http://www.irinnews.org/irin-fp.aspxUpdated everydayen-gbThu, 19 Nov 2009 16:14:02 GMTMONROVIA Thursday, November 19, 2009 (IRIN) - Water and sanitation services in the Liberian capital, Monrovia, are getting worse as a growing urban population tries to squeeze more out of already skeletal services. On 19 November, World Toilet Day, NGOs are calling on the government to up its allocation, and on international donors to reprioritize funding to stamp out cholera and cut child mortality.MONROVIA Thursday, November 19, 2009 (IRIN) - Water and sanitation services in the Liberian capital, Monrovia, are getting worse as a growing urban population tries to squeeze more out of already skeletal services. On 19 November, World Toilet Day, NGOs are calling on the government to up its allocation, and on international donors to reprioritize funding to stamp out cholera and cut child mortality.

Just one-third of Monrovia's 1.5 million residents have access to clean toilets, and 20 to 30 cholera cases are reported weekly; in 2008 there were 888 suspected cases, 98 percent of them in Monrovia's overcrowded shantytowns such as West Point, Buzzi Quarter, Clara Town, and Sawmill.

Poor or non-existent clean water and sanitation facilities are linked to high malaria and diarrhoea rates, Liberia's two leading child killers.

In the Clara Town slum, 75,000 people share 11 public toilets and 22 public taps; West Point's 70,000 residents must make do with just four public toilets, said Bessman Toe, head of the Montserrado County slum-dweller association, which represents over 40 slum communities in and around the capital.

Some households build their own toilets, but these tend to collapse during the seven-month rainy season, Oxfam emergency health engineer Jennifer Lamb told IRIN, so people defecate in the narrow alley-ways between their houses, on the beach, or into plastic bags, which they dump on nearby piles of rubbish or into the sea.

A visit to a toilet in West Point costs 2.5 US cents; the young men running the latrines said there were around 500 users a day. The facilities can be smelled 50 metres away, with the floor of each squalid cubicle 15cm deep in soiled newspaper that residents use to wipe their posteriors. Staff use gloved hands to scoop the used paper into a wheelbarrow, which they lug to the nearby river or beach to dump its contents into the water.

"The situation is just getting worse here. There are more people for fewer toilets; people just openly defecate between their houses - conditions are really bad," West Point community activist Darius Nyante told IRIN.

In Clara Town's aptly named "Struggle Community" - a network of haphazard, rubbish-strewn streets, many of which are flooded for several months of the year - 10,000 residents share two privately owned water taps.

When IRIN visited one of them, two young men were fighting over payment while the rest of the queue waited their turn to get water. Land-owners employ young men to manage the taps, who charge between 7 US cents and 14 US cents for 5 litres to 15 litres of water, depending on where the tap is located.

Why so bad

Spokesman Toe blamed overcrowding for the overstretched services: thousands of Liberians moved their families into informal settlements in Monrovia, which mushroomed chaotically during and after the 14-year civil war that ended in 2003, and now there is very little land on which aid agencies can build toilets.

Concern, a member of the NGO water and sanitation (WASH) consortium, set up to try to improve water and sanitation conditions in Liberia, builds latrines and installs taps in urban townships as well as rural communities across the country, but most NGOs operate only in rural areas.

Some NGOs are reluctant to build toilets in slum communities because of long-standing rumours that the townships will be relocated. "Do you invest infrastructure that could be destroyed, or do you wait?" said Oxfam's Lamb.

An experiment in the 1970s to move people from West Point, a busy commercial and fishing area near the sea, failed because residents flocked back despite squalid living conditions, to fish and make a living as informal shopkeepers and service providers.

Topography also complicates matters: many of Monrovia's slums are built on low-lying swamp land, making them difficult to connect to any existing municipal sewage system; building toilets in these conditions is expensive, costing approximately US$4,000 per six-toilet block, Concern's public health coordinator, Timothy Owhuchukwu, told IRIN.

West Point activist Nyante said the Monrovia City Corporation allowed new residents to build houses wherever they pleased if the price was right, so septic tanks in West Point, Buzzi Quarter and Sawmill had become blocked and could not be emptied. Toe said residents were attempting to desludge the tanks with hand pumps.

Committing cash

The government needed to increase its spending on water and sanitation from the current one percent of the total budget – equivalent to $15 million – to 10 percent, said WASH consortium spokesperson Muyatwa Sitali. He pointed out that the government spent seven times more on curative health than on preventive health.

In a soon-to-be published report on water and sanitation in Liberia, Oxfam will call on donors such as the World Bank, the UK government's Department For International Development and the European Commission - which have supported water and sanitation improvements with $65 million - to commit a further $80 million in line with Liberia's poverty reduction strategy budget.

Omarley Yeabah, an adviser to the Ministry of health environmental planning unit, who is in charge of ensuring water quality and promoting public hygiene awareness, said government resources were thin. "The challenges are enormous - our lack of capacity, a lack of vehicles, just a few people working on this in each county." Nevertheless, "The situation is not terrible, considering the war we just had."

The Cabinet was reviewing a policy on water and sanitation that the UN Children's Agency (UNICEF) had helped draft, the organization's Hamidou Maiga told IRIN. Once that was in place, donors, agencies and the government might have greater clarity on their roles.

Given the growing urban coverage gap in sanitation facilities and water supply, Sitali said NGOs, including Oxfam, were likely to step up construction of urban toilets and tap stands.

Logistical and financial hurdles were not the only challenges. Building more toilets was the first step, said Concern's Owhuchukwu; forming and sustaining community committees to keep them clean, and encouraging community members to pay to use them, would take ongoing effort.

Standing behind six toilets built by Concern in Sawmill, community chairman Henry Varnuy told IRIN that the residents' attitudes to open defecation were changing. But while he was speaking, two children squatted behind him to defecate on a mound of rubbish. Yassa, 10, pointed at the toilet. "No enough money," she said, "so I go outside."

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http://www.irinnews.org/report.aspx?ReportId=87110NAIROBI Wednesday, November 18, 2009 (IRIN) - Escalating violence in the Somali town of Galkayo, Mudug region, is creating a climate of fear, which in turn has adversely affected livelihoods, residents say.NAIROBI Wednesday, November 18, 2009 (IRIN) - Escalating violence in the Somali town of Galkayo, Mudug region, is creating a climate of fear, which in turn has adversely affected livelihoods, residents say.

Cases of killings and explosions have increased in the past six weeks, with the business community attributing the trend to the demolition of a market and subsequent displacement and desperation of dozens of small-scale traders.

"The current climate of insecurity is affecting all aspects of our lives, including the ability to make a living," Fuad Abshir, a businessman in Galkayo, told IRIN.

Abshir said the town's authorities had been promising to do something about the deteriorating security situation but nothing had changed.

Abdiqani Hassan, another businessman, said he was now closing his shop much earlier than he used to due to insecurity. "I close three to four hours earlier than I did before, which impacts on how much business I do."

Hassan said security forces had exacerbated the situation by firing indiscriminately whenever explosions or gunshots were heard.

Abshir blamed the insecurity, in part, on the demolition of a market for small traders on 29 October by the authorities. "They demolished a market of hundreds of small traders without providing an alternative."

He said he suspected that many of the displaced traders were on the streets and "will do anything to survive". He urged the authorities to address the problems of the traders "as a priority, before things go from bad to worse".

In addition, the police had been lax in addressing the insecurity, he claimed.

Abshir said businesses paid taxes "and those taxes should be used to provide services such as security to the people".

Maryan Hashi, a mother of seven, was a small trader in the Suqa Bankiga market, demolished for security and health reasons. "I was not rich but I had a decent life and never asked for help from anyone to feed my children. Now I have nothing," she told IRIN.

She said the market supported hundreds of families who are now destitute and urged the authorities to address the issue.

Khalif Abdi Dala, an official at the Centre for Peace and Development in Galkayo, said the demolition had hit low-income families hardest.

"This was a place where low-income people eked out a living," Dala said. "It is a problem and the government needs to address it."

However, he said, "there is no serious security problem at the moment and what there is, is being addressed".

Ahmed Ali Salad, the governor of Mudug region, said “although Galkayo has had some problems, we are dealing with it.

"Galkayo is better placed than most in Somalia and our security situation is under control," he said. The security forces were redoubling their efforts.

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http://www.irinnews.org/report.aspx?ReportId=87098JOHANNESBURG Wednesday, November 18, 2009 (IRIN) - Good quality food aid can save billions of dollars that would otherwise be spent on saving lives, says a major report from the World Bank, one of two new studies that uncover some unsettling facts about food aid and malnutrition. JOHANNESBURG Wednesday, November 18, 2009 (IRIN) - Good quality food aid can save billions of dollars that would otherwise be spent on saving lives, says a major report from the World Bank, one of two new studies that uncover some unsettling facts about food aid and malnutrition.

Spending US$200 to treat a severely malnourished child can save $1,351 in treating nutrition-related illnesses, said the report, Scaling up Intervention: What will it cost? which argued that "The cost of not intervening ... is much higher. The benefits from iron fortification of staples and salt iodization alone are estimated at $7.2 billion per year."

The 2007/2008 food price crisis, followed by one of the worst economic recessions in recent times, has revived the humanitarian aid world's interest in malnutrition, especially in the quality of food aid being dispensed.

The other report, Malnutrition: how much is being spent? by international medical charity Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), agreed with the World Bank's conclusion in that food aid abysmally fails to meet nutrition requirements.

Food aid does not necessarily focus on the "window of opportunity" from pregnancy until a child turns two, when children and women are most vulnerable, said Meera Shekar, a leading health and nutrition specialist at the World Bank and co-author of its report.

"Rarely does the food aid target the most vulnerable groups: children under five, pregnant women and lactating mothers," said Stéphane Doyon, a co-author of the MSF report.

Donors spent very little on nutrition - barely 1.7 percent of development and emergency food aid between 2004 and 2007 actually addressed malnutrition, said MSF.

Doyon said their analysis suggested that donors should maximise the value of funding by ceasing in-kind donations and provide cash instead, allowing aid agencies to source cheaper or more appropriate food in the region or beneficiary country. However, donor countries in the European Union (EU) and Canada, which had recently moved to provide cash, were not spending enough on nutrition.

The World Bank report noted that addressing malnutrition in the 36 countries where 90 percent of the world's most malnourished children live would be relatively cheap - only $11.8 billion to step up 13 proven nutrition interventions from current coverage to 100 percent of the target population.

Scaling up these programmes which include providing fortified food, deworming tablets and promoting breastfeeding could save the lives of more than 1.1 million children younger than five in these countries, where an estimated eight million children die of malnutrition-related causes every year.

The World Bank report takes a comprehensive look at the nuts and bolts of nutrition interventions like providing micronutrient-fortified foods, and not only details how much each intervention should be stepped up, but also its impact in monetary value.

Children who received fortified complementary food before they were three years old grew up to be more economically productive, said the World Bank study, citing an investigation led by John Hoddinott, a senior research fellow at the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), published in the British medical journal, The Lancet, in 2008.

