Girls in rural Somalia spend a large portion of their time helping with household chores. But thanks to Education Cannot Wait funding many girls are now able to receive an education. Credit: Save the Children

By Abdalle Ahmed Mumin
MOGADISHU, Jun 8 2021 (IPS)

Ten-year-old Sabah Abdi from Ali Isse, a small rural village on the Somaliland-Ethiopian border, scored well in her recent exams, placing third overall in her local village school of 400 students.

Yet is was just three years ago Sabah spent her days helping with household chores and herding goats, rather than studying because her pastoralist family could not afford her school fees.

“I’m very glad to be among the top three students in the village school. I am hoping to be a doctor and cure sick people in the village when I grow up,” Sabah told IPS.

Droughts, food insecurity prevent Somaliland children from attending school

Recurrent droughts, food insecurity, water shortages, poverty and inequality hinder efforts to get more Somaliland children in schools. Families in this part of Somaliland are dependent on their livestock for basic food and income, with many moving from place to place in search of good rains and pasture.

In July 2019, the Somaliland Government, Education Cannot Wait (ECW) – the United Nations global fund for education in emergencies and protracted crises – and UNICEF Somaliland launched a multi-year resilience programme to increase access to quality education for children and youth impacted by ongoing crises in Somaliland.

The Somaliland national primary net attendance ratio is estimated at 49 percent for boys and 40 percent for girls. Only 16 percent of children who are internally displaced and 26 percent of children in rural communities are enrolled in primary schools. 

If fully funded, ECW’s $64 million three-year education programme will reach 198,440 (out of whom 50 percent are girls) children by end of the third year, including 21,780 supported through ECW’s seed funding. Currently 18,946 students – 46 percent of whom are girls – have benefitted from the programme in 69 targeted schools in six regions. Out of these, a significant number of out of school children 6,342 (3,074 girls) have been enrolled in schools.

In addition, ECW has also launched two other similar multi-year investments in Puntland and in the Federal Government of Somalia and Member States in the amounts of $60 million and $67.5 million, respectively. The three programmes are aligned in outcomes and focus on increasing access to free education for the most marginalised children and youth, including for pastoralist communities.

“The positive impacts of ECW’s multi-year investments in Somalia and the tangible difference we are making together with our partners in the lives of Sabah and so many other marginalised girls and boys are heartwarming and inspiring. For the first time, many of these children and youth can learn and develop themselves in a safe, protective and inclusive environment,” said Yasmine Sherif, Director of Education Cannot Wait. “Yet, so much more remains to be done. I call on strategic donor partners to join our efforts and fully fund the three programmes. Together, we can restore the hope of a better future for Somalia’s most vulnerable children and youth.”

The Hani school in Sanaag region, Somalia. Credit: Save the Children

Free schooling thanks to ECW funding

The primary school Sabah attends offers free schooling thanks to support from ECW. It has enabled her and other kids from this rural community to start learning.

Sabah’s mother, Anab Jama, said she is now able to keep her children in the village school while her husband travels with the animals in search of fresh forage and water. “I stayed behind to take care of the children at school. I don’t want them to miss the free education,” Jama told IPS. 

Last year, ECW funding supported the distribution of education kits by local partners and the Somaliland Ministry of Education during the COVID-19 lockdown so children could continue their studies until schools reopened at the end of 2020. The kits included books and solar lamps.

“When the pandemic hit Somaliland, we closed down the school and sent kids back home,” Mohamed Abdi Egal, the headteacher of the Ali Isse primary school, told IPS. “There was not any other option we could provide to continue students’ learning. That was the biggest disruption we saw. When we resumed late 2020, we started to maintain social distancing and hand-washing.”

“Education is considered a vital element in the development of the community but when emergencies unfold like COVID-19 it shows how it hampers provision of essential services, including education,” Egal told IPS.

Thanks to funding 11,052 students, 4,568 of whom are girls, were able to sit for their grade 8 centralised final examinations in Puntland State, Somalia. Credit: Save the Children

Schooling tailored to pastoralist families’ needs

A year after the 2019 programme launched, the number of enrolments of children in the pastoralist community increased substantively – from 12 percent to 50 percent due to the programme design – said Safia Jibril Abdi, UNICEF Education Specialist in charge of managing the ECW-funded programme in Somaliland.

“Education always needs long-term planning. In the drought-affected areas families are on the move and besides that the children do the hard work, such as grazing animals. Girls are core for rural families when it comes to household chores,” continued Abdi.

“We started afternoon classes during the beginning of the school year [in August 2019] and teachers were hired. When the education timing matched the rural families’ lifestyle it brought impact and is much better for rural children.”

The programme targeted children 10 years and above and those who would be able to successfully complete their secondary education in five years within the constraints of their nomadic lifestyles.

Local community members in 15 locations across Somaliland have established education committees to ensure the long-term sustainability of providing education here.

“The goal was to increase access of children to the education with a safe environment. Also, the most important is to make the project sustainable for the local community,” Abdi told IPS. “Girls in school have certain needs, such as sanitary pads, which we provide to them. This helps teenage girls not miss ongoing classes during their periods.”

The UNICEF Education Specialist said that the benefits of the collaborative approach that saw the various actors, including the Ministry of Education, rural communities and civil society organisations, working alongside and with funding from ECW to deliver education for crisis-affected children made the initiative successful.

“It is a sad reality that one in every two children in Somaliland doesn’t have the opportunity for free education. With the launch of the ECW programme we are now able to reach these marginalised children many of whom are in the conflict affected and rural areas,” she said.

Meanwhile, Save the Children, an ECW partner working in Somalia’s Puntland State, has launched multiple distance learning initiatives, including uploading lessons online to help students continue their studies despite COVID-19 lockdowns.

As a result, 11,052 students, 4,568 of whom are girls, were able to sit for their grade 8 centralised final examinations.

“We have created an online learning programme under the ECW fund that targeted primary schools in Puntland. Currently 15,604 students, among them 6,924 girls, have access to education with the support of ECW in Puntland,” Ahmed Mohamed Farah, Save the Children’s ECW Education Consortium manager in Puntland, Somalia, told IPS.

As an ECW implementing agency, Save the Children aims to strengthen the Puntland government education system and enhance the quality by monitoring students’ dropout as well as managing the education system in the four regions it targets in the northeastern Somalia.

According to Farah, ECW funding also paid for the exam fees of 1,000 students from 51 target schools across Somalia.

“Certain students from the low-income families and those in the remote areas could not register for their national primary school exams due to the registration fees therefore we were able to cover for their exam fees.

“Six out of the 10 top grade students were girls. That is the impact,” Farah said.

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To learn more about Education Cannot Wait’s work for children and youth caught in emergencies and protracted crises, please visit: educationcannotwait.org and please follow @EduCannotWait on Twitter.

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A Palestinian family on the street in Beit Lahia in north Gaza. According to a new Save the Children report, 72 percent of child deaths and injuries across the world’s deadliest conflict zones are caused by landmines, unexploded ordinance, air strikes, and other explosives. Credit: Mohammed Omer/IPS.

By Tharanga Yakupitiyage
UNITED NATIONS, May 17 2019 (IPS)

Too many children are dying as a result of explosive weapons, and the international community must step up to protect and declare children off limits in war.

In a new report, Save the Children documented the devastating toll that armed conflicts have on children psychologically and physically and is urging further resources and political commitment to protect them.

“International law makes clear that everyone has a responsibility to make sure children are protected in war. Yet explosive weapons continue to kill, maim and terrorise thousands of children every year,” said CEO of Save the Children International Helle Thorning-Schmidt.

“Every warring party – from armed groups to governments – must do more to protect children and abide by this important moral principle to protect children,” she added.

“We are calling on governments to adhere to the humanitarian laws and norms and human rights provisions that are there to protect children. We have been underestimating the harm done to children by explosive weapons in densely populated urban areas. And attacks that cause disproportionate civilian harm are illegal under international law,” echoed Kevin Watkins, CEO of Save the Children UK.

According to the report, 72 percent of child deaths and injuries across the world’s deadliest conflict zones are caused by landmines, unexploded ordinance, air strikes, and other explosives.

In fact, children are seven times more likely to die from blast injuries than adults involved in fighting.

In Afghanistan, explosive weapons were the cause of death in 84 percent of child conflict fatalities over a two-year period compared to 56 percent of civilian adult deaths.

In Gaza in 2014, all reported child fatalities were the result of explosive weapons.

Just earlier this week, Saudi-led coalition airstrikes in Yemen’s capital Sana’a killed four children.

Children are also 50 percent more likely to be victims of a blast injury after conflicts are over as they are finally able to go outside and play again.

Mahmoud, a 12-year-old from Gaza, was playing in the street when he was hit by an explosive weapon and lost his eye.

“I heard an explosion and I felt something go into my eye. I touched my eye and began to run. I felt blood pouring out,” he told Save the Children.

Not only do such experiences leave an emotional scar, but also injured children are more likely than adults to suffer more complex internal damage as their underdeveloped skulls and muscles offer less protection to the brain and other organs.

For instance, the different make-up of children’s bones and tissue means that amputated limbs must be managed carefully. Bones continues to grow as the child grows, so wounds must be regularly tended and bone shaved down.

Without care or the necessary knowledge, children will live with life-lasting consequences, noted former Director General of British Army Medical Services and member of the Paediatric Blast Injury Partnership (PBIP) Major General Michael von Bertele.

“The sad reality is most medics just haven’t been trained to treat children injured by blasts. Nearly all the textbooks and procedures we have are based on research on injured soldiers, who are usually fit adults,” said von Bertele.

“We know children’s bodies are different. They aren’t just small adults….without [highly specialised knowledge], children are left with even worse disabilities, and often intractable pain for life,” he added.

For example, Iraqi 9-year-old Hassouni was severely injured by a car bomb as shrapnel penetrated his skull. One of his hands was paralysed and Hassouni lives in constant pain.

Medical manager of Syrian Relief Dr. Malik Nedam Al Deen echoed similar comments, stating: “For more than eight years we’ve seen children dying on the operating table from wounds that adults have survived. The tragedy is these deaths could have been prevented with basic training.”

Now, PBIP, a coalition of doctors and experts founded by Save the Children, has developed the world’s first guide to help doctors treat and save more children’s lives. It provides child-specific knowledge and treatments geared towards those who have suffered blast injuries. 

“In a war zone, you’re mentally prepared for the adults. You expect to treat injured soldiers, and even civilian adults. But the sights and sounds of a young child torn apart by bombs are something else,” said lead author of the manual Paul Reavley.

“Until this manual, there really hasn’t been anything to prepare doctors for dealing with the horror of children injured by blasts. For the first time it tackles psychological, as well as the physical, challenges. It’s not just a guide to practical procedures – it’s a crucial emotional crutch,” he added.

In May, Save the Children’s partner Syria Relief began distributing the manual to emergency units across northwest Syria including Idlib and Aleppo. The guide will later be dispersed to other conflict zones such as Afghanistan and Yemen.

“This manual is designed for anyone with a medical degree and a scalpel. I’m excited this is going to doctors in Syria. It’s a simple solution that will undoubtedly save lives,”said Al Deen, who helped co-author the guide.

Alongside the manual, Save the Children launched a new campaign to #StopTheWarOnChildren and a 10-point charter which was presented at the Hague in the Netherlands to United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet and Dutch Princess Viktoria. 

The charter highlights the need to ensure parties to conflicts adhere to international law and standards, including the suspension of arms sales where there is a risk of killing or injuring children, hold perpetrators to account, and provide children with necessary, practical assistance.

“This manual is a practical step that will save countless lives. But prevention is the best option. Even in war, children have a right to protection,” said Watkins.

“The bottom line is that all governments and armed forces need to stop treating children as though they are adults in miniature. Evidence on blast injury shows they are more vulnerable, and this should be reflected in how those using explosive weapons assess risk – and how agencies responsible for investigating possible war crimes review evidence,” he added.

The redistribution of asylum seekers from Italy and Greece, which are the main landing territories of migrants heading to Europe, was stopped mainly because of opposition to the refugee quotas from some EU member countries. Credit: Ilaria Vechi/IPS.

By Maged Srour
ROME, Aug 2 2018 (IPS)

Thousands of migrant minors placed in reception facilities upon arrival in Italy, as a first step in identification and later relocation into other structures for asylum seekers, are untraceable and feared trafficked.

A report, Tiny invisible slaves 2018, released this week by the non-governmental organisation Save the Children, states that 4,570 minors migrating through Italy are untraceable as of May.

Once they escape the facilities, their vulnerable position—having no money, not knowing the language and being often traumatised after their trip to Italy—places them at the mercy of traffickers and exploiters.

Many of these children end up in networks of sexual exploitation, forced labour and enslavement. Save the Children reported that some girls are forced to perform survival sex—to prostitute themselves in order to pay the ‘passeurs’ to cross the Italian border or to pay for food or a place to sleep.

“I left Nigeria with a friend and once we arrived to Sabha (Libya) we were arrested,” Blessing, one of the victims, told Save the Children.

“I stayed there for three months and then I moved to Tripoli. For eight interminable months I was forced to prostitute myself in exchange for food,” she added.

Blessing then reported that her nightmare continued in Italy where she was sexually exploited by a compatriot. She ultimately was able to enter a protection programme thanks to Save the Children. But her story is a rare case of rescue as many other children find themselves enslaved with no end in sight.

According to testimonies collected by the NGO, minors leave reception facilities because they judge the processes of entering the child protection system as a useless slowing down towards the economic autonomy they aspire to and usually leave the centres a few days after identification.

This has been occurring largely in the southern regions of Italy.

But according to the report, “the flow of minors in transit through Italy to northern Europe is, by its own nature, difficult to quantify.” Though it noted that minors transiting through Italy between January and March, make up between 22 percent and 31 percent out of the total transitioning migrants across the country. The minors are mostly Eritrean (14 percent), Somalis (13 percent), Afghans (10 percent), Egyptians (9 percent) and Tunisians (8 percent).

“The fact that the European Union relocation programme was blocked in September 2017, has contributed in an important way to forcing children in transit to re-entrust themselves to traffickers, or to risk their own lives to cross borders, as well as it continues to happen for those minors who transit through the Italian north frontier with the aim of reaching the countries of northern Europe,” Roberta Petrillo, from the child protection department of Save the Children, Italy, told IPS.

The redistribution of asylum seekers from Italy and Greece, which are the main landing territories of migrants heading to Europe, was stopped mainly because of opposition to the refugee quotas from the EU member countries of Poland, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary.

The EU’s initial plan provided for the relocation of 160,000 refugees from Italy and Greece to other European countries within two years. As of May, 12,690 and 21,999 migrants were relocated from Italy and Greece respectively. To date, the Czech Republic has accepted only 12 refugees, Slovakia 16, with Hungary and Poland having taken no refugees.

According to estimates from the International Labour Organization (ILO) and the Walk Free Foundation, in partnership with the International Organization for Migration (IOM), almost 10 million children and youth across the world were forced into slavery, sold and exploited, mainly for sexual and labour purposes in 2016.

