 |
 |
|
|
 |
08/20/08 - CONGO: Government sets sights on infant mortality |
|
BRAZZAVILLE, 20 August 2008 (IRIN) - The Republic of Congo's government has launched a nationwide weeklong campaign of action aimed at tackling the country's high rates of infant, juvenile and maternal mortality. "I seize this opportunity to fight maternal and infant mortality, my primary concern," Health and Social Affairs Minister Emilienne Raoul said at the launch of the campaign in the town of Ouesso, some 800 km north of the capital, Brazzzaville.
According to a 2005 demographic and health survey, 781 of every 100,000 births resulted in the death of the mother. The same survey showed the infant and juvenile mortality rates to be 75 and 117 per thousand respectively. The survey also showed that there had been no improvement in these indicators since 1990. Across the country during the week of action, impregnated bed nets are to be distributed, while children are to be treated for parasites, given vitamin A supplements and pregnant mothers given birth kits.
The government used the occasion of the week of action to give birth certificates to 2,012 as yet unregistered children in indigenous communities. "Our children have this right because they are citizens just like the Bantu," said Paul Ngama, head of one such family. Indigenous communities, sometimes referred to as Pygmies, account for about 10 percent of Congo's three million inhabitants.
|
|
|
|
|
08/18/08 - SOMALIA: Street children increase as food insecurity grips region |
|
NAIROBI, 14 August 2008 (IRIN) - Food insecurity compounded by inflation and recent fighting between insurgents and government forces around the town of Beletweyne in central Somalia's Hiran region has led to a sharp increase in the number of street children.
"More and more children are taking to the streets; some to engage in petty trade while others are just there in search of food," a journalist based in Beletweyne, who declined to be named, told IRIN. The journalist said children, numbering at least 100, had resorted to Beletweyne streets in recent months as access to food dwindled for many families.
Layla Maowlid, 12, is one such child: "I am on the streets daily to sell sweet potatoes due to the poor condition and hunger of my family, I have no other choice. My mother prepares this food in
The journalist said since many local and international NGOs had left the town due to insecurity, only the Zamzam Foundation, which runs the Ughas Kalif orphanage in the town, was providing aid for children.
According to Robert Kihara, a spokesman for the UN Children's Fund in Somalia (UNICEF-Somalia), the agency is currently conducting a rapid assessment of the child protection situation in Beletweyne through its Child Protection Network for Hiran. "Similar assessments are also currently underway in Bay, Benadir, Middle Shabelle, Galgaduud, and Lower Shabelle," Kihara said. "The increase in children living or working on the street has also been reported by the Benadir Child Protection Network. No figures are stated."
He added: "Among other essential protection issues for children, the assessments will provide insight into the scale of the problem. As such UNICEF is not in a position to comment on figures at this stage. The assessments will be completed by this coming Sunday in the field and will then be analysed. Kihara said UNICEF was not supporting any programmes focusing specifically on children living or working on the street at this stage, "but we do support programmes that monitor the violations against children, that provide psycho-social care and support to children (for example in Afgoye) through schools, as well as community mobilisation programmes to highlight child protection issues at community level."
Benadir Child Protection Network. No figures are stated."
He said UNICEF also supports child protection networks to develop community-based responses to critical areas in need of intervention, adding: "This may very well include children living or working on the street."
|
|
|
|
|
06/18/08 - UGANDA: "Falling into rebel hands five times within eight months was the easier part" |
|
PATONGO, 18 June 2008 (IRIN) - Widow and mother of four, Margaret Awoi, 48, has been abducted five times by Joseph Kony's Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) rebels. She told IRIN why falling into rebel hands was easier than living with HIV, which was diagnosed in 2004 after her deceased husband succumbed to it. "Many people in northern Uganda have been abducted at least once in their lives, but has anyone else been abducted five times within eight months? I was captured five times between February 2003 and October of the same year.
"In February 2003 my two children and I were farming when the rebels appeared. They captured me, took my sandals, then shoved two water-filled 20-litre jerry cans at me and demanded I carry them both on my head. The hiding children were undetected. Later that day the UPDF [Ugandan army] ambushed the rebels and I escaped unharmed. "The rebels struck again about five weeks later and took two bicycles, and goats. I deceived them and escaped. They struck a third time four weeks later and took me hostage from my father's house. I was horrified. They ordered me to carry a 60kg bag of grain, joking about having someone strong and beautiful to move their food. Three days later the rebel troop was ambushed, allowing me to escape.
"The one in October 2003 was most memorable. A faction of rebels had ambushed a group of us [villagers] minutes before three military fighter jets flew over my father's home. We scampered away. The rebels panicked and melted into the nearby greenery. I had just escaped the fifth abduction. "The following day my family fled to a settlement camp in Patonga. I felt I would be secure. Then my husband - once a Uganda People's Defence Forces [Ugandan army] soldier - returned home weak and sickly. He died five months later of an undiagnosed illness. Shortly after that I began experiencing fatigue and caught many opportunistic illnesses easily. I was treated for malaria but remained sick. Then a friend advised me to have an HIV/AIDS test. I tested positive. Newly widowed, that result was worse than being abducted 100 times.
