SUDAN: Aid agencies react to expulsions

Photo: IRIN

Most displaced civilians in Darfur rely on humanitarian agencies for basic needs

KHARTOUM,� – The expulsion of 10 relief organisations from Sudan will leave hundreds of thousands of the most vulnerable civilians at risk, aid groups warned as they appealed to the government to review its decision.

Vice-President Ali Osman Taha told reporters on 4 March that several relief groups had been asked to leave because “they are breaking the law of the country”.

Taha did not elaborate, but added that Sudan remained “committed to the implementation of the agreement we signed with the UN and other NGOs”.

The expelled organisations include Oxfam, CARE, MSF-Netherlands, Mercy Corps, Save the Children, the Norwegian Refugee Council, the International Rescue Committee, Action contre la faim, Solidarités and CHF International.

Sources said the groups received notice to leave after the International Criminal Court (ICC) issued an arrest warrant for President Omar el-Bashir on war crimes charges.

Bashir denies all the charges, describing them as “not worth the ink they are written in”.

“Shortly after the announcement, Sudan’s government revoked the registration of several aid agencies, including Mercy Corps,” Neal Keny-Guyer, its chief executive officer, said. “We plan to appeal the decision under Sudanese law.”

The expulsion of NGOs will, however, not apply to the semi-autonomous Southern Sudan, which is slowly rebuilding after more than two decades of war with the North – unless the government there decides so, sources said.

“We were told we have 24 hours to leave, that we simply must just go,” said one NGO official, who requested anonymity. “It doesn’t seem we have any choice but to comply.”

The removal of key agencies would be a severe blow to the poorest, especially in the western region of Darfur where violence has displaced several million from their homes, observers said.

We were told we have 24 hours to leave, that we simply must go…It doesn’t seem we have any choice but to comply

At least 2.5 million displaced people in Darfur rely on aid agencies for food, clean water and other critical needs, according to Keny-Guyer.

“Serious setback”

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon warned that the decision represented “a serious setback to lifesaving operations in Darfur” and called on the government to reverse it.

Two Sudanese organisations, the Khartoum Centre for Human Rights and Environmental Development and the Khartoum Amal Center for the Rehabilitation of the Victims of Violence, were also reported on 5 March to have been shut down.

The revocation of Oxfam’s licence would affect more than 600,000 Sudanese people who have been receiving humanitarian and development aid, Penny Lawrence, Oxfam’s international director, said.

“Oxfam does not have an opinion on the [ICC's] activities, and our sole focus is meeting humanitarian and development needs in Sudan,” it said in a statement.

The IRC was ordered to close its humanitarian aid programmes in Darfur as well as North and East Sudan. The decision, it stated, had put 1.75 million people at risk.

Photo: Derk Segaar/IRIN

Displaced women returning to a camp in Darfur after collecting firewood (file photo)

“We are extremely distressed by the forced closure of our aid operations,” IRC president George Rupp said. “It appears the international aid effort in the region is being shut down and that raises grave concerns about the welfare of millions of Sudanese who rely on humanitarian aid for survival.”

CARE said it had received a letter from the government cancelling its registration to operate in Sudan and was assessing the implications for its 1.5 million beneficiaries.

Save the Children said the decision by Sudanese authorities to suspend its operations would affect 50,000 children in Khartoum and the northeast. Many of these children, said Ken Caldwell, director of international operations, were living in camps, having been forced to flee their homes by the ongoing conflict.

Government warning

In February, government officials warned several aid agencies to avoid involvement in Sudanese politics, and accused them of working with their own governments against Khartoum.

“We know that some NGOs are governmental,” Humanitarian Affairs Commission chief Hassabo Mohammed Abdel Rahman said at the time. “We see in practice and implementation more involvement of politicians, either ambassadors or governments within these NGOs.”

A day after the ICC announcement, Sudanese officials were in a defiant mood as thousands of Bashir supporters staged a massive demonstration in Khartoum.

“We are concerned this may expand to others,” said another aid official in Khartoum, who declined to be named. “We are nervous of the future.”

pm/eo/mw source.www.irinnews.org

SIERRA LEONE: Pregnancy- automatic dismissal for male and female students

Photo: Anna Jefferys/IRIN

Hannah*, 16, from Makeni, dropped out of school when she became pregnant last year

MAKENI,� – New local laws being passed by village chiefs in northern Sierra Leone decree when a school girl is impregnated by a male student, both must drop out of school, causing concern among child protection experts.