They make up 25 percent of the over 40 million people who are trafficked, of which more than seven out of 10 are women and girls. According to the ILO estimates, nearly one million victims of sexual exploitation in 2016 were minors, while between 2012 and 2016, 152 million boys and girls aged between five and 17 were engaged in various forms of child labour. More than half of these activities were particularly dangerous for their own health.

“When we talk about data of this kind we must be very cautious because we are dealing with numbers that only concern the emergence of the phenomenon, without keeping track of the submerged data,” Petrillo added.

There were 30,146 registered victims of trafficking and exploitation in 2016 in the 28 EU countries with 1,000 of them minors.

However, according to 2016 figures from the ILO, 3.6 million people across Europe were reportedly modern day slaves.

According to the Alabama Human Trafficking Task Force, human trafficking is the second-largest criminal industry in the world, second only to the illegal drug trade. It is estimated to be an industry worth USD32 billion annually.

The most targeted

Nigerian and Romanian girls are amongst the most targeted by the trafficking networks.

According to Save the Children, for the journey that will take them to Italy, the Nigerian girls contract a debt between 20,000 and 50,000 euros that they can only hope to repay by undergoing forced prostitution.

Like their peers from Romania, they enter a mechanism of sexual exploitation from which they cannot get free easily.

While Nigerians escape mainly for security issues and political instability, Romanian girls flee their country because of a total lack of opportunities and economic autonomy there. Their deep economic deprivation makes them highly vulnerable and easy targets for traffickers, who deceive or coerce them to enter into networks of sexual exploitation. 

According to the Save the Children Report, in 2017 there were a total of 200 minor victims of trafficking and exploitation who were put into protection programmes. The vast majority of these, 196, were girls with about  93.5 percent Nigerian girls aged between 16 and 17 years.

In addition, almost half of the minors were sexually exploited 

Riccardo Noury, spokesperson for Amnesty International Italy,  told IPS that migrant men were welcomed with open arms because they were useful for working under exploited conditions.

However, migrant women were welcome only because they were used for prostitution.

“By not guaranteeing legal and safe paths for those fleeing wars and persecution, by not organising and recognising the presence of migrant workers, we just do a favour to the criminal groups, who build real fortunes on trafficking in human beings,” Noury told IPS.

While Petrillo said that “the Italian and the EU legal framework is solid and a good one,” she cautioned that  “what is needed, instead, is a unitary intervention that closely links the issue of anti-trafficking reality with that of minors in transit. And we must be able to guarantee universal protection for the victims.”

Africa's children still stand as the number one victims of suffering and destitution across the continent. Credit: Jeffrey Moyo/IPS

By Jeffrey Moyo
HARARE, Aug 26 2015 (IPS)

“Poverty has become part of me,” says 13-year-old Aminata Kabangele from the Democratic Republic of Congo. “I have learned to live with the reality that nobody cares for me.”

Aminata, who fled her war-torn country after the rest of her family was killed by armed rebels and now lives as a as a refugee in Zimbabwe’s Tongogara refugee camp in Chipinge on the country’s eastern border, told IPS that she has had no option but to resign her fate to poverty.

Despite the United Nations’ Millennium Development Goal (MDG) of eradicating extreme poverty and hunger, African children still stand as the number one victims of suffering and destitution across the continent.“Poverty has become part of me. I have learned to live with the reality that nobody cares for me” – Aminata Kabangele, a 13-year-old refugee from the Democratic Republic of Congo

“In every country you may turn to here in Africa, children are at the receiving end of poverty, with high numbers of them becoming orphans,” Melody Nhemachena, an independent social worker in Zimbabwe, told IPS.

Based on a 2013 UNICEF report, the World Bank has estimated that up to 400 million children under the age of 17 worldwide live in extreme poverty, the majority of them in Africa and Asia.

According to human rights activists, the growing poverty facing many African families is also directly responsible for the fate of 200,000 African children that the United Nations estimates are sold into slavery every year.

“Many families in Africa are living in abject poverty, forcing them to trade their children for a meal to persons purporting to employ or take care of them (the children), but it is often not the case as the children end up in forced labour, earning almost nothing at the end of the day,” Amukusana Kalenga, a child rights activist based in Zambia, told IPS.

West Africa is one of the continent’s regions where modern-day slavery has not spared children.

According to Mike Sheil, who was sent by British charity and lobby group Anti-Slavery International to West Africa to photograph the lives of children trafficked as slaves and forced into marriage, for many families in Benin – one of the world’s poorest countries – “if someone offers to take their child away … it is almost a relief.”

Global March Against Child Labour, a worldwide network of trade unions, teachers’ and civil society organisations working to eliminate and prevent all forms of child labour, has reported that a 2010 study showed that “a staggering 1.8 million children aged 5 to 17 years worked in cocoa farms of Ivory Coast and Ghana at the cost of their physical, emotional, cognitive and moral well-being.”

“Trafficking in children is real. Gabon, for example, is considered an Eldorado and draws a lot of West African immigrants who traffic children,” Gabon’s Social Affairs Director-General Mélanie Mbadinga Matsanga told a conference on preventing child trafficking held in Congo’s southern city of Pointe Noire in 2012.

Gabon is primarily a destination and transit country for children and women who are subjected to forced labour and sex trafficking, according to the U.S. State Department’s 2011 human trafficking report.

In Africa’s most populous country, Nigeria, a study of child poverty showed that over 70 percent of children are not registered at birth while more than 30 percent experience severe educational deprivation. According to UNICEF Nigeria, about 4.7 million children of primary school age are still not in school.

“These boys and girls, some as young as 13-years-old, serve in the ranks of terror groups like Boko Haram, often participating  in suicide operations, and act as spies,” Hillary Akingbade, a Nigerian independent conflict management expert, told IPS.

“Girls here are often forced into sexual slavery while many other African children are abducted or recruited by force, with others joining out of desperation, believing that armed groups offer their best chance for survival,” she added.

Akingbade’s remarks echo the reality of poverty which also faces children in the Central African Republic, where an estimated 6,000 to 10,000 boys and girls became members of armed groups following an outbreak of a bloody civil war in the central African nation in December 2012, according to Save the Children.

Violence plagued the Central African Republic when the country’s Muslim Seleka rebels seized control of the country’s capital Bangui in March 2013, prompting a backlash by the largely Christian militia.

A 2013 report by Save the Children stated that in the Central African Republic, children as young as eight were being recruited by the country’s warring parties, with some of the children forcibly conscripted while others were impelled by poverty.

Last year, the United Nations reported that the recruitment of children in South Sudan’s on-going civil war was “rampant”, estimating that there were 11,000 children serving in both rebel and government armies, some of who had volunteered but others forced by their parents to join armed groups with the hopes of changing their economic fortunes for the better.

Meanwhile, back in the Tongogara refugee camp, Aminata has resigned herself. “I have descended into worse poverty since I came here in the company of other fleeing Congolese and, for many children like me here at the camp, poverty remains the order of the day.”

Edited by Phil Harris   

The 15-member Security Council discusses the security situation in Yemen on Aug. 20, 2015, at the United Nation’s headquarters in New York. Credit: UN Photo/Loey Felipe

By Kanya D'Almeida
UNITED NATIONS, Aug 20 2015 (IPS)

With a staggering four in five Yemenis now in need of immediate humanitarian aid, 1.5 million people displaced and a death toll that has surpassed 4,000 in just five months, a United Nations official told the Security Council Wednesday that the scale of human suffering is “almost incomprehensible”.

Briefing the 15-member body upon his return from the embattled Arab nation on Aug. 19, Under-Secretary-General for Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs Stephen O’Brien stressed that the civilian population is bearing the brunt of the conflict and warned that unless warring parties came to the negotiating table there would soon be “nothing left to fight for”.

An August assessment report by Save the Children-Yemen on the humanitarian situation in the country of 26 million noted that over 21 million people, or 80 percent of the population, require urgent relief in the form of food, fuel, medicines, sanitation and shelter.

The health sector is on the verge of collapse, and the threat of famine looms large, with an estimated 12 million people facing “critical levels of food insecurity”, the organisation said.

In a sign of what O’Brien denounced as a blatant “disregard for human life” by all sides in the conflict, children have paid a heavy price for the fighting: 400 kids have lost their lives, while 600 of the estimated 22,000 wounded are children.

Aid groups say Monday’s bombing of the Houthi rebel-controlled Red Sea port by Saudi military jets has greatly worsened the risk of continued suffering, since the port served as the main entry point for shipments of humanitarian supplies.

In a statement published shortly after the airstrikes, Edward Santiago, Save the Children’s Country Director for Yemen, said, “We don’t yet know the full extent of the damage at Hodeida but we can’t lose a day; time is running out for Yemen’s children who are already at risk of starvation, disease, and abuse.”

He said there are already 5.9 million children going hungry, 624,000 displaced and about 7.3 million sick and wounded kids who are not receiving medical attention.

Even as civilians’ needs multiply, funding for the humanitarian response remains slow.

U.N. agencies say they have only received 282 million dollars for the response plan, just 18 percent of the 1.6-billion-dollar sum requested. Even if Saudi Arabia makes good on its pledge of 274 million dollars it will only bring funding up to 33 percent of the total required to adequately meet the crisis.

The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) said Wednesday its operations, too, are “grossly underfunded”; the agency has received just 16 percent of an urgent 182.6-million-dollar funding appeal.

The scale and rapid escalation of the conflict has much of the international community stunned. President of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), Peter Maurer, said after a three-day visit to Yemen earlier this month that he was “appalled” by the situation for civilians, which is “nothing short of catastrophic”.

Having witnessed the destruction first-hand he added in a press interview on Aug. 19, “Yemen after five months looks like Syria after five years.”

O’Brien described the southern port city of Aden as a “shattered” metropolis, “where unexploded ordnance litter the streets and buildings”; while the city of Sana’a is pock-marked with craters left by airstrikes.

While humanitarian groups struggle to provide life-saving supplies, human rights watchdogs say the combination of Saudi-coalition-led airstrikes from above and fighting between pro- and anti Houthi armed groups on the ground have put civilians in an impossible situation.

A new Amnesty International report documenting what the organisation calls a “gruesome and bloody trail of death and destruction” suggests that unlawful attacks by all parties may amount to war crimes.

Edited by Kitty Stapp

A child stands amid the rubble of what was once his home, after an aerial bombardment on the city of Idlib in northwestern Syria. Credit: Freedom House/CC-BY-2.0

By Kanya D'Almeida
UNITED NATIONS, Jul 9 2015 (IPS)

Barely 10 months ago, the United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR) said the refugee population from Syria had reached the three million mark. Today, the latest data from the field show that the number has passed four million.

“This is the biggest refugee population from a single conflict in a generation,” U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees António Guterres said in a statement on Jul. 9.

"I took [my son] to the field hospital in Tafas. They tried to help him but couldn't, since the appropriate equipment is not available in Syria. He needed to go to Jordan for treatment." -- Murad, the father of a 27-day-old baby injured in a barrel bomb attack in Syria
“It is a population that deserves the support of the world but is instead living in dire conditions and sinking deeper into abject poverty.”

Midway through its fifth year, the Syrian conflict that began in March 2011 has reached catastrophic heights, and yet shows no sign of abating.

What started out as mass demonstrations against long-time ruler Bashar al-Assad now involves multiple armed groups including fighters from the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS).

A quarter of a million people are dead, according to estimates by the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. A further 840,000 are injured, with many thousands maimed for life.

And as U.N. agencies struggle to cobble together the funds needed to heal, house and feed millions who have fled bullet-ridden towns and demolished cities, the exodus just keeps growing.

A UNHCR press release issued Thursday said Turkey is hosting 1.8 million Syrians, more than any other nation in the region. Over 250,000 of these refugees are living in 23 camps established and maintained by the Turkish government.

Other countries in the region that have opened their doors to scores of families fleeing the fighting include Lebanon (currently home to over 1.7 million Syrians), Jordan (hosting 629,000 refugees), Iraq (249,000) and Egypt (132,000).

In every single one of these countries, health and infrastructure facilities are quickly nearing breaking point as the hungry, sick and wounded arrive in droves.

On Jul. 9 Doctors Without Borders (MSF) warned that Jordanian hospitals are groaning under a huge patient burden, including numerous Syrians injured by barrel bombs.

In the last two weeks alone more than 65 war-wounded patients turned up at the emergency room of Al-Ramtha hospital in northern Jordan – less than three miles from the Syrian border – where MSF teams have been working with the Jordanian Ministry of Health to provide emergency care to refugees.

The medical humanitarian organisation has called repeatedly for an end to the use of these deadly, improvised weapons, which are typically constructed from oil drums, gas cylinders or water tanks filled with explosives and locally-sourced scrap metals dropped from high-altitude helicopters.

Due to the wide impact radius of barrel bomb attacks, victim often suffer wounds that are impossible to treat within Syria’s borders, where many health facilities have been reduced to rubble in the past five years.

“More than 70 percent of the wounded we receive suffer from blast injuries, and their multiple wounds tell their stories,” Renate Sinke, project coordinator of MSF’s emergency surgical programme in Ramtha, said in the statement released Thursday.

Dr. Muhammad Shoaib, MSF’s medical coordinator in Jordan, added, “A significant proportion of the patients we receive have suffered head injuries and other multiple injuries that cannot be treated inside southern Syria, as CT-scans and other treatment options are limited.”

One of the patients at Al-Ramtha Hospital, the father of a 27-day-old child who suffered head injuries as a result of shrapnel from a barrel bomb, recounted his family’s plight, which mirrors the experience of millions of civilians caught in the crossfire of the deadly conflict.

“At 9:00 a.m., a barrel bomb hit our house in Tafas […]. When I heard the news, I dropped what I was doing and I ran to the house as fast as I could […]. I saw my little boy. He was quiet and his head seemed to be injured. I took him to the field hospital in Tafas. They tried to help him but couldn’t, since the appropriate equipment is not available in Syria. He needed to go to Jordan for treatment,” Murad, the boy’s father, told MSF staff.

“It took us one-and-a-half hours from the time of injury until we arrived at the border, and some more before arriving in Ramtha. Now, all I want is for my baby to be better and go back to Syria.”

It is families like these that comprise the bulk of Syrian refugees, the highest recorded since 1992 when Afghan refugees reached an estimated 4.6 million, says the U.N. Refugee Agency.

Indeed, the figure from Syria could well be even higher than field reports suggest, and does not include the roughly 270,000 asylum applications by Syrians in Europe. A further 7.2 million people are displaced inside Syria itself, in remote or heavily embattled regions.

Worse, officials say, is the apparently inverse relationship between emergency needs and humanitarian funding: with the former constantly rising, while the latter shrinks.

UNHCR and its partners had requested 5.5 billion dollars for relief operations in 2015, but so far only a quarter of those funds have been received.

The World Food Programme (WFP), tasked with feeding about six million Syrians inside the country and in the surrounding region, is facing a massive shortfall, and warned last week that unless immediate funding became available, half a million people could starve.