The World Bank study represented "A careful attempt to assess what resources are needed to put a significant dent in malnutrition around the world ... [the] striking feature of these estimates is, in fact, how small these financial requirements are," Hoddinott told IRIN.

"For a fraction of the amount of money spent on bailing out financial institutions, governments around the world could significantly reduce micronutrient deficiencies and dramatically reduce the incidence of stunting."

The global economic slowdown, combined with high food prices, has added some 100 million people around the world to those already living in chronic hunger and poverty in 2008, according to the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO).

Between 3.5 million and 5 million children under five years of age die every year from malnutrition-related illnesses, accounting for 11 percent of the global burden of disease, according to the reports.

The MSF study said about 40 percent of nutrition funding flows were allocated to sub-Saharan Africa, where the main recipient countries included Sudan, Ethiopia, Somalia, Niger, Kenya, Zimbabwe and the Democratic Republic of Congo; almost 18 percent of the funds went to South and Central Asia; the remainder was "unspecified".

The nuts and bolts

Of the $11.8 billion the World Bank said was needed to address malnutrition in the 36 countries, $1.5 billion could be contributed by wealthier households in the beneficiary countries to purchase iodized salt and fortified staple foods, such as flour, which were available locally.

The World Bank study found that undernutrition was surprisingly high, even among the wealthiest populations. "For example, in India, Bangladesh, and Ethiopia, respectively 20, 30, and 37 percent of children under the age of five in the highest-income quintiles are underweight."

The remaining $10.3 billion could buy vitamin A supplements, iron-folic acid tablets, and staple foods fortified with iron, among others, for several million children and mothers.

Besides rescuing lives, these interventions could save an estimated 30 million disability-adjusted life-years (DALYs) or years lost to premature death and disability, as well as the money needed to treat patients and provide care.

Severe acute malnutrition could be halved from the current prevalence of 19 million; an estimated 138,000 of the current 276,000 annual deaths would be averted by preventive measures; a further 50,000 deaths would be averted by treating severe acute malnutrition.

The World Bank study recommended scaling up interventions in two phases: expanding the distribution of micronutrients, and educating people about eating healthy food in Phase 1; providing complementary or therapeutic foods to prevent and treat moderate malnutrition in children younger than two, and spending on resource-intensive interventions to treat severe malnutrition in Phase 2.

However, MSF's Doyon pointed out that prevention and treatment had to run concurrently. "What's the point in educating people about micronutrient interventions when they will have to wait to access them?"

What about the money?

The World Bank study suggested that the allocation of funds in recipient countries would be made more efficient by filling the gaps in costed and agreed-upon national strategies, and noted that this perception was growing.

In a complementing move, several developed countries, including those in the EU, have "either developed new nutrition strategies or position papers on food security, or seem poised to do so".

"It's about changing the mindset from providing food aid to assistance, keeping the people's needs in mind," said Doyon.

The authors of the World Bank report were upbeat over the recent announcement by the G8 group of industrialised countries in L'Aquila, Italy, that an additional $20 billion over three years would be spent on food security.

There is also a possibility that Canada will pursue this agenda when the G8 meets next, in 2010, by moving "from food security to nutrition security", offering "yet another opportunity for financing the nutrition scale-up".

jk/he http://www.irinnews.org/report.aspx?ReportId=87106CAIRO Tuesday, November 17, 2009 (IRIN) - When government workmen came in a truck to take Ahmed Mohamed’s furniture to his new home just outside Cairo, the 32-year-old fisherman was overjoyed: His dream of quitting the slum where he had lived for years seemed to be coming true.CAIRO Tuesday, November 17, 2009 (IRIN) - When government workmen came in a truck to take Ahmed Mohamed’s furniture to his new home just outside Cairo, the 32-year-old fisherman was overjoyed: His dream of quitting the slum where he had lived for years seemed to be coming true.

However, when he got to a new residential area called 6 October, 50km southwest of the city centre, he realized there was a problem: “We were given beautiful homes, but they’re good for nothing. What can a fisherman like me do in the desert?” Mohamed, whose former slum of Istable Antar was near the River Nile, told IRIN.
 
There are some 1,221 slums in Egypt (76 in Cairo), and around 20 million people, a quarter of the population, live in them, according to the country’s Central Agency for Public Mobilization and Statistics (CAPMAS).

Between 1993 and 2007, the government spent the equivalent of US$727 million developing some slums and relocating the residents of others, according to CAPMAS.
 
But the plight of slum-dwellers hit the headlines in September 2008 when a rockslide caused the deaths of some 100 residents of al-Dweiqa slum, [http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=81301] in eastern Cairo, part of the al-Muqattam cliffs on the edge of the city.

The deadliest seven

Seven of Cairo’s slums were identified by the government as the most dangerous in terms of health and safety - built on or under crumbling cliff-edges.

The 2008 rockslide tragedy prompted the government to provide the estimated 19,000 families living in these seven slums with new housing on the outskirts of Cairo.

To date, 4,000 families have been relocated, and Mohamed was one of the “lucky ones”.

But he now travels up to 50km to get to his boat and fishing gear on the Nile. With a weekly income of less than LE200 (US$36), Mohamed bemoaned his travelling costs and the time lost travelling.
 
“Almost a quarter of my income goes on transport… I work three days a week now.”

Many of the breadwinners of relocated families jointly rent small rooms near their places of work in the capital and visit their families in the new flats only on weekends.
 
Jobless

While few slum-dwellers are fishermen like Mohamed, most said moving outside the capital left them jobless.
 
Abdel Ra’ouf Abdel Monem, another resident of Istable Antar, earns a living by roaming the streets of Cairo on a donkey-drawn cart collecting scrap metal and plastic which, on an average day, he sells for about LE40 ($7). He and many others like him fear they will be cut off from their source of income if and when they are moved.
 
“Our jobs are here, our life is here. Why should we move?... The government can’t put us in the desert and then claim to have solved our problem,” he said.

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http://www.irinnews.org/report.aspx?ReportId=87069MARAWILA Tuesday, November 17, 2009 (IRIN) - A grim boat journey partly spent in an airless hold, surviving a storm and running afoul of Australian security officers were still not enough to dim the hopes of some would-be Sri Lankan migrants, they say.MARAWILA Tuesday, November 17, 2009 (IRIN) - A grim boat journey partly spent in an airless hold, surviving a storm and running afoul of Australian security officers were still not enough to dim the hopes of some would-be Sri Lankan migrants, they say.
 
“We ran out of fuel on the high seas,” said Ranjit P, 25, declining to give his real name for fear of being prosecuted in Sri Lanka. “But some Indonesian fishermen helped us by giving us cans of diesel and we were able to carry on our journey. They even gave us food and water because we had finished our supplies,” he told IRIN.
 
Still, the tyre shop employee in this small western coastal village - who turned down a cleaner’s job in Dubai to pursue a dream life in New Zealand - said if an opportunity arose for another trip, he would take it.
 
Fellow traveller Krishantha D, agreed: “I’m definitely going to try again, even if it is to another country.” The hotel worker and father of two said he could barely make a living with the 15,000 rupees (US$131) he earned a month.   
 
Ranjit and Krishantha were among some 50 men from northwestern Puttalam district who boarded a 14m fibreglass boat one night in February. They each paid $1,500 to people smugglers as a partial payment for a one-way ride to New Zealand.
 
They were expected to pay US$2,000 more once they landed and found employment.
 
Instead, after 35 days, their boat ran aground off the unfamiliar northern Australian coast near Horn Island, and they were picked up by border security officials. The closest they got to their destination was the detention centre at Australia’s Christmas Island, where they congregated with 800 other Sri Lankans who arrived that month. They left voluntarily and received $1,200 from the Australian government upon their return.  
 
Cooperation on people smugglers
 
In recent weeks, a stand-off in Indonesia involving 75 Sri Lankans on board an Australian customs ship and the capsizing of a boat ferrying illegal migrants off northwest Australia, have focused attention on the flow of Sri Lankan migrants and asylum seekers.
 
Although many Sri Lankans go abroad through skilled migration programmes, the option is closed for the poor.
 
“Even if we want to go legally, we can’t,” said Prasanna K, 30, a mason who was also on the ill-fated trip to New Zealand. “We just don’t have the bank balance that is required if we want to apply legally.”
 
Between 2003 and 2008, some 16,291 Sri Lankans were deported from other countries, with an average of some 2,715 returnees a year, according to the International Migration Outlook – Sri Lanka 2008 report, released in October by the International Organization for Migration (IOM).
 
The majority were sent back from Malaysia, Japan, Singapore, South Korea, Hong Kong and the UK, it notes.
 
“There has been a continuous increase in the number of refugees and asylum-seekers from Sri Lanka due to the conflict in the northern and eastern parts of the country,” stated the report.
 
Australia is one destination of choice for migrants and asylum seekers, and on 9 November, it signed a memorandum of understanding with Sri Lanka on legal cooperation against people smuggling.
 
Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapakse told visiting Australian Foreign Minister Stephen Smith last week that his government would help the Australians “investigate, track down and bring to justice the masterminds involved in migrant smuggling”, a statement from the president’s office said.
 
“The focus of our effort with Sri Lanka is on the criminal syndicates that organize the people-smuggling trade,” Australia’s envoy to Sri Lanka, Kathy Klugman, told IRIN.
 
“Police-to-police co-operation has been stepped up in recent months and this will include successful prosecution of the organizers of the people-smuggling business,” she said.   
 
Numbers up
 
While most of the economic migrants are from the majority Sinhalese community, many minority Tamils have made the boat trip to seek political asylum, said Tamil politician Dharmalingam Sithadthan.
 
"Most Tamils want to leave the country because they do not feel safe here,” said Sithadthan, referring to the 26-year civil war between the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) and government forces, during which Tamils say they were treated with suspicion and subject to harassment.
 
A report released in October by the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) [http://www.unhcr.org/4adebca49.html] said there was a 12 percent increase in the number of asylum applications from Sri Lanka in the first half of 2009 to all industrialized countries compared with the same period a year before, with a 68 percent increase lodged in Australia, New Zealand, Japan and South Korea.
 
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http://www.irinnews.org/report.aspx?ReportId=87080JOHANNESBURG Tuesday, November 17, 2009 (IRIN) - Fearing a resurgence of xenophobic attacks, around 2,500 Zimbabwean migrants have taken refuge in government buildings in De Doorns, a farming town about 140km from Cape Town, South Africa, after some of their shacks in an informal settlement were attacked and demolished, said a police official. JOHANNESBURG Tuesday, November 17, 2009 (IRIN) - Fearing a resurgence of xenophobic attacks, around 2,500 Zimbabwean migrants have taken refuge in government buildings in De Doorns, a farming town about 140km from Cape Town, South Africa, after some of their shacks in an informal settlement were attacked and demolished, said a police official.

