Category Archives: Humanitarian response

Yemen heads list of countries facing worst humanitarian disasters in 2020

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Venezuela also in top five as IRC’s David Miliband warns of devastating impact from war, floods, droughts and disease

Yemen has topped an annual watchlist of countries most likely to face humanitarian catastrophe in 2020, for the second year running.

Continued fighting, economic collapse and weak governance mean that more than 24 million Yemenis – about 80% of the population – will be in need of humanitarian assistance this year, according to analysis by the International Rescue Committee (IRC), which found that another five years of conflict could cost $29bn (£22bn).

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Downward spiral of war, crisis and need to worsen in 2020, fears top UN official

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UN relief chief fears women, girls and disabled people will bear brunt of continued conflict, climate and economic deprivation

The UN’s relief coordinator, Mark Lowcock, believes next year could be worse than a “terrible” 2019, when conflict, the climate emergency and economic desperation left 165 million people in need of aid.

Extreme storms, drought and other disasters driven by the climate crisis hit the world’s poorest “first and worst”, Lowcock told the Guardian, with women, girls and those with disabilities the most badly affected.

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‘We might be next’: families flee as Burkina Faso tips into chaos

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Schools targeted by extremist groups as half a million people are driven from their homes by violence and the climate crisis

Roukiata Sow looks tired. The mother of five has welcomed 26 people under the roof of her small brick house. “What will those kids become? Some haven’t been to school for more than two years … Are they all going to be bandits?” she asks.

She is sitting, her head draped in a long grey veil, with other women and girls in a small courtyard in front of her home in Dori, the capital of the Sahel region of northern Burkina Faso.

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Reopening Sana’a airport ‘critical first step’ for Yemenis needing medical care

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Patients requiring life-saving treatment to be allowed to fly, but aid agencies say imports of medicine and humanitarian aid crucial

Aid agencies have welcomed news from the Saudi-led coalition in Yemen that it will allow some flights out of Houthi-held Sana’a, for Yemeni civilians requiring life-saving medical treatment.

As many as 32,000 people in need of overseas medical care may have died since the airport closed to commercial flights in August 2016, according to ministry of health estimates. The figures have not been verified independently, but in 2017 the UN estimated that up to 20,000 people had been denied access to potentially life-saving healthcare due to restrictions on airspace.

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UN warns Burkina Faso could become ‘another Syria’ as violence soars

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Children bear the brunt as extremism and climate crisis drive almost 500,000 people from their homes

The UN food agency has warned of an “escalating humanitarian crisis” in Burkina Faso, driven by growing extremist violence and the long-term impact of climate crisis in the arid central Sahel region.

A sharp increase in attacks, the result of the west African country becoming embroiled in the jihadist insurgency that began in the region in early 2015, has forced almost half a million people from their homes.

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‘Living a daily tragedy’: Venezuelans struggle to survive in Colombia

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Driven from their homeland by economic chaos, tens of thousands of people are living a precarious existence on the dangerous streets of Maicao in northern Colombia

Axleny Machado has slept on a piece of foam outside Maicao’s main bus terminal since she arrived from Venezuela a year ago. She’s one of thousands who live this way in the arid border city in La Guajira, northern Colombia, which is now struggling with the huge influx of migrants and refugees.

Machado, 24, has a small trolley she rents for 90p a day to sell cigarettes, coffee and sweets to commuters. If lucky, she makes about £4 a day – enough to look after herself. She wants to leave Maicao for another Colombian city and look for opportunities, but money doesn’t permit.

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Severe hunger threatens millions in Somalia as climate emergency deepens

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Aid efforts to help communities struggling to recover from drought compounded by continuing conflict, aggravated by al-Shabaab

Somalia faces a new humanitarian crisis with more than 2 million people now threatened by severe hunger, aid agencies say.

A further 3 million people are uncertain of their next meal, latest assessments suggest.

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End violence against female aid workers | Letter

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Rosalind Crowther of CARE International on the need to protect humanitarians

Around the world, humanitarian aid workers operate in dangerous and difficult environments and here in South Sudan we know that many aid workers and peacekeepers have lost their lives while trying to protect and assist South Sudanese communities.

Among them have been women who play a vital role in every aspect of crisis response, and particularly in preventing, responding to, and working with survivors of gender-based violence.

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Bangladesh prepares to move Rohingya to island at risk of floods and cyclones

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Foreign affairs minister defends controversial proposal as ‘only solution’ despite misgivings of human rights campaigners

The first Rohingya refugees could be relocated to an island in the next few months under controversial plans drawn up by the Bangladesh government, the country’s state minister of foreign affairs has said.

Some of the nearly 1 million Rohingya refugees who fled a military crackdown in Myanmar and are now living in camps in Cox’s Bazar will be relocated to the silt island of Bhasan Char in the estuary of Bangladesh’s Meghna river, accessible only by boat.

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Awkward exchanges as Trump meets religious persecution survivors – video

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Donald Trump has had some awkward exchanges with survivors of religious persecution during a meeting with them in the Oval Office on Wednesday. When the Nobel laureate and Iraqi Yazidi human rights activist Nadia Murad requested aid for the Yazidis, the president replied: ‘And you had the Nobel prize? That's incredible. They gave it to you for what reason?’ When asked by a Rohingya refugee about the plan to help his people, Trump replied: ‘Where is that exactly?’

