More creativity needed in responding to crises

AID POLICY: Classifications questioned in protracted crises

Photo: Marion Doss/Flickr

More creativity needed in responding to crises

MEDFORD, USA, 8 June 2011 (IRIN) – Classifying aid as “relief”, “early recovery” or “development” does little to help countries that have been troubled for years.

This was the key message from the Second World Humanitarian Studies Conference this month during a discussion on food security response in protracted crises such as Somalia.

The UK’s Overseas Development Institute (ODI) reckons there are at least 22 countries in protracted crises, by which it means countries where a large population is vulnerable to disease, death and disruption of livelihoods over a long period, with the state having limited capacity to help those affected.

“Food insecurity is the most common manifestation of protracted crises,” according to Prabhu Pingali, deputy director of Agriculture Development at the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, and Luca Alinovi, the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) representative for Somalia. About 20 percent of the world’s undernourished people (or more than a third of the global total if China and India are excluded) – 166 million – live in countries in protracted crises.

The problems of engagement in such countries are linked to the way “development” is perceived and how aid is used to respond, said Alinovi.

In the aid world, “development is viewed as a gradual improvement in the quality of life. Disasters or acute emergencies briefly interrupt this trend, but the expectation is that there will be a return to normality, hence the use of terms such as ‘disaster’, ‘recovery’ and ‘sustainable development’,” he said.

Aid responses even in protracted crises tend to be short term. “We cannot work with funding that is reviewed every year as at times there are breaks in funding, which does not help projects which have long-term development objectives,” said Alinovi. “If we want to help the country emerge from the crisis we have to make a long-term commitment with no interruption in spending.”

“Wrong” emphasis

Principles for Good International Engagement in Fragile States and Situations set out by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) put too much emphasis on building state institutions, said Daniel Maxwell, a food security expert at Tufts University and one of the authors of a joint FAO and World Food Programme (WFP) report on food insecurity in protracted crises.

Most developed countries and major aid donors are among OECD’s 34 members. The OECD should better focus on efforts to strengthen livelihoods and local institutions that support livelihoods, he said.

“We have to become more creative in how we seek to respond to a crisis – and not with the traditional humanitarian mindset,” said Maxwell.

ODI researcher Sarah Bailey in a forthcoming paper on the Democratic Republic of Congo, another country in a protracted crisis, says: “Aid architecture is divided into humanitarian and development compartments. The choice to use aid mechanisms is a political decision related to how donor governments want to engage with the state, and there is a lack of programming strategies for shifting between shorter-term and longer-term assistance approaches.

“As addressing state fragility has become an important international concern, so too has the focus widened from linking relief and development to integrating aid and security.

“Many policies and interventions now seek to `stabilize’ fragile and conflict-affected settings through assistance and security responses. ‘Early recovery’, meaning laying foundations for recovery at the earliest opportunities, has also emerged as a framework in recent years. ”

But rather than coming up with frameworks such as “early recovery” intended to plug a theoretical distinction between relief and development, the aid community should try to understand the opportunities and limitations offered by existing approaches, she says.

Flexibility key

In perhaps the most protracted crisis of all, FAO and other agencies have had to be creative in trying to help communities in Somalia. Humanitarian agencies there engage with whichever local authority holds sway, and many dispatch funds through “hawala” money transfer systems, global networks of trusted brokers, with some success, says Alinovi.

Francois Daniel Grunewald, chair of Groupe URD, a research centre, said another reason why FAO had made inroads is “because it responds to a crisis in agro-ecological zones, so it can set up those relationships in a decentralized way – which is the way to respond for aid agencies and donors even in countries like Afghanistan – and not have to spend vital time engaging with an ineffective central government”. Grunewald worked in Somalia for some years when he ran the agriculture rehabilitation unit of the International Committee of the Red Cross.

ODI’s Bailey suggested that donors, rather than responding to the needs of a crisis from one year to the next, should consider aid money pledged over a period of time in totality and then decide how best to spend it.

Donors and the aid community perhaps needed to better understand the impact of their assistance in terms of helping communities back on their feet. Instead of asking the question, “How can humanitarian action support recovery?” Bailey suggested they ask: “What is the most appropriate assistance given the needs, context and capacities? How can it have the greatest impact?”

jk/cb/bp/mw source www.irinnews.org

Uncertainty in Sudan: All packed up… and nowhere to go

SUDAN: Uncertainty, fear among Southerners in the North

Photo: Maryline Dumas/IRIN

All packed up… and nowhere to go. A ‘temporary’ departure site near Khartoum

KHARTOUM,  – A month from now, millions of people in Southern Sudan will celebrate their first day of independence. But many thousands of Southerners still stuck in the North are likely to miss the party.

Promises of relocation assistance from the Government of Southern Sudan (GOSS) have for many turned out to be empty. An escalation of hostilities between North and South – in Abyei and then in Southern Kordofan, further reduces the likelihood of renewed large-scale returns any time soon.

And as the North embarks on the mammoth task of compiling a register of all citizens, it is not clear whether this will include people of Southern origin, or what their status in the North will be.

