Climate change is a global problem that requires a global solution. However, negotiating a solution has been challenging due to several factors. One of the main reasons that recent COP Climate summits and other international climate talks have not been able to resolve climate change is that there is a lack of consensus among countries on how to address the issue. Developed countries, which have historically been the largest emitters of greenhouse gases, are often unwilling to take on significant emissions reductions or to provide financial assistance to developing countries to help them adapt to the effects of climate change.

The Gabura union, a small island adjacent to the Sundarbans forest, is expected to be submerged in seawater by 2050. Credit: Mohammad Rakibul Hasan

Another significant barrier to progress on climate change is the need for more political will among leaders of countries. In some cases, leaders may not see climate change as a priority or may be reluctant to take on the economic and political costs of reducing emissions or investing in clean energy due to political reasons. Some countries may be influenced by powerful fossil fuel lobbies that push against climate action. Developed countries must be willing to take on more significant emissions reductions and provide financial assistance to developing countries to help them adapt to the effects of climate change. Developing countries, in turn, need to be willing to take on emissions reduction measures and invest in clean energy and other climate mitigation measures.This can happen through more effective multilateral negotiations such as United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), where all countries agree to set emissions reduction targets and support developing countries.

Bangladesh is located in the low-lying delta region of the Ganges, Brahmaputra, and Meghna rivers, making the country particularly susceptible to flooding and rising sea levels. Bangladesh is also prone to cyclones and other extreme weather events, which are becoming more frequent and severe due to climate change. The country has a long coastline, much of which is low-lying and vulnerable to flooding. As sea levels continue to rise, the risk of coastal flooding is increasing, devastatingly impacting the lives and livelihoods of the people in these areas. These events are causing widespread damage to homes and infrastructure and affecting the country’s agricultural sector, a significant source of income for many people in Bangladesh. Many people in the coastal areas have lost their homes and livelihoods due to sea level rise and coastal flooding. They face food and water insecurity due to increased soil and water salinity.

Globally, rich countries can assist Bangladesh cope with climate change in several ways. One crucial way is by providing financial assistance to help the country adapt to the impacts of climate change. This may include funding for building sea walls and other flood protection infrastructure and programs to help people in coastal areas relocate to higher ground. Another way rich countries can help is by providing technical assistance to Bangladesh to develop and implement clean energy and other climate mitigation measures. This could include funding and expertise to help the country develop renewable energy sources such as solar and wind power, as well as to improve energy efficiency and to reduce emissions from the industrial and transportation sectors.

The Sundarbans forests, located in the coastal belt of Bangladesh, is one of the most vulnerable areas in the country to the impacts of climate change. The forests span over 10,000 square kilometres and is home to various plant and animal species, including the Royal Bengal tiger. Sea level rise is one of the most significant threats to the Sundarbans forest making it particularly susceptible to flooding and rising sea levels. According to a study by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, sea levels in the Bay of Bengal are projected to increase by up to 1 meter by the end of the century. This would devastate the Sundarban forests, as seawater would submerge large areas.

The impacts of climate change on the Sundarban forests are also likely to have knock-on effects on the people living in the surrounding areas. The forests are a significant source of livelihood for many people in the region, who rely on it for fishing, agriculture, and other activities. As the forests are damaged by sea level rise and extreme weather events, these people will also be affected by food and water insecurity and the loss of their homes and livelihoods. Many people who lost their homes and land to flooding, were forced to relocate to higher grounds.

The health impacts of climate change on people living around the Sundarban are also significant. As a result of sea level rise and increased flooding, many are at risk of waterborne diseases such as cholera and diarrhea. Extreme weather events are accelerating salinity across the coastal belt of Bangladesh. Women are experiencing uterus cancers, infertility, and skin diseases, and men, too, are experiencing fertility problems and other health issues. Due to the loss of livelihoods and displacement, many people face food insecurity and malnutrition. In addition to these immediate impacts, climate change exacerbates the region’s existing social and economic inequalities. People living in poverty and marginalized communities are disproportionately affected by climate change, as they have fewer resources to cope with the impacts and less access to services and support.

Climate change has led to a growing number of people migrating from these areas, searching for better opportunities and escaping the impacts of climate change. Most climate migrants from coastal belt areas of Bangladesh are moving to urban areas, such as the capital city of Dhaka and other major cities. These migrants often seek better job opportunities and access to services and support. However, many migrants face challenges in their new locations, such as a lack of affordable housing, discrimination, and limited access to services and support. The future is uncertain for those still living in coastal areas of Bangladesh and fighting the climate crisis. Many of the people living in these areas are among the country’s most vulnerable and marginalized communities, making them particularly susceptible to the impacts of climate change. Climate conversations worldwide by world leaders and major organizations have been occurring every year. But they must see the severity of the situation for the people suffering and take concrete actions beyond being in a room to converse about the effects of climate change.

Climate conversations by world leaders are occurring worldwide but how much is changing ? Credit: Mohammad Rakibul Hasan

Many indigenous communities across the Sundarbans forest have been experiencing extreme weather conditions. Credit: Mohammad Rakibul Hasan

Fishing communities face extreme poverty due to the lack of fish available in the rivers. Credit: Mohammad Rakibul Hasan

Women around coastline areas of Bangladesh face increased salinity, a major cause of uterus cancer. Credit: Mohammad Rakibul Hasan

Due to climate change, extreme heat and salinity are declining birth rates across the coastal belt in Bangladesh. Credit: Mohammad Rakibul Hasan

Climate change is accelerating the displacement of inhabitants across the coastal belt of Bangladesh. Credit: Mohammad Rakibul Hasan

Four families are sitting with what remains in their food storage. Due to high salinity, agricultural products cannot grow well anymore. Credit: Mohammad Rakibul Hasan

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Rising sea levels, extreme climate conditions such as severe storms faced by Bangladesh, one of the primary victims of anthropogenic climate change, the country is set to be the worst sufferer from climate change by 2025, far worse than any other country.

Bangladesh, with a population of over 166 million, is imperilled due to its position between two key rivers, the Brahmaputra and Ganges. Many regions in the country are also prone to drought. As a developing country Bangladesh does not have enough financial resources for protective or reparative measures.

The photo story ‘Wave’ by Mohammad Rakibul Hasan, an award wining Bangladeshi photo journalist, captures images of people who face this crisis as a human problem. Bangladesh is a small, overpopulated country in Southeast Asia with primarily an agro-based economy. Besides, climatic hazards like cyclones, floods, drought, soil salinity, and river erosions are more frequent nowadays. These two facts contribute to the increasing number of climate refugees forced to migrate to the cities, worsening the socio-economic problems. The barrages [1] built across the rivers inside the border of India have resulted in both flooding and drying of the river beds in Bangladesh. Major rivers like Padma, Jamuna, Meghna, Brahmaputra, and smaller rivers in the coastal region erode when the water level rises. Due to prolonged droughts, the temperature is increasing every year at an alarming rate. Sadly, people can’t adapt to this rapidly changing climate and are on the brink of socio-economic insecurity. The waves, whether present or absent, don’t bring any hope for these people. When they hit, they take away the valuable land and lives. When the waves are gone, nothing is left but parched, cracked riverbeds.

[1] A report on the impact of Farakka barrage on the human fabric. Manisha Banerjee, on behalf of the South Asian Network on Dams, Rivers, and People (SANDRP).
http://sandrp.in/dams/impct_frka_wcd.pdf

The two rivers Jamuna and Brahmaputra are surrounded by Islampur, a sub-district of Jamalpur, one of the most climate-vulnerable places in Bangladesh. The Jamuna River is the ferocious, devastating and eating village after village by eroding its banks. Islampur town is at risk; the protecting dam is not built sustainably. Islampur, Jamalpur, Bangladesh. Credit: Mohammad Rakibul Hasan

Dohar, a sub-district of Dhaka, is bordered by Padma River. The mighty Padma during the summer behaves like a monster and eats its surrounded lands, and even changes the usual floating path. It creates enormous erosion and displaces inhabitants on both sides of the river. Due to the change in climate, floods cause environmental degradation. Dohar, Dhaka, Bangladesh. Credit: Mohammad Rakibul Hasan

People are removing the remaining structures and belongings as the River Padma is about to swallow the area. River Padma at Mawa is aggressive in the summer and very often it erodes massively, displacing people and their belongings. Mawa, Dhaka, Bangladesh. Credit: Mohammad Rakibul Hasan

Women, children and the elderlyare the most vulnerable due to the climate crisis. In Islampur, during floods, low-income households in the villages suffer the most. A woman is in search of food relief to feed her children. Islampur, Jamalpur, Bangladesh. Credit: Mohammad Rakibul Hasan

The vast area outside Rajshahi City is flooded on both sides of the Padma River banks. People have been experiencing adverse calamities; the change in ecology affects adapting to the new norms of hot weather. Rajshahi, Bangladesh. Credit: Mohammad Rakibul Hasan

People are trying to adapt to extreme climate conditions. Many places of Dohar, Dhaka, are washed away and many people moved to other cities while many others still live there as they have nowhere to go except to move back slowly away from the river. Dohar, Dhaka, Bangladesh. Credit: Mohammad Rakibul Hasan

The frequent floods across Rajshahi division by the River Padma are causing massive economic loss, displacement, and health hazards. The whole ecology and biodiversity have changed, and even animals are trying to adapt to extreme climate conditions. Rajshahi, Bangladesh. Credit: Mohammad Rakibul Hasan

The River Jamuna has caused floods in the whole territory of Islampur, and villagers are waiting for flood relief. They had to shift their houses and belongings. Many of them were starving as relief was insufficient. Islampur, Jamalpur, Bangladesh. Credit: Mohammad Rakibul Hasan

The Climate Crisis is leading to school drop outs. The rivers swallow up many schools; children with their families had to move from place to place with no sustainable livelihoods near the big rivers. Islampur, Jamalpur, Bangladesh. Credit: Mohammad Rakibul Hasan

Frequent changes of the riverscapes are problematic for the fishermen as they have to shift their homes. The village markets get moved too and the villagers go to different places to secure their livelihoods. Climate Crisis makes it harder for everyone in terms of its economic impact and other socio-geographical effects.
Mawa, Dhaka, Bangaldesh. Credit: Mohammad Rakibul Hasan

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Abandoned by family and friends, transgender people in Bangladesh are subject to extensive daily abuse. The existing and continuously growing transphobia and homophobia in society are obstacles in the lives of this group. The people featured here from the LGBTQ+ community share a wide variety of narratives.

The photo story “The Forbidden Love” seeks to elevate and celebrate love. It portrays the transgender community’s desire to live with and within love. The vividness of their expressions, their enchanting bonding with partners, and their honesty – all of these made these photographs possible – act as a catalyst to destroy stereotypes.

This project is perhaps a way to explore the infinite and beautiful gradient of the representation of love. It attempts to redefine love beyond the gender identities and stigmas through the true reflection of their personas.

“The Forbidden Love” is a collaborative photo project with the LGBTQR+ community in Bangladesh. They have been fighting for their fundamental rights to live with and love their chosen partners and equal rights. The interviews with the LGBTQR+ community was source material to recreate their memories and transform them into photographic montages.

“I feel free when I am in nature. I haven’t spent a single day without abuse. People bullied me, hurt me, betrayed me. I was always strong, always. Some days some clients would take me to the jungle for sex and use me badly. I have no complaint with anybody. When I feel alone, devastated, I come to this place. I come here to cry loudly. I cry the loudest cry. I feel free; I feel I can live another day.” – Bobita, a 21-year-old transwoman
Dhaka, Bangladesh, 2021 Credit: Mohammad Rakibul Hasan

“It was love at first sight. We stared at each other and knew there is something. I was hurt, betrayed, tortured in the past. For a transwoman, love is like poison, and it kills the heart. But my partner left his world for me. We are together for one year now. I know there are days when he misses his family – who have stopped talking to him. He says someday they will accept us. I do not hope for anything. As long as we are together, life is beautiful.” – Ash is an 18-year-old transwoman who had to leave home at the age of nine due to societal humiliation.
Dhaka, Bangladesh, 2021 Credit: Mohammad Rakibul Hasan

“Every day, we fear to lose each other. Being a trans-couple in a transphobic society is hard. We cannot do simple things that a normal couple does. We have no ties with our biological families. Our families abandoned us. For almost four years, we are in a relationship. I feel fragile when I heard how many people are dying from coronavirus (COVID-19). If something happens to my partner, I will not be able to bear the grief.” – Sonia, a 28-year-old transgender woman living with her partner.
Dhaka, Bangladesh, 2021 Credit: Mohammad Rakibul Hasan

“I have learned to love myself in a hard way. Every door I knocked on was closed for me once my identity was revealed. No one wanted me or accept as a woman. When I left home, no one tried to stop me, no one chased me, and no one wanted me to come back home. I was all alone in a city, and it was a strange feeling of not being wanted by anyone. Then I found my community, the people who always stand beside us. They are like me, and they are my original home. But still, my heart bleeds when my past family asks me to go back to them – but as a man. I cannot betray myself,” – Lara, a 23-year-old transwoman who works as a professional dancer.
Dhaka, Bangladesh, 2021 Credit: Mohammad Rakibul Hasan

“Love is a disease. It almost killed me. After seven years in a relationship, my boyfriend disappeared, I searched for him everywhere, but he finally married another woman. He could have told me the truth. Love is not about robbing someone. I was hurt and about to kill myself. It was not because of the betrayal but for the feeling of being unwanted and unloved. I have met many men since then. But none of them conquered my heart. The door of my heart is now closed forever” – Bristy, a 25-year-old transwoman.
Dhaka, Bangladesh, 2021 Credit: Mohammad Rakibul Hasan

“We want to spend our life together; we want to grow old together. Every time I look at his eyes, I know he is my home. Some days it feels hard, but when he holds me tight, I feel we are living in heaven, and the outside world does not exist anymore” – Ash.
Dhaka, Bangladesh, 2021 Credit: Mohammad Rakibul Hasan

“At the age of eleven, I took the longest train ride. I left home to save my parents from social embarrassment. I also left my long-time boyfriend. We have not spoken for eight years or more. A year ago, I first called him during the lockdown in 2020. He picked my call and said, how dare I am to call him. So, I blocked the number and never called again. I am living my life, doing training, and learning new skills every day. I love what I have become, a strong human being. I no longer want to cry; there might be not a single drop left in my eyes to cry for anything. Something big has died a long ago inside me.” – Trisha, a transwoman with her new boyfriend.
Dhaka, Bangladesh, 2021 Credit: Mohammad Rakibul Hasan

“My husband said I am the most beautiful woman he has ever seen. I trust him. Because he deeply loves me. His love has changed my life, healed my wound, and poured my heart. In the past four years, we made a beautiful home together. When he came to our guru to ask my hand, my guru questioned how long he would stay. He said till death and beyond. I never cried in front of him because he could never see me sad. I am a transwoman, I have been through heartache, and I was ridiculed, tortured, and mocked. That is his love that made me believe I am a human being too. Last year my husband went to Kuwait. He wants to build our future; he does not want me to work in a way that could humiliate me in any way. He brought me back to my guru and begged her to keep me safe till he returns. I never knew how beautiful life could be before I met him. His father calls me and visits me with big fish. He calls me daughter-in-law. I have lived all the happiness that was reserved for me in this world. Now I want my husband never to return to me. He should marry a normal girl and have a child of his own. I cannot deprive him more. I have decided to leave. To let him enjoy the life any normal man could live, with no judgment, with a gaggle of small children and respect from the society. The love I already have is enough to spend one life.” – Karishma, a 28-year-old transwoman.
Dhaka, Bangladesh, 2021 Credit: Mohammad Rakibul Hasan

“It could be our last embrace, our last meeting. We might never see each other again. We live with this fear. My partner is leaving for the village. His family asked him to move with them. He has a wife and a child. I do not want to hold him back. But I knew well, no matter how far he stays, he will miss me every time he breathes” – Sakira (25) and Robin (27), a trans-couple in their last embrace.
Dhaka, Bangladesh, 2021 Credit: Mohammad Rakibul Hasan

“Sometimes, I feel like a bird. My feathers fly in the air, so light that it never touches the ground. Or is it my heart that feels like a bird? Yes, my heart moves from place to place, sometimes in transit from present to past. And I have no barrier to cross, neither I had a home to choose. I only stay where my heart wants to belong.” – Konok, a transwoman.
Dhaka, Bangladesh, 2021 Credit: Mohammad Rakibul Hasan

“For us, love is fleeting, temporal, and complicated. Perhaps this is the destiny of a transgender person. Many girls from my group overbreak up to kill their hearts. I have been in love many times. It’s always new, it’s always precious, but it’s always transient. And every time I lose someone I love, I have to accept it. You can never deny the harsh reality of a society where being a transwoman is considered a curse in families. Although there are memories of love and agony that no one can erase, not even I, love is magical” – Lara, a 23-year-old transwoman with her partner.
Dhaka, Bangladesh, 2021 Credit: Mohammad Rakibul Hasan

“I grew up in terrible loneliness. I wanted to talk to someone, but no one was there to listen to me. It was about my body and mind. So, I left home knowing well no one will come to take me back. So, I have never lived a normal life. And love has always been a forbidden venture for me.” – Lara, a 23-year-old transwoman, and a professional dancer.
Dhaka, Bangladesh 2021 Credit: Mohammad Rakibul Hasan

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Documentary photographer and filmmaker Mohammad Rakibul Hasan has documented the health crisis in Bangladesh over the past several months. In these haunting images, Hasan brings to life the conditions in which many patients are being treated in poor conditions exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic.

