IRAQ: Christian IDPs find refuge in Kurdish north

Photo: Namo Abdulla/IRIN

Mourners at an Ankawa funeral of a Christian couple killed by extremists in Baghdad

ANKAWA, 23 December 2010 (IRIN) – Hundreds of Iraqi Christians are fleeing to the northern semi-autonomous Kurdish region and particularly the town of Ankawa, which has become a safe haven for the country’s Christians, thanks to its special status and privileges granted by the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG).

Ankawa, near Erbil, KRG’s capital, has a predominantly Christian population and administration, several churches and distinct Assyrian language.

Melissa Fleming, chief spokeswoman for the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR), said on 17 December  that UNHCR offices in Iraq had seen a significant increase in Christians fleeing Baghdad and Mosul to the KRG Region and Nineveh plains in the north.

Fleming said the Christian communities in the two cities had started a “slow but steady exodus” since a deadly attack on 31 October, when 68 people were killed during the storming of Our Lady of Salvation Church in Baghdad during Sunday Mass.

Some 1,000 families have arrived in the Kurdistan region and Ninewa since the beginning of November, according to UNHCR. “We have heard many accounts of people fleeing their homes after receiving direct threats. Some were able to take only a few belongings with them,” Fleming said.

“Bagdad has too many evils,” Jabir Hikmet Al Sammak, a Christian, said last week in Ankawa at the funeral of his 78-year-old father and 76-year-old mother. They had both been beheaded in their Baghdad home by extremists.

“It’s a city of guns,” said Al Sammak.

Al Sammak and many other Christian IDPs are now homeless and jobless, living either with their relatives or in rented houses they can hardly afford in Ankawa.

Safe havens

Many areas in the north have been safe havens for religious minorities fleeing violence elsewhere in Iraq, and Erbil is no exception, says the International Organization for Migration (IOM).

According to IOM, there are 6,879 IDP families (about 41,274 individuals) in Erbil governorate and almost a quarter are estimated to be Christians. Initial assessments by IOM staff in Iraq suggest that more Christian families will be arriving in Erbil as soon as they are able to leave their homes and jobs.

“We just came here for security,” said Naji Behnan, 57, a church security guard in Ankawa, who earns 240,000 Iraqi dinars (approximately US$200) a month, but has to pay $300 rent per month for a house in which his and his son’s families live. He came to Ankawa less than two months ago.

Behnan said the two families of six people lived on the money from selling his house and property in Baghdad’s Jadid neighbourhood.

“My two sons, who are university graduates, have no jobs,” he said. “In Baghdad they were church security guards just like I am here.”

IOM’s report said access to work was cited as a priority need for 83 percent of IDP families in Erbil.

These people only possess a few items, such as blankets, plastic sheeting and kitchen utensils, as well as some subsistence food donated by international aid organizations, such as UNHCR, IOM and the International Churches of Christ, according to Helene Caux, UNHCR’s senior external relations officer in Erbil.

There is criticism that despite pledges over the past two months, neither the Iraqi central government nor KRG has done enough to tackle the plight of Christian IDPs.

More promises

Earlier this month, Massoud Barzani, Kurdistan’s president, reiterated his promises to do whatever was possible for Christians coming to Kurdistan, saying leaving Iraq was no solution.

Nawzad Hadi, Erbil’s governor, told IRIN that Barzani had created a special committee to look into the needs of displaced Christians and provide them with aid.

“Kurdistan is their home,” said Hadi. “As an ethnic minority which suffered in the past, we Kurds can feel the suffering of Christians very well.”

However, a Christian official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said the Kurdish authorities had told Kurdistan Christians that it was the duty of the Iraqi government, rather than the KRG, to aid the IDPs.

Meanwhile, Christians keep leaving Baghdad, according to the UNHCR’s Caux. “The Christian authorities say there are only 150,000 Christians left in Baghdad; one-third of them could be ready to leave,” said Caux, pointing to an increase in the migration of Christians abroad since Baghdad’s church attack.

Since then, 30 percent of new Iraqi arrivals in Jordan have been Christians, and in Lebanon and Syria, 167 and 55 Iraqi Christian families respectively have approached UNHCR to be registered as refugees, said Caux.

