INDONESIA: Displaced returning home after West Papua earthquakes

Photo: Ayi Farida/UNICEF

The coastal districts of Manokwari and Sorong in West Papua, Indonesia were hard hit by a series of earthquakes. 23,000 people were displaced with 10,000 yet to return home.

JAKARTA, 9 January 2009 (IRIN) – Thousands of people displaced by powerful earthquakes that killed four people and devastated Indonesia’s West Papua province on 4 January have begun returning home. However, fear of disease outbreaks in makeshift camps is increasing and aid has yet to reach some survivors, government officials said.

About 10,000 people remain in camps in the coastal districts of Manokwari and Sorong. They fear further aftershocks and a tsunami, following the quakes that measured 7.2 and 7.6 on the Richter scale on 4 January, Ubaldus Rumlus, secretary of the West Papua Disaster Relief Agency, told IRIN from Manokwari on 9 January.

Since then, several aftershocks, the largest 5.6, according to Indonesia’s Meteorology and Geophysics Agency, have rattled the region, sparking renewed fear among the population. Tremors subsided as of 9 January.

“At the beginning there were 23,000 displaced people but they have gradually returned to their homes after officials assured them they were safe,” Rumlus told IRIN.

“Those who are still in the camps either lost their homes or are still afraid,” he said.

Rumlus said that at least 507 people were injured in the initial quakes, 31 of them seriously. The quakes also damaged or destroyed 6,000 houses, 88 government buildings, 16 hospitals and clinics, 76 places of worship and 67 schools.

Hermus Indou, head of the social affairs department of the provincial Regional Development Planning Agency, said the survivors were at risk of diseases such as malaria and infections due to camp conditions and harsh weather.

“One day it is very hot and the next day it rains. Some people are already suffering from coughs,” he told IRIN.

He said aid supplies had not reached some of the survivors, especially those in more remote areas.

“There seems to be an abundance of relief supplies but in some [difficult to reach] areas they have not received aid. These people need food, tents and blankets,” he said.

Photo: Ayi Farida/UNICEF Four people were killed and at least 507 were injured in the initial quakes, 31 of them seriously. The quakes also damaged or destroyed 6,000 houses, 88 government buildings, 16 hospitals and clinics, 76 places of worship and 67 schools

Rains slow aid distribution

Ignacio Leon-Garcia, head of the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), said the government and aid agencies had distributed tonnes of relief supplies such as food, medicines, medical equipment and tents. He said rains may have been to blame for the slow distribution of aid.

“It’s been raining in the area and aid has not been distributed in villages, especially those that are isolated,” he told IRIN on 9 January. “We are expecting the number of people who have not received aid to be very few and the government will allow aid to reach them.”

Leon-Garcia said the West Papuan government had approved 2.2 billion rupiah (US$199,000) while the central government had earmarked 1.2 billion rupiah ($108,000) for the relief and reconstruction efforts.

He said aid groups HOPE and World Vision had been distributing non-food items such as plastic sheeting.

“Oxfam is still doing the assessment and UN agencies have offered our assistance to the government,” he said.
The OCHA head said the government had the capacity to handle the situation without international intervention.

“You need some concrete action to support local authorities, but, in general, I don’t see an immediate need for massive international assistance,” he said.

Houses devastated

Johnny Noya, an emergency response officer for World Vision, who was conducting an assessment in Manokwari, said many houses were flattened and needed to be rebuilt.

“The general condition is returning to normal and the government is doing well in terms of coordinating the relief effort,” he told IRIN.

He said some affected areas could only be reached by helicopter, making relief distribution difficult. The jungle-rich Papua region has limited road networks and relies heavily on air transport.

Leon-Garcia said it appeared the second quake on Sunday resulted in more damage but that traditional houses were able to resist the tremors, resulting in fewer casualties.

“In the second quake many buildings collapsed but people were already outside,” he said. “Many public buildings were destroyed but it was Sunday when people were not working … The density of the population is very low and therefore casualties were minimal.”

Indonesia is in the so-called Pacific Ring of Fire, a chain of fault lines and volcanoes known for seismic activity.

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YEMEN: Poverty, lack of education boosting HIV/AIDS – experts

Photo: Muhammed al-Jabri/IRIN

High rates of poverty and lack of education make Yemenis vulnerable to HIV/AIDS

SANAA, 7 January 2009 (IRIN) – Maha (not her real name), 22, has been a commercial sex worker since she was 17. She told IRIN she and her sister were forced into prostitution to provide food and medical treatment for their ailing mother.

