Weekending Sunday, 10 February 2008

EDUCATION HELPS KEEP DISPLACED CHILDREN SAFE

4 February 2008 [MEDIAGLOBAL]: Educational opportunities in IDP and refugee camps help protect displaced children, experts said this week. Children make up a large percentage of those driven from their homes by war, and inadequate security in and around many camps makes them vulnerable to violence, abduction and recruitment by military forces. “Recruitment happens everywhere but these places are targeted whenever possible,” Vera Achvarina, a researcher at the Ford Institute for Human Security, said in an interview with MediaGlobal. Along with increased security, rigorous child protection measures are needed inside camps. “Groups that are recruiting from within the camps may be most likely to look at kids who aren’t in school. So for those kids, making sure there are educational opportunities in these camps is really critical,” Jo Becker, Children’s Rights Advocacy Director at Human Rights Watch, told MediaGlobal. Systems alerting camp residents to potential threats and educating children and parents about the risks of abduction are critical, she said, adding, “Often times recruitment is done through misinformation, kids are promised education or payment that never materializes, and so making sure that communities know what the realities of child soldiering are is really important.” Achvarina, who is currently working with former child soldiers in a Liberian refugee camp in Ghana, noted the difficulties of re-integrating such children into camps that are largely devoid of community structure and employment opportunities. “There is no self-sustainable system in refugee camps,” she said. Former child soldiers “go from one non-functioning society, which has actually functioned in such a horrible way, to which they were exposed without learning any civilian life from their parents, [and] they come to a refugee camp [where] there is not really any substitute for the military organization.” Hopelessness and disenfranchisement lead to more violence, she said. “They all need school, they all need education. Some of them at the age of 25 or 20 still remain at the incomplete primary education level.”
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Children make up a large portion of many refugee populations
(photo courtesy of USAID/OFDA)

CARIBBEAN CORAL REEFS IN PERIL, SAYS UNESCO

4 February 2008 [MEDIAGLOBAL]: Climate change is increasingly endangering the Caribbean’s coral reefs, and threatening the survival of people who depend on them for their livelihoods, said the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). “2005 was an exceptional year in the Caribbean,” Dr. Clive Wilkinson, Director of UNESCO’s Global Coral Reef Monitoring Network, and author of the recently released UNESCO report, “The Status of Caribbean Coral Reefs after Bleaching and Hurricanes in 2005,” told MediaGlobal. During 2005, the hottest year on record, the Caribbean experienced no fewer than 26 named storms, including 13 hurricanes. As a result, Caribbean reefs suffered unprecedented damage, including extensive bleaching, disease and coral death. Wilkinson warned that as climate change both warms the planet and increases the frequency of extreme weather events, the effects seen in 2005 provide a glimpse of future dangers if environmental conditions continue to deteriorate. To stop this from happening, Wilkinson told MediaGlobal, “We need to act locally and globally” to both curb emissions and minimize direct damage to reefs from pollution and other sources. This is important, he stressed, not simply for the sake of the environment, but also for those who rely on reefs for their survival – often the very poorest of the poor. “About 500 million people have some dependence on reefs and 30 to 50 million are almost totally dependent on them for food – fish, crabs, shells, seaweed etc., as well as for coastal protection and increasingly for tourism,” he said.

UNICEF TRAINS WATER MANAGERS IN SOUTHERN SUDAN

5 February 2008 [MEDIAGLOBAL]: The United Nations Children Fund (UNICEF) and the government of Southern Sudan are conducting an intensive training program in the effective use and management of water resources in the region. As a result of two decades of war, millions of people do not have access to safe drinking water. “Only 60 percent of the population has access to safe drinking water and just seven percent practice good hygiene and sanitation, thus putting millions of lives in danger of water borne diseases,” UNICEF stated. The training program aims to improve the planning, coordination and monitoring of water and sanitation programs. Emphasis is also placed on the promotion of community-based water supply, hygiene and sanitation initiatives. “A joint assessment undertaken in 2005 shows that there is an extreme lack of capacity in the water sector to deliver services,” Swangin Bismarck of UNICEF told MediaGlobal. “This is partly due to 21 years of the war that ended in 2005. The [trainees] are people who have been rebels for over two decades. While some of them are technical people others don’t have any knowledge on water management.” UNICEF is working to provide safe water through the establishment of more water sources, while maintaining and rehabilitating existing ones. “Water in Southern Sudan is one big cause of communal fights due to its scarcity,” added Bismarck. “It’s against this backdrop that UNICEF is training the water managers to ensure effective management and delivery of water and sanitation services.”