Hasan was awarded the Lucie Awards Discovery of the Year 2018. He also received the 23rd Human Rights Press Awards for his series “The Looted Honor” on rape survivors of Rohingya Refugee from The Foreign Correspondents’ Club Hong Kong, Amnesty International and the Hong Kong Journalists Association that recognizes top reporting on Asian news.

In Bangladesh, from January 3, 2020, to August 23, 2021, there have been 1,467,715 confirmed cases of COVID-19, with 25,399 deaths, according to WHO. As of August 17, 2021, a total of 21,728,150 vaccine doses have been administered.

Medical professionals clean their used items of clothing and reusable and washable equipment in a COVID-19 make-shift hospital at the Rohingya Refugee Camp, Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh. Credit: Mohammad Rakibul Hasan (Documentary Photographer/filmmaker)

A medical professional is preserving the swab sample from a COVID-19 patient at the Rohingya Refugee Camp, Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh, in Bangladesh. The fight against coronavirus pandemic in the refugee camp is challenging as most live in densely packed temporary hut-like temporal houses are densely made in the camps, where social distancing is impossible. Credit: Mohammad Rakibul Hasan (Documentary Photographer/filmmaker)

A swab is being taken at the Rohingya Refugee Camp. There are many COVID-19 tests booths that the government and humanitarian organizations have installed for the host communities and the Rohingya Refugees around the camp area. Credit: Mohammad Rakibul Hasan (Documentary Photographer/filmmaker)

Mehrun (pseudonym) is a leprosy patient staying in a missionary leprosy hospital in Nilphamari, Bangladesh. If left untreated, Leprosy can create complications. Mehrun has lost her left eye, and her right one is being treated at the hospital. “After God, only doctors can treat my eye, and I love seeing the world,” she said. The health system is buckling under the latest wave of the pandemic with the highly contagious Delta variant.
Place: Nilphamari, Bangladesh Credit: Mohammad Rakibul Hasan (Documentary Photographer/filmmaker)

A critically ill COVID-19 patient is treated in the ICU in a hospital bed in Dhaka, Bangladesh. Most of the hospitals with ICU beds are occupied in Dhaka. The increased rates of infections and deaths every day are alarming, and the ferocity of the Delta variant of the disease is crippling the health system. Credit: Mohammad Rakibul Hasan (Documentary Photographer/filmmaker)

There is a critical shortage of hospital beds for COVID-19 patients and other critically ill people in Dhaka, Bangladesh. The highly contagious Delta causes most infections in the country. Credit: Mohammad Rakibul Hasan (Documentary Photographer/filmmaker)

A COVID-19 positive patient is being treated in ICU in Dhaka, Bangladesh. Medical professionals are dedicated to their jobs, but coronavirus infection rates among doctors, nurses, and other medical professionals is increasing. It has become harder for all hospitals in Bangladesh to fight the third wave of the pandemic. Credit: Mohammad Rakibul Hasan (Documentary Photographer/filmmaker)

A young boy has come to a hospital in Dhaka, Bangladesh, in critical condition during the third wave of the COVID-19 pandemic. Credit: Mohammad Rakibul Hasan (Documentary Photographer/filmmaker)

During the strict lockdown in Bangladesh, more than 20 horses used for tourism in Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh, which has the longest sandy beach globally, have died due to food shortages. The pandemic has broken the economic backbone of communities, especially in the low GDP countries across the globe. Credit: Mohammad Rakibul Hasan (Documentary Photographer/filmmaker)

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For three days from Sunday morning until late on Tuesday night, Cape Town’s firefighters were dispatched to Table Mountain and surrounding areas to battle a blaze that destroyed 600 hectares of land, displaced 4,000 students from the University of Cape Town and left heritage buildings damaged. Credit: Yazeed Kamaldien

By Yazeed Kamaldien
CAPE TOWN, South Africa, Apr 21 2021 (IPS)

Cape Town-based photojournalist Yazeed Kamaldien reported on a massive mountain fire that broke out on Sunday on Table Mountain and near residential areas on its foothills. By this morning, Wednesday 21 April, officials said the fire had been extinguished after three grueling days for firefighters. Firefighters are still monitoring on the ground for any flare-ups.

South African National Parks, which manages the Table Mountain area, estimates that the fire destroyed 600 hectares of land. A total 135 firefighters were dispatched along with 125 mountain rangers and an additional 170 fire and rescue workers.

While there were no deaths in the blaze, at least 4,000 students from the University of Cape Town were evacuated from their university residences. Locals have been assisting students with meals and other necessities.

Residents living on the Table Mountain slopes also had to evacuate their homes as the fire reached closer to their doors. Firefighting teams were deployed to extinguish the flames.
Heritage sites and university buildings were damaged and destroyed. Of the 11 affected buildings, seven are in the University of Cape Town campus.

Among these was the J.W. Jagger Library, which housed special collections that are well over a hundred years old. Other destroyed landmarks are the Mostert Mill and the Rhodes Memorial Restaurant.

Local police have arrested and charge with arson a vagrant while two other suspects are still being sought.

For three days from Sunday morning until late on Tuesday night, Cape Town’s firefighters were dispatched to Table Mountain and surrounding areas to battle a blaze that destroyed 600 hectares of land, displaced 4,000 students from the University of Cape Town and left heritage buildings damaged. Credit: Yazeed Kamaldien

By Wednesday morning, the fire had been contained and firefighters were still out monitoring areas around Table Mountain and areas nearby. The fire had started on Sunday at 9am around the historical Rhodes Memorial site. The fire destroyed the Rhodes Memorial Restaurant, which overlooks the city. Credit: Yazeed Kamaldien

Homeless people living on the slopes of Table Mountain lost their shacks and few possessions. They escaped with their lives to find shelter in safer spaces. Credit: Yazeed Kamaldien

A lone homeless man sits amidst the burnt out grass around him on the slopes of Table Mountain, where Cape Town’s firefighters fought back flames across 600 hectares of land. Local police arrested a vagrant for allegedly starting the fire and charged him with arson. Two more suspects are being sought. Credit: Yazeed Kamaldien

A lone homeless man sits amidst the burnt out grass around him on the slopes of Table Mountain, where Cape Town’s firefighters fought back flames across 600 hectares of land. Local police arrested a vagrant for allegedly starting the fire and charged him with arson. Two more suspects are being sought. Credit: Yazeed Kamaldien

A homeless man pulls his few possessions in a suitcase, leaving an area where firefighters were still battling flames on Tuesday afternoon. Homeless people living on the slopes of Table Mountain, where the fire spread for a few kilometers, fled their shacks for safer spaces. By Wednesday morning, officials had extinguished most of the fire that has left a trail of destruction. Credit: Yazeed Kamaldien

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By IPS Correspondent
DHAKA , Mar 24 2021 (IPS)

The building that was once the largest health centre in the Kutupalong refugee camp, serving some 55,000 Rohingya refugees 24/7, is now a burnt, distorted shell after a massive fire spread through the Cox’s Bazar camp in Bangladesh this week.

And as the tens of thousands of affected Rohingya return to the empty pieces of land that where once their homes, the need to rebuild — both the health facility and their homes — has added impetus because of the current COVID-19 pandemic and the coming monsoon season.

At least 11 people were killed and more than 45,000 Rohingya refugees were been displaced by a massive fire that caused “catastrophic damage” as it spread through the Kutupalong refugee camp in Cox’s Bazar, the largest refugee camp in the world.

“Tragically, reports from the camps indicate that at least 11 people are said to have lost their lives in the fire and more than 500 others have been injured. Around 400 people are unaccounted for,” the Inter Sector Coordination Group, a group of humanitarian partners said in a statement.

According to the International Organisation for Migration (IOM), more than 10,000 shelters were damaged in the fire and the agency’s largest health centre in the camp was destroyed.

“The loss of the 24/7 health centre, which served more than 55,000 people in the last year, now further complicates the challenge of responding to COVID-19,” IOM said in a statement.

It is not clear how the fire started, but according to a World Food Programme report the massive fire broke out in the Kutupalong mega camp on Monday around 3pm local time and spread to three neighbouring camps. 

“The fire that raged through the camps only slowed once it reached the main roads, slopes, canals and rice fields. It has since subsided, but not before consuming essential facilities, shelters and the personal belongings of tens of thousands of people,” IOM said.

IOM, which managed 3 of the affected sites, noted that “the fire affected at least 66 percent of the populations the four affected camps”.

With the monsoon season approaching, IOM says it is critical to rebuild the shelters as quickly as possible. Credit: IOM/Mashrif Abdullah Al

More than 10,000 refugee shelters were damaged when a devastating fire broke out in Cox’s Bazar Rohingya camp, Bangladesh. Some 45,000 Rohingya refugees have been displaced as a result. Credit: IOM/Mashrif Abdullah Al

The building that was once the largest health centre in the Kutupalong refugee camp, serving some 55,000 Rohingya refugees 24/7 is now a burnt, distorted shell after a massive fire spread through the Cox’s Bazar camp on Monday, Mar. 22. Credit: IOM/Mashrif Abdullah Al

Emergency shelter kits that included blankets and other essentials that were distributed by aid agencies to Rohingya refugees. The WFP said it provided 62,000 hot lunches and hot dinners on Tuesday, Mar. 23. Credit: IOM/Mashrif Abdullah Al

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Mohammad Rakibul Hasan is a Bangladeshi documentary photographer, photojournalist, filmmaker and visual artist who has been visiting the camps in Cox’s Bazaar to document the Rohingya refugee crisis.

Rakibul Hasan is a recipient of the Lucie Awards Discovery of the Year 2018. He also received the 23rd Human Rights Press Awards from The Foreign Correspondents’ Club Hong Kong, Amnesty International and the Hong Kong Journalists Association, for his series “The Looted Honor” which documents Rohingya refugee rape survivors.

Rakibul Hasan has shared with IPS a selection of images document life in the Rohingya refugee camps.

At a COVID-19 sample collection centre in a Rohingya refugee camp, a healthcare professional takes a swab from a Rohingya refugee child. During the pandemic, refugees are receiving information about COVID-19 protection but at the same time many COVID-19 myths have spread across the camp. Although the number of positive cases and the fatality rate is low, many people are asymptomatic as noted by healthcare providers. In addition, many refugees experiencing flu-like symptoms are said to be hiding in their make-shift homes and hoping to recover without medical intervention.

In the world’s largest refugee camp, Cox’s Bazar, many aren’t wearing masks. This is despite the fact that many non-profit organisations as well as the Bangladesh government are providing basic protective kits and conducting awareness programmes educating those living here on how to protect themselves from COVID-19. Though the number of COVID-19 cases are low as per the data from healthcare centres in the camps, many refugees are flocking to medical centres and local pharmacies to collect medicine for fevers and coughs.

A healthcare professional checks a COVID-19 sample in a lab in Cox’s Bazar. A number of COVID-19 samples have been collected in the Rohingya refugee camps and all samples are sent to a designated testing lab operated by the Bangladesh government.

Drug trafficking and robbery by Rohingya refugees and local Bangladeshi smugglers around Teknaf, Cox’s Bazar, has become a difficult problem to solve.

More than one million Muslim minority Rohingya’s fled Myanmar in 2017 due to ethnic cleansing, which has been condemned internationally as genocide. They now live in refugee camps in Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh. Many are uneducated as the Myanmar government never allowed them to study in their country and currently many in the refugee camps still do not have access to education. It is a life of uncertainty. And the COVID-19 pandemic has pushed them to the edge.

A Rohingya refugee boy holding an umbrella as the cyclonic storm Amphan hit the coastal region of Bangladesh, causing excessive rainfall in the Rohingya refugee camps.

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Hawaii is home to many of the world's rarest plants and animals, recognised globally as a 'biodiversity hotspot.' “We have seen a lot of positive actions being taken around the world, especially new green initiatives, in response to the pandemic,” Mrema of the Convention on Biological Diversity, said. Credit: Jon Letman/IPS

By Samira Sadeque
UNITED NATIONS, May 22 2020 (IPS)

This year’s International Day of Biological Diversity falls amid the coronavirus pandemic and the slow easing, in some nations, of a global lockdown. While the lockdown has forced most people to stay at home, there have been reports of more wildlife being spotted – even in once-busy city centres. 

This change is fitting for this year’s theme: “Our solutions are in nature.” Experts say that this is an opportunity for humans to see the footprint they are leaving behind on earth, and time to reflect on how to work towards a better future for the sustainability of the environment and for wildlife in the future. 

“We know that humanity stands at a crossroad with regard to the legacy we wish to leave to future generations,” Elizabeth Maruma Mrema, Acting Executive Secretary of the Convention on Biological Diversity, told IPS. “As noted by the recent IPBES [Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services ] Global Assessment report, the current global response has been insufficient, given that nature is declining globally at rates unprecedented in human history, and the rate of species extinctions is accelerating, with grave impacts on people around the world. Transformative change is necessary in order to restore and protect nature.”

‘Pandemic of complacency’

“I’m hoping what this pandemic does for us is draws attention to the pandemic of complacency that we were in before and [how that] contributed to the higher carbon [footprint], to greater human footprint, [and] plastic pollution in the ocean,” Roderic Mast, Co-Chair of the International Union for Conservation of Nature SSC Marine Turtle Specialist Group, told IPS. “Hopefully it’ll make people realise they were having an impact.”

Mast added that one issue that has come up during this lockdown is a rise in illegal poaching in places such as Indonesia and French Guiana. Although this information is yet to be verified, Mast said he has unofficial accounts from community members on the ground that a lack of enforcers on the job means there more illegal poaching is taking place. 

Meanwhile, Mrema of the Convention on Biological Diversity said conservation efforts have actually strengthened under the pandemic.

“The present COVID-19 crisis has provided us with a reset button – as well as confirming what we already know, that biodiversity is fundamental to human health – and has given new urgency to the need to protect it,” Mrema said. 

However, both experts echoed each others’ sentiments that now is not the time to become complacent seeing the changes the lockdowns have brought to wildlife. For example, just because more sea-turtles are seen out in the open does not mean the crisis has been resolved, Mast said. 

“This temporary reduction of stress is not sufficient and we need greater changes in the way we treat our environment,” Mrema said.

“The only thing wrong with the ocean is all the stuff that we humans put in it and all the stuff we humans take out,” Mast added. “So if we can limit what we put in the ocean in terms of pollution, boat traffic, and sounds, and if we can limit what we take out in terms of fisheries — that’s when we’re going to start seeing healthier oceans.”

According to the IUCN’s Red List, 31,030 species of the 116,177 that have been assessed are threatened with extinction. Here are glimpses of conservation efforts and endangered species around the world:

Biological Diversity by Inter Press Service

Excerpt:

The world is at risk of widespread famines resulting from lockdowns to contain the spread of the coronavirus pandemic. The devastating economic impact of Covid-19 is seeing a huge rise in the number of hungry people.

Hamida Begum, a domestic worker in Bangladesh who is now out of work, said: “We only have forty Taka at home (approximately US 50 cents). We have to drink poison to end life if we cannot go out for work. Who will save us from hunger?” The suffering of some 7 million slum dwellers around Dhaka, the capital city, is multiplying due to lost earnings and price hikes of consumer goods.

Most slum dwellers, living in different parts of the capital city, no longer worry about the virus but worry about hunger as they cannot go out to work. They do not have food reserves. Whatever little they have cannot save them from starvation and famine in the coming days.

Hamida Begum, 37, works as a house maid. She and her husband, a daily labourer are now jobless. The little food they have won’t feed their five member family. Credit: Mohammad Rakibul Hasan

Kulsum Begum, 30, is struggling to feed her three children since her husband died last year. After the lock down she lost her job as a housemaid . She Does not have any relatives in the city that she can turn to for to survive. Credit: Mohammad Rakibul Hasan

Shipli Rani Shiuli, 35, is the sole breadwinner of the family. Her husband left her and she takes care of her two sons alone. After the lockdown she lost her job and does not know how she will bring food to the table. Credit: Mohammad Rakibul Hasan

Textile worker Helena Begum was laid off last month. She, along her five year old daughter Shakiba and elderly mother, are living on half the amount of food they normally had before the lockdown. Helena who is 35 says that her husband left the family after she gave birth to a daughter. She does not know anyone who could help her to seek a loan. Credit: Mohammad Rakibul Hasan

Aklima, 35, is standing with her one and half year-old daughter Suborna in their one room slum house. She has sent off her three children to the village as they are unable to manage food for themselves in Dhaka city. Aklima says that she and her her rickshaw puller husband can only manage one meal a day and drink water to kill hunger pangs. Credit: Mohammad Rakibul Hasan

Kohinoor Begum and her security guard husband Abul Kashem are now staying at home due to the lockdown. Kohinoor lost her job as a housemaid. The only house they had in their village has been swallowed up by the river. During their three years stay in Dhaka city, they never faced such poverty and hardship before the lockdown. With no food at home and no cash, their five family members fear starvation in coming days. Credit: Mohammad Rakibul Hasan

Khadiza Begum, 38, with her two year daughter Sumaiya. She and her husband sold pickles on Dhaka streets. After the lockdown, they paid 4000 Taka (approximately $ 50 ) as rent and now have no money to buy food. Credit: Mohammad Rakibul Hasan

The Coronavirus pandemic is changing how we live our daily lives. The scale of the COVID-19 and its impact on our lives is unprecedented. When humanity gets past this, the world will be a very different place than the one we have known.

