Hunger children, animals dying — locusts, drought — Somalia, Ethiopia, Kenya and Djibouti The WE News Archives

Third World Country Famine

Unfortunately for the Somali people the International Monetary Fund answered

Following the Somalia’s military withdrawal in the Ogaden War, the economy was crippled due to disproportionate military spending and looming foreign debt.

In the face of increasing public discontent with Barre’s government and the loss of aid from the Soviet Union, Somalia called to the West; unfortunately for the Somali people, The International Monetary Fund answered.

As part of the IMF’s loan protocol, the borrower country must accept the conditions stipulated within structural adjustment policies, thus requiring the suspension of public work programs, investments in education and nearly any outlet which gives priority towards improving people’s conditions and standards of living.

Structural adjustment programs are designed to pry countries open to predatory capital, often purging the authority of national companies over the management of the resources in their own lands; these schemes of the IMF and other financial institutions are designed to secure the indebtedness the borrower country to total dependency on further loans and foreign aid; directly attacking national sovereignty and practices of self sufficiency which the Somalis gave their lives to protect.

Following the IMF-imposed austerity measures, Somalia began to grovel and churn by facing food shortages, record inflation and currency devaluation, to a point where a simple meal at a restaurant required paying with bundles of currency notes.

Barre’s increasingly irrelevant leadership settled further loan agreements with the Paris Club and International Development Association, which required the Government to sell off vital public systems, such as the countries’ electricity generators, which cast Mogadishu into a nightly darkness.

The real causes of impoverishment in Somali farming communities were caused by deregulation of the grain market, currency warfare and the influx of foreign food aid.

Such donations were made with the expectation that Somalia’s best-irrigated farmlands would be used to harvest fruits, vegetables, oilseeds and cotton, not for domestic consumption, but for export into lucrative grocery market shelves in the First World.

Donors were able to take control of the entire budgetary process by providing food aid because its domestic sale became the principal source of revenue for the state.

Bretton Woods’ institutions oversaw the restructuring of government budgeting and expenditure, which prevented the government from independently utilizing the available domestic resources, leading to an eighty five percent decline in agricultural expenditures from levels in the mid seventies.

Somalia famine for profit

— click here

Food shortages — Derivatives responsible for Commodity food price inflation.

A mother holds her severely malnourished child at an Internnational Medical Corps (IMC) outpatient therapeutic program in Bolossa Sore, southern Ethiopia, June 5, 2008.

Drought and soaring food prices have triggered widespread starvation, with new admissions at IMC's therapeutic feeding sites increasing more than 600 percent in the last three months.

This food emergency has developed in an incredibly short space of time — essentially over the past 18 months.

The reason for food 'shortages' is speculation in commodity futures following the collapse of the financial derivatives markets.

Desperate for quick returns, dealers are taking trillions of dollars out of equities and mortgage bonds and ploughing them into food and raw materials.

It's called the 'commodities super-cycle' on Wall Street, and it is likely to cause starvation on an epic scale.

The rocketing price of wheat, soybeans, sugar, coffee — you name it — is a direct result of debt defaults that have caused financial panic in the west and encouraged investors to seek 'stores of value'.

These range from gold and oil at one end to corn, cocoa and cattle at the other; speculators are even placing bets on water prices.

Photo: Margaret Aguirre/International Medical Corps/Handout

A mother holds her severely malnourished child at an Internnational Medical Corps (IMC) outpatient therapeutic program in Bolossa Sore, southern Ethiopia, June 5, 2008.

Drought and soaring food prices have triggered widespread starvation, with new admissions at IMC's therapeutic feeding sites increasing more than 600 percent in the last three months.

Photo: Margaret Aguirre/International Medical Corps/Handout

Food shortages — Derivatives responsible for Commodity food price inflation

A severely malnourished child's upper-arm circumference is measured at an International Medical Corps (IMC) outpatient therapeutic program in Bolossa Sore, southern Ethiopia, June 5, 2008.

Drought and soaring food prices have triggered widespread starvation, with new admissions at IMC's therapeutic feeding sites increasing more than 600 percent in the last three months.

This food emergency has developed in an incredibly short space of time — essentially over the past 18 months.

The reason for food 'shortages' is speculation in commodity futures following the collapse of the financial derivatives markets.

Desperate for quick returns, dealers are taking trillions of dollars out of equities and mortgage bonds and ploughing them into food and raw materials.

It's called the 'commodities super-cycle' on Wall Street, and it is likely to cause starvation on an epic scale.

The rocketing price of wheat, soybeans, sugar, coffee — you name it — is a direct result of debt defaults that have caused financial panic in the west and encouraged investors to seek 'stores of value'.

These range from gold and oil at one end to corn, cocoa and cattle at the other; speculators are even placing bets on water prices.

Photo: Margaret Aguirre/International Medical Corps/Handout

A severely malnourished child's upper-arm circumference is measured at an International Medical Corps (IMC) outpatient therapeutic program in Bolossa Sore, southern Ethiopia, June 5, 2008.

Drought and soaring food prices have triggered widespread starvation, with new admissions at IMC's therapeutic feeding sites increasing more than 600 percent in the last three months.

AWAKENING!

Food shortages — Derivatives responsible for Commodity food price inflation

This food emergency has developed in an incredibly short space of time — essentially over the past 18 months.

The reason for food 'shortages' is speculation in commodity futures following the collapse of the financial derivatives markets.

Desperate for quick returns, dealers are taking trillions of dollars out of equities and mortgage bonds and ploughing them into food and raw materials.

It's called the 'commodities super-cycle' on Wall Street, and it is likely to cause starvation on an epic scale.

The rocketing price of wheat, soybeans, sugar, coffee — you name it — is a direct result of debt defaults that have caused financial panic in the west and encouraged investors to seek 'stores of value'.

These range from gold and oil at one end to corn, cocoa and cattle at the other; speculators are even placing bets on water prices.

Photo: Margaret Aguirre/International Medical Corps/Handout

“There is no justification for the current rise in prices.”

Saudi Oil Minister Ali al-Naimi

Food shortages — Derivatives responsible for Commodity food price inflation

A severely malnourished child is weighed at an International Medical Corps (IMC) outpatient therapeutic program in Bolossa Sore, southern Ethiopia, June 5, 2008.

Drought and soaring food prices have triggered widespread starvation, with new admissions at IMC's therapeutic feeding sites increasing more than 600 percent in the last three months.

This food emergency has developed in an incredibly short space of time — essentially over the past 18 months.

The reason for food 'shortages' is speculation in commodity futures following the collapse of the financial derivatives markets.

Desperate for quick returns, dealers are taking trillions of dollars out of equities and mortgage bonds and ploughing them into food and raw materials.

It's called the 'commodities super-cycle' on Wall Street, and it is likely to cause starvation on an epic scale.

The rocketing price of wheat, soybeans, sugar, coffee — you name it — is a direct result of debt defaults that have caused financial panic in the west and encouraged investors to seek 'stores of value'.

These range from gold and oil at one end to corn, cocoa and cattle at the other; speculators are even placing bets on water prices.

Photo: Margaret Aguirre/International Medical Corps/Handout

A severely malnourished child is weighed at an International Medical Corps (IMC) outpatient therapeutic program in Bolossa Sore, southern Ethiopia, June 5, 2008.

Drought and soaring food prices have triggered widespread starvation, with new admissions at IMC's therapeutic feeding sites increasing more than 600 percent in the last three months.

AWAKENING!

Food shortages — Derivatives responsible for Commodity food price inflation

This food emergency has developed in an incredibly short space of time — essentially over the past 18 months.

The reason for food 'shortages' is speculation in commodity futures following the collapse of the financial derivatives markets.

Desperate for quick returns, dealers are taking trillions of dollars out of equities and mortgage bonds and ploughing them into food and raw materials.

It's called the 'commodities super-cycle' on Wall Street, and it is likely to cause starvation on an epic scale.

These range from gold and oil at one end to corn, cocoa and cattle at the other; speculators are even placing bets on water prices.

Photo: Margaret Aguirre/International Medical Corps/Handout

What anyone else might tell you — Western elite propaganda that oil increase is due to shortage — the increase in price of your oil and food is due to derivatives

The West's Central Banks are pouring out your money to financing institutions and the rich elite so the rich elite do not have to concern themselves with their failures

With no retreat, the rich elite of the planet can now speculate in oil futures contracts and food futures contracts.

Hedge funds and investment banks are taking from you as you pay at the pumps and the grocery story so they can restore their losses.
So the rich elite can continue with more speculating in highly leveraged oil and food future contracts

Kewe

Published on Friday, August 17, 2007 by the Independent/UK

US Food Aid is ‘Wrecking’ Africa, Claims Charity

by Leonard Doyle

US aircraft and missile attacks on Somalia
Continued violence driven by US government money
All funded by U.S. taxpayer
US funded violence driven thousands from their homes into squalid camps

Somali women and children displaced by fighting cook at a makeshift camp in Jowhar, 90km north of Somalia's capital Mogadishu August 4, 2007.
Continued violence driven by US government money in Somalia, all funded by the U.S. taxpayer, has driven thousands from their homes into squalid camps.
Photo: REUTERS/Raphael Sourt
Image inserted by TheWE.biz

Selling heavily subsidised US produced food
WASHINGTON — Critics of US food aid subsidies say they help cause obesity among Americans and starvation among Africans.
Now Care, one of the world’s biggest charities, has announced that it will boycott the controversial policy of selling tons of heavily subsidised US produced food in African countries. Care wants the US government to send money to buy food locally, rather than unwanted US produced food.
Causing rather than reducing hunger
The US arm of the charity says America is causing rather than reducing hunger with a decree that US food aid must be sold rather than directly distributed to those facing starvation.
In America, the subsidies for corn in particular, help underpin the junk food industry, which uses corn extracts as a sweetener, creating a home-grown health crisis.
The farm lobby meanwhile has a stranglehold on Congress, which has balked at making any changes that would interfere with a system that promotes overproduction of commodities.
Undermines African farmers’ ability to produce food

Critics of the policy say it also undermines African farmers’ ability to produce food, making the most vulnerable countries of the world even more dependent on aid to avert famine.
Under the system Washington buys tens of millions of dollars of surplus corn and other products from agribusiness.
The food, which can only be exported on US flagged ships, is then sold by charities to raise money to pay for emergencies.

Iraq refugee children created by US terror state
Continued violence driven by US government money
All funded by U.S. taxpayer
More than 4 million Iraq people displaced

Iraq refugee children play at a Red Crescent transit camp in Ruweished, 2003.
4 million displaced Iraq people, men, women and children are displaced over the Middle East due to continued US violence and the attack on Iraq by the US government and people.
Many families, women and children have fled their country living in squalid conditions in Jordan, Syria, Egypt and any country that allows them access.
Photo: AFP/Awad Awad

Globally, about 800 million are chronically hungry and the number is rising every year.
US farmers love the present system, but it is slow and unresponsive when there are food emergencies.
Upset US agribusiness and shipping interests
Care has caused a huge upset in the American charitable sector by deciding to phase out the practice.
It has also upset US agribusiness and shipping interests, which benefit to the tune of some $180m a year from the practice.
Attempts to get Congress to end the policy, as it debates a new farm bill that will last for the next five years, have failed.
Don’t think Americans who generously donate want people to go hungry at their expense
Alina Labrada, a spokeswoman for Care said: “I don’t think that Americans who generously donate want people to go hungry at their expense.”
Care’s decision has led to a rift with some of the biggest US charities, including World Vision, Feed the Children and Africare, who rely on the system to fund a large part of their budgets.
They argue that it keeps hard currency in impoverished countries and stops food prices rising.