Traditional laws have been passed by chiefs in parts of Sierra Leone’s northern Bombali district, among them the Safroko Limba chiefdom, according to Ramatu Kanu, Deputy Director of Education for the district. Bombali district is made up of 13 chiefdoms.

The laws are designed to build stigma around teenage pregnancy and dissuade girls from becoming pregnant, according to Maud Droogleever Fortuyn, child protection director at the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) in Sierra Leone.

“In these chiefdoms, when a girl becomes pregnant most boys also drop out. They start doing petty trade, or become okada [motorcycle taxi] drivers, said student John Amadfoma, 17, who attends school in Makeni, the capital of Bombali district, 140km north of Freetown.

High pregnancy and drop-out rates

…Most girls drop out of school by age 15, mainly because of pregnancy…

Teenage pregnancy levels contribute to the low levels of girls attending secondary school in Sierra Leone, according to Kanu. Just 17 percent of girls and 21 percent of boys attended secondary school from 2000-2007, according to the UNICEF’s 2009 State of the World’s Children report.

Just over 40 percent of women, now between the ages of 25 and 29 had their first baby by the time they were 18, and 12 percent of them by age 15, according to the yet-to-be-published 2009 government demographic health survey (DHS).

Most girls drop out of school by age 15, mainly because of pregnancy, Kanu said. Boys tend to drop out by age 16.

Local child protection experts speculate these pregnancies are caused by voluntary sexual relations among school-children, early marriage, transactional sex with adults and other forms of sexual abuse, but UNICEF’s Fortuyn told IRIN no studies have yet been undertaken.

She added that UNICEF plans to research the issue in upcoming months.

Against the ban

“UNICEF is not happy with these [laws] banning pregnant girls and boys who made girls pregnant from school, Fortuyn told IRIN. Taking children out of school is against their right [to education].

Although we recognise the boy needs to bear responsibility too, this is not the way. Why not make his family responsible for ensuring the girls finish secondary school, for instance?

…In Sierra Leone when you are a teenager and you are pregnant and unmarried, you are a second-class citizen

Education deputy director Kanu calls for more incentives to encourage girls to stay in school. More girls would stay in school if they had more role models to look up to. We need to reward high-performing girls and hold them up as an example to others. Girls top the primary school tests, but then they disappear out of secondary school. It is such a loss for the community.

Even where laws are not in place, social stigma pressures pregnant girls to leave school as soon as they become pregnant, according to Kanu. “In Sierra Leone when you are a teenager and you are pregnant and unmarried, you are a second-class citizen.

Hannah*,16, from Makeni, told IRIN she left school when she became pregnant in January 2008. She now has a five-month-old baby. I watch my friends walk to school every day. I am desperate to join them.

She said her uncle, who was paying her school fees, withdrew his support when she became pregnant. Life is not simple for me now. I stay at home alone to care of my baby. My father is very angry with me.

Hannah told IRIN the child’s father�a student at a different school – has denied responsibility.

Changing attitudes

Teresa Will, 16, is a member of a Girls Tell Us club in Makeni, where both male and female students convene to discuss the problems they face- such as what to do when a schoolgirl becomes pregnant.

Teenage pregnancy and early marriage are the biggest problems girls in Makeni face. The point is not to get pregnant in the first place, Will said. “We go to schools, we go on the radio, we talk in assemblies, to discuss the issue.

When a schoolgirl becomes pregnant, club members approach the expectant mother and her family to discuss the potential problems they may face, such as how to support the baby and pay for school fees. So far the club has helped three female students return to school, according to Will.

Club members told IRIN they have seen some attitudes start to change. Amadfoma, one of several male students who joined the club, says he has seen parents of new young fathers agreeing to pay for their baby’s care. “If not, they will sometimes negotiate with the girl’s parents to figure out if they will pay.

And more boys, he says, are starting to realise they cannot shirk responsibility. We spread the message: if you impregnate a girl, it will affect you too.

So far no solution has been found for Hannah, but the Girls Tell Us club will not give up. If you persevere, you can make change, Will told IRIN.

* not real name

aj/pt
source.www.irinnews.org

In Brief: Aid flows should be scaled up – IMF

Photo: Alimbek Tashtankulov/IRIN

IMF report saidthat migrants’ remittances would decline in 2009, affecting countries like Tajikistan

DUBAI, – A new IMF report has highlighted the impact of the global financial crisis on 26 low-income countries. It says poverty and political instability could increase unless at least US$25 billion is injected into 22 of these ailing economies this year.

