Category: Humanitarian Aid

Meghan Markle and Prince Harry fell in love while doing humanitarian work

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With just days to go before the royal wedding between Prince Harry and Meghan Markle, one of her closest friends spills the details of how the couple fell in love.

“Harry invited Meghan to Botswana,” Janina Gavankar said. “They were staying in a tent with nothing and just had each other.” The two had a shared passion for philanthropy work, according to Gavanker, which she thinks cemented their romance.

“I remember when Meghan told me about Botswana,” Gavanker said. “I loved how she was … pleasantly surprised. Like, this boy is actually just doing this for real. This is not some flouncy trip … he really means it.”

“Even with Meghan’s crazy schedule as an actor, she’s always made time for philanthropic endeavors,” her friend recalled. “It could be one day helping at a charity event and it could be an entire trip that she’s told nobody about to go help people in India.”

“One of the things I love about both of them is that they don’t tell anyone,” she added. “They just go do good work in countries with nobody watching.”

Gavankar added that Markle, who is known for her ever-glamorous appearance, is “incredibly low maintenance.” She thinks it was Harry’s down-to-earth side that stole Markle’s heart, which the bride-to-be got to witness in Botswana.

[ABC News]

‘Marathon of suffering’ in Syria conflict far from over

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Jan Egeland, Special Adviser to the UN Special Envoy for Syria, recently said, “That’s what I fear, people think it’s over,” amid reports that “tens of thousands of people” from rural Damascus were preparing to evacuate to Idlib in the north-west of the country. “It’s not over.”

“We’ve still only 23 per cent of humanitarian programs funded,” Mr Egeland said, warning that there was “no cash …available to humanitarian actors” as “desperate, exhausted people arrive now every day in Idlib. There is no money for the operations.” He called on countries not to slow down their support “before this marathon of suffering is over.”

Two million people remain in hard-to-reach areas in Syria and 11,000 still live in besieged locations. According to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), displacement in some parts of Syria is as high as it was at the beginning of the crisis. OCHA’s records indicate that for every person who returns home voluntarily, another three people are newly displaced.

Mr. Egeland said his “worry number one” was Idlib, which is already home to more than two million people. “They are living out in the open, they are living in congested displacement camps…crammed in collective centers,” he said.

[UN News]

Aid workers freed in South Sudan

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Ten aid workers, who were detained while on an assessment mission, and then were held by an armed opposition group for more than five days, have been freed.

The humanitarian staff, all nationals, included one from the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (UNOCHA), two from UNICEF, one from the South Sudanese Development Organization, two from ACROSS, three from Plan International and one from Action Africa Help.

The Humanitarian Coordinator for South Sudan, Alain Noudehou, confirmed that the workers were returned safely and in good health. He commended the tireless work of those who secured their release, particularly the efforts of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) to facilitate their return to Juba.

He expressed outrage at what he described as a deteriorating environment for humanitarian work in South Sudan. Earlier the same week, a humanitarian worker was shot and killed while returning to check on a health clinic that had been looted in Leer County. This most recent death brings to 100 the total number of aid workers killed since the conflict began in December 2013.

[UNOCHA]

Post-harvest food losses: a priority for Africa

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Around a third of all food produced globally is lost or wasted. In Africa, the figure is estimated to be as high as 50%. In developing countries, this happens mainly because of poor crop harvest and handling practices early in the value chain.

A report by Global Knowledge Initiatve (GKI) calls for investment into ‘quick wins’ that show promise for immediate impact – one example of that would be ColdHubs, which is providing affordable refrigeration to farmers in Nigeria. ColdHubs sells access to refrigeration hubs on a pay-as-you-store basis, solving the problem for individual farmers of large upfront investment in their own equipment.

“A 20 kg crate of tomatoes sells in Nigeria for US$40-50 [€32-40] during the peak season,” says Nnaemeka Ikebwuonu, CEO of ColdHubs. “That’s the price from 7am until about 1pm. By this time, rot has set in and it is sold for 50% less. By 5-6pm, it will be sold for 80% less. But ColdHubs enables farmers to store that 20 kg crate for US$0.50 [€0.40].” In other words, if a farmer has surplus tomatoes, an affordable €0.40 investment per crate will enable them to stagger sales and prevent a substantial loss in income.