The changes will likely impact how we interact with each other and with family, how we work, study, eat, pray, love or play. The COVID-19 crisis has upended our lives. This novel virus is already reorienting our relationships with the outside world, our loved ones, dependence on each other, on technology, government and healthcare. What changes we might see in the future is uncertain. Global cooperation may be at stake although what we are hearing today is that we must all be together in this fight for survival against the virus. In the near future, we cannot rule out a scenario of fierce competition over resources, medicines and food.

Italy’s Ezio Mauro recently wrote in La Repubblica:
“… As we know, democracy is also a system of mutual guarantees which we take for granted because they are part of our civilisation – which is now threatened by the virus. Now we must relinquish parts of our freedom in the name of responsibility. … And even if politicians are not yet saying it openly, this is the real confirmation of the emergency.”

Mohammad Rakibul Hasan, an award winning photojournalist from Bangladesh shares with us a set of images on the lockdown across the country. Workers in the garment industry, rickshaw pullers and hourly contract labourers in Bangladesh are hit with loss of income like no other in the face of COVID-19 crisis. In the garments sector alone, Bangladesh has lost around $1.5 billion in canceled orders by foreign brands, which has impacted some 1.2 million workers. Ever since the increase of COVID-19 cases in Europe and the United States, Bangladeshi factories are losing around $100 million per day.

Gatherings, including the saying of prayers in the mosque, during the COVID-19 outbreak have been prohibited to ensure public safety. However, some religious people continue to attend mosque and say prayers.

Shops are closed, and people rarely venture onto the street.

The homeless have nowhere to go. There is no government initiative to aid the homeless in Dhaka, Bangladesh.

The COVID-19 outbreak red alert has been taken seriously by the public in Bangladesh. Few venture out for anything. Roads and highways are empty, and there is no sign of life on the streets.

Dhaka, the capital city of Bangladesh, never sleeps. Approximately 30 million people live in this mega city. As a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, the government has locked down the city, no one should be out or on the street unless it is for an emergency.

A transwoman calls her ex-boyfriend during isolation amid the COVID-19 lockdown in Dhaka.

A transgender couple kisses during the COVID-19 outbreak in Dhaka. The trans community is socially excluded, locally they are called “Hijra”, and they generally encounter socio-cultural deprivation from mainstream society. The coronavirus pandemic has meant they are unable to leave their homes, placing many in a difficult financial position as they face shortages of food and daily necessities.

Mehrunnessa lives in an ‘old age home’ in Dhaka. She has been living in a “type of isolation” away from her family, but the COVID-19 outbreak has meant that her relatives, who used to visit her frequently, no longer come to see her. She says that the whole world is suffering, and hopes “God is kind enough to eliminate the evil disease soon”.

COVID-19 outbreak has locked down one third of the population across the globe. Bangladesh is a densely-populated country and there is a high risk that the deadly virus can spread rapidly as many of the city’s homeless sleep on the streets.

Kamalapur Railway Station, the central station in Dhaka, has been shut down to prevent the virus spreading in the rest of the country.

The Dhaka City Corporation has begun spraying disinfectant in public places to reduce the risk of the spread of COVID-19.

During the COVID-19 lockdown in Bangladesh, many street people have no choice but to live in the open. The virus is airborne, according to World Health Organization, and can survive for between three to 24 hours on various surfaces.

People traveling to their homes after Bangladesh’s government instituted an emergency lockdown to prevent the spread of COVID-19.

As government and private organisations, shops, factories and all most everything was closed, people who work in Dhaka were rushing to leave the city for their home towns by public transport. Many did not use adequate safety measures, which could lead the COVID-19 spreading nationwide.

The day before the shutting down all inter-city buses, many people were returning to their home towns as Dhaka city was locked down. There was uncertainty of how long the lockdown would last.

City railways stations are always crowded with thousands of people every minute. But COVID-19 pandemic and the resultant lockdown declared by the government has been taken seriously by the citizens of Bangladesh. Everything is closed and there is no presence of people at the stations any longer — only a few stray dogs.

View of the Italian Pyramid, at 5,050 m a.s.l. located 20 minutes awayfrom Lobouche, Nepal. Credit: Valentina Gasbarri

By Valentina Gasbarri
MILAN, Italy, Feb 27 2020 (IPS)

Hello! Are you Italian?
No, I’m from Nepal.
Oops.

Kaji Bista is the staff manager of the Ev-K2-CNR’s innovative Pyramid International Laboratory/Observatory (known as the Italian Pyramid) at 5,050 m a.s.l. located in Lobouche.

He usually does not welcome trekkers, unless they stay overnight in the Nepali style lodge, located in the base of the building.

When planning the Everest Base Camp Trek, the last thing one would expect to find is a Pyramid that made it to the Guinness Book of World Records in 1998 for being the highest point in the world.

Covered with Perspex solar panels and sitting atop a low-stone building, the Everest Pyramid is about 20 minutes away from Lobuche. Crossing the glacier and a narrow lunar valley, the route reveals the vista of a past, glorious and visionary research center.

Our curiosity opened up a way for me to enter the forbidden area – entry reserved only for researchers. Inside the Pyramid there were a number of warm, clean, western-style rooms, crammed with scientific equipment, advanced lab machinery and paper files. Italian electronics labels and stickers were everywhere.

“Look – it’s just like being at home!” I said.
“I’m Italian and here it’s so strange to be in a place thats familiar, thousands of kilometers away”.

Kaji smiled, maybe not surprised anymore by my obvious reaction.

He then narrated the story of the Italian research center.
It all started more than 30 years ago, when in 1986 an American expedition declared K2 was taller than the Everest. It was the beginning of a mountaineering competition between Italy and the US.

Agostino Da Polenza and Prof. Ardito Desio, both researchers could not resist this challenge and, in 1987, they combined their scientific and mountaineering knowledge to launch the “Ev-K2-CNR Project” in collaboration with the Italian National Research Council (CNR).

They organized expeditions which put mountaineering at the service of science and re-measured both mountains using traditional survey techniques and innovative GPS (Global Positioning System) measurements.

Not only did they confirm Everest’s title but they also set the standard for altitudemeasurements to come.

Two years later, the two researchers founded the Ev-K2-CNR Committee to continue promoting technological and scientific research at high altitude.

Since then, Ev-K2-CNR has been recognized for this unique scientific research base, the quality and importance of the research carried out there and the specialized scientific contributions, combining technical and logistics know-how with scientific excellence.

I asked Kaji if he has opened the place up as a lodge for trekkers too.
He smiled and replied saying that this was the only thing he could do as the only manager still left there.

“ I had to. I’ve not been paid a salary for three and a half years”.
The Italian government stopped funding the Centre since 2015.

Kaji went on to say that they were a team of 15 people and he has been a staff manager for more than15 years. Now, he is doing more or less everything from maintaining the facility and collecting all the data himself.

“If I leave, the research station will close. So, for my income now I offer the empty space as a trekking lodge for the scientists and journalists visits, too”.

Kaji hopes the new Italian government will free up some funds to finance the Centre.

Microplastics in the Himalayas: Lessons-learned and Best Practices

Ev-K2-CNR continues to promote technological and scientific research at high altitude on health, climate change and environment as well develop new technologies.

One of the major projects carried out, despite the financial challenges, is one on micro-plastics, promoted by the Nepalese Government.

According to the Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA), plastic pollution has emerged as an environmental crisis of international concern. With the scale of global plastic pollution now painfully clear, it is high time for corporations and governments to take into consideration scientific-based research to find alternatives to plastics.

“It is a testament to how ubiquitous this pervasive material has become in our society that it can now be easily found even on the very highest point on our planet – Mount Everest, in the Himalayas” the EIA states.

In an unprecedented clean-up campaign launched by the Nepali Government in 2019, over four tonnes of plastic debris were collected in the high-altitude region of the Everest in the first five days alone. Consequently, since January, the Nepalese authorities have banned single-use plastics in the Everest region in a bid to cut down on waste left by climbers.

All plastic drinking bottles and plastics of less than 30 microns in width will be banned in the province.

The government says the army will be used for the task, which will cost 860 million Nepali rupees ($7.5m). It has also brought in measures to encourage people not to litter, asking for a $400 deposit before climbing, which is returned if they bring their waste back down with them.

Travel agencies and sherpas have a key role to play in sensitising trekkers and citizens to curb plastic waste.

During treks, the waste is coming from a variety of products, such as climbing gear and other rubbish like food wrappers, cans and bottles. Often, abandoned oxygen and cooking gas cylinders are found on the higher levels to the Summit.

Recently, iced bodies have also being discovered, creating a global debate on the expeditions and impact on the landscape and environment in the Mt. Everest region.

Scientific tools outside the building. Unfortunately, since 2015 the research projects are all frozen due to lack of funding from the Italian Government. Credit: Valentina Gasbarri

Few Everest Base Camp trekkers expect to find a pyramid high in the Himalayas. Covered in solar panels and sitting atop a low stone building, the Everest Pyramid is an unusual sight among the rock and snow of the mountains. Credit: Valentina Gasbarri

Entrance of the Research Center entered in 1998 in the Guinness Book of World Records for being the highest in the world. Credit: Valentina Gasbarri

Kaji and Sherpa Paesang collecting samples of water for studying the effects on microplastics on water and soil in the Khumbu Valley. Credit: Valentina Gasbarri

Plastic Waste in the Everest Base Camp Trekking Route. Plastics do not quicklybiodegrade, but instead break down into smaller pieces. This has led the NepaleseGovernment to ban single-use plastics from 2020. Credit: Valentina Gasbarri

Arriving close to the highest point in the world, one can still find plastic waste and garbage to collect.
Ev-K2-CNR Side Event at the 15th meeting of the UN Committee on SustainableDevelopment, New York (2007). Credit: Valentina Gasbarri

Tourists and trekkers are considered one of the biggest polluters in the Everest Region.
Education and Awareness Raising campaigns would be critical to educate people to adoptsustainable tourism practices. Credit: Valentina Gasbarri

By Maged Srour
ROME, Feb 19 2020 (IPS)

In a groundbreaking ruling in January 2020, the International Court of Justice demanded that Myanmar halt all measures that contribute to the genocide of the Rohingya community.

The order was lauded by international bodies and organisations who have been involved with and/or closely following the case since the Gambia filed a lawsuit against Myanmar for human rights violations against the Rohingya community.

The United Nations Secretary General has said he “welcomes” the order and “will promptly transmit the notice of the provisional measures ordered by the Court to the Security Council,”

The Rohingya refugees continue to remain in camps in Bangladesh, where they are vulnerable to human trafficking and other forms of violence.

IPS has been reporting extensively on the Rohingya tragedy over the past several years.
https://www.ipsnews.net/2020/01/experts-laud-international-court-justice-order-myanmar-halt-genocidal-conduct/

Here, IPS brings together a select number of powerful images from the Rohingya community seen through the lens of Mohammad Rakibul Hassan, a Bangladeshi photojournalist, filmmaker and visual artist.

By Valentina Gasbarri
KATHMANDU, Nepal, Jan 31 2020 (IPS)

Since I was a kid, I grew up with adventures and stories of famous characters of the books of Jack London: White Fang, Make a Fire… and the incredible ode to perseverance of Martin Eden.

I was absolutely fascinated by the fact that human beings could establish a deep link with the environment, even in the remote, high-altitude, coldest and hardest places of our Planet. This was the first contact I had with the theoretical concept of sustainability.

But when theory meets curiosity, the result is clear: always looking for stories to be told to document successful models of living where Human-Nature result in creating a perfect balance.

On the way from Phakding (2,610 m) to Namche Bazar (3,440m). Walking duration is 5 to 6 hours to cross the 830 meters elevation through deep blue sky, snow-covered peaks, mystical landscape, breathing in fresh air, pine forests and ancient Buddhist sites. Credit: Valentina Gasbarri

Majestic landscape of mountains, deep valleys and glaciers are dominated by Mt. Everest (Sagarmatha in Nepalese, which means “forehead in the sky” and Chomolungma in Tibetan, meaning “goddess mother of mountains”) at 8,848m above the sea level.

This mountain of many names has always attracted pilgrims, whether Tibetans honoring a peak they believe is abode of a deity, or climbers or trekkers fascinated by the highest point on Earth.

Since the first successful ascent on 29 May 1953 by Sherpa Tenzing Norgay and Sir. Edmund Hillary, a New Zealand mountaineer, explorer and philantropist, a pivotal change is taking place but local mountain Sherpas show resilience and are committed to protect high mountain ecosystem, plants and wildlife from the valley to the icy summits, where they have lived for more than 400 years.

“It is our hope that the people who are coming to the Sagarmatha Park and the Khumbu valley will agree that the Sherpa people and landscapes in our land have exhibited an overall stability and resiliency which can provide important insights and lessons-learned for mountain people around the globe” said Sherpa Paisang during our journey to the Everest Base Camp (8.364m).

The term Sherpa or sherwa derives from the Sherpa language words Shyar (“East”) and Pa (“People”), which refer to their geographical origin of Eastern Nepal.

“It’s hard to become a Sherpa guide, there’s a 1 year course to attend and an exam to pass on subject related to mountain and case-studies to be solved. Majority of Sherpas are porters. They can usually carry on their shoulders max 130kg from Lukla airport to Namche Bazar or up to the other villages. They get around $8 per kg. They got a little salary for a huge effort” said Paisang, a young guide with a long experience in trekking in the Himalays.

The 2011 Nepal census recorded 312,946 Sherpas within its borders.

Changes in the Sherpa livelihoods from tradition across the Himalaya to Global Tourism

As a population, the Sherpas have historically responded and adapted to changes brought by the outside world. In the mid-1800s, the King of Nepal granted the Sherpas a trade monopoly by prohibiting anyone but a Khumbu Sherpa from crossing the Nangpa La, the high-altitude pass to Tibet.

Many Sherpa families benefited to some degree from the bartering that took place in either Tibet or border towns of India.

Namche Bazar, 3,450m above the sea level, is the starting point for expeditions to Mt. Everest and other Himalayan peaks in the area. It has been the main trading centre since 1905. Prior to that, it was simply a place where traders from Khumjung stored their trading goods between the seasons when they could travel to the lowlands. The trade to Tibet was drastically reduced after it was taken over by the People’s Republic of China in the late 1950s.

At present only a few Tibetan and Sherpa traders crossed the pass in both directions. They could be seen at the weekly market with lowland in Nepal traders. The weekly market is not a Sherpa tradition, it was started in the mid-1960s by an army officer stationed in Namche to meet the needs of the growing population of Nepali civil servants.

Since the Nepali government first allowed Westerners to visit the Kingdom in 1950s, tourism has grown to be now the main source of livelihood for the Sherpas. Until the beginning of the 21st Century, the number of explorers coming to the SNP annually grown from 1,400 ( ‘70s) to over 25,000. According to the last figures more than 40,000 people per year make the trek from Lukla airport to the Everest Base Camp.

The growing prosperity brought also opportunities for new lifestyles. The Sherpas have constantly balanced outside influences with their own culture, which has valuable spiritual and cultural aspects to share with the world.

Before Western explorers, adventurers and climbers, Sherpas’ economy was based primarly on agriculture (potato and buckwheat farms) yak herding, and trade of salt, wool, rice, yaks and cows from Nepal to Tibet and viceversa. But in the valleys of Khumbu, the summer monsoon lasts from June to September. During the quiet but productive season people carry out their chores of hearding and farming. But… farming is not easy.

Most fields for cultivating food crops are at relatively lower elevtions of about 3,300 meters near the main Sherpa villages. During the cold winter, herds of yak or nak ( female) are grazed on nearby hillsides; when the summer comes, the yaks or nak are taken up to high valleys wher the rains changed the dry mountinsides to rich, green pastures.

Periche, Lobouche and Dingboche were established as their summer huts and hay fields. The shaggy bovines provide dairy products ( yak milk, butter and meat), wool and transportation.

But, nowadays we are witnessing a crucial shift for Sherpa culture, and in particular for the sub-culture of Sherpa guide, climbing and porters community. When the interest for adventurous explorations grew gradually over the decades, Sherpas were firstly hired away from their farms to carry loads, as porters, to become guides and climbers.

In some ways, Sherpas have benefited from this commercialization fo the Mt. Everest more that any ethnic group, earning money from trekkers or climbers. The job of “sherpa” has been progressively formalized and now they own hotels, trekking companies, airlines.

Paradoxically, Khumbu Sherpas are nowadays among the wealthies of Nepal’s dozens of ethnic groups.