The attacks took place early in the morning of 17 November in Stofland, meaning dustland in Afrikaans, the largest squatter camp in De Doorns. All the displaced Zimbabweans are documented.

The local police station commander, Superintendent Desmond van der Westhuizen, told IRIN the local residents were unhappy that farm owners had been employing Zimbabweans for "less money", and had complained that farmers were "excluding the local community".

The global economic recession has hit South Africa hard; the government's latest labour force survey said 484,000 jobs had been lost in the last six months, and unemployment stood at 24.5 percent for the period July to September 2009, up from 23.2 percent during the same period in 2008.

Van der Westhuizen told IRIN that the situation had been tense since 13 November, when Zimbabweans had been involved in a violent spat in an informal tavern. "Following that incident, some 68 Zimbabweans" had fled the area, fearing a resurgence of xenophobic violence.

In May 2008 a tide of xenophobic violence erupted in Johannesburg and quickly spread through most parts of the country, killing more than 60 people and displacing about 100,000 others.

"The same area was affected in 2008," van der Westhuizen said. The 68 Zimbabweans took refuge in government buildings in De Doorns during Saturday and Sunday.

The police, accompanied by local government and disaster management officials, held a meeting with the informal settlement residents on the evening of 16 November to calm the situation. "But the residents threatened to prevent the Zimbabweans from going to work on 17 November [Monday morning]," van der Westhuizen told IRIN.

Police had to fire rubber bullets to disperse the residents, who attacked some more shacks in Stofland, forcing the Zimbabweans to flee. "Fortunately, none of the Zimbabweans were harmed and they all moved out with their personal belongings voluntarily," the police superintendent said.

The local authorities are trying to erect a tent shelter and provide portable toilets for the displaced people on the town's sports ground. Van der Westhuizen told IRIN: "We are making interim arrangements to keep them here for a week until we try and mediate with the local residents to get the Zimbabweans integrated back into the community."

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http://www.irinnews.org/report.aspx?ReportId=87090HANOI Monday, November 16, 2009 (IRIN) - The birth rate in rapidly developing Vietnam has dropped in recent years while maternal health and antenatal standards have risen – albeit only for the dominant ethnic groups. Ethnic minorities mostly still give birth at home, without a healthcare worker or midwife, specialists say.HANOI Monday, November 16, 2009 (IRIN) - The birth rate in rapidly developing Vietnam has dropped in recent years while maternal health and antenatal standards have risen – albeit only for the dominant ethnic groups. Ethnic minorities mostly still give birth at home, without a healthcare worker or midwife, specialists say.

Vietnam has 54 ethnic groups, with the Kinh comprising more than 80 percent of the population of 85.8 million, according to government figures. They are the dominant ethnic group. A few others, such as the Tay and Hoa (ethnic Chinese), have similar standards of living and education.

But most other ethnic minorities - more than eight million people - live mostly in the mountainous and remote areas, and are economically disadvantaged. The poverty rate is 69.3 percent, compared with 23.11 percent for the majority Kinh and Chinese ethnic groups, according to the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF). [http://www.unicef.org/vietnam/overview.html]

Maternal mortality rates vary widely across the country. In Cao Bang province, with a 98 percent ethnic minority population, there are 411 maternal deaths for every 100,000 live births, according to UNICEF. In Binh Duong province, near Ho Chi Minh City, the rate is less than one-tenth of that.

H’Mong struggles

Minorities such as the H’Mong mostly still give birth at home, and are far less likely to access healthcare, especially antenatal care, health specialists say.

The H’Mong, who make up less than 1 percent of the population, have much lower standards of living, and are often confined to remote areas, in the mountains.

Women “don’t know how to recognize problems and this may lead to obstetric emergencies”, said Nguyen Van Hai, manager of the Save Newborn Lives project at Save the Children.

Barriers to care cited by experts include a lack of confidence when it comes to accessing and dealing with the healthcare system and health workers, and poor fluency in Vietnamese.

In addition, H’Mong women traditionally give birth at home with their husbands or with traditional birth assistants (TBAs), who lack formal training.

The cost of healthcare is also prohibitive, including the US$10 to give birth at a health centre. “For ethnic minority groups, it's too much,” said Hai.

Hoa Binh leads the way

Since 2001, the UN Population Fund (UNFPA) has been working with local government in Hoa Binh province, 80km south of Hanoi, to improve the use of antenatal services among H’Mong communities.

UNFPA officials say visits by H’Mong women to two commune-level health centres have increased since 2001, and there has not been a maternal death since 2003.

Tran Thi Tuyet Minh, a government doctor who works with UNFPA, said 65 percent of her patients now are H’Mong or another minority, against 8-10 percent in 2001.

“Hoa Binh province achieved some results. However, we must try more,” she told IRIN.

The rise in attendance of H’Mong women at one commune-level health centre is partly thanks to one of the midwives being ethnic H’Mong. Patients are more apt to trust her as they share a culture and, more importantly, language. Many H’Mong girls do not complete middle school, or even attend primary school for more than a year or two. Poor education and lack of fluency in Vietnamese keep them confined to the house and fields.

“If it [the commune-level health centre] is run in a city way, rural people won’t go,” said Duong Van Dat, national programme officer with UNFPA’s reproductive health unit in Hanoi. “It must be culturally adapted to needs.”

The Hoa Binh programme is still something of a pilot project, but Dat said there were hopes the lessons learned could be replicated and applied to other areas, even though it is near the capital and far northern mountainous areas, such as Ha Giang and Cao Bang province, might provide different challenges.

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http://www.irinnews.org/report.aspx?ReportId=87061NAIROBI Friday, November 13, 2009 (IRIN) - The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria has approved US$2.4 billion in its ninth round of grants, bringing the total amount of approved funding since its inception in 2001 to $18.4 billion. NAIROBI Friday, November 13, 2009 (IRIN) - The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria has approved US$2.4 billion in its ninth round of grants, bringing the total amount of approved funding since its inception in 2001 to $18.4 billion.

"These grants enable countries around the world to address some of the main problems they are struggling with every day," Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, Ethiopian Health Minister and Chair of the Global Fund Board, said in a press release.

The two-year commitment - the second largest ever - was approved by the board of directors during a recent meeting in Addis Ababa, when it also decided to launch the tenth round of grants in May 2010.

There had been fears that as a result of a funding shortfall, the board would decide to cancel its 2010 call for funding proposals, curtailing the fight against the AIDS pandemic.

Despite the decision to go ahead with a call for proposals in 2010, Michel Kazatchkine, executive director of the Global Fund, noted that the demand for funding was 'enormous', and there was a need for more investment to continue the worldwide momentum of HIV prevention, treatment and care.

"We may not be able to continue approving such amounts of financing and see continued progress in health in the coming years unless donor countries scale up their funding even further than what they have done so far," he said.

An estimated 2.3 million people around the world are on life-prolonging antiretroviral drugs paid for by the Global Fund, which has also provided anti-tuberculosis treatment to 5.4 million people.

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http://www.irinnews.org/report.aspx?ReportId=87031PHANOP Thursday, November 12, 2009 (IRIN) - A close look at this river bank village on the Ho Chi Minh trail bordering Vietnam reveals details which belie its tranquility.PHANOP Thursday, November 12, 2009 (IRIN) - A close look at this river bank village on the Ho Chi Minh trail bordering Vietnam reveals details which belie its tranquility.

Cluster munitions containers are used as planter boxes for flowers and herbs. Decorative pedestals at the local temple are old bomb shells, and a discarded spare fuel tank from a US plane downed during the Vietnam war serves as a boat.

The remnants of old ordnance from heavy US bombing from 1966 to 1975 are everywhere in this village in the eastern province of Khammouane and are part of daily life.

Janthan, 38, is hoarding two 500 pound bombs - the explosives have been removed - which lie by her front gate.

“I bought them from the bomb hunter for 200,000 kip (US$24) each,” she told IRIN, clutching her seven-month-old grandson.

“I’ll sell them when the price of scrap metal goes up,” she said.

For Phanop village, where people are mostly subsistence farmers, selling old metal and unexploded ordnance (UXO) littered on their land helps to eke out a living.

“It’s their main activity,” said Sivilay Chanthaphoumy, the Mines Advisory Group’s (MAG’s) provincial programme manager for Khammouane Province.

“Some families lack food about four or five months a year, so during that time they go to the forest or jungle and look for leftovers from the war,” he said.

Choosing risk

Laos is the most heavily bombed nation in the world per capita because of the war, and is strewn with metal from the conflict, including UXO such as bombs, grenades, bullets, mortar shells and cluster munitions. [http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=78463]

Collecting scrap metal is a deadly economic activity borne of the need by many of the nation’s poorest to make a living.

“Some people are completely reliant on it, but most people supplement their incomes with it,” said Tom Morgan, the regional information officer for MAG [see: http://www.maginternational.org/] Southeast Asia.

A 2006 UXO risk education needs assessment written by MAG found there was generally a high level of awareness about the danger of UXO in three contaminated provinces surveyed in the north, east and south of Laos.

However, both adults and children voluntarily came into contact with UXO for a number of reasons, including economic ones. Among those identified at high risk were scrap metal dealers, and adults and children who collect scrap metal.

In Langkang, a town near the Vietnam border, would-be collectors from Phanop or other villages can purchase cheap Vietnamese metal detectors at the local market for $12-15.

Scrap metal, in fragments or as part of UXO, is usually good quality steel, aluminium and copper. It is sold by scrap dealers to a few foundries in Laos, but most of it goes to private foundries in Vietnam and China, where it is used in construction.

Maligna Saignavongs, the director of the government's National Regulatory Authority for UXO/Mine Action Sector in Lao PDR (NRA), said 36 of the country’s 47 poorest districts were located in UXO-contaminated areas.

Scrap metal can sell to dealers for up to 35 US cents per kilogram, making it tempting for those in the very poorest districts who make less than $4-5 per month, he said.

“If the government would like to prevent the search for scrap metal, it’s difficult because we have no substitute for them for how to alleviate poverty,” Maligna told IRIN.

“The scrap metal is no problem, but if you take the metal from an UXO, it can lead to accidents. So we are trying with mine risk education, especially with the high risk group like scrap metal dealers,” he added.

The NRA is drafting a prime ministerial decree expected to be approved next year which will ban children from collecting scrap metal and regulate collection by adults, Maligna said.

Alternative incomes

To provide an alternative source of income, Handicap International (HI) Belgium [see: http://en.handicapinternational.be/] has started a pilot project, funded by the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF), that gives families the inputs for a home garden in return for a written commitment not to collect scrap metal.

“We want to see how best we can support these families, and in turn raise their income levels to the point where they no longer need to send their kids to collect scrap metal,” said Simon Ingram, UNICEF’s communication chief in Laos.

Kim Warren, HI’s UXO programme coordinator in Laos, said there had been an overwhelming response, with 60 families in three districts of southern Savannakhet Province signing up for the project, where it is hoped they can sell their excess produce.

“We are insisting - and we are very strict about this - that they are willing to stop doing this and will get rid of their metal detectors,” Warren said.

