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06/02/2010 - SOUTHERN AFRICA: Snapshot of food security.

JOHANNESBURG, 5 February (IRIN) - Economic conditions in most southern African countries declined as a result of the global recession, pushing many more people towards greater food insecurity. According to a new food security update which focused on some southern African countries, food prices have risen and are still climbing in several countries.

The price of most fertilizers doubled in 2008 and continued to rise through 2009, affecting the quantity of crops planted throughout the region. High input costs prompted many governments to either extend their input subsidy programme or consider implementing one.

Here is a snapshot of food security in the region, based on an update compiled by the Famine Early Warning System Network (FEWS NET), the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), the UN Children's Fund (UNICEF), the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) and the UN World Food Programme (WFP).

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Zimbabwe

Agriculture

Area planted increased since 2008, but most parts of the country have experienced dry spells since December 2009. About 57 percent of communal farmers received input support, but input schemes face critical shortages of ammonium nitrate, which has compromised crop quality.

Food availability

Farmers' stocks have been depleted. Food aid and purchases are now major sources of cereals. Basic foodstuffs easily available in markets. Tax-free import of food items extended to 31 July 2010.

Food access/Prices

Declining supplies driving up maize prices. Around 1.6 million people will be food insecure between January and March 2010, with about 1.9 million receiving food aid.

Nutrition/Health

At least 35 percent of children are severely malnourished. Measles outbreaks reported in 16 of 62 districts. A few cholera cases reported in 10 districts by 3 January 2010.

Comments

Economic recovery sluggish. Amount of foreign currency in circulation still limited. Provision of basic services still problematic.

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Lesotho

Agriculture

Rains were on time, but area planted by end of December 2009 dropped by 25 percent compared to previous season. Government subsidized seeds and fertilizer by between 30 and 50 percent.

Food availability

The only country in southern Africa where food production fell in 2009, perhaps because farmers could not afford inputs. Government will have to import cereals from South Africa.

Food access/Prices

Between 400,000 and 450,000 of Lesotho's 2.1 million people will need food aid before the next harvest in April 2010.

Nutrition/Health

Data from a food consumption survey by WFP, UNICEF and the National University of Lesotho yet to be analyzed.

Comments

Government income from the Southern African Customs Union, a major source of revenue, fell by 35 percent in 2009/10 and is expected to shrink further in 2010/11.

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Namibia

Agriculture

Rainfall has been erratic and insufficient. Few farmers have ploughed their fields.

Food availability

Rural households have no food stocks. Namibia will need to import between 150,000mt and 156,000mt of grain according to various estimates - almost its entire requirement of 159,000mt.

Food access/Prices

Most households have depleted their stocks and depend on markets and or government food aid.

Nutrition/Health

African swine fever was reported in the Ohangwena region of northern Namibia, affecting transportation of inputs to the neighbouring fertile Kavango region.

The report on the 2008 Demographic Health Survey is still being finalized; the 2010 survey is being planned.

Comments

Chronic food insecurity in the northern communal crop-producing areas was worsened by shocks such as droughts and floods in 2009. Namibia is a net cereal importer.

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Mozambique

Agriculture

Irregular and poor distribution of rainfall and very high temperatures have affected crops, mainly in the south and central provinces.

Food availability

Food is available because of the good 2008/09 season, but food security could become critical in the southern and central provinces.

Food access/Prices

Maize prices have risen. At least 267,000 people will need food aid until the harvest in April 2010.

Nutrition/Health

Chronic malnutrition levels are high - 44 percent- according to the last survey in 2008.

Comments

The National directorate of water has forecast a high risk of flooding until March 2010 in the Zambezi River basin in the central region, and the Messalo River basin in the far north.

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Malawi

Agriculture

Long dry spells have affected crops in most districts. An attack of army worms has also affected maize, rice, millet and sorghum crops.

Food availability

The food security situation remains favourable in most parts of the country.

Food access/Prices

Most markets have recorded a slight increase in maize prices but generally it is affordable and accessible.

Nutrition/Health

The findings of a 2009 micronutrient survey have yet to be released.

Comments

Food is available in the Karonga district of northern Malawi, which experienced a series of earthquakes in December 2009

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Madagascar

Agriculture

Input prices have gone up by between five and 10 percent but subsidies have been suspended, which could adversely affect food production. The cyclone season began in December 2010 and the island will remain under threat until April 2010.

Food availability

Supplies of the staple cereal, rice, are adequate.

Food access/Prices

A good harvest in 2009 reduced the number of food insecure among poor and vulnerable households from 65 percent in 2008 to 40 percent in November 2009. Local rice prices are stable.

Nutrition/Health

The country has the highest levels of acute malnutrition (15 percent) and chronic malnutrition (53 percent) in southern Africa

Comments

More than 200,000 jobs were lost in 2009 as a result of the economic and political crisis. The USA has terminated its trade benefits because of the political situation and another 500,000 jobs could be lost. The UN Country Team has raised concerns over the approaching cyclone season, which usually affects some of the poorest regions of Madagascar.

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Zambia

Agriculture

Government increased the number of people receiving subsidized fertilizer by halving the amount given to each household.

Food availability

The country has surplus food and will not require imports.

Food access/Prices

Maize prices stable until the end of 2009, yet remain high compared to previous surplus years, probably because of high input costs. High prices are expected to affect low-income households.

Nutrition/Health

High food prices and recurrent floods have pushed up child malnutrition levels, according to the Jesuit Centre for Theological Reflection in Zambia.

Comments

Food has been pre-positioned for the current rainy season in the three most flood-prone districts.

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Swaziland

Agriculture

Government has announced a plan to subsidize inputs later in 2010.

Food availability

Annual maize harvest improved but the country still needs to import around 90,000mt to meet requirements.

Food access/prices

At least 256,000 people are facing food shortages.

Nutrition/Health

The last nutritional survey in 2008 found chronic malnutrition of around 40 percent. Maternal nutrition figures indicate a problem of over-nutrition rather than under-nutrition among women.

Comments

Trend analysis shows that increasing levels of stunting could result from both economic decline and continued high HIV prevalence rates.

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South Africa

Agriculture

Most of the country received good rainfall but some drought conditions related to El Nino experienced in central and western parts.

Food availability

The country is expected to produce a surplus.

Food access/prices

Food prices have come down slightly but remain high.

Nutrition/Health

Infant mortality is high - 49 out every 1,000 infants born every year die, largely because of HIV/AIDS.

Comments

Government is working with agriculture and health institutions to improve existing food security initiatives.

05/02/2010 - SUDAN : Mixed success on Malaria control in the South.

JUBA, 4 February (IRIN) - More than four million insecticide-treated nets (ITNs) have been distributed across Southern Sudan since 2007, but universal coverage of treatment remains a long way off, according to experts.

The region is, however, likely to achieve preventive targets set by African heads of state in 2000 at a summit in Abuja, Nigeria. These include at least 80 percent of people at risk from malaria using locally appropriate vector control methods like ITNs and indoor residual spraying.

Other targets are 80 percent of malaria patients being diagnosed and treated with effective anti-malarial treatments; and in areas of high transmission, all pregnant women receiving intermittent preventive treatment.

"We can say that in areas where ITN distribution campaigns have taken place, there is already 80 percent coverage," Robert Azairwe, a senior adviser to the Ministry of Health's National Malaria Control Programme, told IRIN.

"By the end of 2010, nationwide nets' distribution is likely to be achieved," he added.

The distribution programme - which so far has been run by the Health Ministry, the UN Development Programme and the social marketing NGO Population Services International (PSI) - has covered seven and a half of the 10 states in the south.

Central Equatoria and parts of Eastern Equatoria and Jonglei are yet to be reached.

Community partnership

The region, according to experts, is "hyper-endemic" for malaria. The disease, the UN Children's Fund says, is responsible for up to 29 percent of Southern Sudan's disease burden.

Lukasz Czerwinski, operations manager for PSI in Southern Sudan, said the distribution had succeeded largely because of a good relationship with the government, planning, and prepositioning of materials.

"Community sensitization on malaria prevention through the use of LLINs [long-lasting insecticide-treated mosquito nets] began several months before the nets arrived, with more than 10,500 community volunteers raising awareness at state, county and `payam' [large village] level," he told IRIN.

PSI is currently the principal recipient for malaria grants from the Global Fund to fight HIV, Tuberculosis and Malaria in the region.

"PSI beefed up its community level activities by adoption of a mass media strategy using radio stations as a tool to urge people to use LLINs. The messaging focused on correct and consistent use of the distributed LLINs," he said.

Challenges

Despite some success, Southern Sudan's poor road network and notoriously difficult natural terrain made distribution a challenge. Where possible, PSI used bicycles or people on foot to take nets to areas that were impassable for vehicles.

Sometimes, during the rainy season, teams were forced to postpone the distribution when rivers burst their banks, cutting off entire villages. Sporadic outbreaks of violence also delayed distribution to certain areas.

The programme has also faced some unexpected challenges, according to Azairwe, including reports that in some areas, the nets - which should usually have a shelf life of up to three years - are being destroyed by extreme environmental factors and have not even lasted one year.

"During the dry season, temperatures in some areas can go over 40 degrees Celsius, and reports from the field indicate that their use, and perhaps durability may be compromised" he said.

Czerwinski said the nets were being tested for durability as reports of heat damage continued to be investigated. Surveys, he said, were also under way to monitor actual use of the nets and their impact in terms of malaria incidence in the populations covered.

Treatment lagging behind

While distribution of nets has been largely successful, the same cannot be said for treatment. According to Azairwe, less than 10 percent of children with fever currently receive effective malaria treatment within 24 hours of fever onset.

"The Abuja targets require that by the end of 2010, 80 percent of malaria patients receive effective treatment within 24 hours of the first symptoms," he said. "In Southern Sudan, where only 25 percent of the population has access to a health facility, this is an extremely difficult target to achieve."

"Ensuring a constant supply of ACTs [Artemisinin-based combination therapy] is difficult - the drugs are expensive and we depend on partners, and efforts are not always well coordinated," he said. "In 2009 there was at least one quarter [of the year] where there were no ACTs here."

Logistical difficulties - including storage of rapid diagnostic tests - that most manufacturers recommend not be stored above 30 degrees Celsius - make diagnosis, and in turn, treatment, difficult.

Human resource shortages mean that even when the drugs were available, there was not always a trained medical professional on hand to dispense them. Even when both drugs and health workers were available, patients often did not actively seek health services.

"We also need to build the capacity of the private sector - used by much of the population for their drugs - to follow the government's malaria policies," he said. "A dose of Coartem [a brand of ACT] costs US$7-10, so many outlets don't stock it because people won't buy it; instead they stock less costly ineffective drugs that are not in line with the government's policy."

"If we manage to improve the supply of medicines, see some improvements in health systems and implement home-based care on a larger scale, we could see about 50 percent treatment coverage by the end of 2010," he added.

02/02/2010 - SOMALIA : My farm \

ABUDA, 2 February (IRIN) - Mohamed Olhaye Nour, 60, last cultivated his farm in Abuda, 24km southwest of Somaliland's capital, Hargeisa, more than two decades ago.

"Before the war, our life was good; we did not worry about making ends meet," he said. "In an average year, our crop production was about 40-50 `jawan' (one `jawan' = 100kg sack of maize and sorghum mixed together).

"We kept 15-20 `jawan' in reserve. We used the remainder in different ways, such as for bread, 'African cake' [maize meal] eaten with milk, or sorghum with milk."

Nour, who has two wives and 17 children, stopped cultivating his land because it "is full of mines". Two people who ventured onto the land got injured - one losing both arms. Nour has also lost 36 livestock to the mines.

Most of the unexploded ordnance (UXO) in Abuda was planted during the 1977-78 war between Somalia and Ethiopia, according to local residents. Some is from the 1981-91 war between the Somali National Movement and the Somali National Army.

According to Nour, many residents of Abuda were agro-pastoralists before these wars. Most fled to Ethiopia when clashes first broke out. When they returned in 1991, they found their farmland had been mined. Now they mostly survive as livestock keepers.

Experts in the self-declared republic say more than 250,000 pieces of unexploded ordnance, including anti-personnel and anti-tank mines, are buried in Somaliland.

UXO is scattered across northwestern Somalia, from Elayo to Loyada and from Bihen to Gestir.

Demining

Over the years, farmers wrote many letters to the Somaliland government requesting that the Abuda area be demined, Nour said. In 2009, the UK-based organization HALO Trust started demining farmland in this area.

Hargeisa, according to HALO, was heavily mined around military bases, refugee camps, private houses and the airport. The war between Ethiopia and Somalia also left behind large amounts of unexploded ordnance.

Some explosives have, unfortunately, been harvested from mines for illegal reuse. This is particularly the case with anti-vehicle mines and explosive ordnance. Another problem is that most mines in Somaliland are plastic-bodied, making them difficult to locate using conventional demining equipment, according to HALO.

"We started demining operations in this area [Abuda] in early November 2009 after we received complaints from residents," said Hassan Kosar, operations officer for HALO in Hargeisa. "We hope to finish in early May 2010, if we have adequate manpower capacity."

Two other mine clearance institutions now exist in Somaliland - the Mine Action Center and the National Demining Agency.

HALO is currently supporting the National Demining Agency to expand mine-clearing operations, because the Somaliland government's budget for demining institutions is limited.

"This is the first time a local institution is going to engage in mine clearance operations in Somaliland after HALO Trust trains 40 deminers for us," said Mohamed Were, operations officer for the Somaliland National Demining Agency. "[But] our problem is lack of funds."

At least eight hectares owned by 95 families in the Abuda area were mined, as well as several hectares further to the north.

"I have not cultivated my farm since 1988 but now that demining is going on, I hope the clearing of our farms will be completed before the rains come," Nour told IRIN.

01/02/2010 - NEWS - UP DATES

With regret we have to inform all persons concerned that the company Web2Net Solutions where our domaine is hosted, last month, had a major server crash down and all our NEWS up dates for the period 01 JULY 2006 till 31 JANUARY 2010 have been lost and cannot be retrieved.

All other details have not been effected.

The Secretary

01/02/2010 - DONATIONS

Because the daily records have been lost we like to confirn that ALL donations received in 2005, 06,07,08,& 2009 for account of the Fistula Hospital or the Children Heart Hospital have been paid in FULL into their accounts.

21/07/2006 - ETHIOPIA. Incresed efforts to prevent blindness

Former US President Bill Clinton (middle) at a health centre during his recent visit to Ethiopia. ADDIS ABABA, 21 Jul 2006 (IRIN) - The Ethiopian government is to increase efforts to prevent and treat blindness, which afflicts a large number of people across the country, said Prime Minister Meles Zenawi.

Meles was speaking after visiting a cataract surgery training programme provided for Ethiopian ophthalmologists by the ORBIS International flying eye hospital. Some 40 local ophthalmologists attended the training.

The flying eye hospital carries treatment facilities and an operating room, where operations performed by volunteer surgeons are relayed to an on-board classroom and to remote conference rooms attended by local doctors to enhance their skills.

"I am very impressed with the work ORBIS has been engaged in," Meles said. "I would like to assure you of my full support and appreciation."

ORBIS International Medical Director, Douglas Officials, urged the Ethiopian government to devote more resources to blindness prevention and make it - especially trachoma control - a health priority. According to ORBIS, nearly 37 million people worldwide are blind or visually impaired, of whom 90 percent live in developing countries. Many of these cases are preventable.

ORBIS, an international non-governmental organisation, would spend close to US $10 million on blindness-prevention projects in rural areas of Ethiopia, including provision of surgical equipment and further training for ophthalmologists.

The organisation's head in Ethiopia, Wound Alemayehu, said the high rates of blindness and visual impairment in Ethiopia had put pressure on socio-economic development. An estimated 75 percent of blindness cases were caused by preventable and curable diseases, he added.

Meanwhile, the Bill Clinton Foundation is to equip 3,200 health centres so they can treat 25,000 people each. Former US President Bill Clinton, who visited the country last week, said his organisation would increase its support for health development programmes in Ethiopia.

14/07/2006 - WORLD BANK PLEDGES CONTINUED SUPPORT

ETHIOPIA: The World Bank will continue supporting Ethiopia's development efforts, President Paul Wolfowitz said on Wednesday, expressing confidence that the country was recovering from the political upheaval that caused major donors to suspend direct budgetary support last year.

"I think there is more reason to feel confident that people are learning the right lessons from the experiences of last year," Wolfowitz told reporters at the end of a two-day visit to the country

14/07/2006 - ETHIOPIA: Fourteen dead as diarrhoea hits Oromiya region

An outbreak of acute diarrhoea has claimed the lives of 14 people in the Oromiya region of southern Ethiopia, where more than 530 cases of the disease have been reported in the past two weeks, a United Nations agency said.

Cases had been reported in the East Shoa zone of the region, with the worst-hit areas being Shashemene, Siraro and Arsi Negele, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), said in a bulletin issued on Monday

30/06/2006 - DJIBOUTI - Drought-affected pastoralists facing tough times

NAIROBI, 30 June (IRIN) - Cattle farmers in Djibouti are facing an uncertain future due to continuing drought conditions and a lack of long-term planning for pastoralists in the Horn of Africa state, an early warning agency said.

"In the absence of long-term measures to protect and restore livelihoods [...] pastoral livelihoods are in real jeopardy," reported the Famine Early Warning Systems Network (FEWS Net) in its June update on the food situation in Djibouti.

Several seasons of failed rains have meant that cattle farmers are unable to recover from a loss of pasture and water, and the agency warns that they will be unlikely to fully regain their livelihoods in the near future.

"The benefits to water, browse [cattle fodder] and pasture for pastoralists are dwindling with the advance of the current dry season, raising concern about the adequacy of these resources for livestock herds [...] Water is becoming scarce and almost all water catchments are drying out," FEWS Net said.

The cattle themselves are said to be in poor physical condition in the northwest and southeast pastoral zones. Despite some rain in April, the next rains are not expected until July-September.

A spokesman for the United Nations World Food Programme said the agency was distributing food to 70,000 recipients in rural areas of Djibouti.

Both rural and urban residents are cutting down on their food expenditure, a situation that has been exacerbated for those living in Djibouti city by the departure of expatriate military personnel based in the country for their summer holidays.

30/06/2006 - ERITREA- Measles vaccination campaign launched.

NAIROBI, 30 June (IRIN) - A nationwide measles vaccination campaign aimed at children aged 6-months to five-years against has been launched in Eritrea, the health ministry has announced.

The campaign began on Wednesday and is expected to last until 2 July. It is hoped that five million children will benefit from the campaign, which also involves the distribution of Vitamin A tablets. Parents are being urged to take their children to the nearest health centres for vaccination.

According to the United Nations World Health Organization (WHO), measles is a major killer of young children despite the availability of a safe and effective vaccine for the past 40 years. An estimated 454,000 people worldwide, the majority of them children, died from measles in 2004.

In April, the UN granted US $450,000 from the newly-created Central Emergency Response Fund (CERF) to WHO for life-saving programmes including vaccination campaigns in Eritrea.

The disease is an acute viral respiratory illness associated with high fever, rashes and vomiting.

The current campaign follows similar operations carried out in 2003 (which targeted children between the age of nine-months and 15-years) and in 2000.

30/06/2006 - ETHIOPIA - Bunper crop harvest expected next year.

Ethiopians should expect a bumper crop harvest next year due to good rains and an improved use of fertilizers, Prime Minister Meles Zenawi has promised.

"We are better prepared than ever to make good use of the good rains we now have and we have imported more fertilizer then ever [...] and the regional extensions [systems that] provide technical assistance are better organised," Meles told reporters in the capital Addis Ababa on Tuesday.

30/06/2006 - ETHIOPIA - Avain flu contingency plan approved.

Ethiopia's national avian flu coordination committee has approved a multi-million dollar contingency plan to strengthen preparedness in the event of the disease spreading to the Horn of Africa country.

The three-year plan, costing almost US $124 million, was prepared by the Avian Human Influenza National Coordination Committee. It includes the creation of surveillance systems, stockpiling of essential medical supplies and equipment, as well as systems for building national, regional and local response capacity.

14/06/2006 - TESTIMONIES FROM ETHIOPIANS

NAIROBI, 14 June (IRIN) - Mohamed, 27, former soldier, from Ethiopia

I joined the military when I was 20 and was immediately posted north, first to Humera on the Sudan border. I stayed in the military for seven years, and I was injured in the Ethiopia-Eritrea war, in Badme. A bomb blast injured my face. When the war finished, I wanted to see my family. I was posted to Region 1, Mekele [Tigray], but I pleaded to see my family. I got permission to go to Gode [the capital of Ethiopia's Somali Region]. When I arrived in Jijiga, I discovered that my father and brother had been arrested as ONLF [Ogadeni National Liberation Front] members. Then I got into a very difficult situation. The government told me I had to find my other brother, also an ONLF member. They gave me a gun and said, "Find your brother. Search for him and bring him to us." Then I was afraid I would be killed, because if I came back to them without my brother, they would think I am ONLF because I am Ogadeni. They will arrest me or kill me. But if I go to my brother, he knows I am military, so he will kill me. I had to leave, but I couldn't get out of the country to Mogadishu. There, in that area, they are opposed to Ethiopians like me and call you 'al Ittihad' [Islamic militant] or 'spy'. You can't go that way - and you can't go to Somaliland, because the Issak [ruling clan] in Hargeysa [capital of Somaliland] have a relationship with Ethiopia. They have cross-border agreements and do security for each other, and they have Ethiopian security officers living in Hargeysa. So I had to come to Bosasso, but I fear this place because there is no government. I have no plans to go to Saudi Arabia - that's not why I came. I don't want to take that risk. I didn't use the brokers to get here; I came by car. I wanted to find a safe place.

Fatuma, 21, unemployed, from Ethiopia I left Dessie [central Ethiopia] to find work. It was a very tough life there. I went from Dessie to Addis Ababa, where I have friends. In Addis, I used to meet up with my friends and we would plan what to do. We wanted to get out, go to Saudi Arabia and abroad. I was put in touch with a broker through my friends, who were all in a similar situation. The broker was a young man - an Amhara like me - and good company. He told us it was easy to get out and said it could be arranged. I borrowed a lot of money. There are so many brokers in Addis - Amharas, Oromos and Somalis - they can fix the journey. Our broker was in touch with Somalis and Ethiopians who could take us to Region 5 [Ethiopia's Somali Region] and take us across the border.

We arranged to go from Addis Ababa to Harar, and there we connected with another broker. I paid 200 birr (US$24) and went in a bus with 50 other migrants. In Harar, we were taken by bus to Hartisheik and then handed to another broker. We were kept for five days in the broker's house, and we had to pay another 500 birr ($60). He waited until there were a lot of us in the house - too many, over 100. I was travelling with women friends, and we all kept together to be safe. When the group was big enough, the broker organised another truck to take us across the border to Burahao [in the self-declared separate state of Somaliland]. There, things went wrong: We were abandoned by the truck in a forested area, and I had to walk for 17 days. I was robbed of all my money and possessions just outside Burahao by a gang of gunmen.