There is also the very real possibility that over 1.7 million people will have to face the coming winter months without fuel or shelter.

As aid supplies dwindle, desperate and impoverished families are sending their children out to earn a living – according to a joint report released this week by the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) and Save the Children, three quarters of all refugee households surveyed reported that children have become breadwinners.

Against the backdrop of soaring poverty rates, these findings are perhaps not unexpected. An estimated 86 percent of refugees outside of camps in Jordan, for instance, live below the poverty line, while a further 55 percent of refugees in Lebanon are living in “sub-standard” shelters, according to the refugee agency.

While world leaders oscillate between political and military solutions to the crisis, Syrians are faced with a choice: death by shrapnel at home or death by starvation abroad?

Edited by Kitty Stapp

Aboudi, 12, spends his evenings selling flowers outside Beirut's bars. His parents are stuck in his war-torn hometown Aleppo in Syria. Credit: Sam Tarling/IPS

By Kanya D'Almeida
UNITED NATIONS, Jul 3 2015 (IPS)

In a conflict that has claimed over 220,000 lives and injured a further 840,000 people as of January 2015, it is sometimes hard to see beyond the death toll.

What started as a confrontation between pro-democracy activists and the entrenched dictatorship of President Bashar al-Assad in 2011, Syria’s civil war is today one of the world’s most bitter conflicts, involving over four separate armed groups and touching numerous other countries in the region.

“I feel responsible for my family. I feel like I’m still a child and would love to go back to school, but my only option is to work hard to put food on the table for my family." -- Ahmed, a 12-year-old Syrian refugee in Jordan
With millions on the brink of starvation and displaced Syrians now representing the largest refugee population in the world, after Palestinians, scores of lesser-known war-related atrocities are jostling for space in the headlines.

On Jul. 2, the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) and Save the Children released a joint report highlighting one of the hidden impacts of the Syrian crisis – a rise in child labour throughout the region.

In a press release issued in Jordan’s capital, Amman, Thursday, the agencies warned, “Syria’s children are paying a heavy price for the world’s failure to put an end to the conflict.

“The report shows that inside Syria, children are now contributing to the family income in more than three quarters of surveyed households, In Jordan, close to half of all Syrian refugee children are now the joint or sole family breadwinners in surveyed households, while in some parts of Lebanon, children as young as six years old are reportedly working.”

“The most vulnerable of all working children are those involved in armed conflict, sexual exploitation and illicit activities including organised begging and child trafficking,” the release stated.

Before the outbreak of war four years ago, Syria was considered a middle-income country, providing its people a decent standard of living and boasting a literacy rate of 90 percent, according to UNICEF data.

By the middle of 2015, however, four in five Syrians were living below the poverty line and 7.6 million were classified as internally displaced persons (IDPs).

With whole cities and towns emptied of residents, businesses and industries have collapsed, sending unemployment rates soaring from 14.9 percent in 2011 to 57.7 percent today.

The U.N. Refugee Agency estimates that about 3.3 million people have fled the country altogether and now live in camps or makeshift shelters in neighbouring states. Women and children comprise over half the refugee population.

The vast majority of those who remain inside Syria – over 64.7 percent – are classified as living in “extreme poverty”, unable to meet the most basic food or sanitary needs.

Thus, experts say, it comes as no surprise that children are becoming breadwinners, taking to the streets and selling their labour in a range of industries to help keep their families alive.

As 12-year-old Ahmed, a Syrian refugee in Jordan, pointed out in interviews with UNICEF, “I feel responsible for my family. I feel like I’m still a child and would love to go back to school, but my only option is to work hard to put food on the table for my family.”

Entitled ‘Small Hands, Heavy Burden: How the Syrian Conflict is Driving More Children into the Workforce’, the report notes that an estimated 2.7 million Syrian children are currently out of school.

With few education opportunities and dwindling humanitarian rations, these children now either comprise, or are at risk of joining the ranks of, a veritable army of child workers.

“In Jordan, for example a majority of working children in host communities work six or seven days a week; one-third work more than eight hours a day,” the report noted. “Their daily income is between four and seven dollars.”

Quite aside from representing an irreversible interruption to their education, cognitive development, and – almost certainly – limiting their chances of securing better jobs later in life – the child labour epidemic is harming young people’s bodies.

Save the Children estimates that “Around 75 percent of working children in the Za’atari refugee camp in Jordan reported health problems; almost 40 percent reported an injury, illness or poor health; and 35.8 percent of children working in Lebanon’s Bekaa Valley are unable to read or write.”

In this climate of conflict, with the specter of hunger haunting countless families, every industry is considered fair game.

In the Bekaa Valley, for instance, landowners who used to pay a daily wage of 10 dollars to migrant agricultural workers now pay kids four dollars a day, often for performing the same tasks alongside their adult counterparts.

In urban centers, garages, workshops and construction sites are “popular” employers, with 10-year-old Syrian boys hired on a full-time basis to do carpentry, metal work or motor repairs in cities across Lebanon.

Street work represents one of the most dangerous occupations for children, with a recent survey of two major Lebanese cities identifying over 1,500 child street-workers, of whom 73 percent were Syrian refugees.

These kids earn an average of 11 dollars a day, either begging or hawking, while illicit activities like prostitution could earn a small child up to 36 dollars in a single working day.

UNICEF says child labour “represents one of the key challenges to the fulfillment of the ‘No Lost Generation’ initiative”, launched in 2013 with the aim of putting child rights and children’s education at the centre of the humanitarian response to the Syrian crisis.

Edited by Kitty Stapp

Children on their way to school in Kibera, the largest slum in Nairobi. Credit: Save the Children

By Valentina Ieri
UNITED NATIONS, May 5 2015 (IPS)

It’s called the urban survival gap – fuelled by the growing inequality between rich and poor in both developing and developed countries – and it literally determines whether millions of infants will live or die before their fifth birthday.

Save the Children’s annual report on the State of the World’s Mothers 2015 ranks 179 countries and concludes that that “for babies born in the big city, it’s the survival of the richest.”

Speaking from the launch at U.N. Headquarters, Carolyn Miles, president and CEO of Save the Children, said that for the first time in history, more families are moving into cities to give their children a better life. But this shift from a rural to an urban society has increased disparities within cities.

“Our report reveals a devastating child survival divide between the haves and have-nots, telling a tale of two cities among urban communities around the world, including the United States,” Miles added.

The document estimates that 54 percent of the world’s population lives in urban areas, and by 2050 the concentration of people in cities will increase to 66 percent, especially in Asia and Africa.

The World Health Organisation (WHO) says that nearly a billion people live in urban slums, shantytowns, on sidewalks, under bridges and along railroad tracks.

Rizelle, 17, and her three-week-old baby. Rizelle lives in a squatted home under a bridge in San Dionisio, Indonesia. Photo credit: Save the Children

While women living in cities may have easier access to primary health care, including hospitals, many governments have been unable to keep up with this rapid urban growth. One-third of all urban residents – over 860 million people – live in slums where they face lack of clean water and sanitation, alongside rampant malnutrition.

Miles said that despite the progress made on reducing urban under-five mortality around the world, the survival divide between rich and poor children in cities is growing even faster than that of poor children in rural areas.

In most of the developing nations surveyed, children living at the bottom 20 percent of the socioeconomic ladder are twice as likely to die as children in the richest 20 percent, and in some cities, the disparity is much higher.

Robert Clay, vice president of the health and nutrition at Save the Children, explained that urban poor are more transient, as they tend to have unsteady jobs and living situations. In rural areas, many people at least have land and food, and a stronger support system within the community.

“In urban areas this doesn’t exist. Urban cities are overcrowded by many ethnic groups living side by side so it’s a bit harder to bond, communicate and build trust. It’s the hidden population that is more problematic to reach,” Clay told IPS.

He said lack of data makes it harder for charities like Save the Children, or national and municipal governments, to access these marginalised communities.

The 10 developing countries with the largest child survival divide are Bangladesh, Cambodia, Ghana, Kenya, India, Madagascar, Nigeria, Peru, Rwanda and Vietnam.

Among the 10 worst wealthy capital cities for child survival, out of the 25 studied, Washington D.C. (U.S.) was number one, followed by Vienna (Austria), Bern (Switzerland), Warsaw (Poland), and Athens (Greece).

The river that runs through the Kroo Bay slum community in Sierra Leone. Credit: Save the Children

By looking at the mother’s index rankings of 2015, based on five criteria – maternal health, children’s well-being, educational status, economic status and women political status, Save the Children says that conditions for mothers and their children in the 10 bottom-ranked countries – all but two of them in West and Central Africa – are dramatic, as nations struggle to provide the basic infrastructure for the health and wellness of their citizens.

“On average, in these countries one woman out of 30 dies from pregnancy-related causes, and one child out of eight dies before his or her fifth birthday,” Miles said.

Globally, under-five mortality rates have declined, from 90 to 46 deaths per 1,000 live births. However, these numbers, says the organisation, mask the fact that child survival is strictly linked to family wealth, and miss addressing the conditions of poverty and unhealthy life of slums.  

Positively, the report has also uncovered some successful solutions found by governments to reduce maternal and infant mortality, and close the inequality gap between rich and poor children in their own countries. The most successful countries are Ethiopia (Addis Ababa), Egypt (Cairo), Guatemala (Guatemala City), Uganda (Kampala), Philippines (Manila) and Cambodia (Phnom Penh).

“Ethiopia, which recently had accelerated economic growth, managed to develop effective targeting policies, and provided accessible preventive and curative health care for poor mothers and children,” Clay said.

“[Ethiopia] should be a blueprint for other countries, which should bring access to communities in slums so that local people are not left behind,” he underlined, adding that hiring urban outreach workers who can go into the communities, speak the language of the people living there and understand their conditions and needs is vital.

Save the Children is calling on national governments worldwide to find new policies and plans to invest in a universal maternal and infant health care, develop cross-sectoral urban plans, and reduce urban disadvantages, and to increase the focus on the Sustainable Development Goals in the post-2015 development agenda, concluded Miles.

Edited by Kitty Stapp

Boat carrying asylum seekers and migrants in the Mediterranean Sea. Photo credit: UNHCR/L.Boldrini

By Sean Buchanan
ROME, Apr 15 2015 (IPS)

“The unbearable number of lives lost at sea will only grow if the European Union does not act now to ensure search-and-rescue operations across the Mediterranean,” Human Rights Watch warned Apr. 15.

The international human rights organisation was reacting to reports that as many as 400 migrants may have died in the Mediterranean sea over the past weekend, according to witness accounts collected by the Save the Children charity among the more than 7,000 migrants and asylum seekers rescued by the Italian Coast Guard since Apr. 10.

Noting that 11 bodies have been recovered so far from one confirmed shipwreck over the past few days, Judith Sunderland, acting deputy Europe and Central Asia director at Human Rights Watch said that “if the reports are confirmed, this past weekend would be among the deadliest few days in the world’s most dangerous stretch of water for migrants and asylum seekers.”

Many of those rescued over the weekend remain on Italian vessels as authorities scramble to find emergency accommodation, and Human Rights Watch said that the lack of preparation for arrivals was entirely preventable because many had predicted that 2015 would be a record year for boat migration.

“Other E.U. countries have shown a distinct lack of political will to help alleviate Italy’s unfair share of the responsibility,” according to the human rights organisation.

The European Union’s external border agency, Frontex, launched Operation Triton in the Mediterranean in November 2014, as Italy downsized its massive humanitarian naval operation, Mare Nostrum, which has been credited with saving tens of thousands of lives.

Triton’s geographic scope and budget is far more limited than Mare Nostrum, and the primary mandate of Frontex is border control, not search and rescue.

According to the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), as many as 500 migrants and asylum seekers have died already in the Mediterranean in 2015, a 30-fold increase over recorded deaths in the same period in 2014.

However, said Human Rights Watch, if the reports of hundreds more dead over the past few days are confirmed, the death toll in just over three months would be nearly 1,000 people, and that number is likely to rise as more migrants take to the seas during the traditional crossing season in the spring and summer months. The death toll for all of 2014 was at least 3,200 people.

The European Commission is to present a “comprehensive migration agenda” to E.U. member states in May but some of the proposals, while cloaked in humanitarian rhetoric about preventing deaths at sea, raise serious human rights concerns, Human Rights Watch said.

These include setting up offshore processing centres in North African countries, outsourcing border control and rescue operations in order to prevent departures, and increasing financial assistance to deeply repressive countries like Eritrea, one of the key countries of origin for asylum seekers attempting the sea crossing, “without evidence of human rights reforms.”

While some proposals contain elements that could potentially address root causes of irregular migration or provide safe alternatives for migrants, Human Rights Watch said that the proof of their success will rest on whether they respect the rights of migrants and asylum seekers, rather than simply stop the flow.

Early signs of intent suggest that rather than building the capacity to protect, the emphasis will be on enhancing and outsourcing containment mechanisms to prevent departures, and “it’s hard not to see these proposals as cynical bids to limit the numbers of migrants and asylum seekers making it to E.U. shores,” Sunderland said.

“Whatever longer term initiatives may come forth, the immediate humanitarian imperative for the European Union is to get out there and save lives.”

Meanwhile, the debate around immigration in Italy has taken on xenophobic tones in some quarters, with the leader of Italy’s anti-immigrant Northern League, Matteo Salvini, calling on all local authorities to resist “by any means” requests to accommodate asylum seekers, and saying that his party is ready to occupy buildings to prevent arrivals.

Edited by Phil Harris    

Cane cutter Evaristo Pérez, 22, on the La Isla plantation in the municipality of San Juan Opico in El Salvador. He used to be a child worker in the sugar cane fields in El Salvador, where child labour has been practically eradicated thanks to a policy of “zero tolerance” in the sugar industry. Credit: Edgardo Ayala/IPS

By Edgardo Ayala and Claudia Ávalos
SAN JUAN OPICO, El Salvador , Apr 6 2015 (IPS)

The participation of children and teenagers in the sugar cane harvest, a dangerous agricultural activity, will soon be a thing of the past in El Salvador, where the practice drew international attention 10 years ago.

“Before, when I was a kid, my brothers would take me along to help them cut sugar cane, it wasn’t a problem. But now things have changed,” Evaristo Pérez, a day labourer, told IPS during a break from his work in the sugar cane field under a blistering sun on the La Isla plantation in San Juan Opico, a municipality in the department of La Libertad in western El Salvador.

“I had to turn 18 before I could start working as a cane cutter,” added 22-year-old Pérez, standing next to a group of two dozen other cane cutters covered in dirt and sweat. He admitted that working in the sugar cane fields as a boy was “really tough.”

Child labour in activities described by the International Labour Organisation (ILO) as dangerous or unhealthy has long been rife in El Salvador. That includes cutting sugar cane, hazardous because of the sharp machetes used, as well as the practice of burning sugar cane ahead of the harvest to facilitate the work, which produces ashes to which the cutters are exposed.

The severe poverty suffered by many rural families kept child labour alive, despite the risky work and heavy, long workdays.

