UK limits spending on Irma disaster relief as overseas territories ‘too wealthy’

The UK’s £13bn aid budget cannot be spent helping its overseas territories recover from Hurricane Irma, the Government has said. Instead, funding must be collected from other reserves across the Government, which have been described as “scanty”.

Anguilla, Turks, Caicos and the British Virgin Islands are all considered too wealthy to receive emergency funding from the budget, according to international aid rules.

The UK has so far pledged £57m to help fund the recovery effort following the deadly storm. Now, the Government is facing claims that five times more aid could have been sent to help the victims of the hurricane had it been allowed to dip into aid budget reserves.

An unnamed minister told the BBC:  “This great pot of ODA, necessary for development, needs to be spent on crises like this and we have to find a way of doing it.”

A Government spokesman said: “This was an unprecedented disaster and it’s absolutely right that the Government responded immediately to the needs of those affected. This was our primary focus and continues to be our priority.

The way Britain and 34 other developed nations spend their aid budget is governed by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development based in Paris (OECD). Countries are given a ranking according to need, which is intended to ensure the poorest nations are given priority.

[The Independent]

Nearing 300,000 Rohingya have fled Myanmar

The number of Rohingya who have fled fighting in western Myanmar has climbed sharply to 270,000, placing a huge strain on camps in Bangladesh where they are seeking shelter, the United Nations refugee agency said.

Two refugee camps in Cox’s Bazar in southeast Bangladesh that were already home to nearly 34,000 Rohingya refugees “are now bursting at the seams,” Duniya Aslam Khan, a spokeswoman for the refugee agency, said in a statement. “The limited shelter capacity is already exhausted,” she said. “Refugees are now squatting in makeshift shelters that have mushroomed along the road.”

The refugees in Bangladesh are mostly women and children who have arrived by foot, the United Nations refugee agency said. The Rohingya are a Muslim ethnic group that has faced severe repression in Myanmar, where a Buddhist majority has long ruled. About one million of them live in Rakhine State in the west of the country.

Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, the de facto leader of Myanmar and a Nobel Peace Prize laureate for her long struggle against military rule, has come under increasing international criticism for the plight of the Rohingya. Bishop Desmond Tutu of South Africa, also a Nobel laureate, wrote in a letter Thursday that it was “incongruous for a symbol of righteousness to lead such a country” that “is not at peace with itself, that fails to acknowledge and protect the dignity and worth of all its people.”

Previously, Malala Yousafzai of Pakistan, the youngest Nobel Peace Prize laureate, had also confronted Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi on Twitter over the violence against the Rohingya.

[New York Times]

US Appeals Court deals blow to Trump’s temporary ban on refugees

A U.S. appeals court on September 7 rejected efforts by the administration of U.S. President Donald Trump to temporarily bar most refugees from entering the United States.

In the latest legal blow to Trump’s executive order targeting refugees and people from six predominantly Muslim countries, the New York State Court of Appeals ruled that refugees who have “bona fide” relationships with U.S. resettlement agencies should be allowed into the country.

The court also ruled that grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins of legal U.S. residents should be exempted from Trump’s 90-day ban on travelers from Iran, Sudan, Syria, Libya, Somalia, and Yemen.

The court added that “it is hard to see how a grandparent, grandchild, aunt, uncle, niece, nephew, sibling-in-law, or cousin can be considered to have no bona fide relationship with their relative in the United States.”

[AP / Reuters]

Mexico’s strongest earthquake in a century leaves dozens dead

A magnitude-8.1 quake, which was felt as far as Mexico City and Guatemala City, was registered off Mexico’s southern coast just as heavy rains from Hurricane Katia lashed the east.

The epicenter was in the Pacific Ocean, some 600 miles (1,000 kilometers) southeast of the capital and 74 miles (120 kilometers) from the Pacific coast.

Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto said the quake was the strongest earthquake Mexico has experienced in 100 years.

It hit late Thursday, when many people were asleep. The states of Chiapas and Oaxaca, home to about 9 million people, are located closest to the earthquake’s epicenter. They are two of the most impoverished areas in Mexico, and were likely hit the hardest.

So far, twenty-three people have been confirmed killed in Oaxaca state, seven in Chiapas state and two in Tabasco, local and federal officials said.

[CNN]

Angela Merkel’s open-door migration policy a million refugees later

A million refugees have taken refuge in Germany since 2015 under German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s open-door migration policy. Many cities and towns took in more refugees than required.

Altena, an industrial west German town, was facing an economic downturn after its ironworks closed. Jobs were lost, businesses shut down, and families abandoned their homes. The population dropped by more than 10%. The mayor was looking for a way to give the town a boost when Merkel made her appeal in 2015.