“Unless you’re replacing people’s livelihoods and giving them something else, to stop them from collecting or using a metal detector, it’s tricky,” she said.

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http://www.irinnews.org/report.aspx?ReportId=86998SANAA Wednesday, November 11, 2009 (IRIN) - Yemen’s Agriculture Ministry is boosting efforts to combat the livestock disease screw worm, which is threatening the livelihoods of rural inhabitants, particularly in coastal and central regions, according to ministry officials.SANAA Wednesday, November 11, 2009 (IRIN) - Yemen’s Agriculture Ministry is boosting efforts to combat the livestock disease screw worm, which is threatening the livelihoods of rural inhabitants, particularly in coastal and central regions, according to ministry officials.

"Since 1 November, we have dispatched dozens of vets to rural areas in the governorates of Hodeida, Hajjah, Mahwit, Taiz, Ibb, Dhamar and Raima to treat thousands of infected animals and increase awareness among pastoralists on how to protect livestock," Mansoor al-Qadasi, the government's chief vet, told IRIN on 7 November.

"Falling temperatures during winter in coastal and central-southern areas, coupled with unhealthy animal shelters, encourage the rapid spread of screw worm, putting animal lives at risk," he said.

According to Agriculture Ministry vet Hani Merai, some 7,666 cows, sheep, goats and camels have been treated and over 50,000 vaccinated against the disease in the seven governorates over the past month. "Four hundred and sixty-nine villages were covered by the programme and 4,053 animal shelters were sprayed or cleaned in the same period," he said.

Merai said the ministry had distributed over 3,600 leaflets in the most affected areas in Taiz and Ibb governorates, and more would be distributed in other governorates in the next couple of months.

Taiz-based epidemic surveillance and control official Nizar Faisal said increasing the awareness of pastoralists was the best way to reduce the risk of another screw worm outbreak.

"It is difficult to eliminate the epidemic but early interventions can keep deaths to a minimum… Since the epidemic first broke out in 2007, more than 22,000 animals have been infected," Faisal said.

The screw worm fly lays its eggs in a cut or open wound on a warm-blooded animal. Maggots then feast off the living flesh, and can kill the animal if the wound is not cleaned and treated with insecticide in time.

FAO, IAEA involvement

The Agriculture Ministry initiative is supported by international organizations such as the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA)

"Earlier this year, FAO provided us with pesticides while IAEA offered the necessary equipment and trained staff at the Central Veterinarian Laboratory on how to deal with infected animals," chief vet al-Qadasi said. "But the programme's budget is limited… We still need more funds from international and local donors to increase the drive against screw worm."

Al-Qadasi said livestock was the main source of income for 75 percent of Yemen's rural population (estimated to be 16 million).

According to Anwar Abdullah, a Taiz local council member, a shepherd earns YR 400 (US$2) a day for grazing 50-100 sheep or goats from 8am until 5pm, but with fewer animals to graze, their incomes were being hit.

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http://www.irinnews.org/report.aspx?ReportId=86973HARGEISA Tuesday, November 10, 2009 (IRIN) - Days after Saudi Arabia lifted a nine-year ban on livestock imports from Somalia, the market in Hargeisa, Somaliland, has seen a 10-fold increase in sales, according to local traders.HARGEISA Tuesday, November 10, 2009 (IRIN) - Days after Saudi Arabia lifted a nine-year ban on livestock imports from Somalia, the market in Hargeisa, Somaliland, has seen a 10-fold increase in sales, according to local traders.

"One thousand five hundred sheep used to be sold in the market before the recent announcement... compared to more than 16,000 animals in the market daily in the last few days," Jama Farah Du’alle, a middleman (`dilal’) in the market, told IRIN on 7 November.

Livestock keepers in the self-declared republic of Somaliland, whose mainstay is pastoralism, said they were beginning to see a change in their fortunes.

"In the last nine years I used to earn 5,000-10,000 Somaliland shillings a day [US $1.6 - 3.2] but by Allah’s mercy in the past few days I have been earning 60,000-70,000 a day, which has really improved my life," Du’alle said.

Somaliland’s livestock minister, Idiris Ibrahim Abdi, announced the Saudi move on 5 November. Imposed in late 2000, the ban followed an outbreak of Rift Valley Fever (RVF) in the Horn of Africa region.

RVF is an acute viral infectious disease of humans, cattle and sheep, which usually occurs during the rainy season. Clinically it is characterized by fever, loss of body coordination and sudden death.

Saudi Arabia, which used to be the biggest buyer of Somali livestock, said it had lifted the ban to coincide with the `haj’ pilgrimage later in November.

Better days for Berbera

The decision allows livestock keepers to ship animals to Saudi Arabia through Somaliland's traditional livestock port of Berbera. In the past, the port also served livestock trucked from the neighbouring Ethiopian regions of Somali and Oromiya.

Berbera had been losing its importance as a business centre since 2000. Thousands of people there moved to other towns such as Hargeisa and Burao.

"[Most] of the young men who used to work in the livestock export business as animal herders on vessels heading to Saudi Arabia, have moved to Arab countries or other urban centres within Somaliland," a local resident said.

The Saudi decision, according to local pastoralists, has renewed hope that Somali livestock can fetch a good price. "We have suffered in the last few years because of the ban; our animals had no value in the market.

"For example one lamb was valued at only about US$20, which is much less than the cost of foodstuff," said Rashid Haybe Illeeye, from the Lebi-Sagaale region along the Somaliland-Ethiopia border.

"Today I came with four lambs as usual - to buy food - and three of them were bought at $40-50," Illeeye said.

A local journalist based in Burao told IRIN that the lifting of the ban was a boon to all. "The market has not seen such activity for nine years," he explained. "The whole of Burao - from tea ladies, truckers and nomads, to porters - is doing a booming business."

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http://www.irinnews.org/report.aspx?ReportId=86959THANDAIT Tuesday, November 10, 2009 (IRIN) - Before the devastation of Cyclone Nargis in May 2008, Cho Tuu, 30, never found it hard to make ends meet, but these days he struggles to feed his family. THANDAIT Tuesday, November 10, 2009 (IRIN) - Before the devastation of Cyclone Nargis in May 2008, Cho Tuu, 30, never found it hard to make ends meet, but these days he struggles to feed his family.
 
Without any fishing equipment, Cho Tuu is forced to pay the equivalent of US$15 per month to hire a boat, and to hand over three-quarters of his catch to the owner of the fishing net that he rents.
 
"Some months, I can barely make enough money to even pay for hiring the boat," said the father of two school-age children from his makeshift hut in Thandait village in the Ayeyarwady Delta, the area worst hit by Nargis.
 
Though Cho Tuu has been expecting fishing equipment from humanitarian agencies for more than 17 months, no assistance has come yet.
 
Like Cho Tuu, officials say thousands of fishermen are still unable to restore their livelihoods because of a lack of aid following Cyclone Nargis, which left nearly 140,000 people dead or missing, and 2.4 million affected.
 
After paddy planting, fishing is the second largest source of income for households in the Ayeyarwady Delta, a labyrinth of rivers, ponds and waterways.
 
For 20 percent of Nargis-affected households, full-time fishing is the primary source of income, according to the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) in Myanmar.
 
Tesfai Ghermazien, the FAO’s senior emergency and rehabilitation coordinator in Myanmar, said it would take 3-5 years to fully restore the livelihoods of cyclone-affected fishermen.
 
"Very few [fishermen], if any, are back to normal," Ghermazien told IRIN.
 
Although the main sources of livelihood in the Delta are farming, fish and livestock, these sub-sectors were the least funded in the Cyclone Nargis response, he said.

According to the FAO, 1,550 marine fishing vessels, 50 percent of small inland fishing boats (i.e. about 100,000 out of 200,000), and 70 percent of fishing gear were destroyed by Nargis.

ASEAN review
 
A review of recovery efforts by the Myanmar government, the UN, and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) released in July this year (see: http://unic.un.org/imucms/Dish.aspx?loc=80&pg=384) found that livelihoods remain insecure in the worst-affected townships of  Ayeyarwady and Yangon divisions.
 
It said that the townships of Bogale, Labutta, Mawlamyinegyun and Pyapon in the delta’s south - where fishing is the predominant income source - had experienced the highest percentage of losses of fishing gear.
 
However, on average, only 6 percent of surveyed households in these four townships reported receiving fishing gear as a relief item. Only 11 percent of the surveyed households reported receiving boats, although 33 percent of them said they considered a boat as a pressing need to restore their livelihood activity, said the review.
 
A third Post-Nargis Periodic Review is expected at the end of 2009.
 
Equipment lacking
 
In an effort to help cyclone-affected fishermen restore their livelihoods, FAO and its cooperating agencies have distributed about 5,000 boats, and some 130,000 sets of different types of fishing gear, mainly nets and traps.
 
The Department of Fisheries has also distributed over 10,000 boats with nets and gear.
 
Before the end of the year, FAO plans to hand over 200 boats which are expected to have a longer life than most common boats now being built. It will also distribute a few thousand boats next year.
 
In the meantime, though, most cyclone-affected fishermen complain that they still do not have enough equipment.
 
"There are 154 fishermen in our fishing village, most of whom lost their fishing gear in the cyclone," said Aung Myo, the head of Thandait Village. "But, so far we just got 14 fishing boats and gear."
 
Besides being forced to hire equipment or take out loans to buy gear, fishermen have complained of the burden of paying for boats distributed by the government, said Aung Myo.
 
He said the cost of the fishing boat and gear - nearly the equivalent of US$360 - had to be paid back in four installments.
 
Other complaints include those about the equipment distributed. Some say the nets they received were inappropriate - those who fish in rivers were given nets for sea fishing, and vice-versa. Some boats distributed have also been found wanting.
 
“The fishing boat I received was quite small,” said Tint Swe, 42, who received a fishing boat from the Department of Fisheries on an installation system.
 
Tint Swe, who lost two motorized boats during Nargis, said he had been forced to spend additional money to modify the boat to his requirements.
 
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http://www.irinnews.org/report.aspx?ReportId=86961JOHANNESBURG Friday, November 06, 2009 (IRIN) - The UN World Food Programme (WFP) has been feeding people in Lesotho since 1965, yet the tiny mountain kingdom is still not much closer to achieving food self-sufficiency. Time to overhaul the approach, aid agencies say.JOHANNESBURG Friday, November 06, 2009 (IRIN) - The UN World Food Programme (WFP) has been feeding people in Lesotho since 1965, yet the tiny mountain kingdom is still not much closer to achieving food self-sufficiency. Time to overhaul the approach, aid agencies say.

WFP generally only ships and provides food in crisis situations like civil conflicts and natural disasters. Programmes sometimes linger on after the emergency has passed, when food aid used to help communities rebuild, but the goal is usually to move out.

"Something needs to change," said Bhim Udas, WFP Country Director in Lesotho, the only southern African country to harvest less in 2009 - around 86,000 metric tons (mt) of cereals - than in 2008; maize production, the country's staple, would be about 10 percent lower, the UN food aid agency projected.