US policies forcing privatization of water
US and European companies cashing in on world's poor
U.S. taxpayer funding subsidizing US congolomerates — no money to help where really needed
Many millions of people have no portable water

Angolan children play in front of the toilet-bathroom shack outside their makeshift home in Kambamba, south of Luanda, in May, 2007
Almost a third of people in the world have no access to a toilet, a privation that has dramatic consequences and leads to millions of deaths each year.
US policies forcing privatization of water.
US and European companies cashing in on world's poor.
U.S. taxpayer funding subsidizing US congolomerates — no money to help where really needed.
Many millions of people have no portable water
Photo: AFP/Alexander Joe

Much of aid lost in overheads of shipping it to Africa
The US claims to be the world’s most generous provider of food aid, giving $2bn annually.
Much of that aid lost in the overheads of shipping it to Africa.
Food grown and bought locally can be shipped within days
Not only does subsidised US food hurt African farmers, but food purchased in the US regularly takes four months to reach the destination where there is an emergency.
In contrast food bought locally takes only days to arrive.

COMMENTS
jbs August 17th, 2007 12:21 pm
“Stop Trying To ‘Save’ Africa” By Uzodinma Iweala
Sunday, July 15, 2007
Look this up for an african’s take on ‘aid’.
She will open your eyes to American and world hubris toward 'Third World' countries.

curmudgeon99 August 17th, 2007 1:51 pm
To Care:
Hip, Hip, Hurray
Hip, Hip, Hurray
Hip, Hip, Hurray
Care has got it right. Kudos.
I have a friend whose family in Africa has benefited from this change!
Hopefully more will get the message

marctileston August 17th, 2007 1:28 pm

Children testing with meningitis epidemic experimental drug
Now suffering physical disability and brain damage in Kano, Nigeria
US conglomerate Pfizer facing four court cases

Abu Madaki, holds her eleven year child Firdausi Madaki who was one of the kids tested with the meningitis epidemic experimental drug and now suffering physical disability and brain damage in Kano, Nigeria Thursday, July 19, 2007.
New York-based Pfizer is facing four court cases two filed by the federal government, two by the state in Nigeria over a decade-old drug trial in the northern Muslim city of Kano.
It is accused of using a 1996 meningitis epidemic to push through a sloppily managed study without the full understanding of the parents or the proper regulatory approval.
Photo: AP/George Osodi

This corrupt government knows that as long as they continue to export our surplus crops, they can…
A) continue to subsidize and thus control US agriculture.
B) manipulate global food prices.
C) destroy markets for local farmers, forcing foreclosures
D) buy up foreclosed land to sustain US controlled corporate agribusiness.
Thanks for the help America!

ARA Charleston August 17th, 2007 2:20 pm
Why would we want revolution to happen there?
We need to make sure that our corporations can bribe the corrupt governments there so that they can buy up all the land and not allow the locals to have their own land, thus forcing the locals to work the land
(I’m lookin at you, Starbucks) for $0.03/hr.
Plus, an unstable govt = easy control for us over African oil.
After all, they’re all terrorists, right?

wdmax3 August 17th, 2007 2:22 pm
Give a man a fish and feed him for a day, teach a man to fish and feed him for a lifetime.
Charities do an honorable job taking care of people that need immediate attention.
This of course is a double edged sword that can do harm in the long run.
Dependence on foreign aid can wreck havoc on a nation’s people.
I have no solution for this dire problem, but it seems that most of the time our government and corporations are doing more harm than good.
Charity should never be profitable.

Brain damaged boy
Children tested with meningitis epidemic experimental drug
Now suffering physical disability and brain damage in Kano, Nigeria
US conglomerate Pfizer facing four court cases


Anas Mustapha foreground who was one of the children tested with the meningitis epidemic experimental drug and now suffering brain damage stands near the entrance of their house in Kano, Nigeria Thursday, July 19, 2007.
New York-based Pfizer is facing four court cases two filed by the federal government, two by the state in Nigeria over a decade-old drug trial in the northern Muslim city of Kano.
It is accused of using a 1996 meningitis epidemic to push through a sloppily managed study without the full understanding of the parents or the proper regulatory approval.
Photo: AP/George Osodi

       But rather than conduct more studies to test the link to autism and other forms of brain damage, the CDC placed politics over science
       The agency turned its database on childhood vaccines — which had been developed largely at taxpayer expense — over to a private agency, America's Health Insurance Plans, ensuring that it could not be used for additional research
       Awful decision to allow brain-killing mercury to be injected into young children
       Children — Thimerosal, Autism, Mercury

A New Documentary featuring Amy Goodman!

Click here for:
Listen to daily 1 hour news stream available 24 hours per day
Full past archives available by search

Picture on right is of a child being followed by a vulture waiting for child's death due to starvation
Greg Palast on the Battle to End Vulture Funds
— Click Here
Greg Palast looks at the battle to end "vulture funds", where companies buy up debts of poor nations cheaply and then sue for the full amount.

Saturday, 12 May 2007

A pygmy conference in the rainforest
By John James
BBC News, Republic of Congo

It was 08:30 in the morning when I clambered out of the cab of the battered French 10-wheeled truck, wiped the sweat off my forehead with an already soaked shirt-sleeve and looked for the nearest patch of shade.

Meeting in the forest
The first international forum for indigenous peoples in Impfondo

I had flagged down the truck to hitch a lift to the pygmy meeting, but I found myself deposited on a mud road in a tropical jungle.
My skin was already burning.
The first clue to the location of the conference was the chanting which drifted out of the rainforest.
I headed towards it down a narrow track through the forest.
Small figures flitted in and out of the trees on the path ahead.
A few seconds later the trees parted to reveal a shaded clearing; on it, somewhat incongruously, a pile of white plastic chairs.
Everything else around was clearly made from and in the tropical rainforest.
Leaves had been bent and twisted and then shaped into small domed huts.
Inside, children slept on, oblivious to the large circle of men and women shuffling, swaying and singing outside.
The soundtrack was provided by the beat of drums, several taller than a man.
International forum
I had arrived at the first international forum for indigenous peoples in the Congo basin.
The delegates were from settlements of ancient forest peoples — many commonly called pygmies.

River into Impfondo.
Supplies can only reach Impfondo via the Oubangui river.

Some indigenous rainforest communities dislike the word pygmy, others maintain they are proud of it.
They had come to the remote town of Impfondo in the far north of the Republic of Congo.
There are no roads linking this place to the rest of Congo.
Just the Oubangui river, which flows into the mighty Congo river just after it crosses into the southern hemisphere.
Untouched forests
For outsiders it is a daily battle to make a home here in the rainforest.
Supplies can only be shipped in to Impfondo when the river is high enough or on the Soviet-era propeller planes that fly in from Brazzaville 500 miles (804 km) to the south.
Electricity comes from the massive town generator, but only if there is enough oil.
Congo-Brazzaville, as this country is often called, is much smaller than its neighbour, the Democratic Republic of Congo.
But it is not small.    It is roughly the size of Germany with a population of less than four million.

The majority live in the two southern cities of Brazzaville and Pointe-noire; so the rest of the country has some of the most untouched forests in the world.
These are the forests where outsiders came in waves for rubber, ivory, palm oil and timber.
They may have thought this was a land untouched by human habitation, but it was in fact already home to thousands of pygmies.
Preconceptions about pygmies
Most of your preconceptions about pygmies would vanish if you met Ilundu Bulanbo Stephane, a Twa pygmy from South Kivu in East of the Democratic Republic of Congo.
He is not tall but when we first meet in the jungle I find he is sharply dressed in a grey suit and striped tie.
As I take his photograph he jokes, in his polished French, "people don't expect to see pygmies wearing clothes like government ministers".
He says there is a time and a place for everything. "It is good to wear traditional clothes in the village, but you can't wear a traditional loincloth in town or at school."
Seen as sub-human
As a delegate from Cameroon puts it, indigenous people from the forests of central Africa are the third world of the third world.
Their way of life — hunting in the forest and moving from one spot to another — makes it tricky for them to take advantage of education and health services.

Ilundu Bulanbo Stephane.
Ilundu Bulanbo Stephane is a Twa pygmy from South Kivu.

Meanwhile the bureaucrats among the non-forest people find it difficult to deal with those born in a jungle, away from officialdom.
So, for the pygmies, there are problems getting birth certificates, attending school, taking part in elections and playing an active role in the wider society.
There is also the problem of exclusion from the forests, because of logging companies.
And it is not uncommon to hear about others kept in slave-like employment, by neighbouring farmers who regard them as sub-human.
End discrimination
So they have come to Impfondo on the Oubangui river to meet similar forest people from across central Africa to talk and to work out how to end discrimination.
There is a willingness to modernise: in some areas they have even started using the latest global positioning satellite technology to map out their hunting grounds and sacred sites.
There is also a strong appreciation of the role education can play in helping the communities fight for their rights in the outside world.
"Of course we can take on new things that are good for us", says Stephane. "But our values are also good for the 21st Century", he says.

Women making baskets
The first international forum for indigenous peoples in Impfondo

"We are a peaceful, egalitarian people who share and live at peace with others.
"These are values we ask others to copy."

MMVII

Western Terror States: Canada, US, UK, France, Germany, Italy, other European nations
Special operations, secret US, UK and other Western money taken from taxpayers
Western special operation money starts the conflicts, then helps fund the obliging governments who agree to certain 'obligations' paid for by their poverty stricken peoples, to try to end the conflicts.



The Kivu lake neighborhood in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).
Burundi, Rwanda, the DRC and Uganda have adopted a joint military strategy to fight rebel groups operating in the war-scarred Great Lakes region.
Special operations, secret US, UK and other Western money taken from taxpayers.
Western special operation money starts the conflicts, then helps fund the obliging governments who agree to certain 'obligations' paid for by their poverty stricken peoples, to try to end the conflicts.
Photo: AFP/Desirey Minkoh

Congolese people walk on the road near Goma, in 2006.
At least 42 Rwandan Hutu rebels and four government soldiers have been killed in a crackdown by the Democratic Republic of Congo's military in the strife-torn east, the UN said Wednesday.
Special operations, secret US, UK and other Western money taken from taxpayers.
Western special operation money starts the conflicts, then helps fund the obliging governments who agree to certain 'obligations' paid for by their poverty stricken peoples, to try to end the conflicts.
Photo: AFP/Jose Cendon



Members of a family sit outside their makeshift shelter at a camp for the internally displaced in Nyongera, eastern North Kivu province May 8, 2007.
The U.N. says around 113,000 people have been displaced by renewed violence in recent months.
Special operations, secret US, UK and other Western money taken from taxpayers.
Western special operation money starts the conflicts, then helps fund the obliging governments who agree to certain 'obligations' paid for by their poverty stricken peoples, to try to end the conflicts.
Photo: REUTERS/Joe Bavier

A boy sits on a mound overlooking a camp for the internally displaced in Nyongera, eastern North Kivu province, May 8, 2007.
The U.N. says around 113,000 people have been displaced by renewed violence in recent months.
Special operations, secret US, UK and other Western money taken from taxpayers.
Western special operation money starts the conflicts, then helps fund the obliging governments who agree to certain 'obligations' paid for by their poverty stricken peoples, to try to end the conflicts.
Photo: AFP/Jose Cendon



