While watching Norwegian TV 2 yesterday night something crossed my mind. The journalist was attempting to tarnish the Foundation’s name because it helps the Samburu people with clean water. The argument labelled against the organization is the fact that they have stated that their method of assistance� providing clean water to the needy Kenyan population of Samburu is unique: The wording, “unique method used”, has not gone down well with the TV 2 journalist as he furthers his argument that he does not see anything good the Foundation is doing for the Samburu people according to his assessment. The journalist has even managed to get some Kenyan professors to accuse the Foundation. Accusing the foundation that they have paid the Samburu women to clap and dance for the foundation is disgusting. These are professors without need for clean water to be supplied to them because they have it in plenty and even may be having swimming pools with clean water and here they dare come out and say the women of Samburu should not clap their hands to thank the foundation for giving them clean water. These to me are selfish people who only think accademically and care less for the suffering Samburu people. Instead of pointing their fingers at the Voss Foundation, they should confront the Kenyan government on water for the needy and fight for the people who need clean water in the country.

Water is something needed badly in many parts of Kenya and many people have a big problem to access clean water. The debate as to the methods used to supply such communities with water must not be given weight more than the need the needy people have in suffering without clean water.

The organization headed by the former Prime Minister Gro Brundtland’s son Mr Knut Brundtland got roughed thoroughly by the TV 2 journalist whose obbsession seemingly was to find fault by all means, interested in digging up mistakes in an effort to find out if Voss Foundation is supplying water to the needy illegally. The journalist’s approach to the Kenya government officials was only meant to disrupt the Voss Foundation’s activities in the country. Otherwise, why was the journalist so interested to get word from the government officials in charge of water on licensing procedures on water supply projects.

API will follow up the story and will soon seek an interview from Knut Brundtland in an effort to bring to the wider community of the world the facts of this case, one which we think does not need to be disrupted by claims that the Foundation is illegally working in Kenya and yet the focus should be what they do and how many needy Samburians they manage to reach with the much-needed clean water.

By Chief editor Korir/ African Press International.

COTE D’IVOIRE: On-hold aid projects set to resume

Photo: ONUCI

Many hope development in C�te d�Ivoire will gather pace if October 31 elections take place (file photo)

ABIDJAN, 29 September 2010 (IRIN) – The World Bank says it will give a record US$540 million over three years to finance post-conflict recovery and development projects in C�te d�Ivoire.

Aid agencies hope the money will enable several on-hold projects to resume after an almost five-year election impasse that has set back the country�s development prospects.

The UN Children�s fund (UNICEF) says many of its projects have been on hold until World Bank funding is confirmed, including a project aimed at special needs children, according to communications director Louis Vigneault-Dubois.

“What happens [now] depends on if we and the Ministry of Education are able to get adequate funds,” he told IRIN.

Of the total allocation, the World Bank announced it will channel $20 million to provide health care for people living with HIV; $120 million for post-conflict rebuilding; and $13 million to improve government transparency. The bank is carefully targeting money to specific projects and aid partners, due to �mistakes� made in the past, its C�te d�Ivoire director, Madani Tall, told reporters in Abidjan.

Altogether, donors committed $750 million to the country between April 2008 and July 2010.

Poverty in C�te d�Ivoire has risen steadily over recent years: 39 percent of people lived on less than US$2 a day in 2002, versus 49 percent in 2008, according to the World Bank.

Tall said the World Bank needed to continue to support what it called the �backbone� of West Africa. Elections are due to be held on 31 October.

mm/aj/cb source.irinnews

DISASTERS: Reducing the risk in slums

Photo: IRIN

The estimated one billion urban dwellers now living in crowded slums will rise to 1.4 billion by 2020, according to the report

NAIROBI, 21 September 2010 (IRIN) – The disproportionately high risk of disaster faced by a billion slum-dwellers across the world could be significantly reduced with prudent investment, states a new report.

“We cannot stop urbanization but we shouldn’t be na�ve; a trend does not mean destiny, disasters can be prevented,” Matthias Schmale, the Under-Secretary-General of the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC), said in Nairobi at the global launch of the 2010 edition of the World Disasters Report.

Schmale said solutions for disaster risk reduction and preparedness “need to be found in dialogue with the affected people; moving from the bottom upwards”.

The World Disasters Report 2010 focuses on urban risk, with the IFRC warning that 2.57 billion urban dwellers living in low- and middle-income nations are vulnerable to unacceptable levels of risk fuelled by rapid urbanization, poor local governance, population growth, poor health services and a rising tide of urban violence.

The estimated one billion urban dwellers now living in crowded slums will rise to 1.4 billion by 2020, the report says, adding that Africa, which is often considered predominantly rural, “now has an urban population (412 million) larger than North America (286 million)”.

“Urban is the new rural,” Schmale said. “We know that it is better to give seeds than food… we should invest more in preparedness as shown by the recent disasters in Haiti and Chile where the magnitude was worse in Chile but the impact was worse in Haiti.”

According to IFRC, urban poverty and disaster risk are often closely intertwined and the links between them will be increased by climate change.

“In any given year, more than 50,000 people can die as a result of earthquakes and 100 million can be affected by floods and the worst-affected are most often vulnerable city dwellers,” IFRC said.