AFRICA’S TRADITIONAL CROPS OFFER NEW PROMISE

5 February 2008 [MEDIAGLOBAL]: The majority of the world’s agriculture-based economies are found in sub-Saharan Africa, where regional growing conditions vary so widely that the need for crop diversity is an important and inescapable reality, according to the World Bank’s World Development Report 2008, which was presented Tuesday at UN Headquarters. As a result, scientists are re-evaluating the amount of attention paid to the region’s traditional crops, many of which have been passed over by researchers in favor of developing non-native varieties whose success has been proven in other parts of the world. “There is increasing value in re-focusing on these native crops, which have been largely ignored by research and extension agents in the past 20 to 30 years. Several university food science departments have been testing these crops and realize some have superior nutritive value that was largely ignored in the past when modern crops were selected for taste and ease of cooking,” Dr. Daniel Karanja, a Senior Fellow at the Partnership to Cut Hunger and Poverty in Africa, told MediaGlobal. “Some native crops also are better adapted to the environment, and may tend to resist serious pests, diseases and drought, making them better placed for increased food security, especially with the kinds of erratic weather patterns experienced in Africa in the past few years,” he said. Karanja added that the best qualities of some native African crops can be combined with varieties from other parts of the world to create even more productive hybrids, citing the success of New Rice for Africa (NERICA) varieties. “It proves that indigenous crops can be improved upon to achieve better yields without greatly compromising other genetic qualities important in Africa, such as disease resistance, drought tolerance or [the] ability to do well in shallow or toxic soils.”

FREAK SNOWSTORMS SERVE AS GRAVE WARNING OF CLIMATE CHANGE

6 February 2008 [MEDIAGLOBAL]: The exceptionally heavy snowstorms that swept across mainland China in the last month could be the sign of a long-term problem. Salvano Briceño, Director of the Secretariat of the International Strategy for Disaster Reduction, said that these types of catastrophes should serve as a warning, alerting the world to the need to get ready for “new kinds of disasters.” The Chinese provinces of Hunan and Guizhou, known for growing chili peppers and experiencing subtropical weather, were hit hardest by the storms. “‘Climate proofing’ projects should be an inspiration for others,” Nick Nuttal, Spokesperson for the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), told MediaGlobal, describing initiatives like those fashioned by UNEP Earth Award winner Dr. Balgis Osman-Elasha. With the downing of power lines and the disruption of water systems, transportation routes and financial markets, China’s snowstorms proved that the effects of climate change can be devastating to all sectors. “Governments need to start examining how to best adapt to unpredictable ‘freak’ conditions that may sadly become all too normal,” said Briceño. He added, “The intensifying effect of climate change on weather, combined with global trends of rapid urbanization and environmental degradation, will lead to ever more complex disasters involving more and more people.”

TOBACCO EPIDEMIC SHIFTING TO THE DEVELOPING WORLD, SAYS WHO

7 February 2008 [MEDIAGLOBAL]: Long seen as a problem purely of the developed world, developing countries are increasingly affected by the growing tobacco epidemic, according to a new report, “The Global Tobacco Epidemic 2008,” launched this week by the World Health Organization (WHO). “The low-income countries are where we’re seeing the brunt of the epidemic,” Dr. Douglas Bettcher, Director of the WHO Tobacco Free Initiative told MediaGlobal in an exclusive interview. “Already 70 percent of deaths are in developing countries. That’s going to be well over 80 percent by 2030.” Tobacco kills an estimated 5.4 million people worldwide from lung disease, heart disease, and other illnesses each year, an estimated 3.7 million of which are in the developing world. The report is the first comprehensive analysis of global tobacco use and control efforts, and also outlines the six most important and effective actions that need to be taken to combat this growing epidemic. By providing this road map, known as “MPOWER”, the WHO is hoping to aid governments, including those of developing nations, to take action against this deadly epidemic which the WHO describes as the single most preventable cause of death in the world today. “[The report is] a message,” Bettcher said. “It’s a call to action by our Director General, that developing countries must focus on all high-priority and high-burden disease risk factors and determinants, and this is one of the biggies.”

