American aid worker kidnapped in Niger

Armed assailants abducted a US aid worker from his home Friday night in the West African nation of Niger, killing a police officer and a guard before fleeing west toward neighboring Mali, Niger’s interior ministry said.

Authorities are taking all necessary measures to locate the American and his abductors, including imposing a heavy military presence between Abalak, where the kidnapping took place, and the border with Mali, said a source who was not authorized to speak publicly.

The assailants stormed the aid worker’s home, the interior ministry said. The slain guard was the aid worker’s bodyguard, according to the source.

The American had been working with the locally based aid organization JEMED, said a spokesman for Youth With a Mission, which is affiliated with the group.

The aid worker has 29 years’ experience in Niger, spokesman Pete Thompson told CNN.

The kidnapping marked the first time a foreigner had been abducted in the area, the government source said. There has been no claim of responsibility so far.

[CNN]

Humanitarian delivery drones

A maker of delivery drones called Zipline International  began nationwide delivery of blood and other critical medical supplies in Rwanda today, through a partnership with the Rwandan government.

Executives at the startup prefer to call their technology “flying robots,” “small planes,” or “Zips” and not drones. That’s because they use a fixed-wing, rather than quadcopter or other multi-rotor design. Quadcopters are the default image people get when you say “drone,” now, as they’ve become mainstream in consumer electronics.

Other startups, including Matternet and Flirtey, have created multi-rotor drones to deliver everything from food and building supplies to medicine and biological samples.

According to co-founder and CEO Keller Rinaudo, the fixed-wing design of Zipline’s drones allows them to fly greater distances on less power than any quadcopter design, and allows them to launch and fly reliably through variable weather.

That detail is critical when you’re flying in areas of the world that do not have the infrastructure to allow frequent recharging, he said. The Zips are also battery-powered, so they don’t have to be refueled where it’s hard to find any reliable supply of diesel. Zipline CTO and co-founder Keenan Wyrobek said the company expects to get 1,500 flights out of each of its small planes before they need a new battery.

[Tech Crunch]

UN warns Mosul could be facing largest single humanitarian crisis of year

The UN has warned that the liberation of Mosul from the Islamic State group could cause the single largest humanitarian crisis of the year, with up to a million people needing shelter and a forced population movement that no single institution could cope with.

Lise Grande, the UN humanitarian coordinator for Iraq, warned that the coming battle could push the vast majority of the population of the city out of their homes, and billions of dollars would be needed to help them.

“The UN estimates that in a worst case scenario, Mosul could represent the single largest most complex humanitarian operation in the world in 2016,” she said.

“A worst case scenario in Mosul would look something like this: you would have mass expulsion of hundreds of thousands of people. You would have hundreds of thousands of people who are held as human shields inside the town. You would have a chemical attack that would put tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, maybe even more at grave risk. If all of that were to happen at the same time it would be catastrophic.”

Grande’s warnings came as Iraqi forces moved into position for an expected imminent push on the city. Iraq and its allies have repeatedly signaled that they are planning to retake the city – the country’s second-largest – in the coming weeks.

Civilians who have already attempted to escape Mosul were facing land mines and dehydration, aid agencies reported. Residents are confronted with a stark choice: remain in IS-controlled areas and risk violence and food shortages; or try to escape through minefields and escalating fighting while also risking dehydration.

Mosul has been occupied by IS since June 2014. Normally the city would have a population of more than two million, although at least half-a-million people have fled since IS took over.

[Middle East Eye]

Who destroyed the aid convoy in Aleppo?

Washington blamed Russia for last month’s attack on a UN humanitarian aid convoy near the Syrian city of Aleppo.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has said the attack was actually carried out by one of the terrorist groups present.

Russia said a US drone was monitoring the convoy, so Washington should know the truth about the attack.

“…The Americans know it too, but prefer to take a different position, to falsely accuse Russia. This is not helping,” Putin said at an economic forum in Moscow.

The aid convoy was attacked on the night of September 20. The International Committee of the Red Cross reported 20 civilians killed and 18 vehicles destroyed.

[RT]

Africa’s own humanitarian agency?

The African Union (AU) has recognized that there needs to be an urgent response to the humanitarian crisis caused by millions of people being displaced on the continent.

Africa has a huge challenge. Almost 30% of the world’s 41 million internally displaced people and close to 20% of the world’s refugees are in Africa. The root cause of displacement across the continent is conflict. And more people are bound to be displaced given the threat of climate change and a growing wave of natural disasters.