I have been in Bosasso for six months now. I survive by selling tea and working in a small restaurant for 7,000 to10,000 Somali shillings a day (50 to 70 US cents). I haven't tried to get the boats to Yemen because I am afraid, and I can't afford it. But my friends have gone. I want to go back home, but I am afraid to return because I borrowed a lot of money to pay the brokers. I am in debt. I want to see my daughter so much. She is four years old and I left her with my parents. My parents have no idea I came here, and they don't know if I am alive or dead.

Hussein, 32, merchant, from Ethiopia

I have been in Bosasso for two months. I am Oromo, a merchant. I left my wife and son in my home area, but my place of work was Addis Ababa. I used to be prominent in the union. When there were elections in the country election, I was working with the opposition. I was an active member of the opposition. Also, I was the chairman of my community - we call it 'kebele' - and I became a target. It became a problem to stay. Also, I was working and travelling with others who were disliked by the government. Some of my friends and fellow workers were arrested and imprisoned and I became fearful, afraid to stay. I left. I don't know what happened to my friends and colleagues who were put in prison.

Ali, 27, student, Addis Ababa I came to Bosasso in November 2005. I was in my third year at university, but education was badly affected in Ethiopia from September 2005. One day there were disturbances at night in Addis Ababa, and there was fighting between people and soldiers. We held a meeting then. The students were divided between opposition and government supporters. Someone informed on us. Federal police came by bus into the campus and seized about half the students and accused them of being opposition supporters. There was fighting between the students and the federal police, and the students were stoning the police. The police used their guns. They tear-gassed the students and they shot them, right there. They killed 18 on campus - some were my friends. Then they took the bodies away. After the killings, they took a number of students and imprisoned them, accusing them of being opposition supporters. Everyone fled the university. Many went to Gondar and into Sudan. But I don't know that way - I don't know my way to Sudan. There were three of us who randomly decided that same night that we should flee this way, over the Somali border. We took a truck from Harar and went to Hartishiek, where we waited one week in the house of a middleman. Then we came here. I have talked to my father on the phone, who he told me, "Get out of Ethiopia. Don't stay - you'll be imprisoned or killed." I have no plan. I want to continue my education, but I fear going back to Ethiopia.

14/06/2006 - TESTOMONIES FROM SOMALIA

NAIROBI, 14 June (IRIN) - With life in Somalia offering so little comfort and hope, some migrants risk crossing the Gulf of Aden to Yemen, not just once, but time and time again. More than 5,000 Somalis registered as refugees in Yemen in the first four months of 2006, and the United Nations refugee agency (UNHCR) believes many more travelled on, making their way to Saudi Arabia.

Jilibley Mohamed, 30, from southern Somalia I have been deported nine times from Saudi Arabia and Yemen. We get put on planes or boats and taken to Mogadishu. The last time I got deported was in September [2005], just before Ramadan. I was working in Saudi Arabia for a water company.

I have done so many different jobs - I look after sheep and goats, work in the house or garden, wash cars. We do anything and can earn about US$100 month. Life is too difficult in Mogadishu. I went to Mogadishu because I thought I could find work there or do business, but you just survive. There are no jobs, and there is insecurity. I have two children - a boy and a girl - but I have divorced my wife. She is also looking for work. My parents look after the two children in Jowhar, where I was born. We have been waiting here [on the beach] for two nights now, but we will go tonight. The owner says he can put 90 of us in the boat, and we have to squeeze together and sit still. We must sit still. We are allowed to carry three litres of water to drink, and we can take some dates to eat. It takes 36 hours to get to Yemen on these small boats. I have done it before. You just take your luck. What will happen will happen.

Ali Mohamed, 16, from Mogadishu

I'm going to Yemen. I can go to the camps or I can look for work. Anything I do is better than Somalia. I come from Mogadishu, where there is no work, no education, no money, no health - it is not a life for me. We have no government in Somalia. I have never lived with government, so I don't know what it is like. I think it could make things better for the youth, like me, so we can have a future in our own country. I talked to people in Mogadishu who worked in Saudi Arabia and Yemen, and they told me you can earn US$1 or $2, even up to $5 a day. I can work as a labourer, or in construction, or work in the houses and gardens if there is a position. Or I can get work in the ports. My family knows I have come here, and they helped me get the money. They encouraged me to make the journey because it is good to work and get money from abroad. We can send money back to them. The brokers tell you it is easy to get to Bosasso and across the sea. Many, many people have done it. I have already paid the 500,000 Somali shillings [US$36] for the boat to the smugglers here. I paid money before to another and waited for two months. But we know this one is good - the boat is there. I know it is dangerous. Yes, people die sometimes. We take our luck. It is in God's hands.

Abdulahai Ali Yusuf, 27, from Mogadishu I work as a painter in Mogadishu, but life is very difficult. I come from a minority clan. People don't treat you well. I live with my family, but it is very difficult to earn money and survive. If you get sick you cannot afford the private hospitals, so you suffer and pray. We can't buy drugs. There are some days you live in fear. Anything can happen on the street - there is no control. Everyone knows about Bosasso and the boats. We collected money together so I could look for work. I travelled for eight days in a truck through Galkayo to get to Bosasso. You pay the 'hambaar' [smuggler] in Mogadishu. It is well known, and the trucks are there.

I have done this before. It took three days and two nights on a small boat, and there were no problems. I got from Yemen to Saudi Arabia and got work there. I took any job. But they have this thing called government, and after a few months I got arrested and deported back to Mogadishu. I was put on a plane. Yesterday, the smugglers brought us here and told us to wait, but I don't see any boats here. I paid US$50 for the boat. We don't know why it is only the five of us and no one else is waiting. The smugglers will be bringing more people in a truck, I think, but maybe we will give up and go back to Bosasso.

14/06/2006 - TRAGIC CARGO PART TWO.

NAIROBI, 14 June (IRIN) - Tragic Cargo, Part Two: This is the second part of a two-part Special Report by IRIN on the Somali and Ethiopian migrants who undertake a treacherous journey in small fishing boats from the tip of the Horn of Africa to the Arabian peninsula

NAIROBI, 9 June (IRIN) - Raho Rasoni's home is made of sticks, cardboard and scraps of faded material. It is a poor shelter against the seasonal sandstorms and gales that rip through Shabelle camp on the outskirts of Bosasso, a busy commercial port in northeastern Somalia.

Raho, 30, lives in the camp with her seven children. "Most of my life I have been displaced, and I expect it to remain that way," she says. Her parents fled conflict in their native Hiiran region in central Somalia to Ethiopia, where Raho was born. The family returned to Hiiran when Raho was about seven years old and settled, but when civil war erupted in 1991, they fled to Mogadishu, the Somali capital, until fighting there, too, forced them out.

Like thousands of other Somalis, Raho came to Bosasso hoping to find work at the port or leave Somalia. Instead, she has been here doing menial labour for more than two years. She sweeps and cleans in a restaurant, earning about 30,000 Somali shillings (US$2) a day.

Stranded in Bosasso

About 34,000 displaced people live in shelters on the periphery of Bosasso. According to a May 2005 survey by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and a local organisation, the Somali Reunification Women's Union (SRWU), about 30 percent of the displaced are from Mogadishu; the rest are mainly from southern Somalia.

With relative stability, there has been a commercial boom in the port over the last few years, attracting an increased number of would-be migrants and displaced people. Somali migrants who cannot cross the Gulf of Aden to Yemen move into the camps or settle with relatives and friends in the heart of the town. More recently, thousands of Ethiopians have arrived, too.

In November 2005, a UN team did an assessment of the stranded migrants after some Ethiopians died on the streets of Bosasso. As a result, the UN World Food Programme, the Danish Refugee Council and SRWU set up five feeding sites for 2,500 Ethiopians. According to SRWU's Abdulahai Haji, food is supplied "as a lifesaving measure", and the number of recipients is sometimes as high as 4,000.

In contrast, Somali migrants live in camps for the internally displaced, but find their search for a better life has hit a dead end. Landlords charge rent even for tiny, rudimentary shelters and force many people to share a small amount of space.

Raho pays 40,000 Somali shillings (about $3) a month to her landlord, who also charges for the use of latrines. Many women choose to pay to use latrines at night because of the threat of rape and harassment. The more remote the camp, the more vulnerable its population is to theft, gangs, lootings and rape.

When she can, Raho uses her earnings to send her children to school. However, she can rarely afford to do so. According to the survey, most children in the camps have had no education. About 70 percent have attended a 'madrassa', or Islamic school, at some point, but most still cannot read or write. Half the displaced eat only one meal a day, and almost all families resort to traditional treatments when they become sick.

Raho believes she will never go home. She has seven children between the ages of 2 to 14 years, and sets her sights only on where she can earn money. "I can give my children a home here," she says, "for now."

Society's burden

Bosasso is located in the semiautonomous region of Puntland, at the northeastern tip of the Horn of Africa. Puntland has been quite stable politically, but local humanitarian workers have warned that it is economically vulnerable, due to the effects of war and recurrent droughts. Before the most recent influx of migrants from southern Somalia and Ethiopia, Bosasso was already home to ranks of displaced pastoralists and fishermen - who had either lost herds of livestock to drought or their fishing livelihoods to the 2004 tsunami.

The local Somali population is mainly dependent on livestock, which has been decimated by a number of factors, including environmental desertification. Charcoal exports have become a major trade, exacting a serious environmental toll. Livestock exports, once critical to the regional economy, have been dramatically cut since 1991, when Saudi Arabia banned the import of Somali livestock because of inadequate inspection in Somalia to detect Rift Valley fever.

In the 15 years of civil strife in Somalia, migration has typified life in a country that considers itself abandoned by the international community. The concentration of displaced people in Bosasso is testimony to the hopelessness felt throughout southern Somalia, where communities live without either governmental or humanitarian assistance.

Aid agencies estimate there are more than 350,000 internally displaced people in Somalia. Since the collapse of central government in 1991, many have fled southern Somalia, where warlords have fought over and even taken control of the most fertile land between two key rivers, the Juba and Shabelle. Disputes also centre on areas near key southern ports, such as Mogadishu, Merka and Kismayo. The 15-year Somali conflict has been particularly disastrous for minority clans from fertile regions, who now account for most of the permanently displaced population in the Bosasso camps.

05/05/2006 - WATERY DIARRHOEA CASES ON THE RISE

ETHIOPIA: Watery diarrhoea cases on the rise Watery diarrhoea has claimed the lives of 10 people and infected more than 1,400 others in the Gambella regional state in western Ethiopia since 15 April, said Turuwork Tafesse, director of disease surveillance for the country?s health ministry.

"We suspect cholera, but we haven't confirmed it yet," Turuwork said, adding that samples had been sent last Thursday for analysis. "The results are expected by the end of the week, or beginning of next week."

05/05/2006 - SOMALIA. APPEAL LAUNCHED TO STOP SPREAD OF POLIO.

Health officials have warned that ongoing vaccination campaigns in Somalia, which has seen 202 children infected with polio since July 2005, must be sustained to prevent the disease spreading to neighbouring countries.

"It must be kept in mind that despite all these other emergencies, we still have a funding gap in the polio campaign," said Marjatta Tolvanen-Ojutangas, the head of the health and nutrition unit at the Somalia office of the United Nations Children's Fund

05/05/2006 - NEW STRAW TO KILL DISEASE AS YOU DRINK.

BBC NEWS 04 MAY 2006

The LifeStraw is used in some places direct from the river A new straw that purifies water as it is drunk is hoped to be part of a solution to water-borne disease killing thousands in developing countries. Water from most sources can be drunk if done so through the LifeStraw say the makers of the product.

Created by Danish innovator Torben Vestergaard Frandsen the straw is made of plastic and resembles a flute. Inside are filters and a chamber impregnated with iodine. These remove the bacteria from the water as it is drunk.

"You basically just suck the water through it," said Alan Mortensen, business director of the Public Health Water-Bourne Disease Control - which produces the LifeStraw - told BBC World Service's Culture Shock programme.

"You just need to suck a few times to get the water through all the filters."

'Bacteria-free drink'

The company that makes the LifeStraw, Vestergaard Frandsen, emphasise that it hopes the invention can help to meet the UN's Millennium Development Goals on providing access to clean drinking water.

The LifeStraw isn't going to prevent the long journey, even if it does improve the water they drink

Paul Hetherington, WaterAid In the developing world, one person in six does not have access to drinking water, and 6,000 people a day die from water-borne diseases.

The LifeStraw, however, is designed to filter these out - it includes a disinfectant filter which kills bacteria, and active carbon which removes parasites and gives the water a better taste.

Mr Mortensen said that using the straw, it would be possible even to drink water from the notoriously polluted Thames river in London.

"You'd definitely have a bacteria-free drink," he said.

"You might still taste some of the algae, but you could do it, no problem."

He added that as the straw is aimed at the developing world, it is being made it in China, where production costs are lower.

It is priced at around $3.50 (£1.85) a straw. Each one will last for around 700 litres, around six months to a year.

Long journey

However, a spokesman for UK charity WaterAid, which works to supply clean water and sanitation in 17 of the world's poorest countries, condemned the device as overly expensive, and said it was not a real solution.

The organisation's Paul Hetherington said that while he thought the LifeStraw is an 'amazing-sounding idea,' he did not ultimately think it would help.

E.coli is amongst the diseases the LifeStraw filters out "$3.50 sounds like very little to you and me - but most people in those countries earn less than one dollar a day, with which they have to feed their families," he said.

He added that he felt the problem is that many people live very far away from their water, often walking a total of 20km or more carrying a weight of 25 kilos.

"That's what takes it out of them - the long journey," he explained.

"The LifeStraw isn't going to prevent that long journey, even if it does improve the water they drink.

"They're not going to have the education, because they're not going to have the time. It's girls in particular who suffer, because it's women and girls who have to collect the water.

"It only costs a charity like WaterAid £15 per person to provide them with water, sanitation and hygiene education, which, provided there is decent water resource management in the country, will last them a lifetime.

"At that rate, $3.50 is expensive."

02/05/2006 - Horn of Africa Invest in development to reduce drought vulnerability - UN envoy

ADDIS ABABA, 2 May (IRIN) - In a pledge of continued cooperation between his country and Africa, Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi called for reforms to the United Nations Security Council to make it more representative of member states.

"We must realise UN Security Council reform without delay so that the African voice is heard more in the Security Council," Koizumi said during his visit to African Union (AU) headquarters in the Ethiopian capital, Addis Ababa, on Monday. Tokyo has called for six new permanent seats without veto power on the Council - one for Japan, Brazil, Germany and India and two for Africa - as well as four nonpermanent seats. In 2005, Japan submitted a joint proposal with Brazil, Germany and India to enlarge the Council. It failed, however, because the AU demanded Africa be granted veto power. During this visit, Koizumi tried once again to drum up support for the proposed changes.

"Japan wants to enhance its cooperation with African countries in meeting new challenges faced by the entire international community, such as global environmental issues and energy security," Koizumi said. He pledged that his country would continue to fund efforts by Africans to improve their own lives. "Japan wishes to provide cooperation to Africa so that African countries can stand on their own," he said.

The chairman of the AU commission, Alpha Oumar Konare, thanked Japan for its continued assistance to Africa. "We don't forget the assistance you give to the African Union [...] through our different programmes of peace consolidation, fighting against poverty and lasting development," he said.

During Koizumi's visit to Ethiopia, Japan announced it would provide an additional US$8.7 million to support the AU peacekeeping mission in the troubled western Sudanese region of Darfur, and another $10 million in humanitarian relief to the area.[ENDS]

28/04/2006 - ETHIOPIA launches anti-malaria plan

Ethiopia has launched a five-year malaria treatment and prevention plan at cost of US $447 million in an effort to lessen the burden of the disease, one of the leading causes of illness and death in the Horn of Africa country, the health ministry has said.

The plan, which the government distributed to its partners on Tuesday, is intended to provide early diagnosis and treatment services and implement mosquito control measures, including the provision of insecticide treated nets and indoor residual spraying.

28/04/2006 - SOMALIA : NEW MALARIA THERAPY INTRODUCED

A new malaria treatment, artemisinin-based combination therapy (ACT), is being introduced in Somalia to combat the disease, one of the leading causes of death among children and women in the Horn of Africa country, the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) said on Tuesday.

28/04/2006 - SOMALIA : SEVEN KILLED.

At least seven people were killed and scores wounded as rival armed groups fought on Sunday in the Somali capital, Mogadishu, displacing dozens of families.

The violence erupted in Hamarweyne district in south Mogadishu when local residents opposed the setting up of a checkpoint by armed militias reportedly loyal to Mogadishu faction leader Abdi Nure Siyad, also known as "Abdi Wal".

28/04/2006 - ERITREA: UN envoy urges stronger links between Govt, agencies.

The United Nations special humanitarian envoy for the Horn of Africa, Kjell Magne Bondevik, has called for the strengthening of cooperation between the Eritrean government and humanitarian organisations in a bid to improve food security in the Horn of Africa country, one of several in the region affected by drought.

"There is a need for more effective dialogue and enhanced cooperation on humanitarian and long-term food security issues between the government and [the] international community, including donors, UN agencies and NGO partners," said Bondevik, who met Eritrean President Isayas Afewerki at the start of a tour of the Horn of Africa that will also take him to Djibouti, Ethiopia, Kenya and Somalia.

20/04/2006 - ANTI-POLIO CAMPAIGN

ETHIOPIA: Anti-polio campaign targets five million children

Following the recent confirmation of polio cases in Ethiopia, local health authorities in collaboration with the United Nations and other agencies will embark on a second round of a four-day vaccination campaign to stem the spread of the polio virus in identified high-risk regions in the north and east of the country, officials said.

The campaign, which begins on Friday, aims to reach five million children under the age of five in 15 zones of Tigray, Amhara, Oromia, and Harari regions, as well as Dire Dawa City Administration, according to the Ethiopian government and the UN Children's Fund (UNICEF). The first round of the vaccination campaign was conducted in February.

13/04/2006 - vaccin against measles

TUKA, 13 Apr 2006 (IRIN) - Diramu Arero had waited since early morning along with dozens of other mothers and their babies in front of Tuka's small health centre in drought-stricken southern Ethiopia to get her child vaccinated against measles.

Having lost her youngest child to the disease during the last major drought five years ago, Diramu was determined this time to get her little one, Dinku, jabbed. She had left her four other children at home and walked two hours to reach the health centre in Tuka, some 29 km north of Moyale, a town that straddles the Ethiopian border with Kenya.

"My son is two years old, and with all my cows having died during the past two months, I have no more milk to give him. Now I am afraid he might get weak and get diseases," said the 44-year-old mother, who now collects firewood from the bushes and sells it to survive.

Like another 1.5 million children under the age of five in southern and southeastern Ethiopia, Dinku was vaccinated against measles in an emergency campaign aimed at averting mass deaths among young ones weakened by hunger.

"This emergency campaign is a lesson we learned from the previous droughts. In 2000, we lost hundreds of children in a few weeks because of measles. We want to avoid this happening again," said Bruno Maes, a senior programme officer for the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF), which organised the campaign. "Drought and measles is a death cocktail. With diarrhoea, it is the main killer during a drought."

During the last major drought in 2000, one-fifth of all deaths of children under the age of five were measles-related. During the last six months, at least 34 have already died in eastern Ethiopia. The first cases appeared in the southern Bale Region and in neighbouring Moyale District, where the town of Tuka is located. "Two young children died a few days ago. We fear it might be measles. So we have to move fast to avoid a spread of the disease like last time," explained Mohamed Lur Abdulahi, the health officer of Moyale district. He said the vaccination coverage in the area was only 9 percent.

Dead livestock litter the road outside Goraye, southern Ethiopia, and health authorities fear the carcasses might contaminate the water in the surrounding ponds.

Dry area

Measles is only one of several problems Ethiopians are currently facing, after the near total failure of two successive rainy seasons over the last year. The area around Tuka, a dry, dusty village in the southernmost part of Ethiopia's Oromiya Region, some 750 km from the capital, Addis Ababa, and 30 km from the Kenyan border, is at the heart of a devastating drought that has left an estimated 1.7 million Ethiopians struggling to survive with difficult access to water. Most traditional water sources, including hand-dug wells or ponds, have already dried up, leaving boreholes as the only source of water in the area. However, one-third of the region's water wells are broken or unusable, according to UNICEF, and at least 637,000 people depend on emergency water deliveries.

"We are starting to see more patients come in with drought-related diseases like diarrhoea and signs of severe malnutrition, which is uncommon here, as the pastoralists usually always have milk to give to their children," said Derese Duguma, one of the trained nurses at the health centre. "But the patients have absolutely nothing to pay. And we are very short of drugs, so any increase will be difficult to cope with."

Approximately one in five children in the whole region is malnourished, according to the last regional survey.

"I have nothing anymore. Three years ago I lost five cows. Now, 20 died," said Diramu, who looks much older than her 44 years. "If at least someone could help me to buy a donkey to carry the firewood I collect every day. But there is no one to help us."

Outside the village, rotting carcasses of cattle line the road. The lack of water and drought-related diseases have killed thousands of livestock in the last two months. Such deaths are the first signs of what could be a disaster. Livestock has lost 60 percent of its value, directly affecting the pastoral communities living in this area, who rely on cattle, sheep, goats and camels for food and income. Food prices have gone up by as much as 50 percent.

Seven hours’ drive north along the road from Tuka is the village of Goraye, some 550 km south of Addis Ababa. Outside the village, the humanitarian agency CARE has hastily put up a slaughterhouse. Cattle that about to die are slaughtered here every day, and the meat is distributed to the community. "Since we have started, we slaughter up to 100 animals a day, when they are too weak to walk," explained Gilma Liben of CARE.

However, the onset of the rains is bringing fear instead of relief.

"With all these carcasses strewn all over the place, the rain might contaminate the wells and the ponds where people used to get water and bring waterborne diseases," said Diide Tadi, the local health official.

"For the last five years, we have had these on-and-off rains. They are unable to solve the crisis. On the contrary, we now fear a malaria outbreak, and the weak cattle will obviously die even quicker, with the sudden drop in temperature," explained Dejene Benti, the local representative of the International Medical Corps.

In Oromiya and Somali regions alone, the UN needs more than US $10 million - not just to avert hunger but to buy more emergency water tankers, repair broken down pumps, drill new boreholes and finance the measles-immunisation campaign. Only $5 million of the required amount is currently available.

Outside the village, a man walks with his small, skinny herd on the baked red earth, looking for pasture. "I can't remember having experienced such a severe drought in the last five years," said 25-year-old Gaarso Lema, who added that he sometimes had to walk between 10 hours and 15 hours to find some pasture. He used to have a herd of 45 cows, but only five are left now. "If the rain doesn't come for at least a month, we are just going to die," he said.

