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Millions of people short of food in Sahel this year
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- Written by alib
- Category: Africa
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Geneva – Across Central Africa’s Sahel region, drought threatens to leave millions of people short of food this year. The UN estimates that 127,000 children under age 5 will be affected by severe acute malnutrition in 2012 in Chad’s Sahel region. These children require therapeutic care and life-saving treatment. Severe acute malnutrition puts them at greater risk of opportunistic diseases including diarrhoea and skin and respiratory infections.
In response to the crisis, the UN Central Emergency Response Fund (CERF) has allocated US$1 million to the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) to treat 90,000 children with severe acute malnutrition. Earlier this year, CERF allocated $6 million to three UN agencies to reduce food insecurity and acute malnutrition among children under age 5 in Chad.
“Currently, 223 UNICEF nutrition centres are operational due to the significant support from CERF,” says UNICEF Chad Representative Bruno Maes. “CERF has helped UNICEF deliver life-saving food aid to more than 40,000 children admitted for severe acute malnutrition in the country.”
UNICEF is seeking an additional $18.8 million to continue its efforts to meet the growing needs of children in Chad.
At a medical clinic outside Bol, in Chad’s Lac Region, Adama Abdulai’s three-year-old son, Abdou, is being treated for severe acute malnutrition. Abdou weighs about the same as his nine-month-old brother: just 8 kilograms.
Adama, a 30-year-old mother of six, explains that while she was able to breastfeed her baby, there was not enough money to feed the rest of her family.
“Maize is so expensive in the market now and we cannot afford food every day, so sometimes we eat and sometimes we do not,” says Adama. “Our farm yielded no harvest this year so we have nowhere else to turn.”
She has been the sole breadwinner in the family since her husband left in search of work last year when food prices began to rise. He has not been back since.
In Chad, the failed rains and poor harvests of 2011 are expected to make this year’s lean season—an annual time of dwindling food stocks when families often do not have enough to eat—the most severe in years.
Collapse of unity between Tuaregs and Islamists in North Mali
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- Written by alib
- Category: Africa
- Hits: 133
Gao - Plans for Tuareg rebels and Islamist group Ansar Dine to join forces and proclaim an independent Islamic state in northern Mali have collapsed due to to fundamental differences, the two groups said Tuesday.
"We have refused to approve the final statement because it is different from the protocol agreement which we have signed," said Ibrahim Assaley of the Tuareg rebel National Liberation Front of Azawad (FNLA).
Moussa Ag Asherif, close to Ansar Dine head Iyad Ag Ghaly, confirmed the impasse in talks which came just 48 hours after the two groups announced their plans for joint domination of the remote desert region.
Regional and Western leaders have long feared a breakaway state in Mali's restive north could become Al-Qaeda's main safe haven
A draft of the statement by Ansar Dine (Defenders of Faith) spoke of applying "pure and hard" Islamic Sharia law and banning non-Muslim humanitarian groups from the area, Assaley told AFP by phone from Gao, where the unity talks took place.
"It is as if they want us to dissolve into Ansar Dine," complained the representative of the secular Tuareg rebels. "That is unacceptable."
Asherif said the original accord had been merely a basis for working discussions and that the deal was on a "take it or leave it" basis. Ag Ghaly would travel to Gao on Tuesday morning "to solve the problem", he added.
Ansar Dine is backed by Al-Qaeda's north African branch, known as Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb.
The original declaration of a separate Islamic state in Mali's vast desert north, an area larger than France, had come at the weekend.
The short-lived accord was hammered out after weeks of fraught discussions between the two groups that have long held separate objectives and ideologies.
In January, the Tuareg rebels launched an offensive against the Malian army, which was heightened with the arrival on the scene of Ansar Dine wanting Islamic Sharia law imposed throughout the land-locked west African nation.
A coup by Captain Amadou Sanogo and a group of low-ranking officers ousted the government in Bamako of President President Amadou Toumani Toure on March 22, saying it was handling the Tuareg rebellion incompetently.
But the coup only opened the way for the Tuaregs, Ansar Dine -- led by the charismatic Ag Ghaly -- and criminal groups to occupy the north.
Mali's embattled transitional government had swiftly rejected the embryonic rebel alliance's declaration.
"The government of Mali categorically rejects the idea of the creation of an Azawad state, even more so of an Islamic state," Hamadoun Toure, information minister in the transitional administration, said on Sunday.
The West African bloc ECOWAS also rejected on Monday the rebel declaration of independence and repeated an earlier threat to take "all necessary measures" to keep Mali intact.
The 15-nation Economic Community of West African States "denounces in the strongest possible terms this opportunistic act," said a statement signed by ECOWAS head Desire Kadre Ouedraogo. It said the move would "only worsen the situation for a population that has already been the victim of all sorts of atrocities and hardships in the occupied area of Mali, as well as expose the entire region to the most serious dangers regarding peace and security".
Mali's transitional leaders have stressed their wish to restore the country's territorial integrity but seem unable to guarantee their own safety, let alone mount a credible challenge against the north's new masters.