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source http://www.irinnews.org

COTE D’IVOIRE: Wounds reopened – the price of breakdown

Photo: Nancy Palus/IRIN

A Laurent Gbagbo billboard in Abidjan depicts a woman whose arm is amputated. ‘For peace I choose Gbagbo’. The incumbent accused rival Alassane Ouattara of inciting the 2002 rebellion

ABIDJAN, 21 December 2010 (IRIN) – Gunshots at night, beatings, unexplained disappearances of ordinary civilians and makeshift barriers around homes have become commonplace in Côte d’Ivoire’s main city, Abidjan, in the chaotic aftermath of the presidential election. As violence threatens to spiral, Ivoirians say ethnic and regional divisions are sharper than ever.

Both the incumbent Laurent Gbagbo and Alassane Ouattara – a northerner – have claimed victory in the 28 November presidential run-off. Independent electoral commission results put Ouattara as the victor, but the Gbagbo camp rejected that, threw out poll results in seven northern departments – alleging mass fraud – and said the incumbent had won. The third main candidate, former president Henri Konan Bédié, a Baoulé, from central Côte d’Ivoire, has backed Ouattara.

Hopes of a dialogue between the protagonists rapidly vanished and a period of diplomacy gave way to armed confrontation. International support for Ouattara and calls by the UN, African Union, the Economic Community of West African States, the European Union and the USA for Gbagbo to go seem only to have made the veteran opposition leader-turned-president more determined to stay in power. The political deadlock has been accompanied by outbreaks of serious violence.

With the army backing Gbagbo, people of northern ethnic groups say they have been the target of harassment by security forces, pro-Gbagbo youths and Liberian and Angolan mercenaries, who they say carry out random beatings, home invasions and illegal detentions throughout Abidjan’s ethnically-mixed neighbourhoods.

The support base for former prime minister Ouattara – who was long barred from running for president over allegations he did not fill the eligibility requirement of two Ivoirian parents – is drawn significantly from the north, where many are descendants of people in neighbouring countries. Côte d’Ivoire’s conflict erupted when northerner soldiers staged a rebellion in 2002, saying northerners faced discrimination. Since then the north has been controlled by these soldiers.

“The current violence against northerners harks back to the early 2002 conflict and it shows the main fault line around citizenship and Ivoirité [the state of being pure Ivoirian] hasn’t been resolved,” Eurasia Group analyst Anne Frühauf told IRIN.

In campaigning, Gbagbo supporters regularly referred to Ouattara and his camp as “foreigners”, and Gbagbo accused Ouattara of leading the rebellion; a pro-Gbagbo newspaper ran the headline, “The democrat versus the putschist”.

Presidential elections had been repeatedly scheduled and cancelled since 2005, when Gbagbo’s first term should have ended. Voter registration efforts in the country of more than 60 ethnic groups were repeatedly interrupted by pro-Gbagbo youth, some charging that Malians and Burkinabé were registering to vote.

Harassment of UN personnel?

The UN says at least 50 people have been killed since the election, with hundreds injured or kidnapped.

UN Special Representative for the Secretary-General Y.J. Choi told reporters that since 18 December, when Gbagbo called for the departure of UN and French troops, Gbagbo’s camp has been harassing UN personnel. “[They have been] sending armed young men to the homes of some UN staff, knocking at the door and asking them their departure date or entering their residences under the pretext of looking for weapons,” Choi said. “Their preferred time for such visits so far has been during the night.”

Photo: Nancy Palus/IRIN

A child’s artwork from 2007, depicting Alassane Ouattara and Laurent Gbagbo. ‘I sew the country back together’

Gbagbo’s interior minister, Émile Guiriéoulou, has said the Gbagbo government refuses to collaborate with the “partisan” UN operation.

Intimidation, beatings

IRIN spoke to some people in Abidjan who say they have witnessed or experienced attacks:

Father of three, Abobo District: “Last night we heard a burst of gunfire and then screaming. The noise was horrible, just wailing, and the gunfire. We huddled in our room and prayed nothing would happen to us. In the morning, a neighbour told us her son had been taken away. There was blood outside their house.”

Keïta*, 29, Yopougon District: “I was walking home at around 9pm on 19 December – that’s three hours before the curfew. Three soldiers stopped me and asked me for money.

“I told them, ‘Who’s got any money these days? I don’t have any money.’ Then they asked for my ID. When they saw my name, Keïta, they shoved me to the ground and jumped on me, pressing my face against the ground. A man who was passing by asked what the problem was. They [the soldiers] said I am a Keïta, I am among the rebels – among those who brought the country to war. The man asked them, ‘Was he armed?’ They shouted, ‘Oh – now you’re going to tell us how to do our job’ and went after him. That’s when I was able to run away.