“My father died when we were young and so my mother had to work as a house maid. We lived as destitutes and we could not continue our education. My mother got cancer and my sister and I decided to work on the street,” she said.

“Prostitution has become our source of income. We have no education or skills… Job opportunities are very scarce,” she said.

When asked whether she was at risk of HIV/AIDS, Maha said she had never been tested. “We hear about AIDS and all I know about it is that it is fatal. I think Yemen is safe as it is a Muslim country. AIDS comes from Western people and we don’t sleep with them,” she said.

Experts say Yemenis are vulnerable to HIV/AIDS as a result of high rates of poverty and lack of education.

Abdul-Hafed al-Ward, secretary-general of the Integrated Care Association for People Living with HIV, told IRIN: “Poverty and HIV/AIDS go together and whenever the former exists so does the latter.” He said most HIV/AIDS cases were among the poor.

Yemen is ranked 153 out of 177 countries on the UN Development Programme’s (UNDP�s) 2007-08 Human Development Index. According to the Poverty Assessment Report 2007 prepared by the UNDP, the World Bank and the Yemeni government, the percentage of poor people among Yemen’s 21 million population stood at 34.8 percent. According to the UNDP office in Yemen, 15.7 percent of the population lives on less than US$1 a day and 45.2 percent live on less than US$2 a day.

Khaled Abdul-Majid, a programme officer at the UNDP office in Sanaa, said state institutions lacked the capacity to tackle HIV/AIDS, adding: “When there are not enough jobs, young people feel they have no future. Some resort to prostitution.” He also said internal and external migration had played a role in spreading the virus.

Commercial sex work on the rise

Photo: Muhammed al-Jabri/IRIN Muhammed al-Jabri/IRIN

Some 16 percent of Yemen’s 21 million population lives on less than US$1 a day and 45 percent lives on less than US$2 a day, according to UNDP

Suad al-Qadasi, chair of the Women’s Forum for Research and Training (WFRT), a local NGO, said prostitution and commercial sex work had begun to increase rapidly over the past three years.

“But Yemen is a conservative community which does not acknowledge this phenomenon. This is a problem in itself,” she told IRIN.

The WFRT recently conducted a survey on commercial sex work but found that people were not willing to admit to its existence. �Denying it is a problem as awareness rests on acknowledging that the phenomenon exists,” Suad said, warning that if the situation continued, HIV/AIDS would be rife.

According to the US Department of State’s Trafficking in Persons Report 2006, Yemeni children were trafficked internally for sexual exploitation, and Yemen was also a destination country for trafficked Iraqi women.

Ignorance

The UNDP�s Khaled Abdul-Majid decried ignorance about HIV/AIDS, ways of preventing it and the stigma attached to those tested positive.

Misunderstanding and fear of HIV/AIDS abound: �For example, dentists often refuse to treat an HIV-positive person, making it difficult for such people to admit they have contracted the virus,” he told IRIN.

According to him, ignorance is compounded by high illiteracy rates. �Local radios should allocate one hour [a day] to educate people about HIV/AIDS,” he said.

The National Programme for Combating AIDS had registered 2,493 cases in Yemen up till September 2008.

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ISRAEL-OPT: Tens of thousands flee Rafah

Photo: Flickr/Amir Farshad Ebrahimi

A Palestinian boy looks up from inside a damaged house after an Israeli air strike in Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip, 30 December 2008

TEL AVIV, 9 January 2009 (IRIN) – Independent confirmation of the situation in Gaza, particularly in Rafah on the border with Egypt, is difficult as Israel�s ban on journalists entering the Strip remains in place. Telephone lines are overloaded and affected by power cuts.

Rafah residents told IRIN by phone that tens of thousands had fled heavy Israeli bombardments, with some seeking refuge at UN institutions or at homes of friends and relatives in areas further from the border but still in the south.

IRIN was told of the case of one woman from Rafah who said she and her children had to sleep on the street as she could not find any refuge and simply ran as far away from the border with Egypt as possible, as Israel was conducting air strikes against smuggling tunnels in the area.

Max Gaylord, the UN’s humanitarian coordinator in the occupied Palestinian territories, said earlier in the week that Palestinians had nowhere to seek refuge from the fighting.

UNRWA stops aid deliveries

The UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) on 9 January stopped virtually all aid deliveries after one of its drivers was shot.

