Somalians face hunger and fear in Kenya’s refugee camps

Victims of war and drought are at the mercy of bandits as they trek miles across the desert to seek UN help. Then corrupt officials demand starving families pay for food

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Source: Guardian

As the world looks to Libya, a refugee crisis unfolds

Night after night they huddle together in groups, desperately trying to stay warm. The lucky ones scavenge blankets and plastic sheeting, or gather around sputtering fires. Others sleep on the hillsides, waiting for help to arrive.

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Mugabe Strips Tsvangirai of Powers

Zimbabwe Situation – A fresh confrontation is looming in Zimbabwe’s shaky power sharing
government after President Robert Mugabe reportedly ordered all ministers to
stop reporting to Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai but to the two Zanu PF
Vice-Presidents in a bid to demote the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC)
leader.

Highly placed government sources have told Radio VOP that the Mugabe issued
the directive through a memo written and signed by the country’s chief
secretary to the president and cabinet Misheck Sibanda last week.

The controversial directive by Mugabe, which goes against the Global
Political Agreement (GPA) which gave power to Tsvangirai, is likely to
escalate tensions in the transitional government following last week’s
collapse of talks between Zanu PF and the two MDC formations.

“The directive from Mugabe came as a surprise to us, and in the letter he
does not explain where he is getting the orders but it is clearly a Zanu PF
and Mugabe ploy to create problems in the unity government. It’s yet another
attempt by Mugabe to abuse his powers and ostracise the prime minister.

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Donors seek $378 mln aid for Zimbabwe, crisis easing

By Nelson Banya

(Reuters) – Aid agencies, led by the United Nations, on Monday launched an appeal for $378 million to meet Zimbabwe’s humanitarian needs, amid signs that the crisis facing the country is easing under its unity government.

Zimbabwe’s power-sharing government, formed by President Robert Mugabe and his rival Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai in February, has presided over improving social conditions in the country, but aid agencies say more needs to be done. More than 70 aid organisations, including U.N. agencies, are requesting the money to for food security and to improve health, water and sanitation.

U.N. assistant secretary general for humanitarian affairs, Catherine Bragg, who presided over the launch ceremony in Harare, noted an improvement in Zimbabwe’s social conditions under the unity government. “Zimbabwe is experiencing a gradual shift from humanitarian crisis to recovery following political changes that positively affected socio-economic conditions,” she said.

“Despite improvements in food security, the country still faces a substantial national cereal deficit and an estimated 1.9 million will need food assistance at the peak of the hunger season, between January and March.”

Zimbabwe’s humanitarian crisis peaked last year when a cholera outbreak, blamed on collapsing health, water and sanitations systems, killed over 4,000 people in nearly 100,000 cases. About 7 million people needed food aid in 2008. Bragg said the easing crisis meant the 2010 aid request would be the lowest since agencies and the U.N. began the appeals process in 2006. Donors managed to provide 64 percent of the 2009 appeal of $719 million. Western donors, seen as key in Zimbabwe’s recovery efforts, have been providing mostly humanitarian aid while holding out on direct assistance to the government until it implements broad political reforms.

‘Crisis is still here’ says Zimbabwean priest

MSF: Zimbabwe crisis also crisis for South Africa

By Donna Bryson

(AP) — Zimbabwe’s collapse has spilled over the border with devastating effect, an international medical aid group said Tuesday, calling on the South African government and the international community to do more to ensure desperate migrants were safe and had shelter and health care.

“It’s a major humanitarian crisis … here on this side of the border,” Dr. Eric Goemaere, medical coordinator for Medecins Sans Frontieres in South Africa, told reporters.

Goemaere said the group was speaking out now for fear Zimbabwe’s troubles and their impact on the region were being forgotten. Goemaere said there was a mistaken impression that the formation of a unity government in Zimbabwe in February meant the crisis was over.

“The situation, it’s still not solved,” he said.