People walk along a road near a camp for displaced people in Kiwanja,DR Congo, March 2007.
The U.N. says around 113,000 people have been displaced by renewed violence in recent months.
Special operations, secret US, UK and other Western money taken from taxpayers.
Western special operation money starts the conflicts, then helps fund the obliging governments who agree to certain 'obligations' paid for by their poverty stricken peoples, to try to end the conflicts.
Photo: REUTERS/Joe Bavier

Children wash utensils outside their makeshift shelter at a camp for the internally displaced in Nyongera, eastern North Kivu province May 8, 2007.
The U.N. says around 113,000 people have been displaced by renewed violence in recent months.
Special operations, secret US, UK and other Western money taken from taxpayers.
Western special operation money starts the conflicts, then helps fund the obliging governments who agree to certain 'obligations' paid for by their poverty stricken peoples, to try to end the conflicts.
Photo: AFP/Jose Cendon

Death by AIDS

Aids is affecting family life in the southern African country.
Zimbabwe’s is the world's fastest-shrinking economy outside a war zone — unemployment has reached more than 70% and inflation recently topped 1,200%.
The village of Murambinda, about three hours south-east from the capital, Harare, Zimbabwe is one place where HIV prevalence is more than 30%.
Here death is one of the few growth industries.
Photo: http://www.unicef.org/

So much death

Ephraim Musandawi, 34, makes five coffins every day and sells an average of 50 each month.
Nearly 400 adults die from HIV-related deaths every day in Zimbabwe.
“People here are dying, there is just so much death,” says Ephraim.
“It is very sad.
“At one time we had four funerals in our small village in one day.
“You feel sorry for the parents who are burying their children, and for the grandparents looking after the young ones.
“But for us it is good business and we have to survive.”
Photo: http://www.unicef.org/

Lost his mother this year
Grandmother looks after
grandchildren

(left)
Despite immense hardships, Zimbabweans continue to support one another.
Thirteen-year-old Likun Chiwata lost his mother earlier this year; his father died in 2001.
His community helps him with school fees and food.
Per capita, Zimbabwe has more orphans than any country in the world, and school enrolment is falling.
(right)
Zimbabwean grandparents care for huge numbers of the country’s 1.6m orphans.
They need the world’s support, says Unicef.
Mrs Mwaimbodei Chamutsa, 74, cares for her five grandchildren: Gladys, 16; Tabitha, 14; Peacemaker, 13; Nhamo, 13 and three-year-old Busi.
Donors, like the European Commission and the UK’s DfID, help provide school fees, food, shelter, immunisation, and psychological support for tens of thousands of orphans in the country, including the Chamutsa family.
Photos: http://www.unicef.org/

Death by AIDS

More than 70 children are orphaned every day in Zimbabwe.
Despite difficult living conditions, 90% of the country’s orphans are cared for by their extended family.
Mrs Chamutsa says she does her best but that “motherhood should be for younger women”.
Photo: http://www.unicef.org/

        Donations can be made to
        www.unicef.org/

Orphaned girls

Like many grandparents in rural Zimbabwe, Mrs Chamutsa worries for her grandchildren’s future.
A recent survey found that orphaned girls are three times more likely to become infected with HIV than girls whose parents are alive.
Orphaned girls are more susceptible to abuse and more likely to be forced into early marriages.
Photo: http://www.unicef.org/

Harder every day
Tomorrow may be better
than today

(left)
Mrs Chamutsa says: “I am old and I have many children to support.
“There are many grandparents who are looking after children because of Aids.
“Many cannot keep their children in school.
“Or in good health.
“Many just don’t cope.
“And things get harder every day.”
(right)
Life is a constant struggle," says orphan Gladys who is writing her GCSE-equivalent exams.
“I have to work before and after school, but I am just grateful me and my siblings are in school — this way tomorrow may be better than today.”
Photos: http://www.unicef.org/

(left)
An internally displaced Kenyan herdsman waits for food at the only hospital in El Wak, 1530 km (951 miles) north of Kenya's capital Nairobi, December 18, 2005.
Littered with carcasses and criss-crossed by nomads hunting for water, the remote plains of northern Kenya are undergoing a drought that has killed at least a dozen people and hundreds of livestock.
Residents of Mandera district, which borders Somalia and Ethiopia and was already one of Kenya's poorest and most arid areas, say the drought is the worst there for years.
Picture taken on December 18, 2005.
(right)
A Kenyan man walks with his donkey carrying water after trekking 6 km (4 miles) to the only well with water in El Wak, 1530 km (951 miles) from Kenya's capital of Nairobi, December 19, 2005.
Photos: REUTERS/Antony Njuguna

A malnourished child in a makeshift hospital in Maradi, Niger
People in Maradi were hit by the humanitarian crisis of last year

Niger Bars BBC From Reporting on Country’s Hunger Crisis
www.democracynow.org      April 4 2006
The government of Niger is barring the BBC from reporting on the country’s increasing hunger crisis.
The BBC recently revealed that the country is facing severe food shortages and that 1,000 children were recently admitted within a single week to a feeding program for the malnourished.
Officials said international and local media would not be allowed to do stories about the food situation as they did not want that subject touched.
BBC 3 April 2006     Orla Guerin
BBC Africa correspondent

Guerin and her crew have now returned to London

'Culture of denial'
After we broadcast our first story we were recalled to the capital, Niamey, and told our permission to report on the humanitarian situation had been withdrawn.
Officials said they had no problem with our story, but the government did not want foreign or local media to report about food supplies or malnutrition.
The officials also criticised aid agencies without naming names, claiming that some of the funds raised for Niger last year did not reach their destination.
Hunger has always been a politically sensitive issue in the country.
Aid workers say there is a culture of denial at the highest levels and they worry that donors may forget the suffering in Niger if the government stops them from seeing it.
...Milton Tectonidis of the relief organisation Doctors Without Borders said that unless donors dig deep, many in Niger could face a desperate few months.
"They are fragile.   Everybody knows that.   A bad year weakens their resources for two or three years following," Dr Tectonidis said.
"So it's going to be bad if the financing doesn't come in.   There's no doubt about it.   We're going to be running around like crazy."

How can gifts that bring so much happiness have come from so much pain?

A New Documentary featuring Amy Goodman!

Click here for:
Listen to daily 1 hour news stream available 24 hours per day
Full past archives available by search

Valentine’s Day: Labor Conditions at US-Owned Plantations Show Hidden Realities of Flower Industry — Click Here
Nora Ferm of the International Labor Rights Fund talks about a new report on labor conditions at US-owned flower plantations in Colombia and Ecuador.
Beatriz Fuentes, President of the Sintrasplendor Union at Dole’s largest flower plantation in Colombia which has become the site of a growing worker’s struggle, joins us.

“Diamond Life”: Documentary Examines How Diamonds Funded the Civil War in Sierra Leone
— Click Here
We turn now to the issue of conflict diamonds — also known as blood diamonds.
The documentary “Diamond Life” looks at how diamonds funded the civil war in Sierra Leone.
Excerpt of “Diamond Life”, the documentary produced by Stephen Marshall and Josh Shore of the Guerrilla News Network.

Child Labor: The Hidden Ingredient to the Billion-Dollar Chocolate Industry?
— Click Here
On Valentine's Day, chocolate is the currency in which people are supposed to trade their love.
Little do they know that chocolate might have been made with slave labor. We speak with Brian Campbell, an attorney with the International Labor Rights Fund.

Global Witness Founder Charmian Gooch: “The Diamond Industry is Failing to Live Up to Its Promises” — Click Here
For more on the diamond industry, we’re joined by Global Witness founder and director Charmian Gooch.
Gooch says diamond companies have failed to deliver on promises to reduce the prevalence of blood diamonds.

Picture on right is of a child being followed by a vulture waiting for child's death due to starvation
Greg Palast on the Battle to End Vulture Funds
— Click Here
Greg Palast looks at the battle to end "vulture funds", where companies buy up debts of poor nations cheaply and then sue for the full amount.

(left)
Somalians ferry food aid to the Rabdure district for general distribution under the World Food Programme (WFP) from Wajid, 340 km (211 miles) west of Somalia's capital Mogadishu, March 27, 2006.
Insecurity is hampering aid efforts and the WFP says delivering food to the needy in a country that barely functions is a logistical nightmare.
Pirates hijacked two WFP ships last year, forcing the agency back on the country's dangerous roads.
(right)
Halima Mohamed Mahrow hoes the arid soil as her daughters follow behind throwing seeds into the ground, near Burdhuhunle village in southern Somalia, 370km (230 miles) west of the capital Mogadishu in this March 29, 2006 photo.
East Africa's long-running drought is killing thousands of people due to related illnesses and malnutrition, the United Nations said on Friday in the first such estimate of the scale of the tragedy.
Photos: REUTERS/Thomas Mukoya


Famine stalks Somalia again
Friday 31 March 2006
By Jennifer Warren & Stephen Digges
Many Somali children are suffering from malnutrition

Drought and lawlessness have devastated Somalia, and aid groups are struggling to get food and water to residents and livestock.
The UN Food and Agriculture Organisation's Food and Security Analysis Unit (FSAU) says drought in the past two years has devastated agricultural production, causing aid groups to declare a famine in parts of the country.
At a feeding centre in northeastern Kenya, where desperate people from Southern Somalia cross to in the hope of getting some aid, young Somali mothers draped in colourful headscarves and bui bui (traditional head covering) nurse crying, malnourished children.
One mother, who brought her five-year-old to the clinic in Mandera district about a week earlier, says: "I am a housewife with not enough food or water for my children.
"Others at my home are also getting sick."
Not enough food
Her child is suffering from diarrhoea, vomiting and fever, and she says she has been given antibiotics, anti-malarial medicines and special milk because she cannot breastfeed.

Many Somalis cross over to Kenya in search of aid

"I have eight other children at my home in Bulla Nguvu. All of my family is affected by the drought because we don't have enough meals for each day.
"We do receive food aid, but my family is large and farming is also a problem. We have lost many livestock."
Each child brought to the feeding centre often has a host of diseases.
Prepare for worst
The government should prepare for the worst, an official for the UN food group says.
"Another failed rain, outbreak of conflict, and overflow of migration from Mogadishu of people already vulnerable to the outbreak of famine" could bring a humanitarian catastrophe, Nicholas Haan, chief technical adviser to FSAU, told Aljazeera.net.
"Agencies need to be preparing for that, and donors need to be prepping funds."
Unicef Somalia's emergency officer, Bob McCarthy, says his team is bringing water to drought-stricken areas.
"Our drought mobilisation went under way in January. We are making progress in terms of expanding access to water for human and livestock consumption."
Sharing rations
Over half a million people are already receiving food aid in Somalia.
But USAID — which supplies the bulk of donated food to CARE Somalia — recently appealed for more funding and supplies for the country.
However, much of the food rations will be divided between people and their livestock.
FSAU predicts 80% of livestock in Gedo will die by April 2006

"People think of the long term," says Abdul, a stock-keeper for the Gedo Health Consortium (GHC) clinic in Dolow, Somalia.
"They receive 2kg of beans, for example, and only half a kilogramme goes to the family while one and a half kg goes to the livestock."
He points to two cows surviving from a herd that numbered 80.
"The family must keep them alive and share food rations, for hope of the future. The owners will not slaughter today because they would only have meat for two days," Abdul says.
"If they can keep the primary livestock alive, they will have meat and milk throughout for one-two months."
The FSAU predicts that 80% of all livestock in the Gedo region will be dead by April 2006.
Security problems
A large part of the problem in Somalia is that few aid groups are able to freely operate because of security concerns and the lack of a functional government.
There has been no central government in Somalia since a civil war broke out in 1991.
An interim parliament elected in 2005 convened in the country for the first time in February, but local militias still control two-thirds of the country.