10/04/2006 - Funding shortfalls could worsen humanitarian situation

ADDIS ABABA, 10 April (IRIN) - The Ethiopian government and humanitarian organisations have expressed concern about the slow donor response to the drought crisis in the Horn of Africa nation, where nutrition and water needs are severely underfunded.

"On the non-food items, around 82 percent is still missing," said Wodayehu Belew, fundraising team leader for the Ethiopian government's Department of Prevention and Preparedness Agency (DPPA). "This is worrying - even more so considering it is now four months since we made our appeal to the donors."

In January, the government, the United Nations and other aid agencies appealed for US $166 million in emergency food and non-food assistance to help 2.6 million Ethiopians. However, only $19 million of the $111 million earmarked for health and nutrition and water and sanitation has been received so far.

According to the UN, at least 1.7 million Ethiopians are struggling to survive, with limited access to water in the eastern Somali region and in the southern Borena zone. About one in five children in southeastern Ethiopia is malnourished, and two out of every 10,000 die every day, making the need for therapeutic feeding and water access extremely urgent, according to Paul Hebert, the head of the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) in Ethiopia.

"We have already identified critical malnutrition rates in the Somali region, with 20 percent of malnourished children. If resources are not made available quickly, we will be unable to feed them and we fear that children might start to die," Hebert said. "If we don't receive new funding quickly, it might jeopardise the whole crisis in the region."

Measles and diarrhoea - which infect weakened children who have no access to clean water - are the main killers during a drought. In the last major drought in 2000, one-fifth of all deaths of children under the age of five were measles-related, according to the UN. At least 34 people have died of measles in eastern Ethiopia over the last six months.

The food-relief situation does not look good, according to the DPPA and OCHA. Food pipelines will be full only until the end of May, and no new contributions have been announced. "The available stock of food has already been nearly totally distributed. Unless we get new funding, we don't know," said Wodayehu from the DPPA. "We need more support from the donor community if we want to keep the current crisis under control."

"It is worrying that you never get anything [funding] until kids start dying in huge numbers," said Bjorn Ljunqvist, head of the UN Children's Fund (UNICEF) in Ethiopia. UNICEF lacks nearly 50 percent of the $10 million urgently needed for additional emergency water tankers and the vaccination of some 1.5 million children against measles. "If the rain doesn't come in adequate amounts, there are a lot of signs that the crisis will spill to the north, that the 1.7 million will jump to 2.5 or three million."

"We don't have precise figures yet, but we expect the needs to increase a lot," OCHA's Hebert said.

The UN has provided $1.7 million to the World Health Organization through its newly created Central Emergency Response Fund to be used to provide aid to the Horn of Africa region, of which Ethiopia will receive $350,000 for life-saving programmes. An estimated 11 million people in the Horn of Africa are facing severe food shortages as a result of several failed rainy seasons

07/04/2006 - UNMEE ENVOY LEAVES. NEW FORCE COOMANDER APPOINTED.

ERITREA-ETHIOPIA: The top United Nations envoy to Ethiopia and Eritrea expressed both regret and determination in his farewell remarks on Thursday. "I leave with sadness that the border has not been demarcated, but with pride that I have led this mission for five-and-a-half years, even under difficult circumstances," said Legwaila Joseph Legwaila, the outgoing special representative of the Secretary-General at the UN Mission in Ethiopia and Eritrea (UNMEE).

He called on all parties in the region to redouble their efforts to resolve the border stalemate between the two Horn of Africa nations. The peacekeeping mission, he said, would continue to carry out its mandate of creating conditions conducive to the demarcation of the contested border.

07/04/2006 - FIRST TWO PRIVATE RADIO STATIONS

ETHIOPIA: Gov't licenses first two private radio stations

Residents of Addis Ababa, the Ethiopian capital, heard their first independent radio broadcast on Tuesday morning, after authorities issued licences to the East African nation's first two privately owned radio stations.

The proprietor of Zami Public Connections, Mimi Sebhatu, had been waiting for her broadcast licence for four years. The first programme she aired was a debate among representatives from the opposition. Sebhatu said that broadened access to information through radio would expedite Ethiopia's

07/04/2006 - SOMALIA - DISPLACED FAMILIES.

SOMALIA: Displaced families in Mogadishu in dire conditions - rights group

The main human rights group in Somalia, the Mogadishu-based Isma'il Jim'ale Human Rights Centre (IJHRC), has called on Somalis and the international community to come to the aid of hundreds of families displaced by recent fighting in the capital city.

"Hundreds of families are either sheltering with relatives or are living in the open," said Marian Hussein Awreye, the IJHRC director. From 22 to 26 March, Mogadishu was the scene of heavy fighting between rival militias, during which more than 100 people were killed and 300 wounded.

06/04/2006 - DEAD BIRDS TEST NEGATIVE FOR H5N1 VIRUS

ETHIOPIA: ADDIS ABABA, 6 April (IRIN) - Final laboratory tests on birds suspected of having died of the H5N1 avian flu virus in Ethiopia in March are negative, according to health officials.

"We were informed on Tuesday by the Italian-based laboratory that the avian flu has not been detected in the samples. We have been waiting eagerly for over a month to know the final results of the testing," said Dr Sileshi Zewde, head of animal care at the Ethiopian Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development, on Wednesday.

Samples had been sent to the Italian laboratory, Pavola, in March following the death of more than 6,000 chickens at a poultry farm some 300 km south of the Ethiopian capital, Addis Ababa. The laboratory found that the chickens had died of another viral disease, Gumboro. Sileshi said the virus had entered Ethiopia three years earlier from a neighbouring country he declined to name. "What we know about this disease - Gumboro - is that it is a new disease affecting chickens, but cannot be transmitted to a human beings," he said. "We will continue to undertake prevention measures to control the spread of the disease among poultry farms."

Tiruwork Tafesse, a nurse in charge of integrated disease surveillance and prevention at the health ministry, said preventive measures were underway. No general outbreak of the new disease had been reported in the country so far. "We cannot predict tomorrow, but we should tell the public to take measures during slaughters at house levels. They should not eat uncooked chicken and eggs," she said.

There are approximately 30 million chickens in Ethiopia. Since the outbreak of Gumboro, chicken sales have been very low, and the price of the birds has dropped by more than 20 percent.

In December 2005, 500 dead pigeons in Ethiopia's eastern Somali region were confirmed to have died from Newcastle disease, one of the most infectious poultry diseases in the world.

07/02/2006 - IT IS NOT THE RAINS IN ETHIOPIA YOU NEED TO WORRY ABOUT,BUT WHETHER IT RAINS IN AMERICA OR CANADA.

ETHIOPIA: Struggling to end food aid dependency

ADDIS ABABA, 7 February (IRIN) - There is a joke told in Ethiopia that encapsulates the country's struggle with food aid dependency. In it, two subsistence farmers are talking about the year's poor rains and the impact on their harvests.

The older, his face and hands worn from a lifetime of hard work, turns to his younger friend and offers some advice: "It is not the rains in Ethiopia you need to worry about, but whether it rains in America or Canada."

For the last three decades, millions of Ethiopians have depended on food aid from the donors. Each year, regardless of harvests or rains, at least five million Ethiopians need food aid for six months to survive.

Millions of tonnes of wheat are shipped and trucked into the country. In the eyes of the world, Ethiopia seems to be in constant crisis, and food aid has become the norm.

Two years ago, the government decided to take steps to reduce its dependency on food aid.

"We could not go on as normal," said Mulugeta Debalkew, agriculture ministry spokesman. "Things had to change."

In 2005, the Ethiopian government launched a relief-to-development strategy called "safety nets", which it hoped would end food aid dependency for millions within three years.

Agricultural development is at the heart of the plan, which is, effectively, a food-for-work scheme where local people build wells or small irrigation systems and work on projects to help prevent soil erosion in exchange for food.

"On one hand, people get food to eat. On the other, it contributes to growth because people are doing things to help support the communities," said Mulugeta.

Relief creates dependency while development breaks it, he said. The safety nets programme combines relief with development.

"The safety nets programme offers the chance to move from food aid dependency to a situation where you save lives while figuring out a solution," said Ishac Diwan, head of the World Bank in Ethiopia, which is one of the leading proponents of safety nets initiatives.

Breaking the cycle of dependency

In most parts of the world, food needs are transitory: An earthquake hits a region, and people need food to survive until they are back on their feet.

That solution has been used repeatedly in Ethiopia, where rains regularly fail. Hungry people got food handouts.

That approach failed, according to Mulugeta, because it created dependency and did not address the real problems of repeated drought, bad governance, and conflict in the country.

"If the need is transitory, it should be stopped at a particular time. But the food aid to Ethiopia has been going on for the last three decades," he said.

"The problem in Ethiopia is a chronic one, and you cannot solve this with free handouts. The food aid just kept them alive and next year they needed it again," he added.

Mulugeta said that since the current government led by Prime Minister Meles Zenawi came to power in 1991, the number of hungry people in Ethiopia had remained the same.

The target of ending chronic hunger for five million people in three years is optimistic, and the relief-to-development scheme has not been without its share of problems, such as poor implementation leading to delays in food reaching its intended beneficiaries.

"This is a very important transformation," said Diwan. "The first year of the programme was not bad. There were problems and lessons have been learned. One of the things learned is the need was greater than five million people."

Ethiopia's development partners maintain that in isolation, the flagship scheme will not bring about real change or end dependency.

Aid workers believe that to make a real difference, subsistence farmers - who account for 85 percent of the 77 million people living in rural areas - must be offered alternatives to eking out a pitiful existence on endlessly dwindling plots of land. Most of them live below the international poverty line of US $1 a day.

"The problem we face here is that more and more people are living on the edge," said Paul Hebert, who heads the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs in Ethiopia. "It doesn't take very much to push them over that edge.

"The fear is that if we do have another large drought in this country and we haven't made significant progress in addressing the chronic food security that could set things back significantly. Because of the precariousness of many people, you can easily slip into a very serious famine situation."

An estimated 11 million people in East Africa and the Horn of Africa are currently facing critical food shortages owing to a prolonged drought - some 1.75 million people in southern Ethiopia's Somali and Oromiya regions are facing severe food shortages. Experts predict that the coming rains will also be insufficient.

Hebert warned against focusing only on the relief-to-development side at the expense of reduced capacity to address acute life threatening humanitarian needs.

"Mitigation is important, and these development activities can partially do that. But I think the country has to maintain the response capacity to the inevitable next large drought," he said.

Basic needs like nutrition, health assistance and dealing with major diseases also need to be given a higher priority, he added.

Ethiopia's booming population is also exacerbating current development drives.

"If the current population growth in Ethiopia continues, according to recent figures, by 2050 there will be more than 170 million people," Hebert added.

"The Ministry of Finance and Economic Development indicated themselves that population growth will undermine development and growth efforts of the country if it is not addressed. These problems of course have to be addressed, otherwise we are not going to achieve the Millennium Development Goals," he noted.

Hebert said as many as 10 million people may need assistance annually, and current aid of around $1.9 billion would need to be tripled if Ethiopia were to make development gains.

He also stressed the importance of growth outside the farming sector.

"People must be given other options rather than just agriculture," Hebert added. "There is going to have to be a tremendous increase in the private sector to be able to create alternative job opportunities. It cannot be created just through government programmes.

"That could also have a large impact on food security because people can buy their food," he said.

The agriculture ministry is optimistic it can overcome these hurdles and break the three-decade dependency stranglehold and sees the safety nets initiative as part of the solution, which also includes boosting the private sector.

Mulugeta said the ministry was trying to create a fruit and vegetable corridor along the country's Rift Valley. It is also encouraging farmers to switch from growing crops like sorghum, which sells at local markets, to crops like sesame, for export on the world market.

"We have to break this continual dependency if we are to develop. The relief-to-development programme will help do that," he said. "I think we will achieve our target of ending food aid dependency for five million people in the next three years." [ENDS]

20/01/2006 - ETHIOPIA. SOUTHEASTERN REGION RAVAGED BY DROUGHT

DENAN, 20 January (IRIN) - For a two-year-old child, Bishir Arab should be twice his weight, but severe malnutrition has seen his body weight plummet to just six kilogrammes.

Too exhausted to show any emotion, Bishir was one of many children hospitalised in Gode, some 75 km southwest of Denan, southeastern Ethiopia. From a handful of children initially brought in for treatment, the numbers have turned into a steady flow, overwhelming the two doctors at the hospital.

"We are starting to see more patients come in with drought-related illnesses and signs of severe malnutrition," said Zelalem Gizachew, one of the two doctors. "But we are very short of drugs and with only two doctors, any increase will be difficult to cope with."

He added that the use of dirty water meant diseases like measles and diarrhoea were also spreading in the area. These had exacerbated wasting among undernourished children.

"We have not received any help even though we have no food," said Bishir's mother Idil Arab, who trekked the 75 km to Gode Hospital from Denan. "We have been forgotten."

The area around Denan, a dry, dusty village in the extreme southeast some 1,400 km from the capital, Addis Ababa, is where the messengers of widespread hunger have made their first call.

The bones and rotting carcasses of cattle are its signposts, foretelling disaster.

"If there is no intervention, then we could be talking about the same disaster we had in 2000," said Abdullahi Ali Haji, the government's health officer for the area.

As many as 98,000 people died during a drought in Ethiopia in 2000, according to estimates by the Journal of the American Medical Association.

Around Denan, the effects of that drought and its impact on communities are still visible. Some 10,000 people continue to live in a makeshift camp on the outskirts of the village, having moved there six years ago in search of food.

"The drought is already here. This is our warning that without immediate help...there will be deaths. We are still assessing the situation rather than making emergency interventions," Haji added. "We have to move quickly."

Although some aid is beginning to arrive in this remote region, local residents said it was too little, too late.

Aid workers said although urgent appeals for food, water and medicine had been made, often it took weeks, if not months, before the aid arrived.

Yet the widespread food shortage in Denan had announced itself before arriving in the area.

While land degradation, overcrowding and global warming have been blamed for the successive droughts that afflict Ethiopia's desolate Ogaden region, poor rains over the last nine years have left many families living on a knife edge.

This year the rains failed completely, leaving the area, whose landscape is ribbed and rutted like a crocodile's back, with dried riverbeds and sun-parched valleys.

Food prices have gone up by as much as 50 percent, while the value of livestock has plummeted, affecting mostly nomads, who rely on cattle, sheep, goats and camels for food and income.

With livestock deaths on the increase, many people have started migrating to nearby towns in search of aid. Some of those who have recently been displaced have walked 200 km into the Ogaden from across the borders of neighbouring Kenya and Somalia, where the situation is said to be worse.

In this area alone, about 1.75 million people - mainly nomads - need help, say aid workers.

The earth is baked hard, and little grows from it. Temperatures regularly rise above 38 degrees Celsius. Eddying pillars of dust whirl over the camel trains of nomads searching for food.

In good times it is one of the busiest caravan routes in Africa, as daily processions of camels packed with wares travel from Somalia to Ethiopia along the edge of the Rift Valley, their traders making tidy profits.

Unfortunately, an earlier crackdown by the authorities on smugglers, coupled with Saudi Arabia's continued ban on meat imports from the region out of fear of Rift Valley Fever, had already left many families without reliable incomes.

"Without urgent help the drought could spiral," said Bjorn Ljungqvist, the country director for the UN Children's Fund (UNICEF) in Ethiopia. "Urgent emergency intervention in the form of food, water, and vital medicines for women and children is needed to avert an impending disaster."

For this area alone, the UN needs US $6 million to help - and not just to avert hunger. In 2000, a fifth of all deaths of children under the age of five were measles-related. At the moment, almost half of the region's water wells are broken or unusable, according to UNICEF, and at least 637,000 people depend on emergency water supplies.

"The alarm has been raised in time but if we don't get the support we need, the results could be catastrophic. As ever, women and children will bear the brunt of this disaster," Ljungqvist said.

Ogaden, with a population of four million, has yet more problems.

Administratively, it is the weakest of Ethiopia's federal regions, with its huge area and sparse population. A long-running conflict between the government and a rebel secessionist group, the Ogaden National Liberation Front, has also severely hampered any real development in the region. In recent months the insecurity has taken a menacing turn, with trucks of food aid being attacked and in some cases burnt.

Violent clan disputes - a spill over from the feuding factions in neighbouring Somalia - have also deterred the work of aid workers in the region.

Hospitals are virtually non-existent and schools are too far for children to attend. Gode Hospital, for example, is the only such facility for a population of one million people.

"If the rains do not come things will get worse and we still do not know how we are going to cope until then," Ayan Abdi, a mother of two-month-old twins, said. "This is a bad time."

So weakened by hunger that she is now unable to earn the $7 a month that she used to get from collecting firewood, Ayan has seen her breast milk dwindle to barely enough for one child - her daughter.

While her son, Niemo, has tightly stretched skin over his tiny skeletal frame, his twin sister, Asma, still retains some of the rounded features she was born with.

In a few days, perhaps a week at the most, Niemo could be dead, Ayan said, adding that it would not be the first time she had lost a child to hunger - three of her children died in the devastating drought of 2000.

The same region is once again among the worst affected by a new and potentially disastrous drought in the Horn.

Across the Horn of Africa, according to the UN Food and Agriculture Organization, some 11 million people are on the brink of starvation due to the extensive drought that has affected Djibouti, Ethiopia, Kenya and Somalia.

The rains are due in three months, but some forecasters are predicting they will be late - adding to Bishir and Niemo's woes

19/01/2006 - UK IMPOSES ETHIOPIAN AID SACTION

Clashes between police and protesters followed last year's polls The UK has ended unconditional aid to the Ethiopian government over concerns about its commitment to human rights. All aid will now be earmarked for specific projects, UK Development Minister Hilary Benn announced on a visit to Ethiopia.

Ethiopia Prime Minister Meles Zenawi was once seen as a key British ally.

The United Nations estimates 1.75m Ethiopians in the south are in desperate need of food aid and has issued an urgent appeal for help.

Mr Benn did not disclose how much money would be withheld, but it is thought to be about £50m ($88m).

The details of the new funding mechanisms have not been released.

He said there had been a "breach of trust" since more than 80 people were killed in opposition protests following disputed elections.

Mass arrests

Mr Benn maintained that Britain was still "fully committed to supporting the people of Ethiopia in their fight against poverty".

But he said he was seriously concerned about "the detention of and very serious charges faced by the opposition, the media and members of civil society".

Many of the country's opposition leaders are now in jail Some 100 opposition leaders, journalists and aid workers remain in prison on charges ranging from treason to "genocide" in connection with the unrest.

"Concerns have been raised with me about the continuing clashes between students and security forces in schools and colleges across the country," he told reporters in Addis Ababa.

Last May's polls were the most closely contested in Ethiopian history, and resulted in the opposition winning more than 100 seats in parliament.

But the opposition believed they had been cheated of victory, and took to the streets. The clashes left many dead, and Mr Meles accused the opposition of attempting to overthrow his government.

Western governments tried to bring the parties together, but with limited success.

In November, the British ambassador to Ethiopia, Bob Dewar, put out a strong statement on behalf of the European Union and the United States.

It called for respect for human rights, an end to mass arrests, the lifting of restrictions on the opposition, and the freeing of political detainees.

Until last year's elections, Mr Meles had been praised for opening up political debate and for liberalising the economy.

He was even invited to be a member of the British prime minister's Commission for Africa.

The government has blamed its opponents for the unrest and violence.

03/01/2006 - SOMALI GOVERNMENT SET TO RELOCATE.

Somali government set to relocate The speaker and president are continuing in talks in Yemen Somalia's interim government is close to agreeing to relocate to the capital, at talks with rivals in Yemen. The president and speaker, who have been in dispute over the issue, initialled an agreement which could be finalised in Yemen on Wednesday.

Yemeni officials say that if the deal is signed then ministers and government institutions would move to Mogadishu before President Abdullahi Yusuf.

He will stay in his Jowhar stronghold until his personal safety is ensured.

There is been no reported comments so far from the Somali representatives.

Facts and figures about life in Somalia

At-a-glance

President Yusuf was elected by the transitional parliament in 2004 but without a power base in Mogadishu he says it is too dangerous to move there and has been located in Jowhar, some 90km east of the capital.

The prime minister has twice survived assassination attempts when he has visited the capital for talks.

Parliamentary Speaker Sharif Hassan Sheikh Adan is based in Mogadishu along with a large number of MPs and is allied to militia leaders who control the city.

The split has prompted fears of renewed widespread conflict in a country which has been without an effective central government since the overthrow of President Mohamad Siad Barre in 1991.

Correspondents say Somali leaders are under pressure from international donors to assemble the transitional parliament - which has never met in Somalia - as a first step towards establishing a viable central government.

02/01/2006 - ETHIOPIA : Halt in budget support will effect the poor, minister says.

U N I T E D N A T I O N S Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs Integrated Regional Information Network (IRIN) - 1995-2005 ten years serving the humanitarian community

1 - ETHIOPIA: Halt in budget support will affect the poor, minister says ADDIS ABABA, 30 December (IRIN) - Ethiopia's finance minister, Sufyan Ahmed, has said that the poor in his country would suffer if aid donors carried out their plan to withhold US $375 million in budget support because of the government's recent crackdown on opposition supporters.

Sufyan said on Friday the donors' decision to shift that money to programmes in the country would delay implementation of the government's poverty alleviation projects.

"We feel this is an unacceptable decision, but it is their prerogative," he added.

Direct budgetary support, he said, made up around 10 percent of Ethiopia's annual budget. "The impact should be insignificant although it is the poor who will be affected," Sufyan added.

Britain, the European Commission and the World Bank are the main providers of direct budgetary support to Ethiopia. They are angered by what they see as the government's reluctance to respect democratic principles.

On Wednesday 129 opposition leaders, journalists and members of the civil society were again remanded in custody on charges ranging from treason to genocide. Most of the defendants were arrested during disturbances that erupted after political parties alleged that the ruling bloc party had massively rigged in elections held in May.

Sufyan said the donors had "misunderstood" the political situation in Ethiopia and that the government had tried, to no avail, to correct the misconception.

"Either they have misunderstood what is going on in the country or they are under pressure from certain groups - I don't know," he said.

30/12/2005 - DJIBOUTI : Food insecurity worsens as dry spell peersists.

The delayed onset of the October-February rainy season in Djibouti has led to worsening food insecurity in pastoral areas due to lack of pasture and water in the coastal dry period grazing areas, a famine alert agency has reported.

Milk production and livestock sales were far below seasonal average levels, the USAID-funded Famine Early Warning Systems Network (FEWS NET) said in its monthly update for Djibouti, which was released on 18 December.

"There is a strong probability that the food security situation among pastoralists will deteriorate in the coming months, with a resulting increase in the drought-affected population by 30-40 percent (around 66,000 people),"

30/12/2005 - ETHIOPIA - Donors withold budget support to government.