A sugar cane cutter earns around 200 dollars a month, said workers interviewed by IPS.

“At the bottom of this cultural and economic phenomenon lie poverty and the lack of opportunities in the countryside,” said Julio César Arroyo, executive director of the El Salvador sugar industry association (AAES), which groups the six privately owned sugar mills that process the country’s sugar cane.

In this Central American country of 6.3 million people, 38 percent of the population lives in rural areas, where 36 percent of the households are poor, above the national average of 29.6 percent, according to official statistics from 2013.

The problem of child labour in the sugar cane harvest in El Salvador was thrust to the forefront in June 2004 when the Washington-based Human Rights Watch published the report “Turning a Blind Eye: Hazardous Child Labor in El Salvador’s Sugarcane Cultivation”.

The report triggered a strong reaction by human rights groups as well as international buyers of El Salvador’s sugar. Canada, the second-biggest market after the United States, threatened to stop buying sugar from this country.

The position taken by Canada “was worrisome because it could have caused a domino effect,” leaving thousands of rural workers without an income, Arroyo told IPS.

Due to the Human Rights Watch report on child labour and the resulting pressure, sugar cane producers, sugar mills and the government, grouped together in the Salvadoran Sugar Industry Council (CoNSaa), jointly adopted a code of conduct in 2006.

They stepped up the process a year later with the inclusion of a clause declaring “zero tolerance” of child labour.

They also implemented measures to oversee compliance with the clause, by means of ongoing monitoring by the Labour Ministry, inspectors on plantations and a special external auditor.

A significant improvement was seen. According to the AAES, the number of children working on sugar cane plantations fell from 12,000 in 2004 to 3,470 in 2009, a 72 percent drop. During the 2013-2014 harvest, only 700 children under 18 were reported – a 92 percent drop in 10 years.

“We’ll be satisfied once the problem has been fully eradicated, but great progress has definitely been made,” Arroyo said.

Another positive factor has been that poor rural families have gradually understood that it is important to keep children and teenagers out of the sugar cane fields.

Pablo Antonio Merino, the foreman at the La Isla plantation, told IPS that he knows very well that he can’t hire minors to cut sugar cane, even if they ask him for work.

“They’re not going to find a single minor among my workers,” said the 63-year-old Merino. “Sometimes kids come to my house to ask me to do them a favour and hire them, but when I see how young they are, I tell them no, that I don’t want trouble.”

But there is still resistance to the change.

Another worker, David Flores, 53, told IPS that the ban on child labour in the industry causes problems by leaving adolescents with nothing to do, which leads them down “the wrong path” – a reference to the youth gangs that are rife in this country.

El Salvador is caught up in a wave of violent crime. In 2014 the homicide rate was 63 per 100,000 population, compared to a global average homicide rate of 6.2 per 100,000 population in 2012, according to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC). Many of the murders are committed by gangs.

“It has hurt the country to take work away from young people, because they end up as vagrants,” Flores argued.

But Ludin Chávez, the director in El Salvador of the international organisation Save the Children, told IPS that child labour must be eradicated because children grow up in an environment where exploitative conditions are seen as normal.

“They see it as natural that other people exploit them, and that they can never defend their rights; we see this as a dangerous vicious circle,” she said.

Other forms of hazardous child labour are shellfish harvesting in the mangroves, the production of fire crackers in sweatshops, and domestic service, she added.

The 2013 household survey found that 144,168 children and adolescents between the ages of five and 17 were involved in child labour – a nearly 12 percent reduction from 2012.

Since 2009, when the left-wing Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front (FMLN) came to power, the government outlined a plan to eradicate the worst forms of child labour this year, with a goal to totally eliminate it by 2020, in a joint effort with a wide range of economic and social sectors.

Edited by Estrella Gutiérrez/Translated by Stephanie Wildes

Every morning Raj Kumari Chaudhari offers prayers to this mango tree where she took shelter during the floods in 2014 in mid-west Nepal. Credit: Mallika Aryal/IPS

By Mallika Aryal
BARDIYA, Nepal, Feb 26 2015 (IPS)

Every morning, Raj Kumari Chaudhari walks from her home to the other end of Padnaha village, located in the Bardiya district of mid-west Nepal, to a big mango tree to offer prayers.

The tree is majestic, its branches spreading as far as the eye can see. “This tree doesn’t bear fruit, but it saved my family from death,” she says. In her eyes, this single tree did more for her family at their time of need than the government of Nepal.

“We’re no strangers to rebuilding our lives […] but I hope my daughters won’t have to do it over and over again, like we did.” -- Raj Kumari Chaudhari, a survivor of the floods that swept away her village in mid-West Nepal in August, 2014
On the night of Aug. 14, 2014, Chaudhari lost her home when a big flood washed her entire village away. Her husband grabbed their eldest daughter, while she carried her twins on her shoulders, and ran.

When they reached the other side of the village, they realized there was no escape. They climbed the nearest tree and took shelter. In a matter of minutes 11 other people from her village had climbed the tree.

“My six-month old baby was the youngest amongst us, I tied him with my shawl so he wouldn’t fall,” says Kalpana Gurung, 27.

Bardiya, one of three districts in mid-west Nepal, was the hardest hit by last year’s flood; the District Disaster Relief Committee of Bardiya says more than 93,000 people were affected.

The gushing waters killed 32 and 13 still remain missing. Almost 5,000 people were affected in Padnaha village where the Chaudhari family lived.

The year 2014 was considered the deadliest on record in Nepal in terms of natural disasters. According to the Ministry of Home Affairs 492 people were killed and over 37,000 households affected by disasters between April 2014 and February 2015.

Still, experts say, the government hasn’t formulated a long-term response for those like the Chaudhari family who survived these catastrophic events.

Raj Kumari and Hira Lal Chaudhari, their 11-year-old daughter, and their eight-year-old twins survived the August 2014 flood in mid-west Nepal by climbing a mango tree and waiting for the waters to recede. Credit: Mallika Aryal/IPS

It took the community of Padnaha five months to get their lives back together. Now 12 families have rebuilt their homes. “This entire village was like a desert after the floods,” Raj Kumari Chaudhari, one of the survivors, recalls. Credit: Mallika Aryal/IPS

“The government has no direction, no plans for rehabilitating survivors – those who lost [their] lands essentially became stateless,” says Madhukar Upadhya, a watershed and landslide management expert.

After the 2008 flooding of the Koshi River in east Nepal the government established a disaster-training centre, the police force now has a disaster division and Nepal’s army has a disaster directorate. But the government’s focus is on rescue and relief, and not rehabilitation and resettlement, experts say.

Living on a knife’s edge in disaster-prone Nepal

Chaudhari’s family and the majority of her neighbours are from the Tharu community, indigenous to western Nepal. They are former ‘kamaiya’, meaning people affected by the oppressive system of bonded labour that was abolished by law only in 2002.

After being liberated, her family were evicted from their homes by their former masters and lived out in the open for years. Two years ago, the government finally resettled them in Padnaha.

“It took us a long time to build our homes, the kids were finally feeling settled, and then the floods washed away everything,” Chaudhari tells IPS.

After spending 24 hours on the tree branches, water swirling below, Chaudhari and her family were finally able to come down and rush to a school nearby. When the water level receded, they saw that everything had been washed away.

“We may have lost our homes and belongings, but unlike other survivors of floods and landslides, we still had our lands to come back to,” says 18-year old Sangita, another tree survivor.

With assistance in the form of raw materials from Save the Children, and Nepal’s 13-day Cash for Work programme that provided them 3.5 dollars a day for their labour, the community started to rebuild.

In a matter of a few days 12 households cleared away the debris and erected their huts.

Kalpana Gurung inspects her vegetable garden and hopes she will harvest enough green leafy vegetables for her family this spring. As a nursing mother, she is worried she won’t be able to provide enough nutrition to her nine-month-old baby. Credit: Mallika Aryal/IPS

Eleven-year-old Saraswati Chaudhari and her twin sisters Puja and Laxmi are ready for school. Activists say the government must formulate a comprehensive disaster management plan to safeguard families living in disaster-prone areas. Credit: Mallika Aryal/IPS

Eighteen-year-old Sangita remembers the night when she woke up to water surrounding her bed. Pointing at the tree where she took shelter she says, “That tree over there saved my life, but I want to forget about that horrible night.” Credit: Mallika Aryal/IPS

Today, Chaudhari has planted some vegetables in the garden, an additional source of nutrition for her family. She is worried that what happened last year may happen again and she realizes now that she has to be prepared.

Climate experts say that the little model community is not sustainable – changes in weather patterns mean that every monsoon is likely to bring floods and even landslides to vulnerable regions of Nepal.

A study released last year by the Climate and Development Knowledge Network (CDKN) found that climate variability and extreme weather events costs the government of Nepal the equivalent of between 1.5 and two percent of its gross domestic product (GDP) each year.

Twelve massive floods over the last four decades have cost every single affected household, on average, the equivalent of 9,000 dollars.

Considering that the country’s average income per family was about 2,700 dollars in 2011, this represents a major burden, borne primarily by the poor – like the Chaudhari family – who live in disaster-prone areas.

Every year since 1983, floods in Nepal have caused an average of 283 deaths, destroyed over 8,000 houses and left close to 30,000 affected families to deal with the fallout of the disaster.

As Chaudhari gazes off into the distance towards their sacred mango tree she says, “We’re no strangers to rebuilding our lives […] but I hope my daughters won’t have to do it over and over again, like we did.”

Edited by Kanya D’Almeida

While millions around the world are celebrating the dawn of a new year and the promise of change, hundreds of thousands of Syrian children have little reason to hope that 2015 will bring better days.

A spokesperson for the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) told reporters in Geneva today that some 670,000 primary and lower-high school students are being denied an education, due to school closures across parts of the northern city of Aleppo and in the Raqqa and Deir-ez-Zour governorates.

Christophe Boulierac said that the order to close the schools was made by members of the Islamic State, though he was uncertain whether or not the militant group had complete control over the areas in questions.

For school-going children and their parents, however, these details are not of the utmost concern. More pressing is finding ways to ensure the education of an entire generation, as the Syrian conflict enters its fifth year.

UNICEF estimates that some 160 students were killed and a further 343 injured in the roughly 68 attacks on Syrian schools last year. These are only the official statistics; other groups believe the real number could be much higher.

“In addition to lack of school access, attacks on schools, teachers and students are further horrific reminders of the terrible price Syria’s children are paying in a crisis approaching its fifth year,” Hanaa Singer, UNICEF’s representative in Syria, said in a statement.

“Access to education is a right that should be sustained for all children, no matter where they live or how difficult the circumstances in which they live,” Singer added. “Schools are the only means of stability, structure and routine that the Syrian children need more than ever in times of this horrific conflict.”

In total, the war in Syria has taken a toll on over eight million children, of which 5.6 million are still living inside the country while 1.7 million are refugees in Lebanon, Jordan, Turkey, Egypt and elsewhere in North Africa.

This past September, Save the Children reported that nearly 2.8 million Syrian students were being kept out of school, since the conflict had destroyed a total of 3,400 schools.

The charity labeled education as a “deadliest pursuit” for children and teachers; schools are often the targets of airstrikes and shelling, while others have been occupied for military purposes, it said.

Enrolment rates have nearly halved from close to 100 percent when the deadly conflict began five years ago. The death toll now stands at some 190,000.

(END)

Primary school children like the ones pictured here in Zimbabwe's capital Harare often drop out of school, casting doubts on this Southern African nation's capacity to achieve universal primary education for all by December 2015. Credit: Jeffrey Moyo/IPS

By Jeffrey Moyo
HARARE, Dec 24 2014 (IPS)

Zimbabwe boasts of one of the highest rates of literacy across Africa but, but without free primary education, achieving universal primary education here may remain a pipe dream, educationists say.

It would also defeat Zimbabwe’s quest to reach the United Nations Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) by the deadline of 2015.

One of the MDGs requires countries the world over to achieve universal primary education by the end of 2015 and reintroduce free primary education. But more than 34 years after gaining independence from Britain, educationists say Zimbabwe is far from attaining universal primary education for all.

“Hordes of pupils enrolled in schools after independence at a time the Zimbabwean government made education free at primary school level,” Thabo Hlalo, a retired educationist from Zimbabwe’s Midlands Province, told IPS.“Without free primary education, school attendance has become intermittent, meaning that achieving universal primary education in line with the U.N. MDGs may remain imaginary for Zimbabwe” – Thabo Hlalo, retired educationist from Zimbabwe’s Midlands Province

”But now without free primary education, school attendance has become intermittent, meaning that achieving universal primary education in line with the U.N. MDGs may remain imaginary for Zimbabwe.”

At independence in 1980, the Zimbabwean government abolished all primary school tuition fees, but they have now crept in and crept up. Parents not only contend with fees that they cannot afford but also with expensive essentials like notebooks and uniforms.

Early this year, Zimbabwe reportedly approached the United Kingdom for funds to help cover fees for an estimated one million pupils who would otherwise be forced out of school. The cash-strapped government said it was unable to finance its Basic Education Assistance Module (BEAM), a scheme meant for poor children.

The U.K. government provided 10 million dollars from its Department for International Development but warned it may be the last contribution.

The school fees have been defended by Zimbabwe’s Education Minister Lazarus Dokora, who has gone on record as saying that parents who default on the fees should be taken to court.

Dokora’s “warning” comes despite the fact that at least 95 percent of Zimbabweans voted in a referendum in March last year to adopt a new Constitution expressly granting free primary education to all. Specifically, Section75 (1) (a) of the Zimbabwean Constitution provides for the right to state-funded basic education.

Despite this constitutional provision, it is still a sad story for many children like 9-year-old Tobias Chikota from Harare’s Caledonia informal settlement located about 30km south-east of Harare, the Zimbabwean capital.

“I dropped out of school early this year because my unemployed parents couldn’t afford to pay my school feels,” Chikota, who at the time was in Primary Four, told IPS.

While it is a requirement for nations to ensure a predictable and adequate state budget allocation to education under the MDGs, civil society activists here say the Zimbabwean government seems way off the mark in terms of prioritising education.

“Despite the impending deadline for the attainment of the MDGs, our government has not been and remains inconsistent in its budgetary structures in practically directing money towards education, which may make the attainment of universal primary education for all difficult, if not impossible, by 2015,” Catherine Mukwapati, a civil society activist and director of the Youth Dialogue Action Network, a democracy lobby group in Zimbabwe, told IPS.

Earlier this year, the Zimbabwean government allocated 919 million dollars to the country’s education sector in its 2015 national budget announcement, but for Mukwapati these were “mere void commitments made on paper, hardly followed by action as customary with our government.

Through UNICEF’s Education Transition Fund (ETF), the Zimbabwean government distributed 13 million textbooks to 5,575 schools countrywide in 2010, resulting in each pupil in primary schools countrywide receiving a set of four basic textbooks.

In spite of this gesture, a 2012 report by Zimbabwe’s Parliamentary Portfolio Committee on Education found that the country’s rural teachers are overwhelmed with work, operating at a ratio of one teacher to 60 pupils, far over the government-pegged teacher-pupil ratio of one to 40.