Regional and clan-based militias
control most of Somalia

When humanitarian organisation CARE attempted its first food distribution in Garbaharey along the Ethiopian border in February 2000, its field officer, Said Ali Mumin, was attacked and shot.
Recounts Mumin: "We crossed over into Beled Hawa town from Kenya, just as we had done times before, for distributions to Beled Hawa and Luuk, and a group of men ran out from behind this building and opened fire on our vehicle.
"I was shot in the stomach, and the driver quickly turned back to the Kenyan side of the border."
CARE decided not to pull its operations from the country, but authorised staff to hire militias to protect their convoys.
Unicef's McCarthy, who was abducted and later released in March about 100km from Kismayo, says: "The operating environment in southern Somalia is very difficult for aid agencies.
"We have seen piracy of relief supplies, harassment and abduction of aid workers, and frequent conflict that has forced agencies to suspend operations for days or weeks at a time.
Haan, of the FSAU, says the onus is on Somali authorities to take charge of security issues.
Some progress
A Somali official says there has been progress and expressed hope that the situation is improving.

The population is suffering from the effects of the drought.

"Even though Somalia is still not considered safe, the TFG (transitional federal government) is making progress," says Mohamed Ali Nur, commissioner for Somali affairs in Kenya.
"MPs are working closely with community elders to bring peace to regions so desperately in need of humanitarian assistance.
"We are optimistic to move forward with both the Arab League and the European Commission behind us," he says.
But Abdifatah Abdullah Ahmed, resident of Dolow, Somalia, says: "It is obvious that the local people are having problems... Our livestock are dying in vast numbers and we are subsequently malnourished.
"The population as a whole, we are all suffering from malnutrition and the effects of the drought."
          Aljazeera

(left)
Somalian men walk home after cultivating their farms in hope of rain near Bur Dhuxunle village in southern Somalia, 370 km (230 miles) west of the capital Mogadishu, March 29, 2006, as locals strive to fight the drought ravaged East African nation.
(right)
A child drinks water helped by his mother.
Photos: REUTERS/Thomas Mukoya, AFP/Thomas Mukoya

Thursday, 6 April 2006

Heavy rain in drought-hit Kenya

Children collecting water in northeast Kenya
The north-east of the country has been hit hard by the drought

Heavy rain has fallen in northern and eastern parts of drought-hit Kenya.
The falls have brought some relief to the African nation but also caused flooding and damage to roads.
And a government spokesman said that although famine had been averted so far, without sufficient rainfall the country would be in "deep trouble".
Months of drought have left 3.5 million people in Kenya and at least 11 million across the Horn of Africa in need of food aid.
UN relief co-ordinator Jan Egeland is due to launch an appeal for international aid for the region on Friday.
Kenyan government spokesman Alfred Mutua said systems were currently in place to feed the people until June.
"If it doesn't rain, then we are in deep trouble, then we have to start importing food," he said. "But we have asked for international assistance because it is very, very expensive to feed our people."
He said the rain, though welcome, had brought havoc in some areas, damaging roads and leading to flooding.

Horn of Africa shortages

Ethiopians at heart of food crisis answer your questions

Some 3,000 people had to leave their homes in the north-east of the country after a river burst its banks, Reuters news agency reported.
Aid workers were having trouble getting to the area because of damage to roads, an official told Reuters.
Aid agency Oxfam warned last month that north-eastern Kenya could take 15 years to recover from the effects of drought.
The BBC's Karen Allen says although the rain may provide temporary relief, millions of people will still have to rely on food aid for some time to come, and it is clear the crisis is far from over.

Friday, 6 January 2006

Starvation looms in African Horn

Millions of people could face starvation in the Horn of Africa, the United Nations food agency has warned.
The FAO says Somalia has been worst hit by a drought in the region, where 2m need urgent food aid. The harvest there could be the lowest in a decade.

Woman in northern Kenya
The drought does not respect international borders

There are also food shortages in parts of Ethiopia, Kenya and Djibouti. Some 11 million need food aid, the FAO says.
A BBC correspondent in northern Kenya says corpses of cattle and donkeys are lying everywhere.
The BBC's Adam Mynott says six children have died in the past three weeks in Wajir hospital from hunger-related diseases and 15 of the 20 beds are occupied by malnourished children in varying states of health.
While trees with deep roots are still managing to push up a few scant leaves, everything else is brittle, brown and dry as tinder, he says.
BBC Africa analyst Martin Plaut says the UN agencies do not use words like "starvation" and "drought" lightly.
The FAO's Shukri Ahmed told the BBC News website that he was particularly worried because people are harvesting their crops at the moment and yet there is still not enough food.

FACING STARVATION
Kenya: 2.5m people
Somalia: 2m
Ethiopia: 1m
Djibouti: 150,000

"There should be a lull in the period of hunger," he said.
But food prices are still rising in both Somalia and Kenya, he said.
He also warned that long-term weather forecasts predicted that the next rains in April and March could be lower than normal.
'Wiped out'
In Ethiopia, some one million people in the south-eastern Somali region could face severe food shortages, while another seven million need food aid, the FAO says.
On Thursday, international aid agencies stepped up their appeal for the estimated 2.5m people needing food aid in northern Kenya.

Nearly 150,000 people — 20% of the population — face food shortages in Djibouti.
The FAO says it is conducting an urgent assessment to find out what is required to meet these people's needs.
"Communities may soon be wiped out since they depend entirely on livestock," said the Red Cross on Thursday.
Children, weakened by months of hunger, are starting to die of diarrhoea, malaria and other diseases, and the existing centres for feeding malnourished children are overflowing, aid workers say.

(left)
A Kenyan farmer tends to his coffee plantation in Mukuruweini Nyeri, 120 km (75 miles) northwest of the Kenyan capital Nairobi February 23, 2006.
Even in Kenya's lush, misty central highlands, the stinging drought facing east Africa is showing up in the form of sickly yellow coffee leaves.
(right)
AKjell Magne Bondevik, the new U.N. humanitarian envoy for the Horn of Africa and a former Norwegian prime minister, tours Kajiad in the southern corner of Kenya on Thursday, Feb. 23, 2006, to see for himself the impact of the drought that has hit eastern, central and the Horn of Africa.
Senior U.N. envoy Bondevik appealed for urgent help for 11 million people hit by food shortages amid severe drought in parts of Africa.
Photos: REUTERS/Thomas Mukoya, AP/Anthony Mitchell

Thursday, 23 February 2006

UN warns world on Africa drought

The world is in danger of allowing a drought in East Africa to become a humanitarian catastrophe, the UN warns.
The UN special envoy to the Horn of Africa, Kjell Bondevik, says a disaster can be avoided if funding comes "in a matter of weeks... not months".

Young child suffering from severe malnutrition is treated at an MSF centre in Maradi
Images like this one in Niger mobilise donors, but often too late

Around 11 million people are in serious danger in Kenya, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Somalia and Djibouti, the UN estimates.
The World Food Programme, leading the aid effort, says it has only a third of what it needs to close the shortfall.
Donors had committed just $186m (£106m) of the $574m (£327m) needed, the WFP says.
"I urge donors countries to pledge more and pay. Not only to pledge, but to pay," Mr Bondevik said on a tour to see first-hand the situation in Kenya.
Past disasters
It follows past food crises in Niger and other parts of Africa where, by the time images of dying children have prodded the international into action, it has been too late, says the BBC's Peter Greste in Nairobi.
Mr Bondevik said global climate change was the root cause for the failure of the past two rainy seasons, and it was incumbent on the global community to come to the aid of those at risk.
"I'm afraid that we will go from a crisis to a disaster to a catastrophe if help is not provided in time," he said.
His comments were echoed by UK charity Oxfam, which said the response so far from rich donor countries had been "dwarfed by the immediate need".
The crisis is so bad in some parts of northern Kenya that families are being forced to eat insects, wild berries and squirrels to stay alive, Oxfam has found.
"Donors need to frontload their efforts so that action can be taken now; money given in three months will be too late for many," Paul Smith — Lomas, head of Oxfam in East Africa, said.

Death


As many as 12 million people need food aid across southern Africa, after a lack of rain last year exacerbated by a systematic crisis.
In Malawi, Wizaki Joseph, 47, buried his 21-year-old daughter Serena, a divorced mother of two.
She had gradually succumbed to hunger despite the watery porridge her family begged and borrowed from neighbours in the village of Fombe, in the district of Chikwawa.
Wizaki and his wife Esnat now look after their two young grandchildren aged five and seven.
Photo: www.tearfund.org

        Donations can be made to
        www.oxfam.org.uk/

        www.tearfund.org

No nutrition

John is worried: "I am old and my legs do not work well, so I cannot find work in other villages.
My family is relying on relatives to provide us with porridge.
"I do not know what will happen to my family because if the rains do not come then we will just die."
When the maize runs out, villagers are driven to eat wild fruits to survive, like this mfula.
It is a bitter-tasting nut-like fruit and contains virtually no nutrition.
Photo: www.tearfund.org

(left)
A mother and her child sit at the therapeutic feeding centre run by Action contre la faim, with support from the U.N. World Food Programme (WFP), in Wajid, 340 km (211 miles) west of Somalia's capital Mogadishu March 28, 2006.
WFP is seeking to distribute food aid to over 1.5 million people in the drought-ravaged East African nation.
(right)
A malnourished child is fed using a naso-gastric tube at the therapeutic feeding centre run by Action contre la faim, with support from the U.N. World Food Programme (WFP), in Wajid, 340 km (211 miles) west of Somalia's capital Mogadishu March 28, 2006.
Photos: REUTERS/Thomas Mukoya

G8 Will Not Ease
Third World Poverty

Thursday, 7 July 2005
Green Left Weekly — Australia
John Pilger

Afghanistan poverty
while US taxpayers and European NATO governments spend billions of Euros and US dollars killing people

Some 25-years of war in Afghanistan, US taxpayers and European NATO governments are spending billions of Euros and US dollars killing and maiming people, trying to insert their idea of 'democracy' which is merely illegal occupation and control by the West towards another people, a people the West has no right to either force their wish, or control.
Photo: AP/Musadeq Sadeq

We all know that the higher oil prices affect GDPs negatively.
The only question is to what extend.
Colin Campbell and Jean Laherrère have studied this problem and published their result in the Journal of Applied Economics.
“We find that in the US the output loss resulting from a 100% oil price hike increases from around 3.5% in the linear approach to 5% in the scaled case.
Among the other oil importing countries, the respective increase in the output loss arising from the same shock is from around 2% to a range of 3 to 5% in the case of individual euro area countries, from less than 1% to 2% in the case of the euro area as a whole, and from very small values to around 1% in Canada.” ^[18]
Three and a half percent or five percent may sound marginal, but it is only when one looks at the dollar amount that one begins to see the significant of this loss.
(United States GDP 2005) 12.47 trillion dollars X 3.5% = 436.45 billion dollars.
(United States GDP 2005) 12.47 trillion dollars X 5% = 623.5 billion dollars.
The negative affect of higher oil prices on GDP has not been ignored by the United States.
The Energy Information Administration (EIA) estimates that the negative effect of high oil prices on U.S. GDP will be felt for years to come.