Donors have put on hold US $375 million in budget support to the Ethiopian government because of a crackdown on opposition supporters, development officials said Thursday. They said the money would be diverted to other programmes in the country.

"Until the situation gets better we will look to disburse funds in other ways, but we are not going to halt aid to the country because it is one of the world's poorest," a senior development official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said.

On Wednesday, 129 opposition leaders, journalists and members of the civil society were again remanded in custody on charges ranging from treason to genocide. Most of the defendants were arrested during the disturbances that erupted after political parties alleged that the ruling bloc had massively rigged in elections held in May.

Some donors are exploring the possibility of channelling the funds to local authorities, while others intend to disburse the funds through UN agencies.

30/12/2005 - ETHIOPIA : A million people in southeast face extreme food insecurfity.

At least one million people in southeastern Ethiopia are facing extreme food insecurity following a prolonged drought, a famine early warning agency reported on Thursday, saying the crisis had sparked conflicts over scarce water and pasture.

There had also been reports of some children dying of hunger-related causes, the USAID-funded Famine Early Warning Systems Network (FEWS NET) said. The situation in the area, known as the Somali Region, could get worse in the next three months, it added.

"Urgent responses are required to prevent an alarming escalation of a food insecurity crisis," FEWS NET said in an emergency bulletin.

Government officials have estimated that US $40 million is needed to help save animals and to provide water and healthcare to affected people. FEWS NET said pre-famine conditions had emerged as a result of the poor rains as well as fast depleting pasture and water sources.

The Somali Region of Ethiopia is one of the driest and most inhospitable parts of the Horn of Africa country. Average annual rainfall in parts of the region is 250 millimetres. Most of the inhabitants are nomadic pastoralists.

29/12/2005 - ETHIOPIA THREATENED WITH AID CUTS

Many of the country's opposition leaders are now in jail Western donors are considering withholding millions of dollars of aid to Ethiopia, after a recent crackdown on the opposition and the press. The sum of $375m in direct funding for Ethiopian government programmes is reported to be under review.

More than 80 opposition leaders and journalists were in court in Addis Ababa this week, charged with conspiring to overthrow the government.

Aid donors' frustration with Ethiopia's government has grown in recent months.

May's election was the most closely contested in Ethiopian history, and resulted in the opposition winning more than 100 seats in parliament.

But the opposition believed they had been cheated of victory, and took to the streets. The clashes left many dead - and President Meles Zenawi accusing the opposition of attempting to overthrow his government.

Western governments tried to bring the parties together, but with limited success.

The opposition leaders, reporters and aid workers appeared in court on Wednesday a month after their arrest - complaining that they had not been allowed access to their lawyers.

Snub

In November the British ambassador to Ethiopia, Bob Dewar, put out a strong statement on behalf of the European Union and the United States.

EU/US statement

It called for respect for human rights, an end to mass arrests, the lifting of restrictions on the opposition and for the freeing of political detainees.

But a spokesman for the European Commission told the BBC the Ethiopian government had failed to reply to the statement, and therefore hundreds of millions of dollars of funding were now being reviewed.

The money involved had been earmarked for budget support.

These funds can be used at the discretion of the Ethiopian government, and is not tied to specific projects.

No final decision has been made.

But although the money would be missed by the Ethiopian authorities, it is unlikely that food aid, which regularly feeds around five million of the country's poorest people, will be touched, says the BBC's Martin Plaut.

Sentences

Under Ethiopian law, the possible sentences on some 130 people facing charges linked to election-related violence for the various offences range from three years imprisonment to the death penalty.

"The prison administration has denied us access to our lawyers to discuss the gravity of the charges. I have nothing to say," Hailu Shawel, chairman of the main opposition Coalition for Unity and Democracy (CUD), told the court, Reuters news agency reports.

Another CUD defendant, a lawyer, urged the judge to release them on bail, saying it was their right under Ethiopia's constitution.

"We are all responsible people with no criminal record and are leaders. (We) request the court to grant us bail," Yenenhe Mulatu said.

The opposition is made up of the two broad groupings - the CUD and the United Ethiopian Democratic Forces.

29/12/2005 - SOMALIA : COUGHT IN THE STORM

SPECIAL NEWS FROM : MEDECINS SANS FRONTIERS.

Since 1991, Somalia has been a state with no government. Fourteen years of conflict have left the country with enormous humanitarian needs and a high level of everyday violence. MSF was running health care projects in the capital, Mogadishu, as well as northern Somalia when war broke out, having begun working in the country in 1986.

The ongoing civil war has brought about a virtual collapse of public health structures and services. In most parts of the country, clinics and hospitals have been looted or seriously damaged. There are estimated to be only 4 doctors and 28 nurses and midwives for every 100,000 people in Somalia.

Unsurprisingly, Somalia has some of the worst health indicators in the world. More than one-in-ten children die at birth and of those that survive, a quarter will perish before their fifth birthday. The estimated overall life expectancy for a Somali is only 47 years.

Violence is so widespread that few aid agencies choose to work there and permanent international staff members are extremely rare in most parts of the country. With 35 international and over 560 national staff on the ground, Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) tries to fill some of the huge gaps in areas such as Mogadishu, Galkayo, Xuddur, Dinsoor, Jowhar, and Aden Yabaal. The projects mostly deal with primary health care across the worst affected areas in south and central Somalia, but also include services such as treatment for tuberculosis and visceral leishmaniasis, or kala azar, pediatric care, and even surgery.

Many Somalis live side by side with violence every day and even with the latest attempt at installing a government, their prospects of improvement appear remote. In a series of articles, MSF bears witness to the plight of the Somali people and the humanitarian catastrophe that the country now faces. Somalia Feature Stories Weathering the Storm: Humanitarian Aid Amid Somalia's Chaos Violence Stalks Civilians in Somalia Saving Lives in An Abandoned Land Voice From the Field: "In Somalia there is no freedom because guns point at us permanently"

29/12/2005 - BBC NEWS. ETHIOPIA THREATENED WITH AID CUTS.

Many of the country's opposition leaders are now in jail Western donors are considering withholding millions of dollars of aid to Ethiopia, after a recent crackdown on the opposition and the press. The sum of $375m in direct funding for Ethiopian government programmes is reported to be under review.

More than 80 opposition leaders and journalists were in court in Addis Ababa this week, charged with conspiring to overthrow the government.

Aid donors' frustration with Ethiopia's government has grown in recent months.

In an interview with the BBC, the European Union's representative in Ethiopia, Timothy Clarke, said the EU was delaying some aid payments, although no formal decision to stop these had yet been taken.

Ethiopian Finance Minister Sufyan Ahmad told the BBC he was confident aid would not be reduced - and even if it was, this would have little effect on the overall budget, he said.

May's election was the most closely contested in Ethiopian history, and resulted in the opposition winning more than 100 seats in parliament.

But the opposition believed they had been cheated of victory, and took to the streets. The clashes left many dead - and Prime Minister Meles Zenawi accusing the opposition of attempting to overthrow his government.

Western governments tried to bring the parties together, but with limited success.

The opposition leaders, reporters and aid workers appeared in court on Wednesday a month after their arrest - complaining that they had not been allowed access to their lawyers.

Snub

In November the British ambassador to Ethiopia, Bob Dewar, put out a strong statement on behalf of the European Union and the United States.

EU/US statement

It called for respect for human rights, an end to mass arrests, the lifting of restrictions on the opposition and for the freeing of political detainees.

But a spokesman for the European Commission told the BBC the Ethiopian government had failed to reply to the statement, and therefore hundreds of millions of dollars of funding were now being reviewed.

The money involved had been earmarked for budget support.

These funds can be used at the discretion of the Ethiopian government, and is not tied to specific projects.

No final decision has been made.

But although the money would be missed by the Ethiopian authorities, it is unlikely that food aid, which regularly feeds around five million of the country's poorest people, will be touched, says the BBC's Martin Plaut.

Sentences

Under Ethiopian law, the possible sentences on some 130 people facing charges linked to election-related violence for the various offences range from three years' imprisonment to the death penalty.

"The prison administration has denied us access to our lawyers to discuss the gravity of the charges. I have nothing to say," Hailu Shawel, chairman of the main opposition Coalition for Unity and Democracy (CUD), told the court, Reuters news agency reports.

Another CUD defendant, a lawyer, urged the judge to release them on bail, saying it was their right under Ethiopia's constitution.

"We are all responsible people with no criminal record and are leaders. (We) request the court to grant us bail," Yenenhe Mulatu said.

The opposition is made up of the two broad groupings - the CUD and the United Ethiopian Democratic Forc

25/10/2005 - AFRICA AIDS ORPHANS

Africa Aids orphans 'may top 18m' Sub-Saharan Africa will be the main focus of the campaign UN charity Unicef says 18 million children in sub-Saharan Africa could be orphaned by Aids by the end of 2010. It also says that every minute, a child is infected with HIV and another child dies from an Aids-related illness.

The charity says children are being overlooked in the global fight against HIV and Aids.

Unicef says only 5% of HIV-positive children get medical help, and fewer than 10% of the 15 million already orphaned by Aids get financial support.

Unicef's executive director Ann Veneman said children were the "invisible face" of a very visible disease and were missing out on the help that adults received.

"It is critical that the world unite for children and unite against Aids. The size of the problem is staggering, but the scale of the response has been inadequate," she said.

'Years of neglect'

The children's charity is launching a global campaign, Unite For Children, Unite Against Aids, which will focus on Africa, but also target Central Asia and Eastern Europe.

The campaign will focus on preventing mother-to-child transmission, educating young people on how to protect themselves, and on making sure HIV-positive children get the medical treatment they need.

Although sub-Saharan Africa is the focus, Unicef says 80% of all those living with HIV in Eastern Europe and Central Asia are under 30, and that rates of infection are climbing faster there than anywhere else in the world.

The BBC's East Africa correspondent, Karen Allen, says Unicef is using Kenya to highlight what it says are years of neglect of youngsters either infected or affected by Aids.

The time for the blame game is over. We are asking for collective action... from governments downwards

Naisiadet Mason Unicef adviser

Orphans bear cost of Aids

She says the campaign is calling for cash subsidies to pay for school fees, food, and shelter, transforming the lives of youngsters who might otherwise be forced into prostitution or crime.

Nairobi-based Unicef adviser, Naisiadet Mason, an HIV-infected mother of two, said the campaign was long overdue.

"The time for the blame game is over. We are asking for collective action... from governments downwards," she told the Reuters news agency.

"The day I was told I was HIV positive I was devastated and alone. We must create the networks, remove the stigma, supply the drugs," she said.

"We want to get HIV treated as just another disease because we know it is manageable."

30/09/2005 - MAIN OPPOSITION COALITION MERGES TO FORM PARTY.

The four parties that make up Ethiopia's largest opposition alliance, the Coalition for Unity and Democracy (CUD) have merged to form one party, an official of the coalition said on Thursday.

The All Ethiopia Unity Party, the Union of Ethiopia Democracy Party, Rainbow Ethiopia and the Ethiopian Democratic League announced their unification on Saturday. Members of the new party elected Hailu Shawel to continue as chairman of the new party and Birtukan Mideksa to serve as vice-chair.

"This merger means a strengthening of the opposition, added force to the opposition," Hailu Araya, CUD spokesman, told IRIN.

"Our vision is eventually to unite all the opposition parties in Ethiopia, but in the immediate future we are focused on consolidating the CUD alliance," he added.

Hailu said the opposition demonstration to protest against the results of the 15 May national elections - planned for 2 October - was still "on schedule" but was dependent on the administration of the capital, Addis Ababa

22/09/2005 - ETHIOPIA. Six million at risk of Malaria Epidemic.

NAIROBI, 22 September (IRIN) - Some six million Ethiopians, most of them children, are threatened by a potential malaria epidemic, the UN Children's Fund (UNICEF) cautioned.

In its latest update on Ethiopia, the agency said it needed close to US $22 million to prevent tens of thousands of additional deaths.

"UNICEF urgently needs $21.9 million to fight Ethiopia's looming malaria epidemic, fund a nationwide polio immunization drive and reach 963,855 people in critical need of water," it said. "While polio is continuing to spread, a UNICEF-supported nationwide vaccination campaign planned for October and November is badly underfunded."

Prevention initiatives by members of the Roll Back Malaria partnership in response to a sharp rise in malaria cases from June to August helped control the spread of the disease. A recent, widespread increase in malaria parasites and other worrying signs, however, have renewed fears of a nationwide epidemic.

According to a UN News Service report, UNICEF said that high rainfall and epidemiological trends were adding to concerns that an epidemic could occur during the "long" transmission season from October to December.

Supplies of the new anti-malaria drug Artemether-Lumefantrine - brand name Coartem - already had been consumed in large quantities to control malaria earlier in the year, the agency added, noting that the looming epidemic could exhaust stocks of Coartem and quinine, another anti-malaria drug.

UNICEF said that to ensure adequate stocks for the remainder of the year and maintain overall emergency capacity, Ethiopia needed another two million doses of Coartem, at a cost of $4 million, as well as $125,000 for emergency quinine for the treatment of severe cases, including infants and pregnant women.

A study published in the East African Medical Journal in April 2005 estimated that some six million malaria cases had occurred in Ethiopia during the last full-blown epidemic between April and December 2003, with up to 114,000 fatalities. UNICEF cautioned that similar figures could be expected if there was another epidemic in 2005.[ENDS]

15/09/2005 - HORN OF AFRICA CRISIS. Polio Vaccintion campaign targets 34 millions kids

NAIROBI, 14 September (IRIN) - The UN-backed Global Polio Eradication Initiative has launched a new campaign to vaccinate more than 34 million children in the Horn of Africa against the polio virus amid concern that the crippling disease was re-emerging in the region.

The new plan follows the confirmation of a polio case in Somalia, a country that had been polio-free since 2002, the UN World Health Organization (WHO) said in a news release on Tuesday. The victim - a 15-month-old girl in Mogadishu - had suffered the onset of paralysis on 12 July.

The rapid and large-scale campaign was made possible due to a US $25 million grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and support from other donors, including the Humanitarian Aid Department of the European Commission (ECHO).

The plan will see a series of immunisation campaigns coordinated across eight countries - Djibouti, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Somalia, Sudan, Yemen and parts of Kenya and the Democratic Republic of the Congo - between September and November.

There had been growing concern that polio outbreaks in neighbouring Ethiopia and Yemen were bound to extend to Somalia.

Although five national campaigns were conducted in Somalia this year, most recently in June, July and August to prevent the risk of a large-scale epidemic, insecurity in the country and low routine immunisation rates could still result in the rapid spread of the virus.

"The polio-eradication initiative has shown the world that even in the poorest countries, widespread and debilitating disease can be defeated," said Patty Stonesifer, co-chair and president of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

"As a resurgence of polio threatens to roll back the amazing progress of the past 20 years, it is more important than ever that governments and donors support the final push to eradicate polio," she added.

The first phase of the plan will be launched on 28 September in Somalia, where 1.5 million children under the age of five will be targeted for immunisation.

Some of the countries will use the recently developed monovalent oral polio vaccine type 1 (mOPV1) to maximise the impact of the campaigns. The new vaccine offers higher protection against polio virus type 1, the specific virus currently affecting the Horn of Africa.

Global polio-eradication efforts have reduced the number of polio cases from 350,000 annually in 1988 to 1,163 cases as of 6 September 2005.

Six countries - Nigeria, India, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Niger and Egypt - remain polio-endemic, and the virus has continued to spread to previously polio-free countries. In total, 10 previously polio-free countries - Somalia, Indonesia, Yemen, Angola, Ethiopia, Chad, Sudan, Mali, Eritrea and Cameroon - had been reinfected in late 2004 and 2005.

Poliomyelitis ("polio") is caused by the polio virus, which enters the body orally and infects the intestinal lining. It may proceed to the bloodstream and into the central nervous system, causing muscle weakness and often paralysis.

In areas with poor hygiene and sanitation, the virus spreads through human contact, usually via water or food that is contaminated by faeces. It also can be transmitted through coughing and sneezing in crowded environments.

Symptoms include fatigue, sore throat, fever, vomiting, gastro-intestinal disturbances, headache and pain in the neck and extremities. Weakness of muscles often leads to permanent paralysis and deformity of the limbs

14/09/2005 - AKIS DRINK

How I look after my Health

We are a few friends who with the age have developed some problems either with the Prostate or Kidneys (as my self)

My case started in the beginning of March 2003 when I noticed blood in my urine. I went to my doctor who after a small examination in his clinic, he believed that on my left kidney I had a lamp and water. He immediately refer me to the Hospital as an Out Patient for further investigations and treatments.

Since then I have undergone 4 MRI scans, various tests and X Rays. As of today (Sep 2005) I have not yet been discharged from the Hospital’s Out Patient list. I attribute this to an apparent improvement of my kidney. The most important thing is that apparently the lamp has not grown and the water has disappeared. Apart from one session of antibiotics I have not taken any other medication in relation to my kidneys problem.

After my first MRI scan etc.. when the results were communicated to me, I was morally very down. I spent the whole night behind my computer writing ??

By talking with friends that have similar health problems, I found out that some of them were taking a drink recommended by apparently an old person in a village of Greece.

I had nothing to loose. As this juice is made by my self, from fresh natural vegetables I decided to also give a try.

After the first week, I already noticed an improvement to my health.

So, what does this drink consist of ?

Ingredients : Fresh, Carrots, Tomatoes, Lemon, Garlic and Virgin Olive Oil.

Preparation :

a) Peel the carrots

b) Wash with clean water the peeled carrots and tomatoes.

c) With a juice machine press the carrots and fill 2 quarters of glass of water with the carrot juice

d) Add 1 quarter tomato juiced

e) Then the juice of ½ Lemon

f) Then the juice of 1 (piece) of garlic. (Myself after the first sessions I change it to 1 tablet of non-odorous garlic)

g) Add 1 table spoon of the Virgin Olive Oil.

For practicality (less messy), I prepare one bottle of carrot juice and one bottle of tomato juice and I keep them in the Fridge. (Gold is easier to drink it) I only do fresh at the moment the ½ lemon juice.

About 15 minutes before my meal (breakfast, lunch & dinner) I drink one glass of this fresh mixture of juices.

I do not smoke and I only drink a glass of wine, occasionally with a meal.

After meals I walk for about 15 minutes. I never did this before.This is now knew to my daily life.

When I started, I did this for the first 3 weeks. Then I stopped for about a month. Thereafter every couple of months I take the same drink morning and evening only. My friends take it much more regularly and they also feel very well.

In addition to the above an other important factor I did is :

To convinced myself to never give up and, I proved it.

I am 69 years old, I feel in good shape and I keep myself busy. I am still doing very well my 8 hours per day, 6 days a week.

As I am not a doctor, I cannot state that my improvement is due to this drink.

Is it a combination of everything ?

I never mentioned to my doctors what I am doing.

The reason ?

Most of them do not believe to grand mothers stories.

However and this was vital for this mine decision. I believed that, from the moment my doctors do not forbid me eating the vegetables I am using, I have nothing to worry.

The purpose of this letter is to share with you my experience that may be of assistance to you or your loved ones and, to express in my own way as chairman of the Trustees of this charity, our gratitude to all of for your kind support.

It would be greatly appreciated if anyone of you who will try my experience and would like to share with us his/hers own experiences to send me an Email and tell us how they feel after the first weeks.

akis@childrenofethiopia.com

29/08/2005 - UN envoy calls for greater flexibility in providing AID

ADDIS ABABA, 29 August (IRIN) - Greater flexibility in providing aid to Ethiopia is needed to tackle widespread hunger and underdevelopment in the region, the Special Envoy of the UN Secretary-General for the Humanitarian Crisis in the Horn of Africa, Martti Ahtisaari, said on Sunday.

"Our difficulties now are in the non-food [area]," he said.

While donors had provided more than 130 percent of food needs for the country, he said, vital areas like emergency health, water and sanitation were seriously underfunded.

Ahtisaari, a former Finnish president, said seven million to eight million Ethiopians would survive on foreign aid in 2005. He also said the government was working to end problems with its flagship safety net scheme, which is aimed at ending perennial hunger in the country. Under the scheme, five million chronically hungry people are to be given food or cash - around six Ethiopian birr (US $0.70) - in return for engaging in public works tasks such as road building.

However, the government's Emergency Nutrition Coordination Unit reported in July that as of the end of May, only 11 percent of cash and 44 percent of food had actually reached the needy, although the scheme started in January.

"There have been problems with higher than expected grain prices and capacity at local level in effecting transfers, especially during the time of the election process," Ahtisaari said. "There were also problems in timely provisions of cash and food resources in the first two months of the year."

He said the government was working to correct the problems. "It is critical during this period of transition that all partners build capacities of local communities to achieve food and livelihood security," he said.

"Our common aim must be working towards self-reliance and not expect this to happen overnight," he told reporters at a news conference in the capital, Addis Ababa.

He also urged donors to continue aid despite the postelection violence in June, which has human rights groups claiming that security forces shot dead 42 people protesting against alleged electoral fraud.

"Whatever has happened, humanitarian assistance should never be politicised. All those that are in need should be helped," he said. "I sincerely hope that the elections will not affect the donor preparedness."

Britain froze 20 million pounds sterling ($36 million) in aid to Ethiopia following the postelection civil unrest.

Ahtisaari spent eights days in Eritrea and Ethiopia, where at least 10 million people are in need of food aid.

29/08/2005 - HORN OF AFRICA CRISIS

NAIROBI, 29 August (IRIN) - Some 90,000 Eritrean and Ethiopian refugees living in eastern Sudan could go hungry unless more money is found to fill a 47-percent funding gap in a feeding programme for them, the UN World Food Programme (WFP) said on Friday.

"Food distributions to the refugees are in real danger of being scaled down or even interrupted because of the lack of funds, and because we are battling to feed more refugees than were expected to remain in Sudan at this time," Ramiro Lopes da Silva, the WFP country director for Sudan, said in a statement.

The agency said more than halfway through its two-year operation to feed the Eritrean and Ethiopian refugee populations living in eastern and southeastern Sudan, it had received US $9.4 million of the required $17.7 million. It added that it was feeding almost 50 percent more refugees than expected because concerns about general conditions in their homelands meant many refugees had decided not to return home.

The refugees are living in 12 camps in Kassala, Gezira, Sinnar and Gedaref states in eastern and southeastern Sudan. WFP said they faced competition for wage labour from local residents and internally displaced people, and few had access to land for farming. It said the large proportion of families headed by women were particularly vulnerable because social and cultural factors limited their access to food and sources of income.

The agency said it had distributed some 16 tonnes to 3,908 people in July through supplementary feeding programmes run by partner NGOs, while the government of Sudan had distributed 1,880 tonnes of food to 84,498 people.

