US reveals plans for donating first 25 million Covid-19 vaccine doses

The Biden administration has announced which countries will share in the first 25 million Covid-19 vaccine doses donated by the U.S. to help low- and middle-income nations combat the pandemic.

The decision comes after months of internal debate and growing pressure from America’s allies to share shots.
– Nineteen million doses will be routed through the global aid program COVAX to countries in Central and South America, Asia and Africa.
– Another 6 million doses will be split among nations including Mexico, Canada and South Korea, as well as U.N. health workers. 

The donation will include a mixture of vaccines from Johnson & Johnson, Pfizer and Moderna.

[Politico]

COVID vaccination success in wealthy countries contrasts with shortages elsewhere

It’s a tale of two pandemics as Bangladesh, Nepal and Sri Lanka run low on vaccines while U.S. has fully inoculated 38% of population.

Cases and deaths hit records in India and flow over to its neighbors, as AFP reported. India, the world’s biggest vaccine maker, has said it will not export any more doses until year-end as it struggles to contain a deepening crisis. That has left Asian countries scrambling to secure supplies and some are looking to China and Russia. India is also looking for supplies on international markets and has started to import Russia’s Sputnik V to make up for domestic shortages.

The European Union pledged to donate 100 million vaccine doses to poorer countries at the start of a global G-20 summit Friday, at which world leaders are expected to stress the need to scale up vaccine efforts all around the world.

Pfizer and BioNTech told the summit they would provide 2 billion doses of their vaccine to middle- and low-income countries in the next 18 months.

That comes after agencies, including the World Health Organization, the United Nations, UNICEF and the Red Cross, have made appeals for greater vaccine equity. Experts have emphasized that leaving poorer countries out of the vaccine push will allow variants to emerge that have the potential to become resistant to the current vaccines.

[MarketWatch]

Will Patents on Vaccines be suspended?

The Biden administration came out on Wednesday in support of waiving intellectual property protections for coronavirus vaccines, siding with international efforts to bolster production amid concerns about vaccine access in developing nations. President Biden had come under increasing pressure to throw his support behind the proposal, drafted by India and South Africa and backed by many congressional Democrats.

The United States had been a major holdout at the World Trade Organization over a proposal to suspend some of the world economic body’s intellectual property protections, which could allow drug-makers across the globe access to the closely guarded trade secrets of how the viable vaccines have been made. 

Support from the White House is not a guarantee that a waiver will be adopted. The European Union has also been standing in the way, and changes to international intellectual property rules require unanimous agreement. 

The United States would participate in negotiations at the World Trade Organization over the matter, but a US spokesman said that they would “take time given the consensus-based nature of the institution and the complexity of the issues involved.”

Standing against this will be the pharmaceutical industry, which responded angrily to the extraordinary decision. Stephen J. Ubl, the president and chief executive of the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, called the announcement “an unprecedented step that will undermine our global response to the pandemic and compromise safety.”

[The New York Times]

Covid death burden shifts to poorer nations

The relentless pace of death from the global Covid-19 pandemic is now being increasingly borne by the poorest places in the world.

More than 3 million lives have been lost as a result of the novel coronavirus that emerged in 2019, with the latest 1 million recorded deaths coming even faster than the first two. It took about 8.5 months after the initial fatality in China to mark the first million, and just another 3.5 months to reach the second million.

The grim milestone underscores a widening disparity in combating the pandemic, which parallels the gap in vaccine access. While mortality rates have largely slowed in the U.S. and parts of Europe thanks to vaccine rollouts that promise a return to some semblance of a normal life, the developing world is shouldering a rising death toll.

[Bloomberg]

UN calls for a wealth tax

United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres is calling on nations to institute a wealth tax to help reduce global inequality exacerbated by the Covid-19 pandemic.

There has been a $5 trillion surge in the wealth of the world’s richest in the past year even as those at the bottom were made increasingly vulnerable, Guterres told a UN economic and social forum on Monday.

With the Covid-19 fallout causing government debt to swell, and hurting poorer people most, wealth taxes are being debated from California to the U.K.

[Bloomberg]

Deaths amongst migrant arrivals to Europe remain high

The number of migrants and asylum-seekers who reached Europe in 2020 is the lowest it has been in the past decade, according to a report by the United Nations migration agency. But deaths and disappearances on sea routes remain alarmingly high with only a small fraction of bodies recovered and victims identified.

Of the 93,000 people who entered Europe irregularly last year, roughly 92% did so via the Western, Central and Eastern Mediterranean Sea, as well as through the Atlantic Ocean off West Africa to Spain’s Canary Islands, often on unseaworthy boats.

The International Organization for Migration’s Missing Migrants Project has confirmed the death or disappearances of nearly 2,300 people last year. This number is higher than in 2019 and slightly lower than in 2018.

[AP]

After a decade of war, the plight of Syrian refugees is only getting worse

Ten years ago, protesters clamoring for political reform in Syria took to the streets, hoping for change. Instead, there has only been ruin and chaos.

The past decade has shattered the nation and scattered its people. More than half of the population was forced to flee.

“The United Nations stopped counting the dead in 2016 at 400,000. Six million Syrians fled their homeland, escaping across its borders into neighboring countries,” writes correspondent Liz Sly. “Five million are still stranded, barely surviving in substandard conditions. A million climbed into flimsy boats to cross the Mediterranean to Europe.”

Even as foreign humanitarian aid dwindles, millions still languish in limbo in countries bordering Syria, living on the margins of the societies hosting them but too afraid of the grim fate that may await should they try to return. And conditions are only getting worse. “Poverty and food insecurity are on the rise, school enrollment and access to health care are shrinking, and the COVID-19 pandemic has wiped out much of the informal work that refugees rely on,” noted a recent report from the U.N.’s refugee agency. “People are at a breaking point,” said UNHCR senior communications adviser Rula Amin. While “the attention of the world has shifted from the Syria crisis and people tend to think that maybe it has become easier, with every passing year, it becomes more difficult, not easier for Syrian refugees.”

[Washington Post]

US seeks return to UN human rights body

The United States will seek election to the U.N. Human Rights Council later this year, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said on Wednesday, marking the Biden administration’s latest international re-engagement.

Under former President Donald Trump’s more isolationist approach, Washington quit the council in 2018 but the Biden government has already returned as an observer.

“I’m pleased to announce the United States will seek election to the Human Rights Council for the 2022-24 term,” Secretary of State Antony Blinken told the council by video. “We humbly ask for the support of all U.N. member states in our bid to return to a seat in this body.”

Blinken, addressing the council by recorded video, also said that President Joseph Biden’s administration would work to eliminate what he called the Geneva forum’s “disproportionate focus” on U.S. ally Israel. The council, set up in 2006, has a stand-alone item on the Palestinian territories on its agenda every session, the only issue with such treatment, which both Democratic and Republican administrations have opposed. It routinely adopts resolutions condemning alleged violations by Israel in Gaza and the occupied West Bank.

[Reuters]

Global vaccine inequality

As the coronavirus pandemic rages, WTO representatives have periodically gathered around a virtual table and clashed over how to more equitably increase global access to vaccines.

On one side are the United States and other mainly wealthy Western democracies, where the major pharmaceutical companies developing key vaccines and related medical technologies are based. They want to maintain the status quo, in which the trade secrets of their vaccines—i.e. intellectual property—remain in their hands to preserve profits and the incentive for future development.

On the other side are South Africa and India, leading the charge on behalf of the vast number of countries without any—or a limited supply of—vaccine doses and other equipment for fighting the virus. They argue that the rest of the world cannot keep waiting for the lifesaving shots, which Western countries have monopolized by buying up existing supplies and pre-purchasing future rounds.

Given the gravity of the global public health crisis, the latter camp wants to resort to an emergency waiver mechanism, whereby the intellectual property rights for making vaccines and related medical supplies would be temporarily suspended, which would lead to production and distribution ramping up more equitably in factories worldwide.

[Washington Post]

US President Biden set to announce major foreign policy shifts

President Joe Biden is expected to announce an end to all American support for offensive operations in Yemen, and will appoint an envoy to focus on the long-standing conflict.

The President “will talk about the United States playing a more active and engaged role” in ending the war, according to National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan.

Biden is also expected to announce his intention to increase the number of refugees admitted into the United States after years of historical lows under the Trump administration, and fulfill a campaign promise in doing so, two sources familiar with the plans told CNN.

The President is anticipated to use a speech not only to unveil policy changes, fulfill campaign promises and reverse Trump administration policies, but also to reassert US global leadership and realign foreign policy.

Biden has spoken by phone to more than a half-dozen foreign counterparts since taking office, while his Secretary of State Antony Blinken has been working the phones intensely to do outreach to his counterparts around the world.

A source close to both men has said that they are aware that there is serious repair work to be done after four years of the Trump administration left allies wary and bruised — and uncertain about how reliable an ally the US will be in future.

“There’s a real sense among allies is, ‘How long can we count on them?'” said this source. “We have to address that.”

[CNN]

UN warns 2021 shaping up to be a humanitarian catastrophe

Next year is shaping up to be a humanitarian catastrophe and rich countries must not trample poor countries in a “stampede for vaccines” to combat the coronavirus pandemic, top U.N. officials told the 193-member U.N. General Assembly on Friday. World Food Programme (WFP) chief David Beasley and World Health Organization (WHO) head Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus spoke during a special meeting on COVID-19.

The pandemic, measures taken by countries to try to stop its spread and the economic impact have fueled a 40% increase in the number of people needing humanitarian help, the United Nations said earlier this week. It has appealed for $35 billion in aid funding.

“2021 is literally going to be catastrophic based on what we’re seeing at this stage of the game,” said Beasley, adding that for a dozen countries, famine is “knocking on the door.” He said 2021 was likely to be “the worst humanitarian crisis year since the beginning of the United Nations” 75 years ago and “we’re not going to be able to fund everything … so we have to prioritize, as I say, the icebergs in front of the Titanic.”

U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres and his top officials have also called for COVID-19 vaccines to be made available to all and for rich countries to help developing countries combat and recover from the pandemic.

“We simply cannot accept a world in which the poor and marginalized are trampled by the rich and powerful in the stampede for vaccines,” Tedros told the General Assembly. “This is a global crisis and the solutions must be shared equitably as global public goods.”

[Reuters]

African asylum seekers in America

Cameroonian asylum seekers in the custody of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) have accused the agency’s officers and private prison guards of using torture, violence and threats to force them to sign documents facilitating their deportation. If true, the actions violate state, federal and international laws.

The refugees, as mentioned in a November 5 report from the Southern Poverty Law Center (SLPC) and Freedom for Immigrants, claim that ICE officers and private prison guards at detainment facilities in Louisiana and Mississippi physically forced their fingerprints as signatures upon documents that they didn’t understand. They further allege that guards and officers used threats of prolonged detainment or abuse and housed them alongside federal prisoners.

“All of the complainants are seeking asylum in the U.S. and face life-threatening consequences if deported to Cameroon,” the SLPC and Freedom for Immigrants wrote of the accusers in their report.

One non-English-speaking refugee said that ICE officials and private guards demanded that he sign an English document that he didn’t understand. He claims that an ICE supervisor seized him by the throat. He alleges that, as he hid under the table, the people present dragged him out, removed his pants and underwear, leaving his genitals exposed, and bent his left arm in a painful position while forcing his right thumbprint onto the documents in the presence of the 10 people present.

“They don’t treat us like immigrants. They treat us like prisoners,” the man is reported to have said in the report. “My country Cameroon is in a civil war,” he continued. “I don’t know why they force us to go back to a country that is not stable right now. People die every day.”

Another 49-year-old detainee said detainees feared for their life after watching this man being physically forced to sign a document. “This is what will happen to you if I don’t sign,” a female guard allegedly told the 49-year-old accuser.

Another detainee said, “The three (guards) pressed me to the wall as I cried. One held my hand, the other pressed against my chest, and the third held onto my other hand and pressed my fingerprint to the paper. She told me that this was my custody review document for deportation. I couldn’t sleep for days because of the pain I was in.” She alleged that guards at the facility strip-searched them and made them squat naked within sight of federal prisoners, to search them for weapons.

The SLPC and Freedom for Immigrants argue that the incidents, if true, violate Louisiana state and federal law, the international Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment, which the U.S. has ratified, as well as ICE’s own policies within its 2011 Performance Based National Standards.

The accusers all fled a four-year ongoing conflict in the central African nation of Cameroon, in which over 3,000 people have been killed and half a million displaced, according to the United Nations.

[Newsweek]

Asylum seekers seeking refuge in the United States

A former Colombian police officer had spent his career fighting rebels from the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia — also known as FARC — and now that he was retired, they promised to hunt him down.

The first death threat came in the form of a note slipped under the front door. “Now that you’re out of the police we will take care of the pending issues,” read the note. “We are returning to the area.” The paper bore the FARC logo. Over the next few months, FARC would send four more death threats to Edier de Jesus Rodriguez Bedoya.

Bedoya and his family lawfully entered the U.S. in May 2013, and applied for asylum. He told an immigration judge that FARC was systematically targeting retired Colombian police officers who had fought against them. He feared if he returned to Colombia, FARC would make good on its threats. But that wasn’t enough for the U.S. Department of Justice, whose Board of Immigration Appeals (BIA) rejected his asylum request.

This week, federal appeals court overturned that decision: “As we have repeatedly explained, a threat of death qualifies as past persecution,” wrote Judge Robert King for the unanimous three-judge panel. Although the written threats never explicitly said they would “kill” the officer, “their meaning is plain and unambiguous,” the court wrote.

It’s a rebuke of the BIA at a time when more and more claims are being denied. An analysis earlier this year by the nonpartisan human rights organization Human Rights First found far fewer people are being granted asylum than in the past. The current grant rate is 40 percent lower than the average during the Barack Obama and George W. Bush administrations, the group said.

Joe Biden has criticized the Trump Administration’s asylum policies, and has promised to increase the number of asylum officers, to take the burden off overwhelmed immigration courts.

This federal appeals court decision will help others who seek asylum in that jurisdiction, said immigration attorney Jim Hacking. “No aspect of legal immigration has been under greater assault than our asylum system,” he told NPR. “Hopefully, this case represents a solid first step to restoring sanity to the asylum process.”

[NPR]

Alarm over world’s hunger crisis

U.N. agencies have warned that some 250 million people in 20 countries are threatened with sharply spiking malnutrition or even famine in coming months.

The United Nations humanitarian office this week released $100 million in emergency funding to seven countries most at risk of famine—Yemen, Afghanistan, South Sudan, Ethiopia, Nigeria, Congo, and Burkina Faso.

But David Beasley, head of the World Food Program, says billions in new aid are needed. Without it, “we are going to have famines of biblical proportions in 2021,” he said in an Associated Press interview last week.

In multiple countries, the coronavirus pandemic has added a new burden on top of the impact of ongoing wars, pushing more people into poverty, unable to afford food. At the same time, international aid funding has fallen short, weakening a safety net that keeps people alive.

[AP]

Ethiopia’s multiple crises: War, COVID-19, even locusts

Ethiopia could hardly bear another emergency, even before a deadly conflict exploded in its northern Tigray region this month. Now, tens of thousands of refugees are fleeing into Sudan, and food and fuel are running desperately low in the sealed-off Tigray region, along with medical supplies and even resources to combat a major locust outbreak.

The United Nations warns of a “full-scale humanitarian crisis.” Food can’t get into the Tigray region of some 6 million people because of transport restrictions imposed after the fighting began. Humanitarian officials say long lines have appeared outside bread shops, prices have soared, and banks dispense only small amounts of cash.

“At this stage there is simply very little left, even if you have money,” according to the internal assessment by one humanitarian group contacted by The Associated Press.

[AP]

U.S. refugee admissions

President Joe Biden has promised to increase annual refugee admissions to 125,000.

Under the Trump administration, the number of refugees that would have been allowed into the United States in the coming year would have been at its lowest level in modern times, just 15,000 refugees.

According to a Trump administration White House memo, 5,000 of those 15,000 places were to go to refugees facing religious persecution, 4,000 reserved for refugees from Iraq who helped the United States, and 1,000 for refugees from El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras; leaving 5,000 open slots remaining, although refugees from Somalia, Syria, and Yemen are banned unless they can meet special humanitarian criteria.

[Foreign Policy]

545 migrant children separated from their parents by US government cannot be found

Lawyers appointed by a federal judge to identify migrant families who were separated by the Trump administration say that they have yet to track down the parents of 545 children and that about two-thirds of those parents were deported to Central America without their children, according to a filing Tuesday from the American Civil Liberties Union.