The Lesotho Vulnerability Assessment Committee (LVAC) said between 400,000 and 450,000 people would be in need of food assistance before the next harvest in April 2010. "That's a quarter of the population," Udas told IRIN.

Part of a worrying trend

Annual per capita cereal production in Lesotho has been shrinking since the 1970s. According to WFP, domestic cereal production met about 80 percent of the national requirement in 1980, but this dropped to 50 percent in the 1990s, and by 2004 only 30 percent was being produced locally.

The worst drought in 30 years hit in 2006 and 2007, sparking a further drop in production; by 2008 maize prices had risen more than 35 percent. "This year [2009] production was even less [than in 2007], even though there was no crop failure or drought," Udas noted. WFP's food flow mix has changed dramatically since 1988, reflecting the drop in food security.

Over the years, "programme" assistance - food aid usually supplied on a government-to-government basis - practically disappeared, and "project" aid - in support of specific poverty-reduction and disaster-prevention activities - declined steadily, while "emergency" food aid - for victims of natural or man-made disasters - started climbing.

Continued food and agricultural support, coupled with falling production, have led some to believe that aid might actually be at the root of the problem. A common complaint, often with specific reference to WFP assistance programmes, has been that food handouts create disincentives to produce.

If only it were that simple, Udas said, pointing out that lowered local production was not a matter of choice. Lesotho had a shortage of arable land, and a lack of agricultural inputs and poor farming practices meant the quality of already scarce farmland was deteriorating too.

Increasingly erratic weather patterns and the impact of HIV/AIDS on farming families – the 23.2 percent prevalence rate is one of the highest worldwide - all but crippled the country's agricultural production capacity.

The UN Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) has been supporting agriculture in Lesotho since 1983. "A convergence of several issues [is] causing the decline," said Farayi Zimudzi, the FAO Acting Representative and Emergency Rehabilitation Coordinator in Lesotho.

"In rural areas families manage to produce, on average, three to four months' worth of food supply – that's in a good season. The rest is aid, or is bought [with money made] through [basic] employment opportunities," she told IRIN.

Location, population and too little land

Lesotho is barren, mountainous and dwarfed by South Africa, which completely surrounds it; most of its two million people live in rural areas, where 85 percent eke out a living from agriculture. "It's the type of topography, and pressure from population growth," Zimudzi said.

Less than 10 percent of the country's total area of 3 million hectares is arable - which equates to less than a single hectare of suitable farmland per rural family - but soil erosion and urban encroachment have brought down the quality and quantity of land available for growing food at an alarming rate.

Government estimates put the loss of soil to erosion at 40 million tons annually - equivalent to more than 2 percent of the country's topsoil. Years of poor farming practices have added to the problem. "People extract the nutrients but don't put them back through adequate fertilizing so they start from a lower fertility point every year," Zimudzi commented.

The country receives adequate rain on aggregate, but its mountainous topography means runoff is exceptionally high and water had little chance to seep into the soil. Rainfall distribution - usually a large amount over short periods, with long intervals – was also problematic, "because the window of opportunity to plant is very narrow".

WFP's Udas said the soaring prices of essential inputs added to farmer despair. "Because of the high prices of fuel, fertilizers and seeds, farmers could not buy inputs in time ... so they decided not to plough; most of the arable land was left fallow." FAO estimated that since 2007 the price of maize seed has gone up by 60 percent, and fertilizer by a whopping 170 percent.

A heavy dependence on South Africa - Lesotho imports over 60 percent of its food requirements, livestock and almost everything else from their only neighbour - has often been blamed for stifling the local economy, with farmers unable to compete with huge commercial farms across the border. "There is no way to ignore the overhanging presence of the ... country next door. They do it bigger, better and cheaper," Zimudzi said.

Importing food has also become much harder: prices in South Africa have rocketed in recent years, while spending power in Lesotho has plummeted. Retrenchments in South Africa's mining sector, where many Basotho men worked as migrant labourers, and an ailing textile industry - the cornerstone of Lesotho's tiny industrial base – delivered another blow to food security.

Not for lack of ideas

Zimudzi called for a shift in strategy. "Lesotho will have to look for a competitive advantage," she said. Focusing on niche crops like seed potatoes was one option, because "due to the altitude and climate there is an absence of disease."

Udas suggested growing high-value crops like beans, apples, grapes and peaches, "that would benefit from the specific climatic conditions - they don't have to produce everything they need, as long as they have other resources so they can pay [for what they need]."

Zimudzi noted that harnessing Lesotho's water resources would be key, but "irrigation schemes require heavy investment, [so] crops need to provide adequate return."

The Lesotho Highlands water scheme, which supplies much of South Africa's industrial hub, is located high in the mountains and bringing water to where it was needed for irrigation would not only be extremely difficult but also financially unviable.

Farmers were already exploring alternatives by planting crops like sorghum, which are more resistant to changing weather patterns, instead of maize. But whatever the crop, "there has to be a fundamental and revolutionary change in the way that agriculture is practiced," Zimudzi said.

Improved farming practices like crop rotation, and the more novel concept of conservation agriculture - which minimizes soil disturbance, applies more precise timing for planting, and utilizes crop residue to retain moisture and enrich the soil - would need to be widely promoted.

The promise of agriculture

Boosting agriculture and food production are major components of Lesotho's Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper, but despite the introduction of the Lesotho Food Security Policy in 2005, "agriculture has not received much support," FAO's Zimudzi commented.

WFP's Udas agreed: "They have the policy and an excellent plan, but now it needs to be implemented; if that is done then most of the problems would be solved - but that would require the right budget allocation."

Therein lies the problem. In 2003 the Southern African Development Community leaders met in the Mozambican capital, Maputo, and committed to allocating at least 10 percent of their national budgetary resources to agricultural sectors, but Lesotho has only managed to allocate around 3 percent annually towards meeting the target set in the Maputo Declaration on Agriculture and Food Security.

Lesotho's representatives will go to the World Summit on Food Security in Rome from 16 to 18 November with an eye to garnering more donor finance for agriculture and food security programmes. "But that would only be realistic if the country showed a genuine commitment to implementing their own policies," Udas said.

In the meantime, FAO will continue supporting agricultural development, and WFP will keep feeding people through its "Protracted Relief and Recovery Operation" and "Development Project" - but only the most vulnerable.

"We don't feed everyone here; we provide food assistance that is targeted," Udas said, to the chronically poor, and food insecure beneficiaries like orphans and vulnerable children, and those involved in prevention of mother-to-child HIV transmission, antiretroviral therapy, and tuberculosis treatment in remote, mountainous and inaccessible areas, and there is also a school feeding programme. Altogether the schemes benefit some 244,000 Basotho.

Udas did not think WFP would leave Lesotho anytime soon. "The country still faces too many problems - that's why Lesotho will always need donor support - but you cannot talk about [donor] dependency when it's an issue of life or death for people."

tdm/hehttp://www.irinnews.org/report.aspx?ReportId=86910DAKAR Friday, November 06, 2009 (IRIN) - Even when Guinea is not facing political crisis and reeling from a massacre, daily life is gruelling for many and instability is never far away. The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) in a September 2009 report says Guinea is “volatile” due to a combination of sharp economic decline; widespread and chronic poverty; limited access to basic services like health, water and sanitation; and persistent political instability.DAKAR Friday, November 06, 2009 (IRIN) - Even when Guinea is not facing political crisis and reeling from a massacre, daily life is gruelling for many and instability is never far away.

In this country that holds 30 percent of the world’s reserves of bauxite, the primary ore in aluminium, most people live hand-to-mouth; only about 19 percent of the population has access to proper sanitation facilities; malnutrition is widespread.

The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs in a September 2009 report says Guinea is “volatile” due to a combination of sharp economic decline; widespread and chronic poverty; limited access to basic services like health, water and sanitation; and persistent political instability.

Some facts about Guinea:

-At the peak of regional conflicts in the 1990s Guinea housed some 800,000 refugees from Sierra Leone and Liberia; today some 25,000 refugees remain in Guinea, including from Côte d’Ivoire

-Guinea has borders with Côte d’Ivoire (instability and political impasse since a 2002 rebellion), Guinea-Bissau (narcotics-trafficking hub struggling to emerge from a history of coups, counter-coups, civil war and political assassinations), Liberia (civil war 1989-2003), Mali, Senegal (attacks by armed groups on civilians and sporadic fighting in southern Casamance region) and Sierra Leone (civil war 1991-2002)

-Since independence in 1958 Guinea has not had a peaceful transition of power

-Population: 9.8 million; average population growth rate 2.6 percent from 1990 to 2007

-70 percent of population living under the poverty threshold of US$1.25 per day, as of 2005

-Chronic malnutrition has increased by 50 percent in the past five years

-Polio-free from 2004 to 2008, Guinea recorded at least 16 cases of polio in 2009

-Known as “the water tower of West Africa”, Guinea is the source of the 4,180-kilometre Niger River and a number of other major rivers

-Nearly half the population has no access to safe drinking water

-Cholera, yellow fever and seasonal flooding regularly spark humanitarian emergencies, straining already limited national capacity to cope

-In the UN Human Development Index Guinea ranks 170 of 182 countries

-150 in 1,000 children are likely to die before fifth birthday

-93 in 1,000 infants are likely to die before age one

-980 women die annually from pregnancy-related causes per 100,000 births

-An estimated 1.6 percent of the population infected with HIV

-0.1 physicians per 1,000 people as of 2004

-Illiteracy rate (age 15 and above) 70.5 percent

-Life expectancy 55 years

Sources: UN Children’s Fund, UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, World Bank, UN Human Development Index 2009 report

np/cihttp://www.irinnews.org/report.aspx?ReportId=86924KABUL Thursday, November 05, 2009 (IRIN) - The average per capita monthly expenditure of nine million Afghans is less than 66 US cents a day, and millions of other Afghans spend about $42 a month, according to a summary of Afghanistan’s new National Risk and Vulnerability Assessment (NRVA).KABUL Thursday, November 05, 2009 (IRIN) - The average per capita monthly expenditure of nine million Afghans is less than 66 US cents a day, and millions of other Afghans spend about $42 a month, according to a summary of Afghanistan’s new National Risk and Vulnerability Assessment (NRVA).

NRVA 2007/08 was produced by the government with European Union funding and in collaboration with aid agencies.

A bleak picture is painted:

26 percent literacy rate (12 percent female and 39 male)
24 percent of all child deliveries are attended by a skilled birth attendant
Less than 30 percent of people have access to safe drinking water
Over 90 percent do not have access to proper sanitation
About 20 percent have electricity in their homes.
Half of the estimated population of 25 million is under 15

“NRVA is an effective tool for… poverty alleviation and development programmes,” Naseer Ahmad Popal, an official from the Ministry of Rural Rehabilitation and Development, told IRIN.

