MYANMAR: Cross-line NGOs in Kachin need support

Photo: Contributor/IRIN

Thousands of displaced remain in need

YANGON, – Local NGOs in northern Myanmar with access to both sides of an ongoing conflict between government forces and the Kachin Independence Army (KIA) are playing a key role in addressing the needs of thousands of displaced.

There are four local cross-line Burmese NGOs and community-based groups: Karuna Myanmar Social Services (KMSS), the Metta Development Foundation, the Kachin Baptist Convention (KBC) and the Shalom Foundation.

“We are working between two warring parties – this is the biggest challenge we face,” Win Tun Kyi, programme coordinator for KMSS, a faith-based group affiliated with the Catholic Church, told IRIN.

“It’s already been 10 months [of being displaced] – these people have suffered too much,” said Sai Sam Kham, executive director of Metta, citing food, shelter, water and sanitation, and psychosocial support as the primary needs.

The UN estimates that more than 60,000 people have been displaced by fighting between government forces and the KIA, since the collapse of a 17-year ceasefire between the two sides in June 2011.

The KIA has been fighting for greater autonomy from the country’s central government since 1961.

Around 20,000 of the displaced are living in government-controlled areas, up to 40,000 more are in KIA-controlled areas; mostly in camps, and another several thousand are believed to be staying with host families across the border in China.

Access

Despite the numbers, humanitarian access for international agencies, including the United Nations, is problematic.

Displaced people in government-controlled areas receive better levels of assistance because the UN and international agencies can reach them more easily, but the same cannot be said of KIA-controlled areas near the Chinese border where most of the displaced now are, which prompted the UN to again press for sustained access at the end of March.

These constraints further underscore the importance of local NGOs that have access to both sides, international aid workers say.

“Although they have received little support from the international community, local NGOs have negotiated access to the areas of greatest need and delivered life-saving humanitarian assistance,” noted John Prideaux-Brune, country director of international aid agency Oxfam.

“It’s not just about providing emergency relief. The fact that these groups can work with both sides will ultimately help in bringing about peace,” said Shihab Uddin Ahamad, country director of ActionAid Myanmar.

Others cite the nuanced yet non-political understanding that local groups have regarding the situation inside Kachin, and their strong relationships with the communities concerned.

“These are strengths that neither UN nor INGOs [international NGOs] can currently provide. As such, all resources should be channelled to support NGOs in their efforts, regardless of where they operate from,” said another aid worker.

So far it isn’t happening, which could have an impact ahead of the rainy season starting in May.

“Right now our key challenge is funding, said Metta’s Sai Sam Kham, warning that given current funding constraints, they may have to pull out of KIA-controlled areas.

“From the beginning of this conflict we have had access to both sides,” he said “Despite that, the response from international agencies in supporting local groups like ours has been very slow.”

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source www.irinnews.org

EGYPT: Rising poverty threatens gains in fight against TB

Photo: Amr Emam/IRIN

Poverty in Egypt’s slums contributes to the spread of infectious diseases like TB

CAIRO,  – Rising poverty, overcrowded public transport, and sprawling slums threaten to reverse the gains made in eradicating tuberculosis (TB) in Egypt, experts say.

In recent days, the government has released new figures showing a significant decrease in mortality caused by TB. But medical experts warn the government will never be able to stamp out the disease through a narrow medical approach. Rather, it must tackle the socio-economic problems at the disease’s root if it is to avoid a dramatic increase in infections.

“Our slums, our transport, and the poor economic conditions of millions of Egyptians make many people prone to the disease,” Mahmud Amr, a chest disease expert from Cairo University, told IRIN. “TB will continue to shatter the lives of thousands of people as long as no progress is made in these areas.”

The political instability that followed the overthrow of former Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak in February 2011 sent Egypt’s economy into a downward spiral.

In 2011, 25.2 percent of Egyptians became poor, up from 21.6 percent in 2009, according to the state-run Central Agency for Public Mobilization and Statistics (CAPMAS). More than half of these poor people lived in Upper Egypt, it added.

“Although most tuberculosis patients are poor, poverty itself is not the problem,” said Ahmed Attia, head of local NGO Egyptian Society for Fighting Tuberculosis. “The problem lies with the living conditions this poverty brings to people.”

In 2007, 12.2 million people lived in 870 slums across this country, according to CAPMAS. With whole families living in narrow rooms and sharing toilets and sewage-filled alleyways, these slums, experts like Amr say, offer fertile soil for the spread of serious diseases like TB.

TB is the third greatest killer in Egypt, after Hepatitis C and Bilharzias, according to Amir Bassam, deputy chairman of parliament’s Health Committee.

Naeema Al-Gasseer, the World Health Organization representative in Egypt, says Egypt is one of nine countries out of 23 in the Eastern Mediterranean Region (which stretches as far as Pakistan), where 95 percent of the region’s TB patients live.

In a recent interview with private TV station CBC, Al-Gasseer linked TB to poverty and malnutrition, which also appears to be rising in Egypt, saying “malnutrition is a big problem for both children and adults.”

Progress

Despite the challenges, Egypt has managed to make remarkable progress in TB control, according to the Health Ministry.

Health Minister Fouad Al Nawawy outlined in recent statements to the media huge drops in the effects of TB from 1990 to 2011: TB incidence, the number of new cases every year, fell from 34 per 100,000 to 18 cases per 100,000. TB prevalence, the total number of infections in any given year, fell from 79 per 100,000 to 24 per 100,000; and the mortality rate, the number of people who die from TB every year, fell from 4 per 100,000 to 1.1 per 100,000, he said.