It also suspended staff movements after two separate incidents of Israeli fire on its convoys on 8 January. Two contracted aid workers were killed as they brought humanitarian supplies into the enclave.

�We will continue to deliver services wherever possible, but there is a complete restriction on movement,� Chris Gunness, the spokesman for UNRWA, said.

Gunness later added: �UNRWA would resume activities only once it had clear assurances from the Israeli army that a mechanism was in place to make sure its staff would not be fired upon.�

Officials from other UN agencies said they too would probably have their work curtailed, particularly as UNRWA was supplying them with logistical support.

UNRWA said the two convoys had coordinated their movements with the Israeli military, which, for its part, continued to have no comment on the incidents.

Four UN local relief workers have been killed since Israel began its offensive on 27 December.

UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon condemned the deaths, shortly before the Security Council passed resolution 1860 calling for a ceasefire.

Grim

Aid workers say the humanitarian situation is grim. Electricity and water services have been severely limited for two-thirds of the population since the offensive began. The World Bank warned on 7 January about an impending sewage crisis.

Electricity services improved slightly on 9 January after Israel let in supplies of fuel.

Medical officials in Gaza said hospitals were under-stocked and overcrowded, with doctors insisting they need drugs and surgical equipment, as well as more doctors to help them cope with the influx of patients. Surgeons told IRIN they were exhausted and reaching breaking point.

ICRC

The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) issued one of its most harshly worded statements on 8 January, slamming Israel for not allowing ambulances free access to the wounded, saying it had violated international humanitarian law.

The ICRC said it had taken advantage of a �humanitarian lull� Israel offered for three-hours on 7 January to reach areas that had previously been inaccessible and found, together with the Palestinian Red Crescent, about 16 emaciated and weakened wounded people as well as well many bodies. In one case, four children, weak but alive, were found in rubble with their dead mothers.

�This is a shocking incident,� said Pierre Wettach, the ICRC�s top official for the region. �The Israeli military must have been aware of the situation but did not assist the wounded. Neither did they make it possible for us or the Palestine Red Crescent to assist the wounded.�

UNRWA’s Gunness said a three-hour lull was a �drop in the ocean� and demanded a permanent ceasefire to halt the continued heavy impact on the civilian population.

Death toll

Palestinian medical officials in Gaza said the death toll has exceeded 770 people, with over 3,250 wounded. A doctor at Gaza�s main Al-Shifa hospital said that in recent days 80 percent of the dead and wounded were women and children, and officials estimated that over half of all those killed in the military campaign were civilians.

Nine Israeli soldiers have died and three civilians were killed by rockets fired from Gaza.

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SUDAN: Walking again, despite losing a leg

Photo: Anne Kilimo/ICRC

An official of the ICRC helps Akuch Ajak Bol with fitting an artificial leg to replace one that was amputated in 2006

JUBA, 7 January 2009 (IRIN) – Akuch Ajak Bol lost a leg after his parents, lacking the money for medical treatment, administered herbs to treat a swelling. The result was a severe infection and ultimately, amputation.

“When the leg was cut, I was not sad,” Bol, who was nine when the operation was done in Malakal in 2006, said. “I was relieved because it was so much pain.”

In November 2008, he was fitted with an artificial leg at a centre built by the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) and the Southern Sudanese government.

Walking up the stairs at the centre, unsupported by crutches, he smiled, aware that only two years ago he had only one leg.

There are an estimated 80,000 people needing artificial limbs in Southern Sudan. About 80 percent, according to the ICRC, were victims of gunshots, mines and shells.

The statistic is a grim reminder of the devastation wrought by the North-South war. The 21-year conflict ended with the signing of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) in Nairobi in January 2005.

At that time, Southern Sudanese authorities estimated that 15,000 people needed artificial limbs. In 2006, the Ministry of Gender and Social Welfare revised the estimate to 50,000.

The Commission on War Disabled, Orphans and Widows has lately revised this to 80,000, as remote areas become accessible.

“Many people were injured [but] some were not able to get treatment and have been unable to walk since they were injured in, say, 1994,” said Mary Kiden, the Gender, Women and Social Welfare Minister.

Over 19 years to March 2006, some 4,300 patients were fitted with artificial limbs and 2,000 with orthoses – devices that support or correct damaged parts of the body. Another 9,000 received crutches at the ICRC�s centre in Lopiding in neighbouring Kenya.