The uncertain security situation was highlighted by an assault on
Mali’s 70-year-old caretaker President Dioncounda Traore who was hospitalised with head injuries on Monday after being attacked by hundreds of protesters who stormed the presidential palace in the capital Bamako to demand his resignation.
Some 50 people have been arrested in the investigation into the attack, the government announced Monday.
Traore's entourage said tests had revealed nothing alarming and that he was expected back in Mali in the coming week following a trip to Paris for medical attention.
Resolving the political crisis in the capital Bamako is a prerequisite for foreign help in efforts to retake control of the north, now in the hands of separatist and Islamist rebels, including some al Qaeda fighters.
Mali coup: The story so far
- 22 March: Junta seizes power, accusing President Amadou Toumani
Toure of not doing enough to tackle rebels in the North
- 28 March: Mali suspended by regional bloc, Ecowas
- 1 April: Rebels seize whole of north, including historic city of Timbuktu
- 6 April: Tuareg rebels declare independence for the north calling it the
republic of Asawad. It is not recognised internationally
- 12 April: Speaker of parliament Dioncounda Traore sworn in as Mali's
Interim leader
- 17 April: Junta arrests several allies of former President Toure
- 19 April: President Toure and his family flee to Senegal
- 30 April: Fighting breaks out in Bamako
- 1 May: Junta forces say they have defeated a 'counter-coup'
Taylor jailed for 50 years
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- Written by northsouth
- Category: Africa
- Hits: 141
The Hague – Former Liberian President Charles Taylor was today sentenced to 50 years in jail by the Special Court for Sierra Leone (SCSL) sitting here.
He was found guilty last month of aiding and abetting rebels of the Revolutionary United Front (RUF) in Sierra Leone during the 1991-2002 civil war.
Justice Richard Lussick, who read out the judgement, said the Trial Chamber found that Mr. Taylor's abuse of his position as President of Liberia to aid and abet the commission of crimes in Sierra Leone, and the abuse of his position as a member of the ECOWAS [Economic Community of West African States] Committee of Five [later Six], which was “part of the process relied on by the international community to bring peace to Sierra Leone,” was “an aggravating factor of great weight”.
The Judges took into account the report of Mr. Taylor's good conduct in detention, but otherwise rejected a number of mitigating factors proposed by the defence.
While the jurisprudence of the SCSL and other tribunals “holds that aiding and abetting as a mode of liability generally warrants a lesser sentence than that imposed for more direct forms of participation,” Justice Lussick said that Mr. Taylor's leadership role “puts him in a class of his own”.
“The Trial Chamber wishes to underscore the gravity it attaches to Mr. Taylor's betrayal of the public trust,” Justice Lussick said.
“In the Trial Chamber's view, this betrayal outweighs the distinctions that might otherwise pertain to the modes of liability discussed above.”`
The parties, if they intend to appeal, must submit written notice to the Appeals Chamber within 14 days of today's sentencing judgement, setting forth the grounds of their appeal.
If Mr. Taylor loses the apeal he will serve his sentence in a British jail.
The trial of Mr. Taylor opened on 4 June 2007 here after it was moved from Freetown where the authorities felt his presence in the region could lead to further instability in Sierra Leone and Liberia.
The trial was adjourned immediately after the prosecution’s opening statement when Mr. Taylor dismissed his defence team and requested new representation.
Witness testimony began on 7 January 2008, and ended on 12 November 2010.
Closing arguments took place in February and March 2011.
The Court heard live testimony from 94 Prosecution witnesses, and received written statements from four additional witnesses.
The defence presented 21 witnesses, with Mr. Taylor testifying in his defence.
DD
Passenger plane crashes in Nigeria's Lagos city
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- Written by northsouth
- Category: Africa
- Hits: 134
Lagos - A passenger plane carrying about 150 people on board has crashed into a building in Nigeria's commercial capital Lagos. The Dana Air plane struck a two-storey building and
burst into flames, witnesses were quoted as saying. The head of the Nigerian Civil
Aviation Authority said he doubted anyone could have survived the crash. Thousands of
onlookers were drawn to the crash site. Rescue services pulled at least one body from the
rubble and were searching for survivors, AP news agency said. The plane crashed in the
densely populated Iju neighbourhood, just north of the airport, Lagos State police
spokesman Joseph Jaiyeoba told AFP. The commercial aircraft was flying from the Nigerian
capital, Abuja, to Lagos when the crash took place. There were chaotic scenes as onlookers and emergency services rushed to the crash site. At the crash site, reporters saw plane wreckage scattered around and the body of the plane lodged into an apartment building. Several charred corpses could be seen in the rubble, reported AP. The plane did not to appear to have nose-dived into the building but to have landed on its
belly, careering through a furniture shop and then into residential buildings, it said. On 11 May a similar Dana Air plane - possibly the same one - developed a technical problem and was forced to make an emergency landing in Lagos, correspondents say. Dana Air's website says it operates Boeing MD-83 planes to cities around Nigeria out of Murtala Muhammed Airport. (FA/NSN)
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