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http://www.irinnews.org/report.aspx?ReportId=86889CAIRO Thursday, November 05, 2009 (IRIN) - Despite a number of positive economic indicators, Egypt has a hunger problem: Nearly a third of all children are malnourished, according to a new report compiled by the Ministry of Health and the UN Development Programme (UNDP).CAIRO Thursday, November 05, 2009 (IRIN) - Despite a number of positive economic indicators, Egypt has a hunger problem: Nearly a third of all children are malnourished, according to a new report compiled by the Ministry of Health and the UN Development Programme (UNDP).

The Egyptian Demographic Health Survey (EDHS) 2008, [http://www.measuredhs.com/pubs/pdf/FR220/FR220.pdf] published in March 2009, recorded a 6 percent increase in undernourishment severe enough to stunt growth in children under five, pushing the percentage of stunted Egyptian toddlers to 29 percent from 23 percent in 2000.

The survey collected data in 2007/2008, when gross domestic product (GDP) grew by 7.2 percent, indicating that strong economic growth had not benefited ordinary Egyptians. A slower GDP growth of 4.7 percent is forecast for 2008/2009.

“Within the recent context of economic crises and economic slowdown, in addition to the growing epidemics of avian and H1N1 influenza, nutrition is not treated as a priority,” said Hala Abu Khatwa, head of communications in Egypt for the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF).

Government-run food programmes are in place: In partnership with the World Food Programme (WFP), fortified date bars have been distributed in high-risk schools since 1963; and government-subsidized flour and cooking oil - used to make ‘baladi’ bread - are fortified with iron/folic acid and Vitamins A and D.

Chicken cull

Yet some government policies have adversely affected the nutrition of the poorest.

UNICEF and WFP said the EDHS report of a spike in malnourished children was partly attributable to the government’s decision to cull millions of chickens in 2007.

“The culling had a significant and substantial impact on household consumption of poultry and eggs, especially [on] young children, and also put considerable strain on household resources since poultry sales accounted for nearly half of the incomes of many Egyptian households,” said UNICEF’s Abu-Khatwa citing a 2007 study by the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) entitled Livelihood Impact Assessment in Egypt. [http://www.fao.org/docs/eims/upload//239037/ai294e.pdf]

Gianpietro Bordignon, the director of WFP in Egypt, attributed growing malnutrition among children to “the successive series of shocks that affected people, especially the poorest. This started with the outbreak of avian flu and the subsequent killing of poultry that lowered the intake of protein, and then the financial and food crises that followed.”

No data has yet been collected on the nutritional status of the estimated 70,000 unofficial garbage collectors and pig farmers in the Cairo area [http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=86742] who relied on pigs for meat, income and organic waste.

Economic reforms

Since 1991 Egypt has embarked on economic reform programmes which have not necessarily helped the poorest in society.

A July report by Egypt’s General Authority for Investment and Free Zones, seen by IRIN and entitled Towards Fair Distribution of the Fruits of Growth, found that 66 percent of the wealth generated in Egypt is sector specific, benefiting only those directly employed by the sector rather than the economy as a whole.

“Between 2005 and 2008, the risk of extreme poverty increased by almost 20 percent. Poverty levels are highest in Upper [southern] Egypt where 70 percent of the country's poor live,” Abu Khatwa said. Upper Egypt is home to about 17 percent of the country’s 82 million people.

WFP’s Bordignon also pointed out that since Egypt is not a “least developed country”, it misses out on international food aid.

According to the 2009 UNDP Human Development Report, [http://hdrstats.undp.org/en/countries/country_fact_sheets/cty_fs_EGY.html] 23 percent of the population are below the poverty line. Food riots [http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=77691] in 2008 were symptomatic of widespread poverty.

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http://www.irinnews.org/report.aspx?ReportId=86893JOHANNESBURG Thursday, November 05, 2009 (IRIN) - Zimbabwe's rough diamond trade has escaped a six-month suspension by the Kimberly Process Certification Scheme (KPCS) - an international initiative to stem the flow of conflict diamonds - after its own investigating team recommended earlier in 2009 that the country be temporarily barred from importing and exporting the gems.JOHANNESBURG Thursday, November 05, 2009 (IRIN) - Zimbabwe's rough diamond trade has escaped a six-month suspension by the Kimberly Process Certification Scheme (KPCS) - an international initiative to stem the flow of conflict diamonds - after its own investigating team recommended earlier in 2009 that the country be temporarily barred from importing and exporting the gems.

No consensus on Zimbabwe's suspension could be reached at the annual plenary, said Annie Dunnebacke, of Global Witness - a UK-based NGO that seeks to prevent the use of natural resources to fuel conflict, and a prime mover in setting up the KPCS - who described the meeting in the Namibian coastal town of Swakopmund, as "the most disorganized plenary session ever held."

The KPCS, established in 2002, brings together governments, the diamond industry and concerned NGOs to police the trade in conflict diamonds, also known as blood diamonds. The organization has 49 members representing 75 countries, and covers about 99.8 percent of the global production of rough diamonds.

The credibility of the KPCS has been on a knife edge since the decision not to take action against Zimbabwe. According to one delegate, who declined to be identified, Zimbabwe's escape from suspension was ensured by its neighbours, but would not divulge which countries in the region objected to punitive measures against the offender.

Southern Africa's economies are already seeing the effects of the global recession in depressed diamond sales, and any return to international boycotts against diamonds originating in Africa would further impact these fragile economies.

"We [civil society] are very disappointed" with the outcome, Dunnebacke told IRIN. Instead of suspension, an action plan to ensure Zimbabwe's compliance with the KPCS was called for, with the dispatch of an official to monitor the country's adherence.

In July an 11-person KPCS review team, led by Kpandel Fiya, Liberia's deputy minister of mines, visited the Chiadzwa diamond area in Marange district, Manicaland Province, bordering Mozambique in eastern Zimbabwe, and documented a litany of human rights abuses.

Yet the action plan did not address human rights abuses or the militarization of the Marange alluvial diamond fields. "The implementation of the action plan depends on Zimbabwe showing commitment and sincerity," she pointed out.

The KPSC had been "undermined by this decision ... the KP [Kimberley Process] has to look at itself ... it is too important to fail, and that is why we have not walked away from it yet ... are we endorsing a system that we cannot believe in anymore?"

Ian Smillie, of Partnership Africa Canada (PAC), one of the architects of the certification scheme, has walked away. He resigned as civil society representative to the KPCS in June 2009, saying: "When regulators fail to regulate, the systems they were designed to protect collapse ... I feel that I can no longer in good faith contribute to a pretence that failure is success, or to the kind of debates we have been reduced to."

In the KPCS review team's report, addressed to Obert Mpofu, Zimbabwe's minister of mining, Fiya said: "Sir, I was in Liberia throughout the 15 years of civil war, and I have experienced too much senseless violence in my lifetime, especially connected with diamonds. In speaking with some of these people [in Zimbabwe], minister, I had to leave the room. This has to be acknowledged, and it has to stop."

A report in June 2009 by the international watchdog, Human Rights Watch, accused Zimbabwean security forces of killing more than 200 miners in 2008 - an allegation denied by President Robert Mugabe's government - and recommended that Zimbabwe be suspended from the KPCS.

A 2009 report by PAC - Zimbabwe, Diamonds and the Wrong Side of History - said, "Zimbabwean diamonds are produced from mines that benefit political and military gangsters, and they are smuggled out of the country by the bucket load."

Another KPCS review team is expected to visit the country within the next six months.

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http://www.irinnews.org/report.aspx?ReportId=86903KANDAHAR Wednesday, November 04, 2009 (IRIN) - Afghanistan appears to be getting drier: Since the 1996 drought many traditional irrigation sources such as springs, streams, rivers and man-made subterranean aqueducts have been drying up in the southern provinces, according to the Ministry of Agriculture, Irrigation and Livestock (MAIL).KANDAHAR Wednesday, November 04, 2009 (IRIN) - Afghanistan appears to be getting drier: Since the 1996 drought many traditional irrigation sources such as springs, streams, rivers and man-made subterranean aqueducts have been drying up in the southern provinces, according to the Ministry of Agriculture, Irrigation and Livestock (MAIL).
 
A succession of dry years in 1999-2004 and the severe drought of 1999-2001 substantially reduced cultivated areas in the south and east and put great pressure on grazing land, says Afghanistan's Environment 2008 joint report http://postconflict.unep.ch/publications/afg_soe_E.pdf by Afghanistan's National Environmental Protection Agency (NEPA) and the UN Environment Programme (UNEP).
 
"Ecosystem services, soil water content, and conditions of rangelands are most affected by climatic hazards and changes. The effects on food crops and livestock are similarly high. Irrigated agriculture, livestock herders and dry land farmers are considered the most susceptible to the impacts of weather hazards and climatic changes," the report said.
 
Many farmers are battling persistent drought, which has also affected subterranean aqueducts known locally as `kareze’ http://www.fao.org/nr/water/aquastat/countries/afghanistan/index.stm or `qanat’, which channel water from underground aquifers for use in irrigation.
 
“Drought has destroyed more than 80 percent of `kareze’ and springs in [the southern province of] Kandahar,” the head of MAIL in Kandahar, Abdul Hai Nemati, told IRIN. “This has devastating impacts on agriculture and rural livelihoods,” said Baba Jan, 59, a farmer in Arghandab District, Kandahar Province.
 
DFID-funded report
 
A 2009 report -http://www.livelihoodsrc.org/uploads/File/2007447_AfghanCC_ExS_09MAR09.pdf funded by the UK’s Department for International Development (DFID) and written by the Stockholm Environment Institute (SEI) entitled Socio-economic Impacts of Climate Change in Afghanistan - said increasing desertification and land degradation were likely: "Drought is likely to be regarded as the norm by 2030, rather than as a temporary or cyclical event."

"The vulnerability of the agricultural sector to increased temperatures and changes in rainfall patterns and snow melt is high. Increased soil evaporation, reduced river flow from earlier snow melt, and less frequent rain during peak cultivation seasons will impact upon agricultural productivity and crop choice availability," the report said.
 
Crop failure levels due to water shortages and the amount of potentially productive land left uncultivated will probably increase. More water intensive staple crops will become less attractive to farmers, with a likely increase in the attractiveness of those that are more drought-hardy, including opium poppy, it added.
 
Some 80 percent of the country’s 28 million people live in rural areas and depend on agriculture, according to the NEPA/UNEP report.

Lack of investment
 
MAIL officials say Afghanistan has enough water for irrigation and other needs, but the UNEP/NEPA report says “functional irrigation systems are running at about 25 percent efficiency against their potential of 40-60 percent.” Lack of investment in irrigation systems, lack of modern irrigation tools such as pumps, and a lack of awareness among rural farming communities were to blame, it said.

“Sometimes farmers waste some 30 percent of the water while irrigating a field,” Abdul Haq Rashiq, an agronomist and lecturer at the faculty of agriculture in Kabul University, said.
 