Expanded facilities

Photo: Stevie Mann/UNICEF

A lot of people in southern Sudan need artificial limbs because of landmines

To tackle the backlog, it was decided to construct a physical rehabilitation centre in the Southern capital, Juba. After two years, the US$1.8 million, 1,200 sqm centre is up and running.

Aid workers said it had the capacity to fit limbs for thousands of people in a few years. But even then, it would take 40 years to reach all those needing artificial limbs.

As a result, satellite sites in Rumbek to the northwest, Bor to the west and Malakal to the north are planned, officials said. The sites are necessary given the widely dispersed population in a region hardly serviced by roads.

Days before the 5 January opening, Kiden visited the facility. Construction had been sporadic, with officials worried whether the centre would ever be completed.

“He is the fifth head of mission I am meeting,” Kiden, said of Marc Ducrey, ICRC head of mission in Southern Sudan, adding that the centre took so long the disabled complained that the government had forgotten them. “I always wanted the work to go very quickly.”

Ducrey said: “You have many, many thousands of disabled [people] to whom we will offer a service. It took a long time, but this is a great step we have reached.”

Photo: Manoocher Deghati/IRIN

Mine victims are most often from rural areas of southern Sudan, many hundreds of miles from the nearest treatment centre.

Training

The ICRC stopped evacuating patients to Lopiding one month after the peace agreement was signed. Lopiding was its largest field hospital in the region, with up to 500 beds at the height of the war.

In November 2006, the ICRC and Southern government resolved to relocate the rehabilitation programme to Juba where a small workshop existed. Established by the health department in 1982, it produced 40 appliances a month before the war.

“We said, if we can add more technicians from those already in Lopiding, we can boost production at that centre to maybe 60,” Kiden explained.

However, the centre in Juba turned out to be too small. According to the ICRC, only 282 people were fitted with prostheses between July 2006 and December 2008.

The new facilities will significantly increase beneficiaries and cut costs. Each artificial limb costs between $200 and $250 and patients must return every two to three years for servicing and a new device.

Skills would also be passed on to local staff. In 2007, five Kenyan technicians started work at the centre while 26 southerners were training in Rwanda, Tanzania, Khartoum and Kenya to both manufacture and fit limbs.

Ultimately, the facilities, once fully established, should enable more southerners like Bol to contribute to the development of their homeland.

“I want to be a doctor, if only I could be well,” Bol said. “Doctors help people to do a lot of things.”

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CAPE VERDE: Can fog solve water shortages?

Photo: Nathan Lee

A fog net screen erected in Serra Malagueta, Cape Verde to transform fog into drinking water

SANTIAGO, 9 January 2009 (IRIN) – When the rainy season ends in Cape Verde hundreds of families tap into another source of water: fog. Farmers track fog as their ancestors followed rain clouds, monitoring 15 double-sided nets that rise into the mountains.

�Here in Serra Malagueta [community of Santiago Island], like this year, there is lots of rain but we still don�t have enough from the springs,� said Domingos Monteiro, a farmer.

According to park officials, the Serra Malagueta natural reserve park and surrounding community get about 900mm of rain a year, three times the country�s average annual rainfall.

Even so, residents here have little access to safe drinking water due to a shortage of purification facilities and declining rainfall, a situation shared by 25 percent of the population – more than 100,000 people.

Close to the sea, the government-protected park on Santiago Island has ample fog, which does not�often produce rain.

With the help of 200sqm of netting erected in 2005, Serra Malagueta�s residents are collecting fog water to supply their water needs. The nets capture fog, which then turns into water that drips into a trough and flows through pipes. The filtered water is fed into holding tanks that supply the water to the elementary school and community faucets.

Before fog nets families waited during the dry season for water to be trucked in from surrounding communities that have clean groundwater, for which they paid 2 US cents per litre.

Cheap solution

Most of the country�s water must be purified at energy-intensive production plants. It costs about $1 to desalinise 1,000 litres of water, according to the government. The state electricity company spent nearly $4 million dollars on water purification in 2006.

According to the government�s June 2008 anti-poverty strategy, the state electricity and water company �faces serious difficulties in meeting the growing demand for water� and has asked larger-scale hotel operators to include water purification facilities on site.