"In 2007 I returned home and joined the Gwokke Keni People Living with AIDS community group. Gwokke Keni was founded in 2004 to address the stigmatisation of HIV/AIDS returnees in Pader. All 100 of us are living positively and helping the group's coordinator, Jane Adong, to sensitise the people of Pader to the dangers of risky sexual behaviour. We support each other in caring for our sick, carrying family burdens and baby-sitting. We generate extra income from Gwokke's jointly-owned pig farm. That said, I am weak and worry constantly about my children's education; their parentless future. I can no longer afford their fees and I am hoping a Good Samaritan will come to their aid."
|
|
|
|
|
06/17/08 - SOMALIA: Conditions getting worse for IDPs in Kismayo |
|
NAIROBI, 17 June 2008 (IRIN) - Increasing insecurity, hyperinflation and lack of adequate food have exacerbated conditions for thousands of displaced families living in the southern Somali port city of Kismayo, civil society sources said. "There are an estimated 35,000 IDPs in the city and they are living in very precarious conditions," Mohamed Adan Dheel, a civil society activist, told IRIN by phone from Kismayo, 500 km from the Somali capital of Mogadishu.
"The IDPs [internally displaced persons] in Kismayo are of three categories: those who fled the recent upsurge of violence in Mogadishu, those who were displaced by fighting in Jammame [55 km north of Kismayo], and the old ones from 1992," Dheel said on 17 June. "There are others that can be classified as a fourth [category]: the ones who returned from the Kenyan border after failing to cross." The IDPs, he added, were generally in poor health and lacked access to basic services, clothing, sufficient food, and shelter. "It is now very common in Kismayo to see a mother and her children from Mogadishu begging because they have no other choice," Dheel added.
One of the IDPs, Asha Mohamed Yusuf, said she had spent 15 days in the town. "I left Mogadishu after my husband and two children [aged six and five years] were killed by a shell," the 35-year-old mother of five told IRIN. Yusuf and her other children survived the attack because they were not at home. "My other children were in Koranic school; my baby [18 months] and I were at the market," she explained. "A neighbour came to tell me what happened. After that I decided to take the rest to some place safe."She was on the streets of Kismayo when good Samaritans brought her and her children to a displaced camp and helped her build a small shack. But the only help she got was some food and clothing that the locals gave her.
Farhan Lafoole, a local journalist, told IRIN that in the past many IDPs used to find work in the town to supplement what little help they got, but because of insecurity and inflation they could no longer find employment. People who used to hire the IDPs can no longer afford them, he said. At the same time, the price of one kilogram of sugar has risen to 44,000 Somali shillings from 14,000 a year ago; while one kilogram of rice is now 65,000 shillings, up from 6,000 a year ago.
The value of the shilling itself has more than halved; it is now exchanging at 35,500 to the US dollar, down from 14,000 a year ago.
Many of the IDPs claim they survive on aid. For example, the UN World Food Programme (WFP), among other agencies and NGOs, has been feeding 10,000 in the town since August. "The number increased in January to 16,000; the last distribution in April was for 16,000 IDPs," said Abdi Jama, information officer for WFP Somalia. "WFP is planning to continue feeding Kismayo IDPs until December 2008, up to a total number of 20,000 IDPs. We will also target another 10,000 drought-affected [IDPs] in Kismayo town," he added.
Persistent insecurity in Kismayo has, however, made it very difficult for aid agencies to effectively help the displaced and those who need assistance. Since fighting between Ethiopian-backed Somali forces and insurgents began in early 2007, about one million Somalis have fled their homes. Another estimated 6,500 civilians have been killed. Aid workers estimate that 2.6 million Somalis need assistance. That number is expected to reach 3.5 million by the end of the year if the humanitarian situation does not improve, according to the UN. |
|
|
|
|
06/16/08 - Agreement to establish an observatory on gender parity in Latin America and the Caribbean |
|
INSTRAW/ECLAC--José Luis Machinea, Executive Secretary of the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) and Carmen Moreno, Director at United Nations International Research and Training Institute for the Advancement of Women (UN-INSTRAW) signed an agreement for the establishment of an Observatory on Gender Parity in Latin America and the Caribbean.
During the 10th Regional Conference on Women in Quito, Ecuador (2007) Member States requested to create an observatory on equality that will help strengthen national gender machineries and recognized that “equality is one of the driving forces of democracy and that its aim is to achieve equality in the exercise of power, in decision-making, in mechanisms of social and political participation and representation…a goal for the eradication of women’s structural exclusion.”
The Observatory will coordinate an annual evaluation of gender inequality, covering such themes as remunerated and non-remunerated work, the use of time, poverty, access to decision-making and political representation and gender-based violence.
UN-INSTRAW’s participation in this initiative is part of the implementation of the project “Gender, Governance and Women’s Political Participation at local level,” which looks to strengthen the participation and political leadership of women in the planning and management of local governments in Latin America. The Technical Secretary will be the responsibility of ECLAC through its Women and Development Division.
Among the participants are the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO), the United Nations Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM) and various donor agencies (Agencia Española de Cooperacion International para el Desarrollo (AECID), Secretaria General de Iberoamericana (SEGIB) and the Government of France).
The Observatory will offer member countries a variety of strategic tools and methodologies to track and monitor the goals established in the Quito Consensus.
The agreement was signed within the context of the 32nd Session of the United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC), which took place in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic (9 to 13 June 2008).
|
|
|
|
|
Dyna-creation.com