Cities a key to eradicating hunger and eliminating food waste

Cities can and should play a crucial role in the “radical change” needed to address the problem of hunger, malnutrition and food waste, FAO Director-General José Graziano da Silva said to mayors and representatives of more than 150 cities from around the world — from Mexico City and Barcelona, to Kyoto and Quito — gathered in the Spanish city of Valencia.

This is the third meeting of mayors of cities of the Milan Urban Food Policy Pact, a commitment aimed at combating hunger and food waste and improving nutrition.

“Fortunately cities are taking action and rising up to the challenge,” FAO Director-General José Graziano da Silva said. “High levels of creativity can be achieved if partnerships are forged with local actors, civil society, private sector and academic and producer organizations.”

He used his own experience with the Zero Hunger Program in Brazil, which lifted 40 million people from poverty and hunger. “A key component of success was the participation of cities,” he said. “Their mayors launched popular restaurants that served balanced and nutritious food at low prices and the cities privileged the purchase of locally produced food, contributing to strengthening the local economy,” he explained.

Cities occupy just 3 percent of the world’s land area, but are home to some 3.5 billion people — more than half of humanity. And these numbers are rising.

[Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations]

Improvements in the lives of the displaced

It is a time of record displacement worldwide. Ten countries are currently sheltering some 60 per cent of the world’s 22.5 million refugees, and more than 84 per cent of refugees are hosted by low or middle income countries.

Against this backdrop, the UNHCR is hosting discussions in Geneva as was how refugees can be included into the national, health, education, social services and development plans by the countries hosting them, which in turn should be supported to do so.

A panelist from northern Uganda, which has been at the forefront of South Sudan’s refugee crisis in recent years and has one of the most progressive refugee systems in the world, told delegates he saw including and educating refugees in local systems as an opportunity to contribute to peace building in the region.

“I strongly believe by supporting education we help not only the refugees but the entire peace process in South Sudan,” explained Mr James Leku, Chairman of the Adjumani district, who also spent time as a refugee in southern Sudan. “If refugees return to South Sudan as well informed citizens, the whole country will benefit.  Education can break the cycle of violence. It is our duty to contribute to the region in which we live,” he said noting that both the prime minister and president of Uganda had also spent time as refugees.

Throughout the two-day meeting, refugee youth have made a strong call for refugees to be involved in the response to their situation from the outset of a crisis, calling for strategies to meet not just the needs of refugees but also their aspirations.

[UNHCR]

A rape-murder sours Lebanon on its Syrian refugees

As Europe and the United States are closing their doors to the world’s spiraling number of refugees, especially Syrians, the burden is intensifying in countries like Lebanon that border war zones and receive the vast majority of refugees.

When ­Syrians began streaming into Lebanon six years ago to escape their country’s war, around 1,000 of them found a welcome in the small Christian village of Miziara, in the pine-clad mountains of the north. That was until the discovery of the body of Raya Chidiac, 26, a daughter of one of the village’s wealthiest businessmen. She had been bound, raped and suffocated with a plastic bag. The Syrian caretaker at the family’s home confessed to the killing and was arrested and charged with murder.

The ensuing backlash against Syrians has rippled across Lebanon, exposing razor-sharp tensions between the country’s 1 million Syrian refugees and their hosts that increasingly threaten to open up Lebanon’s own fragile sectarian divisions. Syria’s neighbors are hosting 5 million Syrian refugees, compared with about 18,000 admitted by the United States and 1 million who have sought asylum in Europe. As the war in Syria drags into an eighth year with no sign either of an end to the fighting or a peace settlement that will guarantee safe returns, concerns are growing that the refugees will not be going home.

Chidiac’s killing touched a nerve among Lebanese who feel they are shouldering a disproportionate share of the refugee crisis. Calls are mounting for the refugees to be sent back regardless of conditions inside Syria. As for the Syrians living in Miziara, it was already too late. All of them, refugees or not, were ordered to leave the town after Chidiac was killed, setting a precedent many Syrians fear may soon be replicated across Lebanon.

[Washington Post]

Russia sending humanitarian aid to Cuba

Russia has now sent Cuba 930 tons of humanitarian aid aimed at helping to manage the consequences of the deadly Hurricane Irma.

The aid mainly included construction materials and medicines. According to Russian Emergency Minister Vladimir Puchkov, Russia will deliver more than 1,200 tons of construction materials as humanitarian assistance to Cuba.

In September, the Caribbean region, including Cuba and the southeast of the United States, were hit by a number of hurricanes. Hurricane Irma is considered to be one of the strongest hurricanes ever recorded in the Atlantic basin, which caused significant damage to Cuba’s energy and agriculture sectors.

[Sputnik]

Singapore send humanitarian relief to aid Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh

A Singapore Armed Forces (SAF) team on Tuesday arrived in Bangladesh to deliver some $270,000 worth in aid to Rohingya refugees. The humanitarian supplies, which comprised tents, blankets, food, medical supplies and lamps, were donated by the Singapore Government and non-governmental aid group Mercy Relief.

A second batch of aid is slated to be delivered to Bangladesh by the RSAF on Wednesday.

Senior Minister of State for Defence Maliki Osman, who travelled to Bangladesh with the team, told reporters: “We are a small state, we do what we can to help.”

“Singaporeans are also concerned,” he said, referring to the crisis, and noting that several community organizations had stepped forward to raise funds for humanitarian efforts and were working with relief agencies to help distribute them.

Some 500,000 Rohingya are estimated to have fled Myanmar’s Rakhine state for Bangladesh since August. On Tuesday, Mercy Relief said it had identified women as the most vulnerable group in the overpopulated evacuation camps. Its team members will be distributing relief items such as dignity kits for women that contain scarves, sanitary napkins, soap, as well as solar lamps and tents.

[Straits Times]

Swiss humanitarian aid worker abducted in Darfur

A Swiss humanitarian aid worker has been abducted in the conflict-torn Darfur region of Sudan, Switzerland’s foreign ministry and a United Nations source said on Sunday.

The kidnapping is the first such incident since a UN peacekeeping force began downsizing its troops in conflict-wracked Darfur, a western region of Sudan the size of France.

The Swiss foreign ministry told AFP in an email it was “aware of the case of a Swiss woman kidnapped in Sudan [Darfur]”. The foreign ministry did not provide any details on the identity of the abducted woman or the circumstances surrounding her kidnapping.

The Swiss national had lived in Sudan for many years and was “abducted by unidentified armed perpetrators near her residence …late last evening,” (Saturday), UN’s top aid official in Sudan, Marta Ruedas, told AFP. “She is not a UN staff member, but she has long collaborated with the UN on a number of initiatives.”

Ruedas said the aid worker has been actively involved in humanitarian work in El Fashir, the capital of North Darfur state. Social media reports indicated the abducted woman had been working for a Swiss non-governmental organization providing aid to children.

[AFP]