“It is an outstanding issue. The two parties [governments of North and South] have to find an agreement now. The clock is ticking. This issue could affect human rights,” UN human rights envoy Mohamed Chande Othman told reporters in Khartoum on 8 June.

According to the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR), 302,724 Southern Sudanese who had settled in the North have already left for the South. Another 20,000 are ready to go and are waiting in one or other of the 12 official departure sites in Khartoum.

Some 1.5-2 million Southern Sudanese migrated to the North, mainly during the latest phase of civil war (1983-2005), and hundreds of thousands of them could be in limbo after 9 July, the official secession date.

Angry

Nimer Tabash Fatima lives in a makeshift shelter made of cloth, tarpaulin and pieces of wood in Mayo, one of the 12 sites on the outskirts of Khartoum.

“I have been living here since December. I sold my house and all my belongings. I registered on the list to leave. Since then, I am waiting and I am angry about waiting. The children are not going to school any more because the authorities don’t want to register them.”

Hundreds of families are similarly camped out in Mayo amid piles of mattresses, chairs, and trunks of clothes. Having left not only homes but also jobs, many have no source of income.

Unlike registered internally displaced people, they have no access to humanitarian aid: in line with an agreement with the Southern Sudan Relief and Rehabilitation Commission, the World Food Programme (WFP) does not distribute rations in these places of departure “to avoid the creation of transitional camps”, said Amor Almagro, WFP spokesman in Khartoum.

Photo: Maryline Dumas/IRIN

Broken promises… Children wait for transport to the South

“Right now, I can’t say when those registered will be able to leave. It is not only up to us. The Northern government has to organize security for the transport,” said Gatwech Kulang, head of repatriation in GOSS, reached by telephone.

Uncertain future

Speaking in late May, President Omar al-Bashir warned that, after secession “there will be no dual nationality for Southerners. But there will be a transitional period where they could regularize their situation, otherwise they will be expelled to the South.”

For Gordon Push, whose Southern origins are etched into his face in the form of scars typical of the Nuer ethnic group and who lives in the quiet Al Girif East district of Khartoum, these were worrying words.

“If we are still there on 10 July we will suffer,” he told IRIN. “My neighbour, Ibrahim, who is a friend of mine, warned me: `You should go quickly’”.

Even the UN is feeling its way on this issue: “We don’t know what will happen with the Southeners in Khartoum after independence. But we are working closely with the different authorities on the issue,” said Carole Sparks, head of UNHCR’s protection department in Khartoum.

Southern Sudanese in Khartoum fear being physically attacked, said John Dindi, a priest at St Matthew’s Cathedral. “What makes them more afraid is not knowing whether the government will protect them if the Northeners harass them. If it happens, it won’t be in Khartoum but I guess more in rural areas.”

Disillusionment

Some “Southerners” who were born in the North appear sceptical that the nascent Republic of South Sudan will turn out to be the promised land that so many are counting on.

“I will live over there with my parents because it is there that my family and my tribe are from,” said Khartoum-born Florence, whose family originate in the Southern State of Western Bahr al-Ghazal. “But I like living in a city; we can find anything and it is cheaper than in the South.”

Some of those who did migrate southwards found conditions there so arduous or discovered that their land had been taken over during their absence, that they returned to the North. One NGO, Fellowship for African Relief, said it thought some 500 families had doubled back in this way. But the accurate figures are difficult to come by because GOSS’s aversion to such returns to the North mean they often take place in secret.

William Domazo, secretary at St Matthew’s Cathedral in Khartoum, said of one such returnee: “She left in December with her two children to Malakal [capital of Upper Nile State], the land of her parents. A few days after she arrived, she saw soldiers from SPLA [South Sudan army] hitting people from her Nuer community. She was scared. She came back to Khartoum with her younger daughter. She told me that she’s got a nice house here and that she is safe.”

mg/cb/am source www.irinnews.org

South Sudan: New mines are reportedly being laid in violation of a 1997 international ban

SUDAN: Land mines add to security worries in south

Photo: Severine Flores/IRIN

Years of hard work undone? New mines are reportedly being laid in violation of a 1997 international ban

JUBA, 6 June 2011 (IRIN) – Fighting between the Southern Sudanese army and an array of armed opposition movements is severely limiting the ability of humanitarian agencies to reach vulnerable populations, aid workers say.

In oil-rich Unity State, where the Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA) is fighting forces loyal to Peter Gadet, a former SPLA commander who joined the army after leading a Khartoum government-backed militia during the north-south civil war, then launched a new rebellion in April, there have been civilian casualties.

UN officials say a worrisome trend is the laying of new land mines. Tim Horner, deputy director of the UN Mine Action Office in Southern Sudan, told IRIN on 4 June that his organization had seen an increase in the number of “mine incidents and accidents” in the past six months. Although he said it was not possible to know definitely whether these incidents, in the oil-producing Greater Upper Nile region of the south, were due to cases of “re-mining”, he stressed that the anecdotal evidence pointed in that direction.

“It’s sad because we’ve had a lot of success in mine action, it’s been extremely successful over the past six years,” said Horner.