***This story is a first of a series based on my experience on the Mt. Everest Base Camp Trekking Route with the aim to discover and understand more the spirit of the mountaneers and communities in a close relationship with the surrounding Nature

The suspension bridge marks the entrance into Sherpa land. There are five long suspension bridges over Dudhkosi river on the trail to Namche Bazaar. It is a steel cable suspension bridge, with a metal grid for a walkway and hurricane fencing along the sides. Prayer flags are tied to it, fluttering in the constant breeze. Credit: Valentina Gasbarri

During the trek you can continually come across locals, yak- and donkey trains. The sound of the donkey bells was a loyal companion throughout the hike to Namche. Credit: Valentina Gasbarri

During the trek you can continually come across locals, yak- and donkey trains. The sound of the donkey bells was a loyal companion throughout the hike to Namche. Credit: Valentina Gasbarri

Sherpa porter carrying wood in the Himalaya, near Mount Everest, taking a rest from carrying their heavy loads. Generally, they can carry up to 130kg. There are legal restrictions, such as a maximum carry weight and a minimum age, but in reality, these regulations go largely unenforced. Their daily expenses are around $15 a day, while they make about a range of $8-11. Credit: Valentina Gasbarri

Sherpa porter carrying wood in the Himalaya, near Mount Everest, taking a rest from carrying their heavy loads. Generally, they can carry up to 130kg. There are legal restrictions, such as a maximum carry weight and a minimum age, but in reality, these regulations go largely unenforced. Their daily expenses are around $15 a day, while they make about a range of $8-11. Credit: Valentina Gasbarri

Porters on the trails of Nepal, carrying heavy loads. These include rice, coke, Sherpa beer, food and a range of products that locals and trekkers need while they are in the region… and Coca-Cola! Credit: Valentina Gasbarri

Namche Bazar, capital of the Sherpa Land. It is located within the Khumbu area at 3,440 metres at its low point, populating the sides of a hill. Most Sherpa who are in the tourism business are from the Namche area. Namche is the main trading center and hub for the Khumbu region with many Nepalese officials, a police check, post, a bank, and even a beauty salon. Credit: Valentina Gasbarri

Namche Bazar, capital of the Sherpa Land. It is located within the Khumbu area at 3,440 metres at its low point, populating the sides of a hill. Most Sherpa who are in the tourism business are from the Namche area. Namche is the main trading center and hub for the Khumbu region with many Nepalese officials, a police check, post, a bank, and even a beauty salon. Credit: Valentina Gasbarri

Pasang, a young Sherpa guide which dreams to climb to the Summit of Mt. Everest. To become an official guide, he followed a 1-year training programme in Kathmandu and almost 6 months in the Himalaya mountains. He successfully passed a difficult exam many years ago. He has two daughters and a wife living in a village close to Lukla. He dreams to travel abroad, one day. Credit: Valentina Gasbarri

Pasang, a young Sherpa guide which dreams to climb to the Summit of Mt. Everest. To become an official guide, he followed a 1-year training programme in Kathmandu and almost 6 months in the Himalaya mountains. He successfully passed a difficult exam many years ago. He has two daughters and a wife living in a village close to Lukla. He dreams to travel abroad, one day. Credit: Valentina Gasbarri

Starting the day by heading North-West out of Dingboche and passing by a stunning path to reach Lobouche. Credit: Valentina Gasbarri

Mount Everest: melting Khumbu glacier. The terminal moraine of the Khumbu Glacier looms 400 meters above Dughla, a rest stop for climbers. This is the debris bulldozed down from Mt. Everest and surrounding peaks over millions of years and represents the extent of the glacier’s advance in the last Ice Age. Today, the surface ice on the world’s highest glacier is all but gone due to natural and anthropogenic warming. Credit: Valentina Gasbarri

What kind of food can you find at the top of the world? Dal bhat is a traditional meal from the Indian subcontinent, popular in many areas of Nepal, Bangladesh and India. It consists of steamed rice and a cooked lentil soup called dal. It is a staple food in these countries. Bhat or Chawal means “boiled rice” in a number of Indo-Aryan languages. At higher elevations in Nepal, above 6,500 feet (2,000 m), where rice does not grow well, other grain such as maize, buckwheat, barley or millet may be substituted in a cooked preparation called dhindo or atho in Nepal. Bhat may be supplemented with roti in Nepal. Dal may be cooked with onion, garlic, ginger, chili, tomatoes, or tamarind, in addition to lentils or beans. It always contains herbs and spices such as coriander, garam masala, cumin, and turmeric. Recipes vary by season, locality, ethnic group and family. Credit: Valentina Gasbarri

What kind of food can you find at the top of the world? Dal bhat is a traditional meal from the Indian subcontinent, popular in many areas of Nepal, Bangladesh and India. It consists of steamed rice and a cooked lentil soup called dal. It is a staple food in these countries. Bhat or Chawal means “boiled rice” in a number of Indo-Aryan languages. At higher elevations in Nepal, above 6,500 feet (2,000 m), where rice does not grow well, other grain such as maize, buckwheat, barley or millet may be substituted in a cooked preparation called dhindo or atho in Nepal. Bhat may be supplemented with roti in Nepal. Dal may be cooked with onion, garlic, ginger, chili, tomatoes, or tamarind, in addition to lentils or beans. It always contains herbs and spices such as coriander, garam masala, cumin, and turmeric. Recipes vary by season, locality, ethnic group and family. Credit: Valentina Gasbarri

What kind of food can you find at the top of the world? Dal bhat is a traditional meal from the Indian subcontinent, popular in many areas of Nepal, Bangladesh and India. It consists of steamed rice and a cooked lentil soup called dal. It is a staple food in these countries. Bhat or Chawal means “boiled rice” in a number of Indo-Aryan languages. At higher elevations in Nepal, above 6,500 feet (2,000 m), where rice does not grow well, other grain such as maize, buckwheat, barley or millet may be substituted in a cooked preparation called dhindo or atho in Nepal. Bhat may be supplemented with roti in Nepal. Dal may be cooked with onion, garlic, ginger, chili, tomatoes, or tamarind, in addition to lentils or beans. It always contains herbs and spices such as coriander, garam masala, cumin, and turmeric. Recipes vary by season, locality, ethnic group and family. Credit: Valentina Gasbarri

Excerpt:

Child labour is a cancer in Nigeria, with children engaged in domestic labour, forced begging, quarrying gravel and armed conflict. Credit: Tobore Ovuorie and Yemisi Onadipe/IPS

By Tobore Ovuorie and Yemisi Onadipe
LAGOS, Nigeria, Oct 31 2019 (IPS)

“Human trafficking is when someone is taken from Nigeria to another country to be a prostitute. Or, to do other illegal jobs that are not good for humanity,” said Kingsley Chidiebere, a commercial motorcycle rider in Nigeria’s commercial capital, Lagos.

He is one of the over 27 Nigerians interviewed so far by IPS who thinks human trafficking is when a “lady goes to Europe to prostitute herself”.

Though a father himself, Chidiebere, like others interviewed, does not know that children are trafficked to other countries and within Nigeria as well.

Nigeria’s National Agency for the Prohibition of Trafficking in Persons (NAPTIP) April to September 2018 report indicates females are the overwhelming majority of identified victims in Nigeria. According to the report, most rescued victims are now from Kano State, closely followed by Edo State. Credit: Tobore Ovuorie and Yemisi Onadipe/IPS

Nigeria’s National Agency for the Prohibition of Trafficking in Persons (NAPTIP), founded in 2003 in response to the country’s high rate of human trafficking, said while most of the victims of trafficking here are women, children and men now make up a significant portion of trafficked victims compared to a decade ago.

• In a 2014 report,  NAPTIP said children comprised 28 percent of detected victims, and men, 21 percent. 
• NAPTIP said that the two most-reported human trafficking cases here include cases where women are prostituted internationally and the employment of children as domestic workers. In many cases these child labourers also suffer physical abuse. 

Human trafficking and modern day slavery involve the illegal trade of people for exploitation or commercial gain and is a $150 billion global industry.

Two thirds of this figure — $99 billion — is generated from commercial sexual exploitation, while another $51 billion results from forced economic exploitation, including domestic work, agriculture and other economic activities. 

Nigeria remains a source, transit and destination country when it comes to human trafficking. Credit: Tobore Ovuorie and Yemisi Onadipe/IPS

The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) in its 2016 Global Report On Trafficking In Persons says globally more than 500 different trafficking flows were detected between 2012 and 2014.

• In Nigeria, 42 percent of detected victims between 2012 and 2014 were adults, with the remaining numbers accounting for children.
• The UNODC reports 69 countries reported to have detected 21,251 victims from Sub-Saharan Africa between 2012 and 2014. Nigeria had 1,030 detected trafficking victims. Of these, 322 were adults (61 males, 261 females) and 708 were children (458 boys, 250 girls).
• “More recently, reports have surfaced that children in northern Nigeria are being forced by the terrorist group Boko Haram to carry out suicide attacks, the ultimate form of exploitation.
• “Earlier this year, UNICEF reported that suicide attacks by Boko Haram rose 11-fold from 2014 to 2015, and that 20 percent of the attacks were committed by children as young as eight,” the report stated.

Barrister Julie Okah-Donli, the Director General of NAPTIP said parents who give their children away to work as domestics are endangering them. She warned that these kids end up in the hands of human traffickers. 

The 2018 Global Slavery Index Report reveals Nigeria ranks 32/167 of the countries with the highest number of slaves. The report indicates Nigeria produces no fewer than 1,38m slaves. According to Nigeria’s National Agency for the Prohibition of Trafficking in Persons (NAPTIP), the average age of trafficked children in Nigeria, is 15. Credit: Tobore Ovuorie and Yemisi Onadipe/IPS

Nigeria’s government agency responsible for tackling trafficking reported in 2016 that 75 percent of children trafficked within the country are trafficked across states, while 23 percent of the kids are trafficked within states. Only two percent of those who are trafficked are trafficked outside the country. The boys in the yellow and pink shirts are pictured transporting goods from the market during school hours. Credit: Tobore Ovuorie and Yemisi Onadipe/IPS

In 2006, a United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) report indicated child trafficking was the third-most common crime in Nigeria after drug trafficking and economic fraud. UNESCO highlighted Nigeria’s gross poverty, corruption, conflict, climate change/resulting migration and Western consumerism as factors which increase vulnerability to being trafficked in the country. The boys in the yellow and pink shirts are pictured transporting items they had begged for from the market during school hours. Like most trafficked children they don’t understand or speak English. These boys spend their days begging for money and food. Credit: Tobore Ovuorie and Yemisi Onadipe/IPS

In January, the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) released a report stating that the number of modern day child slaves constitute almost one-third of all global victims. A young boy works at a shop during school hours selling palm oil from morning to night for the ‘madam’ he works for. He said she brought him to Lagos from a village and away from his family. Where the village from where he comes is, he doesn’t recall. When asked by IPS, he said he did not know his age. Credit: Tobore Ovuorie and Yemisi Onadipe/IPS

A report by the International Labour Organization (ILO) reveals shocking statistics: 99 percent of the 4.8 million victims of commercial sexual exploitation in 2016 were women and girls, with one in five being children. The young girl pictured here has never been to school and has marks from flogging over her hand. She timidly tells IPS that rice fell on her hand, but the signs of beating are clear. She lives with the person for whom she sells rice for and does not know her age. Credit: Tobore Ovuorie and Yemisi Onadipe/IPS

The Global Slavery Index reveals women and girls represented 84 percent of the 15.4 million people in forced marriages, and 59 percent of those in private, forced labour. The Index maintains that modern day slavery is most prevalent in Africa with Nigeria being one of the leading countries where the practice thrives. Africa, has no fewer than 9.24 million modern day slaves with an average vulnerability score of 62/100. When young women and children are trafficked to Lagos from Northern Nigeria, mostly Kano and Kaduna state, they have no where they sleep. Often their traffickers make them sleep in the streets and beg for money which they hand over to the person who trafficked them. Credit: Tobore Ovuorie and Yemisi Onadipe/IPS

The Global Sustainability Network ( GSN ) is pursuing the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal number 8 with a special emphasis on Goal 8.7 which ‘takes immediate and effective measures to eradicate forced labour, end modern slavery and human trafficking and secure the prohibition and elimination of the worst forms of child labour, including recruitment and use of child soldiers, and by 2025 end child labour in all its forms’.

The origins of the GSN come from the endeavours of the Joint Declaration of Religious Leaders signed on 2 December 2014. Religious leaders of various faiths, gathered to work together “to defend the dignity and freedom of the human being against the extreme forms of the globalisation of indifference, such us exploitation, forced labour, prostitution, human trafficking” and so forth.

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While standing to form the Hong Kong Way on Aug. 23, Protesters cover their right eye in reference to a woman who received a serious injury to her face, which was allegedly caused by police shooting a rubber bullet at her head. One woman (R) holds a sign urging the U.S. government to pass the Hong Kong Human Rights and Democracy Act, which was introduced by Representative Chris Smith (R-NJ.) and Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL). Credit: Laurel Chor/IPS

By Laurel Chor
HONG KONG, Aug 24 2019 (IPS)

As protests in Hong Kong continue over the weekend, thousands of people joined hands to form a human chain that stretched across the city on Friday. It was yet another demonstration – this one entirely peaceful – in a series of protests that have rocked the former British colony for the past 12 weeks. 

The “Hong Kong Way” protest was inspired by the 30th anniversary of the Baltic Way, a 600-km human chain formed across Estonia, Lithuania and Latvia, which at the time were a part of the Soviet Union. Two million people stood hand-in-hand that day to protest Soviet rule.

Yesterday on Aug. 23, organisers estimated that 135,000 people participated in the Hong Kong version, which stretched 60 kilometres across both Hong Kong Island and Kowloon. Hundreds even made their way up the iconic Lion Rock Mountain, lighting up the peak with cell phone lights. 

The human chain marked a shift in tone in the protests, which were often violent. Today, on Aug. 24 protestors reportedly hurled objects and gasoline bombs at police, with police firing tear gas in response.

On Saturday, Aug. 24 protestors reportedly hurled objects and gasoline bombs at police, with police firing tear gas in response.Courtesy: Studio Incendo

The Hong Kong protests were sparked by a proposed extradition bill that would allow suspects to be sent to China and possibly face an unjust trial system, making people fearful that Beijing would exploit the law for political reasons. The demonstrations have been further fuelled by anger towards the police for its excessive use of force and protesters’ key demands now include complete withdrawal of the proposed extradition bill, as well as genuine universal suffrage. 

Earlier this month, two mainland Chinese men were held and beaten at the Hong Kong airport, where protests had disrupted flights for two days in a row. After the incidents, Beijing strongly condemned the protesters and compared the attacks to “terrorism”. On the other hand, organisations including Amnesty International and the United Nations have repeatedly criticised the Hong Kong Police Force for its violent methods to control the protests.

Mindful of public opinion, protesters took a decidedly more peaceful direction after those incidents. First, they apologised for the airport protests. Then, a peaceful march was organised last weekend, with an estimated 1.7 million attending, echoing two similar marches in June that had attracted one million, then two million a week later – an impressive feat in a city of only 7.4 million residents. 

Organisers of the Hong Kong Way issued a statement highlighting Hong Kong protesters’ solidarity: “We are no longer divided into ‘peaceful’ or ‘frontline’ protesters – we are joined as one in our resolve to fight for our freedom.” 

Protests were scheduled for the weekend and are set to continue for the rest of the month. The Hong Kong government has yet to meet with protesters and has not caved in on any of their demands, leading the city to wonder how its biggest political crisis will ever be resolved. 

The Hong Kong protests were sparked by a proposed extradition bill that would allow suspects to be sent to China and possibly face an unjust trial system, making people fearful that Beijing would exploit the law for political reasons. This dated photo is from a protest rally last month. Courtesy: Studio Incendo/CC By 2.0

Standing in front of the famous Victoria Harbor on Aug. 23, protesters cover their right eye in reference to a woman who received a serious injury to her face, which was allegedly caused by police shooting a rubber bullet at her head, as they hold their cell phone lights in the other hand. Credit: Laurel Chor/IPS

A protester hugs a stranger standing in Sham Shui Po on Aug. 23 as part of the Hong Kong Way, the participants of which included families with children. Credit: Laurel Chor/IPS

Protesters stand in front of the Hong Kong Space Museum as part of the Hong Kong Way, a 60-kilometre human chain on Aug. 23. Credit: Laurel Chor/IPS

Protesters – often not knowing those standing next to them – link up to form the Hong Kong Way in Sham Shui Po on Aug. 23, while chanting slogans encouraging Hong Kong protesters and demanding the “liberation” of the city. Credit: Laurel Chor/IPS

Protesters forming the Hong Kong Way hold up their cell phone lights while standing on a busy road in Sham Shui Po, where double decker buses often passed through, on Aug. 23. Credit: Laurel Chor/IPS

Credit: Tarek Mahmud.

By Syed Neaz Ahmad
GUTHAIL, JAMALPUR, Bangladesh, Jul 23 2019 (IPS)

Floods are quite common in Bangladesh – blame it on climate change, the control and discharge of river waters at source or poor disaster management. The damage to property to livestock is colossal.

These pictures sent by Dewanganj (Jamalpur) based journalist Tarek Mahmud explain it all. Some of the government offices, schools, hospitals and large areas of farm land are under water. The damage to property & chattel is estimated to be in millions of Taka (Bangladesh currency). Rehabilitation of these displaced people will take months.

Credit: Tarek Mahmud.

Credit: Tarek Mahmud.

Credit: Tarek Mahmud.

Credit: Tarek Mahmud.

Credit: Tarek Mahmud.

Credit: Tarek Mahmud.

Credit: Tarek Mahmud.

Credit: Tarek Mahmud.