According to Save the Children, for over 3.2 million children enrolled in primary and secondary schools in Zimbabwe, there are only about 102,000 teachers.

A UNICEF report on the Status of Women’s and Children’s Rights in Zimbabwe released in 2012 says that at least 197,000 pupils drop out of primary schools each year, a situation that development experts here say hinders Zimbabwe from achieving universal primary education for all in line with the MDGs.

“School dropouts owing to lack of school fees, mostly at primary level, are peaking up annually and, therefore, talking about Zimbabwe achieving primary education for all by 2015 is a non-starter,” independent development expert Evans Dube told IPS.

And for many parents like 43-year-old Tambudzai Chihota, a widow whose six children are out of school due to non-payment of school fees, the promise of universal primary education means little.

“My children didn’t go beyond Grade [Primary] Five here because I had no money to pay their school fees and the universal primary education you talk about may not be my business as long as my children are still without access to further education,” Chihota told IPS.

The crisis facing the education system here has also been worsened by the flight of about 20,000 teachers from the country between 2007 and 2009 at the peak of Zimbabwe’s economic crisis.

Besides extremely low salaries, the Progressive Teachers’ Union of Zimbabwe (PTUZ), a teachers’ trade union organisation in Zimbabwe, says that morale is low among teachers, negatively affecting the quality of the country’s education.

An average teacher earns 400 dollars a month, well below the poverty datum line of 511 dollars a month for an average family of five in this Southern African nation.

“Universal education may be far from being achieved here by 2015 due to poor teachers’ salaries, causing a deterioration of the quality of education,” Raymond Majongwe, Secretary General of PTUZ, told IPS.

With just over 12 months left before the deadline for achievement of the MDGs, it appears unlikely that Zimbabwe will meet the target of universal primary education for all.

(Edited by Lisa Vives/Phil Harris)

Concern is being raised by civil society and the public about how Sierra Leone’s government is handling the Ebola pandemic. Credit: Marc-André Boisvert/IPS

By Lansana Fofana
FREETOWN, Nov 6 2014 (IPS)

The fight against the deadly Ebola epidemic ravaging West Africa seems to be hanging in the balance as Sierra Leone’s Minister of Health and Sanitation Dr Abubakar Fofana told IPS that the government is overwhelmed by the outbreak.

“We were not prepared for this Ebola scourge. It took us by surprise and with our weak health system, we can only rely on support given to us by our international partners,” he told IPS.

According to a report published last week by British charity Save the Children, five people are infected every hour here and the situation is worrisome.

The government has, however, downplayed this, claiming the report is hugely exaggerated and that the situation is getting better in some parts of the country.

However, concern is being raised by civil society and the public about how the government is handling the outbreak.

Bernard Conteh, the director of the rights advocacy group Anti-Violence Movement, told IPS: “The authorities should be more pro-active. They should pay health workers, who are the frontline soldiers in this fight, reasonably well and ensure they are supplied adequate Personal Protective Equipments. This is not happening. Even the enforcement of the quarantine of Ebola suspects is not effectively done.”

On just one day, Nov. 2, 61 new cases were reported across the country bringing the nationwide toll to 4,059 people infected by the virus. This surpasses neighbouring Liberia which, until a month ago, was the worst-hit country. Liberia has recorded 2,515 cases while Guinea, where the epidemic first started, has 1,409 recorded cases of Ebola.

Since the outbreak of the epidemic in April, Sierra Leone has lost five medical doctors, more than 60 nurses and auxiliary health workers to Ebola. And the figure keeps going up.

The African Governance Initiative has also painted a grim picture of the outbreak here, saying that it is spreading nine times faster than it did two months ago. Of the 12 districts in the country and the capital Freetown, only Koinadugu in the north was Ebola-free — until recently. It now has at least six confirmed cases. Now, no part of Sierra Leone is unaffected but the virus.

The government has, however, been assisted by the international community. The United Kingdom has sent medical equipment and health workers, and has built test and treatment centres in parts of the capital. China has also sent medical aid, while Cuba has deployed dozens of medics on the ground.

But, there are still many challenges to be addressed. According to the medical charity MSF or Doctors Without Borders, the outbreak is far from over and more help is desperately needed.

“There is a huge gap in all aspects of the response, including medical care, training of health staff, infection control, contact tracing, epidemiological surveillance, alert and referral systems, community education and mobilisation,” MSF says.

As the fight against the killer epidemic continues to prove difficult with the virus spreading fast, the government in Freetown has just implemented a year-long state of emergency. This comes just two days after an earlier 90-day state of emergency, implemented in July in response to the outbreak, ended.

Attorney-General and Minister of Justice Frank Kargbo told IPS the extension of the emergency period was necessary to help control the spread of the virus.

“No one knows when the Ebola epidemic will end. We believe that within this period and with our hard work, we will be able to contain the disease.”

Many attribute the rapid spread of the Ebola virus to people’s attitudes and, as MSF says, a lack of sufficient community education and mobilisation. Cultural practices and traditional beliefs are also greatly hampering the fight against Ebola.

“Our people still continue to touch, wash and bury their dead. This is an easy way to get infected, even though they have been told repeatedly not to do so,” the chairman of the National Ebola Response Committee, Alfred Palor Conteh, told IPS.

People also refuse to report to hospitals when they fall ill because of the fear of stigmatisation by their families and communities. Many believe that Ebola is fatal and that going to treatment centres will not help. Ebola survivors and discharged patients also face stigmatisation.

However, Health Health and Sanitation Minister Fofana said he was hopeful the situation would be brought under control soon with international help.

Edited by: Nalisha Adams

Mohini Pait delivered her daughter on the day after floods in the Rekhasapori village of Assam state washed her house away. Credit: Priyanka Borpujari/IPS

By Priyanka Borpujari
MORIGAON, India, Oct 7 2014 (IPS)

The northeastern Indian state of Assam is no stranger to devastating floods. Located just south of the eastern Himalayas, the lush, 30,000-square-km region comprises the Brahmaputra and Barak river valleys, and is accustomed to annual bouts of rain that swell the mighty rivers and spill over into villages and towns, inundating agricultural lands and washing homes, possessions and livestock away.

Now, the long-term impacts of such natural disasters are proving to be a thorn in the side of a government that is racing against time to meet its commitments under the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), a set of poverty reduction targets that will expire at the year’s end.

Target 7C of the MDGs stipulated that U.N. member states would aim to halve the proportion of people living without sustainable access to safe drinking water and basic sanitation by 2015.

While tremendous gains have been made towards this ambitious goal, India continues to lag behind, with 60 percent of its 1.2 billion people living without access to basic sanitation.

Now, recurring floods and other disasters are adding further strain on the government, as scores of people are annually displaced, and left without safe access to water and sanitation. In 2012 alone, floods displaced 6.9 million people across India.

Currently, Assam is one of the worst hit regions.

Since May this year, several waves of floods have affected more than 700,000 people across 23 of the state’s 27 districts, claiming the lives of 68 people.

Heavy rainfall during one week of August devastated the Morigaon and Dhemaji districts, and the river island of Majuli. A sudden downpour that lasted two days in early September in parts of Assam and the neighbouring state of Meghalaya claimed 44 and 55 lives respectively.

The Indian federal last week government announced its intention to distribute some 112 million dollars in aid to the affected population.

One of the primary concerns for officials has been the sanitation situation in the aftermath of the floods, with families forced to rig up makeshift sanitary facilities, and women and children in particular made vulnerable by a lack of water and proper toilets.

Directly following the floods, the ministry of drinking water and sanitation advised the public health and engineering department of the Assam government to “urgently” make provision for such disasters, particularly ensuring safe water for residents in remote rural areas.

Among other suggestions, the ministry recommended the “hiring of water tankers for emergency water supply to affected sites […], procuring of sodium hypochlorite, halogen tablets and bleaching powder for proper disinfection [and] hiring of sufficient vehicles fitted with water treatment plants to provide onsite safe drinking water.”

In Morigaon and Dhemaji, families are slowly trying to pick up the pieces of their lives, but experts say unless proper disaster management measures are put in place, the poorest will continue to suffer and floods will continue to erode India’s progress towards the MDGs.

Edited by Kanya D’Almeida

When isolated by floodwaters, families have no choice but to use boats for transportation; even children must learn the survival skill of rowing. Here in India’s Morigaon district, one week of rains in August affected 27,000 hectares of land. Credit: Priyanka Borpujari/IPS

By Priyanka Borpujari
MORIGAON, India, Oct 7 2014 (IPS)

The northeastern Indian state of Assam is no stranger to devastating floods. Located just south of the eastern Himalayas, the lush, 30,000-square-km region comprises the Brahmaputra and Barak river valleys, and is accustomed to annual bouts of rain that swell the mighty rivers and spill over into villages and towns, inundating agricultural lands and washing homes, possessions and livestock away.

Now, the long-term impacts of such natural disasters are proving to be a thorn in the side of a government that is racing against time to meet its commitments under the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), a set of poverty reduction targets that will expire at the year’s end.

A woman dries blankets after her home went underwater for five days in one of the villages of the Morigaon district. The woven bamboo sheet beyond the clothesline used to be the walls of her family’s toilet. August rains inundated 141 villages in the district. Credit: Priyanka Borpujari/IPS

Target 7C of the MDGs stipulated that U.N. member states would aim to halve the proportion of people living without sustainable access to safe drinking water and basic sanitation by 2015.

While tremendous gains have been made towards this ambitious goal, India continues to lag behind, with 60 percent of its 1.2 billion people living without access to basic sanitation.

Diving into the river is an easy solution to a lack of bathrooms for children and men, even though the water has been stagnant for about a month. Skin rashes are the most common ailment caused by contact with unclean water, according to village doctors. Credit: Priyanka Borpujari/IPS

Now, recurring floods and other disasters are putting further strain on the government, as scores of people are annually displaced, and left without safe access to water and sanitation. In 2012 alone, floods displaced 6.9 million people across India.

Currently, Assam is one of the worst hit regions.

Floods in Morigaon have submerged about 45 roads in the district. Most people wade through the water, believing this is quicker than waiting for a rickety boat to transport them across. Credit: Priyanka Borpujari/IPS

Since May this year, several waves of floods have affected more than 700,000 people across 23 of the state’s 27 districts, claiming the lives of 68 people.

In places where roads have collapsed, the government has erected bamboo bridges. When the government is absent, locals do this work themselves. This man and child travel from one village to another on a boat, and travel by foot over the bridges. Credit: Priyanka Borpujari/IPS

Heavy rainfall during one week of August devastated the Morigaon and Dhemaji districts, and the river island of Majuli. A sudden downpour that lasted two days in early September in parts of Assam and the neighbouring state of Meghalaya claimed 44 and 55 lives respectively.

Men transporting milk from Dhemaji to Dibrugarh district across the Brahmaputra River wash their utensils in the river. The lack of hygiene and proper sanitation facilities is a severe concern in flood-affected areas. Credit: Priyanka Borpujari/IPS

The Indian federal government last week announced its intention to distribute some 112 million dollars in aid to the affected population.

In Dhemaji district, closer to the northeastern Indian state of Arunachal Pradesh, people use a rope boat in the absence of a road. Credit: Priyanka Borpujari/IPS

One of the primary concerns for officials has been the sanitation situation in the aftermath of the floods, with families forced to rig up makeshift sanitary facilities, and women and children in particular made vulnerable by a lack of water and proper toilets.

Women from the Mishing community in Dhemaji district are shocked by the siltation caused by the floods. Their homes on stilts – known as chaang ghor – are built on a raised platform. But the sands have submerged the homes in this village by two feet. Credit: Priyanka Borpujari/IPS

Directly following the floods, the ministry of drinking water and sanitation advised the public health and engineering department of the Assam government to “urgently” make provision for such disasters, particularly ensuring safe water for residents in remote rural areas.

Women from Rekhasapori village in Dhemaji district walk on the hot sand towards a health camp set up by Save The Children. Most people complain of rashes, and acidity from acute hunger. Credit: Priyanka Borpujari/IPS

Among other suggestions, the ministry recommended the “hiring of water tankers for emergency water supply to affected sites […], procuring of sodium hypochlorite, halogen tablets and bleaching powder for proper disinfection [and] hiring of sufficient vehicles fitted with water treatment plants to provide onsite safe drinking water.”

Mohini Pait delivered her daughter on the day after floods in the Rekhasapori village of Assam state washed her house away. She and her baby are currently living in one of many relief camps that dot the roads in flood-affected areas throughout Assam. Credit: Priyanka Borpujari/IPS

In Morigaon and Dhemaji, families are slowly trying to pick up the pieces of their lives, but experts say unless proper disaster management measures are put in place, the poorest will suffer and floods will continue to erode India’s progress towards the MDGs.

Edited by Kanya D’Almeida

Fleeing advancing IS fighters, Kamal Faris and his family found refuge in a school turned into refugee camp in Erbil, September 2014. Credit: Annabell Van den Berghe/IPS

By Annabell Van den Berghe
ERBIL, Iraq, Oct 7 2014 (IPS)

“We had ten minutes to leave our hometown,” says 33-year-old Kamal Faris who, together with his entire family, was forced to flee the threat of Islamic State (IS) fighters approaching his village.

The IS advance in this region, the autonomous Kurdish region of Iraq, has swelled the number of refugees. Overall, they are now estimated at more than 1.8 million people.

A small minority has found a temporary home with relatives living in other, safer cities, but for most of the refugees, this was not an option and entire families became refugees overnight. Faris’ family is one of them.“Three weeks ago, schools had been due to open start the new school year but the at least 700 schools in the autonomous Kurdish region of Iraq that have been turned into refugee camps were unable to open their doors again for classes”

School turned into refugee camp in Erbil, September 2014. Credit: Annabell Van den Berghe/IPS

After what he says was the worst journey in his life, 33-year-old Kamal Faris arrived in Erbil with his wife, children, mother and his blind brother. “There were ten of us. We all had to fit into a tiny Opel, and drive away as fast as we could. We left everything behind, all our belongings,” he says, pointing at his feet, showing that he only brought the sandals that he was wearing.

“The children were sitting in the car with three on each other’s lap, their faces pale with fear. Inside me, everything was cracking from the pain of seeing them like that.”

Under normal circumstances, the drive from Sareshka, hometown of the Faris family, to Erbil takes three hours. But, recalls Faris, “we had to sit in a broiling car for over five hours, everybody was fleeing the city. Roads were packed and our car couldn’t reach its usual speed because we were too many.”

School turned into refugee camp in Erbil, September 2014. Credit: Annabell Van den Berghe/IPS

“With every rough spot in the road,” he continues, “we could hear the chassis of the car scrape on the asphalt. Nobody dared to move, out of fear that the car would break down under our weight.”

When they arrived, it was in the middle of the summer holidays and schools that had earlier been full of children were now makeshift homes for refugees like Faris.