The Trump administration instituted a “zero tolerance” policy in 2018 that separated migrant children and parents at the southern U.S. border. The administration later confirmed that it had actually begun separating families in 2017 along some parts of the border under a pilot program.

A federal judge in California ordered that the parents be found. “It is critical to find out as much as possible about who was responsible for this horrific practice while not losing sight of the fact that hundreds of families have still not been found and remain separated,” said Lee Gelernt, deputy director of the ACLU Immigrants’ Rights Project. “The tragic reality is that hundreds of parents were deported to Central America without their children, who remain here with foster families or distant relatives.”

[NBC News]

UNRWA struggles and Palestinians across Middle East suffering unprecedented poverty

Across Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, Gaza and elsewhere, Palestinian refugees are suffering at new depths because of the pandemic, according to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency chief, Philippe Lazzarini. “There is despair and hopelessness,” he said in an interview.

“In Gaza, people are going through the garbage,” Lazzarini said, referring to reports from UNRWA staff in the enclave. Lazzarini, an experienced humanitarian, was appointed commissioner general of UNRWA in April, and leads it at a time of deep financial crisis for the agency. Add to that the threat of coronavirus ripping through refugee camps across the Middle East, home to many of the 5.6 million Palestinians supported by UNRWA. Meanwhile, Israel’s possible annexation of the occupied West Bank looms, threatening to stifle UNRWA’s work there.

Collected, diplomatic and with three decades of humanitarian experience behind him, the Swiss Lazzarini has been brought in to steady a rocking ship. “In such a highly unstable, volatile environment, we need a predictable UNRWA,” he said. “We need a predictable organization and predictable funding.”

With a typical yearly budget deficit of well over £100m, the organization of 30,000 staff is never more than four or five weeks away from running out of funds. The financial crisis exploded in 2018 when Donald Trump cut up to $300m of annual donations, months after he angrily complained that the US received “no appreciation or respect” from Palestinians for the aid.

[The Guardian]

World Food Programme awarded the Nobel Peace Prize

This year’s Nobel Peace Prize has been awarded to the World Food Programme (WFP) for its “efforts to combat hunger” and its “contribution to bettering conditions for peace in conflict-affected areas.”

The Norwegian Nobel Committee, which presented the award in Oslo on Friday, also described the organization as “a driving force in efforts to prevent the use of hunger as a weapon of war and conflict.”

Executive director David Beasley reacted with joy to the news of his organization’s Nobel win. He said the credit for the prize lay with the “WFP family. … They’re out there in the most difficult, complex places in the world, where there’s war, conflict, climate extremes … They deserve this award.”

He also said that the award was a “call to action,” urging people to “step up and step up now,” warning there are “possibilities of famines of biblical proportions,” and calling for billions of dollars in additional aid to save people around the globe.

“We’re looking for a vaccine for Covid; we have a vaccine for hunger — it’s called food, and we have the food. We need the money and the access to solve it,” he added.

[CNN]

Central American migrant caravans restart heading north

Members of a U.S.-bound migrant caravan from Honduras have been detained in Guatemala and deported before they could reach Mexico. Though their journey was cut short, the formation of a new caravan reveals that – as in 2018 and 2019 – Central Americans are still fleeing violence, hunger and climate change en masse.

The crisis at the U.S.-Mexico border also persists despite the coronavirus drawing media attention toward other matters. The result is a continuation of dehumanizing and dangerous conditions on the border, with less public scrutiny than ever.

Under international and domestic law, the United States must offer asylum to people with a “well-founded fear” of persecution based on their political beliefs, racial or ethnic background, religion or other special characteristics that make them a target for violence. But in April 2018, the Trump administration began “metering” asylum-seekers by requiring that they get on a waiting list for their initial appointment with U.S. officials. By August 2019, 25,000 people were on the list, mostly in Tijuana. By March 2020, over 65,000 asylum-seekers had been returned to Mexico, mostly through ports of entry in Texas.

Under pressure from the Trump administration, the Mexican government acceded to this policy, giving asylum-seekers the right to wait for their interview in Mexico. But shelters could not keep up with the demand, leaving thousands on the streets or in tent camps with no plumbing or electricity. Asylum-seekers outside the shelters rarely have access to social assistance or legal counsel, and are targeted by criminals and local police for extortion, mugging, kidnapping and assault.

In March 2020 the Department of Homeland Security closed the waiting lists for asylum interviews and suspended asylum hearings. Since then, U.S. Customs and Border Patrol has turned away more than 147,000 people. Most of the migrants, including non-Mexicans, are stuck in Mexico.

Yet hunger, sickness, violence and generally dangerous conditions in Central America mean many asylum-seekers will brave the obvious health risks at the U.S.-Mexico border rather than return home. And others, like the migrants in the new Honduran caravan, will continue to flee.

[The Conversation]

Greeks oppose continued sheltering of migrants

Thousands of migrants remained stranded without shelter on the island of Lesbos, sleeping on streets or in fields near Greece’s largest refugee camp after a devastating fire burned the facility to the ground. The Moria camp, long notorious for poor living conditions, had hosted more than 12,000 migrants, four times its stated capacity.

The Greek government said it had secured thousands of tents to provide temporary shelter for the migrants. But Athens’s plans face stiff resistance from local authorities and residents who fear the temporary shelters will turn into another permanent migrant camp.

“Moria is a monstrosity,” Dimitris Koursoubas, a senior official responsible for migration in the northern Aegean islands, told Reuters. “We want all the migrants out, for national reasons. Moria is over.”

[Reuters]

45 migrants die in Mediterranean shipwreck

At least 45 migrants died in an August 17 shipwreck off the coast of Libya, the deadliest such incident this year. The boat’s engine exploded off the coast of the city of Zuwarah.

More than 300 people have died trying to cross the Mediterranean Sea from Libya this year, according to the United Nations, but the real figure could be much higher.

On Wednesday, the U.N. high commissioner for refugees and the International Organization for Migration called for international search and rescue efforts to be stepped up. The European Union has shied away from launching its own rescue operation.

[Foreign Policy]

World leaders pledge $298 Million in aid to Lebanon

International leaders at a virtual summit Sunday pledged $298 million in aid to help Lebanon in the aftermath of the catastrophic blast that killed at least 158 people and devastated large swaths of Beirut.

In his opening remarks, French President Emmanuel Macron — co-host of the summit along with the U.N. — said “Lebanon’s future was at stake” and urged attendees “to come together in support of Lebanon and its people.”

Reuters quotes Macron’s office as saying the approximately $298 million would not be conditional on governmental reforms in Lebanon, but longer-term support would be. During Sunday’s summit, Macron urged Lebanon’s leaders to act in the best interest of the country, making apparent allusion to outrage at the country’s ruling class following the blast.

Unrest in Lebanon has been at a high following last week’s explosion at Beirut’s port. Anger over the blast has been directed at corruption and negligence by the country’s politicians. A day ahead of the virtual summit, massive demonstrations drew thousands into the streets of downtown Beirut, with protesters even assembling a mock gallows for cut-outs of prominent politicians.

Prior to the explosion — caused by 2,750 tons of ammonium nitrate stored at Beirut’s port — the country had already been undergoing a major economic collapse. Lebanon had also been struggling under the COVID-19 pandemic.

The European Commission — the executive body of the European Union — pledged some $35 million on top of an already promised $39 million. The United Kingdom also pledged $26 million during the summit.

Earlier on Sunday, the acting administrator for the U.S. Agency for International Development specified that the agency would pledge $15 million that would instead go through universities trusted by the United States, rather than the Lebanese government.

[NPR]

Red Cross warns of big post-Covid-19 migration

The coronavirus crisis could spark huge waves of fresh migration once borders reopen, the head of the Red Cross has warned. The head of the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC), Jagan Chapagain, said he was deeply concerned about the secondary effects of the pandemic, as border closures and Covid-19 restrictions have driven millions into poverty.

Many people are already faced with the choice of risking exposure to the novel coronavirus or going hungry, Chapagain said, warning that the desperation being generated could have far-reaching consequences.

“…Many people who are losing livelihoods, once the borders start opening, will feel compelled to move,” he said. “We should not be surprised if there is a massive impact on migration in the coming months and years.”

Chapagain also condemned efforts in some countries to secure vaccines for their own people first: “The virus crosses the border, so it is pretty short-sighted to think that I vaccinate my people but leave everybody else without vaccination, and we will still be safe,” he said.

The warnings came as the head of the World Health Organization, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus,strongly criticized the US secretary of state, Mike Pompeo’s comment that the WHO health agency chief having been bought by China. “The comments are untrue and unacceptable, and without any foundation for that matter,” Tedros said. “If there is one thing that really matters to us and which should matter to the entire international community, it’s saving lives. And WHO will not be distracted by these comments.”

[The Guardian]

Global surge in coronavirus cases is being fed by the developing world—and the United States

When the United States began shutting down this spring, a virus that emerged months earlier as a mysterious outbreak in a Chinese provincial capital had infected a total of fewer than 200,000 people worldwide.

So far this week, the planet has added an average of more than 200,000 cases every day.

The novel coronavirus has now crept into virtually every corner of the globe and is wreaking havoc in multiple major regions at once. But the impact is not being felt evenly. Poorer nations throughout Latin America, the Middle East, South Asia and Africa are bearing a growing share of the caseload, even as wealthier countries in Western Europe and East Asia enjoy a relative respite after having beaten back the worst effects through rigorously enforced lockdowns.

And then there’s the United States, which leads the world in new cases and, as with many nations that possess far fewer resources, has shown no sign of being able to regain control.

[Washington Post]

WHO chief: Lack of unity is a bigger threat than coronavirus

The COVID-19 pandemic is testing the world – and humanity is failing because of a lack of leadership and unity, the head of the World Health Organization declared in a passionate speech Thursday.

“How is it difficult for humans to unite and fight a common enemy that is killing people indiscriminately?” WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus asked at a briefing in Geneva, his voice rising with emotion. “Are we unable to distinguish or identify the common enemy?” he asked.

The world’s lack of solidarity — not the coronavirus — is the biggest threat we face, Tedros said, adding that divisions among countries and people give an advantage to a virus that has been holding the world hostage for months.

The WHO director-general spoke about the lack of leadership two days after President Trump began the formal process of pulling the U.S. out of the World Health Organization. That move is expected to become final next June.

Last April, Tedros had pleaded, “Please don’t politicize this virus.” Using a pandemic to score political points, he said, would only result in “many more body bags.”

In the months since, Tedros has repeatedly called for countries to fight the pandemic with unity and common cause. He has also criticized governments for failing to take measures to stop the spread of the virus.

[NPR]

Trump administration sends formal notification of US withdrawal from the WHO

The Trump administration has formally notified the United Nations that the United States is withdrawing from the World Health Organization, cutting off one of the organization’s biggest sources of aid amid a global pandemic that has infected more than 11.6 million people, killed more than a half a million, and upended life around the world.

“The United States’ notice of withdrawal, effective July 6, 2021, has been submitted to the UN Secretary-General, who is the depository for the W.H.O.,” said a senior administration official. By law the United States must give the organization a year’s notice if it intends to withdraw, and meet all the current financial obligations in the current year.

The biennial budget for the W.H.O. is about $6 billion, which comes from member countries around the world. In 2019, the last year for which figures were available, the United States contributed about $553 million.

[The New York Times]

What does a humanitarian crisis look like?

By the end of April this year in one of the countries hardest-hit by COVID-19, more than one in five households did not have enough to eat. Even prior to the pandemic, the situation had been dire with nearly 14 percent of the population dependent on food aid, one in every six children not having consistent access to food and nearly a million suffering from chronic malnutrition. The situation is today complicated not just by disease which has claimed tens of thousands of lives but also by tribally driven, political unrest and fears of bloodshed should the results of the fast-approaching November presidential elections be disputed. Following violent clashes between protesters and police as well as reports of looting, the military has been called out into the streets to preserve order. Journalists have been especially targeted by authorities in the crackdown and thousands of demonstrators across the country have been arrested. The political unrest also appears to have been inflamed by the fact that the pandemic has mostly devastated historically poor and marginalised communities including ethnic minorities and immigrants.

What does a humanitarian crisis look like? The Humanitarian Coalition, a grouping of Canadian aid agencies, defines a humanitarian emergency as “an event or series of events that represents a critical threat to the health, safety, security or wellbeing of a community or other large group of people, usually over a wide area”. By this definition, would you say the situation in the United States over the last few weeks described above qualifies?

It can be a bit disconcerting to think about how humanitarian crises around the world are reported on and the stereotypes embedded in the language that is used. When events happen in certain parts of the world, the media is apt to use particularly colorful descriptions and adjectives – for example, you rarely hear the United Kingdom described as an oil-rich, island nation presided over by an ageing monarch.

This is partly because many journalists still produce reports utilizing tropes that exoticise parts of the world and that are aimed at “home” audiences, but which will be published online and seen by people across the world which generates unnecessary dissonances and controversies.

But the descriptions also reflect a less innocent attribute of the current world order – that it is based on a … white Europe (and her diaspora in North America and Australia) at the top, and Black Africa at the bottom. The “global north” are the custodians of wealth and civilization and the “global south” is the site of poverty, natural maladies and crises. It is the humanitarian duty, so the story goes, of the enlightened West to help out her less fortunate neighbors who are cursed by incompetent and kleptocratic governance as well as a proclivity to have too many babies. This is what American author Teju Cole called the White Savior Industrial Complex.

This framing is evident in how the media reports other stories. For example, when authoritarian presidents in the developing countries appoint close relatives with no experience to senior government positions, use their offices to enrich themselves and their cronies, use police forces to clobber peaceful protesters and meddle with voter registration to prevent opposition supporters from casting their ballots, they are normally called out for what they are: Brutal, nepotistic, corrupt, power-hungry regimes. When it happens in the US, much softer language is employed. Elections, for example, may be interfered with or voting suppressed, but are not actually rigged or stolen. Nepotistic, corrupt and brutal are not constant adjectives that are welded to descriptions of the Trump administration (which is also almost never referred to using the evil-sounding descriptor, “regime”).

Portraying the world like this has real-life consequences. Using consistent language when reporting on humanitarian crises is critical to helping audiences recognize them wherever they occur in the world, and especially in their own backyards. Charity, after all, is meant to begin at home.

[Excerpt of an Opinion piece by Patrick Gathara] 

$7.7bn in humanitarian aid pledged for war-ravaged Syria

International donors have pledged $7.7bn in humanitarian aid for war-ravaged Syria at a virtual conference hosted by the United Nations and the European Union.

While less than the almost $10bn sought by UN agencies, the funding promises were higher than expected, given the economic shock of the coronavirus pandemic and shortfalls in other aid appeals, notably for Yemen earlier this month.

Pledges came from countries including Germany, which offered 1.58 billion euros ($1.78bn), in what Berlin said was the single biggest country donation, and Qatar, which promised $100m.

The money pledged will be used to finance food, medical aid and schooling for the millions of Syrians displaced or forced into exile – many of whom are living with food insecurity.

Now in its tenth year, the war in Syria has killed hundreds of thousands of people and displaced millions, sparking a major refugee exodus.

Yemen hanging on by a thread

More than five years of conflict have left Yemenis “hanging on by a thread, their economy in tatters” and their institutions “facing near-collapse”, the chief of the UN told a virtual pledging conference, calling for a demonstration of solidarity with some of the world’s poorest and most vulnerable. 

“Four people out of every five [Yemenis] — 24 million people in all — need lifesaving aid in what remains the world’s largest humanitarian crisis”, said UN Secretary-General António Guterres. “Two million Yemeni children are suffering from acute malnutrition, which could stunt their growth and affect them throughout their lives”. 

Moreover, since the start of the year, some 80,000 more people were forced from their homes, bringing the total displaced to almost four million. Cholera continues to threaten lives with 110,000 people contracting it so far this year; and recent floods have raised the risk of malaria and dengue fever.  And then there’s COVID 19.

On Tuesday, international donors promised $1.35 billion in humanitarian aid to Yemen, U.N. aid chief Mark Lowcock told a pledging conference to help the war-torn country.

Fighting intensified across Yemen in 2015 between a Saudi-led coalition backing the internationally-recognized Government, and the Houthi armed movement.

[UN News / Reuters]

Trump announces end of US relationship with World Health Organization

President Donald Trump announced on Friday that the United States will terminate its relationship with the World Health Organization (WHO).

“Because they have failed to make the requested and greatly needed reforms, we will be today terminating our relationship with the World Health Organization and redirecting those funds to other worldwide and deserving, urgent global public health needs,” Trump said.

