Media News

Benin

About 57,000 people in the Oueme river valley community of Adjohoun, 60km east of Cotonou, are threatened with malnutrition and water-born diseases because of river flooding, which has wiped out more than 25,000 hectares of crop land, killed about 30,000 animals, flooded 18,000 homes, and has displaced about 2,000 people according to local authorities. Only the Awonou community has been spared flooding, thus far. The river started gradually over-spilling its banks in July 2008 when the season's first storms hit, but did not gather force until about 10 days ago, said Gabriel Assogba from the town council. (IRIN)

Burkina Faso

The European Commission (EC) is ready to increase its aid to fight malnutrition in Burkina Faso if current EC nutrition projects prove to be "success stories," said its humanitarian chief Louis Michel, announcing the new commitment during the opening of an EC Development and Humanitarian Aid office (ECHO) in Ouagadougou on Sept. 13. ECHO is currently funding some ten humanitarian projects in Burkina Faso worth USD 17 million, mostly to fight malnutrition among children and women. ECHO's partners include UNICEF, the FAO, WFP, UK-based OXFAM, Paris-based Action Contre la Faim, the Burkinabe Red Cross Society and Canadian Children's Aid Society. (IRIN)

Chad

UN officials have met in recent days with members of the humanitarian community in Chad to discuss issues of common concern, particularly with regard to the estimated 250,000 refugees and 180,000 internally displaced persons (IDPs) living in the east of the country. A gathering in N'Djamena brought the Deputy Special Representative of the Secretary-General, Rima Salah, along with colleagues from the UN Mission in Chad and the Central African Republic (MINURCAT), together with humanitarian partners, including NGOs and UN relief agencies. A similar meeting was held in Abeche, in eastern Chad, earlier this week. (UN News Service)

Congo (DRC)

The top UN envoy in the Congo (DRC) has joined a group of international officials in calling for stepped-up efforts to restore peace to the country's volatile eastern region, the scene of recent fighting between the Government and rebel groups. Alan Doss, along with representatives of the members of the Security Council, the African Union and the European Union, met with President Joseph Kabila on Sept. 14 in Goma, the capital of North Kivu province, where clashes broke out on August 28 between the country's armed forces (FARDC) and the National Congress for People's Defense (CNDP). (UN News Service)

Djibouti

More than half of Djibouti's population is food insecure and needs emergency aid due to drought and high food prices, an early warning information service has said. At least 340,000 of the country's 632,000 people are at risk, the Famine Early Warning Systems Network (FEWS Net), which is funded by the US Agency for International Development, said in a Sept. 12 report. A semi-desert state that experiences frequent droughts and imports all its staple foods, Djibouti is classified by the UN as both a least developed and a low-income, food-deficit country. (IRIN)

Ethiopia

Angelina Jolie and partner Brad Pitt have donated USD 2 million to create a center for Ethiopian children affected by AIDS and tuberculosis. The Global Health Committee said the donation from the Jolie-Pitt Foundation would establish a center in the Ethiopian capital Addis Ababa to treat AIDS orphans and develop a program to treat drug-resistant tuberculosis. The Oscar-winning Jolie adopted a baby girl, now three years old, from Ethiopia in July 2005 and the new clinic will be named Zahara after her. (Reuters)

Ghana

The UN International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) Sept. 12 announced a USD 22 million loan to Ghana to boost the livelihoods of over 100,000 households there. The funds from IFAD are part of a larger USD 103 million initiative targeted at achieving sustainable livelihoods for poor people in rural areas, especially small farmers, women and vulnerable groups in northern Ghana. The Northern Rural Growth Program seeks to enhance the incomes of rural residents. Some 45,000 households will be directly supported, and it is hoped that more than double that amount will benefit from improved infrastructure. (UN News Service)

Kenya

At least five million Kenyans in urban slums and rural areas are highly food insecure, according to the findings of a national food security assessment. "About 1.38 million people in rural areas will not be able to meet their minimum food requirements in the coming six months without external support," said the report released Aug. 31 by the Kenya Food Security Steering Group (KFSSG). Preliminary indications revealed that between 3.5 and 4.1 million slum-dwellers were highly insecure because of rising food prices and declining supplies, up from around 3 million in 2007. (IRIN)

Nigeria

The chief of a village in northern Nigeria has been suspended from office for divorcing his wife because she had her children immunized against polio. Buluma Ali has been ordered to re-unite with his wife or face "dethronement." The head of Maisandari district said a traditional ruler was supposed to educate subjects on the importance of getting children immunized. In 2003, some Nigerian Islamic leaders said the immunizations were part of a Western plot to make Muslims infertile. (BBC)

Somalia

An African Union peacekeeper from Uganda has died in an attack in the Somali capital, Mogadishu - the second to be killed in as many days. Two peacekeepers were injured in the attack, in which a roadside bomb hidden under a pile of rubbish hit a group of soldiers, an AU spokesman said. On Sept. 14, another Ugandan peacekeeper was killed and two wounded in an earlier attack in the capital. Islamists from the al-Shabab group claimed responsibility for that killing. (BBC)

Sudan

Sudan's human rights situation is grim with killings of civilians by government and rebel forces and arbitrary arrests and torture for political reasons, a UN investigator said on Sept. 15. Sima Samar, in a report for the UN Human Rights Council, said breaches of humanitarian law were being committed not only in the Darfur region in the west but also in other parts of the country, including the south. "Despite some steps by the government of Sudan, principally in the area of law reform, the human rights situation on the ground remains grim, with many interlocutors even reporting an overall deterioration," she wrote. (Reuters)

Uganda

Police reform, improved agricultural production and better mechanisms for resolving land disputes are among the prerequisites for northern Uganda's long-term recovery from humanitarian crisis, according to Oxfam International. In a briefing paper released on Sept 10, "From Emergency to Recovery - Rescuing Northern Uganda's Transition," Oxfam noted that about half the region's 1.8 million internally displaced people (IDPs) had left camps for their original villages since August 2006, when the government signed a ceasefire with the rebel Lord's Resistance Army. (IRIN)

Zimbabwe

Morgan Tsvangirai, invested as Prime Minister of Zimbabwe as part of a power-sharing deal with his bitter rival, President Robert Mugabe, called for international support to help the raise the country off its economic haunches at the signing of the agreement in the capital, Harare. The deal, mediated by South African President Thabo Mbeki, will see Tsvangirai, leader of the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), share executive powers with Mugabe in the first dilution of Mugabe's powers since he assumed the presidency in 1980, when the country won its independence from Britain. (IRIN)


compiled by developmentex.com