Police do bidding of rich elite
Anti-poverty groups and First nation protesters arrested
2010 Olympic Winter Games outcry over disgraceful spending, Vancouver, Canada


An anti-poverty protestor is arrested by police doing bidding of the Canadian elite during a demonstration at a ceremony unveiling the discracefull spending on the 2010 Olympic Winter Games in Vancouver, British Columbia February 12, 2007.
Several dozen protestors from anti-poverty groups and indigenous first nation groups tried to disrupt the ceremony.
Photo: REUTERS/Andy Clark

(left)
Women stand outside their makeshift houses at the Maslah camp in Wajid, 340 km (211 miles) west of Somalia's capital Mogadishu March 27, 2006.
The camp hosts more than 8,000 internally displaced Somalis.
(right)
An elderly Somalian walks past makeshift houses at the Maslah camp in Wajid, 340 km (211 miles) west of Somalia's capital Mogadishu March 27, 2006.
Photos: REUTERS/Thomas Mukoya, AFP/Thomas Mukoya

(left)
Immigrants sleep on the street after they were evicted from a building, in Milan, Italy, early Wednesday Dec. 27, 2005.
Dozens of legal immigrants from Ethiopia, Eritrea and Somalia, were evicted from an occupied building on Tuesday, and spent the night on the street, before being taken to makeshift homes.
(right)
Inmates sing and dance during an inter-prison competition held at Naivasha, Kenya's biggest prison, December 31, 2005.
Tens of thousands of detainees in Kenya have decided to skip a meal on New Year's day to save money in a bid to assist millions of people facing severe food shortages, prison officials said on Saturday.
Prisoners said they had reached the decision voluntarily once they learnt of the plight of those facing hunger through the media, which have dubbed the current crisis the 'Christmas famine'.
Northeast Kenya, neighboring south Somalia and southeast Ethiopia are suffering the brunt of the drought which affects more than six million people across east Africa.
Picture taken December 31, 2005.
Photos: AP/Alberto Pellaschiar, REUTERS/Antony Gitonga

John Pilger: G8 Will Not Ease Third World Poverty
Thursday, 7 July 2005
Green Left Weekly — Australia
Vicious, discredited economic programs

Wire mesh control by the elite
Nairobi slums

A boy peers through wire mesh in the slums of Nairobi, January 2007.
Photo: AFP/Tony Karumba

The illusion of an anti-establishment crusade led by pop stars — a cultivated, controlling image of rebellion — serves to dilute a great political movement of anger.
In summit after summit, not one significant promise of the G8 has been kept, and the “victory for millions” is no different.
It is a fraud — actually a setback to reducing poverty in Africa.
Entirely conditional on vicious, discredited economic programs imposed by the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the “package” will ensure that the "chosen" countries slip deeper into poverty.
Is it any surprise that this is backed by Blair and Brown, and US President George Bush (even the White House calls it a “milestone”)?
For them, it is a useful facade, held up by the famous and the naive and the inane.
Having effused about Blair, Geldof describes Bush as “passionate and sincere” about ending poverty.

Police do bidding of rich elite
People who have known only poverty, corruption and police crackdown now answering call of resistance to wealthy and powerful


Moroccan policemen stand guard as one unidentified defendant arrives at the Sale court near Rabat, Morocco, Friday, Jan. 26, 2007 as Moroccan judges for the elite postpone a trial for more than 50 suspected resistance people.
The name of Al-Qaida and its resistance to the elite is spreading into the cities and deserts of North Africa.
Increasingly, Moroccans, Algerians and Tunisians who have known only poverty, corruption and police crackdown for the elite are answering religious Islam resistance to remake the world, with violence if need be.
Photo: AP/Abdeljalil Bounhar

(left)
Somali militiamen walk in the streets of Mogadishu, February 2005.
(right)
An elderly Kenyan woman walks to a food distribution centre in Burmayo, 1630 km (1013 miles) from Kenya's capital Nairobi, December 19, 2005.
Littered with carcasses and criss-crossed by nomads hunting for water, the remote plains of northern Kenya are undergoing a drought that has killed at least a dozen people and hundreds of livestock.
Residents of Mandera district, which borders Somalia and Ethiopia and was already one of Kenya's poorest and most arid areas, say the drought is the worst there for years.
Picture taken on December 19, 2005.
Photos: AFP/Simon Maina, REUTERS/Antony Njuguna

(left)
Camels scramble for scarce water resources, 11 March 2006 in Dinsor, southwestern Somalia.
A severe drought currently ravaging parts of southern Somalia is threatening the lives of millions of war-bruised people
(right)
Turkana women carry metal containers after work at a water catchment project on the Lokitaung river in northern Kenya March 10, 2006.
The project involves damming up a section of the usually dried out Lokitaung river.
Last week, the dam captured the first rains to hit the area for nearly a year, creating a reservoir of 136 thousand cubic metres of freshwater that would otherwise have run into Lake Turkana, a body too alkaline to sustain plant life.
Turkana is one of the worst-affected regions of a drought that has killed tens of thousands of livestock and hundreds across Kenya, Somalia, Ethiopia and other parts of east Africa. Picture taken March 10, 2006.
Photos: AFP/Simon Maina, REUTERS/Antony Njuguna

Totalitarian corporations and their control

Next to one of the most luxurious hotel in Africa
Sheraton Addis

A general view of a densely populated area in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, where residents live in tin shacks built next to one of the most luxurious hotel in Africa, the Sheraton Addis.
While living standards in the West and emerging Asian powerhouses such as China and India continue to improve in the 21st century, feeble growth rates in much of Africa have mired most of the continent's residents in abject poverty.
Photo: AFP/Peter Delarue

Bono has called Blair and Brown “the John and Paul of the global development stage”.
Behind this front, rapacious power can “reorder” the lives of millions in favour of totalitarian corporations and their control of the world's resources.
There is no conspiracy — the goal is no secret.
Brown spells it out in speech after speech, which liberal journalists choose to ignore, preferring the Treasury spun version.
The G8 communique announcing the “victory for millions” is unequivocal.
Under the section headline “G8 proposals for HIPC debt cancellation”, it says that debt relief will be granted to poor countries only if they are shown to be “adjusting their gross assistance flows by the amount given”.
In other words, their aid will be reduced by the same amount as the debt relief.
So they gain nothing.
Paragraph two states that “it is essential” that poor countries “boost private sector development” and ensure “the elimination of impediments to private investment, both domestic and foreign”.
The “$55bn” claimed by the Observer comes down, at most, to £1 billion spread over 18 countries.

Bono attending rich club
Devos, Switzerland
Winter sports area serves nearby


U2 lead singer Bono attending rich club at Devos, Switzerland.
'Delivering on the Promise of Africa' was the stated theme at the World's rich elite, World Economic Forum (WEF) in January 26, 2007.
Governments controlled by the elites were in attendance 'promising' to help Africa fight poverty and disease.
An annual promise with no end.
Poverty journalist John Pilger — Behind this front, rapacious power reorders the lives of millions in favour of totalitarian corporations and their control of the world's resources.
Photo: Pascal Lauener/Reuters

(left)
A Kenyan woman walks with her donkeys carrying water after trekking 6 km (3.7 miles) to the only well with water in the Kenyan town of El Wak, 1,530 km (951 miles) from the capital Nairobi, December 19, 2005.
Close to a dozen pastoralists and hundreds of livestock have died of starvation and thirst in the worst draught to hit the remote northeastern Kenya in the past three years, residents and hospital sources said on Wednesday.
(right)
Carcass of cows lie in the Kenyan town of El Wak, 1,530 km (951 miles) from the capital Nairobi, December 19, 2005.
Littered with carcasses and criss-crossed by nomads hunting for water, the remote plains of northern Kenya are undergoing a drought that has killed at least a dozen people and hundreds of livestock.
Residents of Mandera district, which borders Somalia and Ethiopia and was already one of Kenya's poorest and most arid areas, say the drought is the worst there for years.
Picture taken on December 19, 2005.
Photos: REUTERS/Antony Njuguna

(left)
A group of Turkana men and women build a dam at a water catchment project on river Lokitaung in northern Kenya March 10, 2006.
Last week, the dam captured the first rains to hit the area for nearly a year, creating a reservoir of 136 thousand cubic metres of freshwater that would otherwise have run into Lake Turkana, a body too alkaline to sustain plant life.
Turkana is one of the worst-affected regions of a drought that has killed tens of thousands of livestock and hundreds across Kenya, Somalia, Ethiopia and other parts of east Africa.
(right)
A severely malnurished child is treated on 10 March at Dinsor hospital in Somalia.
The Red Cross said it is asking donors for an extra 15.8 million Swiss francs (12 million dollars, 10.1 million euros) to aid more than 1.2 million drought-affected people in Somalia over the next four months.
Photos: AFP/Simon Maina, AFP/Simon Mania

Six days' worth of debt payments

Aid distribution from a truck in a displaced camp in The Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), July 2006.
The United Nations refugee agency has said it is launching a 62 million dollar (48 million euro) appeal this year to help hundreds of thousands of Congolese refugees and internally displaced people within the DRC.
Photo: AFP/Lionel Healing

This will almost certainly be halved — providing less than six days' worth of debt payments — because Blair and Brown want the IMF to pay its share of the “relief” by revaluing its vast stock of gold, and passionate and sincere Bush has said “No”.
The first unmentionable is that the gold was plundered originally from Africa.
The second unmentionable is that debt payments are due to rise sharply from next year, more than doubling by 2015.
This will mean not “victory for millions”, but death for millions.
At present, for every US$1 of “aid” to Africa, $3 are taken out by Western banks, institutions and governments, and that does not include the repatriated profit of transnational corporations.
Thirty-two corporations, all of them based in G8 countries, dominate the exploitation of the Democratic Republic of Congo
Take the Democratic Republic of Congo.

A young fighter of the Patriotic Force of Resistance for Ituri walks along a road in south Ituri in the Democratic Republic of Congo, July 2006.
Photo: Lionel Healing/AFP

Thirty-two corporations, all of them based in G8 countries, dominate the exploitation of this deeply impoverished, minerals-rich country where millions have died in the “cause” of 200 years of imperialism.
In Ivory Coast, three G8 companies control 95% of the processing and export of cocoa, the main resource.
The profits of Unilever, a British company long in Africa, are a third larger than Mozambique's GDP.
One US company, Monsanto — of genetic engineering notoriety — controls 52% of South Africa's maize seed, that country's staple food.
Blair could not give two flying faeces for the people of Africa.

(left)
Ibrahim Kula, a 13-year-old severely malnourished Kenyan boy, lies is his hospital bed in Mandera town, 1,500 km (932 miles) northeast of the capital Nairobi, December 21, 2005.
(right)
A severely malnourished young Kenyan boy sits in his hospital bed in Mandera town, 1,500 km (932 miles) northeast of the capital Nairobi, December 21, 2005.
Littered with carcasses and criss-crossed by nomads hunting for water, the remote plains of northern Kenya are undergoing a drought that has killed at least a dozen people and hundreds of livestock.
Residents of Mandera district, which borders Somalia and Ethiopia and was already one of Kenya's poorest and most arid areas, say the drought is the worst there for years.
Photos: REUTERS/Antony Njuguna

Forcing privatisation of water for British investors

Zimbabwean children play with sewage water in Harare, March 2006.
Photo: AFP

Ian Taylor at the University of St Andrews used the Freedom of Information Act to learn that while Blair was declaiming his desire to “make poverty history”, he was secretly cutting the government's Africa desk officers and staff.
At the same time, his “Department for International Development” was forcing, by the back door, privatisation of water supply in Ghana for the benefit of British investors.
This ministry lives by the dictates of its “Business Partnership Unit”, which is devoted to finding “ways in which DfID can improve the enabling environment for productive investment overseas and ... contribute to the operation of the overseas financial sector”.