US start-up company Evaptainers is taking a traditional refrigeration technique – evaporative cooling – and using it to manufacture pre-built, lightweight mobile refrigeration devices. Its EV-8 is a collapsible box made with a synthetic fabric, and users just pour water into the space between the inner and outer layers to activate the cooling process. It will sell for €20-28 and a pilot project using 300-500 units is planned in Morocco this year, with a view to an eventual wider roll-out in other countries.

Sara Farley, chief operating officer and co-founder of the Global Knowledge Initiatve explains: “Sometimes, innovations that seem more incremental in nature are also capable of ushering in large-scale and long-term change.”

[Read full article]

Syrian government and rebels reach evacuation agreement for Damascus

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An agreement brokered by Russia to evacuate neighborhoods in southern Damascus has been reached between the Syrian government and rebel groups controlling the enclave of southern Damascus.

The parties agreed to evacuate trapped civilians and fighters in southern Damascus in exchange for sending away civilians and fighters in the two towns of Fua’a and Kafriyeh, predominately-Shiite towns under the government’s control in rebel-held Idlib province.

Mattar Ismael, a journalist based in southern Damascus, told VOA that people started preparations to leave southern Damascus, and the first convoy of civilians is expected to be bused out Tuesday morning.

[Voice of America]

Migrants-at-risk blocked from crossing US border near Tijuana

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A group of Central American asylum seekers spent Monday languishing on the ground outside a border crossing after U.S. officials said they did not have space to process them. On one side of the standoff are 220 migrants, who cite their right to seek shelter from persecution back home and have traveled through Mexico in a caravan to highlight the suffering of asylum seekers. On the other side is the Trump administration, which is trying to crack down on illegal immigration and says many asylum claims are fraudulent.

Trump tweeted last week that he had ordered the secretary of homeland security “not to let these large Caravans of people into our Country,” adding, “It is a disgrace.” But under international treaties it has signed, the U.S. government is obliged to allow foreigners to apply for asylum.

The San Ysidro port of entry in San Diego has detention space for about 300 people. U.S. officials have not said how many people are being held there. Asylum seekers are typically detained until officers from U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services conduct interviews to determine whether they have a credible fear of persecution or torture if they are sent home. Many of the migrants say they face threats to their lives in their native lands.

Suany Rodriguez, 6, who had been running to the bathroom all day with a bad case of diarrhea, grabbed a Barbie before sitting down in the street in front of a pharmacy. Her mother, Irma Rivera, 31, said that the girl had woken up sick after a bitterly cold night at the border. The family had left Honduras after Rivera’s husband was killed in a cornfield…She said she received anonymous phone calls stating that … other members of her family would be slain. That’s why she’s seeking asylum.

“We’re asking for them [U.S. authorities] to be fair. You don’t leave your country because you want to. The violence makes you leave,” Rivera said. “My life is at risk and so are the lives of my children.”

[Washington Post]

Challenge of getting South Sudan’s former child soldiers back to school

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More than 200 child soldiers, all under 18, have been freed from armed groups in South Sudan. The children were part of a civil war that broke out in the Republic of South Sudan two years after it was granted independence from Sudan. The ongoing conflict has ripped the country apart, making the living conditions for most South Sudanese worse than ever before.

About 19 000 child soldiers are thought to be part of the conflict and so the release of any is great news. But it’s not guaranteed that they will reintegrate successfully.

Education isn’t accessible to most children in South Sudan. In 2016 only 50% of children aged 6-13 were enrolled in primary education and just 3.5% aged 14-17 were enrolled in secondary education. There are challenges in finding a school and being able to afford to go to one. This is even harder for demobilized child soldiers who are often traumatized and stigmatized.

A recent report states that there have been 293 military attacks on schools, affecting over 90,000 children. Due to this security concern, education isn’t readily available in many home communities and so shortly after the former child soldiers are reunited with their families, they leave.