“First, we wanted to help. There was a human reason to take them,” Altena’s mayor Andreas Hollstein explained.  “But the second reason was a win-win situation. We thought, ‘Okay, we need new people in Altena. …. This will help us invest in the future.'”

Altena, required to take in 300 refugees, took in in 400, and set up a program to match them with volunteer mentors that would help navigate German culture and its notoriously bureaucratic paperwork.

Bernadette Koopmann is one of the welcoming. “I have such a perfect life. I have healthy children, we live in a country that has not experienced war in a long time.

“Others are not so lucky,” she said. “They experience war, devastation, and poverty. I believe it’s not too much to ask for our help.”

[Read full CNN article]

WFP ED: Saudi Arabia should fund hunger relief in war-torn Yemen

Comments by David Beasley, Executive Director of the World Food Programme (WFP), were unusually forthright for such a high-ranking UN official in criticizing one party in a conflict, as Beasley accused the Saudi-led coalition of hampering the provision of aid to Yemen.

“Saudi Arabia should fund 100 percent [of the needs] of the humanitarian crisis in Yemen,” Beasley told Reuters news agency. “Either stop the war, or fund the crisis. Option three is, do both of them.”

Since fighting began in March 2015, more than 10,000 people have been killed, and millions have been driven from their homes. The country is also facing a health crisis, with more than 2,000 people having died from cholera since April, more than half a million people infected, and another 600,000 expected to contract the infection this year.

Aid groups have also accused Saudi Arabia of blocking needed assistance and goods from areas that are most in need. The UN has accused Saudi Arabia of restricting entry to vessels bound for the key Red Sea port of Hodeidah through which around 80 percent of Yemen’s food imports once arrived.

“The Saudis have created serious complications for us because of the port being blockaded to a certain degree, and the destroying of the cranes at Hodeidah port … That has substantially reduced our capacity to bring food in,” the WFP‘s Beasley said. He added that coalition restrictions had also obstructed the delivery of fuel needed by UN vehicles which travel in and out of Sanaa carrying aid and personnel.

The kingdom has said that hundreds of millions of dollars it pledged to humanitarian programs have benefited civilians on both sides of Yemen’s conflict.

[Reuters]

Aid workers under attack in Myanmar as Rohingya conflict worsens

The Myanmar authorities’ restrictions on international aid in Rakhine state is putting tens of thousands of lives at risk in a region of Burma where mainly Rohingya people are already suffering horrific abuses from a disproportionate military campaign, Amnesty International said.

“Rakhine state is on the precipice of a humanitarian disaster. Nothing can justify denying life-saving aid to desperate people. By blocking access for humanitarian organizations, Myanmar’s authorities have put tens of thousands of people at risk and shown a callous disregard for human life,” said Tirana Hassan, Amnesty International’s Director for Crisis Response.

Aid workers told Amnesty International of an increasingly desperate humanitarian situation in Rakhine state, where the military has been engaged in a large-scale operation since attacks on dozens of security posts on 25 August.

Tens of thousands of people have been forced to flee from their homes since the violence began. According to latest UN estimates 90,000 Rohingya refugees have crossed the border into Bangladesh. Thousands of people – mostly Rohingya – are believed to be stranded in the mountains of northern Rakhine State, where the UN and international NGOs (INGOs) are unable to assess their needs or to provide shelter, food and protection.

Hate speech and death threats have been directed against international aid workers, further threatening humanitarian operations. The European Commission reported “intimidation of national INGO/U.N. staff, and looting of some INGO warehouses.”

[DeVex / Amnesty International]

16 million children affected by massive flooding in South Asia

The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) said that an estimated 16 million children are in urgent need of life-saving support in the wake of torrential monsoon rains and catastrophic flooding in Nepal, India and Bangladesh.

Since mid-August, there have been at least 1,288 reported deaths, with over 45 million people estimated to be affected.

Many areas remain inaccessible due to damage to roads, bridges, railways and airports. The most urgent needs for children are clean water, hygiene supplies to prevent the spread of disease, food supplies and safe places in evacuation centers for children.

“Massive damage to school infrastructure and supplies also mean hundreds of thousands of children may miss weeks or months of school,” said Jean Gough, UNICEF Regional Director for South Asia. “Getting children back into school is absolutely critical in establishing a sense of stability for children during times of crisis and provides a sense of normality when everything else is being turned upside down.”

In Bangladesh alone, more than 3 million people have been affected by flooding. An estimated 696,169 houses have been damaged or destroyed and 2,292 primary and community schools have been damaged by high water.

[UNICEF]