When war broke out in 2013 in South Sudan, refugees poured into neighbouring Gambella. Today, 485,000 South Sudanese refugees lived in the Gambella region, according to UNHCR, the United Nations refugee organisation. Some displaced Nuer brought arms across the border, destabilising an already tense region. “The fact that the Nuer and Anuwak exist on both sides of the border makes it easy for people of both communities to pass backwards and forwards, taking with them their conflicts both between the two tribes but also at the national level,” says John Ashworth, who has been working in South Sudan and the surrounding region for the last 30 years. Credit: James Jeffrey/IPS

By James Jeffrey
GAMBELLA, Ethiopia, May 6 2019 (IPS)

Right up against the border with South Sudan, the western Gambella region of Ethiopia has become a watchword for trouble and no-go areas as its neighbour’s troubles have spilled over. But now there may be reason for optimism on either side of the border.

The brown waters of the Baro River meandering through the Ethiopian city of Gambella—from which the surrounding region takes its name—coupled with an atmosphere of tropical languor creates an almost cliched archetype of the Western idea of an African river port. Except for the fact that there is not a single boat on the river. The 2013 outbreak of civil war in South Sudan, whose border lies 50 kilometres from the city, put an end to the thriving trade that once plied this waterway between Gambella and Juba, the South Sudanese capital. Credit: James Jeffrey/IPS

It is hard to visit Gambella and not be struck by the height of many locals, some with horizontal scarification lines across their foreheads. The Nuer are one of five ethnic groups populating the region. Close ties and tensions between the Nuer and Anuwak, the two largest ethnic groups, representing about 45 percent and 26 percent of the population, respectively, date back centuries. The modern border between the two nations does not delineate where either group lives nor is movement across the South Sudan-Ethiopia border a new phenomenon. Credit: James Jeffrey/IPS

When war broke out in 2013 in South Sudan, refugees poured into neighbouring Gambella. Today, 485,000 South Sudanese refugees lived in the Gambella region, according to United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, the UN refugee organisation. Some displaced Nuer brought arms across the border, destabilising an already tense region. “The fact that the Nuer and Anuwak exist on both sides of the border makes it easy for people of both communities to pass backwards and forwards, taking with them their conflicts both between the two tribes but also at the national level,” says John Ashworth, who has been working in South Sudan and the surrounding region for the last 30 years. Credit: James Jeffrey/IPS

This is the closest you will come to finding a boat in Gambella nowadays. “The river used to be full of boats and trade before 2013 and the war broke out,” one Gambella local says of the Baro River and its tributaries flowing across the border. Nowadays the most urgent traffic around the city comes from the plethora of white SUVs, plastered with the logos of almost every NGO to be found in Ethiopia. Some locals are employed by NGOs as drivers and translators, but the vast majority of locals struggling to get by see little of the money generated by Ethiopia’s refugee industry. In 2018 the budget required for Ethiopia’s total refugee population—around 900,000 people—was estimated at 618 million dollars. Credit: James Jeffrey/IPS

Gambella city has an intriguing modern history, in which the Baro River plays a crucial part. In the late 19th century, Britain came knocking, seeing the Baro’s navigable reach to Khartoum as an excellent highway for exporting coffee and other produce to Sudan and Egypt. The Ethiopian emperor granted Britain the use of land for a port and Gambella was established in 1907. Only a few hundred hectares in size, this tiny British territory became a prosperous trade centre as ships from Khartoum sailed regularly during the rainy season when the water was high. The Italians captured Gambella in 1936 but it was back with the British after a bloody battle in 1941. Gambella became part of Sudan in 1951, but was reincorporated into Ethiopia five years later. Credit: James Jeffrey/IPS

Here a woman sells fish in a small market. Everyday life appears slow and peaceful. But the Gambella region has gained a reputation as a no-go area among foreigners and Ethiopians alike. Back in 1962, the first of several civil wars broke out next door in Sudan at the start of a 50-year quest for South Sudanese independence, and from which Gambella could not remain immune. The stigma attached to the region hasn’t been helped by the Ethiopian government’ tendency to take a dismissive view of the region, underscored by a prejudice—one that extends throughout Ethiopian society—that the blacker one is the less Ethiopia you are, says Dereje Feyissa, a senior advisor at the Addis Ababa-based International Law and Policy Institute. “The Ethiopian centre has always related to its periphery in a predatory way,” Dereje says. “This is not only because of the geographic distance but also the historical, social and cultural differences which the discourse on skin colour signifies.” Credit: James Jeffrey/IPS

Local men carrying wrapped-up dried fish on their heads walk through an Anuwak village. The Gambella region is something of an anomaly in Ethiopia, displaying stronger historical, ethnic and climatic links to neighbouring South Sudan. “This was not the Ethiopia of cool highlands and white flowing traditional dress, but Nilotic Africa, in the blazing southwestern lowlands near the Sudanese border,” recalls Steve Buff, a former Peace Corps Volunteer. “This was much closer to our childhood National Geographic images of Africa than any place we’d seen before in Ethiopia.” Credit: James Jeffrey/IPS

Since the latest peace agreement between South Sudan’s warring factions late last year, the indications seem more promising than with previous peace agreements that fell apart. By December 2018, the security situation in South Sudan had significantly improved, stated Jean-Pierre Lacroix, head of United Nations Peacekeeping. And by February this year, David Shearer, head of the UN Mission in South Sudan, told reporters in New York that political violence has “dropped dramatically.” Shearer added that the success of the peace agreement will be partly measured by the extent to which people return to home towns and villages. Credit: James Jeffrey/IPS

This year the UNHCR has reported spontaneous movements of South Sudanese refugees from various Gambella-based camps heading toward South Sudan, an estimated 5,000 since mid-December. Perhaps a good sign of what Shearer discussed? Interviews with the refugees, however, indicated they were returning to South Sudan for fear of retaliatory action following clan-based conflicts in camps, while some said they were going to visit their families, and would eventually return to the camps in Gambella. Credit: James Jeffrey/IPS

“This time it is different, as the international community is involved,” a South Sudanese refugee in Gambella remarked while reading Facebook posts on his smartphone about the latest peace deal. At the same time, the time it has taken to overcome the animosity of the past and get to the current stage of the peace process suggests there will be South Sudanese refugees in Gambella for some time yet. Meanwhile, the Baro River will flow on undisturbed by river traffic through a land of limbo caught up in the surrounding troubles, its seemingly placid surface deceiving to the eye. “There are plenty of crocodiles, though you won’t see them as the water is high,” a local man says. Credit: James Jeffrey/IPS

Even the Afar can be shy: Here a young Afar woman consents to be photographed, though only after covering part of her face. Afar women often have intricate frizzed and braided hairstyles, and wear bright coloured bead necklaces, heavy earrings and brass anklets. Many Afar women cover their heads in public. This helps ward off the relentless sun. At the same time, the vast majority of Afar are Muslim. Despite Afar’s ancient trade links with the Christian highlands to the west, Islam was widely practiced in the region as early as the 13th century. Credit: James Jeffrey/IPS

By James Jeffrey
ADDIS ABABA, Mar 6 2019 (IPS)

Once made infamous through explorers’ tales of old, Ethiopia’s remote northeast Afar region both conforms to and contradicts stereotypes.

Tough neighbourhood: Ethiopia’s remote northeast Afar region contains the Danakil Depression—the hottest place on earth where temperatures in the naked plains frequently soar above 50 degrees centigrade, exacerbated by the fierce blowing of the Gara, which translates as Fire Wind. Such inhospitable conditions haven’t stopped the Afar, who regard themselves as the oldest of Ethiopia’s ethnic groups having occupied their arid homeland for at least 2,000 years. Credit: James Jeffrey/IPS

Armed but amiable—fortunately: Here a young Afar man unsheathes the sword he carries attached to his waist. Historically, the Afar menfolk gained a reputation for ferocity and intolerance of outsiders, including the habit of cutting off the testicles of any foreigner found in their territory. The reality now is far removed from the stereotypes of travellers’ tales—the majority of Afar that the author met proved friendly, as well as patient about his photographic requests. Credit: James Jeffrey/IPS

Less on the move nowadays: A kite bird of prey rests on a rooftop in the town of Asaita overlooking the Awash River, beside which can be seen distinctive dome-shaped Afar homes. Traditionally the Afar are nomadic pastoralists, living in light, flimsy houses which they transport from one location to the next on camel back. Recent decades have seen a trend towards an increased dependence on agriculture in the fertile and well-watered areas around the likes of Asaita. Credit: James Jeffrey/IPS

Pastoralist past not forgotten: Here a woman weaves palm frond into the matting used to cover traditional Afar homes. Afar women are typically responsible for constructing a family’s nomadic home from the ground up when a family moves to another location. Despite a visitor encountering friendliness, you still sense a robust mentality among the Afar, shaped by that tough nomadic pastoralist past, and which still continues, evidenced by the camels continuing to plod across the desert, and the clusters of domed houses dotting the parched plains. Credit: James Jeffrey/IPS

What’s that shimmering in the heat haze?: In the plains surrounding Asaita an enormous sugar factory towers over surrounding Afar homes, evidence that there appears to no longer be any part of Ethiopia immune to the country’s ambitions to develop. In recent years the government has made a concerted effort to establish sugar factories to meet growing local demand, create jobs and boost economic growth. This has included locating factories in remote areas instead of being concentrated in one region. Credit: James Jeffrey/IPS

Even the Afar can be shy: Here a young Afar woman consents to be photographed, though only after covering part of her face. Afar women often have intricate frizzed and braided hairstyles, and wear bright coloured bead necklaces, heavy earrings and brass anklets. Many Afar women cover their heads in public. This helps ward off the relentless sun. At the same time, the vast majority of Afar are Muslim. Despite Afar’s ancient trade links with the Christian highlands to the west, Islam was widely practiced in the region as early as the 13th century. Credit: James Jeffrey/IPS

Renowned for distinctive hairstyles: It’s not just Afar women who embrace eye-catching hairstyles. Afar men often wear their hair in thick Afro style or equally distinctive long curls, and dress in a light cotton toga. While these two men aren’t armed, Afar men rarely venture far without a sword or dagger, and these days the traditional knife can be supplemented or replaced by an AK-47 slung casually over the shoulder. Such weapons are still frequently put to fatal use in disputes between local clans. Credit: James Jeffrey/IPS

Trading salt and more: The main thoroughfare through the city of Logiya sees a constant stream of trucks on the way to and from ports across the nearby border in Djibouti. At the same time more modern goods are being taken into Ethiopia to sustain the growing needs of its developing population, the Afar continue to load up camels with bars of salt, cut out of the desiccated ground, to transport to the region of Tigray along the ancient caravan routes. Until modern times, the Afar region effectively served as Ethiopia’s Mint, producing the amoles—salt bars—that served as the main currency in the highlands. Credit: James Jeffrey/IPS

Beguiling mix: At Asaita the Awash River cuts a green swathe through the desert, evoking images of Egyptian pastures watered by the Nile. As the sun begins to set over Asaita, the muezzin can be heard calling the faithful to prayer, while electric lights start appearing in the sugar factory in the distance. It’s a striking impression of old and new, tradition and modernisation co-existing together. “Things are simpler here,” Yohannes, a young man in Logiya, says about the local way of life. Credit: James Jeffrey/IPS

Still embracing the low-tech way of life:
Despite Ethiopia undergoing great changes as it rapidly develops, the nomadic lifestyle lives on in Afar away from its urban centres. Afar men can be seen driving their precious camel herds alongside roads, or as small specks in the distance stretching out across the sands before finally disappearing in the hot horizon. Traveling around Ethiopia and the likes of the Afar can leave a visitor pondering what countries in the Global South might teach more developed countries rushing headlong into a high-tech-focused future about better balancing tradition and modernisation. Credit: James Jeffrey/IPS

Shared bonds and styles: “We have a strong affinity with Eritreans,” says Mekelle resident Huey Berhe, noting how most Tigrayans have Eritrean relatives, and vice versa. “We are the same people. I can feel the agony of isolation they have endured; I have lots of friends whose families were separated by the war.” Credit: James Jeffrey/IPS

By James Jeffrey
ADDIS ABABA, Feb 6 2019 (IPS)

The sudden peace between Ethiopia and Eritrea, and the opening of their previously closed and dangerous border, sent shockwaves of hope and optimism throughout the two countries. But a new issue has arisen: whether Eritreans coming into Ethiopia should still be classed as refugees.

“Asmara! Asmara! Asmara!” There is a new cry from the boys leaning out of minibuses picking up customers in the cities of Ethiopia’s Tigray region, which straddles the border with Eritrea. Here a minibus stops for a lunch break during its 300-kilometer journey between Mekelle, the Tigray capital, and the Eritrean capital, Asmara. The historic shift in Ethiopia-Eritrea relations means Eritreans can cross one of the world’s former most dangerous borders without a passport or permit. Credit: James Jeffrey/IPS

More nuanced reality: Eritreans cuing at the Eritrean border check point, before heading north to Asmara, illustrates how not all Eritreans want refugee status in Ethiopia, despite most media narratives leaving out the nuances and portraying an endless flow of feeling Eritreans. “I went from Addis Ababa to Asmara after the border opened to see my father for the first time in 26 years—he died 10 days after I arrived,” says Senait, an Eritrean who moved to the Ethiopian capital after marrying an Ethiopian but wasn’t able to visit her family after war broke out in 1998 between the two countries, thereby closing the border. “Now I am going back to take his brother, my uncle, to live in Asmara. It will be better for him to be with family there than in Addis. But I will return to my family in Ethiopia.” Credit: James Jeffrey/IPS

Long awaited freedom of movement: The wide palm tree-lined avenues of Mekelle, and its marketplace, have seen a rush of Eritreans coming to reunite with family and enjoy the more vibrant social life and shopping scene, before returning to Eritrea. Credit: James Jeffrey/IPS

Long awaited freedom of movement: Once known for hosting convoys of camels carrying salt from the Danakil desert, Mekelle’s bustling market has lately seen an increase in sales of cereals, construction materials and petrol. “In Eritrea they are limited to how much they can take out of the bank each month, but here they can get money sent by relatives abroad,” says Teberhe, a Mekele entrepreneur. “They are taking back construction materials in case building restrictions are reduced at home.” Credit: James Jeffrey/IPS

Shared bonds and styles: The back and forth over the border is helped by many people in Eritrea and Tigray having shared the same language, religion and cultural and social traditions going back centuries before Eritrea’s independence from Ethiopia in 1993. Credit: James Jeffrey/IPS

Shared bonds and styles: “We have a strong affinity with Eritreans,” says Mekelle resident Huey Berhe, noting how most Tigrayans have Eritrean relatives, and vice versa. “We are the same people. I can feel the agony of isolation they have endured; I have lots of friends whose families were separated by the war.” Credit: James Jeffrey/IPS

Peace—but also prosperity?: “Business is pretty good,” says Tesfaye, who usually works at the cement factory outside Mekelle but at the weekend earns extra money by exchanging Ethiopian birr and Eritrean nakfa for travelers crossing the border. “It’s a good opportunity while the banks aren’t changing money yet.” The open border has seen merchandise and trade flowing freely both ways, and merchants in Tigray cities and in Asmara profiting by the uptick, with talk of only more economic activity to come. Credit: James Jeffrey/IPS

Motoring to Mekelle: Tired-looking cars with the distinctive Eritrean registration plate beginning ER1 can be seen joining minibuses on the main road through Tigray to the border or parked around Mekelle. “We’ve had lots of Eritreans staying,” says Ruta who owns Lalibela Hotel in the center of Mekelle. There’s also been a surge in room rentals in Mekelle thanks to Eritreans looking for work. Credit: James Jeffrey/IPS

Refugee process still continues: A worker photocopying refugee application forms at the Tigray office for Ethiopia’s Administration for Refugee and Returnee Affairs, known as ARRA. “Ethiopia is a signatory to the Geneva convention on refugees, so for now there is no change in their refugee status,” says Tekie Gebreyesas with ARRA. “The relationship between the two countries has improved, but the internal situation in Eritrea is still the same.” Credit: James Jeffrey/IPS

Glued to the reforming prime minister: Lunchtime diners watch a broadcast showing Ethiopia’s popular new leader, Abiy Ahmed, who shocked all by offering peace to Eritrea. The dilemma that Ethiopia now faces over Eritrean refugees reflects a challenge at a global level to better understand the realities of refugee life. “Refugees are always portrayed as victims,” says Milena Belloni, who has researched Eritrean refugees for a decade. “It misses the reality, that they have capabilities and come with dreams, desires and aspirations.” Credit: James Jeffrey/IPS

Refugees and peace not a contradiction: The Tigray city of Shire, not far from the border and where the UNHCR’s regional office is, has also seen its fair share of Eritrean arriving. A UNHCR worker who wasn’t willing to be quoted noted that around the world almost all countries receiving refugees do so while at peace with the country refugees are leaving—hence there is nothing unusual about Ethiopia and Eritrea reconciling while the refugee flow continues. Credit: James Jeffrey/IPS

Travel opens eyes: Ethiopian airlines has restarted flights to Asmara, though Ethiopians often choose the cheaper option of taking a domestic flight between Addis Ababa and Mekelle, before continuing by bus. The overall situation and options available remain fluid, and there could be even more changes ahead. “I don’t think there is any way back now for the Eritrean government,” Teberhe says. “Eritreans are experiencing freedom—the genie is out of the bottle.” Credit: James Jeffrey/IPS

*Some names have been changed or omitted due to the requests of those interviewed.

