Briefs
FrontLines - August 2009
280,000 Displaced Sri Lankans Get US Aid
Colombo, Sri Lanka—Some 280,000 Sri Lankans in government-
run camps are receiving U.S. assistance for health, shelter,
settlements, water, and sanitation
nearly two months after the conclusion of the country’s 26-year conflict.
Sri Lanka’s North was the last holdout of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) separatist group, which was defeated by government forces in May 2009.
Looking ahead, USAID will support legal and policy reform to ensure more effective, decentralized, and accountable governance.
USAID has provided more than $54 million in 2008 and 2009 to assist Sri Lankans affected by the conflict. This assistance includes more than 50,000 metric tons of emergency
food aid, which helps feed more than 280,000 Sri Lankans in need.
In addition, the U.S. Department of State has provided
$15 million for demining
so people can return to their homes.
Jordan Sentences Killer of USAID’s Foley
Amman, Jordan—A military tribunal on July 13 sentenced a Jordanian linked to Al-Qaeda for the 2002 murder of USAID officer Laurence Foley in front of his house in Amman, AFP reported.
Jordan’s state security court condemned Moamar al-Jaghbir to death after a third re-trial for his role in the assassination of Foley, a Jordanian official told AFP.
Jaghbir was already on death row for bombing Jordan’s embassy in Baghdad in August 2003, killing 14 people.
He was arrested in Iraq by U.S. forces and handed over to Jordan in 2004 where he was first sentenced for Foley’s murder,
along with seven others including slain Al-Qaeda in Iraq leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. A Jordanian and a Libyan convicted
with him were executed in March 2006.
Sudan Groups Seize Two Aid Workers
Khartoum, Sudan—Two foreign aid workers kidnapped by gunmen in Sudan’s restive Darfur region are in good health and have been allowed to speak to their relatives, a government official said July 12.
Gunmen snatched the two women—one from Ireland, the other from Uganda—in early July in Darfur. They worked for the Irish aid group GOAL.
The kidnappers are seeking a ransom and do not appear to have political motives, said the official. It was the third kidnapping
of foreign humanitarian workers in Sudan’s remote western
region since March, when an international court issued a warrant
for the country’s president on charges of orchestrating war crimes there.
Somalia Gunmen Loot UN Compounds
Mogadishu, Somalia—Gunmen from Somalia’s al Shabaab group looted two U.N. compounds July 20 after the al Qaeda-linked militants said they would shut down three U.N. agencies operating in the Horn of Africa nation, Reuters reported.
Al Shabaab, which controls much of southern Somalia and parts of the capital Mogadishu, said the U.N. Development Program, U.N. Department of Safety and Security, and U.N. Political Office for Somalia were working against Somali Muslims and the establishment of an Islamic state.
The compounds targeted were in Baidoa, the seat of Somalia’s parliament before insurgents seized the town, and the World Food Program compound in Wajid in the Bakool region. Expatriate staff in Baidoa were being evacuated to Kenya. Al Shabaab said other NGOs and foreign agencies operating in Somalia should contact the administration in their area and they would be informed of the conditions and restrictions on their work.
Philippines Bombings Leads UN to Cut Food Aid
Manila, Philippines—Bombings have led the United Nations to suspend food distribution
to hundreds of thousands of people displaced by fighting in the southern Philippines, a U.N. official said July 8.
The military blamed Muslim separatists for bombings in Cotabato City that killed six people and wounded dozens, and in Iligan City that wounded three soldiers and about 10 civilians.
Moro Islamic Liberation Front rebels, who have been fighting for Muslim self-rule for decades, have denied the charges. The World Food Program acting
director for the Philippines, Alghassim Wurie, said the decision
to suspend food distribution was made out of concern for the safety of its workers.
Behavioral Changes Kept Haiti AIDS Rate Low
Despite fears in the early 1980s that HIV/AIDS would spread across wide portions of Haiti and possibly kill one-third of the population,
Haiti’s HIV infection rate stayed in the single digits, then plummeted, the Associated Press reported July 21.
The infection rate was initially
lessened by closing private blood banks and affected by high mortality rates, said a report by UNAIDS, cited by the AP. It noted that untreated people with AIDS in Haiti die about eight years sooner than an untreated American, reducing the number of people with AIDS.
However, the real blow to AIDS was dealt by well-coordinated
use of drugs, education, and behavioral changes that kept the disease from surging back, the U.N. report said.
