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Maryan0
07-14-2011, 08:37 PM
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East Africa: 'It's because of the drought'

Whether you ask about the carcasses of livestock baked white in the sun, the gaggle of people crowding around the district commissioner's door, or the wards of malnourished children lying listlessly in hospital beds, the explanation given is always the same.

"It's because of the drought", they say.

The failure of rains across arid parts of East Africa has brought misery to millions of people, affecting almost every aspect of life.

In this dry, dusty part of the world, every drop that falls helps people scrape a living from the land. If the rains don't come for a season people go hungry. If they fail twice in a row, as they have in Kenya's impoverished north eastern province, they begin to starve.

At the hospital in Wajir town, the paediatric ward is full of young mothers clutching the tiny, wasted forms of their children.

Doctors estimate admissions for severe malnutrition in children have risen by at least 25 per cent in recent months, and fear that the dozens of referrals they have seen could be the tip of a large and deadly iceberg.

"Some parents are reluctant to bring their children to the hospital because it is such a long journey, or they don't recognise the symptoms of malnutrition. Some think they can cure the problem by praying - they don't realise the children need treatment. Children could be dying because of this and we wouldn't know about it," says Dr Moses Menza, the chief medical officer at the hospital.

He is talking at the bedside of two-year old Bashara, the daughter of nomadic cattle grazers who wander the desert four hours to the west of Wajir town. There is no need for Menza to explain what is wrong with her; her sunken features and twig-like limbs tell their own desperate tale.

Bashara is here with her grandmother, Amina Mohamed; her parents left her in the village and drove their animals to more fertile ground as the drought began to bite. She should have been safer there than out on the plains, but when the livestock began to die, the villagers found themselves with nothing to feed their families.

As always, it was growing children like Bashara who were hit hardest.

"The animals are the way we earn money and how we get food," Amina says, as she waves the flies off the starving child's tiny face. "Now they have died we have nothing to eat and nothing to sell. We have no milk any more, so we cannot feed the children."

Save the Children has treated thousands of drought-affected children for malnutrition in Kenya alone, and believes that across the region, in neighbouring Somalia and Ethiopia, more than millions of children could be at risk over the next three months.

"When these people lose their livestock, they lose their source of food, their livelihood and their savings in a single stroke," said Matt Croucher, Save the Children's regional emergency manager for East Africa.

"We can only imagine the desperation such families feel at not being able to give their children enough to eat and drink to stay healthy. They need help now, before this crisis turns into a catastrophe."

Changing climate

East Africans are no strangers to drought conditions. Traditionally, the rains here have failed around once a decade, giving communities time to build up emergency stocks and to restore the condition of their livestock on the good years. But for the past decade, droughts have been coming more regularly.

The people here reckon the rains fail one year in every two now; consecutive failings, like this one, have the potential to totally destroy the herds upon which they rely.

With their prime assets gone, they lose both their source of food, and their sole source of income. Their nomadic lifestyle prevents them from growing crops; the animals they graze are their only means to survive. Now it appears that climate change is robbing them of that livelihood.

A study by the US Geological Survey, published earlier this year, linked the increased frequency of drought in East Africa with global warming, suggesting that there is more than bad luck behind the latest wave of hunger sweeping the region.

Faced with a changing climate increasing numbers of pastoralists are leaving the land, settling in permanent communities on the edge of towns like Wajir. A way of life that has persisted for thousands of years is slowly dying out.

Those who leave will find little in the way of work in the towns. That pastoralists are willing to opt for grinding urban poverty over the only work they have ever known is a testament to how bad the situation has become.

For those who remain, the next few months will be critical.

The next rains are not expected until October, and with livestock dying every day, the situation looks set to get worse before it gets better. Aid operations are chronically underfunded; Save the Children has less than half of the money it needs to respond to this crisis effectively.

In rural villages, there are already reports of children dying as a result of the extreme hardship they face.

Abdullah Alnoor lives in the remote village of Haragel, two hours drive from Wajir town. In April his two year-old son, Mohamed, died of pneumonia, after living almost all of his short life under drought conditions. Abdullah blames the changing climate for his son's death.

"He was born in a drought, and his mother was sick while she was pregnant with him. When he was born he was not well; he was a very weak child. Then two months ago he became ill again, and could not survive."

He pauses for a moment and shakes his head before uttering a familiar refrain. "It was because of the drought," he says.

Andrew Wander is Save the Children's emergency media manager and a former journalist with Al Jazeera.
http://english.aljazeera.net/video/a...012362837.html
http://english.aljazeera.net/indepth...049438790.html
http://english.aljazeera.net/indepth.../hornofafrica/

http://www.islamic-relief.com/donations/
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Maryan0
07-15-2011, 02:52 AM
UN: Somalia is 'worst humanitarian disaster'
Head of UNHCR appeals for "massive support" over drought affecting about 10 million people in the Horn of Africa.