The President had previously announced a temporary halt of funding to the WHO and sent a letter to the agency earlier in May saying that the US would permanently pull funding if the WHO did not “commit to major substantive improvements in the next 30 days.”

Health experts and world leaders have expressed concern over defunding the organization amid a pandemic. In April, more than 1,000 organizations and individuals including charities, medical experts and health care companies from around the world signed a letter urging the Trump administration to reverse course and maintain funding.

Trump’s decision to permanently terminate the US relationship with the WHO follows a years-long pattern of skepticism of world organizations, with the President claiming in nearly every circumstance that the US was being taken advantage of.

The President has also questioned US funding to the United Nations and the Northern Atlantic Treaty Organization, withdrawn from the Paris climate accords and repeatedly criticized the World Trade Organization.

[CNN]

For the world’s poor, the nutritional crisis of covid-19 will be even worse than the disease

Even though they may not have yet been directly ravaged by the virus, the world’s poorest people may yet suffer some of the pandemic’s greatest losses—in the form of growing hunger.

“There’s a huge covid impact which is economic, and that is drowning out the disease itself,” Mark Lowcock, the U.N. under-secretary-general for humanitarian affairs and emergency relief coordinator, said an interview last week.

The global economy is now expected to shrink this year by at least 3 percent, delivering a direct hit to the primary goods exports, remittances and tourism on which many poor countries subsist.

According to Lowcock, for the first time in 30 years, the percentage of the world’s population in extreme poverty—those living on less than $1.90 a day—will increase.

At the beginning of 2020, the United Nations reckoned that 130 million people would be at risk of starvation. “Now we think there will be 265 million,” Lowcock said. “We could have mass hunger and multiple famines.”

[Washington Post]

Travel restrictions hamper COVID-19 response

The COVID-19 pandemic has sparked an unprecedented shutdown of borders and airlines, with 90% of commercial passenger flights grounded, all of which is severely restricting the movement of essential medical personnel and supplies that are vital to save lives.

At least 90% of the world’s population, or 7·1 billion people, live in countries with restrictions on people arriving from other countries who are neither citizens nor residents, according to a Pew Research Center analysis.

The World Health Organization (WHO) gives the example of Africa where the delivery of equipment and personnel is vital for the COVID-19 response. “There are 47 countries not allowing any airlines to land and we need to support them with equipment, especially as we cannot send any experts to give technical support, for example, with contact tracing or analysis”, Michel Yao, head of WHO’s emergency operations in Africa, told The Lancet. “There is a big shortage of ventilators and also intensive care unit capacity. There are only about 3000 doctors who have intensive care unit expertise in all of Africa.”

“What people don’t realize is that passenger planes also carry a large bulk of the world’s cargo, and [so the major reduction in regular commercial flights] poses a huge problem for us”, Amer Daoudi, head of logistics for World Food Programme (WFP), told The Lancet. As a result of the restrictions, the WFP has an ambitious network of air bridges that will act like a humanitarian airline for fighting COVID-19 around the world, with WHO as the lead partner for sourcing medical supplies and personnel.

“WFP is committed to getting vital medical supplies to front lines and shielding medical workers as they save lives”, said David Beasley, WFP’s executive director. “Our air bridges need to be fully funded to do this and we stand ready to transport frontline health and humanitarian workers as well as medical cargo.”

Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) received exemption from the EU’s ban on exports of personal protective equipment (PPE), said Brice de le Vingne, head of MSF’s COVID-19 task force. MSF needs PPE for its own personnel who work around the world as well as for training on infection prevention and control measures it provides, for example, in Iraq.

Issues of deployment and repatriation of experts have also hit the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO), the WHO regional office for the Americas. “A recent example of this occurred when we deployed an expert to Guayaquil [Ecuador], which we were only able to do by hiring a charter flight from Colombia”, Jarbas Barbosa, assistant director of PAHO, told The Lancet. Restrictions on commercial flights had also caused widespread disruption to deliveries of medical supplies, he said. “Shipments, including PPE, lab supplies, etc, have to wait for space on cargo planes and as demand for these planes increases, there have been challenges.”

[The Lancet]

China steps up to the plate with $2B in funding

China will provide 2 billion U.S. dollars over two years to help with COVID-19 response and with economic and social development in affected countries, especially developing countries.

So announced  Chinese President Xi Jinping via video link on Monday at the opening of the 73rd session of the World Health Assembly.

Xi added that when a vaccine for the disease is available, it “will be made a global public good.” A number of Chinese companies are at the forefront of development and testing for a Covid-19 vaccine.

Xi also emphasized how China would work in particular to support Africa in virus prevention and control efforts.

Major implications for the world’s most vulnerable if America cuts funding to WHO

The head of emergencies at the World Health Organization, Michael Ryan, warned Wednesday that any end to sizable U.S. funding for the U.N. health agency will have a “major implication for delivering essential health services to the most vulnerable people in the world.”

“Replacing those lifesaving funds for front-line health services to some of the most difficult places in the world: we’ll obviously have to work with other partners to ensure that those funds can still flow,” Ryan said. “We trust that other donors will, if necessary, step in to fill that gap.”

WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said: “We have of course received the letter [from President Donald Trump] and we are looking into it.”

Trump has criticized the WHO for its early response to the outbreak and what he considers its excessive praise of China, where the outbreak began, at a time when his administration’s response in the U.S. has come under scrutiny.

Trump has already ordered a pause in U.S. funding, which totaled nearly $900 million to the WHO’s budget for 2018-19, according to information on the agency’s website. That represented one-fifth of its total $4.4 billion budget for those years.

[AP]

On President Trump’s letter to the World Health Organization

NPR spoke to global health experts in the U.S., Canada and Switzerland regarding some of the assertions in President Trump’s letter to the WHO:

An excerpt from Trump’s letter reads: “The International Health Regulations require countries to report the risk of a health emergency within 24 hours. But China did not inform the World Health Organization of Wuhan’s several cases of pneumonia, of unknown origin, until December 31, 2019, even though it likely had knowledge of these cases days or weeks earlier. Even now, China continues to … refusing to share accurate and timely data, viral samples and isolates, and by withholding vital information about the virus and its origins.“

Lawrence Gostin, a global health professor at Georgetown University Law Center, agrees China was not transparent early on in the outbreak. “China was anywhere from two to even up to six weeks’ late in reporting to the World Health Organization,” noting there’s evidence that Chinese health authorities knew the coronavirus was circulating in December.

Second, while China quickly shared the genome sequence for the coronavirus, “it has not been as forthcoming with sharing biological samples which are needed for epidemiology and also for vaccines and treatments,” Gostin adds.

But Gostin said blaming the WHO for China’s reporting delays and sample hoarding is misdirected. Of these charges by Trump, he said: “They’re valid critiques of China but not the World Health Organization.”

Trump’s letter also states: “The World Health Organization consistently ignored credible reports of the virus spreading in Wuhan in early December 2019 or even earlier, including reports from the Lancet medical journal. The World Health Organization failed to independently investigate credible reports that conflicted directly with the Chinese government’s official accounts, even those that came from sources within Wuhan itself.“

The Lancet, a respected medical journal, said of this statement: “This statement is factually incorrect.” The journal said it published its first papers on the novel coronavirus on Jan. 24. In two papers published that day, researchers from China and Hong Kong described the first 41 patients in Wuhan and provided scientific evidence for human-to-human transmission.

On Jan. 24, Trump tweeted: “China has been working very hard to contain the Coronavirus. The United States greatly appreciates their efforts and transparency. It will all work out well. In particular, on behalf of the American People, I want to thank President Xi!”

Yet in his letter to the WHO dated May 18, Trump writes: “The only way forward for the World Health Organization is if it can actually demonstrate independence from China. My Administration has already started discussions with you on how to reform the organization. But action is needed quickly.“

This demand comes with no specifics, global health observers said. “What exactly does the Trump administration want WHO to do?” asks Kelley Lee, a global health professor at Simon Fraser University. It’s not clear what “action” the U.S. is asking for, or how WHO could demonstrate “independence from China,” because no solutions are outlined in the letter.

“For the United States to blame the World Health Organization for its own months and months and months of inaction seems factually untrue and designed to divide the world at a moment when global solidarity is needed most,” said Benjamin Mason Meier, associate professor of global health policy at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. “It undercuts the World Health Organization‘s efforts to provide a collective response to this common threat [of the COVID-19 pandemic].”

[Read full NPR article]

Lancet urges “replace Trump and bolster the CDC”

Americans should oust President Trump from the White House and elect a leader who will support – rather than undermine – public health experts who are battling the COVID-19 pandemic, British medical journal The Lancet says in a newly published editorial.

The unsigned editorial sharply criticizes the Trump administration, saying it has marginalized the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to a degree that is dangerous for both the U.S. and the world. “Americans must put a president in the White House come January, 2021, who will understand that public health should not be guided by partisan politics,” the medical journal says.

“The Administration is obsessed with magic bullets — vaccines, new medicines, or a hope that the virus will simply disappear,” the journal states. “But only a steadfast reliance on basic public health principles, like test, trace, and isolate, will see the emergency brought to an end, and this requires an effective national public health agency.”

Seeking to lay a pile of critical failings at Trump’s feet, the editorial says a federal agency that was once “the gold standard for global disease detection and control” has devolved into an “ineffective and nominal adviser” on the U.S. response to a disease that poses a public health threat of historic proportions.

The Trump administration has “chipped away at the CDC’s capacity to combat infectious diseases” in a number of ways, The Lancet says, citing the reduction of CDC staff in China and the withdrawal of the last American CDC expert from the Chinese CDC campus last July – moves that left an “intelligence vacuum” when the novel coronavirus was detected in Hubei province in late 2019.

The Lancet is a weekly journal that has become one of the world’s leading medical periodicals since its founding in 1823.

[NPR]

Angelina Jolie Mother’s Day Tribute to refugee moms

On Mother’s Day 2020, Angelina Jolie recognized women with children who are refugees, acknowledging their marked strength and sacrifices.

Her essay, published by the New York Times on Saturday, spoke to the challenges faced by refugee mothers caring for families without economic resources or physical security.

“This Mother’s Day, I think of refugee mothers I have met, living in poverty and displacement,” wrote the actor, filmmaker and activist, who became a Special Envoy to the United Nations’ Refugee Agency (UNHCR) in 2012. “Every one began her journey of motherhood with a promise to do all she could to protect her child. To lay down her life if necessary. And if she is defeated and silenced, few things are more tragic.”

Continuing, Jolie shared lessons she has learned about motherhood from interactions with women living as refugees. “I’ve come to believe that a mother is the strongest person on earth,” she said, referencing the elevated incidence of gender-based violence against women in areas of conflict. As human rights organizations like UNHCR have noted, many women refugees have experienced abuse, with some seeking asylum specifically to escape it. According to a report from the Migration Policy Institute, it is not uncommon for women and girls pursuing refugee status to encounter continued threats to their physical safety along the way.

Jolie paid reverence to women refugees and others who have survived gender-based violence, calling particular attention to the prioritization of their children’s safety. “Women who are abused aren’t ‘weak women,’ they are often mothers. They are often trying to manage danger with no way out. They will stand between their child and harm. They will face isolation and criticism.

“But their only thought will be: ‘Hurt me, not my child. Insult and ignore me, not my child. Take away my food, but not my child’s,'” she wrote, adding, “to the mothers everywhere who feel helpless — yet who still give every last bit of energy, every last bite of food and the only blanket to their children — I honor you.”

[Newsweek]

Allies despair as Trump abandons America’s leadership role at a time of global crisis

The United States has scaled back its role on the world stage, taken actions that are undermining efforts to battle the coronavirus pandemic and left the international community without a traditional global leader, according to experts, diplomats and analysts.

The US — usually at the head of the table helping to coordinate in global crises — has declined to take a seat at virtual international meetings convened by the World Health Organization and the European Union to coordinate work on potentially lifesaving vaccines. Former world leaders warn that the Trump administration risks alienating allies by politicizing the deadly pandemic with its push to punish China and have other nations choose sides.

The administration’s decision to halt funding for the WHO, the world body best positioned to coordinate the global response to the raging pandemic, has appalled global health officials. Then on Friday, the US blocked a vote on a UN Security Council resolution that called for a global ceasefire aimed at collectively assisting a planet devastated by the outbreak. The US has similarly blocked expressions of global unity at G7 and G20 meetings due to anger about China and the WHO.

And where US presidents have in the past offered a steadying voice, observers from the Asia Pacific to Europe expressed incredulity, amusement and sadness at President Donald Trump’s briefings on the virus, saying they are deeply damaging to the US image abroad.

At a time when nearly 4 million people worldwide have been infected with the virus, diplomats say many countries are yearning for the firm US leadership they’ve seen at historic moments and in prior epidemics, citing President Barack Obama’s response to Ebola and President George W. Bush’s work on HIV/AIDS.

Thomas Gomart, director of the Paris-based French Institute of International Relations, said that Europe was watching Trump’s response to the pandemic in amazement, calling his behavior “stranger than fiction.” “He provides for us a very mixed balance of amusement and a sadness, which is just not what is expected from a US president.”

[CNN]

Coronavirus traps migrants in mid-route limbo

Thousands of desperate migrants are trapped in limbo and even at risk of death without food, water or shelter in scorching deserts and at sea, as governments close off borders and ports amid the coronavirus pandemic.

Migrants have been dropped by the truckload in the Sahara Desert or bused to Mexico’s desolate border with Guatemala and beyond.

They are drifting in the Mediterranean Sea after European and Libyan authorities declared their ports unsafe.

And about 100 Rohingya refugees from Myanmar are believed to have died in the Bay of Bengal, as country after country pushes them back out to sea.

[AP]

WHO’s members owe it more than $470 million

Two countries account for over half the unpaid membership dues at the World Health Organization: As of 31 March, the United States owed $196 million, while China’s outstanding bill stood at $57 million. 

They’re not alone: 151 members collectively owed $473 million in unpaid dues – about 20 percent of the WHO’s annual budget – and a quarter of it was more than a year late.

But the size of the US and Chinese debts highlight the WHO’s reliance on its largest members.

The WHO’s coffers are nevertheless filling up with extra funding for COVID-19 – it is set to comfortably meet a funding target of $450 million in additional earmarked funds – the pandemic, criticism from the White House, and geo-strategic rivalries have all generated fresh interest in the financing of the global health body. 

The WHO relies on two types of funding: about 20 percent comes from membership dues or “assessed contributions” from its member countries. The rest comes as voluntary payments from member countries, foundations, and the private sector. (Assessed funding has the advantage, for the WHO’s management, of not being tied to specific projects, unlike funds for polio vaccination, Ebola control, or COVID-19.)

The United States is the largest contributor to the WHO’s core budget ($115 million a year). But it pays much more – an average of $450 million per year, according to a WHO fact sheet – as the largest voluntary contributor as well. Prior to suspending its funding for the WHO in reaction to what it alleges as weaknesses in the UN agency’s COVID-19 response, … the United States had paid $316 million in voluntary funding in 2020 before the freeze.

Countries that don’t pay eventually lose the right to vote in the WHO’s assembly. In 2019, Central African Republic, Comoros, Guinea-Bissau, South Sudan, The Gambia, Ukraine, and Venezuela were all barred from voting. A state can get back its voting privileges by agreeing to a gradual repayment plan, one example being Somalia whose annual fee is set at the minimum rate: $4,790.

The United States owes 1.7 times its annual obligatory contributions, not enough to pose a risk to its voting rights in 2020.

[The New Humanitarian]

Coronavirus could kill more than 3 million people in vulnerable and poor countries

The International Rescue Committee, a humanitarian non-governmental organization, said Tuesday in a new report:

• The coronavirus could infect up to one billion people and kill 3.2 million people in 34 “crisis-affected countries” as the pandemic exacerbates humanitarian crises.
• “These numbers should serve as a wake-up call: the full, devastating and disproportionate weight of this pandemic has yet to be felt in the world’s most fragile and war-torn countries,” CEO David Miliband said.
• The IRC warned that some of the countries included, such as Bangladesh, host the largest and most densely populated refugee camps in the world, where the virus could spread even more rapidly. 

“While COVID-19 is a novel virus and much is still unknown, it is clear that its impact in these settings will be different than in the wealthier countries first hit by the pandemic,” the report says.

[Read full CNBC article]

Cuts in American aid deepens misery for Yemen

Dozens of U.N. programs that assist millions of ­impoverished Yemenis could be shut down by the end of the month largely because of major cuts in U.S. aid, humanitarian officials warn, just as the country has seen its first confirmed case of the novel coronavirus.