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By IPS World Desk
DAKAR, Oct 11 2018 (IPS)

The Migrants as Messengers awareness-raising campaign (MaM), developed by the International Organization for Migration (IOM), uses innovative mobile technology to empower migrants to share their experiences and to provide a platform for others to do the same.

By capturing the migration experiences on-camera and sharing the videos on Facebook, the campaign aims to educate potential migrants and their families about the risks involved in irregular migration. It also presents alternatives to migrating on routes that run dangerously through the desert, on to the Mediterranean Sea, and often lead to indefinite detention in North African countries like Libya.

MaM, funded by the government of the Netherlands, is a regional project run in Senegal, Guinea-Conakry, and Nigeria. It trains migrants who return home, like Ndiaye and Fatou Sall, in videography, interviewing, migration reporting, and online advocacy, so they can volunteer as ‘citizen journalists,’ or more appropriately, ‘migrant messengers.’ So far, IOM has trained nearly 80 migrants, referred to as Volunteer Field Officers, across the three participating countries; about one-third of the volunteers in Senegal are women.

By IPS World Desk
MAPUTO, Sep 14 2018 (IPS)

Systemic inequalities based on gender, race, income and geography are mirrored in the digital realm and leave many women, especially the poor and the rural, trailing behind Africa’s tech transformation.

By IPS World Desk
DAKAR, Sep 7 2018 (IPS)

Migrants as Messengers is a peer-to-peer messaging campaign by the International Organization for Migration (IOM) where returning migrants share with their communities and families the dangers, trauma and abuse that many experienced while attempting irregular migration.

The stories are candid and emotional testimonials about the difficulties they faced.

Here is the discussion around irregular migration with Senegalese hip-hop singer Matar Khoudia Ndiaye–aka Big Makhou Djolof and Ramatoulaye Diene, a legal migration activist and radio personality.

The melting polar ice cap in July 2018, at 80 degrees North, inside the Arctic Circle between Svalbard, Norway and Greenland. Climate change is warming polar regions twice as fast as other parts of the world. Credit: Trevor Page

By Trevor Page
ROME, Aug 17 2018 (IPS)

Climate change is on us. Parts of the planet are burning up. Heatwaves across the northern hemisphere have dried vegetation and withered crops. Forests are ablaze in North America, Europe and Asia – even as far north as the Arctic Circle. The polar ice caps are melting and sea levels are rising. Massive storms and floods have devastated communities. Deserts continue relentlessly to encroach. And the extraordinarily hot spells this summer followed on from the extraordinarily cold spells of last winter. In 2018, extreme weather is the order of the day.

It’s not that we haven’t had adequate warning. Climate scientists, the United Nations and its intergovernmental panel on climate change, the IPCC, have been predicting this for decades. But it’s hard to get people to accept something remote in space and time, and whose very livelihood depends on maintaining the status quo. And for many still in denial, climate change is a natural phenomenon that we can’t influence anyway.

Be that as it may, Planet Earth is the only home we have – at least for the present. We must do everything we can to preserve it, lest the natural environment that spawned us be gone forever.

All along the Gerlach Strait in Antarctica, snow and ice is melting much faster than in earlier years, and glaciers are receding further. Credit: Trevor Page

Glacier in Paradise Bay, Antarctica. Whalers operating in the area in the 1920s named the bay likely for the abundance of whales rather than the natural beauty. Credit: Trevor Page

The face of the glacier in Antarctica’s Paradise Bay. The glacier periodically calves huge chunks of ice into the sea. Blue ice in Antarctica can be up to 1 million years old. Credit: Trevor Page

Iceberg in Hope Bay, Antarctica. Over 90% of an iceberg’s volume (and mass) is underwater. Icebergs that calve from glaciers on land cause sea levels to rise. Credit: Trevor Page

Gullfoss waterfall on the Hvita river in southwest Iceland. Although most of Iceland’s electricity comes from hydropower, the country has been able to strike a balance between renewable energy for industrial use and the conservation of nature. Credit: Trevor Page

Wildfire damage in Glacier National Park, USA. The summer heatwave across the globe has helped the spread of wildfires from Canada and the USA to Sweden as far north as the Arctic Circle, to Greece and Japan. Credit: Trevor Page

Ranching in the foothills of the Canadian Rockies.Still small, growing numbers are favouring organically grown food and sustainable agricultural practices over factory farming. Credit: Trevor Page

Huangshan or the Yellow Mountain in China’s Anhui Province. The natural beauty of rock formations, lush green pine trees and a sea of cloud has inspired countless painters and poets over the ages. Credit: Trevor Page

Excerpt:

A partial top view of Balukhali and Kutupalong camps in Cox's Bazar in Bangladesh. Credit: Farid Ahmed/IPS

By IPS World Desk
COX'S BAZAR, Bangladesh, Dec 14 2017 (IPS)

The world has witnessed innumerable images of the long walk to ‘freedom’ of Rohingya women, children and men. Some trudged for endless hours and days, many carrying elderly parents and babies in baskets, with the women suffering the unimaginable trauma having been victims of rape, torture and harassment.

Some of them took boats and drowned, others floated their children in oil drums, not knowing how to swim. They fled their burning homes in Myanmar’s western state of Rakhine, crossing over to Bangladesh, stateless, homeless and hopeless.

These images, which spoke a thousand words, shocked the world. The United Nations described the tragedy as a textbook example of ethnic cleansing. Over 600,000 Rohingya are now in living in camps Bangladesh, cared for by local and international NGOs, United Nations organizations such as IOM and government entities.

What lies at the root of this humanitarian crisis? Why have so many people been forced to flee their homeland? The exodus began in August after Myanmar’s security forces responded to Rohingya militant activities with brutality.

The Rohingya tragedy has been unfolding for decades, going back to 1948, when Myanmar gained independence. As the Rohingya felt insecure and feared genocide, amid growing international concern, former U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan was appointed by the Myanmar government led by Aung San Suu Kyi to find ways to heal simmering divisions between the Rohingya and Buddhists.

In its final report, the commission urged Myanmar to lift restrictions on movement and to provide citizenship rights for the Rohingya in order to avoid fuelling ‘extremism’ in Rakhine state.

So, what must be done? While there are no simple solutions, Myanmar and Bangladesh have signed a deal for the possible repatriation of Rohingya Muslims. The question now is can they safely return to their lands and homes – many of which were burned to the ground – and live as free people with the same rights accorded to Myanmar’s Buddhist majority?

A partial top view of Balukhali and Kutupalong camps in Cox’s Bazar in Bangladesh. Credit: Farid Ahmed/IPS

A group of Rohingya children emerge from a nearby religious school in Kutupalong camp. Credit: Naimul Haq/IPS

Rohingya women at Kutupalong camp. There are now over a million refugees in Bangladesh. Credit: Naimul Haq/IPS

A Rohingya woman at Kutupalong camp in Bangladesh. Credit: Naimul Haq/IPS

A Rohingya woman and child at Kutupalong camp, about 35 km from Cox’s Bazar in Bangladesh. Credit: Naimul Haq/IPS

A dysfunctional tubewell in Kutupalong refugee camp in Bangladesh. Credit: Sohara Mehroze Shachi/IPS

Rohingya women line up for aid. Credit: Sohara Mehroze Shachi/IPS

Rohingya women line up for food rations at Leda camp in Cox’s Bazar. Credit: Farid Ahmed/IPS

Cotton used for menstruation dried on roofs of shacks in Kutupalong Camp. Credit: Umer AIman Khan/IPS

Rohingya women of Balukhali camp embarking on the trek to the toilets. Credit: Umer Aiman Khan/IPS

Girls taking religious education lessons at a Madrasah in the camps. Credit: Kamrul Hasan/IPS

Newborn children in the Rohingya refugee camps. Credit: Umer Aiman Khan/IPS

A Rohingya woman and her child at a refugee camp in Bangladesh. Credit: Kamrul Hasan/IPS

Two Rohingya children carry firewood crossing Tamru canal that has divided Bangladesh and Myanmar along Bangladesh’s Naikhong chhari border in Bandarban district. Several thousand Rohingya people are still staying i no man’s land along Naikhongchhari border.
Credit: Farid Ahmed/IPS

A Rohingya boy shows his Myanmar currency at Shahparir Dwip in Cox’s Bazar. Credit: Farid Ahmed / IPS

Rubina (far left) along with her friend at the Islamic School at Kutupalong camp, home to Rohingya refugees from Myanmar. Credit: Farid Ahmed/IPS

A Rohingya couple, Mohammad Faisal and his wife Hajera, pose for a photo with their child at their camp at Teknaf Nature’s Park, Bangladesh. Credit: Farid Ahmed/IPS

The series of reports from the border areas of Myanmar and Bangladesh is supported by UNESCO’s International Programme for the Development of Communication (IPDC)

Excerpt:

Thanks to simple rainwater harvesting techniques, Almeida has managed to live harmoniously with the local ecosystem. “This is a water harvesting ‘calçadão’ (embankment), the water goes to the tank-calçadão that has a capacity to store 52,000 litres. We use it to water the garden. It provides an income for the families,”

By Fabiana Frayssinet
CANUDOS, Brazil, Nov 9 2017 (IPS)

Irrigated green fields of vineyards and monoculture crops coexist in Brazil’s semiarid Northeast with dry plains dotted with flowering cacti and native crops traditionally planted by the locals. Two models of development in struggle, with very different fruits.

On his 17-hectare farm in Canudos, in the state of Bahia, João Afonso Almeida grows vegetables, sorghum, passion fruit (Passiflora edulis), palm trees, citrus and forage plants.

João Afonso stands amidst his watermelons and other forage plants on his farm in the municipality of Canudos, in the state of Bahia, in Brazil’s semiarid Northeast. Thanks to water and soil management techniques, the droughts are not so hard on him, his crops or his animals. Credit: Gonzalo Gaudenzi / IPS

Between the rows, cactus plants grow to feed his goats and sheep, such as guandú (Cajanus cajan), wild watermelon, leucaena and mandacurú (Cereus jamacaru).

The earth is dry and dusty in the Caatinga, an ecosystem exclusive to Brazil’s semiarid region, where droughts can last for years, alternating with periods of annual rainfall of 200 to 800 mm, along with high evaporation rates.

But thanks to simple rainwater harvesting techniques, Almeida has managed to live harmoniously with the local ecosystem.

“This is a water harvesting ‘calçadão’ (embankment),” he told IPS, showing a tank installed with the help of the Regional Institute for Appropriate Small Farming (IRPAA), which is part of the Networking in Brazil’s Semiarid Region (ASA) movement, along with another 3,000 social organisations.

“The water goes to the tank-calçadão that has a capacity to store 52,000 litres. We use it to water the garden. It provides an income for the families,” he added.

For domestic consumption, he has a 16,000-litre tank that collects rainwater from the roof of his house through gutters and pipes.

ASA has installed one million tanks for family consumption and 250,000 for small agricultural facilities in the semiarid Northeast.

Almeida uses an “enxurrada” (flow) tank, and an irrigation system for his citrus trees, which through a narrow pipe irrigates the roots without wasting water. He also opted for plants native to the Caatinga that adapt naturally to the local climate and soil conditions.

“Production has improved a great deal, we work less and have better results. And we also conserve the Caatinga ecosystem. I believed in this, while many people did not, and thank God because we sleep well even though we’ve already had three years of drought,” he said.

In the past, droughts used to kill in this region. Between 1979 and 1983, drought caused up to one million deaths, and drove a mass exodus to large cities due to thirst and hunger.

Part of the extensive vineyards of the Especial Fruit company in the São Francisco River valley, where irrigation projects have made it possible to grow fruit on a large scale for export, in Brazil’s semiarid Northeast. Credit: Fabiana Frayssinet / IPS

“The farm used to be far from any source of water. We had to walk two to three kilometers, setting out early with buckets,” he recalled.

The droughts did not end but they no longer produce deaths among the peasants of Brazil’s semiarid Northeast, a region that is home to some 23 million of Brazil’s 208 million people.

This was thanks to the strategy of “coexistence with the semiarid”, promoted by ASA, in contrast with the historical policies of the “drought industry”, which exploited the tragedy, charging high prices for water or exchanging it for votes, distributing water in tanker trucks.

Thanks to simple rainwater harvesting techniques, Almeida has managed to live harmoniously with the local ecosystem. “This is a water harvesting ‘calçadão’ (embankment), the water goes to the tank-calçadão that has a capacity to store 52,000 litres. We use it to water the garden. It provides an income for the families” Credit: Fabiana Frayssinet / IPS

“Coexistence with the semiarid ecosystem is something completely natural that actually people around the world have done in relation to their climates. The Eskimos coexist with the icy Arctic climate, the Tuareg (nomads of the Sahara desert) coexist with the desert climate,” the president of the IRPAA, Harold Schistek, told IPS in his office in the city of Juazeiro, in the Northeast state of Bahía.

“What we have done is simply to read nature. Observing how plants can survive for eight months without rain, and how animals adapt to drought, and drawing conclusions for how people should do things. It is not about technology or books. It is simply observation of nature applied to human action,” he explained.

The “coexistence” is based on respecting the ecosystem and reviving traditional agricultural practices.

The basic principle is to store up in preparation for drought – everything from water to native seeds, and fodder for goats and sheep, the most resistant species.

The fruits are seen in the Cooperative of Farming Families from Canudos and Curaçá (Coopercuc), made up of about 250 families from those municipalities in the state of Bahía.

Almeida uses an “enxurrada” (flow) tank, and an irrigation system for his citrus trees, which through a narrow pipe irrigates the roots without wasting water. He also opted for plants native to the Caatinga that adapt naturally to the local climate and soil conditions. Credit: Fabiana Frayssinet / IPS

“We’re not only concerned with making a profit but also with the sustainable use of the raw materials of the Caatinga. For example, the harvest of the ombú (Phytolacca dioica) used to be done in a very harmful way, swinging the tree to make the fruit fall,” Coopercuc vice-president José Edimilson Alves told IPS.

Now, he said, “we instruct the members of the cooperative to collect the fruit by hand, and to avoid breaking the branches. We also do not allow native wood or living plants to be extracted.”

Coopercuc, which Almeida is a member of, has an industrial plant in Uauá, where they make jellies and jams with fruits of the Caaatinga, such as umbú (Spondias tuberosa) and passion fruit, with pulps processed in mini-factories run by the cooperative members.

The cooperative sells its products, free of agrochemicals, to large Brazilian cities and has exported to France and Austria.

“This proposal shows that it is possible to live, and with a good quality of life, in the semiarid region,” said Alves.

Coopercuc vice-president José Edimilson Alves. Credit: Fabiana Frayssinet / IPS

This reality exists in the 200,000-hectare fruit-growing area of the São Francisco River valley, located between the municipalities of Petrolina (state of Pernambuco) and Juazeiro. Government incentives and irrigation techniques favoured the installation of agribusiness in the area.

According to the State Development Company of the Valleys of São Francisco and Parnaíba, fruit growers in the area generate over 800 million dollars a year, and provide about 100,000 jobs.

“It is estimated that this use of irrigation represents 80 percent of all uses of the basin. But we have to consider that the collection of water for these projects promotes the economic and social development of our region by generating employment and revenues, through the export of fresh and canned fruit to Europe and the United States,” explained the company’s manager, Joselito Menezes.

The company Especial Fruit, which has about 3,000 hectares in the valley and 2,200 workers, produces thousands of tons of grapes and mangos every year, which are exported mostly to the United States, Argentina and Chile, along with a smaller volume of melons, for the local market.

“All the irrigation is done with the drip system, since good management of water is very important due to the limitations of water resources,” the company’s president Suemi Koshiyama told IPS.

He explained that “The furrow irrigation system only takes advantage of 40 percent of the water, and spray irrigation makes use of 60 percent, compared to 85 percent for drip irrigation.”

“The region that has the least water is the one that uses the most. Thousands of litres are used to produce crops, so when the region exports it is also exporting water and minerals from the soil, especially with sugarcane,” said Moacir dos Santos, an expert at the IRPAA.

“In a region with very little water and fertile soil, we have to question the validity of this. The scarce water should be used to produce food, in a sustainable manner,” he told IPS.

According to ASA, one and a half million farm families have only 4.2 percent of the arable land in the semiarid region, while 1.3 percent of the agro-industrial farms of over 1,000 hectares occupy 38 percent of the lands.

“Family farmers produce the food. Agribusiness produces commodities. And although it has a strong impact on the trade balance, at a local level, family farming actually supplies the economy,” dos Santos said.

Women's secure tenure rights lead to several positive development outcomes for them and their families, including resilience to climate change shocks, economic productivity, food security, health, and education. Here a young tribal woman works shoulder to shoulder with her husband planting rice saplings in India's Rayagada province. Credit: Manipadma Jena/IPS

By Manipadma Jena
NEW DELHI, Jun 26 2017 (IPS)

In Meghalaya, India’s northeastern biodiversity hotspot, all three major tribes are matrilineal. Children take the mother’s family name, while daughters inherit the family lands.

Because women own land and have always decided what is grown on it and what is conserved, the state not only has a strong climate-resistant food system but also some of the rarest edible and medicinal plants, researchers said.

Women’s secure tenure rights lead to several positive development outcomes for them and their families, including resilience to climate change shocks, economic productivity, food security, health, and education. Here a young tribal woman works shoulder to shoulder with her husband planting rice saplings in India’s Rayagada province. Credit: Manipadma Jena/IPS

While their ancient culture empowers Meghalaya’s indigenous women with land ownership that vastly improves their resilience to the food shocks climate change springs on them, for an overwhelming majority of women in developing countries, culture does not allow them even a voice in family or community land management. Nor do national laws support their rights to own the very land they sow and harvest to feed their families.