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‘Alarming’ shortfall in foreign aid for world’s biggest crises

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Chief of leading aid agency warns that halfway through current funding year, less than a third of required money has been donated

The head of one of the world’s leading aid agencies has issued a stark warning over the “alarming lack of funding” for global humanitarian crises.

Jan Egeland, secretary general of the Norwegian Refugee Council, noted that halfway through the current funding year, humanitarian organisations had received less than a third of money – 27% – needed to provide relief to people affected by crises worldwide.

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Captain who rescued 42 migrants: I’d do it again despite jail threat

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Carola Rackete faces prospect of long trial for defying Italy’s ban on rescue ships

The ship’s captain facing jail after defying Italian law to bring 42 migrants into port has said she would do it all over again and hit out at Italy’s far-right deputy prime minister, Matteo Salvini.

“People’s lives matter more than any political game,” Carola Rackete, the German captain of the migrant NGO rescue ship Sea-Watch 3, told the Guardian.

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Captain defends her decision to force rescue boat into Italian port

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Carola Rackete says act of ‘disobedience’ in Lampedusa was necessary to avert tragedy

An NGO rescue boat captain who has risked jail time after forcing her way into Lampedusa port in Italy with 40 migrants onboard has defended her act of “disobedience”, saying it was necessary to avert a tragedy.

“It wasn’t an act of violence, but only one of disobedience,” the Sea-Watch 3 skipper, Carola Rackete, told the Italian daily Corriere della Sera in an interview published on Sunday, as donations poured in for her legal defence.

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The world over, people in crisis suffer sexual violence – this scourge must end

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Tackling gender violence in crises requires changes of response and focus – as delegates in Oslo for a major summit will be told

Nomtaz Begum had lived all her life in Myanmar. Two years ago, men in uniform came to her village. They killed the men there, including her husband and three small children, boys aged two, five and 11.

She was raped by six of the soldiers, one after the other. They left after setting her house on fire. Badly burned, Begum and her daughter hid in the forest for four days before they were able to flee, making their way to a refugee camp.

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Cyclone Idai: ‘My family needs to eat, I don’t know how we will survive’

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In Mozambique, where many people rely on crops to live, Idai’s impact on two key agricultural areas has been devastating

Marie Jose stares out at her field of broken maize stalks, the cobs yellow and mouldy from days of excessive water followed by weeks of extreme sun. She should have harvested them last month, but Cyclone Idai struck her village in Buzi district, in central Mozambique, and destroyed them all.

She is still dealing with the trauma of losing her grandparents and niece to the tropical storm. “They couldn’t hold on in the trees where we were sitting and the wind pushed them into the water,” she says. Their bodies are still missing.

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Devastation of shelling in Hodeidah: ‘My daughters died hungry’ | Rod Austin and Karl Schembri

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As a voluntary agreement is struck for forces to withdraw from the port city, two friends recount the horror of conflict in their neighbourhood in Yemen

Friends Majed Al-Wahidi and Ali Al-Zazai remember the constant buzzing of drones overhead in Hodeidah on 18 November last year.

Majed, a teacher and father of six daughters, had left Ali’s house to return to his home nearby, but went back because he had forgotten his lighter. It was about 5pm and Majed’s daughters were in their bedroom, having taken a break from studying to pray in their modest, corrugated iron-covered home.

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Red Cross aid to Venezuela to triple as Maduro stance softens

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International Committee of the Red Cross to increase budget to $24m after president approves humanitarian assistance

The International Committee of the Red Cross is to triple aid to Venezuela, a day after the crisis-riven country’s leader approved the delivery of humanitarian assistance.

The organisation announced the increase in the face of mounting calls for the UN to recognise the scale of the crisis facing Venezuela, and amid continued moves by the Trump administration to persuade other countries to back its calls for the removal of President Nicolás Maduro.

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Why were the people worst affected by Cyclone Idai so badly prepared? | Antonio Matimbe

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While the world’s poorest bear the brunt of ever more powerful storms, international leaders do little to address the devastating impact of climate change

I am a Mozambican aid agency communicator. Cyclone Idai is just the latest humanitarian crisis I have been involved in.

Mozambique has a history of being affected by huge storms. The upsetting thing to me is that while international leaders and experts talk about climate change and the impact this is having on the world, the very poorest are bearing the brunt of ever more powerful storms.

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Cyclone Idai crisis deepens as first cases of cholera confirmed in Mozambique

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Five people test positive for waterborne disease in flooded port city of Beira amid warnings outbreak will spread

The first cases of cholera have been reported in the cyclone-ravaged Mozambican city of Beira, complicating an already massive and complex emergency in the southern African country.

The announcement of five cases of the waterborne disease follows days of mounting fears that cholera and other diseases could break out in the squalid conditions in which tens of thousands have been living since Cyclone Idai struck on 14 March, killing at least 700 people across the region.

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‘The water took everything’: Buzi evacuees tell of Cyclone Idai ordeal

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People rescued by boat are arriving at Beira in hope of first aid, shelter and reunion with their families

Standing in the fishing port in Beira, Mozambique, Jose Mala scans the faces of those evacuated by boat from Buzi – one of the towns hardest hit by Cyclone Idai – searching for anyone he knows.

He had hopeful news the day before, says Mala, 27. He met a neighbour at the port who told him his sister and two nephews had survived the cyclone that destroyed large parts of their hometown.

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