The head of the United Nations refugee agency has described the situation in drought-hit Somalia as the "worst humanitarian disaster" in the world, after meeting with those affected at the Dadaab refugee camp in Kenya.

The camp, located in the northeast and the world's largest in the world, is overflowing with tens of thousands of refugees from Somalia, Ethiopia and within Kenya.

Antonio Guterres, the head of the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR), visited the camp on Sunday, appealing for "massive support" from the international community for the more than 380,000 people estimated to be living in Dadaab.

"I have no doubt that in today's world, Somalia corresponds to the worst humanitarian disaster. I have never seen in a refugee camp people coming in such desperate conditions," he told Al Jazeera.

"I saw a mother that had lost three of her children on the way here."

Guterres said that those at the camp were "the poorest of the poor and the most vulnerable of the vulnerable".

The UNHCR chief is on a tour of the region in order to highlight the plight of those affected by the drought.

The World Food Programme estimates that more than 10 million people are already in need of humanitarian aid, with the UN Children's Fund estimating at least two million children are suffering from malnourishment.

Those children are in need of lifesaving action, the UN says.

On Thursday, Guterres visited the Ethiopian camp of Dollo Ado.

"The mortality rates we are witnessing are three times the level of emergency ceilings," he said.

"The level of malnutrition of the children coming in is 50 per cent. That is enough to explain why a very high level of mortality is inevitable."

Thousands flee

Hundreds of thousands of people continue to flee the drought, walking for days in search of food and water.


UNHCR chief Antonio Guterres speaks to Al Jazeera from the Dadaab refugee camp in Kenya
According to doctors in Dadaab, most of the children have severe cases of acute malnutrition and related complications such as anaemia.

"The children are presenting with skin complications where their skin is peeling off mainly due to deficiency in micro-nutrients," Dr Milhia Abdul Kader said. "They are coming in a very bad shape."

Most of the arrivals to the camps are women and very young children, many of whom are in very bad physical condition, Al Jazeera's Azad Essa, reporting from Dadaab, said.

"Every morning hundreds turn up at the registration sites, where they hope to get documented and receive some basic essentials," he said.

"But the process is long and people are waiting for days to complete registration and access food, having already walked for days to get here."

The epicentre of the drought lies on the three-way border shared by Kenya, Ethiopia and Somalia, a nomadic region where families depend heavily on livestock.

Uganda and Djibouti have also been hit by the crisis.

'Absolutely desperate'

Thousands more are waiting at reception centres outside the Dadaab camp.

"The people that are arriving are absolutely desperate," Andrew Wander of Save the Children, a UK-based charity, said.

"They haven't eaten for weeks, they've been travelling for a long, long time in very difficult situations."

Wander said 1,500 people were arriving in Dadaab every day and that the situation was "extremely serious".

Doctors with Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) told Al Jazeera the camps were being stretched to capacity.

"The situation in the outskirts of the established camps are catastrophes waiting to happen," said Essa.

"There are literally thousands of huts assembled out of tree branches, covered by plastic sheets provided by the UN.

"These refugees have registered, but there is no space for them in any of the three camps, so they have just effectively created their own one."

As well as providing medical help, aid agencies are trying to distribute food and water to the hundreds of thousands of people reaching Dadaab.

"To deliver aid inside Somalia is a very important priority. When we see people in such a desperate situation, it would be much better if they could be supported inside the country," Guterres said.

http://english.aljazeera.net/news/af...319179235.html
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Maryan0
07-19-2011, 08:00 PM
Interestingly enough this issue has gotten more feedback when i've posted it on non-religious forums than on Muslim ones...:?
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Rhubarb Tart
07-20-2011, 06:37 PM
:sl:
Thank you for making this thread. I was about to create a thread. I post links below to charities where people can donate.

Please please please donate any amount:
http://www.islamic-relief.org.uk/Eas...is_Appeal.aspx
http://www.islamic-relief.org.uk/Don...FQEf4QodnCTlwQ
https://paypal.savethechildren.org.u...code=A11048004
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Perseveranze
07-20-2011, 07:03 PM
If the Prophet(pbuh) was here today, all he'd have to do is repeat the words he said 1400 years ago, and Muslims from all over the world would help our Somali brothers and sisters.

Otherwise, Muslim countries with all their wealth and power are doing absolutly nothing.


format_quote Originally Posted by Maryan0
Interestingly enough this issue has gotten more feedback when i've posted it on non-religious forums than on Muslim ones...:?
I think it's because were ashamed.
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Eric H
07-20-2011, 08:50 PM
Greetings and peace be with you Maryan0;
.