IMF Managing Director Dominique Strauss-Kahn said spending on targeted social safety-net programmes should be ramped up to protect the poor. “Bilateral donors must ensure that aid flows are scaled up, not trimmed back,” he said.

The report noted that migrants’ remittances would decline in 2009, affecting countries like Tajikistan, where over half the population lives below the poverty line and where remittances were equal to 45 percent of GDP in 2008, according to the World Bank.

The 26 low income countries include many covered by IRIN, including Angola, Burundi, Central African Republic, Democratic Republic of Congo, Côte d’Ivoire, Djibouti, Ghana, Lesotho, Liberia, Mauritania, Nigeria, Sudan and Zambia in Africa, Kyrgyzstan, Laos, Papua New Guinea, Tajikistan and Vietnam in Asia.

at/cb source.www.irinnews.org

SRI LANKA: Civilian circumstances “dire”

Photo: Sri Lankan Navy

ICRC with the Sri Lanka Navy has been transporting injured civilians and their dependants from the combat zone by ferry to government controlled areas in Trincomalee District

COLOMBO,� – The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) organised the eighth sea evacuation of sick and wounded civilians and their dependents from combat areas on 4 March, but officials warned the situation was dire.

Since the first evacuation on 10 February from Putumattalan in Mullaithivu District, more than 2,700 sick and wounded civilians have been moved by ferry to safer areas for medical care, Sarasi Wijeratne, ICRC spokesperson, told IRIN.

“Concerning the civilian population trapped by the continuing fighting in the Vanni region, it is definitely one of the most disastrous situations I have come across,” Jacques de Maio, ICRC’s head of operations for South Asia, said in a statement on 4 March.

“They are exposed to shelling and exchanges of gunfire. People are dying. There is no functioning hospital or other medical facility in the area,” De Maio said. “The facilities that did exist have been shelled and are mostly destroyed.”

Wijeratne said one of the ICRC’s local staff had been killed inside the combat zone on 4 March.

The ICRC established the ferry service in February with the assistance of the Navy when evacuation overland was halted because of security fears. The ferry service has also been used by World Food Programme (WFP) to transport food into the combat areas.

Heavy fighting between government forces and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) in the Vanni Pocket in the Mullaithivu District in northern Sri Lanka has forced tens of thousands to flee.

More than 36,000 have fled the fighting since January to safer areas behind government lines, but thousands remain trapped. The ICRC estimates that up to 150,000 persons are still in the Vanni Pocket.

“Civilians are literally trapped in the combat zone. In the ongoing military confrontation, civilians and other non-combatants are dying in the line of fire and cannot receive life-saving assistance,” De Maio said.

Health threat 

Morven Murchison, the ICRC health coordinator, said more and more people were moving into Putumattalan to escape the fighting.

“Because there is not enough drinking water in the Putumattalan area, they end up moving back inland in search of water,” she said in a web post on 26 February.

“The lack of clean water is a major humanitarian concern,” she told IRIN. “The population at the coast has increased tremendously over recent weeks and the wells in Putumattalan cannot provide enough water for everyone to drink, wash and cook.”

“The risk of an outbreak [of disease] is very high given most people’s living conditions, the lack of water and the lack of proper sanitation,” she said.

“There are no proper latrines or pits in the area where most displaced people are. There are reports of an increase in the number of cases of communicable diseases, including diarrhoea and respiratory infections,” Murchison said. “We are very concerned about the possibility of a serious outbreak of disease.”

De Maio said the ICRC had been unable to transport sufficient medical supplies into the combat areas.

Precautions

Photo: Sri Lankan Navy

An injured civilian who had fled the combat zone in the Vanni pocket is carried ashore by Sri Lankan Navy personnel

The Sri Lankan government said the Tamil Tigers had stopped civilians from moving to safe government-controlled areas.

“After over 30,000 had got away in the space of a week, with the churches among others providing admirable leadership, they were intimidated and targeted by suicide bombing and gunfire and forced into a tiny area,” Mahinda Samarasinghe, Minister for Human Rights and Disaster Management, said during a speech at the 10th session of the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva on 2 March.

He said government troops had taken precautions to avoid hitting civilian areas.

“Our troops, who carry handbooks as part of their standard kit on how to conduct themselves in accordance with these norms and standards [of international humanitarian law], know that even a few deaths of civilians are deaths too many, and that is why currently we are holding back our strength even at the cost of increased casualties to our forces.”

ap/bj/mw source.www.irinnews.org