The warnings come after the Trump administration canceled tens of millions of dollars in humanitarian aid last month after accusing Yemen’s Houthi rebels, who are aligned with Iran, of diverting and disrupting the aid. President Trump then followed that up by withdrawing funding for the World Health Organization, which plays an outsize role in Yemen.

Critics say the U.S. funding cuts are politically motivated and reflect American animosity toward Iran. International aid groups are now urging the administration to restore the funding for Yemen. They argue that the United States has a moral responsibility to help the country because U.S.-supplied fighter jets, bombs and other weapons have been used by the Saudi-led military coalition in Yemen to destroy scores of hospitals, clinics and other civilian facilities.

After more than five years of war, Yemen has earned the label of the world’s most severe humanitarian crisis with about 80 percent of the population now relying on aid. The war has shattered the health infrastructure. The immune systems of millions of Yemenis have been weakened by widespread hunger and malnutrition, as well as diseases such as cholera, dengue and diphtheria.

“Epidemiologists warn that covid-19 in Yemen could spread faster, more widely and with deadlier consequences than in many other countries,” Mark Lowcock, the United Nations’ top official for humanitarian affairs and emergency relief, told the Security Council. “We are, in other words, running out of time.”

[The Washington Post]

Drones delivering COVID-19 tests in Ghana

Ghana is the first nation in the world to use drone technology to test for COVID-19, paving the way for drone technology to play a new role in the fight against COVID-19.

Ghana has one of the highest testing rates in Africa, despite having thousands of far-flung rural clinics, and only two places in the entire country where the swabs can be analyzed. Until last week, all the tests had to be transported to the laboratories by road, a journey that can take up to six hours. Some remote clinics, loath to dispatch an ambulance for just one test, would wait a few days in order to collect enough samples to make the trip worthwhile, prolonging patients’ anxiety and delaying the contact tracing protocols necessary to stop the virus’s spread. Now, the whole round-trip journey takes under 30 minutes.

Now, Zipline, an American health care logistics company, is flying samples from difficult-to-reach rural areas into the capital with its fleet of red and white drones. Once collected, either in local clinics or by health workers out in the field, the test swabs are packaged with ice in specially designed bio-safe containers, fitted with a parachute, and placed into the bellies of the drones. The zips, as they are called, won’t actually land at the laboratories. Instead they swoop down to release their payloads at designated drop zones, where attendants, alerted to the pending arrival via SMS, are waiting to collect them. The whole round-trip journey, which could take up most of a day by car, takes under 30 minutes.

Zipline’s fleet in Ghana is equipped to transport up to 15,000 tests a day, in 300 flights, from their two collection points. The company has two other drone ports that could be brought online as well. Further down the line it could start delivering routine medications as well, keeping vulnerable patients with chronic conditions away from hospitals where they risk exposure to the virus.

[TIME]

Coronavirus pandemic will cause global famines of ‘biblical proportions,’ UN warns

The world is facing multiple famines of “biblical proportions” in just a matter of months, the UN has said, warning that the coronavirus pandemic will push an additional 130 million people to the brink of starvation.

Famines could take hold in “about three dozen countries” in a worst-case scenario, David Beasley the executive director of the World Food Programme (WFP) said in a stark address. The agency identified 55 countries most at risk of being plunged into famine in its annual report on food crises, released this week, warning that their fragile healthcare systems will be unable to cope with the impact of the virus.

Ten countries were singled out as particularly at-risk, after housing the worst food crises last year; Yemen, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Afghanistan, Venezuela, Ethiopia, South Sudan, Sudan, Syria, Nigeria and Haiti.

Even before the outbreak of the coronavirus, food supplies in some of the most vulnerable regions in the world were being directly affected by impacts such as crop failures and locust swarms. Exceptional drought followed by extremely heavy rainfall markedly decreased the seasonal crop yield in the Horn of Africa during 2019. These irregular weather and climate patterns also contributed to the worst desert locust invasion in 25 years, which further threatened the crop supply in the region.

[CNN]

10 African countries have no ventilators. And that’s only part of the problem.

South Sudan, a nation of 11 million, has more vice presidents (five) than ventilators (four).

The Central African Republic has three ventilators for its five million people.

In Liberia, which is similar in size, there are six working machines–and one of them sits behind the gates of the United States Embassy.

In all, fewer than 2,000 working ventilators have to serve hundreds of millions of people in public hospitals across 41 African countries, the World Health Organization says, compared with more than 170,000 in the United States.

Ten countries in Africa have no ventilators at all.

Many experts are worried about chronic shortages of much more basic supplies needed to slow the spread of the disease and treat the sick on the continent – things like masks, oxygen and, even more fundamentally, soap and water. Clean running water and soap are in such short supply that only 15 percent of sub-Saharan Africans had access to basic hand-washing facilities in 2015, according to the United Nations.

In Liberia, it is even worse – 97 percent of homes did not have clean water and soap in 2017, the U.N. says.

“The things that people need are simple things,” said Kalipso Chalkidou, the director of global health policy at the Center for Global Development, a research group. “Not high-tech things.”

[New York Times]

WHO warns Africa could be next COVID-19 epicenter

Africa could become the next epicenter of the coronavirus outbreak, the World Health Organization (WHO) has warned. UN officials also say it is likely the pandemic will kill at least 300,000 people in Africa and push nearly 30 million into poverty.

More than a third of Africa’s population lacks access to adequate water supplies and nearly 60% of urban dwellers live in overcrowded slums – conditions where the virus could thrive.

The fragile health infrastructure in the continent means that it will be doubly strained by an increasing number of new Covid-19 infections. There are only around five intensive care beds available for every one million people in most African countries, compared with around 4,000 beds for every million people in Europe. The WHO has also highlighted that the continent lacks ventilators to deal with a pandemic.

Dr Moeti told BBC Global Health correspondent Tulip Mazumdar that international travel played a part. “If you look at the proportion of people who travel, Africa has fewer people who are traveling internationally,” she said. But now that the virus is in within Africa, she says that her organization is acting under the assumption that it will spread just as quickly as elsewhere.

The WHO has witnessed the virus spreading from big cities to “the hinterland” in South Africa, Nigeria, Ivory Coast, Cameroon and Ghana, Dr Moeti said.

[BBC]

Funding of the World Health Organization WHO

COVID-19 funding and money for much of the WHO’s work comes from voluntary contributions from states, international organizations, and the private sector.

Its core budget, however, is raised from membership dues. The United States has not paid its dues to the organization for 2020, nor has it paid most of 2019’s bill. The United States paid 12.5 of the organization’s voluntary revenue in 2018. This is funding donors can choose to withhold.

Mandatory – or “assessed’ – contributions to the WHO, on the other hand, are part of a member’s obligations and cannot be indefinitely skipped. Percentages are calculated and assigned to members proportional to their national wealth. The US share is 22 percent of the annual core budget. 

Ahead of the US funding boycott, the WHO already had commitments amounting to 94 percent of its $450 million COVID-19 funding target for this year. As of 9 April, it had received $365 million (about four percent of which was from the United States), and recorded pledges for a further $61 million, including an unknown US amount. 

So Trump’s funding cut announcement would appear to have a limited impact on the WHO’s COVID-19 response in 2020, with Kuwait, Japan, and the European Commission being the largest donors. The US contribution, recorded at $14 million, puts it in seventh place as a country donor.

While the WHO should be able to weather a US funding freeze for COVID-19, its long term prospects may be of greater concern.

[The New Humanitarian]

Trump halts US funding to World Health Organization WHO

President Donald Trump announced Tuesday he is halting funding to the World Health Organization while a review is conducted. Trump said the review would cover the WHO’s “role in severely mismanaging and covering up the spread of coronavirus.”

Trump’s announcement comes in the middle of the worst global pandemic in decades and as he angrily defends his own handling of the outbreak in the United States. Amid swirling questions about whether he downplayed the crisis or ignored warnings from members of his administration about its potential severity, Trump has sought to assign blame elsewhere, including at the WHO and in the news media.

The US funds $400 million to $500 million to the WHO each year, Trump said, noting that China “contributes roughly $40 million.”

His decision to withdraw funding from the WHO follows a pattern of skepticism of world organizations that began well before the coronavirus pandemic. Trump has questioned US funding to the United Nations, withdrawn from global climate agreements and lambasted the World Trade Organization — claiming all were ripping off the United States.

Democratic Sen. Chris Murphy of Connecticut, who serves on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said earlier Tuesday that while the WHO and China “made mistakes,” Trump is also looking to deflect blame from his own administration. “Right now, there is a very coordinated effort amongst the White House and their allies to try to find scapegoats for the fatal mistakes that the President made during the early stages of this virus,” he said. Murphy added: “It is just wildly ironic that the President and his allies are now criticizing China or the WHO for being soft on China when it was in fact the President who was the chief apologist for China during the early stages of this crisis.”

Just days before Trump instituted his ban on travelers from China, he also was praising the country. On January 24, Trump tweeted: “China has been working very hard to contain the Coronavirus. The United States greatly appreciates their efforts and transparency. It will all work out well. In particular, on behalf of the American People, I want to thank President Xi!”

Tuesday’s announcement about the halting of funding came days after a major US ally — the United Kingdom — announced an additional £65 million contribution to the WHO.

[CNN]

The poor losing vital remittance payments

Osigan Caseres lost her job as a maid and no longer sends home $300 each month to her daughters in the Philippines to buy food for her eight grandchildren.

In Somalia, Asha Mohamed Ahmed no longer receives the $400 her daughter used to provide from working at a Minneapolis hotel to cover the family’s monthly bills. And in Mexico, Rosy worries how she will afford to buy medicine for her diabetic mother without the money her brother used to send before being furloughed at an Idaho ranch.

They are all economic victims of the novel coronavirus. As hundreds of millions of people around the world grapple with job losses, business closures and lockdowns, many are no longer able to help poorer relatives in developing nations whose lives can hinge on these payments. Billions of dollars in remittances from wealthier nations to poorer ones may be vanishing, threatening the welfare of millions of families globally and the health of their countries in the months ahead, economists say.

[The Washington Post]

Virus could push half a billion people into poverty

The economic fallout from coronavirus could increase global poverty by up to half a billion, Oxfam has warned. “The economic crisis is potentially going to be even more severe than the health crisis,” said their report. It estimates a 400-600 million rise in poverty numbers globally.

Using research by the Australian National University (ANU) and Kings College, London, the charity says it will be the first time poverty has risen globally in 30 years.

The report says the potential impact of the virus poses a real challenge to the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal of ending poverty by 2030. By the time the pandemic is over, half of the world’s population of 7.8 billion people could be living in poverty. About 40% of the new poor could be concentrated in East Asia and the Pacific, with about one third in both Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia.

Danny Sriskandarajah, Oxfam GB’s chief executive, said: “For billions of workers in poor countries who were already scraping by, there are no safety nets such as sick pay or government assistance.

“Next week’s World Bank and G20 meetings are an important opportunity for world leaders to collaborate on a joint economic rescue package to protect the most vulnerable people.”

Earlier this week, more than 100 global organizations called for debt payments to be waived this year for developing countries, which would free up $25bn (£20bn) in cash to support their economies.

[BBC]

Putin sending medical supplies to help U.S. fight coronavirus

Russia is sending the United States medical equipment to help fight the coronavirus outbreak, the Interfax news agency reported on Tuesday, citing the Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov.

President Vladimir Putin made the proposal in a phone conversation with President Donald Trump on Monday.

“Trump gratefully accepted this humanitarian aid,” Interfax quoted Peskov as saying. A Russian plane with medical and protective equipment may leave for the United States on Tuesday, he added.

Confirmed U.S. cases have surged to nearly 180,000 with 16,000 new positive tests reported on Tuesday. For a second day in a row, the United States recorded more than 500 new deaths as the total climbed to nearly 3,600, according to a Reuters tally of officially reported data.

The state of relations between Moscow and Washington has been complicated in recent years due to U.S. sanctions on some of Russian companies in response to Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014 and Russian support for separatists in eastern Ukraine, among other strains.

“It is important to note that when offering assistance to the U.S. colleagues, the president (Putin) assumes that when U.S. manufacturers of medical equipment and materials gain momentum, they will also be able to reciprocate if necessary,” he added.

He also said that Russia and China cooperated in a similar way now as “at a time when the current situation affects everyone without exception …, there is no alternative to working together in a spirit of partnership and mutual assistance”.

[Reuters]

The capacity for innovation in Africa and the Indian Subcontinent

South Africa put its 57 million citizens into lockdown starting Thursday evening as cases there grew to 709 — the highest of any nation on that continent. South Africa’s President Cyril Ramaphosa deployed police and the military to enforce the measure.

The West African nation of Senegal — which was among the countries hit by the 2014 Ebola virus outbreak — also declared a state of emergency earlier this week and imposed a curfew after more than 80 cases of the coronavirus were confirmed.

“The rapid evolution of COVID-19 in Africa is deeply worrisome,” Dr. Matshidiso Moeti, the World Health Organization‘s regional director for Africa, said. “We can still change the course of this pandemic,” she added, but said that “governments must draw on all their resources and capabilities and strengthen their response.”

“The need of the hour as countries like India … and now parts of Africa enter a lockdown phase is to consider these kinds of scenarios and maybe build temporary quarantine facilities for those living in shantytowns,” said Dr. Priya Balasubramaniam, a senior public health scientist for the Public Health Foundation of India.

There is a silver lining to the emergency, Balasubramaniam added. How these countries ultimately cope with the pandemic could be a lesson to the rest of the world. Already, many low-income countries experiment using technology and community health workers to improve access to health care where there had been none.

“There is a lot of capacity for innovation in these countries,” she said.

[Reuters/NBC News]

Lockdowns are fine for the rich, but millions are too poor to shelter from coronavirus

Lockdowns are being championed as a way to help contain the coronavirus, but experts warn this will not be easily achieved in developing countries, where crowded cities and slums could see the virus spread “like fire.”

Questions over how the world’s poorest will survive the coronavirus pandemic surged Wednesday, a day after India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced a 21-day lockdown of its population of 1.3 billion people. Around 50 million Indians are thought to be living in extreme poverty.

“It’s a disease that makes disparity seem more obvious than any other,” Dr. Angela Chaudhuri, director of the nonprofit Swasti Health Catalyst, which works in slums and rural poor communities across India, told NBC News in a telephone interview. “We’re saying wash your hands with soap and water or sanitizers and keep at a distance — none of these are available in the slums.” “If there is just one case, it’s going to be a flash fire,” Chaudhuri said, but the economic and social repercussions for the poor will be severe in a nation of stark wealth disparities.

It is estimated that with the clampdown in India, around a third of the world’s population is living under some form of lockdown. But across the world, for millions living in shantytowns with access to only the most basic sanitation, there is no way to self-isolate.

“The need of the hour as countries like India, the Philippines and now parts of Africa enter a lockdown phase is to consider these kinds of scenarios and maybe build temporary quarantine facilities for those living in shantytowns,” said Dr. Priya Balasubramaniam, a senior public health scientist for the Public Health Foundation of India.

[Reuters/NBC News]

What keeps humanitarian aid workers up at night

With borders now closing around the world and health services coming under huge strain as COVID-19 spreads, the humanitarian sector is scrambling to adapt to new challenges while continuing to provide assistance in ongoing emergencies and disasters.

UN Secretary-General António Guterres has emphasized that “humanitarian needs must not be sacrificed.” But many worry this is exactly what might happen, as attention and resources could shift away from some of the world’s most vulnerable populations, even as COVID-19 presents a new threat to them.

Top of mind for most organizations is how to carry on deploying staff to keep existing operations going, as well as making sure the aid itself could still be made accessible to those who need it.

 ICRC President Peter Maurer said the new travel bans would hurt. Around half of the Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) staff coming from abroad to work on international projects are from Europe, where most countries have put checks on foreign travel due to the pandemic.

Christos Christou, the president of MSF, said he was now worried he wouldn’t be able to deploy enough specialist medical staff to the places where they are needed. “Our human resources have been trapped in their own countries,” he said. “We need these people to go back to the field.”

Even within the EU, migrant centres in places like Greece are filled beyond capacity. “The idea of self-isolation is a luxury,” explained Christou, adding that, in addition to the Greek camps, he had “extreme concerns” about the Rohingya refugees in Cox’s Bazar in Bangladesh, and those currently in the Syrian frontline region of Idlib.

Meanwhile, Matthias Schmale, UNWRA’s operations director in Gaza, expressed his frustration that political paralysis and geopolitical preoccupations among donor countries were already leading to a reduction in funds that is affecting those most in need, particularly in the Middle East. “Even before corona, Gaza was collapsing,” Schmale said, complaining that while the humanitarian situation in the Palestinian territory is becoming increasingly dire, “no one talks about it anymore”.