"Chronic funding shortages, insecurity in the region at times curtailing access as well as problems in contracting enough trucks to carry food aid from Port Sudan to the camps have hampered WFP's efforts to maintain consistent supplies of food assistance to the refugees," it said.

WFP said a joint nutritional survey conducted in April in eastern Sudan's Um Gargour refugee camp had found a 12.7 percent global acute malnutrition rate among children less than five years old.

"We need the world's support to keep feeding," Lopes da Silva said. "We need to feed these families, which have no one else to help them, and nowhere else to go."

Meanwhile, on Friday, WFP handed over an airport, upgraded at a cost of $1.6 million, to the local government in the provisional southern Sudanese capital of Rumbek in a bid to improve access to the south.

WFP said it built a 1.8-kilometre runway at Rumbek, beside the existing airstrip which is now being used as a taxiway. It also built an air traffic control tower.

The airport rehabilitation was part of WFP's special operation for emergency road repairs and mine clearance of key transport routes in southern Sudan from August 2003 to December 2006.

The agency said it planned to deliver emergency food aid to 3.2 million people in southern, eastern and transitional areas of Sudan at a cost of more than $300 million in 2005, but faced a funding shortfall of 41 percent that was severely hampering the provision of desperately needed food at the height of the current "hunger" season.

25/08/2005 - ETHIOPIA. Three million in need of emergency food Aid - WFP -

ADDIS ABABA, 25 August (IRIN) - More than three million Ethiopians face food shortages this year unless they receive emergency food aid, the UN World Food Programme (WFP) said on Wednesday.

"Ethiopia has had five major droughts in just two decades, causing untold deaths, suffering and hardship," Mohamed Diab, head of WFP in the capital, Addis Ababa, said.

His comments came on the eve of a four-day visit to Ethiopia by former Finnish president, Martti Ahtisaari, now the Special Envoy for the UN Secretary-General for the Humanitarian Crisis in the Horn of Africa.

WFP cautioned against allowing the ongoing food crisis in the West African state of Niger to overshadow hunger in Ethiopia.

The agency said a new report based on a countrywide and government-led mid-year assessment mission had confirmed that up to 3.3 million Ethiopians would need emergency food aid in the second half of 2005, while another 2.5 million needed to be closely monitored. Twenty years after famine killed an estimated one million people in Ethiopia, WFP said hunger still loomed large in a country where population growth remains among the highest in the world. The agency, through donations, covers around 70 percent of food aid to Ethiopia.

The budget for WFP's relief-and-recovery operation in Ethiopia over a three-year period - from January 2005 to December

23/08/2005 - HORN OF AFRICA CRISIS

ADDIS ABABA, 23 August (IRIN) - The UN Special Envoy for the Humanitarian Crisis in the Horn of Africa, Martti Ahtisaari, began an eight day visit to the region on Monday to assess prospects for long-term food security.

The former Finnish president began his visit in Eritrea where food shortages have left more than 2.3 million people in need of aid.

While 80 percent of the Eritrean population is rural, the country only produced 85,000 tonnes of cereals in 2004 - just 15 percent of its annual requirement and 47 percent of its average harvest over the last 12 years.

One million Eritreans were likely to go hungry this year unless donors could step up food aid, according to government officials.

Ahtisaari will travel to Ethiopia on Thursday to follow up on recommendations of an evaluation into the 2002-2003 emergency in the country where some 15 million people faced starvation.

According to a recent UN report, Ethiopia was threatened by larger emergencies because of growing vulnerability in the country. It warned that many of the root causes of vulnerability and destitution were still unchecked.

This year the Ethiopian government had made an effort to differentiate between chronically and acutely food insecure populations, a statement released by the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said.

It had launched a safety net programme under which five million people were receiving food and cash transfers for work. However, the programme had been criticised for delays in providing cash or food transfers to families which had resulted in increasing levels of malnutrition.

OCHA said the envoy would meet Prime Minister Meles Zenawi and advocate for longer term food security and livelihood issues. It said that while emergency food needs had been met, only 68 percent of the non-food sector that covers areas like health and sanitation had been covered.

19/08/2005 - DJIBOUTI- Precarious food situation in rutal areas

NAIROBI, 19 August (IRIN) - The food situation in rural areas of Djibouti is precarious and there is a need to accelerate emergency food distribution in the tiny Horn of Africa country, an early warning network has reported.

"Prices for staple foods and non-foods are increasing significantly, with negative impacts on poor households in both rural and urban areas," the USAID-funded Famine Early Warning Systems Network (FEWS Net) said in its food security update for August.

FEWS Net said a continuous rural exodus had been witnessed in the majority of secondary cities, and even in the capital, Djibouti city.

"Animal productivity declined significantly and the current delay of karan/karma [June-October] rains raises concern for the food security of the livestock dependent rural population," it added.

Djibouti is suffering from a drought following three failed rainy seasons.

In June, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs reported that an urgent flash appeal made in April for US $7.5 million in drought relief for Djibouti had received almost no response.[ENDS]

27/07/2005 - ASMARA- NATURAL DISASTERS STRIKE COMMUNITIES

ASMARA, 27 July (IRIN) - Of all the natural disasters that strike communities and environments, a drought can be the most devastating. If it develops into a full-blown famine or forces people to leave their homes or become dependent on external food aid, drought becomes a humanitarian crisis.

Unlike the more dramatic "acts of God", such as volcanoes, earthquakes or tsunamis, the full impact of a drought is more closely related to a country's ability to respond or mitigate the failure of rains.

Fragile state structures, underdeveloped infrastructure, poor agricultural practices and issues of governance are as important in this equation as the absence of water itself.

Travelling around Eritrea, one often finds young boys digging in dry river beds to find water for their bony animals, or a slow procession of donkeys and their owners carrying water home through the heat of the day.

The water table throughout the country has dropped by several metres, relief workers and government officials say, thanks to a drought that has dragged on for years.

"We have had very, very little rain, especially in the past three or four years," Ali Abdu, Eritrea's information minister, told IRIN in May. "Almost one-third of our population was attacked by that."

Some 2.3 million people in Eritrea, almost two-thirds of the population, depend on varying levels of food aid. And although 80 percent of the population is rural, the country only produced 85,000 mt of cereals in 2004 - just 15 percent of its annual requirement and 47 percent of its average harvest over the last twelve years.

One million Eritreans are likely to go hungry this year, unless donors can step up their food aid, a senior government official said.

While it would be easy to pin the blame on long-term drought and the exhaustion of coping strategies, relief workers in Eritrea say these are not the only reasons for the country's precarious food-security situation.

"Food security is more complicated than getting enough rain, or even producing enough food," said a relief worker who did not want to be named. He felt that the failure to produce adequate food crops since 1998 was also linked to Eritrea's conflict with Ethiopia and its preparations to strengthen defences on the border.

The 1998-2000 Ethiopian-Eritrean border war, which was fought mostly in Eritrean territory, killed between 70,000 and 100,000 people and displaced almost one-third of Eritrea's population.

It also left behind an unpleasant legacy of mines and battered infrastructure throughout the border region, and especially in Eritrea's most fertile region in the southwest.

Relations between the two countries have hardly improved since the end of the conflict. When they signed a peace agreement in December 2000, both countries agreed that an independent boundary commission would make a "final and binding" decision on where the border should be.

However, the Boundary Commission decision, produced in April 2002, was later rejected by Ethiopia.

Three years on, the position of both countries remains essentially the same: Ethiopia says it will demarcate the border but would like to negotiate first (although it appears unwilling to do so). Meanwhile, Eritrea refuses to compromise on an international agreement.

So, how has a border dispute affected Eritrea's rapidly declining food security?

The most obvious impact is the redistribution of resources and manpower: An estimated 300,000 people are currently serving in Eritrea's military instead of contributing to the country's economy. In addition, government sources said, the dispute has forced Eritrea to put a lot of its scarce resources into military spending. Along with fuel shortages and rising prices of consumer goods, the already weak economy has declined.

"We are dealing with four years of consecutive drought," Yemane Gebremeskal, presidential advisor and chief government spokesman, told IRIN in an interview at his office in May. "This [drought] has eroded coping mechanisms and is putting severe pressure on the government. The overall security situation has also [had] an impact."

Following an assessment visit to Eritrea at the end of 2004, the UN World Food Programme (WFP) and the UN's Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) said in a January 2005 report: "Due to continued critical shortage of labour, the wage rates this year have been observed to be very high.

"Since farmers cannot afford to pay such high wages [.] critical field operations such as weeding have generally been neglected," the WFP/FAO report added.

A separate report issued in April by the USAID-funded Famine Early Warning Systems Network (FEWS Net), said: "The absence of many young men for national mobilisation reduces the range of household income opportunities and coping strategies, such as livestock-raising and off-farm employment."

It is important to out that some of Eritrea's most fertile land is within the Temporary Security Zone (TSZ), a 25-km wide demilitarised zone that runs along Eritrea's southern boundary and is still patrolled by UN peacekeepers.

The TSZ once accounted for a significant proportion of Eritrean food production. Currently, an estimated 50,000 internally displaced Eritreans live away from the TSZ, unable to return to their ruined villages until the last of the landmines planted there during the war are cleared.

Eritrea's borders with both Ethiopia and Sudan remain officially closed while tensions in the region persist. The border with Sudan was closed in late 2002, with both sides accusing each other of supporting armed opposition in the other's territory.

The border closures have affected the agricultural sector in two significant ways, by limiting grazing areas and by restricting access to markets.

Pastoralists can no longer follow rains across national boundaries. Regional tensions have severely limited the coping strategies of pastoralists, who were once the powerhouse of Eritrean agriculture. The government has been encouraging pastoralists to settle, but adaptation has not been easy, sources say.

"We have not had a census for a long time, but pastoralism is still a very important sector," a source said. "Normally, if they move, they go in search of pasture. But now very few are moving because of the closed borders. So the pressure on forage is worse than ever before," he added.

The closed borders have also blocked a key supply of food, driving food prices higher.

"The loss of access to Ethiopian and Sudanese food markets, on which Eritrea traditionally depended for about one-third of its primary food supply, may have contributed to the current escalation of food grains prices in Eritrea," said the FEWS Net report.

26/07/2005 - OGADEN REGION - SERIES OF GRENADE ATTACKS

ADDIS ABABA, 26 July (IRIN) - A series of grenade attacks on Sunday that killed five people in Ethiopia's Somali region was designed to disrupt forthcoming elections there, officials said.

Simultaneous attacks occurred in six places across the region, said Ali Mohammed Kunaye, speaker of the Somali regional parliament, whose home was among those attacked.

"These attacks are an attempt to disrupt the elections because the registration of voters is due to start today," Kunaye said. "This is an attack by anti-peace elements who want to reject the elections."

The attacks targeted a bar and a nightclub in Jijiga, the capital of Somali region, and the homes of four regional officials.

The police were carrying out investigations, federal police deputy commissioner Hassan Shauffa said.

Eastern Ethiopia's Somali region, with a population of around four million, is one of the country's poorest and most remote. The region has been blighted by skirmishes between a separatist rebel group and the government.

The attacks came a week after Prime Minister Meles Zenawi announced his government's willingness to have dialogue with the region's rebel Ogaden National Liberation Front (ONLF).

Leaders of the ONLF, who have responded favourably to the government's call to dialogue but are yet to declare a ceasefire, condemned Sunday's attacks.

"This deliberate killing of civilians, which included a young child, cannot be justified under any circumstances," the ONLF said in a statement.

Parliamentary elections are due to take place on 21 August in Somali region for 23 remaining seats in Ethiopia's 547-member legislature.

Elections that took place in the rest of the country in May were fiercely contested, with the 307 results released so far showing the government and opposition neck and neck.

Polling was delayed in Somali region due to security concerns and heavy rains making some areas inaccessible

25/07/2005 - OGADEN REBEL GROUP OFFERS TO END WAR.

An armed rebel group waging a bloody guerrilla war in lawless eastern Ethiopia on Tuesday offered a truce to end its decade-old fight against the government. The Ogaden National Liberation Front (ONLF) offered peace talks in a neutral country to try to bring an end to the fighting that has plagued this arid region. The decision was announced in a statement following an exchange of letters between Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi and Ogadeni clan elders in an attempt to secure peace in one of the poorest and most remote parts of the country.

Key elections are scheduled to take place in the region in just over a month, which could tip the balance in Ethiopia's 15 May national elections, where partial results have the government and opposition parties on level pegging. "The ONLF is ready to engage in negotiations with the government in order to find a just and lasting solution to the conflict between the people of the Ogaden and Ethiopian regime if such talks are conducted in a neutral country," the statement said.

22/07/2005 - Waiting for election results

ADDIS ABABA, 22 July (IRIN) - Two months after more than 25 million Ethiopians went to the polls in the country's third ever national election on 15 May, it is still not clear who won or lost the ballot.

As each day passes, claims and counterclaims emanate from rival political parties, the tone and rhetoric causing anxiety across the country.

On Thursday the national election board appealed for patience, but analysts said the strain of the delay was becoming all too evident.

The opposition has cited widespread fraud, not only in the counting but also in the investigations of alleged poll abuse, while the government has ensured that the security forces and police maintain a very visible presence on the streets of the capital, Addis Ababa.

Tensions erupted on 8 June, when the results should have been declared. At least 38 people in the capital were shot dead during clashes between stone-throwing protesters and security forces, among them a college student and a 16-year-old boy.

"We need to be calm and we need to wait until the process is complete," Kemal Bedri, chairman of the National Election Board of Ethiopia (NEBE), said insisting that the elections had been the most successful the country had ever held.

The delays, he added, were because of "the comprehensive nature of the investigations into abuses and fraud, and the election board's desire to oversee a credible ballot".

OPPOSITION VIEW

The opposition disputes this, accusing the NEB of bias - a view sometimes reinforced by senior election board officials when they launch withering attacks on opposition parties in the state media.

NEBE officials said more election results would be announced on Friday but that the winner would still be unknown - so far 307 out of 524 parliamentary seats have been declared, and the remaining 23 are to be contested in delayed elections in eastern Ethiopia's Somali Region.

The ruling Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Democratic Front has won 139 seats while the main opposition group, the Coalition for Unity and Democracy (CUD), has taken 93; another opposition group, the United Ethiopian Democratic Front, secured 42.

The NEBE is awaiting details of investigations into 139 constituencies, but has thrown out complaints in a further 75 seats.

Dessalegn Rahmato, head of the Forum for Social Studies, an independent Ethiopian think-tank, said the tardy and piecemeal release of results had not only caused harm at home but also abroad.

"The delay is causing a lot of anxiety and uncertainty," he noted. "It is unfortunate, and the results should have been known a few weeks after the elections. Many people feel insecure because we don't know what the results will be and how the parties involved will react to it."

The NEBE should have been prepared, he commented. "This is the first fairly open and unrestricted election in this country - the previous two elections were really not free and fair, and there was no contest.

"This election was strongly contested, and the board should have anticipated controversy and been able to move in as quickly as possible to clear up controversies or make quick decisions, so that the results will be out as quickly as possible, and let the courts deal with issues that arise after that," he observed.

The confusion and bloodshed surrounding the elections has also damaged the reputation of the country, which is struggling to shake off accusations of government oppression of human rights groups by foreign donors. "This country has not had a good reputation to begin with, and whatever good will there was, when the country allowed the election to be contested by opposition parties, and the government promised there would be free and fair elections, that was well-received by the donor community here and abroad," Dessalegn said. "But this controversy and failure to resolve the issue ... have disappointed the donor community. This is a worrying time."

HIGH STAKES

Feted by Western leaders, Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi pledged greater democratic reform when two decades of Marxist authoritarian rule under military dictator Mengistu Haile Mariam came to an end in 1991.

He stood alongside UK Premier Tony Blair at the launch of the Africa Commission - the British Prime Ministers' project aimed at promoting good governance and economic development on the world's poorest continent.

Although once described by former US President Bill Clinton as a "part of a new generation of leaders", Meles now faces a tough test in showing that his credentials remain intact.

Britain froze about US $35 million in aid after demonstrators were gunned down, and Washington and the European Union have called on the government to respect human rights, while urging an independent inquiry into the killings.

Information minister Bereket Simon put the blame for the violence and the piecemeal release of election results squarely on the shoulders of the opposition.

>From the start, he said, opposition parties had tried to undermine the election process to discredit the government among Ethiopia's 71 million people, as well as abroad.

The latest claim by the opposition that the poll probe was a "complete failure" and jeopardized the entire process was simply a continuation of that strategy, he added.

"Their comments are designed to discredit and undermine the process," Bereket said.

There could be no doubt that the massive increase in votes for the opposition parties surprised not only the government but also the international community.

The largest opposition group, the CUD, formed just six months before the country went to the polls, took almost four out of every five votes in the capital, but said they were undecided as to whether they would join the new parliament in September. Vice-chairman Berhanu Nega said a decision would be taken after reviewing the complaints investigation process.

"The course the government and election board is taking is one that shows unwillingness to put in place a democratic system in Ethiopia, a disregard for the constitution and inability to accept the verdict of the people," he remarked.

Senior diplomats in Addis Ababa said they were having trouble "keeping the lid" on the tension and hostility between the parties.

Face-to-face negotiations between rival parties have been brokered by the European Union but have borne little fruit as yet, diplomats noted. With the slow creep towards an official result, tensions are beginning to rise again.

22/07/2005 - SOMALIA. Houses to be built for TSUNAMI survivors

SOMALIA: Houses to be built for tsunami survivors

Four hundred housing units are to be built for survivors of the December 2004 tsunami in Hafun town, northeastern Somalia in a joint programme between the UN Children's Fund (UNICEF) and the UN Human Settlements Programme (UN-HABITAT). The 12-month project that begins in August will reconstruct houses, public buildings and sanitation facilities at a cost of US $1.35 million. It is part of a larger integrated development programme involving various organisations, a statement issued by the two agencies on Tuesday, said.

The tsunami, which displaced more than 5,000 people, damaged most buildings on the town's seafront because the largely unplanned settlements were located "on a flat, low-lying sand plate" that made most of them vulnerable to the colossal waves. A joint UN agency assessment mission in February 2005 identified areas for investment in Hafun, some 1,500 km northeast of the Somali capital, Mogadishu, to bridge the gap between relief and development

22/07/2005 - ERITREA- OXFAM GIVING SEEDS AND TOOLS TO HOUSEHOLD

1 - ERITREA: Oxfam giving seeds and tools to households

NAIROBI, 22 July (IRIN) - Some 5,301 Eritrean families in areas of the country worst affected by recurrent drought will benefit from an Oxfam programme to provide them with seeds, fertiliser and agricultural tools, the British charity said.

"For the past five years, the cumulative effects of recurrent drought, in addition to border tensions and possible conflicts, have seriously affected people's access to food," Oxfam said in a statement on Wednesday.

"In response to the shortage of seeds, we are distributing emergency agricultural aid to 5301 households in Mai Mine and Areza in Debub [region south of the capital, Asmara]," it added.

The agency said each family would receive a plough, a 50 kg bag of fertiliser and a voucher to purchase seeds.

Oxfam added that it had just completed an earth dam with a capacity of 100,000 cu.m. to improve water sanitation in the area, and planned to introduce small-scale irrigation farming.

01/02/2005 - SOMALIA- Tsunami survivors need help to overcome the trauma.

HAFUN PENINSULA, 28 January (IRIN) - Nurfo Ibrahim Mudey, a 27-year-old widow and mother of four, is still unable to go to the shore where her home once stood in the Somali hamlet of Hafun, destroyed by the Indian Ocean tsunami on 26 December. Her husband and her six-month-old baby drowned when the surging waves swamped their house.

"I do not want to see the sea again because it reminds me of my husband and my baby," Mudey told visiting reporters, as she sat pensively next to a makeshift shelter made of plastic sheeting donated by the UN Children's Fund (UNICEF).

The people of Hafun, a fishing hub on the northeastern coastline of the self-declared autonomous region of Puntland, lost most of their homes as well as their fishing boats - and thereby their livelihoods - to the killer waves. Many are now terrified of the sea.

"A quarrel between a man and his wife recently caused people to run out of their shelters believing that the sea was surging again," Said Muhammed, an education officer with UNICEF in Hafun, said.

"Children are seriously traumatised and counselling facilities are not available locally," Maulid Warfa, an assistant programme officer with the UN World Food Programme (WFP), told IRIN. "They do not want to go anywhere near the beach."

According to Hawa Said Ismail, a volunteer teacher in a makeshift primary school that UNICEF built, children are still in a state of shock.

"They speak of having dreams [about the tsunami] and look confused," she said.

The mayor of Hafun, Abshir Abdi Tangi, said that the focus should now be on the rehabilitation of livelihoods and infrastructure in Hafun.

"We are a destroyed town that needs everything," Tangi said. "We have received assistance, but it is not enough. Hafun was a historic town and was growing - we had facilities - water, shelter, education - but all that is now gone and we have to start from scratch. Our livelihoods depended on fishing and our fishing equipment has been destroyed.

A few days after the tsunami, WFP distributed some 83 mt of rice, maize, pulses and vegetable oils to an estimated 800 families who were in Hafun. The agency plans to distribute more food to 500 families in a week's time.

"The old Hafun is still a ghost town," Leo van der Velden, WFP's deputy country director for Somalia, said. "Even the sand dunes that provided protection [from the sea] were washed away.

"We plan to assist the people for six months and after that we might think of doing food for work and school feeding," he continued. "WFP is also handling logistics for others agencies."

The tsunami disaster could not have come at a worse time for Hafun and the neighbouring communities. The northeastern region of Somalia has been ravaged by four years of drought that depleted livestock, the mainstay of the area's economy.

Many people had turned to fishing as an alternative means of survival and the income was helping.

"The loss of fishing as a source of livelihood means that the vulnerability levels have gone up," Warfa said. "The major issue now is rehabilitation and livelihood reconstruction."

He pointed out that temporary shelters now housing those displaced by the tsunami could be swept away by the strong monsoon winds that lash the region from July.

"Nobody will be able to go to the sea [during the monsoons]," Warfa said. "This is a critical period for the people of Hafun."

According to various relief agencies working in the region, about 150 people are estimated to have died throughout Somalia, while 54,000 were in need of emergency assistance. Northeastern Somalia was the worst affected, particularly a stretch of around 650 km between Hafun [Bari region] and Garacad [Mudug region].

The damage extended to other parts of the Somali coast, including the Lower Juba area, south of Mogadishu. The livelihoods of many people residing in small villages along the Somali coastline were devastated

01/02/2005 - Mr Blair launches appeal for Africa

U2 singer Bono (right) joined Mr Blair to plead Africa's case Africa's poverty is "a scar on the conscience of the world", UK Prime Minister Tony Blair has told the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. He criticised global leaders for neglecting Africa, saying there would be an outcry if another part of the world was to suffer similar problems.

He appealed for more aid for Africa and said the UK would fund nearly one sixth of a World Health Organisation appeal.