Haiti now has a 2.2 percent infection rate among people ages 15 to 49, according to UNAIDS, the United Nations program addressing the disease. While the rate is higher than in the developed world, it’s lower than the Bahamas, Guyana, and Suriname, and much lower than sub-Saharan Africa.
Pope Calls for Ethical World Financial Order
Vatican City—Pope Benedict XVI called on July 7 for a new world financial order guided by ethics and the search for the common good, denouncing
the profit-at-all-cost mentality blamed for bringing about the global financial meltdown.
In the third encyclical of his pontificate, Benedict pressed for reform of the United Nations and international economic and financial
institutions to give poorer countries more of a say in international
policy.
“There is urgent need [for] a true world political authority” that can manage the global economy,
guarantee the environment is protected, ensure world peace, and bring about food security for the poor, he wrote.
The document, “Charity in Truth,” was released a day before leaders of the Group of Eight industrialized nations met to coordinate efforts to deal with the global meltdown.
“The economy needs ethics in order to function correctly—not any ethics, but an ethics which is people centered,” Benedict wrote.
Clinton Visits Haiti Aid Sites
Former President Bill Clinton, in a new U.N. role supporting
aid for Haiti, on July 7 visited the battered seaside city of Gonaives that was hit by a series of tropical storms, finding a mud-caked maze of partially rebuilt homes and shops, the Associated Press reported.
He also viewed river control projects and visited a hospital that served as an emergency shelter during the two storms that ravaged the town.
While Clinton praised reconstruction
efforts, he said much more work needed to be done and that Haiti needs more money and better coordination among aid groups and the government to rebuild and spur development.
Clinton noted that the Haitian government and its international backers hope to create 150,000 to 200,000 jobs over the next two years, many from projects to rebuild roads and shore up erosion-prone hillsides.
Congo Civilians Decry Military Operations
Kinshasa, Congo—Most civilians in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo disapprove of the current military strategy being used to try and pacify their region, according to a survey by aid group Oxfam, Reuters reported July 14.
Some 85 percent of those interviewed said security conditions
had become worse, not better,
during U.N.-backed military operations this year to defeat Rwandan, Ugandan, and local gunmen in Congo’s east.
As in Congo’s previous conflicts, civilians rather than soldiers are bearing the brunt of the killings, rapes, and abuses, which analysts and aid groups say are committed by government
soldiers as well as those they are attacking.
Oxfam undertook the survey
in May and canvassed 764 people in 27 communities across Congo’s eastern provinces, where 1 million people have fled their homes this year.
Pilot Program in South Africa Seeks to Treat TB at Home
The New York Times reported July 29 that drug-resistant tuberculosis
is a mounting global health threat and “a particularly virulent problem in Africa.”
In South Africa, World Health Organization researchers say, the number of new patients will grow faster than the country can add hospital beds.
South African physicians typically recommend that people diagnosed with TB be isolated from the public in a hospital for a regimen of treatments with drugs that can last for months. However, such treatment, reports the Times, “may drive those with the disease underground.”
Now, a pilot program run by Doctors Without Borders and supported by both the city of Cape Town and Western Cape Province seeks to show that such patients can be successfully treated in impoverished communities
even while they are still infectious. Cheryl McDermid, a Canadian doctor with Doctors Without Borders, noted that one in six of those who started treatment dropped out but most of the patients have stayed with the treatment and are now no longer infectious.
WHO Says ‘H1N1 Unstoppable’
Washington—Saying the new H1N1 virus is “unstoppable,”
the World Health Organization on July 13 gave drug makers a full go-ahead to manufacture vaccines against the pandemic influenza strain and said healthcare workers should be the first to get one, Reuters reported.
Every country will need to vaccinate citizens against the H1N1 virus, commonly called swine flu, and must choose who else would get priority after nurses, doctors, and technicians,
said Dr. Marie-Paule Kieny, WHO director of the Initiative for Vaccine Research.
“The committee recognized that the H1N1 pandemic…is unstoppable and therefore that all countries need access to vaccine,” Kieny said.
Large-Scale Food Aid to Begin in Zimbabwe
Johannesburg, South Africa—Large-scale food assistance
to Zimbabweans could start in the next few weeks, according to a USAID situation report released July 16.
Zimbabwe’s April 2009 harvest, although considerably
better than in previous seasons, was still 680,000 tons short of the national requirement.
Initial estimates in a crop report by the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization and World Food Program are that about 2.8 million people will need food assistance in 2009-2010, according to a report by IRIN, the U.N. news service.
Approximately 600,000 people currently receive food aid, according to the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Assistance.
From news reports and other sources.★
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