At the Ishtar Elementary School, where Faris is taking shelter with his family, he and other refugees had hoped that this would only be a temporary solution and that they would soon be able to return to their homes. “I thought it would only be temporary,” says Wazira, Faris’ wife. “Two, three days maybe. Not more.”

Faris and his family have now been here for more than a month, together with dozens of other families, packed into the narrow classrooms of the school in the centre of Erbil.

Three weeks ago, schools had been due to open start the new school year but the at least 700 schools in the autonomous Kurdish region of Iraq that have been turned into refugee camps were unable to open their doors again for classes. Having believed, like many refugees, that the situation would not last, the Iraqi government has not been able to find an alternative solution.

The upshot is that there are now more than half a million children who are not going to school as planned this year.

“Despite the efforts of the Iraqi authorities, the children who are currently living in these classrooms, as well as the children who are supposed to come here to follow classes, have no access to education,” said Save the Children’s director in Iraq, Tina Yu. She is concerned that it could take weeks or even months to solve the problem.

The United Nations has released a statement requesting its humanitarian agencies to do all that they can to help the government find proper accommodation for the refugee families, hopefully before winter sets in.

But, for the refugees, staying until the winter is far too long. “We just want to go home. As soon as possible,” says Wazira.

(Edited by Phil Harris)

Relief workers and aid agencies are worried about the security, protection and psychological health of women and children in post-disaster settings. Credit: Naresh Newar/IPS

By Naresh Newar
DABI, Nepal, Aug 27 2014 (IPS)

Living in a makeshift tarpaulin shelter, which barely protects her family from the torrential rainfall or scorching heat of this remote village in southern Nepal, 36-year-old Kamala Pari is under immense stress, worrying about her financial security and children’s safety.

The family’s only house and tiny plot of farmland were completely destroyed by the massive landslide on Jul. 2 that struck the village of Dabi, part of the Dhusun Village Development Committee (VDC) of Sindhupalchok district, nearly 100 km south of the capital Kathmandu.

Dhusun was one of the four VDCs including Mankha, Tekanpur and Ramche severely affected by the disaster, which killed 156 and displaced 478 persons, according to the ministry of home affairs.

This was Nepal’s worst landslide in terms of human fatalities, according to the Nepal Red Cross Society, the country’s largest disaster relief NGO.

“My students are too scared to return to their classrooms. They really need a lot of counseling." -- Krishna Bhakta Nepal, principal of Jalpa High School
Though the government is still assessing long-term damages from that fateful day, officials here tell IPS the worst victims are likely to be women and children from these impoverished rural areas, whose houses and farms are erected on land that is highly vulnerable to natural catastrophes.

Left homeless and further impoverished, Pari is worried about the toll this will take on her children, who are now living with the reality of having lost their home and many of their friends.

“We’re not just living in fear of another disaster but have to worry about our future as there is nothing left for us to survive on,” Pari told IPS, adding that their monthly income fell from 100 dollars to 50 dollars after the landslide.

Her 50 neighbours, living in tarpaulin tents in a makeshift camp on top of a hill in this remote village, are also preparing for hard times ahead.

“We lost everything and now we run this shop to survive,” 15-year-old Elina Shrestha, a displaced teenager, told IPS, gesturing at the small grocery shop that she and her friends have cobbled together.

Their customers include tourists from Kathmandu and nearby towns who are flocking to destroyed villages to see with their own eyes the landslide-scarred hills and the lake created by the overflow of water from the nearby Sunkoshi river.

Protecting the vulnerable

Relief workers and protection specialists from government and aid agencies told IPS they are worried about the security, protection and psychological health of women and children.

An estimated 50 children were killed in the landslide, according to the ministry of women, children and social welfare.

“In any disaster, children and women seem to be more impacted than others,” Sunita Kayastha, chief of the emergency unit of the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) told IPS, adding that they are most vulnerable to abuse and violence.

Women and children are 14 times more likely than men to die in a disaster, according to a report by Plan International, which found adolescent girls to be particularly vulnerable to sexual violence in the aftermath of a natural hazard.

Senior psychosocial experts recently visited the affected areas and specifically reported that children and women were under immense psychological stress.

“The children need a lot of counseling [and] healing them is our top priority right now,” Women Development Officer Anju Dhungana, point-person for affected women and children in the Sindhupalchok district, told IPS.

Dhungana is concerned about the gap in professional psychosocial counseling at the local level and has requested help from government and international aid agencies based in Kathmandu.

Schools are gradually being resumed, with the help of aid agencies who are identifying safe locations for the children whose classrooms have been destroyed.

One school was totally destroyed, killing 33 children, and the remaining 142 children are now studying in temporary learning centres built by Save the Children and the District Education Office, officials told IPS.

A further 1,952 children who attend schools built close to the river are also at risk, experts say.

Trauma is quite widespread, the sight of the hollowed-out mountainside and large dam created close to the river still causing panic among children and their parents, as well as their teachers.

“I lost 28 of my students and now I have [the] job of healing hundreds of their school friends,” Balaram Timilsina, principal of Bansagu School in Mankha VDC, told IPS.

“My students are too scared to return to their classrooms. They really need a lot of counseling,” added Krishna Bhakta Nepal, principal of Jalpa High School of Khadichaur, a small town near Mankha.

International agencies Save the Children, UNICEF and the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) are helping the government’s efforts to restore normal life in the villages, but it has been challenging.

“We need to help children get back to school by ensuring a safe environment for them,” Sudarshan Shrestha, communications director of Save the Children, told IPS.

The international NGO has been setting up temporary learning centres for hundreds of students who lost their schools.

High risk for adolescent girls

Shrestha’s concern is not just for the children but also the young women who are often vulnerable in post-disaster situations to sexual violence and trafficking.

“The risk of sexual exploitation and trafficking is always high among the families impoverished by disaster, and during such situations, girls are often hoaxed and tricked by traffickers,” explained Shrestha.

Sindhupalchok, one of Nepal’s most impoverished districts, is notorious for being a source of young girls who are trafficked to Kathmandu and Indian cities, according to NGOs; a recent report by Child Reach International identified the district as a major trafficking centre.

“Whenever disaster strikes, the protection of adolescent girls should be highly prioritised and our role is to make sure this crucial issue is included in the disaster response,” UNFPA’s country representative Guilia Vallese told IPS, explaining that protection agencies need to be highly vigilant.

Government officials said that although there have been no cases of sexual or domestic violence and trafficking, they remain concerned.

“There are also a lot of young girls displaced [and living] with their relatives and after our assessment, we found that they need more protection,” explained officer Dhungana.

She said that many of them live in the camps or in school buildings in villages that are remote, with little or no government presence.

The government has formed a committee on protection measures and will be assessing the situation of vulnerability soon to ensure that children and women are living in a secure environment.

Edited by Kanya D’Almeida

Soundus, a young girl being treated in hospital for injuries from Israeli shelling of Gaza (August 2014). Credit: Khaled Alashqar/IPS

By Khaled Alashqar
GAZA CITY, Aug 16 2014 (IPS)

“My child became blind and lost the ability to speak, his dad died and his three brothers are seriously wounded. He still has not been told about the loss of his dad,” says the mother of 7-year-old Mohamad Badran. 

Mohamad is in hospital for treatment after being seriously injured in Israel shelling of Gaza. “My only way to communicate with him is by hugging him,” his mother adds.

Israeli air attacks and shelling in Gaza have left more than 1,870 dead and thousands injured. They have caused damage to infrastructure and hundreds of homes, forcing a large number of families to seek shelter in schools run by the U.N. agency for Palestine refugees (UNRWA).Some of the children have suffered serious injuries which cannot be treated in Gaza due to the limited medical infrastructure and capacities caused by the Israeli blockade.

In a news note, the U.N. Children’s Fund (UNICEF) said that Israeli airstrikes and shelling have taken a “devastating toll … on Gaza’s youngest and most vulnerable.” It said that at least 429 children had been killed and 2,744 severely injured.

Some of the children injured have suffered serious injuries which cannot be treated in Gaza due to the limited medical capacities caused by the Israeli blockade.

According to UNICEF, about 400,000 children – half of Gaza’s 1.8 million people are children under the age of 18 – are showing symptoms of psychological problems, including stress and depression, clinging to parents and nightmares.

Monika Awad, spokesperson for UNICEF in Jerusalem, told IPS that 30 percent of dead as a result of the Israeli military attacks are children, and “UNICEF and its local partners have been implementing psychosocial support programmes in Gaza schools where refugee families are sheltering.”

”We have a moral responsibility to protect the right of children to live in safety and dignity in accordance with U.N. charter for children’s rights,” she added.

However, the acute psychological effects of the Israeli attacks Gaza that have emerged among children, such as loss of speech, are among the biggest challenges that face psychotherapists.

Dr Sami Eweda, a consultant and psychiatrist with the Gaza Community Mental Health Programme (a local civil society organisation working on trauma and healing issues), told IPS: “When the Israeli war against Gaza ends, psychotherapists will grapple with many expected dilemmas such as the cases of the murder of entire families and the murder of the parents who represent the central protection and tenderness for the children. Such terrible cases put children in a state of loss and shock.”

According to Eweda, “we first need to stop the main cause of these traumas and psychological problems, which is the Israeli war against Gaza, and then begin an emergency intervention to support children’s health and treat traumas and severe psychological effects, including the loss of speech, which is considered as one of the self-defence mechanisms for overcoming traumas.”

Throughout the Gaza Strip, where entire neighbourhoods such as Shujaiyeh and Khuza’a have been destroyed by the Israeli invasion and heavy bombardment, access to basic services is practically impossible.

Displaced children in a UN-run school in the Shujaiyeh neighbourhood of Gaza (August 2014). Credit: Khaled Alashqar/IPS

People in these areas have been suffering difficulties in accessing drinking water and have been living in an almost complete blackout since the Israeli shelling of the power station which was the sole source of electricity in besieged Gaza.

Social Watch– a network of civil society organisations from around the world monitoring their governments’ commitments to end poverty and achieve gender justice – Thursday called on the international community to declare the Gaza Strip an “international humanitarian disaster zone”, as requested by Palestinian NGOs.

“The unrestricted violation of international law and humanitarian principles adds to the instability in the region and further fuels the arms race and the marginalisation of the issues of poverty eradication and social justice that should be the main common priority,” said Social Watch.

“The recurrence of these episodes in Gaza is the result of not having acted before on similar war crimes and of not having pursued with good faith negotiations towards a lasting peace,” it added.

In a press release, Save the Children, the world’s leading independent organisation for promoting children’s rights, said: “Children never start wars, yet they are the ones that are killed, maimed, traumatised and left homeless, terrified and permanently scarred.”

“Save the Children will not stop until innocent children are no longer under fire and the root causes of this conflict are addressed. If the international community does not take action now, the violence against children in Gaza will haunt our generation forever.”

In an interview with IPS, Save the Children’s spokesperson in Gaza, Asama Damo, said: ”We call for a permanent ceasefire and for lifting the siege on Gaza to ensure the delivery of humanitarian aid and basic services to children.”

“We also need the international community to intervene to end the catastrophic humanitarian situation and fight the skin diseases that are widely spreading among the refugees at UNRWA schools due to overcrowding and congestion.”

According to UNRWA, 87 of their schools are being used as shelters by the refugees, half of whom are children under the age of 18. Ziad Thabet, Undersecretary of the Ministry of Education in Gaza, told IPS:

“Israel deliberately targeted educational institutions and the education sector in general; large proportion of those killed and wounded are children and school students. Many schools and kindergartens were attacked.”

In the current disastrous situation in Gaza, it seems not only that the burnt bodies of Gaza’s children are the heritage of war, but also that their educational and health future is being burned.

(Edited by Phil Harris)

Sadhana Ghimire, 23, makes sure to give her 18-month-old daughter nutritious food, such as porridge containing grains and pulses, in order to prevent stunting. Credit: Mallika Aryal/IPS

By Mallika Aryal
RASUWA, Nepal, Jul 22 2014 (IPS)

Durga Ghimire had her first child at the age of 18 and the second at 21. As a young mother, Durga didn’t really understand the importance of taking care of her own health during pregnancy.

“I didn’t realise it would have an impact on my baby,” she says as she sits on the porch of her house in Laharepauwa, some 120 kilometers from Nepal’s capital, Kathmandu, nursing her third newborn child.

It is late in the afternoon and she is waiting expectantly for her two older daughters to return from school. One is nine and the other is six, but they look much smaller than their actual age.

“They are smaller in height and build and teachers at school say their learning process is also much slower,” Durga tells IPS. She is worried that the girls are stunted, and is trying to ensure her third child gets proper care.

A recent United Nations Children Fund (UNICEF) report shows that Nepal is among 10 countries in the world with the highest stunting prevalence, and one of the top 20 countries with the highest number of stunted children.

“Reducing stunting among children increases their chances of reaching their full development potential, which in turn will have a long-term impact on families’, communities’ and the country’s ability to thrive.” -- Peter Oyloe, chief of USAID Nepal’s Suaahara (‘Good Nutrition’) project at Save the Children-Nepal
UNICEF explains stunting as chronic under-nutrition during critical periods of growth and development between the ages of 0-59 months. The consequences of stunting are irreversible and in Nepal the condition affects 41 percent of children under the age of five.

“Nepal’s ranking […] is worrying, not just globally but also in South Asia,” Giri Raj Subedi, senior public health officer at Nepal’s ministry of health and population, tells IPS.

A 2013 progress report on the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) done by Nepal’s National Planning Commission (NPC) says while the number of stunted children declined from 57 percent in 2001 to 41 percent in 2011, it is still high above the 30 percent target set by the U.N..

“Stunting is a specific measure of the height of a child compared to the age of the child, and it is indicative of how well the child is developing cognitively,” says Peter Oyloe, chief of party of USAID Nepal’s Suaahara, or ‘Good Nutrition’ project at Save the Children Nepal.

Oyloe adds, “Reducing stunting among children increases their chances of reaching their full development potential, which in turn will have a long-term impact on families’, communities’ and the country’s ability to thrive.”

Child health and nutrition experts argue that, while poverty is directly related to inadequate intake of food, it is not the sole indicator of malnutrition or increased stunting.

Saba Mebrahtu, chief of the nutrition section at UNICEF-Nepal, says the immediate causes include poor nutrient intake, particularly early in life. Fifty percent of stunting happens during pregnancy and the rest after infants are born.

“When we are talking about nutrient-rich food […] we are talking about ensuring that children get enough of it even before they are born,” says Mebrahtu. The time between conception and a child’s second birthday is a crucial period, she said, one of rapid growth and cognitive development.

Thus it is incumbent on expecting mothers to follow a careful diet before the baby is born.

Basic education could save lives

Sadhana Ghimire, 23, lives a few doors down from Durga. Separated by a few houses, their approaches to nutrition are worlds apart.

Ghimire breast-fed her 18-month-old daughter exclusively for six months. She continues to make sure that her own diet includes green leafy vegetables, meat or eggs, along with rice and other staples, as she is still nursing.

She gives credit to the female community health-worker in her village, who informed her about the importance of the first 1,000 days of a child’s life.