In a report Tuesday, MSF detailed Zimbabweans fleeing hunger, disease and political violence only to be raped by criminals at the border, harassed by South African police once they cross and denied medical care at South African hospitals.

MSF said South Africa’s health system has been overwhelmed by an influx of Zimbabweans, and that South Africa was struggling to provide shelter and other services for Zimbabweans. One example of what foreign donors could do, Goemaere said, was pay for AIDS medication for Zimbabweans in South Africa. Zimbabwe and South Africa each have among the highest AIDS rates in the world.

South Africa officially entered recession this month, and even before that a quarter of the labor force was unemployed. That has led to resentment among some South Africans at the influx of thousands of Zimbabweans — there are no reliable estimates of just how many were here.

“You’re seeing increasing levels of resentment. People are saying, `Why aren’t you going home? Things are sorted now,’” said Richard Smith of Save Zimbabwe Now, an independent group campaigning to raise support among South Africans for Zimbabweans.

Zimbabweans were among the victims of a wave of xenophobic violence by South Africans last year.

MSF workers said Tuesday anti-foreigner sentiment may explain why some South African medical workers were turning away Zimbabweans, but that ignorance could also be the cause.

Goemaere said South African health authorities should ensure nurses and doctors were aware Zimbabweans and other foreigners here were entitled to health care. He also said authorities should do more to make sure police were aware a moratorium on deporting Zimbabweans had been declared in April, and that in May visa restrictions were lifted to allow Zimbabweans to come to South Africa without visas for up to 90 days, and seek work while here.

Nomvanela Kota, a spokeswoman for South Africa’s international relations department, said the changes making it easier for Zimbabweans to come and to stay made clear her government has “long been seized of this matter.”

Kota said foreign help was welcome, but as part of a “coordinated effort” led by South Africa.

International agencies have struggled to raise funds for Zimbabwe itself, raising questions about how much could be raised to help South Africa cope with the spillover.

In a joint statement Monday, U.N. agencies appealed for $718 million for 2009 to provide food, clean water, AIDS medicines and other aid in Zimbabwe — up from an estimate of $550 million in November. They said donor response has been “below average,” with just $246 million provided by May 26.

Late last year, the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies asked the international community for about $9 million to fight cholera in Zimbabwe. The Red Cross had to end its operation early when it received only 45 percent of the funds it needed.

Smith, of Save Zimbabwe Now, said a major foreign aid campaign for Zimbabweans in South Africa might only increase resentment among South Africans.

“I don’t think that South Africa should be calling for international help at the moment” he added. “Rather than calling for international help, we should be calling on the state … to get its act together.”

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If only the world would not look away

Written by Oxfam GB/AlertNet

It was in late March that I started receiving increasingly worrying reports about alleged atrocities in remote areas of North Kivu. Military operations by the Congolese army against the FDLR rebel group had continued (Rwandan troops deployed in a joint operation with the Congolese army withdrew in February); and reports suggested that the offensive was likely to expand to South Kivu.

I heard about reprisal attacks, the burning of houses, sexual violence, looting, and people being prevented from accessing their fields, their only source of food. Many of these reports were coming from areas where Oxfam teams had begun carrying out life-saving work with a local partner, helping to provide safe drinking water, clean latrines and public health education.

I could not believe what I was reading: up to 250,000 people reported to have left their homes since January. Some 40,000 families would have arrived from the forests in Lubero territory alone. Some of our senior staff, as sceptical as me, went to the field and came back with a clear report: it is true, they told me, it’s just not on TV yet. Our immediate response was to decide to scale up our emergency operations in South Lubero – about 160 km north of the provincial capital Goma.

Water trucks were sent to provide clean water to the displaced and the families who hosted them. Hygiene items were distributed, and health promoters were deployed to help avoid the worst: the outbreak of epidemics, which could kill thousands. We also decided to open an emergency response office in the neighbouring province of South Kivu where we were getting reports of another military build-up, indicating that a similar tragedy could happen there.

