A municipal worker clears rubble from a street in downtown Santiago after an earthquake February 27, 2010. A powerful 8.8-magnitude earthquake that shook Chile on Saturday killed at least 78 people. REUTERS

In Summary

• Quake kills at least 300 people in central Chile
• Buildings toppled, bridges and roads destroyed
• Operations halted at two major copper mines
• Tsunami kills at least 4 on Robinson Crusoe island

President Michelle Bachelet said a huge wave hit the Juan Fernandez islands, an archipelago where Scottish sailor Alexander Selkirk was marooned in the 18th century, inspiring the novel Robinson Crusoe.

“There was a series of waves that got bigger and bigger, which gave people time to save themselves,” pilot Fernando Avaria told TVN television by telephone from the main island. But at least four people were killed and 13 others were missing on the island, a local official said.

President Barack Obama called Bachelet on Saturday and said the United States stood ready to help Chile. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was due to visit Chile on Tuesday on a Latin America tour.

source.nation.ke

Photo: Adel Yahya/IRIN

SANAA,  – Hundreds of children have either been killed or used as child soldiers in fighting between Yemeni government forces and Houthi-led Shia rebels in the north of the country since August 2009, according to a new report by Seyaj Organization for Child Protection (SOCP), a local child rights NGO.

The 22 February report said some 89,000 children were forced to flee their homes with their families, whilst “187 children were killed, 402 exploited as soldiers by Houthis, and another 282 recruited by pro-government local militias.”

The findings are based on an SOCP survey in December 2009 – with support from the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) – of children in internally displaced persons (IDP) camps in Hajja, Saada and Amran governorates, as well as in some of Saada’s conflict-ridden districts: Saada city, Razeh, Alb, Baqem, Ghamr and Qataber.

According to the report, 42 percent of children in camps (estimated at 35,000) are affected by malnutrition, 19 percent have diarrhoea, 25 percent have respiratory infections, and 3 percent malaria.

SOCP conducted interviews with 684 former child soldiers and collected information on a total of 73,926 children for the survey.

Aid agencies say more than 70 percent of the estimated 250,000 people displaced by the conflict since 2004 live outside IDP camps, with children making up over half of the displaced population.

On 11 February the two sides agreed on a ceasefire, which is fragile, with reports of sporadic clashes.

Photo: Adel Yahya/IRIN

Ammar is one of thousands of children living in Mazraq IDP camp

The SOCP report said 383,332 children in Saada (about 97 percent of the governorate’s school-age children) had been unable to go to school in this period.

Displacement, insecurity, and the destruction of schools, or their utilization for military operations, were the main reasons, Ahmad al-Qurashi, head of SOCP, told IRIN.

Of the 701 schools in Saada Governorate, 17 were destroyed in the fighting and another16 had been taken over by one or other of the warring parties. Most of the remaining schools were deserted, he said.

Child soldiers

“The number of children exploited as soldiers could be much higher than the figure indicated by the report because we had difficulty detecting who is still under 18 due to lack of birth documents,” SOCP lead researcher Fahd al-Sabri told IRIN. He said only 8 percent Yemeni citizens have birth certificates.

“The number of children killed during the fighting could also be much higher than the figure in the report because many areas hit by fighter jets of the Saudi and Yemeni armies remained inaccessible,” al-Sabri said.

Since August 2009, aid agencies have had difficulty getting comprehensive information about the war’s impact on children, according to UNICEF child protection specialist George Abu al-Zulof, but, he told IRIN, most of the laws regarding child rights appeared not to have been respected during the fighting.

We urge parties to the conflict to release child soldiers so they can get back to school, Abu al-Zulof said, and he called for “an impartial investigation” into the impact of the war on children.

SOCP chairperson al-Qurashi urged Yemen to update Child Rights Law No. 45 of 2002 to make provision for clear penalties against individuals who exploit children in armed conflict.

ay/at/cb source.irinnews

Photo: Annasofie Flamand/IRIN

Aisha was 10 years old when she was married. Today, two years later, she is still hoping for a divorce

——————–

SANAA,  – It was every little girl’s dream – she was to get a new dress, jewellery, sweets and a party for all her friends.

What 10-year-old Aisha* did not know was that after the wedding party she would have to leave school, move to a village far from her parents’ home, cook and clean all day, and have sex with her older husband.