Tackling the spread of HIV has already emerged as a central theme of the week.

Silent scandal

Mr Blair was flanked by pop singer Bono and Microsoft founder Bill Gates, the world's richest man, who earlier in the week gave $750m (£400m) to a global programme to vaccinate children against deadly diseases.

He launched his appeal for Africa by stressing the need to tackle diseases that cripple poor countries economically.

"If what [is] happening in Africa today... was happening in any other part of the world there would be such a scandal and clamour that governments would be falling over themselves to do something about this," he said.

Mr Blair has made it clear he wants to use the UK's presidency of the G7 group of rich nations this year to ensure Africa's problems do not slip out of the international spotlight.

TACKLING AFRICA'S POVERTY The only continent to get poorer since 1979 Nearly 50% of Africans live on less than $1 a day 34% are malnourished 6,000 Aids deaths a day Source: World Bank, IMF, WHO

More aid is needed, as well as a "very clear mechanism" to avoid donor nations backsliding, he said. He committed the UK to supply £45m ($85m) towards a WHO disease control appeal totalling £300m.

Mr Gates called Africa's poverty and the deaths of "millions of people" due to insufficient research into diseases of poverty "the most scandalous issue of our time".

U2 singer Bono praised both men for "getting it right", and told Mr Blair that helping Africa offered "the chance to touch more people's lives than anything else he can do as prime minister".

He also paid tribute to Mr Gates, saying: "No single man on the planet has done more to impact poverty."

Their appeal was followed by a conference session that included ex-US president Bill Clinton and South Africa's president Thabo Mbeki.

01/02/2005 - UK Prime Minister Tony Blair, former U.S. President Bill Clinton and rock star Bon joined forces an attempt to focus the world spotlight on the plight of Africa

DAVOS, Switzerland -- UK Prime Minister Tony Blair, former U.S. President Bill Clinton and rock star Bono joined forces Thursday in Davos an attempt to focus the world spotlight on the plight of Africa.

The three men were sharing a platform at the World Economic Forum in the Swiss ski resort where 2,250 political and business leaders have gathered to address key issues facing the world economy.

Joining them was Microsoft founder Bill Gates, South African leader Thabo Mbeki and President Olusegun Obesanjo of Nigeria.

In a lively discussion, Clinton appeared to criticize his successor President George W. Bush, saying a fraction of the $80 billion a year spent on the war in Iraq would go a long way to alleviating Africa's problems.

Before joining the debate Bono had told journalists: "Our generation wants to be remembered for something other than the war against terror."

The Irish rock star said people kept stopping him and congratulating him for taking up Africa as a cause.

"It is not a cause, it is an emergency," he said.

Mbeki said the region's leaders needed to work harder to end the military conflicts scarring the continent.

"We have to address peace and stability on the continent very vigorously, very successfully, to make sure we end all of those conflicts -- because without that we don't have development.

"Unless we have peace and security we don't have the ability to do anything else," said Obasanjo.

Blair, who has made Africa a focus of his leadership of the G8 this year, said the continent's plight was "a scar on the conscience of the world" and questioned whether the global community would allow such poverty to persist anywhere else in the world.

"I almost think if what was happening in Africa today as we speak was happening in any other part of the world there would be such a scandal and clamor that governments would be falling over themselves to act," Blair said.

Gates, who has amassed an estimated fortune of $48 billion as founder of Microsoft, said most of the disease and despair on the continent would be easily preventable if resources were applied.

"Millions of children die in Africa who shouldn't die, who it would be very easy to save," he said. "The fact that we don't apply the resources to the known cures or to finding better cures is really ... the most scandalous issue of our time."

Gates recently put more of his money where his mouth is, pledging $750 million to support immunization programs in developing countries.

Bono praised Gates, saying: "He is a brainy man and he thinks extreme poverty is stupid."

Blair also brought a financial boost, announcing Britain would contribute £45 million pounds ($85m) toward the $550 million he said the World Health Organization had estimated was needed to buy bed nets to prevent malaria in Africa.

He asked other G8 countries to pay the rest needed to combat a disease that kills between 1 and 3 million people a year, most of them African children under five.

Tight security: Swiss policemen on patrol on the streets of Davos. Britain has proposed doubling annual aid to poor countries to $100 billion, dismantling trade barriers, an infrastructure fund and writing off multilateral debt to the world's 70 poorest countries at a cost over $2 billion over 10 years.

"Debt cancellation must be effected," said Mbeki. "It's really obscene that poor countries become net exporters of capital due to debt."

Bono said agreement on cancelling debt was the minimum that should be achieved this year.

Earlier rounds of debt reduction allowed Uganda to treble the number of primary school places it could afford, he said.

U.S. defended CNN Senior International Correspondent Walter Rodgers said the moderator of the debate, French TV presenter Christine Ockrent, criticized the United States for not doing enough to help the people of Africa.

But after she tried to put ex-president Clinton on the spot, he told her there was very little constituency for foreign aid to Africa in the U.S. -- especially as the U.S. was spending $80 billion a year on the Iraq war.

U.S. Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist defended the U.S., Rodgers said, saying that 25 percent of all disaster emergency relief in the world was donated by the U.S. -- as in the tsunami effort in South East Asia.

Frist also pointed out that 60 percent of all the emergency food donations in the world is donated by the United States.

Security was tight around the mountain town. Preparing for any terrorist threat, organizers told The Associated Press that air force planes were ready to shoot down any unauthorized aircraft that stray too close to the 2,250 participants.

The forum has been a favorite of top U.S. administration officials in recent years, including Vice President Dick Cheney and Clinton during his presidency. But this year's event is being dominated by European leaders as key U.S. officials stay away because of personnel changes in the Bush administration, organizers said.

21/01/2005 - AFAR REGIONS - DROUGHT INCREASING LIVESTGOCK DEATHS.

Increasing livestock deaths are threatening the livelihood of nomadic pastoralists in Ethiopia's drought-hit Afar region, the UN and aid agencies said on Tuesday.

Paul Herbert, head of the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs in Ethiopia, said drought had continued to whittle away the assets of Afar pastoralists. It was vital, he added, to prevent more livestock deaths and protect the dwindling wealth of herders in the region.

"We do think the situation is continuing to deteriorate," he told IRIN. "There needs to be some very quick action. Food is needed, but the critical problem is with livestock and what to do in terms of providing fodder and water."

Some 1.2 million people live in Afar, a lowland region bordering Djibouti and Eritrea, covering 270,000 sq km - about one fifth of the entire country. "There needs to be more assistance than we have actually planned for because the situation has gone to the worst case in Afar region," Herbert added.

The UN's Food and Agriculture Organisation has requested funding to help support the growing numbers of cattle that are dying in the region. As yet, however, the numbers of people who need food was unclear, according to Herbert, although 352,000 were receiving food aid in Afar.

An action plan to combat the situation had been sent to the federal government's disaster prevention and preparedness commission from the regional authorities, he added. It will spell out specific needs and the number of people in need.

Full story at: http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=45107&SelectRegion=Horn_of_Africa&SelectCountry=ETHIOPIA

ERITREA: More than two million people in need of food aid - FAO

An estimated 2.3 million Eritreans are in need of food aid following prolonged drought and delayed rainfall that resulted in inadequate harvest, the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) said on Tuesday.

The agency said those affected by the shortfall would need more than a quarter of a million mt of food this year to supplement their meagre harvest. Cereal production late last year was forecasted at about 85 mt, less than half of the average of the last 12 years. Another 80 mt was to be purchased and 80 mt donated, leaving the need at 262,000 mt, according to FAO.

Failure of the March to May Azmera rains, during which farmers prepare the land and the unusually short June to September Kremti growth rains, not only reduced cereal production, but forced pastoralists to move their herds early. This could result in shortages of animal feed early this year.

Since the end of the 1998-2000 Ethiopia-Eritrea war, Eritrea has suffered from successive droughts, with harvests hit particularly hard in the main grain-producing regions of Gash, Barka and Debub. The destruction during the war, the current stalemate in the peace process, along with the cumulative effects of drought have dealt a serious blow to the economy, reducing Eritrea's capacity to cover food requirements through imports.

20/01/2005 - THOUSANDS OF PEOPLE AFFECTED BY THE TSUNAMI HAD ALREADY BEEN DISPLACED.

GARACAD, 20 January (IRIN) - Thousands of people affected by the tsunami in Somalia had already been displaced by years of successive drought from their areas of origin and had moved to the coastal areas in search of opportunities, a report released by the Somali government and various agencies said.

"They [had] lost their livestock in the drought and the rest of the animals were decimated by torrential rains," said the report, compiled by a government assessment team that recently visited the affected areas in the semi-autonomous region of Puntland. "Thereafter, they moved to the coastal areas in view to get job opportunities and sustain their daily livelihood."

According to the report, about 3,344 families living in areas recently assessed for damage by the December tsunami in Puntland had suffered a "triple disaster".

First, they had been affected by four years of successive drought, which displaced them from their areas of origin. Then their livestock perished in considerable numbers and finally came the tsunami.

About 20,000 people from these families, it added, were now "idly" living "in caves and under trees" near the coastline. Around 298 citizens died or are missing and as many as 283 have been injured as a result of the tsunami in Puntland, the report said.

According to various relief agencies working in the region, however, about 150 people are estimated to have died throughout Somalia, while 54,000 were in need of emergency assistance. Northeastern Somalia was the worst affected, particularly a stretch of around 650 km between Hafun [Bari region] and Garacad [Mudug region].

According to relief agencies, the damage extended to other parts of the Somali coast, including the Lower Juba area, south of Mogadishu. The livelihoods of many people residing in small villages along the Somali coastline, particularly in the northeastern regions, were devastated.

The report appealed for international assistance, warning that if swift humanitarian measures were not implemented soon, certain segments "of the population may resort to inappropriate coping strategies, such as charcoal production and could relocate to urban areas", thus exacerbating the poverty rate already present in the towns and cities.

It estimated the value of damaged and destroyed materials and buildings at more than US $23.5 million for Puntland alone.

Referring to the estimated damage to fisherman along the Puntland coastline, the report said: "The mission observed that these categories are equally affected and lost all their fishing equipment. Knowing [that] the livelihood of the affected communities is totally [dependent] on the sea - the fishing materials are extremely important for their daily survival."

The report recommended three areas of action. First, it said, there was a pressing need for six months' worth of provisions, sheltering materials, medical supplies, clothing, utensils to be delivered to the affected areas, and for the rehabilitation of water systems and latrines.

Secondly, community-based organisations and committees should be established to aid the coastal communities in restocking and finding fishing equipment as soon as possible in order to maintain the economic production of the affected areas.

Lastly, the report suggested that the government of Somalia "should play an active role in the humanitarian interventions through facilitating tax exemptions for emergency supplies and through effective coordination of relief activities in the region".

20/01/2005 - SOMALIA-THOUSANDS OF TSUNAMI SURNIVIVORS WERE DISPLACED PEOPLE.

GARACAD, 20 January (IRIN) - Thousands of people affected by the tsunami in Somalia had already been displaced by years of successive drought from their areas of origin and had moved to the coastal areas in search of opportunities, a report released by the Somali government and various agencies said.

"They [had] lost their livestock in the drought and the rest of the animals were decimated by torrential rains," said the report, compiled by a government assessment team that recently visited the affected areas in the semi-autonomous region of Puntland. "Thereafter, they moved to the coastal areas in view to get job opportunities and sustain their daily livelihood."

According to the report, about 3,344 families living in areas recently assessed for damage by the December tsunami in Puntland had suffered a "triple disaster".

First, they had been affected by four years of successive drought, which displaced them from their areas of origin. Then their livestock perished in considerable numbers and finally came the tsunami.

About 20,000 people from these families, it added, were now "idly" living "in caves and under trees" near the coastline. Around 298 citizens died or are missing and as many as 283 have been injured as a result of the tsunami in Puntland, the report said.

According to various relief agencies working in the region, however, about 150 people are estimated to have died throughout Somalia, while 54,000 were in need of emergency assistance. Northeastern Somalia was the worst affected, particularly a stretch of around 650 km between Hafun [Bari region] and Garacad [Mudug region].

According to relief agencies, the damage extended to other parts of the Somali coast, including the Lower Juba area, south of Mogadishu. The livelihoods of many people residing in small villages along the Somali coastline, particularly in the northeastern regions, were devastated.

The report appealed for international assistance, warning that if swift humanitarian measures were not implemented soon, certain segments "of the population may resort to inappropriate coping strategies, such as charcoal production and could relocate to urban areas", thus exacerbating the poverty rate already present in the towns and cities.

It estimated the value of damaged and destroyed materials and buildings at more than US $23.5 million for Puntland alone.

Referring to the estimated damage to fisherman along the Puntland coastline, the report said: "The mission observed that these categories are equally affected and lost all their fishing equipment. Knowing [that] the livelihood of the affected communities is totally [dependent] on the sea - the fishing materials are extremely important for their daily survival."

The report recommended three areas of action. First, it said, there was a pressing need for six months' worth of provisions, sheltering materials, medical supplies, clothing, utensils to be delivered to the affected areas, and for the rehabilitation of water systems and latrines.

Secondly, community-based organisations and committees should be established to aid the coastal communities in restocking and finding fishing equipment as soon as possible in order to maintain the economic production of the affected areas.

Lastly, the report suggested that the government of Somalia "should play an active role in the humanitarian interventions through facilitating tax exemptions for emergency supplies and through effective coordination of relief activities in the regions"

10/01/2005 - MR BLAIR TO MAKE TSUNAMI STATEMENT

UK soldiers have been clearing up debris in Sri Lanka and elsewhere Prime Minister Tony Blair is to make a statement to the Commons on the Asian tsunami, including an update on the British death toll. His statement to MPs will also include details of the UK's contribution to the relief effort so far.

So far 50 Britons have died with 391 more likely to have died. The total death toll stands at more than 150,000.

The Prime Minster earlier came under fire for not cutting short his holiday to deal with the crisis.

Labour backbenchers, returning from their Christmas break on Monday, will be addressed by Mr Blair in the evening.

On Sunday, Mr Blair said on Breakfast with Frost: "Since [Foreign Secretary] Jack Straw gave those figures a couple of days ago they haven't moved a great deal, which should give us some hope that we are beginning to reach the peak of the numbers. But we just can't be sure.

Difficult job

"It is just an immensely difficult job to get absolutely accurate figures, all countries are struggling with this."

Downing Street hopes Mr Blair's statement on the tsunami will underline how active the government has been in the relief effort, and in helping British victims and the bereaved.

More aid flights carrying water and equipment vital to the relief effort will be sent to Asia from the UK this week.

A plane chartered by the Department for International Development (DFID) will take sanitation equipment and 27 tonnes of water, given by Oxfam, to Medan in Indonesia.

It is one of four flights due to leave from Nottingham East Midlands airport on Monday.

Other DFID flights will head east over the course of the week, carrying equipment paid for by charities.

Meanwhile, Indonesian Foreign Minister Hassan Wirjuda will meet Foreign Secretary Jack Straw in London on Monday, to discuss the disaster.

10/01/2005 - ETHIOPIAN ORPHANS

ADDIS ABABA, 10 January (IRIN) - Wrapped in a bundle of warm blankets and lucky to be alive, four-month-old Thomas Bekele still faces a precarious future.

Orphaned three weeks ago when his mother died from tuberculosis, he is one of the almost five million orphans in Ethiopia - a mushrooming crisis that the government warned was "tearing apart the social fabric" of the country.

The rising number of orphans has, however, raised the demand for adoptions to a record high. Some 1,400 children made new homes abroad last year, more than double from the previous year.

Adoption agencies also doubled to 30 in the capital Addis Ababa in the last year, a highly lucrative market with some agencies charging parents fees of up to US $20,000 per child.

Bulti Gutema, who heads the country's adoption authority, says adoption of orphans poses many moral quandaries to his government. He blames the growing number of orphans and the increasing numbers of adoptions on poverty.

"We would prefer these children to remain in Ethiopia because it is their country," he says. "Adoption is the last resort because it doesn't help alleviate poverty in Ethiopia."

Bulti, however, admits that the $115 million a month needed to care for orphans in Ethiopia is simply out of the question, when compared to the country's annual health budget of $140 million. It means, for some children, overseas adoption is the only option, he says.

In a move to help stem the growing orphan crisis in Ethiopia, the US government announced a $20 million project in December to help the 530,000 HIV/AIDS orphans.

"We can't afford to look after every orphan," Bulti adds. "That is why adoption is one of our existing alternative child-care programmes, although it really solves the problems of just a few children."

Ethiopia has strict adoption laws, but the process can be pushed through in 10-15 days if the paperwork is in order, according to Balti.

An international convention, established in 1993, exists to protect children who are adopted overseas. It has been approved by 66 nations, although the Ethiopian government has not signed it yet.

Most orphaned children from Ethiopia go to France, Australia, the US and Ireland. Couples are turning abroad because of the huge delays - four or five years sometimes - to adopt within their own country.

"Parents adopt from Ethiopia because of the poverty and the children are beautiful and attractive," said Tsegaye Berhe of Horizon Homes, a halfway house where children from orphanages wait until they are selected by parents from the US.

"It is not difficult to adopt here, the Ethiopian government has few restrictions for adoptive parents. Organisations like his will pay orphanages a small amount for upkeep of a child.

"This should not be seen as though we are purchasing a child," says Tsegaye. "We are just refunding the costs incurred by the orphanages."

Most adoption agencies are non-profit. His organisation, which opened last year, received around $6,000 a month to cover the expense of looking after the 32 children it sent to America. Next year, they hope to send more than 50 children.

For accountant Russell Giles, 33, and his wife Vivian, 30, who have four of their own children, they expect to be in Ethiopia for three weeks while they adopt brother and sister Philimon, 5, and Bersable, 6.

"The government here has been very open and willing," said the couple from Salt Lake City, Utah, who are adopting privately from an orphanage, rather than through an agency. "Other countries appear very open, but clamp up once the process has started."

While they meet Philimon and Bersable for the first time in a nervous encounter, just a few metres away, 15-year-old Genet Girma was trying to give her two children up.

"I have nothing to give them," she said of the two tiny eight-week old twins strapped to her front and back. "I am too poor."

Most mothers will simply abandon their children near a police station or church rather than turn up at orphanages, where by law, they must be turned away. Any children that turn out to be HIV-positive cannot be put up for adoption.

Daniel, a three-year-old, bright-eyed boy who is HIV-positive, sits and stares each day as new prospective parents walks around the orphanage, often crying when they leave.

"It is very hard for him to see children leave with new moms and dads because he never leaves and he doesn't understand why," says Sister Camilla, who has worked in the country for more than 30 years.

07/01/2005 - SOMAILA - SHELTER MATERIALS BEING SENT TO TSUMANI AFFACTED AREAS.

NAIROBI, 7 January (IRIN) - The UN refugee agency is to ship a consignment of shelter materials and other non-food items this weekend to people left homeless in Somalia by the tsunami that also wreaked havoc in South Asia on 26 December.

"UNHCR has taken charge of the shelter aspect of the operation [in Somalia], targeting 5,000 households," the agency's spokesman in Nairobi, Emmanuel Nyabera, told IRIN.

The agency's initial intervention will be a shipload of 32,500 blankets and 2,995 plastic sheets from its supplies in Kenya. A vessel carrying that consignment and other relief materials for other agencies is expected to set sail from the Kenyan port of Mombasa on the weekend, headed for Boosaaso in Somalia.

Another 12,500 blankets and 22,900 cooking sets will follow next week, along with 20,000 mattresses and 10,000 jerry cans, the UNHCR said in a statement.

UNHCR has appealed for an initial US $500,000 to assist the worst affected areas of Somalia through the provision of relief items and shelter materials. That amount will be for an initial three-month period, pending a more comprehensive assessment.

The UN World Food Programme (WFP) said on Wednesday that it had distributed 218 mt of food aid so far to 12,000 Somalis affected by the tsunami. According to WFP estimates, up to 30,000 Somali survivors of the tsunami are in need of food assistance.

WFP teams on the ground described the destruction caused by the wave and the obstacles that relief efforts will face in delivering aid to these villages. Kulub, a village near Gara'ad, for example, was still partly under water.

"Most of the 1,200 members of this fishing community live in makeshift huts of canvas and wood, all of which were swept away by the water," the WFP statement said.

In Hurdiye - a village of some 1,000 people, mainly fishermen and salt producers - all of the roughly 100 small fishing boats and other fishing materials were washed away, WFP said.

Northeastern Somalia was the worst affected, particularly a stretch of around 650 km between Hafun [Bari region] and Garacad [Mudug region]. Damage extended to other parts of the Somali coast, including the Lower Juba area.

The livelihoods of many people residing in small villages along the Somali coastline, according to relief agencies, particularly in the northeastern regions, were devastated. Reports suggested that 150 lives were lost in the country.

06/01/2005 - TSUNAMI EFFECTS ON SOMALIA

The UN has launched a flash inter-agency appeal for more than US $10 million dollars to help thousands of people in Somalia who were affected by the tsunami that devastated areas of South Asia and swamped some Indian Ocean coastal areas on 26 December.

The Somali appeal, which was launched on Thursday, was part of a larger request for $977 million for all the countries affected by the tsunami. According to the appeal document, northeastern Somalia was the worst affected, particularly a stretch of around 650 km between Hafun [Bari region] and Garacad [Mudug region]. The damage extended to other parts of the Somali coast, including the Lower Juba area.

The tsunami led to the loss of life, destruction of shelters, houses and water sources, and loss of productive assets. Many parts of Somalia were already suffering from four consecutive years of drought and periodic floods, in addition to chronic insecurity. "The tsunami represents a further assault on an already vulnerable population," the appeal statement said.

04/01/2005 - TSUNAMI DEVASTES SOMALI ISLAND

SOMALIA: 130 reported killed over 15,000 affected and in urgent needs .

NAIROBI, 29 December (United Nations IRIN) - An estimated 110 people were killed in Somalia when the tsunami triggered by an earthquake in the Indian Ocean struck the Horn of Africa coastline, relief workers and local authorities said.

About 15,000 affected people are in need of immediate assistance, especially on the small low-lying peninsula of Hafun in northern Somalia where up to 85 percent of the infrastructure was reportedly damaged. Some 22 boats were missing.

Please HELP us to provide :

• Clean Water

• Food

• Medicine

• and Shelter

This appeal is organized by the Children of Ethiopia AID

Charity Commission No 10 98 604

covering the countries of the Horn of Africa. Somalia, Djibouti, Eritrea & Ethiopia.

TSUNAMI DEVASTATES SOMALI ISLAND

Most buildings on the Somali island of Hafun were swept away by the deadly Indian Ocean tsunami, an emergency aid relief team has revealed.

Roads washed away by the sea are hampering the delivery of food aid to some 4,500 islanders affected.

Waves which swept 7,000km (4,000 miles) from the epicentre left a trail of smashed buildings and boats along the East African coast.