A few days later, I was on a plane crossing this vast country towards the conflict zone to support our field staff and to get a first-hand view of what was happening on the ground. After two flights and a trip by road I finally arrived in Lubero. The government representative there told me the situation was dramatic and people needed urgent help. I continued by road southwards, into what the United Nations called the “red zone” – not to be used without military escorts.

Oxfam refuses such escorts, due to concerns that we may be perceived as supporting a particular side in any conflict. It was one day after an attack on the town of Luofu, where 255 houses were deliberately burned to the ground. We met some displaced people on the road, who were just fleeing from the fighting, carrying the little possessions they could take with them. They were exhausted and desperate.

Two days later, we would start trucking 60,000 litres of clean water to Luofu. They were heading to a town called Kirumba, which was also our destination. Several thousand people had gathered there for an Oxfam emergency distribution of essential hygiene items. Through an interpreter, I heard some of their stories. One woman witnessed another being gang-raped by three armed men. The victim died later, the witness told me. The witness – an old woman – ran away from her village with her children; but had become separated from her husband, who fled in another direction. She told me the few items she had managed to carry with her were taken away by soldiers.

I have been to places like Afghanistan and Sierra Leone and thought I had seen the worst of what human beings were capable of doing to others. But the stories of these displaced women, children, and men made it difficult to hold back tears.

HOUSES TORCHED

As the Oxfam distribution of hygiene items continued, we travelled further south to a town called Kanyabayonga, where Oxfam was carrying out water distribution. The town’s population has more than doubled during the recent fighting, and Oxfam is trucking in 180,000 litres of clean water every day.

Traditional village chiefs from this vast remote area gathered to tell me their stories. Since the start of the military operations, the population here has been caught between a rock and a hard place. Civilians are seen with suspicion by both warring sides, and accused of being collaborators.

People had no choice but to leave their villages – but also had nowhere really safe to go. They arrived in Kanyabayonga, they said, terrified, tired, and in need of protection and help. The fighting had not stopped. One day before we arrived, the FDLR rebels had attacked Kanyabayonga itself. People were living with host families – in some cases, up to five other families in a house. I tried to imagine how it would be – no clean water, only basic squat latrines, with little money and a war going on around me. But what really broke my heart was to hear about the systematic burning of houses in these remote areas of North Kivu province.

Villagers reported that many thousands of homes had been burned to the ground. There are around 17,500 UN peacekeepers stationed in Congo – but with little visible presence here to give these vulnerable people any sense of safety. People I spoke to wanted to see UN peacekeepers patrol on foot, to be present in their communities. To protect them. Now I’m back in the eastern provincial capital, Goma, where Oxfam co-ordinates its emergency operations in the DRC. I am happy that we have managed to scale up our emergency work in South Lubero. More help will come, if the security situation permits. If only the world would not look away.

Crisis group warns of relapse into chaos

(IRIN) – Zimbabwe could slide back into chaos, the International Crisis Group (ICG), a Brussels-based non-profit organisation committed to preventing and resolving deadly conflict, warns in a new report.

After months of negotiations between Robert Mugabe’s ruling ZANU-PF and opposition parties, brokered by the Southern African Development Community (SADC), it was hoped that the Global Political Agreement (GPA) signed in September 2008, and the formation of the unity government on 11 February 2009, would mark Zimbabwe’s renaissance.

However, Western donors have cast a jaundiced eye on the unity government, while Mugabe, who is still president, is blamed for the anti-democratic practices that turned one of the region’s most successful economies into a begging bowl.

“If the international community, regretting the inadequacies of the power-sharing arrangement, stands back with a ‘wait-and-see’ attitude, the likely result will be that Mugabe and/or the military establishment will entrench themselves again, with a corresponding return to violence, repression and catastrophic economic policies. It is time to promote change,” the ICG said in a report, Engaging the Inclusive Government.

Morgan Tsvangirai, leader of the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) and appointed prime minister of the unity government, has conceded that the GPA has shortcomings, but said it was vital that the unity government received support to reverse a decade of catastrophic economic decline.