In preparation for her daughter’s feeding time, Ghimire mixes together a bowl of homemade leeto, a porridge containing one-part whole grains such as millet or wheat and two-parts pulses such as beans or soy.

“I was only using grains to make the leeto before I was taught to make it properly by the health workers and Suaahara,” she says.

However, making leeto was not the most important lesson Ghimire learned as an expecting mother. “I had no idea that simple things like washing my hands properly could have such a long term effect on my daughter’s health,” she says.

Even seemingly common infections like diarrhoea can, in the first two years, put a child at greater risk of stunting.

“That is because the nutrients children are using for development are used instead to fight against infection,” says Mebrahtu emphasising the need for simple practices such as proper hand washing and cleaning of utensils.

If children are suffering from infection due to poor hygiene and sanitation they can have up to six diarrhoeal episodes per year, she warns, adding that while “children recover from these infections, they don’t come back to what they were before.”

Fighting on all fronts

Food insecurity is one of the biggest contributing factors to stunting in Nepal. Rugged hills and mountains comprise 77 percent of the country’s total land area, where 52 percent of Nepal’s 27 million people live.

Food insecurity is worst in the central and far western regions of the country; the prevalance of stunting in these areas is also extreme, with rates above 60 percent in some locations.

Thus experts recognise the need to fight simultaneously on multiple fronts.

“Our work in nutrition has proven again and again that a single approach to stunting doesn’t work because the causes are so many – it really has to be tackled in a coordinated way,” says UNICEF’s Mebrahtu.

In 2009 the government conducted the Nutrition Assessment and Gap Analysis (NAGA), which recommended building a multi-sector nutrition architecture to address the gaps in health and nutrition programmes.

“The NAGA study stated clearly that nutrition was not the responsibility of one department, as was previously thought,” Radha Krishna Pradhan, programme director of health and nutrition at Nepal’s NPC, tells IPS.

Nepal is also one of the first countries to commit to the global Scaling Up Nutrition (SUN) movement, which recognises multiple causes of malnutrition and recommends that partners work across sectors to achieve nutritional goals.

Thus, in 2012, five ministries in Nepal came together with the NPC and development partners to form the Multi-Sector Nutrition Plan (MSNP).

Public health experts say MSNP is a living example of the SUN movement in action and offers interventions with the aim of reducing the current prevalence of malnutrition by one-third.

Interventions include biannual vitamin D and folic acid supplements for expectant mothers, deworming for children, prenatal care, and life skills for adolescent girls.

On the agricultural front, ministries aim to increase the availability of food at the community level through homestead food production, access to clean and cheap energy sources such a biogas and improved cooking stoves, and the education of men to share household loads.

MSNP’s long-term vision is to work towards significantly reducing malnutrition so it is no longer an impending factor towards development. The World Bank has estimated that malnutrition can cause productivity losses of as much as 10 percent of lifetime earnings among the affected, and cause a reduction of up to three percent of a country’s GDP.

At present the Plan is in its initial phase and has been implemented in six out of 75 districts in Nepal since 2013.

(END)

U.S. foreign aid is becoming increasingly outdated, analysts here are suggesting.

Rather, reforms to U.S. assistance need to focus on issues of accountability and country ownership, according to a policy paper released this week by Modernizing Foreign Assistance Network (MFAN), a prominent coalition of international development advocates and foreign policy experts.“Aid should be structured in a way that citizens and NGOs can monitor how the government implements development projects." -- Casey Dunning

“Aid is a strong expression of U.S. moral, economic, and national security imperatives, and in many contexts the U.S. is still the most significant donor,” the paper states. But according to many metrics, U.S. aid is both non-transparent and inefficient.

“The United States needs to frame and deliver aid in a structured way that would support the effectiveness of aid in partnership countries and generate sustainable results,” Sylvain Browa, director of aid effectiveness at Save the Children, an independent charity, told IPS.

“In such dynamic environments, where all aid remains critical to savings lives, curing diseases and putting children in school, new players come to stage, and these include local leaders and citizens who know first-hand what their priorities are.”

In terms of aid quality, the United States ranked just 17th out of 22 major donors according to the Commitment to Development Index in 2013. Each year, the index ranks wealthy countries on how efficiently they help poor ones in areas of aid, trade, finance, migration, environment, security, and technology.

According to that ranking, just one U.S. agency was rated “very good” in terms of transparency. The agency responsible for the bulk of U.S. foreign assistance, USAID, was rated just “fair”, while the State Department and PEPFAR, the landmark anti-AIDS programme, were rated “poor” and “very poor” respectively.

MFAN suggests that a newly streamlined policy agenda, structured around two “mutually reinforcing pillars of reform” – accountability and country ownership – could significantly improve the effectiveness of U.S foreign aid.

“The donor-recipient paradigm of foreign aid is outdated,” the report states, and without priority on these two pillars, “we revert to old, tired, and stagnant paradigms of aid – paradigms that unnecessarily perpetuate aid dependency.”

The new program is designed to empower communities, which in turn should carry out country ownership, says George Ingram, MFAN’s co-chair and a senior fellow at the Brookings Institute, a think tank here.

“The two pillars are prerequisites to build the kind of capacity that will help enable leaders and citizens in the aid-recipient countries to take responsibility for their own development,” Ingram told IPS, “such as spending priorities, as well as making evidence-based conclusions about what works and what doesn’t.”

The report emphasises that such changes are also somewhat time-sensitive. Given looming domestic and international deadlines, MFAN’s analysts say the next two years constitute “an important window of opportunity for U.S. aid reform”.

“The midterm elections in 2014 are certain to shake up the membership of Congress,” they write. “In 2015, the Millennium Development Goals will expire and a new global development agenda will take its place. And 2016 will bring a new administration and further changes on Capitol Hill.”

Local destiny

The recommendations have received quick support from other development groups.

“The paper is of universal importance to all aid agencies, implementers and thinkers,” Casey Dunning, a senior policy analyst for the Centre for Global Development, a think tank here, told IPS.

But she warned that there were inherent difficulties in the recommendations, as well.

“There is a lot of rhetoric on what country ownership means or what accountability encompasses,” she says. “Ambiguities in definitions and measurements of accountability and country ownership make it difficult to make aid more effective. However, the MFAN report helps to find metrics for capacity-building and to see what it actually means.”

Save the Children’s Browa, too, notes that the concepts outlined in the report are not necessarily new.

“But when put together, these pillars are vital to building local capacity and creating local ownership of resources and tools for development,” he says, “so that country leaders and citizens can take leadership in their destiny.”

To achieve better transparency, the report’s authors are calling on the U.S. government to fully implement new global standards called the International Aid Transparency Initiative (IATI) by the end of 2015. In addition, the ratings of the Aid Transparency Index should be extended to all U.S. government agencies, which currently doesn’t happen.

Further, all U.S. agencies should begin contributing comprehensive financial information to a landmark new online government information clearinghouse, known as the Foreign Assistance Dashboard.

Finally, aid and development decisions need to be guided by rigorous evaluation, MFAN says. Together, transparency and evaluation will help these agencies to achieve stronger results for both U.S. taxpayers and communities receiving U.S. assistance.

In all of this, Ingram notes, learning is one of the most important aspects in the policy proposal. “Data and evaluations are useless unless we learn from them and use them to make better decisions and achieve better results,” he says.

Defining partners

The aid paradigm has already shifted, MFAN’s report suggests. “Today, countries that give support through bilateral assistance and countries that receive such support are partners,” it states.

Yet how exactly to define those partnerships remains a work in progress.

“Aid should be structured in a way that citizens and NGOs can monitor how the government implements development projects,” CGD’s Dunning says, “and how the resources are utilised.”

Would such an approach run the risk of strengthening corruption at lower levels? Dunning says this isn’t necessarily the right question.

“We can’t shy away from the corruption issue, since it’s such an integral issue for debate,” she says. “And transparency is the key. It is vital to every programme, every sector. Together with other tools, such as evaluation and learning, transparency contributes to sustainable country ownership, which militates against corruption.”

MFAN’s Ingram, meanwhile, sees the empowerment of local communities as an anti-corruption tool in itself.

“Engaging smart and trusting people who know the culture and know how to manoeuvre through the dynamics of that country is very important,” he says.

“Informed and empowered citizens who demand good governance and sound priorities act as a check against corruption.”

The United States’ main foreign aid funder, USAID, released a mission statement Wednesday that includes new focus on ending extreme poverty while also promising to be more inclusive in incorporating civil society and other input in its decision-making.

“We partner to end extreme poverty and promote resilient, democratic societies while advancing our security and prosperity,” the agency’s new mission statement now reads, putting a greater emphasis on the link between extreme poverty and strong and democratic states.“Any process in which USAID opens its door to different perspectives is an important step and is one that should be applauded." -- Akshaya Kumar

A USAID spokesperson told IPS that the new mission statement “is about how we do what we do and it’s the core of who we are and what we have always done over [the past] 50 years.”

Civil society actors reacted to the new vision with cautious optimism.

“[USAID’s] stated commitment to engage with civil society and others in order to shape their thinking is very important,” Nora O’Connell, associate director of public policy and advocacy at Save the Children, an advocacy group here, told IPS.

Yet she also noted that it will be important for Western donors, while including different stakeholders, to also include local actors in the development effort.

“No donor or outside actor can go in and develop people. The country has to do it itself, and that is why governments in those states should also play a leadership role,” O’Connell said. “These can be from civil society or the private sector,” she said, as long as they are fully included in the development and reconstruction process.

The release of the new statement comes a day after top USAID officials and civil society leaders made a public commitment to fight extreme poverty in conflict zones as part of the post-2015 global development agenda, the successor to the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).

Alex Thier, USAID’s assistant to the administrator, told a panel discussion here on Tuesday that the agency will undergo a major process of inclusion over the next year. This will see USAID increasingly welcoming input from civil society, think tanks and affected stakeholders in its efforts to implement the post-2015 global development agenda.

“We are truly on the precipice of a great moment: One year ago, President Obama called on us to stand together to achieve what I believe may be one of the most extraordinary goals that the United States or frankly any country has ever set out for itself, which is to eradicate extreme poverty from the planet,” Thier said.

“We at USAID are … rising to answer this call [and] as we focus on ending extreme poverty, we have to seek better ways to engage in fragile states where conflict, corruption and recurrent crises impede inclusive growth.”

USAID says it will need to “scale existing partnerships and develop new ones to draw in fresh perspectives and innovative thinking”. This expansion is part of a new effort that Thier said is “meant to provoke thought” by bringing in new perspectives and views.

The new perspectives are likely to come from universities, research institutes and non-governmental organisations, Thier said.

“We’re not just stating policy,” he noted.

Security focus

USAID’s efforts are part of broader global momentum to make the fight against extreme poverty in conflict zones a top priority. Last year, the Washington-based World Bank unveiled a new institutional vision that will likewise focus on ending extreme poverty.

In 2011, a grouping of conflict-affected countries known as the g7+ unveiled a new initiative, called the New Deal Compact, aimed at providing developing states with more of a say in the fight against poverty. With countries such as Afghanistan, the Central African Republic (CAR), the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Haiti, Liberia, Somalia and others as members, the New Deal Compact aims to ensure that development aid focuses on peace and security ahead of other goals.

Also, in 2012, a United Nations report emphasised that eradicating extreme poverty would be a “crucial” aspect of any new post-MDG strategy, especially in conflict-affected areas.

According to USAID statistics, there are currently 1.2 billion people living in extreme poverty, 70 percent of whom live in fragile states. USAID’s Thier says that by 2020 extreme poverty will be increasingly concentrated in fragile or failed states.

Some activists say that such an approach should constitute an important part of USAID’s new approach in countries experiencing conflict.

“Any process in which USAID opens its door to different perspectives is an important step and is one that should be applauded,” Akshaya Kumar, the Sudan and South Sudan analyst at Enough Project, an advocacy group here, told IPS. “But it’s also important to first diagnose the inter-linkages between different conflicts across different regions.”

Very often, Kumar said, conflicts are driven by economic factors – for instance, mining or trade. Once such linkages are detected, addressing root causes of conflict can become easier.

“If you look at the Horn of Africa, for instance, you can see that [warring factions] try to take advantage of goldmines in northern Darfur, or oil routes in South Sudan, undermining the ability of the local population to benefit from economic opportunities,” she said. “They then use that money to fuel war.”

Real efforts aimed at conflict resolution are perhaps the best strategy to begin thinking about how to fight poverty in conflict areas, she said, and the new political commitment by the U.S. government and USAID are positive signs.

“The next step is to show that these commitments will be put in practice. One important factor will be whether U.S. government bodies such as the State Department will actually facilitate these negotiations.”

Hazem Maher, 16, from Hebron, works as a porter in a fruit and vegetable market in a city near Ramallah. Credit: Mel Frykberg/IPS

By Mel Frykberg
RAMALLAH, Occupied West Bank, Jun 4 2013 (IPS)

Hazem Maher, 16, from Hebron in the southern West Bank, works a backbreaking 12-hour day in the fruit and vegetable market in the city of El Bireh, next to Ramallah. He earns just over 15 dollars a day as a porter.

“My father is blind and both my parents are unemployed. I am the sole provider for my parents and my three brothers and two sisters. They depend on me to be able to eat,” Maher told IPS, adding that poor grades and his family’s financial situation forced him to drop out of school.

“I work from 6 am to 6 pm,” he described. At night, he sleeps with other boys because the drive from Hebron to Ramallah takes one and a half hours. “Transportation by service taxi is expensive,” he added."[My family] depend[s] on me to be able to eat."
--Hazem Maher, 16

Maher is not alone in the work he does and the life he leads. Physical and verbal abuse, exploitation, long hours, little pay, exposure to danger, a missing childhood, and a future scarred by physical and psychological damage are what some of the thousands of Palestinian child labourers in the Palestinian territories face.

“If the Israeli occupation continues and Palestinians are unable to implement a national strategy and enforce legislation protecting children in the workforce, the future of these children will be seriously compromised,” said Osama Damo, from the aid organisation Save The Children in Gaza.

“The physical and psychological damage they experience could affect their ability to be good parents and this damage could pass on to the next generation,” Damo told IPS.

‘I have no other choice’

Anis Issa, 17, is also from Hebron. He too works as a porter at the fruit and vegetable market to help support five brothers and supplement the wages of his father, who works in a photography office.

“At the end of the day I’m very tired. I hate this work but I have no other choice. I don’t even think about going to university because my family could never afford that,” Issa told IPS.

Thousands of Palestinian children are currently employed as child labourers in Gaza and the West Bank, though hundreds more are believed to be excluded from those statistics.

According to a report from the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics (PCBS) on Palestinian children, based on information collated in 2011, eight percent of Palestinian children were employed in Gaza and three percent in the West Bank during that year.

Six and a half percent of the children employed were aged 5-11, and less than five percent were between 12 and 14 years. These figures, however, exclude children working in family-owned businesses or on agricultural land and construction sites. Children enrolled in primary United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) schools were not included in the statistics.