More than 130 people in East Africa are known to have died in the floods.

CHOLERA FEAR

"Almost 95% of Hafun's buildings have been destroyed," the UN World Food Programme's Ali Issay - part of the first relief team to reach victims of the tsunami - told the BBC's Focus on Africa programme.

Dazed inhabitants have moved to higher ground and are wandering about asking for help, as there is no food and no fresh water on the island, he said.

SOME OTHER REPORTS ON THE TSUNAMI DISASTER in South Asia.

Tragic calm follows Aceh chaos

The BBC's Rachel Harvey was one of the first western correspondents to reach Banda Aceh in north-western Indonesia, the closest land to the epicentre of the earthquake and now a scene of devastation.

From the air, as you approach Banda Aceh Airport the area closest to the coast has clearly been inundated by water and is till completely flooded.

You can see the roofs of damaged houses and little trees sticking out of the water. As you come slightly further inland towards the airstrip, it looks deceptively peaceful.

BRITISH CHARITY EFFORT

British charities are stepping up efforts to help the devastated countries around the Indian Ocean. An emergency appeal organised by the Disasters Emergency Committee (DEC) is now in its second day. Sir Trevor McDonald and David Dimbleby are making television appeals for help from the public. More than £1m has been raised already by individual charities to try to ease the suffering in Sri Lanka, India, Indonesia and Thailand. Under the DEC appeal, organisations including ActionAid, British Red Cross, Cafod, Oxfam, Save The Children, Christian Aid and World Vision plan to provide clean water, food and shelter. They will also aim to provide longer-term support to people whose lives and livelihoods have been destroyed by the disaster. The committee is operating 3,000 telephone lines for donations. The telephone number is 087 0606 0900. Oxfam has raised £300,000 in two days. The charity is sending a plane with 27 tonnes of equipment from East Midlands Airport to Sri Lanka and Indonesia. The £100,000 shipment includes water tanks, pumps and pipes and equipment for building latrines to avert the risk of disease. The British Red Cross, which has raised £500,000 so far, is sending a plane with logistical equipment to join its team already stationed in Sri Lanka. The International Committee for the Red Cross has been helping to evacuate the wounded and deliver emergency supplies. Save The Children is planning an airlift to Sri Lanka on Sunday, where aid workers for the charity have been delivering food and medicine to 37,000 families. Christian Aid has already made £250,000 available for its partner organisations working in the area. Muslim charities in Britain, responding to an appeal from the Muslim Council of Britain, have already raised about £500,000.

Please visit Donations (TSUNAMI DISASTER) and contribute with any donation.

15/12/2004 - ERITREA CALLED ETHIOPIA TO COMPLY WITH BORDERS RULING.

NAIROBI, 15 December (IRIN) - Eritrea has called on Ethiopia to abide by the ruling of an independent commission that delineated their disputed border in 2002 and urged the international community to help secure peace and stability in the Horn of Africa.

An Eritrean foreign ministry statement sent to IRIN on Tuesday said the wrangle over the 1,000-km border could be resolved if Addis Ababa withdrew "its forces from sovereign Eritrean territories".

It demanded Ethiopia's "cooperation with the Boundary Commission to ensure expeditious demarcation of the boundary" and called for "full and unconditional respect of the Algiers Agreement".

"The government of Eritrea urges the international community to help secure peace and stability in our region by putting pressure on Ethiopia to ensure the long overdue demarcation of the boundary," the statement added.

The two neighbours fought a two-and-a-half year border war that claimed an estimated 70,000 lives. The war ended in December 2000 with a peace plan signed in Algiers, that called for the establishment of an internationally recognised border between them.

As part of the deal to end the war, Eritrea and Ethiopia agreed to form an independent boundary commission and to consider its decision final and binding.

Ethiopia objected to the commission's ruling, handed down in April 2002. Following the objection, the physical demarcation of the border was delayed. Relations between the two countries have since remained tense.

However, on 25 November, Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi announced in parliament a five-point plan for peace between the two countries, saying Ethiopia would accept the ruling "in principle".

On Monday, Meles told journalists in Addis Ababa that his country was committed to peace.

"The only way forward is through dialogue and to address the root causes of the problems," he said. "I do not believe unilateral military steps are conducive to peace in this region."

The Eritrean statement said the border stalemate had dislocated 60,000 people from their homes and villages and created "clouds of another unnecessary and unjustifiable confrontation".

14/12/2004 - POWER LINK TO BOOST ELECTRICITY SUPPLY

ADDIS ABABA, 14 December (IRIN) - Ethiopia and Djibouti are to link up their power generation in a bid to boost electricity access in both countries using loans worth US $32 million and $27 million respectively, the African Development Fund (ADF) said on Monday.

"The common sector goal is to improve the population's access to electricity in Ethiopia and Djibouti through regional cooperation in the energy sector," the fund said.

Only 13 percent of the population in Ethiopia has access to electricity but that would rise to 20 percent by 2012. In Djibouti 49 percent of people have access to electricity, which would increase to 60 percent by 2015.

The project includes development of power transmission network, electricity supply to border towns, project supervision and management and institutional support.

"The power interconnection permits harmonisation of investment programs between Ethiopia and Djibouti and will provide mutual benefits to these countries," the ADF said. "The project will largely benefit the border towns population."

The fund also announced it would finance a new Mombasa-Nairobi-Addis Ababa road corridor to boost economic integration between eastern Africa and the Horn. "The project road is an important section of the Trans-African highway corridor from Cairo to Cape Town," it said.

13/12/2004 - GERMAN PRESIDENT MAKES A PLEA FOR PEACE

ADDIS ABABA, 13 December (IRIN) - German President Horst Kohler made an impassioned plea on Monday for peace between Ethiopia and Eritrea, saying neither of the two countries could afford another war over their unresolved border dispute.

"The most important reason why wars should not happen is because wars are against the interests of the people," Kohler, former head of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), said in Addis Ababa on the first day of his four-day visit to Ethiopia. "In Eritrea, as in Ethiopia, there is poverty.

"Both countries - both peoples here in this region can't think that war is in their interest," Kohler continued. "Therefore, I do think the desire for peace will and should come mainly from the people in the region."

Ethiopia and Eritrea fought a two-and-a-half year border war that claimed an estimated 70,000 lives, The war ended in December 2000 with a peace plan that called for the establishment of an internationally recognised border between the two countries.

As part of the deal to end the war, Ethiopia and Eritrea agreed to form an independent boundary commission and to consider its decision final and binding. Ethiopia initially objected to the Commission's ruling, handed down in April 2002. However, Prime Minister Meles Zenawi said in parliament on 25 November as he announced a five-point plan for peace between the two countries that Ethiopia would accept the ruling "in principle".

Germany was the first nation to welcome the peace proposal, which has also been backed by the European Union and Japan.

Eritrea, on the other hand, rejected the proposal, accusing Ethiopia of stalling over the demarcation of the 1,000-km-long frontier, and warned that the two countries could go to war again if the border dispute is not settled.

"We hardly need to stress the implications of Ethiopia's continued intransigence and the inexcusable attitude of major international powers," the Eritrean information ministry stated recently. "Eritrea has shown maximum patience. We cannot accept the logic of force and accommodate Ethiopia's forcible occupation of our territory."

However, Meles told journalists at a joint press conference with Kohler in the National Palace that his country was committed to peace.

"The only way forward is through dialogue and to address the root causes of the problems," Meles said. "I do not believe unilateral military steps are conducive to peace in this region. I very much hope that those statements [made by Eritrea] will be limited to [the] rhetorical level because if they go beyond the rhetorical they can seriously endanger the peace of the region," said Meles.

Earlier the German government wrote off ?67 million (US $88,520,400) in debts owed by Ethiopia.

Kohler's four-nation Africa trip started in Sierra Leone. He then visited Benin before travelling to Ethiopia and will end his tour in Djibouti.

13/12/2004 - FISTULA HOSPITAL

ADDIS ABABA FISTULA HOSPITAL

HOSPITAL REPORT FOR THE QUARTER APRIL 2004.

Imagine arriving for the first time, and seeing the Hospital’s wonderful garden, the bright sunny words, colorful shawls on cold shoulders and smiles that you thought were long since gone.

So daily the women trickle in, dressed in simple clothes, some with shoes and others barefoot. Heads down, eyes sad, shameful of their wet dresses, the smell reflecting their pain in their very stance. How can one not be moved with compassion as we reach out and touch them and hug them, these forgotten untouchables of our world.

This quarter has been difficult for all of us. The AIDS scourge has hit us close to home. Two of our beautiful young nurse-aides have died. They were family; the other aides felt the loss especially because they had walked the hard road of a post fistula patient together; they lived in the hostel together; they knew each other's secret hopes and dreams... Now they are no more.

Protocol is being introduced for retroviral treatment of the HIV + women and believe that this is money well spent, though it will be an additional cost to the hospital, but it is in keeping with our times.

Our regular visiting urologist, Mr. Gordon Williams. has operated on some of the severely injured girls who hove been waiting for ileo conduit surgery. These little women have been prepared some time. They have been able to talk to others with ileal conduits, and our stoma nurse counsels them and explains what will be done and how this will change their lives.

Our patients are reminded that God loves them and cares for them. Melkitu and Mulunish help in teaching the women to read and write in either Oromingo or Amharic, and offering Bibles when requested, to those who have learned to read a little. At the evening school our teacher helps the nursing aides to improve reading and writing skills. Alemstehoye our part time knitting teacher continues to teach knitting and other simple skills to keep the women occupied as they wait.

Healthcare professionals

Drs. Ayele. Asfaw and Belay of the Addis Ababa University Post Graduate Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology have spent two months at the hospital learning how to repair the simpler vesico vaginal fistula. Our hope and prayer is that they will use these skills to operate on simple fistulae in the remoter areas of Ethiopia.

Dr. Gunter from ICRC spent some Time here. He plans to train the ICRC surgeons and gynecologists in repair and management of women with obstetric fistulae. Drs. Giovanni and Igor visited us. They are working in Mozambique and will offer this service To Their patients. Dr. Ibrahim works in Western Sudan. He stayed for one month To learn our techniques to improve his delivery skills in El Fashir,

Dr. Andrew Browning and Dr. Biruk went to Bangladesh in October, To operate and teach medical doctors our method of obstetric fistulae surgery and Dr. Ambaye Woldemichael went to northern Kenya to operate on 40 Sudanese refugees brought in by the ICRC airplane from southern Sudan.

We hope that a midwifery tutor might come and be in charge of grass root level through to nursing level training. She will train up our nursing aides, she will teach our nurses about obstetrics, ensure a good rotation of service training for the regional coordinators. We are excited about the possibility of having her instruct the patients in 'Why I got a fistula also teaching the residents of Desta Mender in basic childbirth methods and identification of high risk mothers. They in turn can share their knowledge with their village women when they go home on holiday.

Hospital facilities

The annexed land was been leveled, the thirty-bed ward and annex is complete.

The storeroom, pharmacy and outreach coordinators office are nearly completed. A rubbish collection area walled off and plans for a larger incinerator and compost site are on the drawing board.

Plans are going ahead for the two of five outreach centres to be built to improve the services to the far reaching places of Ethiopia from whence so many of our poor women come. The Australian Government will help us build one of the centres, which meant that we would be improving the services to the women of Mekelle, Bahrdar and Yirgalem just leaving Harrar and Metu to build! We have now heard that our USA trust wants to build another one for us.

Our Norwegian friend are building Yirgalem Fistula Outreach Centre, Mr. Varnero (our favorite contractor) is building Bahrdar Fistula Outreach Centre, Australia is building Mekelle Fistula Outreach centre and now USA is building the Horror Fistula Outreach Centre we have only one left to build in Metu Western Ethiopia! Our five-year project looks like it will be accomplished within two years!

Dr. Hamlin and Ruth Kennedy visited Mekelle to see the proposed site. The one selected will be in the grounds of the local hospital; we can use the X-ray Department and Laboratory facilities. The kitchen and laundry at not adequate to meet the current demand so we will have our own.

Dr. Biruk is operating in Harrar on more than twenty women waiting for him. He will at the same time discuss with the head of the Health Bureau about where we can build our new centre in that town.

International

Drs. Biruk Tafesse and Andrew Browning assisted some colleagues in Bangladesh. Dr. Ambaye went to Malaysia to participate in the Averting Maternal Death and Disability Conference held in Kuala Lumpur and Dr. Andrew also attended a urogynoecology conference in Italy where much interest was generated.

Dr. Hamlin visited USA for three weeks speaking throughout on The plight of women with obstetric fistulae and our hospital and plans for the future. She was honored everywhere she went. She has received distinguished awards from the American College of Surgeons and the International Federation of Obstetrician - Gynecologists (FI60) during the month of October. This has done much to raise awareness around the world.

Dr. Biruk Tafesse attended the International Federation of Obstetrician Gynaecologists Congress held in Chile where Dr. Hamlin was honored by FI60 and supported in an address given by Lord Naren Patel and a CD prepared specifically for this occasion.

Many doctors are contacting us for more information on how to help obstetric fistulae patients, thus indicating an increase in awareness internationally. Drs. Andrew and Ambaye were invited to WHO Head Office in Geneva to review the Obstetric Fistula Manual, Dr. Andrew has written one of the chapters. The time was -fruitful and we look forward to seeing this manual come out later this year.

Dr. Mulu Muleta was invited to attend a meeting in Bangladesh for the South-east Asian Maternal Morbidity Conference where she presented a paper.

We have had friends from Johnson and Johnson visiting the hospital and the village of Desta Mender and we hosted the Notional Reproductive Health Task Force Meeting here in the Fistula Hospital grounds. Dr. Hamlin was able to talk about the plight of our women and the need for the nation to move together to reduce these tragically high statistics,

STOP PRESS

Dr Hamlin flew to Chicago in January to appear on the Oprah Winfrey Show. Our USA Partner Trust has been deluged with support and enquiries.

Providing a voice for women

The best voice for other women with fistulae is another fistula patient cured. They carry the word far and wide- We are working on Job descriptions for the Coordinators for our new Outreach Centres. These women will be key players in running our centres. They will be trained in management of finances, pharmacy, ward and theatre services as well as providing a voice for these most ostracized of women.

Dr. Biruk has completed a calendar for 2004 which is intended to raise awareness of childbirth injuries. These have now been produced and we are giving Them away to key role players in Ethiopia and posted them abroad to those who play an important part in helping us help women with obstetric fistulae. We pray that these touching portrayals will remind government personnel, international agencies that women have suffered and continue to suffer because services are inadequate for their childbirth needs as a basic human right.

11/11/2004 - OLD ALPHABET ADAPTED FOR MODERN USE IN TECHNOLOGY.

ADDIS ABABA, 11 November (IRIN) - One of the world's oldest living alphabets could make its debut soon on mobile phones, Ethiopian scientists said on Thursday. In groundbreaking research, the ancient script of Ethiopic, which dates back to the fourth century, has been adapted so it can be used for SMS text messaging.

The scientists believe it will open up the digital age to millions of people in Ethiopia who cannot speak or write English, but use their own centuries-old alphabet.

Samuel Kinde, who proposed the research, said the breakthrough means rural farmers can access healthcare via text messaging, e-commerce and banking.

"We are enabling one of humanity's oldest scripts to enter the wireless age," he told IRIN. "Think of a rural coffee farmer who will be able to text yield and price information to dealers in the capital and elsewhere in real time."

The system could also be used by rural farmers to gain vital information like weather and harvest reports without the need of expensive computers.

"This is an important advance," Assistant Prof Solomon Atnafu said from the Addis Ababa University computer science department, a key researcher on the project.

He said that the relatively cheap cost of mobile phones over computers makes them an ideal tool in helping open up the impoverished country to the digital revolution.

The researchers, who carried out the work at Addis Ababa University, said European mobile phone giant, Nokia, has already expressed interest in their yearlong study.

"There is a significant amount of interest from potential users as well as from chipset manufacturers," added Dr Samuel, an engineering professor from the University of California at San Diego.

"The reason why we chose Ethiopic is for the very fact that for SMS and other wireless applications to succeed in Ethiopia, the local writing system has to be used," he added. "We felt the majority of users will be comfortable in writing their own script. The vision also anticipates that mobile phone systems can indeed be used for more fundamental and far-reaching purposes in food security, SMS-based telemedicine and commerce, among other things."

Ethiopic is used for Amharic - the national language of Ethiopia's 70 million people. It has always been a source of pride for Ethiopians. The nation is the only African country with its own alphabet, which is still widely used. The script is also used to write the holy Orthodox Christian script Ge'ez and is still chanted by priests in incense-filled churches across the country.

However, it does pose problems for exploiting modern communication technology because of its ungainly 345 letters compared with 26 in the Latin alphabet. The scientists have whittled that number down to 210 characters. They then "mapped" a base alphabet of 28 letters onto a standard handset, with users having to thumb in more keystrokes if they wanted the additional characters

02/11/2004 - POTENTIAL FAMINE IN 2005

ADDIS ABABA, 2 November (IRIN) - A government agency warned of a "potential famine" in Ethiopia during 2005, saying food shortages could affect up to 12 million people and the crisis, which could hit the country by the end of 2004, has worsened due to inadequate rainfall and a gradual loss of farmers' assets.

The government's emergency arm, the Disaster Prevention and Preparedness Commission (DPPC), issued the warning on Tuesday. The DPPC said earlier this month that "signs of malnutrition" and a deteriorating situation in many parts of the country were imminent.

"There is cause for concern," DPPC spokesman Sisay Tadesse said. "The international community is going to need to provide support."

He said the exact scale of needs would be established after a harvest assessment led by the DPPC, which is due to start this week. The government is expected to then appeal to the international community for support on December 15th.

"This assessment will alert the international community to what is happening on the ground," he told IRIN from the DPPC headquarters in Addis Ababa.

Ethiopia currently has food stocks of around 260,000 mt, according to the DPPC. It said up to 1.2 million mt of food might be needed for distribution among those affected by the shortages. The DPPC's Food Supply Prospects Based on Different Types of Scenarios in 2005 said between nine and 12.6 million people could be dependent on foreign-food aid next year.

The UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) said in a report released at the weekend, that less than eight million people are currently dependent on food aid.

"The overall food supply situation remains highly precarious," said FAO in its Foodcrops and Shortages report for October, released on Sunday. "The main producing regions in the western and central parts of the country are expected to have an average crop, while the eastern crop producing and agro-pastoral areas are facing serious problems due to late and erratic seasonal rains coupled with inadequate seed supplies."

The FAO said that 35 countries around the world, including 23 African nations, are experiencing food shortages. It also noted Ethiopia is facing "unfavourable prospects" for crops this year.

In 2002, Ethiopia was hit by a serious crisis that left 14 million people dependent on food handouts. The aid effort was one of the largest ever undertaken in Africa, according to the UN. An estimated 1.8 million mt of food was shipped into the country.

The Famine Early Warning Systems Network (FEWS NET), which is funded by the US Agency for International Development (USAID), has also warned of a food crisis.

"Results of the government-led contingency planning process warn of potential famine," FEWS NET said in a special report on Ethiopia released earlier this month.

Ethiopia - with a population of 70 million people - is one of the poorest countries in the world with an average annual income of just US $100.

Acoording to FEWS NET, the crisis may peak between the end of 2004 and the beginning of 2005, a period falling outside the "normal" response period between June and September. It also said that health and water sector did not receive adequate support.

01/11/2004 - FISTULA HOSPITAL - OCTOBER 2004

FISTULA HOSPITAL ADDIS ABABA

Hospital Report for the Quarter October 2004

There has been no reduction in the number of patients arriving at the hospital, many of them with so little hope, and it is with deep sadness that we report on one young lady of only eighteen years who took her own life because of the total despair of her injuries and suffering. We continue to repair hurt little bodies that have endured between four and seven day sin labour,. During these long painful days, pressure on the tissue lying between the body’s bony head and the mother’s bony pelvis causes complications created by the death of tissue in the vagina and adjoining organs.

Labour over, now she deals with the constant trickle of urine. She soon becomes smelly, is unwanted and is often referred to as “spoiled”. The rental houses in Addis Ababa where patients stay who cannot be admitted for surgery because our bds are full, will soon be out of business because we have great plans for housing them.. out in Desta Mender.. while waiting.

To heal these young ladies completely is more than we alone can do. The pain, the rejection, the isolation and abysmal despair is more than any single person can bear. However, gentle voices, warm hugs, bright smiles and the medical care begin to heal that inner hurt. Yhe healing is an ongoing process.

Our find team of surgeons examine, select for surgery and then monitor these beautiful women. Our compassion filled nurses supervise this monitoring process helped by our quite amazing team of nurse aides, - all former patients who in turn care through true empathy with their suffering sisters.

Through all these stages a kindly thread of literacy and God loving teaching is performed by our teachers who enable the women to learn some basic reading and writing skills. Another teaches knitting skills and yet another advises the women of their rights both as woman and in marriage, as well as advising in basic money management.

Capacity.

The land, in the hospital grounds, given last year by the Municipality of Addis Ababa has truly changed its face. A long ward with ten beds on the lower level and 22 beds on the upper level.

Wonderful news for our dear matron who is always trying to bring in extra women and often can give them only half a bed shared with another leaking sister.

Follow Ups

For each patient leaving we provide a card covering their social history, their injury and the operation undergone at the hospital.

Matron and the senior nurses tell them what to do; No sexual intercourse for three months and then when they become pregnant to go to a hospital with the card and our prayer is that these women will have an elective cesarean section, but sadly sometimes the husband doen’t have the money or does not permit this. Others are turned away from the hospitals, still others find the surgeon away and so on ..

Once we have the five Outreach Centres we will be able to have the women return to our local Outreach Centre and have the coordinator to follow up on them ensuring a hospital delivery. The Outreach Centres are essential for this component of our care.

Other News

Desta Mender is our village where women with chronic childbirth injuries may find a safe haven and home. It has been enriched with a guest Sister Rosemary Curtis from UK who helped us by staying there for three weeks supervising their activities. The crafts and literacy teachers continue.

The local government supports the hospital fully. Sister Ruth was able to visit Tigrai, Amhara and Harrar regions where agreements for the projected Outreach Centres have been signed. There regional governments have been informed of our objectives and plans and they are pleased and realize the timeliness of our action.

Voice for Women The Tigrai Women’s Association is spreading the word n Tigrai. UNICAF is helping throughout the country to get the word out. They have local contacts all over Ethiopia.

Sending our women home with information remains the best tool for getting the message to women around this vast and stunningly beautiful country. Speaking to the government on every occasion of their needs is important.

Our own nursing aides go home regularly for their one month annual leave. They talk about the hospital, about the patients, about our video and about what is being done and what should be done to prevent obstetric fistulae. The are wonderful ambassadors

18/10/2004 - WORLD BANK OFFICIAL WARNS OVER OIL PRICES

A senior World Bank official warned on Tuesday of the "substantial" impact of continuing high oil prices on developing countries. Francois Bourguignon, the bank's chief economist, said that precious foreign exchange reserves were being depleted by as much as one third and families were paying more for goods.