“He took out a special sheet and laid me down on it,” Aisha told IRIN, wringing her small plump hands. “After it, I started bleeding. It was so painful that I was crying and shouting, and since then I have seen him as death.”

After a week of fighting off her husband every night, Aisha’s father was called. He had received 200,000 Yemeni Rial (US$1,000) for his daughter in `shart’, a Yemeni dowry, which he could not pay back.

“My Dad made a cup of tea and put some pills in it, which he gave me. The pills made me feel dizzy,” said Aisha. “My Dad told me to sleep with my husband, or he would kill me, but I refused.”

Instead Aisha broke a glass bottle over her head in a desperate attempt to stay awake. “My Dad hit me badly. I was bleeding from my mouth and nose,” she said.

After spending a few months in her husband’s home, where she said he would regularly drug her and beat her, Aisha managed to escape. Now, two years later, aged 12, she is unable to divorce him.

Photo: Annasofie Flamand/IRIN

Shada Mohammed Nasser, a lawyer at the High Court in Sanaa, talking to the parents of a child bride outside court

No child protection

A bill passed in parliament in February 2009 setting the minimum age for marriage at 17 was rejected by the Islamic Sharia Codification Committee which said it was un-Islamic, according to local women’s rights organizations.

So, for now, there is no law protecting children against early marriages in Yemen.

”I don’t call it marriage, but rape,” said Shada Mohammed Nasser, a lawyer at the High Court in Sanaa. She has represented several child bride divorce cases in court, but admits she has lost most of them. Only a handful of child brides have successfully managed to divorce their husbands.

“The law on marriage stipulates that a girl should not sleep with her husband until she is mature,” said Nasser, which according to the law is the age of 15. “But the law is not enforced.”

A girl can be married at just nine, but cannot legally seek a divorce until she is 15 or older. The money paid by the husband for his “wife” is a further obstacle to divorce, while the case can only be heard in a court in the governorate where the marriage took place.

“Usually the marriage will have been signed in the husband’s governorate and the judges may look more favourably on their own kinsmen,” said Nasser. “Many judges are governed by arcane views on women.”

Just under half of Yemeni girls, 48 percent, are married before they turn 18, according to the Washington DC-based International Centre for Research on Women (ICRW). This is classified as underage, according to the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child.

In some governorates as many as half of all girls under the age of 15 are married, according to an unpublished study from 2007 on early marriage by Sanaa University’s Gender Development Research and Study Centre.

Yemen has signed the Convention on the Rights of the Child and the Convention on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW).

Photo: Annasofie Flamand/IRIN

Former child bride Nojood made head lines worldwide when at the age of nine she was granted a divorce. Today she lives with her father (left) and rest of her family

A glimmer of hope?

“The greatest problem facing Yemeni women today is child marriages,” said Wafa Ahmad Ali from the Yemeni Women’s Union, which has long campaigned for a raise in the minimum age of marriage.

“These early marriages rob the girl of the right to a normal childhood and education. The girls are forced to have children before their bodies are fully grown instead of going to school and playing with other children,” she said.

However, Minister for Human Rights Huda al-Ban told IRIN that President Saleh had recently agreed to put forward – for discussion in parliament in May – the bill with 17 as the minimum marrying age. “If the bill is successful it could be passed as a law in September,” she said.

While politicians wrangle in parliament, young girls like Aisha are caught up in a violent world of adults which they are too young to understand, let alone escape.

”These are our traditions,” said Aisha’s father. However, he admits that Aisha might have been too young for marriage. Though she now has a lawyer, Aisha cannot divorce until the two men who control her (her father and husband) agree on how much money each will receive.

What Aisha wants is clear: “I’d rather die than go back to him,” she said, wiping a tear from behind her veil.

(*not her real name)

asf/hm/ed/cb source.irinnews

Photo: Adel Yahya/IRIN

Children in front of their school in southern Saada are happy to see it reopening —————————

SANAA, – Hundreds of schools in the northern Yemeni province of Saada have reopened after five months of closure following an 11 February ceasefire between Yemen’s army and Houthi-led Shia rebels, according to local officials.

More than half the 121,000 students in grades 1-12 who were due to start the current semester last October were invited to return to school on 27 February, Mohammed al-Shamiri, head of the Saada education office, told IRIN.