The drying up of irrigation sources and poor irrigation management have forced more and more families to consider leaving the land to seek alternative livelihoods. Some are selling livestock and land in order to dig deep wells, buy power generators and water pumps and irrigate other land for fruit trees, said MAIL’s Nemati.
 
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http://www.irinnews.org/report.aspx?ReportId=86864HARARE Wednesday, November 04, 2009 (IRIN) - Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe's threat to appoint interim ministers to plug the gap left by the "disengagement" of the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) from the unity government could lead to a review of donor funding, a highly placed official from a major donor country told IRIN.HARARE Wednesday, November 04, 2009 (IRIN) - Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe's threat to appoint interim ministers to plug the gap left by the "disengagement" of the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) from the unity government could lead to a review of donor funding, a highly placed official from a major donor country told IRIN.

"We are still monitoring developments. No decision has been made to appoint acting ministers, but that would certainly send a wrong message, and could get donors who want the situation in Zimbabwe to improve to review their financial commitments to the inclusive government," said the official, who declined to be identified.

The Global Political Agreement (GPA), signed in September 2008, paved the way for the formation of the unity government in February 2009. "When the Global Political Agreement was signed ... we said at the time that we would be looking out to see if the GPA was fully implemented," the official noted.

Morgan Tsvangirai, Prime Minister and MDC leader, withdrew from attending cabinet meetings on 16 October 2009 over Mugabe's procrastination in swearing in provincial governors, while alleging that MDC members and officials faced constant harassment.

The MDC also believes that the continued stay in office of the attorney general and the Reserve Bank Governor - self-admitted allies of Mugabe - is in contravention of the GPA.

After the MDC's disengagement, information minister Webster Shamu said "His Excellency [Mugabe] may have to consider appointing ministers in an acting capacity to key ministries, for the sake of a successful agricultural season and general economic turnaround."

The passage of the unity government has been far from smooth, but the MDC's disengagement represents the most serious breakdown in relations between the partners in the fledgling unity government and its attempt to haul Zimbabwe out of the economic abyss in which nearly 7 million people relied on donor food aid in the first quarter of 2009.

The Southern African Development Community (SADC) organ on politics, defence and security will meet on 5 November in Maputo, capital of Mozambique, to discuss developments in Zimbabwe.

The organ's troika of members is comprised of Mozambican President Armando Guebuza, Zambian President Rupiah Banda, and sub-Saharan Africa's last absolute monarch, King Mswati III. SADC chairman Joseph Kabila, President of the Democratic Republic of Congo, has already visited Zimbabwe to try to resolve the impasse.

Zimbabwe's finance portfolio has also been the object of an ongoing turf war between the MDC and Mugabe's ZANU-PF party. "Firstly, appointing acting ministers would be illegal and unconstitutional; doing so would be killing the GPA," Finance Minister Tendai Biti told IRIN.

"It would amount to a violation of the Global Political Agreement, which created the transitional inclusive government. It has to be understood that the MDC has only disengaged from ZANU-PF, and not government work. We are all going to our offices to work," he said.

Government work continues  

"Nothing has changed in terms of how we do business; we are coming up with frameworks of introducing good governance and accountability to avoid abuse of funds. The money is stored in a multi-donor basket fund, and there has to be consultation and agreement on how it is spent."

Prof Arthur Mutambara, Deputy Prime Minister and leader of a breakaway MDC faction, told IRIN that Tsvangirai's decision to boycott cabinet could prove counterproductive.

"If decisions are made in cabinet, even if others have boycotted the meeting, they will be binding," he said. "So, what we have been doing is to fight against bad decisions, while acting as the peace-builder between Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai and President Robert Mugabe."

dd/go/he http://www.irinnews.org/report.aspx?ReportId=86882DAKAR Wednesday, November 04, 2009 (IRIN) - Donors have promised US$40 billion in aid to agriculture in developing countries since the Rome “food summit” in 2008, but in some countries the bulk of this aid is uncoordinated, shortsighted and does not support government priorities, says NGO Oxfam. DAKAR Wednesday, November 04, 2009 (IRIN) - Donors have promised US$40 billion in aid to agriculture in developing countries since the Rome “food summit” in 2008, but in some countries the bulk of this aid is uncoordinated, shortsighted and does not support government priorities, says NGO Oxfam.

“Technical and financial partners are supporting different projects that are totally disconnected from one another and from the agriculture policy framework set up by the government,” Jean-Denis Crola, author of the report ‘Aid to Agriculture: from promises to reality on the ground’, told IRIN.

“And many of the new interventions do not represent new money, but are financial re-allocations from other sectors,” he said.

Rather than working through governments, most donors and technical partners in the three West African countries Oxfam studied – Burkina Faso, Ghana and Niger – channel agriculture financing through UN agencies such as the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) or the World Food Programme (WFP), and other international institutions; they also implement projects themselves through consultants, said Oxfam.

Impact

In 2007 in Burkina Faso 27 development donors supported 131 separate agriculture projects, most of which bypassed government structures, Crola told IRIN; in 2008 this had been cut to 80, but this number still overwhelms government administration, he pointed out.

Lack of coordination also weakens governments’ administrative capacity as finance ministries are forced to employ dozens of staff whose sole job is to track and report on a multitude of projects, said Oxfam.

With most projects lasting three to five years, donor timeframes can also stymie long-term planning in government.

But most importantly such policies leave people hungry, as investment in agriculture remains low, Crola said.

In Burkina Faso while the government had stressed the need to streamline agricultural financing through a few grain, produce and livestock cooperatives, the four major agriculture donors – World Bank, Germany, Denmark and Canada – chose to support 30 different networks among them, without sufficient coordination in selecting, Crola said.

As a result some sectors such as sesame, soya, and cowpeas were over-supported while staple foods as rice and maize were under-funded, he said.

“A process”

Emmanuel Nikiema, the World Bank’s programme director in Burkina Faso, told IRIN while there have been problems coordinating in the past, “harmonizing our aid with government policies is now the order of the day for all of the major donors in the country.”

Coordination is a process, and while donors could improve their performance, the government must also fulfill its role by showing strong leadership on agricultural policy, he said.

“We [financial and technical partners] are there to support not to replace the government, and it is up to the government to be at the forefront of the strategy,” he told IRIN.

G8 leaders reiterated the need to coordinate funding when they pledged $20 billion at the September 2009 summit, to help developing countries out of the food security crisis and to support long-term agricultural development.

In September 2008 at a forum on aid effectiveness in Ghana, donors reiterated their commitment to improving the predictability and coordination of aid efforts.

Leadership

Oxfam agrees stronger government leadership is needed. Governments must develop policies, demonstrate better leadership on agriculture and work with the commercial sector to develop stronger regional policies if they are to develop a stronger voice with external donors, says the report.

Many West African governments abandoned agriculture, sidelining it in their national budgets, partly as a result of the Washington Consensus donor strategy.
Between 1995 and 2007 agriculture accounted for less than 5 percent of total official development aid committed to West African states, while about 80 percent of West Africa’s inhabitants depend on agriculture to survive.

Niger and Burkina Faso still have no agricultural policy; their commitments to the sector are spread across several different ministries according to Oxfam’s report.

Opportunity

Donors are improving their coordination and performance in other sectors including health and education, with pooled funds increasingly the norm, said Crola, adding that there is no reason they cannot veer in this direction for agricultural funding.

“The opportunity to change is now while international interest in food security and agricultural development is still a reality,” he told IRIN.

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http://www.irinnews.org/report.aspx?ReportId=86883ZIGUINCHOR Wednesday, November 04, 2009 (IRIN) - Landmines and armed attacks in Senegal’s Casamance region are preventing farmers from maximizing production from the region’s fertile soil, but there is another problem, too: not enough young people are taking up farming, residents and experts say.ZIGUINCHOR Wednesday, November 04, 2009 (IRIN) - Landmines and armed attacks in Senegal’s Casamance region are preventing farmers from maximizing production from the region’s fertile soil, but there is another problem, too: not enough young people are taking up farming, residents and experts say.

The increasingly urbanized youth are often reluctant to help with digging and hoeing, even during the holidays, forcing some families to pay day workers to do the job.

“I cultivate a much smaller area than in the past, because I have to pay people to work my land,” said farmer Catherine Badiane, in her 50s, who lost her husband years ago. “Each year I pay people to work my land. My sons, most of whom live in Dakar, refuse to come back to Casamance to farm. When I ask them to come, they say they are busy...

“My produce is not even enough to cover myself and my grandchildren for eight months. I really should be able to feed the family year round by farming. I have had to start trading in Ziguinchor [Casamance’s main city] market so we can get by. This year there was plenty of rain, but I did not grow much; I just cannot afford the workers.”

Poverty levels in Casamance are among the highest in Senegal at more than 60 percent, with nearly half of households vulnerable to food insecurity, according to a 2007 UN World Food Programme (WFP) study.

Despite poverty and unemployment in the region finding non-family members to work the farm is not always easy, residents said. Lined up along a road on the outskirts of Ziguinchor almost daily – especially during the rainy season – are women waiting for workers.

“It is hell for them to find people who will accept this work," François Sagna of Catholic Relief Services (CRS) told IRIN. "The consequence: A lot of land – particularly rice fields – is not exploited. This has increased the suffering of some families who have a hard time feeding themselves during certain periods of the year.” CRS has a number of agricultural and nutrition projects in the region.

Paddy fields

Abdel Kader Coly is an agriculture expert with PADERCA (Projet d'Appui au Développement Rural en Casamance). PADERCA, along with WFP, assists communities in reviving rice fields engulfed by salt water. He said it was important to lure youths back to the land.

“We are investing a lot in agricultural infrastructure… The process of retrieving these valleys is under way, ” Coly said. “Eventually we will come to a point where a lot of land will have been restored for use. But most people work with traditional tools. The problem is that the population that could farm this land are aging, and we find fewer and fewer youths doing this work.”

He said mechanization was essential. “That could mean ox-drawn carts, tractors - but we really must think seriously about mechanization… to really succeed in developing the land. Were this realized, this region alone could cover not only the rice needs of Casamance but of other regions as well. We could contribute significantly to rice self-sufficiency in Senegal.”

But those with other opportunities appear reluctant to go back to the land: “Farming with the `kadiandou’ [traditional long shovel] is tough, especially in the rice fields during the rainy season. You expend a lot of energy, sometimes to the point of becoming ill,” said Matar Diémé, 27, a builder’s apprentice in Ziguinchor.

mad/np/cbhttp://www.irinnews.org/report.aspx?ReportId=86887TEL AVIV Tuesday, November 03, 2009 (IRIN) - According to the 2008 Annual Poverty Report by Israel’s National Insurance Institute (NII), published in Hebrew on 2 November, one in four Israelis (one in three of them children) is living below the poverty line.TEL AVIV Tuesday, November 03, 2009 (IRIN) - According to the 2008 Annual Poverty Report by Israel’s National Insurance Institute (NII), published in Hebrew on 2 November, one in four Israelis (one in three of them children) is living below the poverty line.