WORLD FOOD PROGRAMME FILLING CUPS WITH FOOD

7 February 2008 [MEDIAGLOBAL]: The Word Food Programme (WFP) announced a fundraising initiative to help feed the 59 million hungry schoolchildren worldwide by filling cups with food. Just 25 cents a day buys a school meal for a hungry child, keeping kids healthy and increasing school attendance. Bettina Luesche, spokesperson for WFP in New York, told MediaGlobal that the awareness-raising campaign will fill red cups with porridge. “The campaign is open-ended,” with no scheduled completion date, Luesche said. Those promoting the program include FIFA World Player of the Year, Kaka; Ghanaian President, John Agyekum Kufuor; and the Mayor of Milan, Letizia Moratti. Kufuor said that feeding hungry school kids has helped Ghana stay on track to meet the Millennium Development Goals by 2015. The city of Milan has agreed to partner with WFP, which has been at the forefront of combating world hunger. “The theme ‘Feeding the Planet, Energy for Life’ represents the spirit in which we collaborate, concretely, with the Millennium Campaign. Today we are pleased to work alongside the World Food Programme as a new, important ‘traveling companion’ on this road of international solidarity,” Moratti said. Kaka added, “I’m very proud to call on soccer fans and others to help Fill the Cup and lay a foundation for the future.”

AFRICAN NATIONS SIGN DECLARATION TO SAVE REMAINING ELEPHANTS

8 February 2008 [MEDIAGLOBAL]: After two days of discussions in Bamako, Mali, on Friday, 17 African nations signed a declaration supporting elephant conservation and condemning ivory trade. Representatives of participating countries have been working closely on these issues for years, and the signing of the Bamako Elephant Declaration symbolizes a formal unification of elephant-related policies. “This is a meaningful accomplishment for African elephant range states,” said Patrick Omondi, Kenya Wildlife Service Head of Species. “Not only are we taking a stand against the slaughter of our endangered elephants, but we are joining together to discuss the importance of strong elephant conservation and management strategies, which are essential in maintaining viable elephant populations, and in effect, promoting tourism.” The Mali meeting was facilitated by the International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW), which has a history of promoting elephant conservation. “It is IFAW’s position that a live animal is worth more than a dead one,” Colleen Cullen of IFAW told MediaGlobal. “And by supporting the enhancement and restoration of National Parks all across Africa, from Kenya to Malawi, the animals and the people in their proximity are further secured, and in effect the tourism is increased.” Representatives from Mali, Niger, Senegal, Burkina Faso, Sierra Leone, Guinea Bissau, Cameroon, Ivory Coast, Togo, Nigeria, Ghana, Liberia, Central African Republic, Rwanda, Southern Sudan, Ethiopia and Kenya signed the declaration.

HUMANITARIAN SITUATION IN CHAD STABLE FOR THE MOMENT

8 February 2008 [MEDIAGLOBAL]: Rebels attacked Chad’s capital last week, causing as many as 30,000 people to flee to Cameroon to escape the violence. This new flood of refugees is straining international efforts to aid some 200,000 Chadians already displaced within the country. Sudanese and Central African Republic refugees are also seeking a safe haven in Chad from fighting in their own countries. A week after the attacks, life has slowly returned to normal in N’Djamena, Chad’s capital, but it is a fragile peace completely dependent on foreign assistance. “The vast majority of our beneficiaries in eastern Chad are heavily reliant on humanitarian aid for their survival. Stocks – food, water or fuel for water pumps, health supplies, etc – are in place, and can cover needs for some weeks,” Maurizio Giuliano of the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs in N’Djamena, told MediaGlobal. He warned, “If the situation continues to hamper our activities, then the pipeline to procure and transport these supplies could be affected, and the humanitarian situation could seriously deteriorate.” Humanitarian efforts in Chad have traditionally been well-funded. In 2007, the Humanitarian Appeal received 97 percent of its requirements, which made it the best-funded initiative worldwide, Giuliano said.