“In my neighbourhood I am surrounded by people of Gbagbo’s party. So when they asked me why my face was banged up, I said I had had a motorbike accident. I did not want to call attention to what happened – that would just provoke questions and more trouble. I am in a hurry to move to another neighbourhood, where I’ll be with other Dioula [word used for Ivoirian northerners who speak the Dioula language]; I do not feel safe at all. We don’t know how things are going to evolve so it’s better to be among your own… People are building barriers around their homes because of the night-time invasions.

“Even in the office – people who’ve been friends for years no longer say hello to one another. In this post-election conflict, people are showing their true positions. A Bété [Gbagbo’s ethnic group] said to me: ‘You’ll see. We’re going to kill you’.

“It’s as if we are being forced to rebel, even if that was not our wish for this country.”

Anonymous, 33: “I live in Yopougon and since this trouble started, every single night we hear heavy shooting in a nearby forested area.

“I am a technician and one evening I got a call to come and do a repair. Some armed men stopped me and asked me why I was out. They wore camouflage pants and green T-shirts; some of them were masked. I don’t know whether they were real military; in any case they were speaking French and Nouchi [slang widely used in Abidjan]. I tried to explain to them where I was going and why, and gave them the number of the place so they could verify. But they weren’t hearing any of it. They searched my pockets and took my cell phone. They saw my name on my ID card. One of them gave me a heavy blow to the chest with his gun. They shoved me in a vehicle, saying, ‘You damned Dioula – you’ll see. Dioula will not govern this country’.

“They picked up other people along the way, including two young women. [He said the women were later put in a separate vehicle.] At one point the men bound our eyes and stripped us down to our underwear or naked. They took us to a field about 200-300m from a main road; we sat on the ground while they interrogated us: ‘Where are you from? Where are your parents?’ They called some of the people’s families and asked for ransom.

“Hours later they finally let us leave, warning us to ‘watch out’. I still have some marks from the beating. I wish I could file a complaint, but I wouldn’t know which police station would help me.”

*not his real name

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source http://www.irinnews.org

OPT: Easing of Gaza blockade fails to reverse housing crisis

Photo: Alimbek Tashtankulov/IRIN

Farid Batch standing next to the remnants of his home in Jabalia

JABALIA, 21 December 2010 (IRIN) – Farid Batch and his brother Wasfi live about 500m from their old houses in Jabalia, north Gaza. The homes of four Batch brothers once stood next to each other overlooking a grove of olive and lemon trees but all that is left are the concrete foundations and a tangle of wire and metal.

Since the orchards and all four houses were levelled during Israel’s last military operation in Gaza, two years ago in January, Farid and Wasfi have been living in neighbouring apartments in a large residential block. Their rent is paid by one-off grants from the Ministry of Public Works in Gaza and the UN Development Programme (UNDP), but from January, they will have to cover the cost themselves.

Wasfi recently found a job driving an ambulance for 1,400NIS (US$387) a month and thinks he will be able to afford to rent a place for his family of 11.

Farid, an unemployed carpenter and father of seven, has no idea where his family will be living from January.

“I owned my home and the 600m of land it stood on. When I have the money, I’ll rebuild it but there is no money in Gaza now,” Farid said. “All the building material we need is here but the gravel, cement and steel that come through the tunnel from Egypt are about 10 times the prices before the blockade. Without money, I can’t think about rebuilding.”

Israel tightened its blockade on Gaza in June 2007 when militant group Hamas came into power.

Trade improving

It has been six months since this blockade was eased following international pressure on the Israeli government. While imports into Gaza have increased and exports of Gazan strawberries and carnations are slowly resuming, only a fraction of the material needed to rebuild the homes and infrastructure is coming through the border from Israel, according to various reports.

The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said in its November Humanitarian Update that although the relaxation of the blockade had resulted in a greater variety of consumer goods available in the markets, with consumer items making up the majority (72 percent) of imported goods, ongoing restrictions on basic construction materials, impediments to the movement of people as well as exports, continued to limit both economic revival and a significant improvement in the humanitarian situation.

“Critically needed housing reconstruction projects and upgrades to damaged infrastructure continue to be limited by restrictions on the entry of basic construction materials, particularly cement, gravel and steel bars,” OCHA said.

Before the blockade, consumer items accounted for 45 percent of all imports, and construction materials the balance, according to OCHA.

The report said additional steps were needed to more broadly reactivate Gaza’s crippled economy and restore livelihoods. “Such steps must include lifting the internal access restrictions on land and sea and the removal of restrictions on the import of building materials.”

Smuggled materials

In the meantime, construction materials smuggled from Egypt are used for limited rebuilding in the strip.