Legal protections for indigenous and rural women to own and manage property are inadequate or missing in 30 low- and middle-income countries, according to a new report from Rights and Resources Initiative (RRI).

Mary Wanjiru is a farmer from Nyeri County in central Kenya. Granting land rights to women can raise farm production by 20-30 per cent in developing countries. Credit: Miriam Gathigah/IPS

This finding, now quantified, means that much of the recent progress that indigenous and local communities have gained in acquiring legal recognition of their commonly held territory could be built on shaky ground.

“Generally speaking, international legal protections for indigenous and rural women’s tenure rights have yet to be reflected in the national laws that regulate women’s daily interactions with community forests,” Stephanie Keene, Tenure Analyst for the RRI, a global coalition working for forest land and resources rights of indigenous and local communities, told IPS via an email interview.

Together these 30 countries contain three-quarters of the developing world’s forests, which remain critical to mitigate global warming and natural disasters, including droughts and land degradation.

Bonificia Huamán (2nd- L), carries out a communal task with other women in Llullucha, a Quechua community located 3,553 meters above sea level, where 80 families practice subsistence agriculture, overcoming the challenges of the climate in the Andean region of Cuzco, Peru. Rights of rural women have seen uneven progress in Latin America Credit: Mariela Jara / IPS

In South Asia, distress migration owing to climate events and particularly droughts is high, as over three-quarters of the population is dependent on agriculture, out of which more than half are subsistence farmers depending on rains for irrigation.

“For many indigenous people, it is the women who are the food producers and who manage their customary lands and forests. Safeguarding their rights will cement the rights of their communities to collectively own the lands and forests they have protected and depended on for generations.” said Victoria Tauli-Corpuz, UN Special Rapporteur on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.

In Ghana, the stability of a woman’s marriage and good relations with male relatives are critical factors in maintaining her land rights. Credit: FAO

“Indigenous and local communities in the ten analyzed Asian countries provide the most consistent recognition of women’s community-level inheritance rights. However, this regional observation is not seen in India and Nepal, where inadequate laws concerning inheritance and community-level dispute resolution cause women’s forest rights to be particularly vulnerable,” Keene told IPS of the RRI study.

“None of the 5 legal frameworks analyzed in Nepal address community-level inheritance or dispute resolution. Although India’s Forest Rights Act does recognize the inheritability of Scheduled Tribes and Other Traditional Forest Dwellers’ land, the specific rights of women to community-level inheritance and dispute resolution are not explicitly acknowledged. Inheritance in India may be regulated by civil, religious or personal laws, some of which fail to explicitly guarantee equal inheritance rights for wives and daughters,” Keene added.

Desertification, the silent, invisible crisis, threatens one-third of global land area. This photo taken in 2013 records efforts to green portions of the Kubuqi Desert, the seventh largest in China. Credit: Manipadma Jena/IPS

Pointing out challenges behind the huge gaps in women’s land rights under international laws and rights recognized by South Asian governments, Madhu Sarin, who was involved in drafting of India’s Forest Rights Act and now pushes for its implementation, told IPS, “Where governments have ratified international conventions, they do in principle agree to make national laws compatible with them. However, there remains a huge gap between such commitments and their translation into practice. Firstly, most governments don’t have mechanisms or binding requirements in place for ensuring such compatibility.”

“Further, the intended beneficiaries of gender-just laws remain unorganised and unaware about them,” she added.

Women restore degraded land in southern India under a government-funded program. Credit: Stella Paul/IPS

Women’s land rights, recurring droughts and creeping desertification

According to the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD), one way to address droughts that cause more deaths and displaces more people than any other natural disaster, and to halt desertification – the silent, invisible crisis that threatens one-third of global land area – is to bring about pressing legal reforms to establish gender parity in farm and forest land ownership and its management.

Peruvian peasant women working on the family plot of land near the village of Padre Rumi in the Andean department of Huancavelica. Credit: Milagros Salazar/IPS

“Poor rural women in developing countries are critical to the survival of their families. Fertile land is their lifeline. But the number of people negatively affected by land degradation is growing rapidly. Crop failures, water scarcity and the migration of traditional crops are damaging rural livelihoods. Action to halt the loss of more fertile land must focus on households. At this level, land use is based on the roles assigned to men and women. This is where the tide can begin to turn,” says Monique Barbut, Executive Secretary of the UNCCD, in its 2017 study.

Closing the gender gap in agriculture alone would increase yields on women’s farms by 20 to 30 percent and total agricultural output in developing countries by 2.5 to 4 percent, the study quotes the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) as saying.

An Indian tribal woman holds up her land tenure document secure in the knowledge that now she can plan long term for her two sons. Credit: Manipadma Jena/IPS

Why the gender gap must close in farm and forest rights

The reality on the ground is, however, not even close to approaching this gender parity so essential for achieving the Sustainable Development Goals 1, 2 and 5 which connect directly with land rights.

Climate change is ushering in new population dynamics. As men’s out-migration from indigenous and local communities continues to rise due to fall in land productivity, population growth and increasing outside opportunities for wage-labor, more women are left behind as de facto land managers, assuming even greater responsibilities in communities and households.

The importance of protecting the full spectrum of women’s property rights becomes even more urgent as the number of women-led households in rural areas around the world continues to grow. The percentage of female-led households is increasing in half of the world’s 15 largest countries by population, including India and Pakistan.

Women farmers clearing abandoned farmland in the drought-affected Nachol village in Northern Bangladesh. Credit: Naimul Haq/IPS

Although there is no updated data on the growth of women-led households, the policy research group International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED) in its 2014 study found that from 2000 to 2010, slightly less than half of the world’s urban population growth could be ascribed to migration. The contribution of migration is considerably higher in Asia, it found, where urbanisation is almost 60 percent and is expected to continue growing, although at a declining rate.”

“Unless women have equal standing in all laws governing indigenous lands, their communities stand on fragile ground,” cautioned Tauli-Corpuz.

Without legal protections for women, community lands are vulnerable to theft and exploitation that threatens the world’s tropical forests that form a critical bulwark against climate change, as well as efforts to eradicate poverty among rural communities.

With the increasing onslaught of large industries on community lands worldwide, tenure rights of women are fundamental to their continued cultural identity and natural resource governance, according to the RRI study.

Zimbabwe’s legislation is silent on the issue of women’s rights to inherit communal land. And upon their husband’s deaths, many widows find themselves evicted from their matrimonial homes. Credit: Michelle Chifamba/IPS

“When women’s rights to access, use, and control community forests and resources are insecure, and especially when women’s right to meaningfully participate in community-level governance decisions is not respected, their ability to fulfill substantial economic and cultural responsibilities are compromised, causing entire families and communities to suffer,” said Keene.

Moreover, several studies have established that women are differently and disproportionately affected by community-level shocks such as climate change, natural disasters, conflict and large-scale land acquisitions, further underscoring the fortification of women’s land rights an urgent priority.

With growing feminization of farming as men out-migrate, and the rise in women’s education, gender-inequitable tenure practices cannot be sustained over time, the RRI study concludes. But achieving gender equity in land rights will call for tremendous political will and societal change, particularly in patriarchal South Asia, researchers said.

Having land has made all the difference to Zar Bibi, a 60-year-old widow in Pakistan (centre). Credit: Zofeen Ebrahim/IPS

Women and children caught in a dust-laden gust at an IDP settlement 60km south of the town of Gode, reachable only along a dirt track through the desiccated landscape. Credit: James Jeffrey/IPS

By James Jeffrey
GODE, Ethiopia, May 11 2017 (IPS)

Displaced pastoralists gather around newly arrived drums of brown water as a water truck speeds off to make further deliveries to settlements that have sprung up along the main road running out of Gode, one of the major urban centers in Ethiopia’s Somali region.

Women encountered in the refugee camps around Dolo Odo said that though children weren’t getting as much food as they would like, they were relatively healthy. Credit: James Jeffrey/IPS

Looking at the drums’ brackish-looking contents, a government official explains the sediment will soon settle and the water has been treated, making it safe to drink—despite appearances.“For those who have lost everything, all they can now do is go to a government assistance site for food and water.” --Charlie Mason, humanitarian director at Save the Children Ethiopia

A total of 58 internally displaced person (IDP) settlements in the region are currently receiving assistance in the form of water trucking and food supplies, according to the government.

But 222 sites containing nearly 400,000 displaced individuals were identified in a survey conducted by the International Organization for Migration (IOM) between Nov. and Dec. 2016.

The majority have been forced to move by one of the worst droughts in living memory gripping the Horn of Africa. In South Sudan famine has been declared, while in neighbouring Somalia and Yemen famine is a real possibility.

Despite being afflicted by the same climate and failing rains as neighbouring Somalia, the situation in Ethiopia’s Somali region isn’t as dire thanks to it remaining relatively secure and free of conflict.

But its drought is inexorably getting more serious. IOM’s most recent IDP numbers represent a doubling of displaced individuals and sites from an earlier survey conducted between Sept. and Oct. 2016.

Hence humanitarian workers in the region are increasingly concerned about overstretch, coupled with lack of resources due to the world reeling from successive and protracted crises.

The blunt fallout from this is that currently not everyone can be helped—and whether you crossed an international border makes all the difference.

“When people cross borders, the world is more interested,” says Hamidu Jalleh, working for the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) in Gode. “Especially if they are fleeing conflict, it is a far more captivating issue. But the issue of internally displaced persons doesn’t ignite the same attention.”

An old man squatting outside his shelter in an IDP settlement in the region around Gode. Credit: James Jeffrey/IPS

In January 2017 the Ethiopian government and humanitarian partners requested 948 million dollars to help 5.6 million drought-affected people, mainly in the southern and eastern parts of the country.

Belated seasonal rains arrived at the start of April in some parts of the Somali region, bringing some relief in terms of access to water and pasture. But that’s scant consolation for displaced pastoralists who don’t have animals left to graze and water.

“Having lost most of their livestock, they have also spent out the money they had in reserve to try to keep their last few animals alive,” says Charlie Mason, humanitarian director at Save the Children Ethiopia. “For those who have lost everything, all they can now do is go to a government assistance site for food and water.”

Under the 1951 Refugee Convention, crossing a border entitles refugees to international protection, whereas IDPs remain the responsibility of national governments, often falling through the gaps as a result.

In the early 1990s, however, human rights advocates began pushing the issue of IDPs to rectify this mismatch. Nowadays IDPs are much more on the international humanitarian agenda.

Displaced pastoralists inspecting a dead camel on the outskirts of an IDP settlement in the region around Gode. Credit: James Jeffrey/IPS

But IDPs remain a sensitive topic, certainly for national governments, their existence testifying to the likes of internal conflict and crises.

“It’s only in the last year-and-a-half we’ve been able to start talking about IDPs,” says the director of a humanitarian agency covering Ethiopia and the Horn of Africa, who spoke on condition of anonymity. “But the government is becoming more open about the reality—it knows it can’t ignore the issue.”

The Ethiopian government has far fewer qualms about discussing the estimated 800,000 refugees it hosts.

Ethiopia maintains an open-door policy to refugees in marked contrast to strategies of migrant reduction increasingly being adopted in the West.

Just outside Dolo Odo, a town at the Somali region’s southern extremity, a few kilometres away from where Ethiopia’s border intersects with Kenya and Somalia, are two enormous refugee camps each housing about 40,000 Somalis, lines of corrugated iron roofs glinting in the sun.

Amina, a former pastoralist and now displaced by drought, tends a garden that is nourished by the run off from a nearby water point in an IDP camp in Somalia. Credit: Muse Mohammed/UN Migration Agency (IOM) 2017

Life is far from easy. Refugees complain of headaches and itchy skin due to the pervading heat of 38 – 42 degrees Celsius, and of a recent reduction in their monthly allowance of cereals and grains from 16kg to 13.5kg.

But, at the same time, they are guaranteed that ration, along with water, health and education services—none of which are available to IDPs in a settlement on the outskirts of Dolo Odo.

Displaced women and children in Airstrip Area Displacement Site, Dolo Ado, Somali Region. Photo: Rikka Tupaz\/UN Migration Agency (IOM) 2017

“We don’t oppose support for refugees—they should be helped as they face bigger problems,” says 70-year-old Abiyu Alsow. “But we are frustrated as we aren’t getting anything from the government or NGOs.”

Abiyu spoke amid a cluster of women, children and a few old men beside makeshift domed shelters fashioned out of sticks and fabric. Husbands were away either trying to source money from relatives, looking for daily labour in the town, or making charcoal for family use and to sell.

“I’ve never seen a drought like this in all my life—during previous droughts some animals would die, but not all of them,” says 80-year-old Abikar Mohammed.

Displaced pastoralists helping a weak camel to its feet (it’s not strong enough to lift its own weight) using poles beneath its belly. Credit: James Jeffrey/IPS

As centres of government administration, commerce, and NGO activity, the likes of Gode and Dollo Ado and their residents appear to be weathering the drought relatively well.

But as soon as you leave city limits you begin to spot the animal carcasses littering the landscape, and recognise the smell of carrion in the air.

Livestock are the backbone of this region’s economy. Dryland specialists estimate that pastoralists in southern Ethiopia have lost in excess of 200 million dollars worth of cattle, sheep, goats, camels and equines. And the meat and milk from livestock are the life-support system of pastoralists.

“People were surviving from what they could forage to eat or sell but now there is nothing left,” says the anonymous director, who visited a settlement 70km east of Dolo Odo where 650 displaced pastoralist families weren’t receiving aid.

The problem with this drought is the pastoralists aren’t the only ones to have spent out their reserves.

Women and children at an IDP settlement 60km south of the town of Gode, reachable only along a dirt track through the desiccated landscape. Credit: James Jeffrey/IPS

Last year the Ethiopian government spent an unprecedented 700 million dollars while the international community made up the rest of the 1.8 billion dollars needed to assist more than 10 million people effected by an El Niño-induced drought.

“Last year’s response by the government was pretty remarkable,” says Edward Brown, World Vision’s Ethiopia national director. “We dodged a bullet. But now the funding gaps are larger on both sides. The UN’s ability is constrained as it looks for big donors—you’ve already got the U.S. talking of slashing foreign aid.”

Many within the humanitarian community praise Ethiopia’s handling of refugees. But concerns remain, especially when it comes to IDPs. It’s estimated there are more than 696,000 displaced individuals at 456 sites throughout Ethiopia, according to IOM.

“This country receives billions of dollars in aid, there is so much bi-lateral support but there is a huge disparity between aid to refugees and IDPs,” says the anonymous director. “How is that possible?”

Security in Ethiopia’s Somali region is one of the strictest in Ethiopia. As a result, the region is relatively safe and peaceful, despite insurgent threats along the border with Somalia.

But some rights organizations claim strict restrictions hamper international media and NGOs, making it difficult to accurately gauge the drought’s severity and resultant deaths, as well as constraining trade and movement, thereby exacerbating the crisis further.

Certainly, the majority of NGOs appear to exist in a state of perpetual anxiety about talking to media and being kicked out of the region.

Women and children caught in a dust-laden gust at an IDP settlement 60km south of the town of Gode, reachable only along a dirt track through the desiccated landscape. Credit: James Jeffrey/IPS

While no one was willing to go on the record, some NGO workers talk of a disconnect between the federal government in the Ethiopian capital and the semi-autonomous regional government, and of the risks of people starving and mass casualties unless more resources are provided soon.

Already late, if as forecast the main spring rains prove sparse, livestock losses could easily double as rangeland resources—pasture and water—won’t regenerate to the required level to support livestock populations through to the short autumn rains.

Yet even if resources can be found to cover the current crisis, the increasingly pressing issue remains of how to build capacity and prepare for the future.

In the Somali region’s northern Siti zone, IDP camps from droughts in 2015 and 2016 are still full. It takes from 7 to 10 years for herders to rebuild flocks and herds where losses are more than 40 percent, according to research by the International Livestock Research Institute and the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO).

“Humanitarian responses around the world are managing to get people through these massive crises to prevent loss of life,” Mason says. “But there’s not enough financial backing to get people back on their feet again.”

Animal carcass in Dolo Ado, Somali Region. Photo: Rikka Tupaz/UN Migration Agency (IOM) 2017

Nigeria Ngala: The humanitarian situation in Borno is catastrophic and more assistance is needed, both in remote and accessible areas in Borno. MSF teams have done a cross-border assessment in Ngala and Gambaru in Nigeria where over 200.000 people are living in disastrous conditions and are in desperate need of food and aid. The situation there is similar to what has already been seen in enclaves like Bama, Banki and Gwoza and shows the devastating impact on the population of the conflict between Boko Haram and the Nigerian military forces. Disastrous living conditions and lack of food are killing more people than violence. MSF teams provided food and medical care and are scaling up assistance. September 2016, copyright : Silas Adamou Moussa/MSF

By IKEA Foundation
LEIDEN, The Netherlands, Dec 2 2016 (IPS)

As hundreds of thousands flee their homes in northeastern Nigeria to seek safety from intensifying conflict between Boko Haram and the Nigerian military, the IKEA Foundation has given Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) €1 million to provide lifesaving medical assistance.