Antonio Sabino, a local water engineer who tested fog nets 20 years ago for the National Institute of Agricultural Development and Investigation, told IRIN the nets offer a cheaper solution to cover the island�s water needs. �There is no pollution, no need for [purification-desalination] pumps, fossil fuels or motors.�

He estimated that on a windy, foggy day the 15 nets can produce more than 4,000 litres of water at a fraction of the cost residents paid for trucked-in water. Sabino told IRIN each net costs about $800, which includes labour

Photo: Nathan Lee

The path of drinking water- a trough catches water before it is fed into pipes, a tank, and then community faucets

and a filter and net screen made from locally-available materials.

Hydrology risk

Portuguese engineers first experimented with fog nets in Cape Verde during the 1960s. A decade later, Dutch companies tried to revive fog water �harvesting,� but the trend again faded.

Water engineer Sabino said the risk scares people away. �All hydrology requires risks. Building fog nets require overhead investment and they may not provide as much water as expected.� But he said it is a bigger risk to not invest in alternative water sources. �Using subsoil resources without letting them recharge [dams, fog nets] is like taking money out of a bank without ever depositing more money.

�Cape Verde has some zones that offer optimal [fog] conditions � some of the best in the world. The areas are small, but these small areas have enormous potential.��The engineer�said Cape Verde�s more than 1,000 hectares of land is sufficiently foggy to produce billions of litres of affordable clean water per year.

Currently Serra Malagueta is the only community doing fog-harvesting.

Problems

Starting in November, Saharan desert winds from northern Africa blow dust onto the nets, making it harder to ensure water quality. Sabino said it is important during this period to change the filters, clean the nets and check water quality.

Also, there is not year-round fog in Cape Verde, which markets itself as a sunny tourist destination. �Nets should be built with sufficiently large dimensions to produce enough water to accommodate these periods,� advised Sabino.

Finally, Sabino dismissed occasional complaints about the nets� appearance. �I don�t believe in this notion that tourists will think it is ugly. The objective of the [nets] project is to produce water to give people to drink. Not to take pictures.�

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Constitution making in Kenya has been one big circus. It has attracted all manner of activities, busy bodies and minds. Since independence any attempt to modify the constitution has been largely selfishly driven with very dire consequences to the general populace for it has largely been aimed at consolidating power to an individual or a few of them to the exclusion of others.

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The 2005 attempt to come up with an overhauled constitution ended up in a fiasco which gave birth to horrid events of the 2007 general elections. This year it has been promised to be the year of a new constitution. But do we have confidence that it will be done. My prediction is that it will not.

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Consider that this year provides the opportunities to keep shifting the time frames and goal posts. With hunger looming large it is an opportunity to postpone the rest. With the teachers disgruntled it is a perfect opportunity to keep the rest waiting. With other Civil servants not too sure whether they are happy the rest can be kept waiting. With The� Kenya Communications (amendment ) Bill 2008 which having raised a lot of heat and dust, occupying the top echelons of politics minds the so much else will have to wait.

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As a matter of interest the offending clauses in the The� Kenya Communications (amendment ) Bill 2008 having had passed various hands and stages to the consternation of many just demonstrates that the road to a better constitution will be bumper or� will be blocked altogether. Something is clearly amiss in the constitution making horizon if such bills could be passed by chaps some of whom have been singing about parliamentary democracy , parliamentary approval of this and that.

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In short another round of constitution making in Kenya do not promise much hope. The politicians who have shown propensity to gag the media, refusal to pay taxes and gross mismanagement of funds entrusted with them for the benefit of the poor and their own constituents cannot be trusted to deliver us to Canaan. The busy bodies of this and that organization or groupings calling themselves stake-holders can neither help.

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That our country need to revitalize itself is not in doubt. That it needs a constitutional overhaul is also a well known fact. But the road to that realization as much as it has already been set is full of landmines and more to be planted. If Kenya does not overhaul its constitution to suit its 21^st century needs then 2012 election especially the top office will still divide the country to another likely precipice. In addition the nonsense of a ceremonial president should not suffice. Similarly there is nothing like parliamentary democracy in Kenya , so a constitution revamping towards that direction is also dangerous.

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We still need a strong Chief Executive Officer in Kenya elected by the people directly and not by parliament . �In addition we need very strong institutions of the Judiciary, Parliament, Media etc. These should be made free from the Chief Executive officer who could remain to be still called the President. The challenge we have and have had is having weak institutions which serve at the whims of the Chief Executive of the country but still with labels of being free. Parliament has proved that it cannot offer solace or solution.

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But whether a new constitution dispensation will be realized this year is another big story. But it is predictably very doubtful.

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<By Harrison� Mwirigi� Ikunda,

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Nairobi.

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Kenya.