In early December, Gaza’s Ministry of Public Works re-opened a high-rise block with 36 flats, not far from where the Batch brothers now live in East Jabalia.

Neil Jebb, who leads the UN’s shelter cluster in Gaza, said: “From 20 June to now, a lot more glass, doors, windows and bathroom fittings have been coming through from Israel but they are little good without walls. If you’ve lost your home and you’re poor, the easing of the blockade has had almost no impact.”

The Israeli government has approved only 7 percent of the building plans for UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) projects in Gaza, including schools, medical centres and housing units.

Restrictions applied by European and American donors on international agencies forbidding the use of materials brought through the tunnels mean UN agencies are powerless to rebuild the homes of thousands of vulnerable families.

Jebb says the blockade is having a greater negative impact on the international agencies in Gaza than on Hamas.

“I’m not very optimistic donors will change their policies – we could be two to three years down the line without any change in our access to basic building materials. As long as these donor policies are in place, the Ministry of Public Works will lead the reconstruction effort using material from Egypt.”

For Farid Batch, and thousands of others whose homes are still in ruins, whether bricks and steel come from Egypt or Israel, Hamas or the UN, is irrelevant. His urgent priority is finding somewhere for his family to live. “The most basic human need is to have a roof over your head but I have no idea if we will have a home in January. This is a crisis.”

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source http://www.irinnews.org

MYANMAR: Food worries for cyclone survivors

Photo: Toe Toe/IRIN

Many families like this are now dependent on outside food assistance

RAKHINE STATE, 21 December 2010 (IRIN) – Aye Mya always struggled to provide food for her family, but after Cyclone Giri that task has become almost impossible.

“Now it’s even harder to put a meal on the table for my family,” said Aye Mya, a 36-year-old single mother of two, as she cooked the family’s first meal of the day at lunchtime outside her makeshift hut in a small village in western Rakhine State – a four hour-motorboat ride away from Myebon, the hardest-hit area.

The category 4 storm that struck western Myanmar on 22 October killed 45 and affected some 260,000 while destroying a large portion of the region’s paddy fields and fishing industry – the primary sources of livelihood.

An estimated 86,000 farming households and 7,500 fishing households were left food-insecure, the UN Development Programme said.

According to the World Food Programme (WFP), some 200,000 people need food assistance in the worst-affected townships of Myebon, Kyaukphyu, Pauktaw and Minbya.

Impact on rice production

As the cyclone struck right before the annual harvest in November and early December, many farmers lost all or most of their crops.

“This will result in a loss of food production, and will have an impact on the food security situation of the affected farmers,” Carlos Veloso, WFP country representative to Myanmar, told IRIN.

At the same time, whatever rice stores residents had in their homes were also lost to the storm.

Traditionally farmers in Rakhine State can grow rice only once a year in the monsoon season (May to mid-October), as opposed to some areas of the country where access to fresh water is more readily available, allowing two harvests.

“Right now farmers in the Giri-affected area – depending on the level of the damage inflicted on their farms – are facing food insecurity or are receiving food aid,” Tesfai Ghermazien, Myanmar’s senior emergency coordinator with the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), said.

Agency efforts

Photo: Toe Toe/IRIN

A woman having her first meal of the day in the afternoon

WFP distributed 1,353MT of rice to nearly 200,000 beneficiaries in the worst-affected townships in November. The UN agency also plans to distribute 6,580MT of food, comprising rice, pulses, oil and salt, in December and January.

“WFP remains committed to continuing the provision of food assistance to the people in need, and to improve the food security situation in the most vulnerable areas,” Veloso said.

To better understand the current food security situation, including household consumption and access, WFP and FAO will conduct an in-depth food security and livelihood assessment beginning in the third week of December.

All the 200,000 affected people are receiving food assistance, Veloso said.

Food running out

But despite that effort, many cyclone-affected complain that food aid often runs out long before the distribution arrives.

“I received rice expected to last for one month, but it ran out within two weeks,” said one villager from Pyae Chaung, about a seven hour-motor boat ride from Myebon.

Laurent Campigotto, head of mission of Action Contre La Faim (ACF) in Yangon, said that depending on the capacities of agencies, the amount of food assistance could be different from one place to another.

“Families who have received low assistance have to use coping mechanisms such as borrowing food, or borrowing cash to buy food,” Campigotto said.

Many residents say not only is it harder for them to earn money now, but even finding rice in the market is proving problematic, leaving many to worry about possible price hikes.

“Without action to support these farming families in accessing food and seeds,” warned Campigotto, “food insecurity would be hampered for a longer time.”

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source http://www.irinnews.org