Leadership

James Kisia, deputy secretary-general of the Kenya Red Cross Society (KRCS), said there was a need to rethink the definition of social development.

“The average African man in a rural area will not live in a single room with his children but this is increasingly becoming the norm in informal settlements in urban areas; we seem to have left such social issues at the mercy of economic development,” he said. “Leadership cannot be left to the government alone, we must partner together to create an enabling environment for social development.”

Good urban governance is a recurring theme in the World Disasters Report 2010, with the IFRC stressing that it is essential to ensure that people are empowered and engaged in the development of their urban environment and are “not marginalized or left exposed to disasters, climate change, violence and ill health”.

IFRC quoted David Satterthwaite, lead writer of the report and senior fellow at the International Institute of Environment and Development (IIED), as saying: “The crisis of urban poverty, rapidly growing informal settlements and growing numbers of urban disasters arises from the failure of governments to adapt their institutions to urbanization.

“It stems also in part from the failure of aid agencies to help them [governments] to do so – most aid agencies have inadequate or no urban policies and have long been reluctant to support urban development at a sufficient scale.”

js/am/mw source.irinnews

REFUGEES: UNHCR concerned over Iraqi deportations

Photo: Stephen Starr/IRIN

UNHCR is concerned that some deportees might be being returned to unsafe areas of Iraq

LONDON, 29 September 2010 (IRIN) – The UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) has expressed concern about the growing number of deportations of Iraqi asylum-seekers from Western Europe in the last two months.

Special charter flights to take failed asylum-seekers home have increased in frequency, and Iraqis are being returned to parts of the country which are still unsafe, in contravention of UNHCR guidelines for the handling of Iraqi asylum applications, it says.

The deportations are handled by Frontex, a Warsaw-based agency set up to coordinate operations between European Union (EU) member states in the field of border security, and their planes can carry returnees from several different countries. The most recent (on 22 September) had failed asylum applicants from Sweden, Norway, the Netherlands and the UK.

One of the UNHCR�s complaints is that the information provided by those countries is usually sketchy, varies from country to country and is given only very late in the process. In the case of last week�s flight, Sweden told the UNHCR the names and dates of birth of those being sent home, but not their destinations. The UK provided details of where its rejected claimants were going but not their identities.

No country told the UNHCR how many of the passengers being put on board the plane were going home voluntarily, and how many were being deported against their will, but reports from Baghdad say police had to be called to escort some of them off the plane.

A spokesperson for the UNHCR, Sybella Wilkes, called for states sending home asylum-seekers to be more transparent. �We are aware when a flight is leaving,� she told IRIN, �but we don�t know until the last minute who is on board or which countries they are coming from.�

The organization does not oppose people being sent back to Iraq in every case. �It�s possible that some people on the plane were going back voluntarily,� Wilkes said. �It�s possible that some were going to areas where we don�t have issues about security. But we don�t know. Having full information would be in everybody�s best interests.�

What they do know is that among the passengers leaving Sweden were two women and four children. The British government said all those it was sending last week were single adult males, but their destinations included Baghdad, Ninawa, Kirkuk and Salah ad-Din – all areas the UNHCR considers unsafe.

Five governorates unsafe

�We are very clear in our guidelines,� said Sybella Wilkes. �Baghdad, Diyala, Kirkuk, Ninawa and Salah ad-Din are still not safe, in view of serious human rights violations and continuing security incidents in those areas. We specifically ask governments not to return people to those five governorates, and we are disappointed they are ignoring our guidelines.�

The general secretary of the International Federation of Iraqi Refugees, Dashty Jamal, blamed the rise in forced removals on the electoral success of right wing parties in a number of European countries. He told IRIN: �Most of the EU countries� right-wing parties have united together to change their immigration policy, and deport back all Iraqis who apply for asylum in their country.�

He said that as well as the charter flights run by Frontex, individual refugees are being sent back almost every night on scheduled flights to Jordan. �I believe that no part of Iraq is safe, even Kurdistan. It is like the UN saying that Berne in Switzerland is safe but Zurich is not safe. This is not the time to send people back. They are playing with the lives of innocent people.�

Contacted by IRIN, the UK�s border agency denied there had been any overall policy recently to deport more Iraqi asylum-seekers. Detailed figures of deportations over the past two months are not yet available, but a spokesperson insisted that every case is looked at individually and considered on its merits. �We only ever return those whom the Border Agency and the courts are satisfied are not in need of our protection, and who have failed to comply with a request to leave.�

Are the Agency and the courts ignoring the UNHCR guidelines on safe and unsafe areas? �A whole range of factors are taken into account,� the spokesperson told IRIN. �And from the UK�s point of view we have to be satisfied that they don�t need our protection.�

The UNHCR has been lobbying since June against the forced removals to Iraq, but says so far they have not seen any shift in position by Western European governments. Sybella Wilkes says she is disappointed. �I would like them to consider that they have a minority of Iraqi asylum-seekers in their countries. And this is not a very positive example when Iraq�s neighbours have much greater numbers, and have been much more generous and welcoming.�

Dashty Jamal told IRIN on 28 September that a number of Iraqis in the UK had received tickets for a flight back to Iraq on 6 October, and that a demonstration was being planned that day outside the Iraqi embassy in London to protest at the way returnees are treated when they get to Baghdad.

source.irinnews