Congolese displaced children gather in Bankoko Camp on the outskirts of Bunia, Democratic Republic of the Congo, in 2006.
Photo: AFP/Jose Cendon

Poverty reduction?
Of course not.
Instead, the world is subjected to a charade promoting the modern imperial ideology known as neoliberalism, yet it is almost never reported that way and the connections are seldom made.
In the issue of the Observer announcing “victory for millions” was a secondary news item that British arms sales to Africa had reached £1 billion a year.

Prepared

This rainy season has been better and has brought some relief to the region.
But the underlying causes remain, such as chronic poverty, weakened agriculture and health sectors due to widespread HIV/Aids, political inertia and inappropriate agricultural and economic policies.
Current rains will not produce crops until April.
Still, millions of subsistence farmers prepared the parched soil and planted in the hope of a harvest in three months' time.
Photo: www.tearfund.org

Vulnerable

Among the first to suffer from the food shortages are the vulnerable, widows, orphans, those who are sick or HIV-positive.
Marina Kefasi, 29, and 16-month-old Mariana both have tuberculosis. "We did not harvest last year," says Marina.
"We eat water lilies and rely on my husband to travel to Mozambique to find work.
"I received drugs from the hospital and feel a little better, but am weak from the lack of food.
"There is no milk in my breasts and Mariana cries all the time."
Photo: www.tearfund.org

Losing weight

Children are weighed regularly in the village.
Most are gradually losing weight, month-on-month.
Felester Anderson, 40, one of the care-givers trained by local churches says: "It will get worse in the coming months.
"We monitor the children and we can tell the parents if their child is not doing well and needs help from the hospital."
Photo: www.tearfund.org

        Donations can be made to
        www.oxfam.org.uk/

        www.tearfund.org

Weak

With high levels of HIV infection in some rural areas of Zambia, Elinah Habusala's story is not uncommon.
She explains: "My husband died of Aids in 2002 and I think I am HIV-positive but I have not been tested.
"I am losing weight and feeling weak.
"I have five children of my own and two orphans to care for.
"There is no source of income for us and so we are eating just one bowl of porridge a day.
"If God allows it we will get some seed and have a harvest in April."
Photo: www.tearfund.org

Friday, 7 October 2005

Hunger grips in Malawi maize crisis

The main government maize market in Mulanje is packed.

Malawians queue for food
Tired and hungry Malawians often have to queue for days to get food

It is seven o clock in the morning and many Malawians we stumble across have been queueing for days.   Queueing on empty stomachs and with bare feet.
Mothers whose breast milk has dried up due to lack of food, jostle for space, their babies strapped to their backs in the traditional African way.
Occasionally a scuffle breaks out as some hungry person, accused of pushing in, is plucked from the queue by police officers.
These are Malawi's poorest people — unable to buy maize on the open market where prices have doubled in recent months.   Stocks in the main government markets are diminishing fast, so they're starting to impose rations.
Emerging food crisis
The worse harvest in a decade and failed rains are being blamed for what aid agencies warn is a rapidly emerging food crisis.
What is making matters worse is HIV/Aids.   One in seven people in Malawi is affected and it is fuelling the problem of extreme hunger.

A maize packer gathers small supplies of grain
Replenishing maize stocks is a huge challenge for the country

Money that households would normally spend on buying seed and fertiliser, is being spent on transporting the sick to hospital and buying basic medicine instead.
Malawians, particularly in the parched south of the country, are well used to hardship, but their ability to cope is being severely eroded.
Hunger and heartbreak
Sixty thousand tonnes of maize is being brought in by the Malawian government.   The aim is to distribute it in the coming months.
But it is only a stop-gap measure for the most vulnerable, and Malawi's ministers are reluctantly having to turn to the richer world for help.
The real challenge facing Malawi is how to replenish home-grown stocks.
Aid agencies are trying to distribute seed and fertiliser ahead of the planting season, which is approaching rapidly, but contributions to the UN's emergency relief fund have been miserably low.
Only $27m (£15m) out of the $88m (£50m) appealed for has been committed by the international community so far.
The frightening reality is that if no seeds are planted now, the squeeze on food supplies now could rapidly escalate into a major humanitarian crisis.
And hunger is already causing heartbreak.   Admissions to specialist therapeutic feeding units, which nurse malnourished children back to health, are up a third on last year — and desperate people are being forced to take desperate measures.
In a small village in Mulanje district we come across Berita Chimtengo.   She is a mother mourning her son.   Two weeks before we arrived, her son Benito went out foraging for food.   He brought home wild yams for the family to eat.

Berita Chimtengo and her mother
Berita is terrified every time her children go out in search of food

What Benito didn't realise were that they were poisonous.   The young man fell unconscious and very quickly died and 11 other members of his family, the majority of them young children, were violently sick.
Berita told me that she now was terrified every time her children went out hunting for food, but what can you do she told me, when you simply don't have anything to eat.
In other surrounding villages there are families with similar stories to tell.   And aid agencies fear that without massively increased help in the coming weeks, the tragedies these families have faced could be just the tip of the iceberg.

Reliant

Emmanuel International, a partner organisation of Tearfund has been carrying out food distributions for several months, like this one in Malawi's Machinga district.
One Malawian aid worker captures the sentiment of many affected by the crisis when he says: "As Malawians we want to be self-sufficient and not have to rely on outside help.
"But it is one of the poorest countries in the world and at the moment it is important to keep people alive."
Photo: AP

One bowl a day

In Nedi village in southern Malawi the children who suffered badly in the last food crisis three years ago, are now eating one bowl of porridge a day.
It is all thanks to a church-initiated scheme which sees villagers putting their maize into a central 'pot'.
It means that the children get one meal a day, even if the adults don't and go hungry instead.
Photo: www.tearfund.org

More on interest of debt than entire health budget

A Congolese displaced boy walks in the rain in Bankoko Camp on the outskirts of Bunia, Democratic Republic of the Congo, in 2006.
Photo: AFP/Jose Cendon

One British arms client is Malawi, which pays out more on the interest on its debt than its entire health budget, despite the fact that 15% of its population has HIV.
Brown likes to use Malawi as an example of why “we should make poverty history”, yet Malawi will not receive a penny of the “victory for millions” relief.
The charade is a gift for Blair, who will try anything to persuade the public to “move on” from the third unmentionable — his part in the greatest political scandal of the modern era, his crime in Iraq.
Although essentially an opportunist, as his lying demonstrates, he presents himself as a Kiplingesque imperialist.
His “vision for Africa” is as patronising and exploitative as a stage full of white pop stars (with black tokens now added).
His Messianic references to “shaking the kaleidoscope” of societies about which he understands little and watching the pieces fall have translated into seven violent interventions abroad, more than any British prime minister in half a century.
Geldof, an Irishman at his court, duly knighted, says nothing about this.

A Sudanese refugee only known as Kiro, stands in Seneit near the Chad/Sudan border, November 14, 2006.
Photo: REUTERS/Stephanie Hancock

Look to Venezuela
The protesters going to the G8 summit at Gleneagles ought not to allow themselves to be distracted by these games.
If inspiration is needed, along with evidence that direct action can work, they should look to Latin America's mighty popular movements against total locura capitalista (total capitalist folly).
They should look to Bolivia, the poorest country in Latin America, where an indigenous movement has Blair's and Bush's corporate friends on the run, and Venezuela, the only country in the world where oil revenue has been diverted for the benefit of the majority, and Uruguay and Argentina, Ecuador and Peru, and Brazil's great landless people's movement.
Across the continent, ordinary people are standing up to the old Washington-sponsored order.
“Que se vayan todos!" (Out with them all!) say the crowds in the streets.
Much of the propaganda that passes for news in our own society is given to immobilising and pacifying people and diverting them from the idea that they can confront power.
The current babble about Europe, of which no reporter makes sense, is part of this, yet the French and Dutch “No” votes are part of the same movement as in Latin America, returning democracy to its true home: that of power accountable to the people, not to the “free market” or the war policies of rampant bullies.
And this is just a beginning.
      http://pilger.carlton.com
From Green Left Weekly, July 6, 2005.
      http://www.greenleft.org.au/

(left)
Displaced Somalis sit outside their makeshift houses in south Mogadishu, after welcoming newly arrived Internally Displaced People (IDP) from south central Somalia fleeing hunger.
Tens of thousands of desperate Somalis have converged on Mogadishu over the past two months, abandoning their homes in the nation's drought-stricken south and center to beg for food in the capital as famine looms across east Africa.
(right)
A woman with her drought stricken herd in Kenya's northeastern province, on January 2, 2006.
International aid agencies stepped up appeals for urgent intervention in drought-hit northern Kenya, warning of mass starvation and major famine in the region where dozens have already succumbed to hunger and related illness.
Photos: AFP, AFP/Tony Karumba


UN: Niger in desperate need of food
Thursday 21 July 2005

UN: 2.5 million people, including 800,000 children, face famine

The United Nations has appealed for millions of dollars in aid from donors to tackle an "acute humanitarian crisis" in famine-and drought-stricken Niger where 2.5 million people, including 800,000 children, are facing famine.
Landlocked Niger, one of the poorest countries in the world, was devastated by an invasion of locusts that ate everything green last year, followed by a severe drought.
"We are having an acute humanitarian crisis in Niger in which children are dying as we speak," said UN relief coordinator Jan Egeland.
He added that Niger's severe food crisis could have been prevented if the United Nations had a reserve fund to jump-start humanitarian aid while appeals for money were considered.
"We need a central emergency fund so that we can have some predictability," Egeland said.   "As of now we have none."
Niger was invaded by locusts in 2004 followed by a drought

Under funded
Charity group Oxfam said UN appeals for aid were "dangerously" under funded, with only one third of the money needed from donors being pledged.   In many cases, the pledged money had not arrived, the agency added.   the West African state
The United Nations first appealed for assistance for Niger in November and got almost no response.   Another appeal for $16 million in March got about $1 million.
The latest appeal on 25 May for $30 million has received about $10 million.
The UN "needs money now.   Every day that the world's richest countries look the other way, more people face starvation.   They have to put their hands in their pockets before it's too late", added Oxfam spokeswoman Natasha Kafoworola Quist.
French aid

The Antonov plane was carrying 18 tonnes of aid for Niger

On Wednesday, a first cargo plane packed with 18 tonnes of aid left France for the northeastern town of Maradi in Niger.
The airlift was to continue on Saturday and Sunday and were to make between eight and 10 trips between Ndjamena and Maradi over the weekend, taking 40 tonnes of grain and 28 tonnes of groundnut oil.
The operation is being financed by several big companies.
"The situation is desperate.   Even the limited food that is available has soared in price, rendering it unaffordable for most families, and there is no hope of any harvest for at least three months," said Quist.
"Families are feeding their children grass and leaves from the trees to keep them alive."