John Makumbe, a political scientist based in Harare, the Zimbabwean capital, said ZANU-PF’s commitment to the unity government was far from satisfactory, and cited Mugabe’s grab of an MDC ministry, ongoing farm invasions, and the delay in the appointment of provincial governors.

A return to chaos is the plan

“Those from ZANU-PF are demonstrating amply that they are ready to return to the decay they presided over for so many years, and a relapse into chaos could happen overnight if those in the inclusive government and the international community do not play their cards well,” Makumbe told IRIN.

“Once sanctions are lifted and the economy is performing well again, Mugabe and his hardliners are likely to create an environment that leads to the collapse of the inclusive government. They would arrest or fire the MDC leaders from the government and suspend the planned constitutional referendum, and go back to their old ways of looting and repression,” he said.

The US and the European Union (EU) have said they will lift sanctions targeting Mugabe and the ruling ZANU-PF elite, including travel bans and frozen foreign assets, when they see a commitment to democracy by the old guard, which has ruled since independence from Britain in 1980.

The ICG sees the fragility of the unity government as a consequence of resistance by ZANU-PF hardliners, who fear that greater transparency could reveal years of graft and self-enrichment.

“Some old-regime elements seek to cause the new government to fail out of fear of prosecution, loss of power and its financial sinecures, hatred for Tsvangirai or the MDC, or a genuine belief that they are the guardians of the country’s liberation,” the report said.

“They are thus continuing to provoke and frustrate the MDC, as shown by such actions as continuing arrests and detention of MDC activists, refusal of police to carry out some government orders, efforts to drive out the last few hundred white farmers by continued farm invasions, and stalling on the appointment of provincial governors, as well as reconfiguration of ministerial powers.”

The ICG said there was “a real risk of a coup” and a possibility of Tsvangirai being assassinated, despite the support of the army’s middle and lower ranks for the unity government.

Although a delegation of ministers from all parties attempted persuade the EU and the US to remove sanctions, the ICG said this might be “premature”, and that the SADC should work with Zimbabwe “to help make the reform process irreversible”.

Deconstructing the security apparatus

To speed up the possible lifting of sanctions, the ICG said, a strategy should be put in place to “retire virtually all members of the security sector senior leadership” — in the army, police and state intelligence – which are seen as the architects of human rights abuses.

Persuading them to retire, amid fears of recrimination in the post-Mugabe era, may require “leverage with a law that offers immunity to senior generals from domestic prosecution for past political crimes”, the ICG said.

Such a course should combine transitional justice mechanisms, including a truth commission similar to that established after the demise of apartheid in neighbouring South Africa, the report recommended.

“The US, EU and others could, in accordance with their laws, sweeten the deal by removing targeted sanctions on those who would accept and comply,” the ICG said, while South Africa should warn them that if they remained defiant, they risked prosecution.

The ICG urged donors to pursue a “humanitarian plus assistance strategy” that supported an emergency economic recovery programme promoting the “revival of the education, health and water sanitation sectors, as well as a functioning civil service and reconstruction of basic infrastructure.”

Countries in the SADC, particularly South Africa, should also provide direct assistance. The regional bloc has pledged more than US$8 billion in aid to Zimbabwe but most of its members are too poor to give their neighbour any meaningful support.

Zimbabwe Currency Facing Extinction

By Chipo Sithole

Grocery purchases, public hospital bills, property sales, rent, legal fees, vegetables and even mobile phone recharge cards in Zimbabwe are now paid for in foreign currency as the worthless Zimbabwe dollar virtually ceases to be legal tender.

Once a regional economic model, Zimbabwe is in the throes of an economic crisis, with unemployment running at more than 80 per cent and many families unable to afford a square meal. Stratospheric inflation (officially estimated, in July, to have reached 231 million per cent) and an unstable exchange rate have caused the Zimbabwe dollar to lose both credibility and its value as a trading currency.