Egypt offers free medical treatment to TB patients in around 32 chest hospitals and the Health Ministry hopes to eradicate the disease altogether by 2019.

But independent experts say the incidence of TB is far higher than the official numbers of 18,000 new patients every year. In a sign of the skepticism that exists in some camps, one lawmaker asked the Health Ministry to give a full breakdown of TB figures in all governorates.

“The public has the right to know all the facts,” said Basel Adel during a session of parliament on 9 April. “The Health Minister has to tell us what preventive measures his ministry has taken to prevent the spread of these diseases,” he said in reference to TB and meningitis. “There must be immediate action to control these diseases or the present government will be repeating the same mistakes of the governments of the former regime.”

The number of patients in the country’s chest hospitals, for instance, seems to belie claims that the disease is on the decrease.

“We have 50 beds at the TB section,” said Mahmud Abdel Aziz, the head of the Abassiya Chest Hospital. “These beds are always full. When a patient is treated, he/she gets out for other people on the waiting list to take their place.”

Challenges

Experts say Egypt’s ability to make progress in TB control hinges on its success in improving the living conditions of slum dwellers; making its public transport less crowded; and reducing poverty.

“Patients – most of them are poor people from the slums – use public transport, which is always busy, and pass the infection on to others very easily,” the Health Committee’s Bassam said. “The nation’s prisons are also hotbeds for infection.”

Described in numerous human rights reports as being dirty, unfit for human use, and suffering an extreme lack of health care, Egypt’s prisons, according to people like Bassam, send out to society a large number of TB patients.

This is why Health Ministry specialists pay regular visits to the prisons to make sure they do not turn into centres for TB infection, according to Essam el-Moghazi, head of the Tuberculosis Section at the Health Ministry.

“We must take firm action to eradicate this disease,” el-Moghazi said. “This is why we need everybody to contribute to this action, or this disease can spread like wildfire,” he told IRIN.

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source www.irinnews.org

INDONESIA: Missing children raise trafficking concerns

Photo: Fikckr/AJ Cann

Traffickers “friend” victims through social media

JAKARTA,  – Recent cases of missing children in Indonesia have raised concerns about human trafficking and a lack of law enforcement resources to combat it, say child welfare activists.

At least 182 children aged 0 to 12 were reported missing by their parents in 2011, up from 111 in 2010, the National Commission on Child Protection chairman, Arist Merdeka Sirait, told IRIN.

“These are only the cases that were reported to us, so there are likely more cases out there, but even one child missing is a tragedy,” he said. Thirty-nine of the missing children were babies stolen from maternity clinics.

Sirait said he suspected that a human trafficking network could be seeking to use the children for illegal adoption, commercial sexual exploitation, drug trafficking, and domestic and international child labour.

“Such crime usually involves people who are close to the children. In cases that happened in maternity clinics, employees are usually involved,” he said.

“But police usually treat such cases as ordinary crimes, and are not serious about tackling the larger human trafficking network,” he noted.

In recent months, local media have reported cases of children being kidnapped from their homes. Eight young girls from poor families in Bantaeng, in South Sulawesi Province, have been taken since 2010.

Pribuadiarto Nur, deputy minister for child protection at the Ministry of Women Empowerment and Child Protection, said data on human trafficking in Indonesia were “sketchy”.

In 2011, police investigated 126 cases, in which 68 of the victims were children, but the actual number who have disappeared could be much higher, he said.

“This crime is trans-national in nature. Provinces near the border with Malaysia and Batam, near Singapore, are especially vulnerable,” Nur told IRIN.

In 2008, President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono set up the National Task Force Against Human Trafficking, one year after parliament passed the human trafficking law. Under this law, all forms of human trafficking are punishable by up to 15 years in prison.

Ahmad Sofian, the national coordinator for the NGO, End Child Prostitution, Child Pornography and Trafficking of Children for Sexual Purposes (ECPAT) Indonesia, said in 2011 his organization identified 425 children nationwide as victims of trafficking, mostly for sexual exploitation.

As many as 120 of these children are being cared for by ECPAT Indonesia. “Victims of child trafficking are a hidden population. It’s hard to come up with accurate statistics, but estimates range between 40,000 and 70,000 every year,” Sofian said.

Less than 1 percent of cases are brought to court. “Investigating cases of child trafficking is not a priority for police because of difficulty in gathering evidence and a lack of funding,” Sofian said.

“The scenes of the crime and the locations of the children are often different,” he said. “The cost of investigations is higher than other criminal cases, but the budget is the same.”

The victims are usually women under 18 years old from poor families in villages who are lured by the prospect of jobs and scholarships in the cities, he said.

An estimated 30 percent of women in prostitution in Indonesia were below the age of 18, according to a 2010 ECPAT report.

“Friending” the victims

A report by the National Task Force Against Human Trafficking, published in January 2012, notes that members of trafficking rings use the internet, including the popular social networking site, Facebook, to lure their victims to big cities such as Jakarta, Semarang and Surabaya. Indonesia is second only to the US in the number of Facebook users.

Traffickers also use victims, with the ringleaders promising them more money and better facilities if they recruit more victims, the report said.

“The police have reported that they often experienced difficulty in investigating human trafficking because perpetrators and their victims usually refuse to reveal the identity of the ringleaders.”

According to the 2011 US Department of State’s Trafficking in Persons Report, Indonesia is not “fully complying” with the minimum standards for the elimination of trafficking, but is making “significant” efforts to do so.

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source www.irinnews.org