Sudan is party to the 1997 Mine Ban Treaty, which prohibits the use, stockpiling, production and transfer of anti-personnel mines.

On 26 April, the UN issued a security advisory for key roads through two counties, Mayom and Abiemnom, in Unity State, “due to the suspected presence of land mines”.

On 12 May, the road between the state capital of Bentiu and Tharjath, which has a private oil company airstrip also used by commercial airlines, was declared Category 4 or “no go” when two oil company water tankers and one commercial truck were “blown up by three anti-personnel mines”, according to a UN report on the incident. The advisory noted that the security category was increased “in view of indications of more mine laying activity in the area”.

UN security reports from the past two months highlight a number of incidents. According to one, a young boy stepped on a mine in Mayom County on 17 May and lost both feet.

“The laying of mines since January is seriously impeding humanitarian access,” said Lise Grande, UN Deputy Humanitarian and Resident Coordinator for Southern Sudan. “Mines are being laid in areas where rebel militia groups are active,” she added.
Aid groups operating in Unity, where, according to the UN Mine Action Office, there were six incidents alone in the first two weeks of May, report having to effectively cease operations.

“The start of the fighting in Mayom County in late April has affected our capacity to carry out our outreach-based ambulatory therapeutic feeding programme. As of mid-May, we had no choice but to stop movements out of Bentiu after receiving reports of land mines located on several roads we normally use for outreach visits to treat children with severe malnutrition,” said Gautam Chatterjee of Médecins Sans Frontières in Southern Sudan.

Targeted

In its quarterly report, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) noted that the humanitarian access situation had deteriorated sharply in recent months, highlighting the “commandeering of humanitarian vehicles and demands for use of humanitarian assets by [the] Sudan People’s Liberation Army” as among the most cited problems by OCHA’s humanitarian partners.

Photo: Maryline Dumas/IRIN

Fighting has disrupted humanitarian activities

Also detailed in the OCHA report were multiple reports of “violence against [aid] personnel, facilities, and assets”, with “threats and abuses targeting humanitarian staff, assets, and compounds – by both security services and local authorities” the most common type of incident reported to OCHA in the first quarter of this year.

The agency said the most serious incidents occurred in Lakes State, where “six humanitarian vehicles travelling through Lakes were commandeered by SPLA troops and five of the drivers were made to drive into an area in Unity State where clashes erupted. The whereabouts of two of the drivers were unknown for two weeks and subsequent reports indicate that one of the drivers was killed.” OCHA also details other cases of commandeering of vehicles by SPLA troops in Lakes in May, including one on 14 May when drivers of two humanitarian vehicles were forced “to transport arms and ammunition”.

Hunger gap

Chatterjee told IRIN a combination of factors was drastically impeding the group’s ability to serve needy and conflict-affected populations in Unity, including a blockade on at least two of the critical north-south trade routes (imposed by the northern government) in early May and insecurity.

“Since the end of April, it’s been very difficult to go to these places [in Unity State] because of the fighting,” Chatterjee told IRIN. He said the fighting had also resulted in homes being raided and cattle stolen. “It will increase food insecurity,” he said, noting that the yearly “hunger gap” in Southern Sudan began with the onset of the rainy season and is likely to be more severe this year, given the loss of livelihoods and the inability of villagers to plant crops before the rainy season, which began last month.

He said that malnutrition figures were up to three times as high this year on the same period last year.

No-go areas

The road from the main airstrip to the state capital has been declared a “no-go” zone by the UN peacekeeping mission due to the land mines that have been laid in the past two months of army-rebel conflict.

The top local government official in the area where the fighting has been most intense is appealing for support for what he estimates are 7,800 people in his county who have been displaced by the fighting.

“It has become very difficult for civilians to move out from the fighting [because of the mines],” Mayom County Commissioner Charles Machieng Kuol told IRIN. “The fighting is a threat to community development,” he said, noting that there was no effective security on his county’s northern border with the state of Southern Kordofan, which, he says, militia forces loyal to Gadet are using as a rear base for their operations.

Kuol said civilians had been caught in the crossfire, and that women and children were particularly vulnerable and unable to flee the fighting.

Commandeering of NGO vehicles and siphoning of fuel by southern troops has also been reported to OCHA in Juba on several key routes to Warrap State, where tens of thousands of people displaced after the northern army’s invasion of the disputed north-south border zone of Abyei have sought refuge.

Blockades imposed by the northern government in early May on the routes from north to south, which carry the bulk of the fuel and food supplies for densely populated southern border towns, including Bentiu and Wau, are increasing the severity of the situation and further curtailing the humanitarian response to the post-Abyei crisis.

The manager of the only petrol station in Wau that still had reserves told IRIN they would soon run out. Bol Ahol Ngor of the Nile Petroleum Petrol Station said transporting fuel from Kenya to Wau, near the northern Sudanese border, took twice as long and cost roughly three times as much as bringing fuel from Khartoum.

With Southern independence just over a month away, internal conflict and badly strained north-south relations threaten to further derail humanitarian efforts in the south through independence and beyond.

mf/mw source www.irinnews.org