“Families are feeding their children grass and leaves from the trees to keep them alive”
Natasha Kafoworola Quist,
Oxfam spokeswoman

Pan-African crisis
But the West African state's situation is not unique — more than 18 million people are faced with serious food shortages in 10 African countries, a food security monitoring group said.
The US-funded Famine Early Warning Systems Network said in a report released late on Tuesday that more than 18 million people in 10 African countries faced food shortages because of poor rains and high crop prices.
The food shortages were concentrated in Ethiopia, where more than half of the 18 million affected people live, the report said.   At least half of neighbouring Eritrea's population of 4.5 million was in peril, as well as 2.69 million in Uganda.
Other countries affected include Sudan, Djibouti, Rwanda, Tanzania, Kenya, Burundi and Somalia, it said.
          Agencies

(left)
Malawian mothers wait with their children to get a ration of food and milk at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital's malnutrition ward in Blantyre.
The World Food Programme launched a three-month school feeding project, targetting some 500,000 pupils in the southern African nation's seven worst hunger-affected districts.
(right)
Children are fed with porridge, in Kenya's northeastern province, on January 2, 2006.
International aid agencies stepped up appeals for urgent intervention in drought-hit northern Kenya, warning of mass starvation and major famine in the region where dozens have already succumbed to hunger and related illness.
Photos: AFP/File/Gianluigi Guercia, AFP/Tony Karumba

Thursday, 7 July, 2005

Crops fail across southern Africa

Children in Mozambique village
Aids is reducing harvests across southern Africa

More than 10 million people need food aid after crop failure in six southern African countries, the United Nations food agency says.
The World Food Programme says that people are going hungry after erratic weather, made worse by problems with fertiliser and seeds in some countries.
Zimbabwe and Malawi are the worst hit countries, the WFP says.
It urged donors to send aid to "avoid widespread hunger from developing into a humanitarian disaster".
Malawi has experienced its lowest maize harvest since 1992 and will only cover 37% of average national consumption of 3.4m tonnes of cereal, the WFP said.

In Zimbabwe, the WFP says that four million people may need aid in the coming year.
Swaziland, Mozambique, Zambia and Lesotho will also need help, it said on the basis of new crop studies.
All countries are badly hit by the Aids pandemic, which kills those who would normally be the most productive farmers.
Donors say that Zimbabwe's problems have been made worse by the government's seizure of white-owned farms.
This is strongly denied by the government.

Maasai
Turkana

(left)
Kenya's Maasai people pray over the current drought in Suswa, some 100 km (62 miles) from the capital Nairobi, February 23, 2006.
Donors have only pledged a third of the aid that drought-stricken East Africa needs to halt a famine that threatens 11 million people, aid agency Oxfam said on Thursday.
(right)
Turkana women carrying their babies wait at the feeding center in Elelea, northern Kenya on 15 February, 2006.
The United Nations's special humanitarian envoy to the Horn of Africa said he was alarmed by the impact of the devastating drought that has put millions of people in the east African region in the risk of starvation.
Photos: REUTERS/Antony Gitonga, AFP/Simon Maina

BBC — Thursday, 7 July, 2005

Some 150,000 children are malnourished, aid agencies say

No food aid as hungry flee Niger

Niger's government cannot afford to distribute free food to those hit by a food crisis, officials say, as hundreds of people flee to Nigeria.
Food crisis committee manager Seydou Bakary warned of a "nationwide catastrophe" if this year's harvests are even slightly deficient.
Children are dying as a result of the famine brought about by drought and a locust plague, the United Nations says.
Donors have largely ignored a UN appeal to help the 3.5m people going hungry.

There is chronic malnutrition throughout the country, even during the most productive harvests
Seydou Bakary Food crisis committee manager

Sent home
Two children are dying each day in one feeding station in Maradi, 600km east of the capital, Niamey, UN World Food Programme spokesman Marcus Prior told the BBC.
Some 150,000 young children are severely malnourished after poor rains and locust invasions devastated last year's harvest.
Nigerian immigration officials say there has been a "substantial" increase in the number of people crossing from Niger.
"They are fleeing from the famine facing them," said Hassan Suleiman Kangiwa, head of the Nigerian immigration service in northern Katsina State.
He said that security had been increased at border posts and that those without valid documents would be sent home.

A child suffering from malnutrition in Maradi, Niger
The UN estimates that 150,000 children are starving in Niger

Mr Bakary, however, told the AFP news agency that the issue was being "politicised" and that people always went hungry in one of the world's poorest countries.
"We should be cautious not to exaggerate the situation — there is chronic malnutrition throughout the country, even during the most productive harvests."
He did say that in some parts of Niger, people are only eating once a day and have started to eat wild plants because nothing else is available.
"It is almost impossible to identify with certainty the most vulnerable families in an area plagued by poor crops and food insecurity, which is why we will avoid free distribution of food until the situation demands it," he said.
There have been protests in the capital, Niamey, of people who accuse the government of ignoring the problems.

Displaced Somali children
Ethiopian children walk past
carcass of cow

(left)
Displaced Somali children stand outside their makeshift houses in Mogadishu, January 2006.
The worst drought to hit Somalia in a decade could soon begin claiming lives in the Horn of Africa nation, the International Red Cross warned.
(right)
Ethiopian children walk past the carcass of a cow in Denan, in the southern Somali region of Ethiopia, January 16, 2006.
As many as 11 million people are threatened with starvation across east Africa because of a combination of drought and conflict, a U.N. special investigator warned on Monday.
Photos: AFP, REUTERS/Andrew Heavens

BBC — Saturday, 30 July 2005
Niger's people living on the edge
A town on the edge, on the line at about 15 degrees north of the equator, where human attempts to grow crops give way to the inevitable reality of the Sahara desert.
The sub-prefect, Abakada Agwanaban, a striking tribal leader, dresses in magnificent white flowing robes with a white scarf wrapped elegantly round his head in the style of the Tuaregs — desert nomads who openly carry ancestral swords in the backstreets of his mud-walled town — which looks like that one in the Star Wars film. Beyond the boundaries of civilisation.
Plague
The sub-prefect told me that there were sometimes bad years here, but not since the great famine of 1973 has there been a cycle of three bad years in a row.

A man holds a bowl with the last of his seeds for sowing, in a region blighted by drought and locusts
Drought and locusts have blighted many regions in Niger

There was a drought last year, followed by locusts which ravaged the region.
This year the rain has been patchy, with very little falling in some areas, so they talk of a second year of drought.
Farms are turning to barren land. Their distinctive ball-shaped storage silos empty of food.
Mr Abakada told me that his biggest fear is that the crisis could go on into a third year, leaving people defenceless since all of their own coping mechanisms would be exhausted.
In this harsh environment, people cope with hardship by selling animals, men move away to work, nomads move their animals towards available pasture.
Well, this year the price of animals is depressed since too many are trying to sell.
The men who have gone away to work, as far away as Libya and Algeria, have not come back.
And nomads compete with farmers for scarce resources as they try to move their herds around.
Dirty water
But there is another dimension.

Nomad farmers stand among their cattle
Nomads compete with farmers for scarce resources as they try to move their herds around

In any year, one in four children does not live to see a fifth birthday here.
Child mortality in a normal year is worst around Maradi, the area where the most vivid images of dying babies have come from, because there is an acute shortage of clean drinking water there.
Climate change has made Niger a more precarious place to live, while corruption and the failure of development policies have left this as the second poorest country in the world.

Solution

Amidst the hunger in southern Malawi stands a glimpse of one of the solutions to lifting the country out of its relentless cycle of drought and famine.
The village community of Ling'awa has come together to pump water from the nearby Shire river.
The precious water is moved onto a maize field that was donated to benefit the most vulnerable.
Photos and text by Tearfund's Layton Thompson and Keith Ewing
Photo: www.tearfund.org

        Donations can be made to
        www.tearfund.org

        www.oxfam.org.uk/

        www.unicef.org/

Drought stricken Wajir
Maasai herdsman comforts a dying sheep

(left)
A Kenyan pastoralist walks past carcasses in the drought stricken Wajir, north eastern province, Kenya.
Kenyan authorities ordered a start to water rationing in Nairobi as a searing drought that threatens millions in east Africa hits reservoirs that supply east Africa's main commercial hub.
(right)
A Maasai herdsman comforts a dying sheep in Kenya's Rift Valley.
A scorching drought that threatens millions across east Africa may spark major tribal clashes in Kenya as competition for water and pasture turns violent, Oxfam International has warned.
Photos: AFP/Tony Karumba, AFP/Tony Mwaniki

A New Documentary featuring Amy Goodman!

Click here for:
Listen to daily 1 hour news stream available 24 hours per day
Full past archives available by search

“Diamond Life”: Documentary Examines How Diamonds Funded the Civil War in Sierra Leone
— Click Here
Nora Ferm of the International Labor Rights Fund talks about a new report on labor conditions at US-owned flower plantations in Colombia and Ecuador.
We’re also joined by Beatriz Fuentes, President of the Sintrasplendor Union at Dole’s largest flower plantation in Colombia which has become the site of a growing worker’s struggle.

Child Labor: The Hidden Ingredient to the Billion-Dollar Chocolate Industry?
— Click Here
On Valentine's Day, chocolate is the currency in which people are supposed to trade their love.
Little do they know that chocolate might have been made with slave labor. We speak with Brian Campbell, an attorney with the International Labor Rights Fund.

Global Witness Founder Charmian Gooch: “The Diamond Industry is Failing to Live Up to Its Promises” — Click Here
For more on the diamond industry, we’re joined by Global Witness founder and director Charmian Gooch.
Gooch says diamond companies have failed to deliver on promises to reduce the prevalence of blood diamonds.

Bamako: Danny Glover Produces and Stars in New Film Putting the World Bank and IMF on Trial in Africa — Click Here
Actor and activist Danny Glover joins us to talk about his new film "Bamako."
Set in Mali, the plot revolves around a trial that pits the people of Bamako against the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund.   We're also joined by Bamako's co-executive producer, Joslyn Barnes.

Citing Democracy Now!/BBC Broadcast, Rep. John Conyers Confronts Bush and Demands Investigation of Vulture Funds — Click Here
House Judiciary Chair Rep. John Conyers (D — Michigan) joins us from Capitol Hill to talk about the war in Iraq and African debt.
He calls for a cutoff of appropriations for the war in Iraq, saying "That may be the only way that we're going to end the war."
Conyers also reveals that on Thursday he met with President Bush and asked him to stop vulture investors from preying upon African debtor nations.

Picture on right is of a child being followed by a vulture waiting for child's death due to starvation
Greg Palast on the Battle to End Vulture Funds
— Click Here
Greg Palast looks at the battle to end "vulture funds", where companies buy up debts of poor nations cheaply and then sue for the full amount.

Free Trade Enslaving Poor Countries
Sanjay Suri
LONDON, Mar 20 (IPS)

The new free trade agreements being signed up between rich and poor countries are proving far more damaging to the poor than anything envisaged within WTO talks, Oxfam said in a report Tuesday.
"Poor countries are being forced into very deep tariff cuts," Emily Jones, author of the Oxfam report 'Signing Away the Future' told IPS.
"These are often being reduced to zero under reciprocal so-called free trade agreements they are being forced to sign with rich countries."

Jose Bove
Against globalization and huge conglomerates taking over the world
French presidential candidate

Farmer and presidential candidate Jose Bove, who has been relentless in opposing globalization by huge conglomerates taking over the world, chats during an anti-nuclear rally in Bordeaux, southwestern France, Wednesday, March 21, 2007.
Photo: AP/Bob Edme
Image inserted by TheWE.biz

That means poor countries are having to open up their markets to subsidised agricultural products from places like the EU, she said.
There are already more than 250 regional and bilateral agreements in existence and more under negotiation, the report says.
Regional and bilateral trade deals now govern more than 30 percent of world trade, and 25 developing countries have now signed free trade agreements with developed countries.
"An average of two bilateral investment treaties are signed every week, the report says.
"Virtually no country, however poor, has been left out."
The agreements undermine moves to development, the report says.
"In an increasingly globalised world, these agreements seek to benefit rich-country exporters and firms at the expense of poor farmers and workers, with grave implications for the environment and development," it says.
The United States and the EU are pushing through rules on intellectual property that reduce poor people's access to life-saving medicines, increase the prices of seeds and other farming inputs beyond the reach of small farmers, and make it harder for developing-country firms to access new technology, the report says.
Governments are sometimes showing themselves powerless against such moves.
"Some developing countries find themselves between a rock and a hard place," said Jones.
"Many are signing up to these so-called economic partnership agreements for fear of losing preferences," Jones said.
Many of these countries have been offered export preferences in return for dropping tariffs against imports from developed countries.