“We issued a circular calling on all teachers of these schools to come back to their work and resume classes,” he said. “We reopened only those schools we can supervise, but not those in districts that are still controlled by Houthis.”

During a meeting chaired by Saada governor Taha Abdullah Hajer, provincial education officials agreed that the revised date for the start of the first semester be 27 February and that it should end on 18 May. The second semester is scheduled to run from 23 May to 15 August 2010. The school year usually begins in October and ends in June.

School tents

Photo: Adel Yahya/IRIN

Students in a class in a school tent provided by UNICEF in Mazraq IDP camp, Hajjah Governorate

According to al-Shamiri, some 220 of the governorate’s 725 schools, which were all closed during the war, were completely or partially destroyed or looted.

“The Saada governorate leadership and education ministry are contacting donor organizations on the issue of providing tents to be used as classrooms in locations where schools were destroyed,” al-Shamiri told IRIN.

As part of its planned humanitarian response, the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) has requested funds from donors to support the resumption of education in Saada through the provision of temporary learning spaces such as school tents, teaching kits and basic educational items for children, Aboudou K Adjibadé, UNICEF representative in Yemen, told IRIN.

“Funding is also sought for rehabilitating schools, deploying teachers, including female teachers in order to promote girls attendance, and offering capacity development to the Ministry of Education and local education offices to resume schooling in the wake of the ceasefire,” he said.

According to Adjibadé, school tents were provided to relevant bodies in the neighbouring governorate of Hajja, where an estimated 120,000 displaced people live.

IDP returns

Photo: OCHA

A map of Yemen highlighting Saada, Amran, Hajja and al-Jawf Provinces

Abdullah Dhahban, a local council member in Saada, said the government and humanitarian organizations should accelerate the return of thousands of displaced children who cannot access education where they are.

“Very few students had access to education in their areas of displacement,” he said. “After the fighting broke out on 11 August, children who fled with their families couldn’t get their files and documents from schools in their home districts so that they could enroll in new schools after displacement.”

According to a 22 February report by local NGO Seyaj Organization for Childhood Protection (SOCP), some 383,332 children in Saada (about 97 percent of the governorate’s school-age children) have been unable to go to school over the past five months. The figure includes those 121,000 children who were due to start this semester in October and those who had never enrolled in schools.

ay/at/ed source.irinnews

Photo: Leah Mae Damazo/IRIN

MANILA,  – Humanitarian agencies and rights groups are concerned about overcrowding in Philippine prisons, where tuberculosis (TB) is now taking a toll.

At the Manila city jail, every available space has been appropriated. Men and youths angrily jostle each other, while some sleep standing up as a medical worker walks the corridors to check on their condition.

The oppressive heat creates a nauseating smell of humanity, but there is a bigger problem – TB – an infectious bacterial disease caused by Mycobacterium tuberculosis, which most commonly affects the lungs.

Otherwise treatable, the disease is spreading rapidly through the prison population, officials say.

“We have seen that the overcrowding of jails and prisons has serious consequences for detainees,” Jean-Daniel Tauxe, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) head of delegation in Manila, told reporters recently after numerous prison visits across the Philippines.

“Access to safe water, sanitation, healthcare, and acceptable living conditions are a major problem in overcrowded detention facilities,” he said, adding that the steady spread of tuberculosis had become “a serious concern”.

Built in the 1940s, the Manila City Jail was designed to accommodate about 1,000 inmates. It currently houses more than 5,000 prisoners, adult men mixing with teenage boys awaiting trial, on trial or awaiting transfer to a penal colony after conviction.

The women’s section is equally grim.

According to the Bureau of Jail and Management Penology (BJMP), which has administrative control over all the country’s 1,132 city, district and municipal jails, the total inmate population has doubled to nearly 70,000 from about 35,000 a decade ago.

In Metro Manila, some 22,000 inmates are now registered, over an actual capacity of 16,000, the same agency reports.

And with cases, including petty offences, taking years to resolve in backlogged, understaffed courts, the number of inmates will likely rise to more than 115,000 this year, the penology bureau says.

Tauxe said concern over tuberculosis spreading in Philippine jails had prompted his group to support local authorities to implement a national programme to help combat the disease, a pilot project involving some 30,000 inmates in seven prisons.