Carola Rackete, a German ship captain arrested in Italy in June 2019 for her work for the Mediterranean rescue organization Sea-Watch, said she feared that border closures may feed growing nationalism, to the detriment of poor and vulnerable migrants.

[The New Humanitarian]

An aid worker’s letter from coronavirus-stricken Italy

Two weeks ago, I flew from one crisis to another, in my pajama top, praying the plane would take off and I would make it to my family in Italy. (I work for an aid agency that supports Libya, where fighting is forcing people to flee their homes, and more and more people rely on international assistance to get by.)

I wanted to get to my aunt, the fierce and infinitely gentle woman who raised me, and who still smacks sense into me when I do something silly (which is often). She is 94 years old. I don’t need to tell you what that means in terms of COVID-19; how vulnerable that makes her. I made it to Rome but couldn’t get close for fear of exposing her; but it was a relief to see that she was there, and she was alright, and she was asking why I was wearing my pajama top. The world was falling apart around me, but I was home.

But not everyone gets to be with their loved ones. What about the people who never get to have a home, who live day to day fleeing conflict or poverty?

I see, even in an outing to buy food, people being either incredibly kind or completely dismissive of others.

I understand why some people are turning inwards right now. At first, my aunt’s age made me feel the same, and vulnerability almost always brings along its friend: fear. There’s an urge to stop thinking clearly, and just protect what you fear losing the most.

But I get to choose how I respond right now, and so does the rest of the world. We can choose whether we disregard the pleas… whether we send medical supplies and assistance where they are needed; whether we want to be the kind of society that shields its vulnerable and embraces that we are all, truly, inextricably linked; whether this will make us kinder.

Borders mean nothing to this virus, so perhaps it’s time that we too define ourselves by them less. We can push past that initial urge to protect only that which immediately surrounds us, and apply that feeling outwards so that this renewed sense of identity we’re feeling now encompasses everyone. As a global community, when we eventually see the back of COVID-19, will we remember what it was like to feel unwanted? Will it change how we treat each other, first from day to day, and then from country to country?

[The New Humanitarian]

African countries confirm coronavirus cases as Jack Ma pledges aid

More African nations confirmed their first cases of the coronavirus and shut borders amid fears of the disease’s impact on fragile health systems, as Chinese billionaire and Alibaba co-founder Jack Ma pledged to donate to the continent.

Thirty African countries – more than half the continent – are now treating nearly 400 patients with coronavirus, after Tanzania, Liberia, Benin and Somalia said they registered their first cases. Health experts are concerned the continent’s often dilapidated health infrastructure will struggle to cope as cases mount.

“We cannot ignore the potential risk to Africa and assume this continent of 1.3 billion people will blissfully escape the crisis. The world cannot afford the unthinkable consequences of a COV-19 pandemic in Africa,” Ma’s foundation said in a statement.

The foundation will send 1.1 million testing kits, 6 million masks and 60,000 protective suits and face shields to Ethiopia for distribution to Africa’s 54 nations, it said.

Many African nations, including some without reported cases, have ordered tougher control measures, including bans on public gatherings, halting flights and closing schools and universities.

[Reuters]

Poor nations may see higher coronavirus deaths, warns UN official

Governments and health systems in wealthy nations are struggling to cope with the coronavirus pandemic, suggesting the poorest countries may be hit far harder if the virus gains a foothold there, a top U.N. official warned.

Mami Mizutori, head of the U.N. Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNDRR), said even in developed countries, health services were under stress and did not have enough equipment to treat people in need as the numbers infected rose rapidly.

“It is easily imaginable that if this becomes the case in a country where the health system is not as sophisticated, then that could lead to possibly higher mortality,” she told the Thomson Reuters Foundation from Geneva.

People living in poverty and lacking health insurance or secure employment cannot afford to be sick or miss work, she said, pointing to the virus as an “equity issue”.

If coronavirus expanded in poor countries, the economic impact on individuals would likely be greater as economic losses would be a bigger share of gross domestic product, she added.

The slower spread of the virus to Africa, however, may have bought the continent valuable time to take preventive measures. Some African countries, like Rwanda and Uganda, are implementing strict controls at airports as well as simple hygiene practices such as setting up public sinks to wash hands.

[Reuters]

Canada’s new humanitarian and refugee envoy has a background in Myanmar

Bob Rae, who spent seven months in 2017 and 2018 examining the forces that drove over 600,000 Rohingya from their homes in Myanmar to refugee camps in neighboring Bangladesh, is being named Canada’s special envoy for humanitarian and refugee issues.

In 2017, Rae was appointed as a special envoy to Myanmar. In April 2018, Rae delivered a report that made 17 recommendations for Canada’s response, including ramping up humanitarian aid and welcoming more refugees from the region. Rae’s report was welcomed by Amnesty International, but the Trudeau government did not meet his call for $600 million over four years to help hundreds of thousands of Rohingya Muslims affected by the violence.

However, in September 2018, Canada’s House of Commons voted to unanimously declare the actions of the Myanmar military against the Rohingya Muslims a genocide. Two weeks later, Parliament formally stripped Myarmar’s civilian leader, Nobel Prize winnter,Aung San Suu Kyi, of her honorary Canadian citizenship for her refusal to condemn Myanmar’s military or to take action to stop atrocities–including rape and murder–committed against the Rohingya. She became the first person ever to be stripped of honorary Canadian citizenship.

The announcement of Rae’s latest appointment comes as the Trudeau government has provided financing for police training and surveillance equipment to at least seven Southeast Asian countries with histories of human rights violations — Myanmar, Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Nepal, Sri Lanka and Thailand — to intercept irregular migrants and smugglers.

[RCI]

“Zero hunger” remains a distant reality

“Realizing the right to food requires more than just eliminating hunger and malnutrition; it also requires guaranteeing access to nutritious, adequate food and promoting the survival of smallholder farmers and rural communities,” said Hilal Elver, the UN’s Special Rapporteur on the right to food.

Ms. Elver recommended a holistic, coordinated and rights-based approach to the elimination of hunger and malnutrition with increased participation and involvement of those most affected. “We need robust protections for human rights defenders and members of the scientific community who are facing increased attacks in the face of emerging nationalism, populism and predatory global capitalism.”

In her report, the expert notes that countries must avoid the adoption of economic policies that deregulate food markets, as well as austerity measures that impose hardships on vulnerable communities and accentuate inequality. “These policies can lead to economic, social and political instability,” she said.

During the six years of her mandate, the Special Rapporteur witnessed increased hunger worldwide and sought to draw particular attention to the fate of populations living on the brink of starvation that now threatens 113 million people. Severe conflicts and emergency situations, including those linked to geopolitical tensions and climate change, are exacerbating these conditions.

[UN HRC]

The coronavirus hubs driving cross-border infections

For two months, the world watched as efforts to contain the coronavirus focused on China. But new outbreak epicentres thousands of miles away have been driving cross-border infections since mid-February – including to a handful of countries already hit with humanitarian crises.

Over the last two weeks, more than three dozen countries or territories have reported new coronavirus infections linked to people travelling from two hubs: Italy or Iran. Outbreaks in both countries have surged. A growing list stretches from European and Middle East nations to as far away as New Zealand, the Caribbean, and South America.

Cases have also risen dramatically in South Korea, but cross-border infections have not been widely reported.

In some countries – like France, Germany, and Malaysia – the new infections add to an existing caseload traced to patients who travelled in Asia. Other nations are seeing cases emerge for the first time.

The quality of health systems varies greatly from country to country, but some are especially unprepared to respond to epidemics in part due to long distances and poor infrastructure, according to the Global Health Security Index published last year.

Many countries have ratcheted up border closures or travel restrictions, but the WHO says this has delayed but not prevented infections. Public health experts say border closures can exacerbate outbreaks by driving migration underground – away from public health systems.

The WHO has launched a $675 million response plan aimed at helping countries with weaker health systems prepare for outbreaks. As of Monday, only $2.5 million had been received (though some $31 million was also pledged), according to the WHO. The UN’s humanitarian aid arm, OCHA, said it would dip into its Central Emergency Response Fund – more often used to kickstart disaster relief – to help contain the virus.

[The New Humanitarian]

How community banking empowers women in Tanzania

In Tanzania, many urban and rural areas still function under traditional customs that put women at a social and economic disadvantage. Women often lack economic freedom and access to decision-making opportunities at all levels. They continue to experience poverty and illiteracy at higher rates than men and are more likely to be subjected to gender-based violence. Women also tend to have less access than men to property ownership, credit, training, and employment. Fortunately, those discriminatory traditions, norms, and stereotypes are being challenged. Below, Sijali Kipuli from Somanga Village in Tanzania shows us how a social system in savings and credits can economically liberate the poorest people and empower women.

I was born in 1966 in the village of Nyamwage, in Rufiji Delta. My parents divorced when I was young, so my mother and I moved in with my grandparents. With little education, we were poor and felt helpless. But we had to persist and began farming rice, cashew nuts, cassava, maize, millet, and legumes.

Between 1983 and 2003, I married twice and had five children. I moved to a fishing village, where I rented a room and started a business as a food vendor selling chicken soup, rice and ugali—a stiff porridge made from maize or cassava flour. This business enabled me to buy a piece of land where I built my first house.

In 2006, World Wildlife Fund (WWF) came to our village to introduce Village Community Banking—a way for people to get loans without needing conventional banks that often make such an exercise difficult in Tanzania. Here’s how it works: a group of community members form one by agreeing to deposit a certain amount of money into a group savings fund. Members can then request loans from the group for income-generating activities and educational purposes. These community banks can also provide funds for healthcare and social concerns.

I attended WWF’s meeting on community banking with many other women and just a few days later, we formed four village banking groups of 30 people each. I received training on savings and loan skills, small business skills, making profits, finding markets, separating personal and business expenditures, and maintaining capital. After a year and a half, my group ended the first savings and loaning cycle, and we divided our money. With my share, I managed to build my first modern house with six rooms, concrete bricks, and iron sheet.

In 2012, Aga Khan Foundation, which brings together human, financial, and technical resources to address some of the challenges faced by the poorest and most marginalized communities in the world, came to Kilwa, Tanzania, to introduce a similar project. They were looking for residents who had worked with village community banks to train others. With the experience gained from WWF, I was selected as a community-based trainer, working in four wards and 16 villages to form and organize 84 banking groups. In 2013, WWF expanded its activities to two new areas, and I helped to form an additional 76 groups and became a leader of other community-based trainers for WWF projects.

Since I joined a village community bank, I have managed to shift my food vending business to my eldest daughter for her to manage. The other two girls are still in school. In 2019, I bought a big farm for planting simsim, a marketable crop for Indian communities. And I still continue as a trainer to teach women to work hard to support their family’s education, health, and other developments. I also own a mobile money transfer shop worth TZS 40 Million (US$17,391) and most of my clients are fishermen and traders. I am now empowered financially.

[WorldWildlife.org]

Clashes at Greece-Turkey border as migrants continue push attempt into Europe

Clashes broke out along the Greece-Turkey land border Wednesday morning as Greek authorities fired tear gas and stun grenades to push back hundreds of migrants trying to illegally cross into their country.

The fracas near the border village of Kastanies comes after Turkey made good on its threat to open its borders and send migrants into Europe last week. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, whose action triggered days of violent clashes along the border, said his country is unable to cope with a new wave of Syrian migrants and refugees, and demands Europe’s support. “…The gates are open,” he said Monday. “You will have your share of this burden now.”

On Wednesday, Turkey’s ambassador to the United Kingdom, Umit Yalcin, accused the European Union of “betrayal, hypocrisy and selfishness” for failing to uphold its agreement to stem the flow of Syrian refugees and migrants into Europe. “We did our fulfillment of our commitment and they did not do anything,” Yalcin told Sky News, referring to the accusation by Ankara that Brussels failed to meet the terms of the migration deal struck in March 2016. “And because of that – enough is enough. We are overloaded. We cannot control millions and millions of people.” He continued: “We only ask for fair and equal responsibility-sharing and burden-sharing. We only want to see the fulfillment of that deal, not more.”

During the clashes earlier Wednesday, reporters on the Greek side of the border heard what sounded like gunfire, though it was unclear whether this was live ammunition. A group of people could be seen carrying something which could have been a person between them and running to the Turkish border post. Shortly afterward, an ambulance was heard leaving. Reporters on the Turkish side of the border saw at least four ambulances leave the area.

The head of emergency services at Edirne’s Trakya University Hospital, Burak Sayhan, told journalists six people had been admitted to the emergency department Wednesday, including one who was dead on arrival. He said one person had been shot in the head, two had gunshot wounds to their lower and upper extremities and one had a broken nose.

The mass movement of migrants and refugees to Greece’s borders, the majority of who appeared to be from Afghanistan, has appeared organized. Buses, minibusses, cars, and taxis were organized in Istanbul to ferry people to the border, while some of those who managed to cross have said they were told by Turkish authorities to go to Greece and that the border was open.

Greek authorities said there were about 15,000 people along the Greek-Turkish land border on Wednesday. They said that between Saturday morning and Wednesday morning, they had blocked 27,832 attempts to cross the border, and had arrested a total of 220 people who managed to cross.

[AP]

UN ‘determined to stand by the people of Syria’

Speaking from Hatay, along the Turkish side of the border with Syria, Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator Mark Lowcock, said that displaced civilians were “struggling to survive in horrific conditions”.

Military activity in the region has displaced nearly one million people since December, mostly women and children. Mr. Lowcock painted a picture of traumatized, cold people, many of whom forced to sleep in the open. “Despite extraordinary efforts by humanitarian organizations, aid is not reaching everyone who needs it”, the UN relief chief stated. “What civilians need is a ceasefire. What civilians need is for international humanitarian law to be respected”, he spelled out.

Lowcock said that the UN is sending hundreds of trucks from Turkey into northwest Syria loaded with food, water and shelter each month. “This is saving lives”, he maintained, adding, “it must continue, and it must be scaled up”.

With an estimated 2.8 million people in northwest Syria need humanitarian assistance, Mr. Lowcock explained that $500 million would help 1.1 million of the most vulnerable.

He noted that the United States had just pledged $108 million and that an additional $300 million has been received or pledged by donors.

“We are determined to stand by the people of Syria”, concluded the Emergency Relief Coordinator.

[UN News]

The world’s refugee system is broken

We are in an age of mass displacement. Yet the powerful and stable nations of the world have not figured out a humane way to handle the influx of people claiming persecution while balancing domestic concerns about security and cultural change. Instead, doors are simply closing, with asylum protections rolled back seemingly everywhere.

In Italy, where the former interior minister denounced “fake refugees,” boats of Africans have been blocked from docking. The European Union pays handsomely to keep asylum seekers away, while Turkey considers sending Syrian refugees back to their homeland, which is still at war. In the US, the indefinite detention of asylum-seeking children prompted the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights to say she was appalled. Thousands of asylum seekers are sent from the U.S. to dangerous sections of Mexico and even to countries they’re not from.

The leaders who created international refugee policy never envisioned today’s refugees, with violent flash points rooted in all kinds of new phenomena—police corruption, climate change, gang warfare—that now dot the Earth, creating the conditions for the worst protracted migration crisis since World War II.

The problem is that the refugee system set forth in United Nations documents signed by most of the world’s countries does not apply to many refugees—at least not how it is currently enforced. The 1951 and 1967 agreements were drafted to specifically address European displacement from World War II while more broadly setting rules to protect people from persecution going forward: Anyone who is “unable or unwilling to return to their country of origin owing to a well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group, or political opinion.”

To get refugee status and a pathway to permanent residency, asylum seekers generally must prove that they were personally targeted by documenting their persecution with paperwork—ostensibly from the very same authorities they are fleeing from. The irony, says David Slater, an American anthropology professor at Tokyo’s Sophia University who works with asylum seekers in Japan, is that those who appear to have the most straightforward cases of persecution “are the ones who are least likely to have documentation” to prove that it happened. “You don’t stop off at the local police station, especially when the police are part of the people who are persecuting you, to try to get a police report,” he said.

More to the point, those arriving are eyed suspiciously as mere economic migrants; poverty and hunger, though defining features of persecution, are not accepted reasons for being granted asylum.

“I would say that the system is broken,” Slater says. “The amount of conflict in the world and the number of people who are fleeing are so disproportionately larger now. For us to try to use a framework that was designed under a particular set of conditions and under a particular scale is no longer feasible.”