Merkel follows Bush
in trying to destroy life on the planet

Merkel at the 'Globalization and Trans-Atlantic Economic Partnership' conference in Berlin March 19, 2007, backing the rich elite, trying her best to destroy life on the planet.
Photo: REUTERS/Arnd Wiegmann
Image inserted by TheWE.biz

The North America Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) has brought 1.3 million job losses in Mexico in ten years, Jones said.
Increased exports to the United States have failed to generate growth, and some studies show that the real wages in 2004 were less than in 1994, Jones said.
The rules on liberalisation of services in such agreements threaten to drive local firms out of business, reduce competition, and extend the monopoly power of large companies, the report says.
"When Mexico liberalised financial services in 1993 in preparation for NAFTA, foreign ownership of the banking system increased to 85 percent in seven years, but lending to Mexican businesses dropped from 10 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) to 0.3 per cent, depriving poor people living in rural areas of vital sources of credit."
Governments in developing countries usually come under strong political pressure to sign up to such deals, Simon Ticehurst from Oxfam in Bolivia told IPS.
"But a lot depends also on the type of development models that governments present to their people," he said.
"Colombia and Peru have been signing up to these agreements. Others are more reluctant.
"You now have a small country like Bolivia and many new governments across Latin America beginning to challenge the logic of free trade agreements."
Oxfam has demanded the following:
— Recognise the special and differential treatment that developing countries require in order to move up the development ladder.
— Enable developing countries to adopt flexible intellectual-property legislation to ensure the primacy of public health and agricultural livelihoods and protect traditional knowledge and biodiversity.
— Exclude essential public services such as education, health, water and sanitation from liberalisation commitments.
— Recognise the right of governments to regulate the entry of foreign investors to promote development and the creation of decent employment, and include commitments to enforce core labour standards for all workers.
— Ensure mechanisms for extensive participation of all stakeholders in the negotiating process, with full disclosure of information to the public, including the findings of independent impact assessments.

Copyright © 2007 IPS-Inter Press Service. All rights reserved.

South Korea police
protecting world's elite by stopping protest


South Korean riot policemen protecting world's elite stand to stop people protesting against an anti-free trade agreement(FTA) rally in front of the Deoksu Palace in Seoul, Saturday, March 10, 2007.
Defying the power of the elite anti-globalization activists prepare to hold a mass rally in Seoul Saturday to oppose a proposed FTA between South Korea and United States.
Photo: AP/Ahn Young-joon

Poor cotton farmers in West Africa
Enslavement from privatisation programs of World Bank
All funded by U.S. taxpayer

Cotton to be packaged in Pama, central Burkina Faso.
Poor cotton farmers in West Africa face new pressures from low commodity prices and from privatisation programs advocated by donors like the World Bank, the charity Oxfam said in a report Thursday, March 22, 2007.
Photo: AFP/Issouf Sanogo

       But rather than conduct more studies to test the link to autism and other forms of brain damage, the CDC placed politics over science
       The agency turned its database on childhood vaccines — which had been developed largely at taxpayer expense — over to a private agency, America's Health Insurance Plans, ensuring that it could not be used for additional research
       Awful decision to allow brain-killing mercury to be injected into young children
       Children — Thimerosal, Autism, Mercury

For Film: War by Other Means
— Click Here
An investigation into the crippling levels of debt paid by Third World countries.
John Pilger and David Munro examine the policy of First World banks agreeing loans with Third World countries, who are then unable to meet the cripling interest charges.
The film questions whether poor countries will ever develop while burdened with massive debts to the West.
The role of the World Bank, IMF and corporatism comes into direct conflict with the nature of civilian life.
Won Geneva International TV Award at the North-South Media Encounters event, Geneva, 1993

Film:
War On Democracy
— Click Here

The War On Democracy is a powerful new documentary from award winning journalist and film-maker John Pilger.
Pilger interviews several ex-CIA agents who purportedly took part in secret campaigns against democratic countries and who he claims are profiting from the war in Iraq.
The film uses archive footage to show how democracy has been wiped out in country after country in Latin America since the 1950s.
The Venezuelan segment of the film features the President of Venezuela Hugo Chavez being captured in the coup of 2002, a takeover backed by rich and powerful interests under U.S. support.

It shows how Hugo Chávez was brought back to power by the Venezuelan people.

       Experts have described the situation as the worst mass poisoning of a population in history.
       2008 global economic crisis was the greatest missed opportunity we ever had to redesign the financial system globally and totally.
   Eleven years old Jainal has been working in factory for three years
   Microloans also pay for schooling that allows children to become engineers, doctors and other professionals, a huge leap in one generation from the circumstances of their parents.
      All humans have an entrepreneurial spirit, Yunus noted
       Ideas can start small and go on to change the world

       A slim Kyrgyz boy sits crouched in the corner, waiting for the miner to fill his sack.
          Diego 14, scraping a living on Peru streets
          India's 'cheap commodity'
      47 Years Later in Havana
       Democracy and children
       Child labor Kyrgyz Peru India Bangladesh Indonesia Morocco Africa

       People do not want to eat chocolate that was made with illegal child labor or slave labor. No chocolate can taste good that was made under such conditions.
       It tracked developments in four factories from the first report and four new ones in five countries on three continents producing uniforms for nine major firms in China, Honduras, the Dominican Republic, Mexico, and America.
    Rapacious power can “reorder” the lives of millions in favour of totalitarian corporations and their control of the world's resources.
  For every US$1 of “aid” to Africa, $3 are taken out by Western banks, institutions and governments, and that does not include the repatriated profit of transnational corporations.
    Children workers — Sweat shops — Unions
    Funding Sweatshops Globally
    G8 Will Not Ease Third World Poverty

        Sudan — Darfur pictures

       Globalization

      Life expectancy drops from 60 years to 30 years
      Zimbabwe crises

       Dying for clean water

      Coca-Cola and Plachimada, India
      Deregulation, Accumulation of wealth
      — India resistance and corporations
      — India photos

      Globalization

       Bolivia — Indigenous Revolt Evo Morales President

      Palestine children in prison
      I Refused
      Kept in arm and leg restraints
      Youth prisons
      Humiliation
      Despair

      Venezuela
       The elections of Hugo Chávez

        USA Youth Institutions abuse

        Man!     Dad!
       Locked Up Youth Write Father's Day Greetings to Dads Who Weren't There

       Children workers — Sweat shops — Unions

        Children in danger
        Victims of being accused of witchcraft
        living on the streets

       Depleted Uranium — its use in Afghanistan, Iraq, Balkans

       Photos of Iraq children being born deformed

      U.S. War Crimes — Falluja photos — Graphic Images

      US used chemical and thermobaric weapons in Fallujah

       Demolition of homes — Zimbabwe

        Global weather, environment and climate change — includes photos

       Why did you cut down the trees Grandma?
       State of the World's Garden

       Simple Questions — Iraq June 2005 photos

       Settlements — Trees — Jayyous — West Bank — Palestine

       drinking the Kool-Aid — on the Death of Idealism — i'm twenty-five

      The real news is the shady April 2002 deal to go to war,
      the cynical use of the U.N. to provide an excuse,
      and the secret, illegal air war without the backing of Congress

       Downing Street Memo — How Bush and Blair took us all for a ride
       Blair Brown Campbell Goldsmith Hoon Straw
       U.S. and British bombing raids illegal.

       Mental Health disorders effecting returning US troops
       Most religious people are on the same side as most progressive people

       Hiroshima, Nagasaki — the bombs that incinerated 200,000 people — George Weller report

       The Politics of Anti-Semitism
       99 US Senators, 350 US House members attend AIPAC May, 2005 meeting

       US veteran Mothers against the war:

       So anyway that filth-spewer and warmonger, George Bush
       was speaking after the tragedy of the marines in Ohio...

    Democracy in the United States and most of the rest of the industrial West
    is therefore a false front on a rich man’s mansion, a sham in which people are
    given a political vote but then clock in each day to an economic system where
    their entire lives are regimented by a small group of executives busily downsizing
    whatever workplace rights people had gained in centuries of struggle.

      Agent Orange — Vietnam
      Cleft palates
      Mentally challenged
      Extra fingers toes

      How to End the War — Naomi Klein

       Listing of Iraq War — includes photos

       I beheld the wretch — the miserable monster whom I had created

       World is actually running out of oil

       Corporate toadies — John Kerry, John Edwards, Hillary Rodham Clinton — March 2005 Anti-war photos

       False memories — George Orwell wisdom

       Fake News

       Keep the people frightened
       Of things they cannot know
Is the secret of the Tomb
       If they knew what you and I know
       They would know it is just men
       Who rob them, cheat them, kill them
       Then start it all again
       The Negative Return Economy — a discourse on America’s black budget
       Fascinating and lucrative
       Black Budget?   What Black Budget?

       With Bush's reinauguration, America now has the president it deserves
       — Bush's reinauguration bash and the six children of Tal Afar

      “When You Talk with God”

        US Debt

      State of the Union — USA

      U.S. vote fraud continues

      Cabal has usurped Washington — US

       Broken promises — US Congress — Erosion of Democratic Process

       Torture techniques no surprise

       Israel: A Call for Divestment — Palestine photos

      Mire of Death, Lies and Atrocities — Iraq

      Iraq — US missiles from the sky

      IRAN US Confrontation

      U.S. Soldiers against the war

      British soldier to refuse call to Iraq

      US Foreign Policy Dangerously Slanted Toward Israel

       Saving Children — Irena Sendlerowa

      Bulge story continues into 2005
       — NASA scientist shows Bush wired in debate

      Abu Ghraib soldier, Concientious Objector
Aidan Delgado

      Dr. Martin Luther King — War and Militarism — Photos and images   Iraq   Vietnam 1967

      World Terrorist Organization

      Blair — WMD claims

      Iraq death squads — Badr, White Toyota Land Cruisers
      Glock pistols, Interior Ministry memo
      Salvador Option

      Fallujah photos — War — lunacy, bewilderment, panic, fear invading body, death

      US once great nation transformed into a neo fascist nightmare

      The Empire

       U.S. destructive, psychotic fantasy:    The War On Terror
       — 500 'bunker buster' bombs

       U.S. to Israel:
        — An apocalypse of Evil being created
       — 500 'bunker buster' bombs

        CO2 record high levels in the atmosphere — Climate fear as carbon levels soar

        Atrocities in Palestine

        Ahmed and Asma, story of two children dying

      Jarwas, Onges, Shompens, Sentinelese, Great Andamanese

        Faith Fippinger

        Book of Merlyn

        2010 hottest first 6 months ever recorded
        2005 hottest year on record,
        2004 4th hottest,
        2003 3rd hottest,
        2001-2002 tied for 2nd.

       Master Plan — Mess of coward's pottage

        Rumi

        Grief and Horror

For archive purposes, this article is being stored on TheWE.biz website.
The purpose is to advance understandings of environmental, political,
human rights, economic, democracy, scientific, and social justice issues.
        Globalization           Enviro News
                Abrupt climate event
    World's Garden              War photos
   ‘War Circus’

TheWE.biz