of the state everywhere.

On March 30, the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, Michelle Bachelet, condemned “serious human rights violations” in CAR including “murders and sexual violence” against civilians, committed by the rebel groups but also the armed forces of the regime and their Russian allies.

Source: Voice of America