NII defines the family poverty line as being 50 percent of median family income after tax.

The total number of poor - some 1,651,300 people including 783,600 children under the age of 18 - is a slight increase on the 1,630,400 recorded in 2007.

Some NGOs in Israel are concerned that with the current global economic crisis more people will fall below the NII-defined poverty line in 2010.

td/ed/cbhttp://www.irinnews.org/report.aspx?ReportId=86846DILI Tuesday, November 03, 2009 (IRIN) - Bio-briquettes, a cheap and environmentally friendly fuel, could have the twin benefit of mitigating unemployment and deforestation in Timor-Leste - two significant problems in one of Asia's poorest nations.DILI Tuesday, November 03, 2009 (IRIN) - Bio-briquettes, a cheap and environmentally friendly fuel, could have the twin benefit of mitigating unemployment and deforestation in Timor-Leste - two significant problems in one of Asia's poorest nations.

"We're increasing our capacity for our future," said Mateus Tame, one of a group of young workers learning the art of briquette production in Dili, the capital, who was busy turning gallons of mush into neat stacks of what looked like cardboard doughnuts.

"It's difficult for young people to find jobs. We are a new country," the 20-year-old said.

Since formal independence in 2002, Timor-Leste's post-occupation generation has struggled to find work. While most of the population of 1.1 million is engaged in subsistence farming, unemployment in urban Dili peaks at about 40 percent among the youth, according to the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

Widespread unemployment contributed to the crisis in 2006 when more than 150,000 people were displaced.

According to the Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre [http://www.internal-displacement.org/], the violence was the result of political rivalries dating back to the independence struggle up to 1999; divisions between "easterners" and "westerners"; as well as chronic poverty and a large and disempowered youth population.

Today about 40 percent of the population live below the poverty line of US$1 a day, according to the UN.

With bio-briquette production, three people can make about 750 briquettes a day, sold for 2 cents apiece, with the potential for workers to make about $4-5 a day.

Environmental benefits

According to the Asian Development Bank, the forests, home to 25 rare and endangered bird species, are fast disappearing, with an estimated 31 percent of the area seriously degraded.

An estimated 17.4 percent of the forests was destroyed between 1990 and 2005, say activists.

Nicholas Molyneux, sustainable environment capacity building adviser to Haburas, the environmental civil society group spearheading the project, told IRIN: "In Metinaro [on the outskirts of Dili] we calculated that people were illegally extracting about 10 truckloads a day to sell as fuel wood, each truck probably with three or four tonnes in it," he said.

"It's a forest that isn't being replenished in any kind of way," Molyneux said.

Deforestation, coupled with high seasonal rainfall, makes Timor-Leste's land less fertile and creates a vicious cycle that ultimately ends up with the whole natural environment becoming degraded, he added.

While unsustainable deforestation continues, it is mostly out of necessity for cooking fuel; however, for the project to really work, Haburas must first convince people the briquettes are a viable alternative to wood.

Making the briquettes involves a solution of water, shredded paper, sawdust and coffee husk mixed together and then shaped with one of five wooden presses before being laid out to dry.

The paper comes from local offices, the sawdust from a nearby waste-management company and the coffee husk from the Cooperativa Café Timor, which has donated space on its grounds for the briquette groups to use as a training centre.

The briquettes burn quicker, easier and cleaner than wood, and they are cheap, especially considering that a small bundle of wood costs 25 cents and much of the population spends a considerable proportion of their income on fuel wood.

Given time, Molyneux hopes a small-scale industry can be run independently countrywide.

According to Abilio Fonseca, national adviser for the government's National Directorate for International Environment Affairs: "Our observations are that poverty in the community contributes to over-exploitation of primary natural resources, like collecting wood for sale."

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http://www.irinnews.org/report.aspx?ReportId=86848BAGHDAD Monday, November 02, 2009 (IRIN) - Rain thoughout Iraq’s semi-autonomous northern Kurdistan region, which has been absent for two years, is prompting the return of farmers who had abandoned their land, according to officials.BAGHDAD Monday, November 02, 2009 (IRIN) - Rain thoughout Iraq’s semi-autonomous northern Kurdistan region, which has been absent for two years, is prompting the return of farmers who had abandoned their land, according to officials.
 
“The drought that hit the region over the past two seasons has affected our main irrigation sources, surface and well water, and that has had a negative impact on all our crops - mainly wheat and barley,” Paldar Mohammed Amin, head of the Arbil Agriculture Directorate, said.
 
“We are optimistic this season as the beginning is good so far," Amin told IRIN. “Farmers can cultivate their land and start planting this month, while others will do so in January and February.”
 
If the weather continues like this, he said, this season will yield more than 350,000 tons of wheat and barley in the three governorates that make up the Kurdistan region. Last year, farmers produced only a third of that amount, and in 2007 only 12,000 tons were harvested.
 
Amin said the authorities would support farmers by subsidizing seeds and irrigation equipment, and help with loans for wells and equipment, but no details were available.
 
Displaced
 
According to a 13 October 2009 report by the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), more than 100,000 people have been displaced by the drought since 2005.
 
Man-made subterranean aqueducts (known as karez) have traditionally provided a reliable supply of water, but many had dried up.
 
The report said nearly 40 percent of the 683 karez in five northern provinces (Dohouk, Arbil, Sulaimaniyah, Kirkuk and Mosul) were abandoned in 2005, and the 116 still in use this summer had diminished flows, putting an additional estimated 36,000 people at risk of displacement.
 
“Generations of families, shared history, and connection to a place will be lost when the village dies. The displacement of people will then lead to additional social and economic problems,” Dale Lightfoot of the department of geography at Oklahoma University said in the 56-page report.
 
“Families have made the painful decision to sell their livestock and leave their village for another location where water is not so scarce,” the report said, adding: “Population declines have averaged almost 70 percent among the villages adversely affected since drought and excessive pumping began drying up so many karez.”
 
The karez technology was developed in ancient Persia and comprises a linear series of wells that are linked underground by a downward sloping tunnel which collects the accumulated well water and delivers it to surface canals at the foot of hills.
 
Mohammed Jawhar Harees, a 56-year-old farmer from Sulaimaniyah Province, told IRIN the drought had forced him to abandon his land in early 2006. The father-of-eight said he had moved to the city and worked as a cleaner in a secondary school, then as a guard in a residential building and was now working as a gardener.
 
"We are… very hopeful that we can eventually go back to the land where our ancestors lived," he said.
 
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http://www.irinnews.org/report.aspx?ReportId=86835AKKAR Thursday, October 29, 2009 (IRIN) - In Lebanon’s remote northeastern district of Akkar, teachers and pupils at the Rajam Issa public school are hoping this winter will be the first when the lights stay on. “Electricity is the lifeline of the school,” said head teacher Ibrahim Salame, complaining of frequent and prolonged power cuts.AKKAR Thursday, October 29, 2009 (IRIN) -  In Lebanon’s remote northeastern district of Akkar, teachers and pupils at the Rajam Issa public school are hoping this winter will be the first when the lights stay on. “Electricity is the lifeline of the school,” said head teacher Ibrahim Salame, complaining of frequent and prolonged power cuts.

Upstairs, the new computer room remains unused and unfinished, lacking both trained staff and power. “During the winter if the power goes out and it’s dark we just teach in the dark,” said Salame. “What usually takes one session to explain using a projector takes two hours on the blackboard.”

It is hoped that by the end of November their classroom lights, projectors and photocopying machines will stay on during power cuts thanks to a set of rooftop photovoltaic panels producing renewable electricity from one of Lebanon’s most abundant natural resources, the sun.

“Lebanon has an average of 300 days of sunshine per year, yet we are not making sufficient use of it,” said Jihan Seoud from the Energy and Environment Programme at the UN Development Programme (UNDP) in Beirut.

“The government is looking to reform the electricity sector, but mostly on the supply side. We are working with government entities to reduce load on the demand side. Reducing demand means the government can spend less on electricity generation,” Seoud said.

Burden of oil imports

Lacking oil and gas resources, Lebanon imports some 97 percent of its energy needs as fossil fuel. Government efforts to modernize electricity infrastructure since the end of the Civil War in 1990 have been unable to keep pace with growing demand.

The solution, say many Lebanese environmentalists, is a combination of solar thermal power to heat water, and photovoltaic panels for back-up electricity. These can have a direct humanitarian impact.

“Renewable energy can have huge positive effects both directly and indirectly for humanitarian use. Solar water heaters (SWH) can substantially reduce the energy bills of healthcare and education facilities,” said Pierre Khoury, acting manager of the Lebanese Centre for Energy Conservation (LCEC) in the Ministry of Energy and Water (MEW). “It can also reduce poverty by reducing energy bills of poor people and creating ‘green jobs’.”

After the July War of 2006 further damaged Lebanon’s power infrastructure [http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=70043], including destroying 190 of the nearly 500 SWH units installed in south Lebanon and donated by China, UNDP and LCEC teamed up with the Spanish government to install solar water heaters in south Lebanon.

This was followed by the creation of the CEDRO project through the Lebanon Recovery Fund to promote energy efficient reconstruction of homes and public buildings.

With earlier donations from Sweden and Greece, UNDP and MEW/LCEC have successfully installed or repaired over 500 SWH units and identified 180 public sector buildings in which to demonstrate renewable energy applications.

In a study [http://www.lcecp.org.lb/Files/LCEC%20SWH%20analysis%20paper%20Lebanon.pdf] of one SWH system installed in a typical family home in Marjayoun in South Lebanon, the LCEC found that over a year the system offset some 98.6 percent of the electricity previously needed to heat water.

Total annual savings were calculated to be US$195, though the real saving to the state power company, Électricité du Liban, totalled some $415 per system, providing a payback period of two years. The report concluded that around 290,000 SWH systems are needed to offset the need for a 100 MW power plant in Lebanon.

Reduced bills

Lebanese law does not allow citizens to generate their own electricity and connect to the grid, meaning solar photovoltaic electricity remains too costly for all but the largest private businesses, or for small schools like that in Rajam Issa which was given the system.

Heating water from the sun, however, has proved cost effective, and sales of SWH units tripled between 2005 and 2008, according to a survey by LCEC.

As well as is installing an initial 25 photovoltaic systems on the roofs of small schools in North Lebanon, the Bekaa valley and South Lebanon, CEDRO has constructed large-scale solar water heaters on an initial four public hospitals.

One of these is the Abdallah Rassi Hospital, the first public hospital in Akkar, serving half a million people of whom, in the words of Ali Saada, its general manager, “400,000 are poor”.

With the hospital running at an annual deficit of around half a million dollars, said Saada, a third of which is spent on heating water via a diesel generator, the 48 SWH panels now on its roof will soon start making big savings, with a tangible benefit to patients.

“If we can save most of a third of our total running cost then the hospital could break even in three years, perhaps two if we get more patients,” said Saada. “Without the solar panels it would take us five. That means the intensive care department could open earlier and we could afford to buy a new scanner and other equipment.”

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