The conflict in Northeastern Nigeria started in 2009, as a result of the fighting, countless families have been force to flee their homes and sought safety in overcrowded cities or camps for displaced people Tragically, many are losing their lives and their loved ones to illness, hunger and violence.

MSF is working tirelessly to help displaced survive the biggest killers inside the camps: measles, diarrhoea, malaria and malnutrition.

The IKEA Foundation is leading the way with a €1 million grant and hopes that other funders will step forward to help MSF save even more lives.

MSF is using the funding to implement a range of health activities for the most vulnerable.

More than 7,500 children under five have been vaccinated against measles and have been provided with emergency food rations. Fourteen per cent of children screened for malnutrition were suffering from the deadliest form of malnutrition and received therapeutic food and treatment. MSF is also providing antenatal care for pregnant women, referring critical patients for hospital care and is delivering large quantities of clean water.

Shining a light on unseen emergencies
Around the world, MSF gives medical care to thousands of people suffering from emergencies that receive little or no international assistance.

Thanks to a special agreement with the IKEA Foundation signed only a couple of weeks ago, MSF can quickly access grants to help children and their families survive these emergencies.

“Through this grant, the IKEA Foundation is giving a financial boost for our emergency action on the ground and is also working with us to shine a light on this crisis,” says Bruno Jochum, General Director of MSF.

“When our teams first arrived in Banki in July, we discovered some 25,000 people living in catastrophic conditions in a camp without access to food, water and medical care. The health and humanitarian situation was beyond critical with mortality rates three times above the emergency threshold. Fourteen per cent of the children screened by MSF were suffering from severe acute malnutrition, and nearly one in three children was malnourished. Since then, we have been providing regular assistance in Banki, and we now see an improvement in the health situation. This shows the positive impact of humanitarian aid, although much more remains to be done.” Said Hugues Robert, MSF Programme Manager for Nigeria.

“This emergency has not received the kind of international attention it deserves considering the scale of suffering going on,” he continues. “The IKEA Foundation’s support of our lifesaving medical action is a recognition that more needs to be done, and fast.”

Per Heggenes, CEO of the IKEA Foundation, agrees. “Children and their families have the right to health and protection, which is why the IKEA Foundation is proud to support MSF’s lifesaving services during unseen emergencies and calls on other funders to do the same.”

Ngala, Nigeria: Emergency aid to victims of violence and displacement, On 13 November, MSF teams from Cameroon managed to access Ngala in Nigeria for the second time.
Some 78,000 internally displaced people live there in a camp and receive little external assistance. MSF provided food, relief items and medical care, and screened over 7,000 of children for malnutrition and vaccinated them against measles.
Over twenty per cent of the children were found to suffer from malnutrition. MSF teams also started to improve the water supply.
In the town of Gambaru, a few kilometers from Ngala, MSF teams vaccinated over 8,000 children under the age of five against measles and also screened them for malnutrition. Ten per cent were malnourished and received food aid and medical care. The town’s estimated 70,000 residents lack basic food supplies and have no access to healthcare.
The only health centre was burnt down, and the road is too dangerous for people to leave to seek care elsewhere.
October 2016, copyright : Sylvain Cherkaoui/COSMOS

Nigeria Ngala, MSF teams provided food and medical care and are scaling up assistance.
September 2016, copyright : Silas Adamou Moussa/MSF

Nigeria Ngala ,People in the camp reported having less than half a litre of water per person per day.
September 2016, copyright : Silas Adamou Moussa/MSF

Nigeria Ngala ,People in the camp reported having less than half a litre of water per person per day.
September 2016, copyright : Silas Adamou Moussa/MSF

Ngala: Teams have been able to offer medical consultations to the population in Gambaru inside a tent that was put up in health center that has been burnt down.
September 2016, copyright : Silas Adamou Moussa/MSF

The desperate living conditions in Borno state show the devastating impact of the ongoing conflict between Boko Haram and the Nigerian military. In several locations, people have sought refuge in towns or camps controlled by the military, and are entirely reliant on outside aid that does not reach them. “Although a nutrition emergency was declared three months ago, there has been a serious failure to help the people of Borno,” said Hugues Robert, head of MSF’s emergency response. “And we are again calling for a massive relief effort to be deployed now.”
October 2016, copyright: Stéphane Reynier de Montlaux/MSF

Conflict-affected populations in Banki
October 2016, copyright: Stéphane Reynier de Montlaux/MSF

During the second week of July 2016, MSF organised an exploratory mission and an emergency distribution for more than 15,000 displaced people leaving in dire conditions in the city of Banki, in Borno State – Nigeria.
July 2016, copyright: Naoufel Dridi/MSF

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Notes to editors
For more information about the IKEA Foundation’s emergency-grant agreement with MSF: https://www.ikeafoundation.org/stories/helping-save-children-msf-save-thousands-childrens-lives-catastrophic-disasters/

The IKEA Foundation and MSF have partnered since 2013 to bring lifesaving medical care to people suffering in conflicts and disasters. The IKEA Foundation has donated more than EIUR 20 million to MSF since 2013. In 2014, IKEA Foundation provided EUR 5 million to fight the Ebola virus outbreak in West Africa.

About the IKEA Foundation
The IKEA Foundation (Stichting IKEA Foundation) is the philanthropic arm of INGKA Foundation, the owner of the IKEA Group of companies. We aim to improve opportunities for children and youth in some of the world’s poorest communities by funding holistic, long-term programmes that can create substantial, lasting change. The IKEA Foundation works with strong strategic partners applying innovative approaches to achieve large-scale results in four fundamental areas of a child’s life: a place to call home; a healthy start in life; a quality education; and a sustainable family income, while helping these communities fight and cope with climate change.

Learn more at www.ikeafoundation.org and www.facebook.com/IKEAfoundation.

About MSF
Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) is an international, independent, medical humanitarian organisation that delivers emergency aid to people affected by armed conflict, epidemics, natural disasters and exclusion from healthcare. MSF offers assistance to people based on need, irrespective of race, religion, gender or political affiliation.
Learn more at www.msf.org/en/about-msf

For further information, please contact:
Radu Dumitrascu: Tel +31 6 5569 8570, Radu.Dumitrascu@IKEAfoundation.org
Emma Amadò : Tel +41 79 240 08 71, emma.amado@geneva.msf.org

This article has been provided by IKEA Foundation as part of an agreement with IPS

Excerpt:

To the world they are known as “refugees”. Nameless, faceless, all the same. But each of them have a different story to tell, of their lives, who they lost, and how they got here. Fleeing from the devastating conflict in the Central African Republic (CAR), today they are rebuilding their lives, one day at a time, in a camp in Cameroon. UN Women supports economic and social rehabilitation to some 6,250 vulnerable women and survivors of sexual and gender-based violence there. These are some of their stories.

Hawa, 23, was eight months pregnant when her husband was killed in the fighting in CAR. Her father and brother were also killed and her mother disappeared, leaving her completely alone. She fled and crossed into Cameroon, becoming a refugee at the Gado camp, where she gave birth to a son, Haphisi Ibrahim.

Hawa carries her son as a neighbour pushes a cart with bags of cassava flour, dried fish and nuts for Hawa to sell at the camp’s marketplace. “When I arrived I didn’t have anyone,” she said. She received counselling from UN Women staff. “They sensitized and trained me on how to do a business plan at the camp.”

Ardo Djibo Fadimatou (centre, in blue and yellow), 64, lost eight of her 15 children during the conflict in CAR. She does not know the where her husband is. She speaks for the over 12,000 women in the Gado refugee camp as their elected President and leads meetings in UN Women’s Social Cohesion Space. “The major problem I face as a female leader is to convince parents to send their children to regular schools. Most parents prefer their children to stay at home and learn the Koran. Women need to be educated, to have income-generating activities and be able to contribute to social cohesion here at the camp.”

Yaya Dia Adama escaped CAR and came to the Gado refugee camp with her five children. She is a seamstress by trade and is able to make a living using the sewing machines at the UN Women multipurpose centre. She is currently training three other women to use them to make clothes, and together the women produce dresses to sell in the market. “Each day I am able to earn 1000 to 2000 [CFA] francs a day [USD 1.75-3.50]. This has helped me to provide for my children.”

Ouseina Hamadou, 22, lives in the Ngam refugees host community and works as a food vendor. “UN Women trained me on a business plan, provided me with financial assistance, which I reinvested in my restaurant at the roadside. I started saving 5,000 francs [USD 8.50] a day and when I had 200,000 francs (USD 350), I decided to start building my own house.”

Nene Daouda is a 38-year-old widow who lost her husband in CAR during the war. She escaped to the Ngam refugee site in the Adamawa region of Cameroon with her five children, one of whom recently passed away from illness.

Nene (centre) and one of her daughters, Salamatou Abubakar (left), 12, have been providing food to many refugees at a makeshift restaurant in a small market at the camp. “I witnessed a complete transformation in my business and income following the training I attended, organized by UN Women. At the end of the training, they gave us 50,000 [CFA] francs as capital (USD 85). I reinvested this money in my business and started weekly savings.” Today, she is able to provide education and other basic needs to her children. In the image on the right, Nene passes out bites of dough to tide visitors over while she finishes cooking.

Salamatou steps outside to cut herself slices of mango as a snack. She sees a group of boys nearby playing football and immediately runs to join them, forgetting, at first, to put down her mango-slicing knife.

Displacement is devastating. Every day brings news challenges. But for these women, and many others in Cameroon, life at the refugee camp has also empowered them in ways they never imagined.

Credit for all photos: UN Women/Ryan Brown

This story, part of the “Where I am” editorial series, was replicated from the UN Women website http://www.unwomen.org/ IPS is an official partner of UN Women’s Step It Up! Media Compact.

About 296 million acres of Indian farmland are degraded, while some 200 million people are dependent on this land for their sustenance. In recent years, FAO support for rural livelihoods and sustainable management of water, soil and other natural resources have occupied centre stage in India, followed by crops and livestock, food security information systems and fisheries. Credit: Stella Paul/IPS

By IPS Correspondents
Aug 24 2016 (IPS)

More than 2.2 billion people in Asia rely on agriculture for their livelihoods, but the Asian Development Bank warns that stagnant and declining yields of major crops such as rice and wheat can be ultimately linked to declining investments in agriculture. Public investments in agriculture in India, for instance, have been roughly the same since 2004.

In most Asian countries, agriculture is the biggest user of water and can reach up to 90 percent of total water consumption – a fact that must be addressed as this critical resource comes under increasing strain from climate change, development and population growth.

The vision of the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) office in Bangkok is a food-secure Asia and the Pacific region, helping to halve the number of undernourished people in the region by raising agricultural productivity and alleviating poverty while protecting the region’s natural resources base.

About 296 million acres of Indian farmland are degraded, while some 200 million people are dependent on this land for their sustenance. In recent years, FAO support for rural livelihoods and sustainable management of water, soil and other natural resources have occupied centre stage in India, followed by crops and livestock, food security information systems and fisheries. Credit: Stella Paul/IPS

Zainab Samo, along with her son and daughter, planting a lemon seedling on her farm in Oan village in Pakistan’s southern desert district of Tharparkar, to fight the desert’s advance and for a windbreak. In the drylands of India and Pakistan, farmers still maintain many of their traditions of nurturing biodiversity of wild and cultivated food crops and medicinal plants, despite introduction of monocropping by the Green Revolution. Credit: Saleem Shaikh/IPS

Farmers in Indonesia’s West Java province follow instructions on the government’s “integrated planting calendar”. National food security based on self-sufficiency of rice production remains a major concern of the government. Credit: Kanis Dursin/IPS

Women farmers in Nepal, which has one of the world’s highest malnutrition rates. According to FAO, the low consumption of fruit and fresh vegetables, which is highly dependent on local seasonal availability, contributes to nutritional disorders such as deficiencies in iron and vitamin A. Over the last 64 years, almost 300 projects have been implemented in Nepal by FAO, embracing a broad range of programmes related to crop, vegetables, forestry, livestock, fishery, food safety, nutrition, planning, policy, rural development and environmental conservation. Credit: Naresh Newar/IPS

With floods, droughts and other calamities battering deltaic Bangladesh regularly, farmers need little prompting to switch to climate-resistant varieties of rice, wheat, pulses and other staples. An important opportunity in terms of technology advancement is offered by the genetic improvement of crops that can adapt to future climate conditions, also called “climate proofing” crops. Credit: Naimul Haq/IPS

Gadam sorghum was introduced to semi-arid regions of eastern Kenya as a way for farmers to improve their food security and earn some income from marginal land. The hardy, high-yielding sorghum variety has not only thrived in harsh conditions, it has won a place in the hearts - and plates - of local farmers. Credit: Isaiah Esipisu/IPS

By IPS Correspondents
Aug 24 2016 (IPS)

While agriculture could be the driving force to lift millions of Africans out of poverty and alleviate hunger, its full potential remains untapped. For example, only between five and seven percent of the continent’s cultivated land is irrigated, leaving farmers vulnerable to climate shocks like the devastating El Nino-driven drought in southern Africa. That’s why international agencies like the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) are forging key partnerships to enhance agricultural production, sustainable natural resource management and increased market access.

From boosting the productivity of drylands to introducing innovative, time-saving technology, success stories abound in Africa. Here are some viewed through the lenses of IPS photojournalists in the field.

Philippi residents grow organic produce such as spinach, lettuce, spring onions and beetroot in netted food tunnels, for sale to upmarket restaurants in Cape Town as well as for their own table. The FAO Organic Agriculture Programme aims to enhance food security, rural development, sustainable livelihoods and environmental integrity by building capacities of member countries in organic production, processing, certification and marketing. Credit: Kristin Palitza/IPS

In Sierra Leone, Emmanuel Kargbo, a 26-year-old farmer, pushes a motorised soil tiller recently given to his farming cooperative. Before he was trained to use it, it would take him more than twice as long to do it by hand. Getting technology into the hands of farmers is critical since global food production needs to increase by 70 percent by 2050 in order to feed an additional 2.3 billion people, and food production in developing countries needs to almost double. Credit: Damon Van der Linde/IPS

Gadam sorghum was introduced to semi-arid regions of eastern Kenya as a way for farmers to improve their food security and earn some income from marginal land. The hardy, high-yielding sorghum variety has not only thrived in harsh conditions, it has won a place in the hearts – and plates – of local farmers. Credit: Isaiah Esipisu/IPS

Small-scale farmer Ruth Chikweya working on her land near Harare, Zimbabwe. To counter the risk of poor yields, lost income and hunger, the Government of Zimbabwe turned to FAO for assistance in helping farmers in the country’s marginal areas focus more on producing small grains such as sorghum and millet – both traditionally important crops that can be grown with relatively less water resources and which are more nutritious than maize. Credit: Tonderai Kwidini/IPS

Isaac Ochieng Okwanyi has had his most successful harvest ever after using lime to improve the quality of his soil. Okwanyi, a 29-year-old father of two, began farming after he was evicted from Nairobi’s Mathare slum in 2008 following the country’s post-election violence. According to FAO, soil management is an integral part of land management. Credit: Isaiah Esipisu/IPS

Credit: John Isaac

By Aruna Dutt
UNITED NATIONS, Jun 9 2016 (IPS)

United Nations former chief photographer John Isaac’s short film “India’s Tigers: A Threatened Species” was released at the UN Wednesday to highlight the importance of the endangered species threatened by environmental degradation, water shortages and poaching.

Credit: John Isaac

Climate change has been a serious challenge to keeping tigers’ habitat alive, nearly 17000 villages in Rajasthan have been facing a water crisis.

Tigers provide enormous economic benefits for the local communities, attracting tourists to parks like Ranthambore National Park, one of the largest national parks situated in Rajasthan, India, where most of Isaac’s pictures were taken.

Tigers also control the deer and sambar population, playing a major role in balancing the ecosystem.

Growing populations in the areas where tigers have historically lived are leading to increasing clashes between humans and tigers.

Credit: John Isaac

“Local farmers are more in tune with saving the tigers, but it is the higher authorities that need to do something,” said John Isaac, who has born in India and has been documenting the tigers there for 25 years.

Along with overpopulation and climate change, illicit poaching is on the rise. Poachers will kill a tiger in India for $20, and by the time it gets to China it will be worth half a million dollars, said Isaac.

Credit: John Isaac

Their body parts are used in Asian medicines and tiger claws are used in jewellery. Tiger whiskers are considered a dreadful poison in Malaysia and a powerful aphrodisiac in Indonesia. According to UNODC, ancient trade routes are being used to smuggle tiger skins and bones to buyers based largely in northern India and are then smuggled out of the country through Nepal or directly to China.

In India, the Wildlife (Protection) Act, 1972 is a legislation that covers wildlife crime. However, UNODC highlights the need for strengthening its implementation and enforcement in order to curb this transnational crime.

The tiger population in India which used to be tracked by footprints, is now tracked by cameras installed in forests detect them by their face, allowing for a much more accurate count, said Isaac.

All Photographs Courtesy and Copyright: John Isaac.

Processing baby vegetables at Sidemane Farm in Swaziland. An EU grant helped local farmers to buy equipment and get training in business management and marketing. Credit: Mantoe Phakathi/IPS

By Kitty Stapp
May 5 2016 (IPS)

As the World Farmers’ Organization meets for its annual conference in Zambia to promote policies that strengthen this critical sector, IPS looks at how farmers across the globe are tackling the interconnected challenges of climate change, market fluctuations, water and land management, and energy access.