[The Atlantic]

Underfunded and at war, Afghanistan scrambles to contain coronavirus

This week, Afghanistan confirmed its first case of coronavirus; at least 10 further cases are suspected, all traced to neighboring Iran. Afghanistan finds itself moving from preparing for an outbreak to containing one at the same time.

“We will need more of everything,” said Dr. Mohammed Khan, one of the head physicians at the Afghan-Japan Communicable Disease Hospital on the outskirts of Kabul, which has been designated the main treatment facility for coronavirus patients in the capital.

Khan’s lengthy list includes protective medical gear, machines to diagnose the virus, more ventilation machines – and training to keep staff safe. The intensive care unit has a few beds, and the 60-bed clinic has just been boosted to accommodate 100 patients. The World Health Organization and others have been helping the country get ready for the coronavirus since January, but there’s a funding gap of at least $3.5 million, the WHO said.

One clear sign of the shortfalls: Khan’s hospital, Kabul’s main treatment center for coronavirus patients, cannot yet diagnose the disease. The country’s only three devices capable of diagnosing the coronavirus disease from test kits are located in a separate laboratory in Kabul. This is where samples from other provinces are being sent for diagnosis; each test takes between four to six hours.

It’s not an ideal scenario for a country separated by vast distances and often-inaccessible conflict areas. For now, the hallways at Khan’s hospital are empty. But there’s a nervous undertone when staff here speak of what may come. “Of course it’s scary,” said Ahmedi. “There’s been a lot of fear-mongering and the health system in our country is largely underfunded.”

Afghanistan’s health system is a casualty of its decades-long conflict, and local and international aid groups are often relied on to fill the gaps in care. The Global Health Security Index, an analysis of countries’ epidemic preparedness published last year, lists Afghanistan as one of the world’s least prepared countries.

[The New Humanitarian]

Idlib schools and hospital hit by airstrikes

At least 21 civilians, including nine children and three teachers, were killed when 10 schools and a hospital were hit by “airstrikes and ground attacks” in Idlib province in northwestern Syria on Tuesday, said the Union of Medical Care and Relief Organizations said in a statement.

Save the Children and its partner Hurras Network confirmed some schools were in class, some had broken up for the day and some were being used as shelters. According to Hurras Network, this is the highest number of schools hit by attacks in Idlib in a single day since at least the start of 2019. Twenty-two schools have now been hit since the start of 2020 – almost half of them today.

Bill Chambers, President and CEO of Save the Children said: “Schools must be safe havens for children, even in a conflict zone. Today’s attacks are another sign that fighting in North West Syria has reached catastrophic levels of violence against children and civilians which go far beyond what is acceptable in conflict. Vast numbers of families have been forced from their homes many times in search of some semblance of safety and stability. And still they face daily and nightly terror as bombs rain down. Nowhere is safe, not even school.”

The United Nations launched a revised response plan for Northwest Syria with a funding requirement of US$336 million to help 800,000 newly displaced people over the next six months.

[CNN/Relief Web]

Companies explore giving humanitarian assistance to Iran

U.S. Special Representative for Iran Brian Hook said on Thursday the United States was in talks with at least two more companies that would like to send food and medicine to Iran through the Swiss humanitarian channel.

Hook told reporters there was a lot of interest in the Swiss network, intended to supply goods to struggling sectors of Iran’s population without tripping over U.S. sanctions.

Food, medicine and other humanitarian supplies are exempt from the sanctions that Washington reimposed on Tehran after President Donald Trump walked away from a 2015 international deal over Iran’s nuclear program. But the U.S. measures targeting everything from oil sales to shipping and financial activities have deterred several foreign banks from doing business with the Islamic Republic — including humanitarian deals.

The Swiss Humanitarian Trade Arrangement (SHTA) seeks to ensure that Swiss-based exporters and trading companies in the food, pharmaceutical and medical sectors have a secure payment channel with a Swiss bank, through which payments for their exports to Iran are guaranteed.

[Reuters]

UN official calls Syrian refugee crisis “cruel beyond belief”

The United Nations’ human rights chief, Michelle Bachelet, on Tuesday called the humanitarian catastrophe unfolding in Syria “cruel beyond belief.”

Since December, 900,000 civilians have been forced to flee Syrian and Russian bombs in the northwest. Most are women and children.

This is a war that never ends. Nine years of terror, and in Idlib, where there are more than three million people crammed into Syria’s last major rebel stronghold, they still live powerlessly and impotently as their own government bombs them out of their homes.

The regime’s latest offensive, which is backed by its ally Russia, has forced hundreds of thousands of them to flee for their lives and left people homeless in the middle of a bitter winter.

“I’m begging for a place to shelter my kids,” Fared Alhor told CBS News. “The bombs didn’t kill them, and I don’t want them to die of the cold.”

The children of Idlib have grown up in a time of bloodshed and don’t know what it means to feel safe. One video apparently shows a father trying to protect his 3-year-old daughter from the reality of war. She thinks the bombs and mortars are part of a game.

[CBS]

Desert locust plague in Horn of Africa

Locusts are the world’s oldest and most destructive migratory pest. 

And today, the locust infestation in Kenya is the worst in 70 years. Somalia and Ethiopia are experiencing their worst outbreaks in 25 years, putting crop production, food security and millions of lives at risk. Swarms crossed into Uganda overnight, and Tanzania and South Sudan are now “on the watch list”, the UN’s top humanitarian official reported. 

An average swarm, which contains up to 40 million insects, can travel up to 150 km in a single day and can devour enough food to feed 34 million people within that time. 

Somalia and Sudan faced a famine threat in 2017, and communities have also weathered poor rains, drought, and floods in the past two years. 

The current infestation is threatening food security in Kenya and other African countries, according to the country’s UN Ambassador, Lazarus O. Amayo. “It is also a challenge for pasture, especially our communities that keep livestock,” he added. 

“Without rapid action, we will be facing a rapidly-expanding humanitarian crisis. The Desert Locust swarms are growing exponentially”, FAO Director-General Qu Dongyu warned in a video message.   More on the subject

[UN News]

Freezing weather compounds crisis for displaced in Syria

A military offensive on an opposition-controlled region of northwestern Syria has created one of the worst catastrophes for civilians in the country’s long-running war, and a bitter winter has compounded the pain.

The weather has contributed to at least 10 deaths, including four who suffered hypothermia, a family of four that died of suffocation in their tent and two who burned to death when their tent caught fire, according to Mohammed Hallaj, a coordinator for the area’s Response Coordination Group.

“The temperatures was no less than -8 or -9 degrees Celsius (15 degrees Fahrenheit) and this is rare in Syria,” a survivor said, speaking to The Associated Press from the Idlib town of Binnish.

The government’s Russian-backed assault on Idlib, the Syrian opposition’s last stronghold, has uprooted more than 830,000 people since Dec. 1, most of them fleeing toward safer areas near the border with Turkey, U.N. spokesman Stephane Dujarric said. “Humanitarian needs are increasing exponentially,” Dujarric said. “The ongoing emergency compounds the already dire humanitarian situation for people in the northwest, who have been made vulnerable by years of crisis, violence, economic downturn and, of course, multiple displacements,” Dujarric said.

Around half the territory’s population had already been displaced from other parts of Syria, so formal camps are full.

“It’s cold, it’s snowing and our life is terrible, we can’t take this cold and neither can the kids,” said a woman, who identified herself by her nickname Um Muhammad, who recently fled and was staying at a tent camp near the Turkish border.

[Associated Press]

Mexican migrants sent record $36B in remittances in 2019

Migrant workers sent a record amount of remittances to their home countries in 2019. 

Mexico’s Central Bank reported that Mexican migrants working overseas sent home a record-high $36 billion in remittances in 2019, a 7 percent increase from 2018.

States with the largest population of Mexican-born immigrants rank highest in remittance transfers. The states with the highest transfers include California ($8.84 billion), Texas ($4.3 billion), Illinois ($1.4 billion), New York ($1.8 billion), Florida ($1.15 billion), and Georgia ($1.0 billion).

Comparatively, Mexico receives about $25 billion from foreign tourism, and $22.4 billion in annual petroleum exports.

Remittance flows could remain high with Mexico’s economy projected to remain sluggish. The International Monetary Fund predicts meager economic growth for Mexico at 1 percent in 2020.

Across the wider Latin America region, remittances grew by 4.7 percent in 2019, according to a study published by Manuel Orozco, director of the Migration, Remittances, and Development Program at the Inter-American Dialogue. Mass protests and civil unrest across Central and Latin America were a primary factor in the rise of remittances.

[Fox News]

Unprecedented locust invasion in Africa and Asia

Locust swarms of biblical proportions are threatening crops across a wide swath of Africa and southwest Asia—spurring alarm among top international officials.

A major concern is famine. The United Nations is warning that mass swarms of desert locusts are endangering food supplies in eastern Africa. Officials in Rome noted the situation has a high potential to devolve into a full-blown crisis. Dominique Burgeon, an emergency services director at the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization, said the locust infestation in Africa is now FAO’s top priority.

U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres took to Twitter in an effort to draw global attention to the worsening outbreak. The swarms are now threatening farms in parts of Ethiopia, Kenya and Somalia but are expected to spread to neighboring countries and India soon.

The U.N. chief pinned blame for the crisis squarely on global warming. Cyclones that struck the driest parts of the Arabian Peninsula last year triggered the current crisis, creating ideal conditions for the desert locust species to multiply. “Desert locusts are extremely dangerous,” Guterres wrote. “Triggered by the climate crisis, the outbreak is making the dire food security situation in East Africa even worse.”

The desert locust is a particularly ravenous species that can eat its own weight in food every day. Swarms easily consume entire fields and form mass clouds large enough to block out the sun. They’re quick, too, moving up to 150 kilometers in a day. More breeding cycles are expected. The swarms increase in size twenty-fold with each successive generation and could reach India by June.

“It’s certainly the most dangerous migratory pest in the world, desert locust,” said Keith Cressman, FAO’s senior agriculture officer. “A swarm the size of Rome can eat enough food in one day as everybody in Kenya.” Cressman said FAO is now classifying the situation as “an upsurge, which is one step before a full plague.”

[Scientific American]

Africa’s under-reported humanitarian crises

In Madagascar, three-quarters of the country’s population is living on less than $3 per day. Recent drought has meant people have resorted to eating cassava leaves and the fruits from cactuses that grow locally.

The Suffering in Silence report released on Tuesday by aid agency CARE found the severe drought in Madagascar was the least-reported major humanitarian crisis of 2019, with the United Nations estimating a global humanitarian funding gap of $28.8 billion, showing a correlation between under-reported crises in Africa and a lack of humanitarian funding.

The report found nine of the 10 most under-reported humanitarian crises are located in Africa, many of which have been caused or worsened by climate change.

The brutal conflict in the Central African Republic is the second-least reported crises on the list, followed by climate change issues causing drought in Zambia.  Other crises in Burundi, Lake Chad Basin, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo have all been reoccurring more than once over the last four years of CARE‘s reports.

Nairobian writer and award-winning political cartoonist Patrick Gathara believes the under-reporting of Africa in Western media in general is an important but complex issue. Paying attention to crises in Africa can often be about charity rather than justice, Gathara believes, which he said also raises issues with the media’s portrayal of the region. “There is little money to be made in reminding Western audiences that their privileged lifestyles are underwritten by the suffering in other parts of the world,” he told the ABC.

[ABC.net.au]

The spread of the coronavirus beyond China

Coronavirus cases have spread to at least a dozen countries around the world, now confirmed on 4 continents: Asia, North America, Europe and Australia.

A leading Hong Kong researcher, Gabriel Leung, warned on Monday that the outbreak “may be about to become a global epidemic”, as he released new unofficial estimates of between 12,000 and 44,000 current infections in Wuhan.

While China has imposed unprecedented city-wide quarantines and travel restrictions in hotspot areas, including Wuhan, the city’s mayor on Monday said five million people had likely left the city before the quarantines were in place.

Thailand’s health ministry reported eight cases as of Monday – the most of any jurisdiction outside mainland China.

Vietnam is investigating if one of its confirmed cases became sick after a family member returned from Wuhan. This would be the first known case of human-to-human transmission outside China, the World Health Organization says. The other global cases so far are among people who had traveled to China.

Taiwan announced moves that would essentially shut its borders to many mainland Chinese. North Korea has also reportedly closed its borders to foreign tourists, the vast majority of whom come through agencies based in China.

The United Kingdom and the United States have stepped up health screenings at major airports.

But there’s disagreement among public health professionals about whether screenings and border shutdowns are effective – or even counterproductive. “Evidence shows that temperature screening to detect potential suspect cases at entry may miss travelers incubating the disease or travelers concealing fever during travel,” the WHO said in its 24 January advisory for containing the outbreak.

A study published in The Lancet medical journal also on 24 January suggested the virus can spread through patients who aren’t showing symptoms.

[The New Humanitarian]

Chinese leadership calls situation grave as China scrambles to contain virus

China’s leader Xi Jinping called the accelerating spread of a new virus a grave situation, as cities from the outbreak’s epicenter in central China to Hong Kong scrambled to stop the spread of an illness — coronavirus — that has infected more than 2,800 people and killed more than 80.

Travel agencies have also been told to halt all group tours.

The city of Wuhan, where the outbreak started and its 11 million residents are already on lockdown, banned most vehicle including private cars in downtown areas, state media reported. Only authorized vehicles to carry supplies and for other needs would be permitted after that, the reports said.

The U.S. government is said to be arranging a flight to the U.S. to evacuate Americans from Wuhan.

[AP]

America has spent $6.4 trillion on wars in the Middle East and Asia since 2001

A report from the Watson Institute of International and Public Affairs at Brown University concludes that the United States has spent $6.4 trillion on wars in the Middle East and Asia since 2001, and more than 801,000 people have died as a direct result of fighting.

The study also finds that:

• In addition to 801,000 people who have died due to direct war violence, indirectly this number multiplies several times
• Over 335,000 civilians have been killed as a result of the fighting
• 21 million — the number of war refugees and displaced persons
• The US government is conducting counterterror activities in 80 countries
• The wars have been accompanied by violations of human rights and civil liberties, in the US and abroad

Climate change: Last decade confirmed as warmest on record

The 10 years to the end of 2019 have been confirmed as the warmest decade on record by three global agencies.

According to NASA, NOAA and the UK Met Office, last year was the second warmest in a record dating back to 1850. The Met Office says that 2020 is likely to continue this warming trend.

The past five years were the hottest in the 170-year series, with the average of each one more than 1C warmer than pre-industrial. The Met Office says that 2019 was 1.05C above the average for the period from 1850-1900.

2016 remains the warmest year on record, when temperatures were boosted by the El Niño weather phenomenon.

Last year saw two major heat waves hit Europe in June and July, with a new national record of 46C set in France on 28 June. New records were also set in Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg and in the UK at 38.7C.  In Australia, the mean summer temperature was the highest on record by almost a degree.

“Each decade from the 1980s has been successively warmer than all the decades that came before. 2019 concludes the warmest ‘cardinal’ decade (those spanning years ending 0-9) in records that stretch back to the mid-19th century,” said Dr Colin Morice, from the Met Office Hadley Centre.

Researchers say carbon emissions from human activities are the main cause of the sustained temperature rise seen in recent years.

[BBC]

EU’s Green Deal sets out trillion euro plan to avert ‘climate crash’

EU budget chief Johannes Hahn said the bloc needs to invest dedicated funds to avert a “climate crash” as Brussels detailed how it planned to pay for a trillion euro push to cut net C02 emissions to zero by 2050 and protect member countries dependent on coal. The financial challenge for Europe is huge: Halving emissions by 2030 would require 260 billion euros of investment a year.

Hahn unveiled details using public and private money for this flagship project, the European Green Deal: Of the 1 trillion euros of the EU’s 10-year investment plan, roughly half is to come from the EU long-term budget. This will trigger more than 100 billion in co-financing from governments. Some 300 billion would come from private sources and another 100 from the EU’s Just Transition Fund.

All EU countries except Poland agreed last month they should transform their economies over the next 30 years to not emit more carbon dioxide than they absorb, so as to limit global warming and resulting climate changes. The deal came amid overwhelming support from Europeans who see irreversible climate change as the biggest challenge they are facing, more so than terrorism, access to healthcare or unemployment.

“I’m doing this in my grandson’s future interest,” Hahn, 62, said about his work on financing the EU’s shift to a green economy.