However, the government of long-time ruler President Robert Mugabe is too ashamed to admit that it has officially “dollarised” the economy, so the Zimbabwean dollar remains the de jure legal tender of the country, leading to a situation economists term “partial dollarisation”.

Full or official dollarisation is the adoption by one country of another’s currency as legal tender. In the case of Zimbabwe, the US dollar and the South African rand are widely accepted. The adopted currencies have taken over all the functions of domestic currency.

In order to attract foreign currency into the official market, Zimbabwe’s central bank has, since September, licensed at least 1,000 shops to sell goods in foreign currency. The authorities have also recently licensed mobile phone service providers to accept foreign exchange for airtime and other services, and permits public hospitals to receive payment in other currencies.

Other shops and service providers have followed suit, despite warnings that those who flout the country’s foreign exchange regulations will be prosecuted.

Political analysts and economists say the main reason for the government’s failure to admit to dollarisation or partial dollarisation is that the situation is difficult to reconcile with Mugabe’s oft-repeated declaration of his country’s “sovereignty” and frequent “anti-imperialist” outbursts.

“Such a declaration [of dollarisation] would be an embarrassment to a government which professes hatred of the US government,” Lance Mambondiani, an investment analyst, said.

“At a symbolic level, one of the most important national symbols is money, which serves to enhance a unique sense of national identity. The currency underscores the fact that everyone is part of the same social entity,” he said. “These effects are lost when money of a foreign state is adopted. Dollarisation is therefore a greater threat to national sovereignty than any perceived threat of recolonisation by the British.”

There is another problem. Full dollarisation would require the approval of the US Federal Reserve, which is unlikely to be forthcoming, given the animosity between Washington and Harare.

Mugabe accuses the US government and former colonial power Britain of attempting to bring down his government through sanctions imposed in 2001 in response to political repression and electoral theft in Zimbabwe. In turn, Washington accuses Mugabe of having run down a once thriving economy through insane economic policies.

Diplomatic sources say America has asked the Mugabe regime to come clean on whether it has officially dollarised. Sizani Weza, a spokesperson at the US embassy in Harare, maintains, however, that, although he is “aware of public interest in US government approval or disapproval of the use of the US dollar in Zimbabwe” the US government has not “expressed an opinion” on the issue.

“As far as we know Zimbabwe has not officially dollarised. The US dollar circulates in Zimbabwe, as it does in many countries,” he said.

Weza said the US has simply expressed an interest in knowing whether dollarisation is now official policy so it can establish what short-term and long-term returns are due to it.

A senior government official said Zimbabwe had approached South African finance minister Trevor Manuel and South African Reserve Bank governor Tito Mboweni with a proposal that they rescue the Zimbabwean economy by extending the common monetary area of rand into Zimbabwe. It currently encompasses South Africa, Namibia, Lesotho and Swaziland.

Similar proposals have been made by Steve Hanke, Cato Institute Senior Fellow and Professor of Applied Economics at Johns Hopkins University, who advocates the creation of a currency board to end Zimbabwe’s spiralling inflation, and by Tomaz Salamao, executive secretary of the Southern African Development Community, SADC.

Tomaz has reportedly suggested that Zimbabwe’s depleted foreign reserves be topped up with the South African currency and that Zimbabwe be allowed to join the rand monetary area.

The Zimbabwe government, invoking its sovereignty mantra, initially rejected the suggestion, but IWPR has learnt that it has backed down under the pressure of the imploding economy and proposes issuing Zimbabwean dollars that are fully backed by and convertible into rands at a fixed rate.

Under this plan, the currency board will initially be capitalised by South Africa and the rand will be allowed to circulate legally in Zimbabwe.

“The rand would effectively prop up the Zimbabwe dollar,” which has become almost worthless, said a government official.

The ultimate aim would be to stabilise the exchange rate of the Zimbabwe dollar and curb hyperinflation, enabling the country to buy foreign exchange and continue to import essential goods.

