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Somalia and Syria, optimism and worry
Thursday, February 23rd, 2012
photo source: UK Foreign Office
It was great to have so many high-level figures – from the region and from the UN, from old and new donors – gathered around the same table and agreeing on the way forward for Somalia, a country which has been wrecked for decades by conflict. For good reason it has been described today by British officials as the classic failed state.
I am optimistic that the corner has finally been turned. Read the full entry
Number of views: 2739
Welcome to a world of seven billion people
Sunday, October 30th, 2011
A newborn baby’s first cry has just marked a world record – the seven billionth person living on our planet was born.
Each new life is a new hope. And yet, all too many hopes get crushed by poverty and conflicts. Read the full entry
Number of views: 2527
The refugee camp you did not know about
Thursday, October 20th, 2011
Exactly three months ago, the United Nations declared famine in Somalia. Throughout the entire Horn of Africa, drought has thrown more than 13 million people into a humanitarian crisis with no quick fix in sight. My colleagues and I have already shared our impressions about what we have seen in the region – and you certainly have seen the shocking images of hunger and misery from the Dadaab refugee camps in Kenya. The situation in Dadaab is more serious than ever, but it is not the only hot spot – which is why today I have invited ECHO’s regional information officer Bea Spadacini to tell you more about Dollo Ado, another camp where humanitarian struggle daily to save, cure and feed people.
For several months now, the world has been hearing about the drought which ravages the Horn of Africa, leaving millions of people at risk of starvation in Somalia, Kenya, Ethiopia and Djibouti. The media have paid a lot of attention to the Dadaab refugee camps in Northern Kenya. Built for 90,000 people, the camps now host almost half a million. And they keep growing. Read the full entry
Number of views: 2659
Libya: Six months down the road
Tuesday, September 6th, 2011
A lot has happened since my last post, and not just in the Horn of Africa, about which my colleagues and I have told you so much recently. The emergency in Libya has entered a new stage, and you can learn about our response here. Meanwhile, the Horn of Africa remains a dawnting challenge and yesterday the UN declared famine in new areas of Somalia. Here and here you can read new dispatches from the field, written by my team members in Kenya and Somalia. But today we are changing the topic – I have invited Heinke Veit, our regional information officer for the Middle East, to share her fresh impressions from the Libyan-Tunisian border where I visited in March, and from her trip to Tripoli.
I’m back at Ras Ajdir, the border crossing between Tunisia and Libya which made headlines in late February/early March this year Read the full entry
Number of views: 3660
Keeping the bigger picture in focus
Friday, August 26th, 2011
I am just back from the African Union “Pledging Conference on Drought and Famine for the Horn of Africa” in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.
In spite of some of the negative coverage the conference received in the media I think the event was a success. We have to look beyond the headline figures pledged by African countries to help their starving brothers and sisters in Kenya and Somalia, Ethiopia and Djibouti. Read the full entry
Number of views: 3425
Kenyans for Kenya: National solidarity for drought victims
Wednesday, August 24th, 2011
I am preparing to travel to the Horn of Africa again – this time to Ethiopia. Tomorrow I will attend the pledging conference on the drought and hunger, organised by the African Union with the goal to find an African solution to an African problem. Africans are also showing solidarity with the starving, the refugees and all the other drought-afflicted people in the Horn – and to tell us more about this, I have invited Bea Spadacini, our humanitarian information officer in Nairobi, to be my guest blogger today. Read the full entry
Number of views: 3563
Meet the foot soldiers of relief aid
Wednesday, August 10th, 2011
We, the Commission, deliver European humanitarian aid in partnership with the world’s best respected organisations on the field. You certainly know most of them – UN agencies like the High Commissioner for Refugees, international organisations like the Red Cross, NGOs like Save the Children. This cooperation guarantees that our aid – your aid – is delivered in the most efficient and professional aid to the people who need it.
While we work with the biggest and the best, we also join forces with less-known, but equally worthy partners: local non-governmental and community-based organisations. Read the full entry
Number of views: 3573
Today I have invited a guest blogger – Martin Karimi is in Kenya where he is part of our humanitarian team working on the Horn of Africa crisis. He wrote this poignant account of his recent trip to Wajir, Kenya. It is quite representative of the situation in the Horn of Africa today.
Animals and their keepers have fled from Wajir in droves. In the western district there used to be more than 600,000 sheep, goats, cows, camels and donkeys. Now nearly half a million animals have moved out or died and most of the remaining ones are weak and constantly tethered around homesteads. Read the full entry
Number of views: 3228
I am currently flying back to Nairobi from the remote arid lands of the pastoral clans of northern Kenya and southern Ethiopia, where the impact of the drought would have been far worse if not for some remarkable projects which European taxpayers are funding.
These disaster risk reduction projects are fundamental to breaking the cycle of extreme weather shocks which some of the older members of the Borana and Gabra clans with whom I spoke remember all too clearly. Read the full entry
Number of views: 2843
Doolow is the last stop for Somalis running from hunger and conflict to neighbouring Ethiopia. The local community is itself hard-hit by the drought. What I saw there was grim but I also took some positive notes from my visit.
The first encouraging sign was the local chieftain sitting down with our partner organisation Coopi and taking an active part in the process of distributing food supplies to fellow Somalis arriving from the worst-hit regions of their country. Read the full entry
Number of views: 2370