The Fund is to “benefit territories with high employment in coal, lignite, oil shale and peat production, as well as territories with carbon-intensive industries which will be either discontinued or severely impacted by the transition”, the Commission proposal said. The money will go to areas producing the most CO2 industrial emissions, where job losses and the need for teaching new skills and will take into account the overall wealth of the country so that a region in need of transition in the EU’s poorest Romania would get more money than a comparable region in Germany.

[Reuters]

Fires in Australia serve as wake-up call to climate crisis

A new reality is taking place for Australians as catastrophic bushfires upend the lives of millions. Projections from climate scientists are now becoming the harsh reality and should serve as a wake-up call to other countries around the world to take action. 

Up to now, the climate crisis has been felt primarily by the most vulnerable, predominantly living in the Global South, while richer countries … have largely continued fueling the crisis. The impacts are now hitting the Global North, and the bushfires in Australia are just a glimpse of the future that the entire world will face if climate inaction continues.

International aid agency CARE calls on governments around the world to take more seriously their international responsibilities and increase efforts to fight the global climate crisis.

Louise Gray, Interim Chief Executive and Chief Operating Officer, CARE Australia, stated: “Our country is in flames. Drought and increased temperatures have contributed to catastrophic bushfire conditions. The scientific evidence is indisputable – there is a link between the tragedy we are now experiencing and climate change. If a country like Australia can experience this scale of disaster, what risks are faced in countries with less capacity to respond and recover? We must take collective responsibility and action.”

“What starts as a decade on fire must become the decade of decisive and rapid climate action. Anything less than halving global CO2 emissions by 2030 may lead to a runaway climate crisis. The suffering of the Australian people and environment is a stark reminder for all signatories to the Paris Agreement on Climate Change that achieving its goals is a matter of survival and justice,” says Sven Harmeling, CARE’s Global Policy Lead on Climate Change and Resilience.

[CARE]

Syrian civilians see no future in Idlib

With nearly 300,000 people fleeing bombing and fighting in and around Syria’s rebel-held Idlib province since mid-December, civilians in the area told The New Humanitarian they had taken everything they own with them. Fearing the rebels will be unable or unwilling to resist the approaching forces, some said they had even torched their homes after emptying them, to deny President Bashar al-Assad’s fighters any extra benefits of taking over the territory.

This latest wave of displacement has been especially difficult. It has coincided with heavy winter rains that have drenched the already overcrowded camps that dot Idlib.

Abu Ghadir – a father of six displaced several times and now staying in the village of al-Bira in northern Idlib – saw no future for himself or the other three million people who find themselves increasingly trapped in Syria’s northwest. “This is our end; the end for Idlib and its people,” he said.

Accompanied by heavy aerial bombing, the Syrian army and Russian forces have been accelerating a months-long ground offensive on Idlib. The only adjacent border – with Turkey – is closed, and while more and more people are trying to smuggle themselves across it, others, particularly minors, are joining rebel ranks to fight what they see as a struggle for existence.

Tahrir al-Sham is listed as a terrorist organization in the United States, UK, Canada, and Turkey. Thus concerns about resources reaching the extremist rebels severely limit available social services and emergency aid to the region. Videos produced by a recruitment and fundraising campaign organized by clerics working for Hayat Tahrir al-Sham show children rushing the stage as preachers rouse locals to join the ranks of the “holy warriors”.

Minors are currently training in several locations in Idlib, according to an official with Hayat Tahrir al-Sham.  The official said that training camps were underground, due to fear of coalition airstrikes. He said there were special training camps for “cubs”, meaning youth or teenage boys, but would not provide additional details. Another official with the group confirmed that children as young as 17 can join and undergo training.

There are various international prohibitions against the use of soldiers under 18. The International Criminal Court’s Rome Statute defines “conscripting or enlisting children under the age of 15 and using them to participate actively in hostilities” as a war crime. 

[The New Humanitarian]

Top UN Envoy hails ‘shift’ towards peace in Yemen

Will there be a historic outcome from the talks which marked the first time in two years that the internationally-recognized Yemeni Government and Houthi opposition leaders had come to the negotiating table to talk face-to-face? The Stockholm Agreement resulted in a ceasefire in the rebel-held but contested port of Hudaydah, on the Red Sea, vital for the flow of food and humanitarian aid into Yemen.  

At the time, the World Food Programme (WFP) called it “key” to importing roughly 70 per cent of humanitarian needs. 

Martin Griffiths, Special Envoy of the Secretary-General for Yemen, stated just ahead of a closed-door Security Council meeting on Yemen in New York on Thursday:  “People’s lives have been saved, the humanitarian programme has been protected, and I think it also showed that the parties could actually agree on a different way out of a crisis.” 

However, he reported that negotiations are still ongoing over re-deployments to “de-militarize” Hudaydah, where pro-Government and Houthi forces have continued to largely observe the fragile ceasefire throughout the year. The Special Envoy also expressed grave disappointment over lack of progress on prisoner exchange, one of the key elements under the Agreement.  

The conflict in Yemen has generated the world’s worst humanitarian crisis and has pushed the country to the edge of economic decline. Roughly 24 million people, or 80 per cent of the population, require assistance, according to the UN humanitarian affairs office, OCHA. The UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) further reports that two million children are out of school, including nearly half a million who had dropped out since the fighting began in March 2015. 

These are reasons why peace is so desperately needed in Yemen, Mr. Griffiths told UN News. “If there is any argument in favor of the need for speed towards a political solution to this war, it is those people, those families, who daily suffer from the effects of conflict: families whose children haven’t been to school for five years; families who have struggled to get food on their plates on a daily basis”, he said.  

[UN News]

Namibia rushes to drill boreholes as worst drought in a century bites

Namibia’s dam water levels have almost halved from already low levels as the worst drought in more than 100 years pushes the desert nation closer to famine.

Dams nationwide were at 19.3% of capacity compared to 35.6% this time last year, water utility Namwater said, a drop officials blame on climate change and a five-year drought ripping through southern Africa.

On Thursday, the environment ministry told Reuters that drought had caused a third of Namibia’s 2.5 million population to go hungry, and that hundreds of wild animals in conservation parks as well cattle on farms were dying. The department is rehabilitating existing water points and drilling new boreholes as quickly as it could.

Minister of Environment Pohamba Shifeta said at a climate change conference in Madrid on Tuesday 700,000 Namibians were food insecure, and that the agricultural sector had contracted for the last half-decade, with rural households and small-scale farmers hardest hit.

In neighboring Zambia and Zimbabwe, plunging water levels at the Kariba Dam on the Zambezi have resulted in power cuts. South Africa has introduced rationing.

Namibia’s economy is set to shrink by 1.5% in 2019 after contracting 0.1% last year due largely to severe drought, the finance ministry said in October.

[Reuters]

UN emergency fund is one of the ‘most effective investments’ in humanitarian action

The UN’s Central Emergency Response Fund (CERF), is “one of the most effective investments you can make in humanitarian action”, UN Secretary-General António Guterres told a high-level pledging event at UN Headquarters in New York on Monday.

“It is the only global emergency fund that is fast, predictable and flexible enough to reach tens of millions of people each year”, according to the UN chief, who maintained that the fund supports a “well-coordinated global humanitarian response system with an enormous network of partners to help the most vulnerable”.   

Since its creation 13 years ago, the fund has allocated over $6 billion to support life-saving assistance in 104 countries, protecting millions of people, sometimes within hours of the onset of an emergency.

Noting that the climate crisis is causing more frequent and deadly hurricanes, cyclones and droughts around the world, the UN chief spelled out: “CERF is on the frontline of our response”. He said  “CERF provides funding without the bureaucracy that can slow down our work, so the money is available within days, sometimes hours, of disaster striking”, flagged the UN chief, citing lifeline support to food insecurity-plagued Mali and Sudan, as well as helping children to stay in school in Cameroon, Chad, the occupied Palestinian Territories, Ukraine and elsewhere. 

With the contributions of 52 Member States “CERF truly a fund for all, by all”, upheld the UN chief, while noting that today it is “contending with a far greater scale of suffering” than when it was created in 2005.

Chairing the event, UN Emergency Relief Coordinator Mark Lowcock said that this year’s “unprecedented demand” for emergency funding enabled responses to “time-critical, life-threatening needs” for millions of crises-affected people across 46 countries.  Lowcock admitted that “significant challenges” lie ahead, saying “I fear the outlook for the year ahead is bleak:  One person in 45 around the world are expected to need our help. The highest number ever”, he said, which would require nearly $29 billion in funding.

[UN News]

American music producer travels to Lebanon to record an album with refugees

When Souzda fled the deadly shelling in northern Syria, she thought she was leaving behind more than just her home. The 22-year-old was studying music and had hopes of one day becoming a singer, but the bombs that drove her to escape also threatened to lay waste to her dreams. In Lebanon’s capital, Beirut, Souzda not only found safety but also the chance to rekindle her musical ambitions. Since early this year, she has been writing, composing and recording songs with American producer and singer Jay Denton.

Denton, a musician who studied international relations and has traveled the world, believes music has the power to connect people from all walks of life. Equipped with a mobile recording studio that he typically travels with, he came to Lebanon to make an album with refugees.

“When I sat down with them the first time, they said one of the hardest things about life here is that they don’t feel like they have a voice,” says Denton. He is now working with a group of more than 10 Syrians and an Iraqi refugee, composing and recording various songs.

Souzda has written and recorded a Kurdish-language song about her hometown, Afrin, where an escalation in fighting uprooted more than 150,000 people from their homes. The song tackles themes of war and sorrow, but also of hope. “I wanted people, my people, when they heard us to feel that life has not ended, there is still hope and as long as you have a will you can produce something anywhere you go,” she explains. “Music is… the language I can express myself in.”

As soon as he finishes recording the music with the refugees in Beirut, Denton will go back to Los Angeles, where he is now based, to finish the album in collaboration with a number of American artists. He plans to release the record early next year.

Souzda says music has kept her going through conflict and displacement. “Music is life, the language I can express myself in. I can express my pain, my joy, I can speak in music. It’s the closest language to people’s hearts.”

Lebanon is currently host to around 920,000 registered refugees from the conflict in neighboring Syria, as well as more than 14,000 refugees from Iraq.

[UN High Commissioner for Refugees]

So little aid money goes to preventing violence against women and girls

Some 14 million refugees and displaced women and girls were subjected to sexual violence in 2019, according to a new report from the International Rescue Committee.

Still, gender-based violence is often seen as a “second-tier priority” during a humanitarian response, and the lack of funding to prevent it bolsters that reality. Of the $41.5 billion spent on humanitarian responses between 2016 and 2018, just $51.7 million – less than 0.2 percent – was spent on GBV prevention for women and girls.

Research shows that disasters and displacement exacerbate violence against women and girls. A 2017 study conducted in South Sudan found that 65 percent of women and girls had experienced violence in their lifetimes. Another 2014 study found that one in five women who had been displaced had experienced sexual violence.

Violence against women and girls in humanitarian or displacement settings is often used as a tool to push people out of their homes and communities; it’s used as a tool of warfare, and unfortunately is a very successful tool to break down communities and families.

It can also be a result of the way humanitarian aid is provided. For example, water and sanitation services may be set up in a way where women and girls may not use the toilet or shower facilities because they have to walk down a path that makes them walk by large groups of men. It could be that they don’t have locks on the facilities, so women and girls can’t secure themselves when they’re bathing.

Lots of food distributions are not set up in a way where women and girls are protected. Distributions may be too heavy for them to carry, and they may have to rely on men with carts to carry them to the place where they’re staying – there could be heightened levels of exploitation just in that moment.

[Read more at The New Humanitarian]

Charity to airdrop aid using fleet of drones

A Dutch organization has successfully tested the technology for delivering aid. Wings For Aid has just used a test aircraft to drop 18 boxes from a height of 100m, including two boxes containing raw eggs – all of which survived intact. The test took place at an airbase in the Netherlands, as part of the charity’s development of the concept of providing essential aid to people cut off from terrestrial supplies.

Barry Koperberg, general manager of Wings For Aid, said his organization plans to “bridge the last mile” to reach people beyond the reach of conventional aid logistics. At the heart of the concept is a specially designed all-cardboard “delivery box” that can be dropped from a height of up to 500m without a parachute.  “We have developed a cargo drone with eight boxes of 20kg carrying humanitarian aid,” he said.  The boxes can contain food, water, shelter kits or medical supplies.

“With pinpoint precision we can deliver it anywhere worldwide. Anyone worldwide will be in reach of such a system. Think of Haiti, think of Somalia, think of the Nepal earthquake, where you are out of touch for a couple of days or a couple weeks.”

Wings For Aid, whose start-up has been co-funded by the Dutch government, calculates that while 100 million people involved in crises were provided with emergency supplies last year, an estimated 20 million in need did not. In past humanitarian disasters, essential infrastructure has been destroyed by floods or earthquakes. In some parts of the world, those in need may be located deep inside conflict zones, beyond the reach of aid trucks. While helicopters can sometimes be used, they are expensive and have limited capacity. In addition, pilots will not fly in areas where they believe they may be targeted.

Mr Koperberg said: “We hope launch our first aircraft, which is now being built, in 2020. Meanwhile we are testing the whole system. A very good application of modern technology, I think.”

[The Independent]

Powerful quake kills 13 in Albania as buildings bury residents

At least 13 people were killed when the most powerful earthquake to hit Albania in decades shook the capital Tirana and the country’s west and north on Tuesday, tearing down buildings and burying residents under rubble. Residents, some carrying babies, fled apartment buildings in Tirana and the western port of Durres after the quake struck shortly before 4 a.m. (0300 GMT).

The 6.4 magnitude quake was centered 30 km (19 miles) west of Tirana, the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) said, and was also felt across the Balkans and in the southern Italian region of Puglia. Hours later a magnitude 5.4 earthquake hit Bosnia, with an epicentre 75 km (45 miles) south of Sarajevo, monitors said.

In the northern Albanian town of Thumane, Marjana Gjoka, 48, was sleeping in her apartment on the fourth floor of a five-storey building when the quake shattered the top floors. “The roof collapsed on our head and I don’t know how we escaped. God helped us,” said Gjoka, whose three-year-old niece was among four people in the apartment when the quake struck.

Five people were found dead in the rubble of apartment buildings in Thumane, and a man died in the town of Kurbin after jumping out of a building, a Defence Ministry spokeswoman said. Seven bodies were pulled from collapsed buildings in Durres, the main port and tourism destination, the Defence Ministry said, adding 39 had been pulled out alive from under the ruins. Defence Minister Olta Xhacka said 135 people were injured.

Firefighters, police and civilians were removing the debris from collapsed buildings in Thumane. Most of the buildings that collapsed were built of bricks, a Reuters reporter said. Rescuers there used a mechanical digger to claw at collapsed masonry and remove a tangle of metal and cables. Others groped with bare hands to clear rubble.

Greece had sent emergency services for search and rescue operations, its premier’s office said. Albania is the poorest country in Europe, with an average income of less than a third of the European Union average, according to Eurostat data.

On September 21, an earthquake of 5.6 magnitude had previously shook the country, damaging around 500 houses and destroying some.

[Reuters]

Aid groups condemn Greece over ‘prison’ camps for migrants

Greece is being criticized for adopting legislation in contravention of basic human rights. Under the new approach, land and sea borders will be reinforced with about 1,200 more guards, and extra patrol vessels and deportations stepped up, and closed installations will replace open-air camps. International aid groups have overwhelmingly condemned the measures. After criticizing asylum legislation also passed this month, they predicted the remodeled facilities would only exacerbate the humanitarian disaster unfolding on Europe’s frontiers.

Martha Roussou, senior advocacy officer for the International Rescue Committee in Greece, said: “The creation of closed facilities will simply mean that extremely vulnerable people, including children, will be kept in prison-like conditions, without having committed any crime.”

The Greek branch of Amnesty International called the plans “outrageous”. Likening Lesbos’s infamous Moria refugee camp to a “human rights black hole”, it said: “In reality, we are talking about the creation of contemporary jails with inhumane consequences for asylum seekers, and more widely, negative consequences for the Aegean islands and their inhabitants.”

With Greece being lashed by rainstorms as winter intensifies, groups have increasingly raised the alarm over what many are calling a humanitarian disaster. Officially, reception facilities on Samos, Lesbos, Chios, Kos and Leros have a capacity to accommodate about 5,400 people. About 37,000 asylum seekers are on the islands.

The number of men, women and children making the treacherous sea crossing from Turkey has risen by 73% this year, according to the UN refugee agency, UNHCR. It said the vast majority are refugees fleeing persecution and war.

