NEWSLETTER Week of May 5th 2017

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NEWSLETTER
Week of May 5th 2017
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The return of an old scourge : starvation

03/31/2017 by Claude ForthommeFamine was supposed to be a thing of the past. True, 75 million people had died from starvation in the 20th century, but we had learned from these tragedies, how to predict them and how to address them. The largest famines dated back two decades: in the Horn of Africa in 1984-85 and 1992, and in North Korea in the mid-1990s. There had been only one serious famine in the 21st century, and it had occurred in Somalia in 2011, killing 260,000 people.

Now, all of a sudden, the scourge of starvation is back. The news came out over a month ago: 20 million people facing starvation, including 1.4 million children at “imminent risk of death”. The United Nations famine alert concerned four disconnected countries, across Africa and the Arabian peninsula: Nigeria, South Sudan, Somalia and Yemen.

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US foreign aid cuts: what could impact be?

04/28/2017 by Peter Ford. A leaked State Department budget document lays out proposals for a 30.8 percent cut in development aid and plans to sharply cut back

When President Donald Trump’s budget director, Mick Mulvaney, presented the outlines of the new US administration’s first budget last month, he made no bones about its purpose.

“This is a hard power budget. It is not a soft power budget,” he told reporters, referring to Mr. Trump’s preference for military firepower over the influence he might wield through development aid.

Now the rest of the world is getting a glimpse of just what that will mean. A leaked State Department budget document lays out proposals for a 30.8 percent cut in development aid and plans to sharply cut back USAID, America’s premier foreign aid agency, by closing many of its projects.

Even critics of the current US aid program such as Richard Sokolsky, a fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington, are shocked. “This is the wrong approach,” he says. “Nobody is asking the right questions about how resources are related to our objectives. They are just taking a meat ax to the aid budget.”
Foreign aid’s critics and advocates have long argued over its usefulness.

Syria: ‘Glimmers of humanity’ overshadowed by brutality of attacks on civilians, says UN aid chief

04/27/2017; With fighting intensifying on numerous fronts in Syria over the past months, the top United Nations humanitarian official today urged consolidation of the nationwide ceasefire, most importantly a pause in fighting on the outskirts of Damascus, to enable the delivery of aid.

“The Secretary-General has said time and again that there will be no military end to this conflict. Yet, military might continues to be used against civilians in a way that defies all reason, let alone morality or the law,” Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator Stephen O’Brien told the Security Council.

He said that the use of “abhorrent chemical weapons” on 4 April in Khan Shaykhun was yet another horrific account of such brutality. “I wish I could say mindless brutality – but no, it was deliberate, planned, predetermined, by other humans against their own fellow human beings, sheer unbridled cruelty by leaders and commanders. And we await the investigation to confirm which ones.”

A climate in crisis

04/27/2017. A report by Tracy Carty. How climate change is making drought and humanitarian disaster worse in East Africa.

Nearly eleven million people in Kenya, Ethiopia and Somalia are dangerously hungry and in need of humanitarian assistance. The worst drought-affected areas in Somalia are on the brink of famine.

There is growing scientific analysis suggesting that the impacts of current and recent droughts in East Africa are likely to have been aggravated by climate change. Climate change is not a distant, future threat. As this briefing explains, it is helping fuel this emerging catastrophe in which poverty, chronic malnutrition, weak governance, conflict, drought and climate change have combined to create a perfect storm.

Turkey steps up crackdown on humanitarian aid groups

04/27/2017 by Diego Cupolo. Turkish authorities have detained 15 staff of a US NGO working on Syria relief operations – the latest in a series of moves restricting humanitarian aid groups in the country. Observers attribute the crackdown on foreign NGOs to a resurgence in Turkish nationalism and government concerns about Kurdish empowerment inside Syria.
Police detained the 15 employees, who were working for the International Medical Corps in the southeastern city of Gaziantep, near the Syrian border, on Thursday 20 April. Four of those detained – foreign nationals from Britain, India, Indonesia and Ireland – were deported five days later. The 11 others are Syrian and remain in a detention centre near Gaziantep, from where they face deportation back to Syria.