“Legal and procedural problems, which delay the processing of cases, are the root causes of overcrowding,” Tauxe said.

“Criminal neglect”

In one highly publicized case in 2008, Melvic Lupe, a factory worker jailed with 18 others in a labour dispute, died due to tuberculosis.

One of the surviving 18 meanwhile died in September last year, although the cause of death remained unclear, according to the Asian Human Rights Commission, which was following the case.

“It is appalling that anyone should die of tuberculosis today. It is no longer the dreaded affliction that has killed millions of people over the past decade,” the commission said in its letter to the BJMP last year.

“It has been for many years now a treatable disease and the fact that prisoners have died of it while in custody speaks of the criminal neglect of the prison authorities.”

Lawyer Rita Arce Alfaro, in a study for Manila’s Far Eastern University on the problems facing inmates, said the situation had become so dire that inmates “fall easy prey to outbreaks of skin diseases such as boils, infections and various allergies.

“Tuberculosis proliferates inside prison walls,” she said, stressing that the Philippine government allots less than US$1 a day per prisoner to cover three meals and water. This harsh reality contravenes the UN’s Standard Minimum Rules for the Treatment of Prisoners, she wrote.

“The main thrust of the present-day prison system has not evolved from the time of the guillotine. But if urgent needs are to be addressed, reform in the prison system is a must,” she said.

jg/ds/mw source.irinnews

Photo: Jason Gutierrez/IRIN

Flood survivors queue for relief aid at an evacuation centre in flood-hit Cainta district, east of Manila (file photo)

—————

MANILA,  – Nearly five months after tropical storm Ketsana and two typhoons ravaged northern Philippines, evacuation centres are starting to close but thousands of people are still displaced, aid workers say.

“The situation is definitely getting worse and people’s coping mechanisms are being stretched to the limit,” Paula Brennan, Oxfam’s Ketsana response manager, told IRIN.

“Evacuation centres are closing for a number of reasons. The churches, for example, closed [for] Christmas mass; the schools were closed when classes started,” she said.

On 26 September, tropical storm Ketsana inundated 80 percent of Manila on the island of Luzon, home to some 12 million people.

A week later, Typhoon Parma made landfall, drastically affecting outlying regions that were already heavily flooded. Typhoon Mirinae wreaked additional havoc at the end of October. The National Disaster Coordinating Council (NDCC) says more than 10 million people were affected.

As of 30 January, 24,318 people or 5,253 families were being hosted in 54 evacuation centres, according to the International Organization for Migration (IOM). However, the actual numbers of displaced are thought to be higher, since the figure does not include those staying with relatives.

Some 230,000 homes have been either completely or partially destroyed, according to the Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD).

Fishing ground turned marshland

The Laguna de Bay in Luzon is the largest lake in the Philippines, and the main livelihood source for the fishing communities living along its banks.

Photo: Ana Santos/IRIN

Anna Maravilla has had to relocate three times since September 2009

Anna Maravilla, a 43-year-old single mother, once ran a fishing business with her brother. But Ketsana caused the lake to overflow, destroying her home.

“My home was totally wiped out. We cannot go back there because the government has declared the land uninhabitable,” she said.

Since September, she and her three children have been relocated three times.

The Laguna Lake Development Authority estimates that originally 400,000 families in the area were affected by the onslaught of the storms.

“First, we occupied a public school, but we had to move when classes started. We were then moved to a basketball court… but we had to leave when the residents wanted to use it,” said Maravilla.

Maravilla now lives in a small shack on a poultry farm that was converted into an evacuation centre with 47 other families.

The makeshift centre has no electricity; there are two running taps and two toilets. Oxfam is building four showers and toilets.

“Our life before was not easy, but we were able to survive. We did not have to live like this. At least I had my own house, my own toilet,” said Maravilla, who is also missing her daily income of at least US$10 from fishing.

“I used this [money] as revolving capital and managed our daily expenses. Now, I have nothing to live on,” she said.

Others in the centre have turned to scavenging and re-selling aluminium cans and paper.

Photo: Ana Santos/IRIN

No longer able to fish for their livelihood, many displaced have started scavenging or recycling aluminum cans and paper

Teresita Cuervas, 70, said: “I make about $2 [daily] from scavenging. This used to supplement our income from fishing, but now, this is all I have.”