After visiting the camps last week, Médecins Sans Frontières’ international president, Christos Christou, said: “I’ve been truly shocked and devastated by the extent of the emergency. Men, women and children are trapped in endless drama … In Moria on Lesbos there’s one latrine per 200 people. In Samos, one latrine per 300. This human tragedy needs to end now and it can if Greece and Europe choose to enact a responsible migration system and end these containment policies.”

[The Guardian]

Weighed down by economic woes, Syrian refugees head home from Jordan

According to the UN’s refugee agency, UNHCR, 34,000 registered Syrian refugees have returned from Jordan since October 2018, when a key border crossing was reopened after years of closure. It’s a fraction of the 650,000 registered Syrian refugees remaining in Jordan, but a dramatic jump from previous years, when annual returns hovered at around 7,000.

Syrian refugees from the other main host countries – Turkey and Lebanon – are making the trip too. UNHCR has monitored more than 209,000 voluntary refugee returns to Syria since 2016, but the actual figure is likely to be significantly higher.

Many refugees in Jordan say they are simply fed up with years spent in a dead-end job market with a bleak economic future. Syrian refugees need a permit to work in Jordan but they are limited to working in a few industries in designated economic zones. Many others end up in low-paying jobs, and have long faced harsh economic conditions in Jordan.  Thousands of urban refugees earn a meagre living either on farms or construction sites, or find informal work as day laborers.

“I’m not returning because I think the situation in Syria is good,” said Farah, a mother of three who spoke to TNH in September – about a month before she packed up her things to leave. “But you don’t enter into a difficult situation unless the one you’re currently in is even worse.” 

Asked whether it is safe for refugees to go back to Syria, Francesco Bert, a UNHCR spokesperson in Jordan, said the agency “considers refugees’ decisions as the main guideposts”, but gives refugees considering or planning to return “information that might inform their decision-making”, to help ensure it is truly voluntary.

[The New Humanitarian]

One-third of Afghans need urgent humanitarian aid, millions suffer ‘acute food insecurity’

Over the last three months, around one-third of the Afghan population required urgent humanitarian action, according to the United Nations, which declares that some 10.23 million people are living in a state of “severe acute food insecurity”.

The Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC), which is monitoring a number of key food security indicators in Afghanistan, estimates that the situation is likely to get worse heading into next year, with the numbers of those experiencing severe acute food insecurity set to rise to 11.29 million (with 2.7 million in an Emergency situation, and 8.6 million in a Crisis situation), between November 2019 and March 2020.

A lack of opportunity in the labor market could, says the report, impact the livelihoods of vulnerable groups; as could the uncertain political climate and security situation, with upcoming elections affecting the outlook; food prices, which could rise in the Winter months; and extreme weather events, such as droughts and floods.

The November Alert from the IPC includes several recommendations to alleviate the food insecurity problems faced by the population. Providing humanitarian food assistance, in cash or kind, is one such proposal, as well as helping farmers to obtain quality seeds for the forthcoming season (most farmers do not have the capability to obtain seeds from any source).

Afghanistan has seen record-high levels of civilian casualties in the third quarter of 2019, stemming mainly from the violence between pro- and anti-Government elements. July documented the country’s bloodiest month on record, with the highest number of civilian casualties in a single month since the UN began systematic documentation in the country, in 2009.

[UN News]

I’m a humanitarian. Don’t prosecute me for doing my job.

In 2011, I negotiated in Afghanistan with the Taliban and the United States to establish a trauma hospital in the northern city of Kunduz that would care for the wounded and sick, regardless of who they were. Between 2012 and 2015, Médecins Sans Frontières treated thousands of patients – mostly civilians, but also Taliban and Afghan army patients. This we celebrated as a win for impartial humanitarian action.  

But front lines changed, and during a fateful week in October 2015 when the Taliban took control of the town, US and Afghan counter-terrorism forces declared the entire area, and the people in it, as hostile territory. Arguing that Taliban fighters had “taken over” our hospital, the United States bombed it five times over the span of two hours, until it burned to the ground, with everyone in it. The only Taliban inside were patients – hors combat. I would return to Afghanistan shortly after to mourn the lives of 48 staff and patients who died that day, some scorched to death in their hospital beds.

The bombing of our hospital in Kunduz was condemned around the world, and the United States ultimately financially compensated the families of the victims. But an independent investigation to determine why the hospital was bombed was denied. It is an extreme example of what can go wrong when the impartiality of humanitarian action is not respected.

A new bill before the Dutch government threatens to make the same mistake. The law proposes to criminalize citizens’ travel – without Dutch government permission – to areas it designates as controlled by ‘terrorist’ organizations. The criteria upon which such permission will be granted are not clear. Aimed originally at preventing Dutch citizens from joining the so-called Islamic State, this broad new law has serious inadvertent effects on me and many others in many other places around the world.

As a Dutch aid worker regularly travelling to such areas to deliver lifesaving medical assistance, this new law, if adopted, essentially obliges me to prove I have no terrorist intentions prior to saving lives. This remarkable reversal of the burden of proof not only restricts and endangers my own profession, but violates the humanitarian principle of impartiality that populations trapped in conflict rely on. This principle guarantees that their needs, not which side of the front line they find themselves, determines their access to assistance.

Impartiality is the core tenet of humanitarianism relief. For a medical organization such as ours, the consequences of such legislation are even more dire. Under international law, both civilians and combatants have a right to medical care. This was one of the main purposes of the Geneva Conventions, which allow special protection under IHL for an impartial humanitarian body that collects the wounded and sick. Combatants receiving medical care are considered hors combat and have the same status as civilians. This means MSF has the legal right – and responsibility – to treat everyone, even ‘terrorists’ and even in ‘designated areas’. 

Saving lives is not a crime. Under international law, preventing me from doing so is.

[Excerpts of article by Michiel Hofman, Senior humanitarian specialist with Médecins Sans Frontières]

Hundreds of thousands of civilians at risk in Syria amid ongoing violence

At least 92 people have been killed in northeastern and northwestern Syria in the weeks following 9 October, when Turkish forces invaded Kurdish-held border areas in the northeast, according to the UN human rights office OHCHR.

Noting that victims had come under fire from airstrikes and ground-based strikes, OHCHR spokesperson Rupert Colville said people are increasingly being targeted by the “indiscriminate use of improvised explosive devices (IEDs) in populated areas, including in local markets”.

On Thursday, Najat Rochdi, Senior Humanitarian Adviser to the United Nations Special Envoy for Syria, warned that hundreds of thousands of people in northeast Syria have been left vulnerable following the Turkish military incursion. “Of the more than 200,000 people who fled the fighting in recent weeks, close to 100,000 people have not yet been able to return home and are dispersed across improvised camps and collective shelters,” she said in a statement. These recent displacements have compounded an already dire situation in which 710,000 people were already displaced, and approximately 1.8 million people are in need of humanitarian assistance, Ms. Rochdi’s statement explained.

In a related warning, Mr. Colville said that people recently displaced during the military offensive have been “subsequently…subjected to arbitrary detention, in addition to enforced disappearances, after returning to their homes. This is occurring both in areas controlled by Turkish forces and Turkish-affiliated armed groups and in areas controlled by Kurdish armed groups.”

The OHCHR spokesperson added that attacks using improvised explosive devices in the formerly Kurdish-controlled north-east “have noticeably escalated in recent days, mainly in areas under the control of Turkish-affiliated armed groups, which suggests they have most likely been carried out by groups opposing the Turkish military offensive”.

UN humanitarians meanwhile warned that a serious funding crisis risks leaving hundreds of thousands of Syrians vulnerable to deteriorating weather conditions.

[UN.org]

600 US-bound refugees resettled

More than 600 refugees landed in the United States this week, marking the first arrivals of US fiscal year 2020.

The International Organization for Migration (IOM) welcomed the refugees who come from a variety of countries. IOM works closely with the US Department of State’s Bureau of Population, Refugees and Migration to provide case processing support, pre-departure health assessments and cultural orientation, as well as transportation support for refugees.

Almost half of the refugees resettled in the US in fiscal year 2019 were from the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

On Tuesday, a group of 25 Congolese refugees were the first to arrive on Tuesday morning at Washington Dulles International Airport before continuing to their final destinations. Due to ongoing violence, the families fled to neighboring Rwanda where they remained in limbo for years.

[IOM]

What is a war crime?

Whether in conflicts in Syria, Yemen or Iraq, civilians bear the brunt of war. The protection of civilians lies at the foundation of international humanitarian law (IHL), the law that regulates the conduct of war. According to the United Nations, a war crime is a serious breach of international law committed against civilians or “enemy combatants” during an international or domestic armed conflict.

A war crime occurs when superfluous injury or unnecessary suffering is inflicted upon an enemy. In spite of the outrage caused by the bombing of a school or a country’s TV station, such actions do not necessarily amount to war crimes. Such bombing will only be a war crime if the extent of civilian casualties resulting from the attack is excessive compared to the military advantage gained from the attack. And in contrast with genocide and crimes against humanity, war crimes have to occur in the context of armed conflict.

Although the concept of war crimes has ancient roots, rules on war crimes started to develop at the end of the 19th century. The meaning of war crimes was clarified in the four 1949 Geneva Conventions.

Article 147 of the Fourth Geneva Convention defines war crimes as “wilful killing, torture or inhuman treatment, including … willfully causing great suffering or serious injury to body or health, unlawful deportation or transfer or unlawful confinement of a protected person … taking of hostages and extensive destruction and appropriation of property, not justified by military necessity and carried out unlawfully and wantonly”.

But in spite of the near-universal ratification of the Geneva Conventions, war crimes often go unpunished. According to Mark Drumbl, professor of law at Washington and Lee University, this can be attributed to several factors, including difficulties in obtaining evidence beyond a reasonable doubt, high requirements such as proving intention and, most importantly, power politics.

Bernie Sanders wants to cut military aid to Israel, give it to Gaza as humanitarian relief

2020 presidential hopeful Bernie Sanders says if elected, he would take the $3.8 billion in annual military financing the US gives to Israel and instead give it to Gaza in the form of humanitarian aid.

The Vermont senator said he would use the military assistance to pressure Israel to take steps towards a two-state solution.

“My solution is to say to Israel: you get $3.8 billion every year, if you want military aid you’re going to have to fundamentally change your relationship to the people of Gaza, in fact, I think it is fair to say that some of that should go right now into humanitarian aid”

The US has agreed to give Israel a massive military aid package called the Memorandum of Understanding MOU. The latest aid package was approved by the Obama administration and agrees to give Israel $38 billion – $3.8 billion per year –  in military aid to Israel over 10 years. The MOU covers the years 2019-2028.

Several Democrats have proposed withholding some aid to push Israel into peace talks with the Palestinians. However, he is the first to suggest the US should give it to Gaza as humanitarian relief.

“It is a lot of money, and we cannot give it carte blanche to the Israeli government, or for that matter to any government at all. We have a right to demand respect for human rights and democracy,” Sanders said. “What is going on in Gaza right now, for example, is absolutely inhumane. It is unacceptable. It is unsustainable.”

[CBN News]

Africans caught in US-Mexico migration limbo

For months, hundreds of African migrants and asylum seekers from conflict-ridden countries like Cameroon and the Democratic Republic of Congo have been camped out in tents in front of the main immigration detention facility in the town of Tapachula, in southern Mexico.

Most flew halfway around the world to Brazil, then made the dangerous journey north through the Darien Gap – a remote, roadless swathe of jungle – before traversing Central America into Mexico in the hope of finally reaching the United States to claim asylum.

On reaching Tapachula, they found themselves corralled into a detention center and told they couldn’t progress further without a permit that protects them for deportation and allows them to stay legally – permits that are harder to come by since Mexico agreed in June to help the United States limit the number of migrants crossing the US-Mexico border.

Fearing deportation or that the permits will never come, a frustrated group of migrants – including hundreds of Africans – set off north this week only to be stopped shortly afterwards by Mexican national guard and police and returned to a holding facility. Even if the Africans were to reach the US border and get to the front of the long queue, a recent policy – pushed by President Donald Trump and known as “Remain in Mexico” – means migrants hoping to seek asylum in the United States must await their fate in Mexico. 

The US administration is also set to enforce a series of bilateral agreements that will bar people from applying if they don’t first apply for asylum in the Central American countries they travelled through: Honduras, El Salvador, and Guatemala. The asylum seekers could be deported back to the so-called “safe third country”, which critics say are not safe at all and would put many at renewed risk. 

Pressure is growing on many of the Africans to claim asylum in Mexico, but several told The New Humanitarian they didn’t want to because of the lack of economic opportunities and a perception they could struggle with racist attitudes. Even if they were to pursue asylum in Mexico, the system is already overwhelmed. According to the UN’s refugee agency, UNHCR, asylum applications in Mexico rose from 2,100 in 2014 to 48,000 for the first eight months of 2019.

According to the Mixed Migration Centre, an independent resource for data on migrants and asylum seekers, some 4,799 Africans were apprehended in Mexico between January and July this year – a fourfold increase over the same period in 2018. “Somewhere between 1,500 and 3,000 [Africans] are currently stranded in the southern Mexican city of Tapachula,” it said.

[The New Humanitarian]

Alleviating poverty “a slow deliberative process of discovery – no miracle cure”

Esther Duflo, Abhijit Banerjee and Michael Kremer won the Nobel Prize in Economics for their on-the-ground experiments on how best to alleviate poverty. This award recognizes their more than a quarter of a century’s work in showing how randomized control trials can help to alleviate poverty.

Esther Duflo  states that alleviating poverty, is “a slow deliberative process of discovery – no miracle cure.” 

The need for context, the fact that one size does not fit all, and the essential nature of detailed and deliberate communication and engagement is all part of this continual process of investigation.

Duflo’s TED Talk reiterates the importance of identifying the right problem. She provides a reminder for us to battle against our assumptions and best guesses and eliminate those things that, although part of the problem, are not in themselves the answer to making the biggest impact and creating the possibility of taking solutions to scale.  She nicely demonstrates how getting this right means we can really get change as well as value for money.

[International Institute for Environment and Development]

End to Syrian ceasefire threatens new round of civilian flight

As the end of a five-day ceasefire approaches in Syria’s northeast, thousands of civilians who have fled their homes – many of them several times already during the country’s eight and a half year war – face the prospect of having to do so once again.  Both humanitarians and the people they help are worried about what will happen if the violence kicks off again.

Hedinn Halldorsson, a spokesperson for OCHA, the UN’s emergency aid coordination body said, explains that the dangers civilians face rise every time their lives are upended. “The risk of gender based violence against women and children… increases. There is also a considerable psychological impact; distress, caused by [each] displacement.”

“They’ve lost everything; their homes, their income. They are terrified of everything, even of people asking them their names,” said Zozan Ayoub, the headmistress of an elementary school in Hassakeh who is now running the building as a shelter. “They have no psychological support. They are five families to one room, and they lack electricity, food, and gas for cooking.”

In 2013, Omar and her family fled their hometown of Tel Abyad when clashes broke out between Kurdish fighters and ISIS. They traveled westwards to Kobani, where they stayed until ISIS advanced on the city in late 2014, then forcing them to flee into Turkey. When Tel Abyad was liberated from the militants in 2015, she and her family returned to their hometown, only to flee home once again when Turkish airstrikes began with the new offensive.

“We are civilians; what do they want from us?” she asked angrily.

The UN warns that this cycle of displacement translates into extreme physical and mental stress. People are unable to hold down jobs, ultimately forcing more families to depend on aid to get by. This is compounded by the fact that unlike refugees, displaced people have not crossed a border for sanctuary, and largely remain close to the conflict they are trying to escape from.

[The New Humanitarian]

US restores aid to Central America after reaching migration deals

The United States restored economic aid to El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras that had been cut off after the Trump administration complained the three Central American countries had done too little to halt a surge in migration.

U.S. President Donald Trump and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on Wednesday announced that some “targeted assistance” would resume as they praised governments of the three countries for reaching immigration agreements with the United States.

The three countries from the so-called Northern Triangle of Central America have sent record numbers of migrants toward the United States in recent years, fueling Trump’s rhetoric as part of his “zero tolerance” anti-immigration policy. Pompeo said in a statement that he had cut off the aid earlier this year on Trump’s direction “until the governments of these countries took sufficient action to reduce the overwhelming number of migrants coming to the U.S. border.”

Neither Trump nor Pompeo said how much of the hundreds of millions of dollars of suspended aid would be released. The Washington Post, citing an unnamed person familiar with the decision, reported it amounted to $143 million.

The Trump administration requires asylum-seekers to first seek safe haven in a third country they pass through on the way to the United States. The administration contends the majority of asylum-seekers are really economic migrants who will stay home if their only option is to seek asylum somewhere else.

[Reuters]