The percentage of children aged 5-14 years attending school and also engaged in child labour was 5.9 in 2010 – 7.8 percent in the West Bank and three percent in the Gaza Strip.

Palestinian children can be found working as street and kiosk vendors, car cleaners, newspaper sellers and porters. They also work in construction and agriculture and sell goods at border crossings, traffic lights and in markets, either working for themselves or for employers.

Push factors

According to Palestinian law, children younger than 15 cannot legally work. From the ages of 15 to 18, they are employable with certain limitations and restrictions, according to Damo. However, “this law is not being enforced adequately, and the children are being exploited as adults,” Damo told IPS. “They are working long hours for less pay than an adult because they are more profitable.”

One reason children enter the labour market is because they drop out of school. In the Palestinian territories, the secondary school dropout rate for boys was 1.9 percent and 2.1 percent for girls.

“High levels of unemployment and poverty, exacerbated by illiteracy, are forcing Palestinian children out of school and into the labour force to try and help provide for their families,” Damo explained. He added that because of the Israeli blockade and greater unemployment and poverty, the situation in Gaza is worse than in the West Bank.

Poverty and unemployment in Gaza have been exacerbated by a ban on exports, severe restrictions on fishermen off the Gaza coast, and Palestinians’ inability to reach their agricultural fields in the Israeli-imposed buffer zone.

The separation barrier in and around the West Bank also prevents Palestinians from working in Israel. In addition, “numerous checkpoints and barriers make transportation longer and more expensive for school children, leading many to drop out from school,” Damo elaborated.

Other factors behind the children working and often spending hours in the streets are the lack of public recreational facilities and a high population density, of which children comprise 60 percent. Meanwhile, high birth rates ensure that few Palestinian children ever experience the luxury of a room to themselves at home.

In order to tackle the problem of child labour, Save The Children has embarked on a three-year project, funded by the European Union, in partnership with a number of non-governmental organisations and the Palestinian ministries of social affairs, labour and education. “Our aim is to develop a national strategy for implementing and enforcing child labour laws and protecting children,” Damo described.

UNICEF estimates that 3.5 million children in Pakistan suffer from acute malnutrition. The EU is helping the government to cut down the malnourishment rate by 25 percent by the year 2015. Credit: Ashfaq Yusufzai/IPS

By Jim Lobe
WASHINGTON, May 29 2013 (IPS)

In addition to the serious health problems it causes, child malnutrition is costing the global economy tens of billions of dollars a year by depriving its victims of the ability to learn basic skills, according to a new report released Tuesday by Save the Children (STC).

Based on a multi-year study in four countries, the 23-page report found that chronically malnourished children – about one of every four children born today — are significantly less able to read, write a simple sentence, or perform basic arithmetic.

Those disabilities, as well as other cognitive problems related to malnutrition, translate into a 20-percent reduction in their average adult earnings, which in turn acts as an important brake on economic growth in the countries where they live, according to the report.

The report, “Food for Thought: Tackling Child Malnutrition to Unlock Potential and Boost Prosperity”, estimated the global impact of child malnutrition at 125 billion dollars a year by the time today’s children reach working age in 2030.

It is urging leaders at this year’s G8 Summit, which takes place in Northern Ireland in 10 days, to take strong action, including substantially increasing donor funding, to tackle the problem.

“Poor nutrition in the early years is driving a literacy and numeracy crisis in developing countries and is also a huge barrier to further progress in tackling child deaths,” said Carolyn Miles, STC’s president.

“Improving the nutritional status of children and women in the crucial 1,000-day window – from the start of a woman’s pregnancy until her child’s second birthday – could greatly increase children’s ability to learn and to earn,” she noted. “World leaders must commit to concrete actions to tackle malnutrition in those critical 1,000 days, and invest in the future of our children.”

According to 2012 figures compiled by the U.N., nearly half of children under five in southern Asia and 39 percent of the same age group in sub-Saharan Africa are stunted – that is, too short for their age due to poor nutrition. With more than 60 million stunted children, India is among the most hard-hit countries, as is Nigeria, with nearly 11 million stunted children.

Malnutrition, according to the report, threatens to undermine the impressive gains in reducing child mortality and increasing primary-school enrolment that have been made in the past two decades as the world has moved closer to fulfilling the U.N.’s Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) by 2015.

Between 1990 and 2011, the numbers of children dying under the age of five fell from 12 million to 6.9 million. But malnutrition remains an underlying cause of 2.3 million children’s deaths each year, according to STC.

And, while the number of children in primary school rose by more than 40 million between 1999 and 2011 – an increase of some 32 percent – the cognitive disabilities caused by chronic malnutrition have left millions of children unable to learn some of the most rudimentary tasks of a basic education.

The study, the first to try to identify the impact of malnutrition on educational outcomes across a range of countries, included some 3,000 children in four countries – Ethiopia, India, Peru, and Vietnam – over nearly two decades. The subjects were interviewed and tested to determine their educational abilities, confidence, and aspirations at various points in their lives.

It found that children who are malnourished in the first 1,000 days of their lives – from the start of a woman’s pregnancy until their second birthday – suffer substantial learning disabilities compared to those with healthy diets.

Specifically, the children who suffered malnutrition scored an average of seven percent lower on math tests than non-stunted children; they were 19 percent less likely to be able to read a simple sentence by the age of eight, and 12 percent less likely to be able to write a simple sentence. Stunted children were also 13 percent less likely to be in the appropriate grade for their age at school.

In addition, malnourished children tend to be less confident about learning and about their ability to change their situation for the better, according to the studies on which the report was based.

The report found that children were malnourished go on to earn 20 percent less as adults than children who were well nourished, although it found evidence that the gap could be larger.

It also noted that some of the earnings differential could be explained by the relatively smaller size of many adults who were malnourished as children, particularly if their work requires physical strength, including agriculture and other manual labour.

“This report adds to the mounting evidence that malnutrition takes a toll not only on children’s bodies, but also on their ability to earn an education, make a living and rise out of poverty,” said Lucy Sullivan, director of 1,000 Days, a partnership co-founded by former U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, then-Irish Foreign Minister Micheal Martin, among others, in September 2010 that promotes investments to improve nutrition for mothers and children from pregnancy to age two.

“Malnutrition’s price tag is steep: it costs the global economy 125 billion dollars per year. What the report drives home, however, is that malnutrition is preventable and solvable,” she added.

Despite the fact that the World Bank concluded in a major 2006 study that improving nutrition of mothers and small children was among the most cost-effective interventions in promoting development, the donor community has spent an average of only 0.37 percent of total aid on nutrition over the past three years, in part because the issue often falls through the cracks between the ministries of health and agriculture.

On Jun. 8, however, the British and Brazilian governments will co-host the first-ever nutrition pledging conference at the G8 summit, called “Nutrition for Growth”.

The report is calling on donors to more than double their commitments to spending on nutrition programmes to one billion dollars a year and for national governments to establish plans and targets for reducing malnutrition over the next decade.

There are 135 million live births every year, with only 11 million benefitting from quality care. Credit: Photo stock

By Joan Erakit
UNITED NATIONS, May 8 2013 (IPS)

The story goes like this: a young mother lies quietly in a dimly lit room having just given birth to her baby. For the next seven days she watches over the child with caution, nursing and swaddling it patiently. Fearful that the infant will not survive past a few days, she refuses to give it a name.

Unfortunately, this scenario remains the reality for many women across the globe. There are 135 million live births every year, with only 11 million benefitting from quality care – a divide not only between rich and poor but also between life and death.“We’re not going to solve all these issues without involving and engaging men.” -- CEO of Save the Children Carolyn Miles

On Tuesday, Save the Children launched their annual report State of The World’s Mothers 2013: Surviving the First Day. The report emphasises the need for quality care around pregnancy, delivery and postnatal care.

“The first hours and days of a baby’s life are especially critical,” it says. “About three-quarters of all newborn deaths (over 2 million) take place within one week of births. Thirty-six percent of newborn deaths (1 million) occur on the day a child is born.”

Sometimes it is as simple as not having access to an educated midwife or community nurse. Other times it’s as complicated as having to wait for a husband’s approval in order to go to the hospital to deliver the baby.

Then there are the infections that newborns are prone to when they come into this world, and also the health of the mother during and after pregnancy.

Empowered mothers

“An empowered and educated mother is the best thing for a child,” President and CEO of Save the Children Carolyn Miles said as the report was launched at the United Nations.

The report cites three major causes of newborn mortality: severe infections, pre-term birth and complications during childbirth.

At the heart of the problem is the fact that millions of women lack access to a physician or healthcare facility.

“As we start to do more for newborns, the quality of care is also really critical, because we want babies not just to survive, but to survive without disability,” said Professor Joy Lawn, director of the MARCH Centre at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.

This means making maternal and child health a priority for government officials and community leaders. It means having conversations with husbands and fathers about the need to have a birthing plan.

“We’re not going to solve all these issues without involving and engaging men,” Miles told IPS.

“We have got to work in communities to actually engage husbands, make them part of the plan. A woman develops a plan to get to the hospital to be able to deliver; engage her husband in that plan. Make sure he’s expected to be part of the plan and has put away a little money if there’s a transportation need. He’s actually part of that.”

Growing midwifery

Losing a baby during childbirth has become commonplace in the developing world. It is understood that childbirth is a terribly difficult thing with sometimes devastating results, but still a natural order.

“There is this sense of, ‘this is just what happens’. Babies die, babies are born too early, and they’ll die. Mothers don’t name their children for seven days because so many will die,” Miles told IPS. “So it’s changing that idea that every mother and every child deserves to live through birth.”

According to the report, 800 women die during pregnancy or childbirth and 8,000 newborn babies die during their first month of life. It all seems to boil down to two essential factors: education and access.

Those few midwives or birth attendants who are available – especially in rural areas – usually lack adeqate training in prenatal and postnatal care. What little education on the topic they have, they’ve learned along the way from previous childbirths, some not so successful.

Public health advocates say these providers need proper training and tools to carry out basic tasks like cleaning the umbilical cord after childbirth and teaching new mothers about infection.

This leads to access, another issue preventing pregnant women from receiving the best care during such a critical time. Rural areas are hard to reach, community workers are not paid enough to allow travel, and resources are scant.

“Part of the solution is to train more community midwives and health workers,” says Catherin Ojo, a chief nursing officer at Ahmadu Bello University Teaching Hospital in Zaria, Nigeria.

By Joy Lawn
LONDON, Apr 8 2013 (IPS)

I nearly died on the day I was born. My mother laboured for 24 hours in a bush hospital in northern Uganda that had no running water and no electricity. Fortunately, the midwife found a doctor, who had witnessed a Caesarian section, who managed to operate, saving my life and my mother’s. Today, had I been born in one of the many places across the world without adequate maternal and reproductive health care, I may not have survived my own day of birth.

Joy Lawn. Credit: Courtesy of the author.

While many nations have made remarkable progress towards achieving maternal and child health goals – one of the greatest development successes of the last few decades – newborn death rates (in the first month of life) are declining one-third slower than progress for older children (after one month of age) and at half the rate of decline for maternal deaths.

Each year, three million newborns die, making up 43 percent of the world’s under-five child deaths. The moments before, during and immediately after labour are critical for the survival both mother and baby. Many brain injuries that cause long-term disability and rob the poorest countries of development and economic potential also occur around the time of birth.

Global health goals do not even account for the world’s 2.6 stillborn children, 1.2 million of whom die during labour and are totally preventable with better obstetric care.

Almost all these baby’s deaths stem from preventable causes: prematurity, birth complications and infections. Highly cost-effective solutions to these conditions have already been developed. For example, something as simple as “ Kangaroo mother care” can halve the death rate of preterm babies, preventing half a million deaths each year. This technique, which simply involves skin-to-skin contact between mother and child, provides warmth, promotes breastfeeding, and helps protect against infections.

Africa is now at a tipping point for saving lives, with half of births happening in hospitals. Yet, shockingly, essential equipment that could save newborns is often not available. Midwives and frontline workers are saving lives every day, but they would benefit greatly from access to basic tools and supplies.

Midwives seldom have the neonatal bag-and-mask device that helps resuscitate babies not breathing at birth. Many frontline workers are not trained to recognise common infections in newborns, and lack the antibiotics that would save hundreds of thousands of lives. Antenatal steroid injections costing less than a dollar are not administered to women in preterm labor, as many health workers are unaware that these would almost halve breathing problems in preterm babies.

Why is this care for newborns missing, even as we invest millions in healthcare for women and children? The single biggest reason is that newborn survival has only recently been recognised as a global health issue.

A decade ago we lacked data, and timely interventions were too complex. Now we have no excuse – the data are clear and the solutions are doable. Yet a recent study of 250,000 disbursements of aid from 2002 to 2010 showed that, before the year 2005, the word “newborn” barely occurred. While mention of newborns has since increased, only 0.01 percent of about six billion dollars in aid refers to newborn care interventions that would reduce infant mortality.

One thousand days before the deadline for the Millennium Development Goals, global and national leaders are waking up to the urgency and the opportunity of investing in newborns. If newborns survive, their families are more likely to choose to have fewer children. If they are healthy, the nation becomes stronger.

Meeting goals for preventable child deaths is more and more dependent on targeting newborns. Newborn health conditions, especially preterm births and stillbirths, affect all countries, rich and poor. Such deaths are a tragedy for women, families and communities, and rob nations of the development potential of future generations

In mid-April, many of the world’s leading newborn health experts will come together in Johannesburg, to focus on one of the world’s most solvable but neglected health issues, and lay the groundwork for a Global Newborn Action Plan, linked to national roadmaps.

Teams of experts and stakeholders from high-burden countries, led by their health ministries, will attend the conference, hosted by USAID’s Maternal and Child Health Integrated Program (MCHIP), Save the Children’s Saving Newborn Lives program (SNL), the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), in collaboration with the World Health Organisation (WHO), UKAID and other partners.

Much of the discussion, which will be available to the entire global community via live stream through the Healthy Newborn Network, will focus on effective, low-cost and scalable interventions that already exist to address the leading causes of newborn deaths.

The development of a global action plan is proof that leaders are prepared to commit and hold themselves accountable to new targets to end preventable newborn deaths.

But leaders need support in the form of national data, reliable evidence and experienced advice to make context specific choices to accelerate change for their newborns and to build sustainable healthcare systems: in short, they require investments.

The main source of health funding in even the poorest countries comes from national governments, which must take up this call. Donor aid also has a role to play in helping governments achieve commitments they have set to reduce newborn mortality. Such donor aid has helped bring major changes to other urgent global health issues, including prevention and treatment of HIV/AIDS and the distribution of bed nets to prevent malaria.

The year 2013 has emerged as the moment to include the health and survival of newborn babies among the world’s priorities. As Melinda Gates recently said, “Next focus on the newborn”. 

I survived my first day on this earth. Today, as you read this, nearly 8,000 newborns will be lost to grieving parents. We can – we must – do better.  The voices of families and advocates all over the world are sparking a movement that no longer accepts that babies are born to die.

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