Lack of funds

The Post Disaster Needs Assessment (PDNA) released in December by the government, the World Bank and other agencies, estimated that $942.9 million was required to meet recovery needs, while $3.48 billion was needed for reconstruction.

“Under normal conditions, shelter was already a problem, but the extent of the devastation [wrought] by [Ketsana] was simply overwhelming,” Edin Garde, programme manager for the UN Human Settlements Programme (UN-HABITAT) in the Philippines, told IRIN.

The UN launched a flash appeal for $74 million in October 2009, which was revised a month later to $143.7 million.

However, as of 16 February 2010, only 39.2 percent has been funded, according to the UN’s Financial Tracking Service (FTS). Shelter, along with education, protection and economic recovery, are the least funded.

“Funding shelter is very expensive. It costs about $543 to build one transitory house and $1,489 for a more permanent structure,” said Garde. “It is much easier to fund relief efforts like food, for those who want to reach out to more people and see immediate results.”

“You cannot build a structure on land without first assuring its safety conditions, and this takes time,” Garde said.

“The key is a sustainable source of funding, so as not to depend on the donors,” said Warren Ubongen, shelter cluster coordinator with UN-HABITAT.

“We are now looking at bilateral strategies to mobilize resources. Private institutions like banks are being tapped to donate some repossessed properties,” he said.

as/ey/mw source.irinnews

Photo: David Swanson/IRIN

Some 13,000 undocumented Rohingya live at the Leda site

DHAKA,  – UK-based charity Islamic Relief will withdraw on 28 February from a makeshift camp for Rohingya refugees in southern Bangladesh due to a lack of government support.

See also: Myanmar’s refugees still on the run – special report

Close to 13,000 undocumented Rohingya receive much-needed humanitarian aid at the 20-hectare Leda site outside the border town of Teknaf, about 500km southeast Dhaka. The aid includes shelter, health care, a therapeutic feeding centre and access to clean water.

“Regrettably we have no choice but to leave,” Ahmed Nasr, Islamic Relief’s country director, told IRIN.

“The absence of government approval is the main reason,” he said.

The move underscores the difficulties aid agencies face in assisting what is now described as one of the most protracted refugee situations in the world today.

For decades, hundreds of thousands of Rohingya – an ethnic, linguistic and religious minority – have fled persecution in neighbouring Myanmar, only to find themselves unwelcome in Bangladesh.

Dhaka says they are illegal migrants who do little more than add to crippling poverty in southern Bangladesh.

If further assistance is provided, the Bangladeshi authorities say, more Rohingya will follow in an influx the government is ill-equipped to handle.

Alleviating suffering

Islamic Relief first became involved with the Rohingya in 2005, when close to 2,000 families began crossing the River Naf separating Myanmar and Bangladesh.

Constructed on government forest land in July 2008, the Leda site played a key role in alleviating the suffering of thousands of newly-arrived Rohingya who settled along the river in squalid conditions.

In 2007 the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) successfully negotiated with the government to relocate, on humanitarian grounds, thousands of unregistered Rohingya living along the tidal river site to the Leda site, about 3km from Nayapara, one of two government-run camps for documented Rohingya.

The move was facilitated by Islamic Relief in mid-2008, after the NGO constructed the new site with the support of the European Commission’s Humanitarian Aid Office (ECHO) and the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF).

Although official government approval for the project was never provided, tacit support for Islamic Relief’s efforts – including the provision of government land to erect the site – was always there, Nasr said.

“They aren’t asking the NGOs to leave. They know the presence of the NGOs is important,” he said, adding that further NGO presence to assist the Rohingya, as well as surrounding communities, is still very much needed.

According to UNHCR, there are some 200,000 Rohingya living in Bangladesh, the vast majority of whom live in slums or informal settlements in Cox’s Bazar District.

Only 28,000 are documented refugees, who live in two official camps assisted by the agency.

In addition to those at Leda, close to 30,000 more undocumented Rohingya now stay at a makeshift camp in Kutupalong, which has witnessed a recent increase in arrivals following a crackdown on Rohingya outside the two official camps.

The site is directly adjacent to the Kutupalong official camp, where documented refugees receive assistance from UNHCR.

ds/ey/cb source.irinnews