Some of the capacity for an African Humanitarian Agency already exists. However there are certain concerns that need to be addressed:

• The continent has a wealth of standards and institutions. But standards are often ignored and institutions battle to carry out their functions.
• People should be appointed for their ability to handle complex humanitarian issues rather than because of their political connections.
• One of the criticisms often leveled against the AU is that it does little to promote peace and security on the continent.
• Clear and realizable goals need to be set. One clear target could be that in its first five years, the agency works with states to review laws that criminalize migrants, refugees and other forcibly displaced populations.
• Currently, 80% of the African Union Commission’s budget comes from the region’s cooperation with the European Union and its member states. This funding trajectory needs to be revisited. A new funding model to foster African ownership of AU programs [could include] imposing a 0.2% levy on “all eligible imported goods” into Africa. This would generate an annual income of about US$1.2 billion.

The African Humanitarian Agency is a welcome initiative. But political, technical and financial support will matter. This will require the AU to take a pragmatic approach. The only question is: can it?

[Mail and Guardian]

More than 750,000 need immediate aid after Haiti hurricane

As the death toll in Haiti soars to more than 800 following Hurricane Matthew, humanitarian organizations face a race against the clock. Rising casualty numbers threaten to overwhelm the few health centers and hospitals not hit by the disaster. Large sections of the population are also at risk from epidemics.

The city of Jérémie in Grand’Anse, which has been almost entirely destroyed, remains impossible to access. It will be several days or weeks before all land routes reopen.

“We are working to supply immediate aid to survivors who have lost everything. Casualty numbers are high,” explains Hélène Robin, head of Handicap International’s emergency programs. “Our teams in the field have two priorities: to provide them with immediate and appropriate care to make sure they do not die from their injuries or develop permanent disabilities, and to supply people affected with the equipment they need to build a shelter and prepare food.”

More than 750,000 people need immediate humanitarian aid and first responders are expecting very heavy damage in the Grand-Anse and Sud regions, particularly in the cities of Jérémie and Les Cayes, according to the United Nations.

[Relief Web]

Haiti faces humanitarian crisis after Hurricane Matthew

Hurricane Matthew left a broad swath of destruction across Haiti on Wednesday with flooding, rivers of mud that washed out a crucial bridge into the southwestern peninsula of the country and thousands seeking shelter.

Haiti Ambassador Paul Altidor said his government is confident the number of dead will “remain quite low.” He said the government had enough advance warning to begin to move people away from dangerous, flooding areas and he believes that this saved lives.

“It’s been decades since the Caribbean has seen a hurricane of this magnitude, the heavy downpour. This is something that has not been seen in a long, long time. It is a major, major disaster.”

A United Nations representative to Haiti, Mourad Wahba, agreed the country was facing its largest humanitarian crisis since an earthquake in 2010 that left tens of thousands living in tents and makeshift dwellings. Some 55,000 Haitians left homeless by that earthquake were still living in shelters when Hurricane Matthew struck. Wahba said hospitals were jammed with people and running out of clean water.

The U.N. estimated that 2.3 million people are living in areas impacted by the hurricane.

[USA Today]

Global poverty declines even amid economic slowdown

The number of people living in extreme poverty is continuing to plunge, despite the 2008-09 financial crisis and slowing global economic growth, according to a World Bank study released Sunday. In the report, “Poverty and Shared Prosperity,” the World Bank says the progress proves that eliminating extreme poverty is an achievable goal.

Here’s the study’s key findings:
In 2013, fewer than 800 million people lived on less than $1.90 a day. That’s less than 11 percent of the global population. As recently as 1990, about 35 percent of all people lived in such extreme poverty.That means about 1.1 billion people rose out of extreme poverty.

50 percent of extremely poor people live in sub-Saharan Africa.

Even with a rocky global economy, earnings rose for the poorest 40 percent of people in 60 out of 83 countries studied between 2008 and 2013. The most significant contributions to declining poverty between 2012 and 2013 came from East Asia and the Pacific.

The World Bank studied several countries where inequality declined in recent years including Brazil, Cambodia, Mali, Peru and Tanzania. It identified six successful policies:

• Early childhood development and nutrition
• Universal health coverage
• Universal access to quality education
• Making cash transfers to poor families
• Rural infrastructure — especially roads and electrification
• Progressive taxation

Though poverty and inequality have continuously trended down, researcher Francisco Ferreira said, “the pockets of poverty that remain will become increasingly harder to reach and address.”

[NPR]