Thanks for starting this thread, I do not believe that the drought is the real problem, I believe that it is man’s injustice against their fellow brothers and sisters that cause the problem.
We trade unfairly with the poor countries of the world, and people live in grinding poverty, because of our greed in the richer countries.
.
Poverty and injustice is a sin against God.
.
in the spirit of praying for justice for all people
Eric
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GuestFellow
07-20-2011, 09:19 PM
format_quote Originally Posted by Perseveranze
Otherwise, Muslim countries with all their wealth and power are doing absolutly nothing.
:sl:

I remember a UAE Prince had bought these very expensive cars...the money could have been used to buy a couple of houses for poor people.
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Karl
07-20-2011, 11:08 PM
Africa is way over populated for it's resources, that's why they are always having wars and famines and totally destroying the environment and wiping out the animals and trees. Africa is potentialy the richest continent on the planet but the locals are primitive tribals that are always exploited by outside powers. And aid just makes it worse, as these are Western infiltrators just trying to take over the place.
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Maryan0
07-21-2011, 04:19 AM
format_quote Originally Posted by Karl
Africa is way over populated for it's resources, that's why they are always having wars and famines and totally destroying the environment and wiping out the animals and trees. Africa is potentialy the richest continent on the planet but the locals are primitive tribals that are always exploited by outside powers. And aid just makes it worse, as these are Western infiltrators just trying to take over the place.
Africa is definetly rich in resources... The people dying are people who rely on their cattle and think it hasnt rained in two years or the rainy season hasnt come in two years. These arent people who traditionally rely on aid. I don't know if I agree with you about the primitive tribals part, there may be primitive groups in Africa but many of the issues in Africa stem from a pretty recent source. That's not to say that africans are blameless.
Salam
format_quote Originally Posted by Perseveranze
I think it's because were ashamed.
I dont see the reason for shame it's not like it's something that cant be alleviated. There is hope for this ummah if everyone does their part. But when the largest humanitarian crisis in the world at this time and one that particularly affects muslims isnt even given due attention by Muslims (because 37 views and it being at the very bottom of the world affairs page isnt due attention) it's pretty disappointing and that indeed is shameful. I mean this generally so please dont take it personal.
Salam
format_quote Originally Posted by EricH
Poverty and injustice is a sin against God.
Indeed. May Allah have mercy on the poor and the oppressed.
Salam
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Maryan0
07-21-2011, 04:40 AM
format_quote Originally Posted by sweet106
:sl:
Thank you for making this thread. I was about to create a thread. I post links below to charities where people can donate.

Please please please donate any amount:
http://www.islamic-relief.org.uk/Eas...is_Appeal.aspx
http://www.islamic-relief.org.uk/Don...FQEf4QodnCTlwQ
https://paypal.savethechildren.org.u...code=A11048004
Thank you posting these links. I urge anyone with the means to do so to donate. This situation is dire and is only getting worse and Ramadan is fast approaching.
Salam
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Eric H
07-21-2011, 07:33 AM
Greetings and peace be with you Karl;
Africa is potentialy the richest continent on the planet but the locals are primitive tribals that are always exploited by outside powers.
Sadly we are those outside powers, we do the exploiting. Coffee is often advertised as a luxury product yet the coffee growers get around two pence for every jar of coffee that costs around two pounds fifty. Workers on coffee plantations earn a couple of dollar a day and live in dire poverty. If we paid an extra two or three pence a jar to the growers they could pay their workers a living wage.
.

Most of the profit from coffee is taken in the western world, where we exploit people.
After the coffee is put on a ship, commodity traders will buy and sell the stock a number of times, making hundreds of thousands of dollars profits. They sit in an office and get rich on other people’s grinding poverty.

A lot of the profit from coffee comes in the processing of it, Governments exploit poor countries by imposing unfair trading tariffs. Western countries impose heavy duty on imported processed coffee, which makes it almost impossible for poor countries to benefit from.
.
Some coffee companies advertise that they build schools and hospitals in these poor growing regions. But if they paid them a fair price in the first place, these people would not need charity. A toilet cleaner in a British coffee factory would earn at least £5 per hour, the growers earn less than £2 per day, how can that be fair and just.
.

As I understand pretty much all of Africa’s natural resources are exploited in the same way, keeping them in grinding poverty, close to starvation and death. Under normal circumstances around twenty four thousand children die needlessly every day from preventable disease and starvation.

If they had the money the drought would not be such a problem, we in the richer countries exploit people.
.

In the spirit of praying for justice and fairness for all people

Eric
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FS123
07-21-2011, 01:17 PM
I'm sending my zakat to them through red crescent.
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