The children will also have to pay for school. Even though most of the schools are meant to be government funded, teachers are often not paid and so the students pay fees to give the teachers a little income. But with few resources and no support system, the children struggle to do this and run the risk of not attending or not having teachers.

[Read full News24 article]

Gains against malaria at risk from US cuts and donor complacency

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Zambia’s multipronged effort against malaria is making headway, at least in some parts of the country. In Eastern Province,  parasite prevalence among small children is down almost by half, to 12 percent. Efforts in Southern Province have been even more successful –prevalence is now below one percent. The national death rate declined by around 80 percent from 2010 to 2017. However, the results have been uneven. Many parts of the country have seen increases in prevalence, with some areas as high as 32 percent.

A big chunk of the funding for Zambia’s anti-malaria programming comes from the United States. Begun under former president George W. Bush, the fight against malaria is often cited as one of the US government’s most successful global health campaigns. But that could all change with President Donald Trump’s threat to cut foreign assistance around the globe.

The United States is such a massive player in global health, accounting for more than one third of total anti-malaria funding expenditures worldwide, that even relatively minor cuts would have a significant impact. The current global budget for malaria is less than half of what is needed to meet global malaria targets of reducing malaria by 40 percent by 2020, according to the World Health Organization.

Malaria experts warn that a reduction in that effort would be more than a minor setback: if malaria has been suppressed in a region and then resurges, the results can be devastating since natural immunities will be lowered and death and disability can rise sharply.

Globally, the trend is worrying. A recent WHO assessment found that progress around the world had stalled for the first time in a decade.

[IRIN]

Failure of international donors puts millions of Syrian children at risk

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The failure of international donors to meet the UN’s funding target for Syrian refugees will put the lives of millions of children at risk over the coming year.

A $5bn shortfall will impact not only upon Syrian refugees themselves but also on the host communities in which they now live. New research carried out by Plan International in Lebanon – which hosts close to 1.5 million Syrian refugees – reveals shocking statistics on child marriage and child labor among the Syrian community in particular.

In North Lebanon and North Bekaa, child labor is rife: 42% of Syrian boys aged 15-17 are currently employed. Research also revealed that 16% of girls aged 15-17 were either engaged to be married or already someone’s wife.

These figures should act as a wake-up call to the international community, says Colin Lee, Regional Programme Director for Plan International in the Middle East.

“The situation for refugee children caught up in the Syrian crisis is desperate. Families are struggling to meet basic needs, forcing them to marry off daughters and send sons out to work. Although this means one less mouth to feed and a little extra money to put food on the table, it is having a devastating impact on the lives of their children.

“If the gaping funding gap that this conference has left us with is not closed, we will be unable to reach the millions of people who are most desperately in need of assistance. We’re now into the eighth year of this conflict and the international community must not turn its back on the children caught up in this crisis.”

[Plan International]                                    See also More Misery for destitute Syrians

Cash and vouchers the new vogue in humanitarian aid

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The popular image of humanitarian aid in public consciousness is of trucks loaded with essential foods being handed out to refugees. But increasingly, humanitarian organizations have been turning away from transporting bags of commodities to crisis areas, and are instead focusing on giving refugees the means to buy their own food.

The UK-based Overseas Development Institute estimates that cash and vouchers now account for around 6% of total humanitarian spending, up from less than 1% in 2004. That is still a small amount but the United Nations World Food Program says cash now accounts for just over a quarter of its assistance.

Cash and vouchers are particularly popular in urban areas and have been extensively used to support Syrian refugees. That often means vouchers that can be used at supermarkets or even cash wired directly to those in need.

Aside from the dignity and choice that cash and vouchers offer, they are also seen as a more effective method of supporting the local economy. Traditional in-kind assistance – like soap, blankets, rice – is often sold by refugees below market price, to get something they need more. Cash allows them to keep the full value of the support they receive, and to prioritize according to their needs.

Vouchers are also popular with the donor community because it is easier to track and trace their use.

[EurActiv]