Turkish authorities cited discrepancies in employment permits as the cause for the detentions, but Rebecca Gustafson, a senior communications adviser for the US-based NGO, said all the staff had valid work permits.
“[IMC] is working with the Turkish government to secure the release of those staff still detained as soon as possible, and we continue to support our team members and their families during this very difficult time,” she said in a statement on Wednesday.

Syria Changed the World

04/21/2017 by Anne Barnard. The world seems awash in chaos and uncertainty, perhaps more so than at any point since the end of the Cold War.

Authoritarian-leaning leaders are on the rise, and liberal democracy itself seems under siege. The post-World War II order is fraying as fighting spills across borders and international institutions — built, at least in theory, to act as brakes on wanton slaughter — fail to provide solutions. Populist movements on both sides of the Atlantic are not just riding anti-establishment anger, but stoking fears of a religious “other,” this time Muslims.

These challenges have been crystallized, propelled and intensified by a conflagration once dismissed in the West as peripheral, to be filed, perhaps, under “Muslims killing Muslims”: the war in Syria.

Now in its seventh year, this war allowed to rage for so long, killing 400,000 Syrians and plunging millions more into misery, has sent shock waves around the world. Millions have fled to neighboring countries, some pushing on to Europe.

Staffan de Mistura Special Envoy for Syria and Jan Egeland UN Senior Advisor Stakeout after the HTF Meeting

04/24/2017. Staffan de Mistura:

Good afternoon,

We will do it like this, I will first do a briefing and then take some questions and then my friend Jan Egeland will do his own about the humanitarian side, so that we don’t confuse questions between political and humanitarian.

But let me say anyway one thing about the humanitarian side: We had the HTF (the Humanitarian Task Force) a moment ago and frankly one of the main issues which was raised was this horrific attack on the 15th of April. That explosion, which now as the latest figures [show], came up to more than 130 people killed among which 67 children perhaps more than 200 wounded. All this was quite shocking for everyone because as you know that convoy was made of people who had been besieged for more than three years and finally they were able to get out through a very complicated process as you know between four towns. Once they came out someone pretending even to distribute aid and attracting children produced that horrific explosion. So, we will go more into that aspect but just to say that was the main moment of total unity among all the members of the HTF. There was one aspect which also was noted that due to that horrific attack there was a moment of unity: Armed groups representatives who were present, government representatives, and of course the NGOs, all of them affected by the explosion, all helped whoever was wounded in order to make sure that they could get to the first hospital. So in a way the divisions were blurred by the horrific attack which was meant to do the opposite.

Libya’s warring sides reach diplomatic breakthrough in Rome

04/24/2017 by Patrick Wintour.

Rome has brokered a diplomatic breakthrough in Libya that has the potential to bring the two main warring sides together in a new political agreement after years of division, fighting and economic misery.

The scale of the breakthrough will be tested later this week, but Italy is hailing a compromise brokered between the presidents of the house of representatives, Ageela Saleh, and the state council, Abdulrahman Sewehli.

The meeting was overseen by the Italian foreign minister, Angelino Alfano, and the Italian ambassador to Libya.

According to a statement from the state council, “there was an atmosphere of friendliness and openness” at the meeting in Rome. The statement also said there would have to be further consultations between the two sides this week in order to bring about reconciliation “and stop the bleeding as well as [ensure] the return of displaced persons”.

The house of representatives led by Saleh has refused to approve a government of national accord based in Tripoli for more than a year until changes are made to the Libyan Political Agreement (LPA), which can only be effected by a joint team from the house and the state council.

Unity within Security Council vital to prevent mass atrocities – UN chief Guterres

04/18/2017. Briefing the Security Council, United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres today stressed the importance of unity in the 15-member body to effectively address human rights violations as well as to prevent mass atrocities.

“Article 24 of the UN Charter is clear: the primary responsibility for the maintenance of international peace and security rests with this Council ‘in order to ensure prompt and effective action’,” said Mr. Guterres, speaking on the theme of Human Rights and the Prevention of Armed Conflict.

“We must collectively draw strength from the letter and spirit of the Charter to better prevent armed conflict and sustain peace through development [by] ensuring effective protection of all human rights – civil, political, economic, social and cultural,” he added.

Noting that peace, security, sustainable development and human rights are mutually reinforcing, the UN chief underscored that peace must be “relentlessly pursued” along the gamut of prevention, conflict resolution and peacekeeping to peacebuilding and long-term development.