According to diplomatic sources, the price of South Africa’s help will be Mugabe’s commitment to a genuine power-sharing arrangement with the opposition in terms of the agreement signed on September 15, 2008, and to far-reaching political and economic reforms.

The power-sharing deal, which, it was hoped, would halt Zimbabwe’s plunge to destruction, has stalled over the allocation of key cabinet ministries.

Source : IWPR (08/01/09)

*Chipo Sithole is the pseudonym of an IWPR journalist in Zimbabwe.

Zimbabwe cholera crisis spurs South African action

JOHANNESBURG, South Africa (AP) — South Africa is sending more military doctors to its northern border to treat Zimbabwean cholera victims who have fled their collapsing homeland to get help, the government said Friday.

Cholera is easily prevented and cured, but Zimbabwe’s medical and water-treatment systems have all but disappeared. The disaster, linked to Zimbabwe’s political impasse, has created fears of a regional disease outbreak and led to renewed calls on longtime Zimbabwean leader Robert Mugabe to step down.

Zimbabwe state media announced Thursday that a national health emergency had been declared. The United Nations estimates the cholera epidemic has killed at least 575, of at least 12,700 infected since August.

Aid agencies say it is likely many more Zimbabweans have sickened and died at home, officially unrecorded. Caroline Hooper-Box, spokeswoman for the British charity Oxfam, said the death rate is as much as 10 percent of those infected, while normally it is 1 percent.

Cholera is an infectious intestinal disease that is contracted by consuming contaminated food or water. Its symptoms include severe diarrhea.

South African government spokesman Themba Maseko said Friday that in addition to deploying more military health workers at the border, South Africa, the main regional power, was sending clean water and other aid into Zimbabwe.

South Africa also was dispatching a fact-finding team to Zimbabwe on Monday, Maseko said. Other humanitarian steps would be announced next week, he said, after the fact-finding team returns and makes its report to the president and Cabinet ministers.

“We will continue to work with the World Health Organization’s representatives and other donor organizations to provide assistance to medical facilities in Zimbabwe in order to manage and reduce the influx of Zimbabweans into South Africa and other neighboring countries,” Maseko said.

In Mozambique and Botswana, which also border Zimbabwe neighbor, health authorities were on alert, trying to determine the extent of the risk of cholera spreading from Zimbabwe. Cholera is common in many parts of southern Africa.

Zimbabwe’s neighbors, led by South Africa, also have been mediating in the political impasse, trying to get the increasingly autocratic Mugabe to implement a power-sharing agreement with his rivals. The main mediator, former South African President Thabo Mbeki, has kept to a policy of quiet diplomacy, but others in the region and beyond are losing patience with Mugabe.

In an interview Thursday on the Dutch current affairs show Nova, Nobel peace laureate Desmond Tutu said African nations should use military force to depose Mugabe if he refuses to relinquish power.

Tutu, the retired Anglican archbishop of Cape Town, South Africa, said another option would be to threaten Mugabe with prosecution at the Hague-based International Criminal Court, although he did not say on what charges.

Mugabe “is destroying a wonderful country,” said Tutu, who has long been among Mugabe’s sharpest critics. “A country that used to be a bread basket … has now become a basket case itself needing help.”

U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, speaking in the Danish capital Friday, said it was “well past time” for Mugabe to leave office.

Rice said the cholera outbreak should be a sign to the international community that it is time to stand up to Mugabe. The nations in southern Africa have the most to lose and need to take the lead, she said.

British Foreign Secretary David Miliband said in a statement Friday that the deteriorating situation in Zimbabwe was “a further illustration of the misrule of Zimbabwe’s rogue government.”

Mugabe has blamed his nation’s plight on Western sanctions, and scoffed at criticism from Tutu, the United States and Britain in the past.

The Netherlands and Britain are pushing for tougher EU sanctions against Mugabe’s regime and last week Botswana’s Foreign Minister Phandu Skelemani urged Zimbabwe’s neighbors in southern Africa to impose sanctions on Mugabe.

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