"With the same amount of money people will not be able to buy the same amount of goods as before," Bourguignon, who was on a six-day visit to Ethiopia, told journalists in the capital, Addis Ababa. "The drop in the real purchases made by those people is around two to five percent of GDP," he added. Bourguignon said some countries had seen their foreign exchange reserves depleted by as much as 30 percent as they struggled to pay for oil.

He said that experts from the World Bank estimated that oil prices had risen by around $10 a barrel on average from the previous year. "The impact of that on oil consuming countries is substantial," added Bourguignon, who has been holding talks with Ethiopian officials on global anti-poverty targets.

11/10/2004 - BRITISH PRIME MINSTER IN ADDIS ABABA

ADDIS ABABA, 11 October (IRIN) - British Prime Minister Tony Blair said on Friday the time for excuses on Africa was over, adding that Africa must be pushed to the top of the world's agenda.

As he left Ethiopia after the opening of the British-sponsored Commission for Africa, set up to reverse the continent's fortunes, Blair charged that now was the time for action.

"The price of failure would be disaster for Africa and for the wider world," Blair said as he unveiled his vision for the continent, which has grown poorer in the last 40 years. "The prize for success will be an Africa standing proud in its own right in the international community. Next year will be the year of decision for Africa and the international community."

Blair sees his positioning as president of both the powerful G8 and the European Union in 2005 as a unique chance to tackle the crisis facing Africa. And the commission he chairs will publish its report by March, ahead of the UK- hosted G8 summit in June, to inform Blair on how to combat the continent's enormous woes.

Africa will be asked to intensify peer group review to stamp out corruption and human rights abuses. Rich nations will be asked to write-off debt, end subsidies and increase international aid. Disease, HIV/Aids, debt, poor trade rules and conflict are all ravaging Africa.

African countries are saddled with US $305 billion in debt, and their products account for barely 2 percent of world trade. Investment in the continent has shrunk to $11 billion a year.

"The problems are multiple - we know them all: debt, disease, conflict, poor governance and inadequate aid," Blair said. "The difference is, this time, we have to put together a plan that is comprehensive in its scope and has at its core a real partnership between Africa and the developed world."

The meeting is the commissions' first in Africa after its initial gathering in London. The 17 commissioners include Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi and Tanzanian President Benjamin Mkapa.

At its opening the Prime Minister announced a European Union battle force dedicated to intervening in African conflicts and deployable within 10 days of a political instruction. Blair said the force should be ready next year. He called for funding of the troubled Darfur region to be increased tenfold from $15 million to $150 million.

Blair also revealed that Britain would train, directly or indirectly, 20,000 African troops over the next five years. He said a recovery for Africa was necessary to keep the rest of the world secure.

"We know that poverty and instability lead to weak states, which can be havens for terrorists and other criminals," he said. "Even before 9/11, al-Qaida had bases in Africa. They still do, hiding in places where they can go undisturbed by weak governments."

Speaking to a hall of leading African politicians and economists, Blair described the drive to restore hope for Africa as a "noble cause worth fighting for" in an era of cynicism and disengagement from the political process.

"People can be cynical about it or get on board," he challenged. "I think they should get on board. It is clear the spotlight of the whole of the international community should be focused on Africa. The purpose of next year has got to be international attention on Africa. The time for excuses will be over.

20/08/2004 - UNMEE DIRECT FLIGHTS BETWEEN ADDIS ABABA & ASMARA

ADDIS ABABA, 20 August (IRIN) - The Ethiopian government has allowed the United Nations Mission in Ethiopia and Eritrea (UNMEE) to operate direct flights between Addis Ababa and Asmara, lifting a ban that was put in place after the border war between the two countries ended in 2000.

"The (Ethiopian) Prime Minister wrote to the Secretary-General and we were informed [of the decision to lift the ban] by the office of the Secretary-General," George Somerwill, UNMEE's deputy chief spokesman told IRIN by telephone from Addis Ababa, on Friday.

"Some of our flights will now be able to fly directly to Asmara," said Somerwill, adding that UNMEE planes in the Eritrean capital, Asmara, would also fly directly to Addis Ababa, if there was need to pick up equipment or personnel from the Ethiopian capital.

UNMEE had not been operating direct flights from Asmara to Addis Ababa. Instead its planes would first stop in the Eritrean port town of Assab. In July, the UN requested Ethiopian Prime Minister, Meles Zenawi, to allow direct UNMEE flights between the two capitals.

The Ethiopian News Agency quoted a statement from the Ministry of Information in Addis Ababa, as saying: "The prime minister has made it clear that UNMEE can commence its direct flights whenever it needs to do so."

Earlier this month, the Eritrean government reopened a supply route to the west of the country, which had been closed to UNMEE since March.

The Asmara-Keren-Barentu road was closed following accusations by the Eritrean government that UNMEE forces were using the road to illegally monitor its troop movements.

Ethiopia and Eritrea fought a bloody two-and-a-half-year war over their 1,000-km border, ending in a peace accord signed in Algiers in 2000. Under the deal, an independent boundary commission was set up to defuse tensions by demarcating the border.

The commission issued its ruling in April 2002, but this was rejected by Ethiopia because it placed Badme, a symbolic border town over which the war had broken out, in Eritrea. The 4,200 UNMEE force was deployed to monitor the cessation of hostilities and to help ensure the observance of security commitments by the two countries.

14/08/2004 - URGENT APPEAL FOR £ 3,000

This is an URGENT appeal to raise £ 3,000 to ship ONE container with Medical equipment to Ethiopia.

It took a long time and a very hard work of Dr M.R. Brett-Crowther to prepare this shipment for Ethiopia with the care of, “ORDER OF THE ORTHODOX HOSPITALLERS” Charity No 1052263 (This order was founded with the permission of President Archbishop Makarios III of Cyprus in 1972 and with the blessing of The Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople and other Orthodox hierarchs. Since then, they have assisted with Medical Help many countries. From Russia to Palestine and from Romania to Haiti. ) We are now jointly, trying to help also the children in the Horn of Africa by sending this first Aid.

This shipment of Medical equipment consist of 23 boxes packed into one container with :

- 10 dialysis machines - 4 anaesthetic machines - numerous surgical instruments (Many completely new) - Syringe drivers for terminally ill patients - Syringes - I.V. Kits - Autoclaves etc - Baby clothes & soft toys - Children’s clothes - Blankets - And many various.

Now that this shipment is ready to go, we currently have a shortfall of £ 3,000 being the cost to ship this container to Ethiopia.

Please help with a donation. Effecting this shipment we are just saying a BIG thank you, to ALL these good people who have worked so hard during all these months.

The people in the Order and dealing with this shipment have exhausted all their efforts and patience. For your guidance, we are quoting part of an Email just received. Quote

THE MOST SACRED ORDER of THE ORTHODOX HOSPITALLERS

Chancellor: Dr M.R. Brett-Crowther, August 13th 2003 …… the clock is ticking and if no solution is found soon, I will have to make a negative decision. There is no more time to waste. With every good wish, Yours sincerely, Dr M.R. Brett-Crowther Unquote

Please visit our website www.childrenofethiopia.com (Donation)

ANY DONATION, WILL ASSIST WITH THIS SHIPMENT Thank you Children of Ethiopia Aid

01/08/2004 - FISTULA HOSPITAL JULY 2004

FISTULA HOSPITAL ADDIS ABABA

Hospital Report for the Quarter July 2004

We received a young patient in so much pain, her face a picture of misery and perplexity, quite emaciated and looking like an old woman at 16 years of age. One day she had been joyfully pregnant with bated Breath awaiting her newborn baby and then a few days later a life destroyed simply because there was no hospital, and no one to help with this obstructed labour. Sadly despite everyone’s efforts she died. Her dress was rags, patched at the back where the ammonia from the urine had worn it away. Many of the outpatients had down cast eyes, and were unwilling to shake our hands, preferring to keep their hands close to themselves fearful of rejection once more. They startled looks when patted gently on the shoulder. But the transformation at this hospital always remains a new and absolute joy. Going from fearful, rejected, downcast to smiling, shoulders high and laughing even this is the privilege we see after successful surgery. On the sad side though are those who once again have had a failed operation, after all the pain the urine still comes, the catheter is now out but the control is lost. .. We feel their pain, because they had hoped so much to be dry. So we love them, encourage them and tell them we will try again or do another operation and build up their hope again. Those women who have been waiting for the end of the harvest and for their men folk to accompany them arrived in March. Each day the bare footed or at best plastic shoed women drift in through our gates, sitting patiently on the wooden slatted benches provided for them. They wait until the doctor has finished surgery or the round of the in patients and finally during the late morning or early afternoon they are seen. Outside the outpatients department there is a muddy puddle where they have stood waiting once called for the line up to see the doctor.

Health Care Professionals.

Drs Getachew, Eyassu, Dawit, of the Addis Ababa University Post-Graduate Department of Obstetrics and Gynaecology spent two months at the hospital leaning how to repair the simpler vesico vaginal fistulae. Our hope and prayer is that they will use this skill to operate on simple cases in the remoter areas of Ethiopia. Dr Nell Wagoner from Alaska, USA has worked with women with obstetric fistulae in Zimbabwe and wished to spend more of her life helping women throughout Africa by repairing their childbirth injuries, so she spent a month with us. Then Dr Abdel Rahman Ali from Sudan was here during the following month. He was found to be quite expert at obstetric fistulae surgery. We hope that he can go elsewhere in Sudan to strengthen those areas so underserved. Dr Elspeth Patterson from Scotland was here for a month. She has taken her new skill to northern Pakistan to help those women there. She has written to say her first case has arrived, so as you can see our trainees are being activity put to use. The midwifery tutor, Sr. Emnet is now working with us. She is teaching four new nursing aides. She also teaches hygiene and basic obstetric care at Desta Mender. We are pleased with her dynamic interest and desire to see patients cared for correctly. Teaching the patients about their bodies is essential as they return home in order that those in the villages may know more about themselves. Some twenty women were asked. “Why do you think you got a fistula?” All replied that they thought it was a curse from God.

Improving the Hospital capacity.

Annexe Ward

The annexe ward is awaiting the final touches now and is looking quite stunning. It is a delightful building with plenty of sunshine. There are some alterations needed for the safety of the patients regarding rails and steps etc. But other than that we will soon be able to start landscaping and tidying up the area. We will house 24 patients there and 12 nursing aides on the lower level. The nursing aides will have a little sitting room area where they can relax and watch television and have coffee ceremonies. We are now planning for the furnishing of this building. We are arranging for the furniture and suppliers for the annexe, which, we have named “Bethlehem” ward. The selection of who will live there and which patients will go there has been done by Sister Ejigayhu our Matron.

Outreach Centres Mr Varnero, our building contractor has built and financed the Bahdar Fistula Outreach Centre. There is a main ward, laundry and kitchen plus an operating theatre as the local hospital facilities simply cannot accommodate another theatre. Our international partners visited the site in April so they saw the first of the 5 Outreach Centres at almost completion. It was his firm that undertook the major refurbishment of the Hospital in 1998 and constructed Desta Mender recently. The Ambassador of the Norwegian Embassy and a NORAD representative visit us and they are most positive about the Centre in Yirga Alem which they are to finance. We are grateful to them for doing this for the women in that region. The Norwegian Lutheran Mission will be monitoring the project on behalf of the Government. Our trust in Australia is planning to build the Mekelle Fistula Outreach Centre, and our Foundation in the USA is financing the Centre at Harrar.

Celebration of 30 Years service at the Hospital.

On Sunday 2 May 2004 representatives of the Hospital and its supporters around the world gathered in Addis Ababa to celebrate 30 years of service to the women of Ethiopia. In particular, all the hospital’s International Partners were represented. Whilst there were many celebratory occasions, the Conference was used as a forum to see how best we can help the hospital in the long term with its plans for major expansion into 5 Outreach Centres which are mini hospitals.

Social Rehabilitation.

The majority of our patients go home a day or two after being declared dry. They are taken by car to the bus station where one of our guards ensures that they are on the right bus going to the correct town or community. They normally travel in twos so that they are not stranded alone in the big towns and then they find their way to their own little villages usually on foot. Some will remarry and have children; others will find their role as the one who had fistula and has been cured in telling her story to others and encouraging women to go soon to the hospital if labour is over long. Both will be a valuable contributor to her community.

20/07/2004 - RAINFALL, TIMELY FOOD AID DELIVERIES IMPROVE HUMANITARIAN SITUATION

NAIROBI, 20 July (IRIN) - Recent rainfall and increased distribution of aid have improved the immediate humanitarian situation in the country, but additional pledges are still required to cover an 11 percent food shortfall in the June-December period, a famine alert network has reported.

The USAID-funded Famine Early Warning System Network (FEWS Net), however, said an estimated 50 percent of humanitarian needs for the peak shortage months of September to November was yet to be obtained. "Only 36 percent of the non-food sector's emergency requirements have been met. At a minimum, already-pledged resources must be delivered and distributed on time in order to reduce uncertainties for food-insecure households and to help them retain productive assets," FEWS Net said in its July update for Ethiopia.

It said food aid distribution had improved because of the increase in pledges. Between January and June 2004, the Ethiopian Disaster Prevention and Preparedness Commission's (DPPC), UN World Food Programme and NGOs had managed to distribute 386,110 mt of food, equivalent to about 68 percent of the total required amount, and 10 percent higher than the cumulative deliveries between January and April.

In addition, the DPPC pre-positioned 10,787 mt of cereals and supplementary food for drought-affected areas which become inaccessible during the July-August rainy season. However, although the distribution-to-needs ratio appeared to be improving, there was still room for further improvement, FEWS Net said.

Despite improvements in the food aid pipeline, pockets of acute malnutrition remained, it added. The DPPC, donors, UN agencies and NGOs, are expected to update the humanitarian appeal in August, according to FEWS Net.

It said early cessation of the long rains in the Somali region had put pastoralists at the risk of food shortage. Resource- and clan-based conflicts in Warder, Dagahabur, Fik and Gode zones had exacerbated the situation by limiting people's movement and increasing local prices, it added.

June rainfall was normal to above normal in most crop-dependent areas in the western half of the country. On the other hand, an early withdrawal and erratic distribution of Belg rains (March-May) had led to moisture deficits in the east.

FEWS Net added that cereal prices had been stable in June, continuing a trend that started in March. Stable prices would help rural households obtain what food they could through the markets during the current hunger period, although rural cash income was critically limited by a lack of labour and other off-farm income opportunities.

Despite improvements in the food pipeline, however, as many as 7.1 million Ethiopians would require appropriate types and levels of assistance in the coming months to rebuild their livelihoods following recurrent droughts, FEWS Net said.

12/07/2004 - ANNAN CALLS FOR

ADDIS ABABA, 12 July (IRIN) - UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan has told Ethiopia and Eritrea that "sober choices" must be made if they are to end their potentially dangerous stalemate. In his latest report to the UN Security Council on the progress of the UN Mission in Ethiopia and Eritrea (UNMEE), Annan said the four-year-old peace process was unlikely to succeed without flexibility from both sides.

He said Asmara and Addis Ababa must explain to their peoples that the deadlock could not be overcome by digging their heels in. Annan also noted that the stalemate was a source of instability in the region and could have potentially devastating results for both nations. "I am concerned that a relatively minor incident - even one of miscalculation - could degenerate into a very serious situation, which no one would wish for and which would be tragic for all concerned," he said.

The peace process between Ethiopia and Eritrea ground to a halt in April 2002 after the independent boundary commission ruled on the disputed frontier. The commission, which was agreed on by both countries after a border war ended in December 2000, ruled that certain territories were part of Eritrea, a decision rejected by Ethiopia. Demarcation of their 1,000-km frontier would by now have been complete, but it was delayed three times before being suspended indefinitely.

Annan also referred to the strained relations between UNMEE and Eritrea. He cited restrictions on movement, detentions of local staff and public criticism of UNMEE by officials as having resulted in the deterioration of relations. This year, some 100 local staff in Eritrea had been "rounded up" by the authorities for national service, despite the exemption of UN staff from military service, he noted.

"The peace process between Ethiopia and Eritrea is unlikely to succeed if the parties remain unwilling to move forward and be accommodating," Annan warned. "Four years have passed since the end of hostilities, and it would now be time for the parties to demonstrate extra flexibility.

"It is hoped that the two governments will realise, and perhaps explain to their peoples, that sober choices will have to be made in order to end the current stalemate. Failure to do so could indeed bring into jeopardy the overall peace endeavours," he added his report. "On the other hand, an early conclusion of the peace process would inevitably allow both countries to reap the fruits of peace and concentrate on much-needed reconstruction and development."

The secretary-general's report, which covers the last four months, was released after Annan visited both countries last week and met their respective leaders. The report also coincided with Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi telling his country's parliament on Friday that Ethiopia wanted peace with Eritrea, but maintaining its opposition to the border ruling. "Attempting to implement the decision as it stands at a time of great tension could result in a return to hostilities in the near future," he told the MPs.

12/07/2004 - UNPRECEDENTED ECONOMIC AND AGRICULTURE GROWTH REPORTED FOR 2003/2004

ADDIS ABABA, 12 July (IRIN) - Prime Minister Meles Zenawi said on Friday that Ethiopia enjoyed unprecedented economic and agricultural growth over the past 11 months. Presenting his annual progress report for 2003/2004 to parliament, he said the economy had grown by 11.6 percent, and agriculture by nearly 20 percent.

Meles also told the country's 547 parliamentarians that foreign investment had grown by over 80 percent last year, while exports had risen by 13 percent in the past 11 months.

Ethiopia's priority would now be to boost the agriculture sector, he said announcing in this context that the food security budget would be doubled to about US $230 million. Agriculture is vital to Ethiopia's achieving its annual $6.7 billion gross domestic product, and more than 80 percent of its 70 million people work in that sector.

The figures Meles gave are particularly significant since a severe drought brought about a 25-percent drop in harvests in 2002/2003, while the economy experienced negative growth. The country's extreme dependence on rain-fed agriculture results in fluctuating and volatile growth rates, which, some analysts argue, exacerbate deep-rooted poverty.

Meles emphasised that without peace future development could be undermined, but he acknowledged that relations with Eritrea remained in deep freeze. He revealed that the annual budget for the military for the current year would remain below $348 million so as not to strain the economy.

He noted that the federal police had undergone extensive training "to ensure that law and order are respected", and announced the establishment of a federal rapid deployment force which would make it possible for police to be deployed to any part of the country where disturbances erupted.

Meles also spoke of defusing potential conflicts in the regions, saying "developments" in the Somali region in eastern Ethiopia could destabilise the country. "Quite a number of measures were undertaken this year to deal with instability in and between regions," he noted. In the northeastern Afar region, armed groups had laid down their arms, while in Gambela in the west a commission had been established to bring to justice people believed to have perpetrated killings there earlier this year.

He warned, however, that if security in the Somali region came under threat, the government would "take whatever measures are necessary under the law" to resolve the situation. "The Somali region has also been faced with problems on and off as regards good governance," Meles said, referring to disturbances that have occurred there.

"As development there can place the peace of our country in jeopardy, the federal government has expressed its grave concern to the regional administration. The federal government is confident that the leaders of the region will do away with the troublemakers in their midst and ensure the prevalence of peace and stability," he said.

His 19-page report outlines the activities undertaken last year by the ruling coalition, the Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF).

Meles was first elected prime minister in August 1995 and is chairman of both the Tigray People's Liberation Front and the EPRDF. He was president of the country in a transitional government from 1991, having led the rebels in the overthrew of the former military ruler, Col Mengistu Haile Mariam.

In the course of his address, the prime minister also spoke of boosting trade and industry and ending bureaucratic bottlenecks to expedite investment. He said more children were going to school, and pointed out that improving the skills of government in areas like the civil service and justice was a priority. Fighting the spread of HIV/AIDS and tackling poor health coverage were also emphasised during his address.

07/07/2004 - BORDER SITUATION IMROVING

ADDIS ABABA, 7 July (IRIN) - The United Nations Mission in Ethiopia and Eritrea (UNMEE) has said that incidents along the 1,000-km common border have declined and the situation in the area is calm.

Maj-Gen Robert Gordon, the UNMEE force commander, told senior military officials on Monday that the border situation had seen some improvement. The recent visit by UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan to the region, he added, had also brought "a high level of international attention" to the stalled peace process.

UNMEE had earlier expressed concern that incidents of cattle rustling and outbreaks of firing could heighten tension along the border. But speaking at a Military Coordination Committee (MCC) meeting hosted by the UN, Gordon said: "It is fair to say that the number of incidents has been reduced, as has the military rhetoric."

The MCC was attended by military delegations from both countries. "At the same time, the level of cooperation with UNMEE is better than in the period before the last MCC meeting. All this is positive," Gordon said.

UNMEE has established three local Sector Military Coordination Committees to help ease tensions along the 25-km-wide Temporary Security Zone (TSZ). They also carry out ground and air patrols, last week conducting 753 ground and 13 air reconnaissance patrols throughout the border area.

The two countries fought a two-year border war, which claimed tens of thousands of lives, but reached a full peace deal in December 2000 after a six-month ceasefire. Since then, there have been no clashes between the two forces, but border incidents like cattle rustling and firing by unidentified armed groups have alarmed peacekeepers.

However, the physical construction of the frontier - originally scheduled for May 2002 - has been indefinitely delayed amidst continuing wrangling. A ruling by the independent Eritrea-Ethiopia Boundary Commission set up under the peace deal to resolve the dispute was rejected as flawed by Ethiopia.

Ethiopia has called for dialogue as a means of resolving the dispute, but the Eritrean government has rejected talks until demarcation takes place. The only talks between the two countries come at the MCC.

Eritrean Brig-Gen Abrahaley Kifle told the meeting of his frustrations over planned "troop reductions" of the UN force, which currently stands at 4,200 men. He told the MCC that there should be "more troops on the ground" and that demarcation of the common frontier should be speeded up.

Ethiopian Brig-Gen Yohanes Gebremeskel described the security of the TSZ as a "springboard" for peace between both countries.

Both officers paid tribute to Gordon, who is leaving the mission.

02/07/2004 - UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan visit t

ADDIS ABABA, 2 July (IRIN) - The proposed visit to Eritrea by UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan this weekend should have a positive impact on the stalled peace process with Ethiopia, UN officials said on Thursday.

Gail Bindley Taylor Sainte, the spokeswoman for the UN Mission in Ethiopia and Eritrea (UNMEE), said the visit comes at a "critical time" for the mission.

Annan is expected to fly into Eritrea on Saturday to try to overcome the current deadlock over the stalled three-year-old peace deal with Ethiopia. He will meet Eritrean President Isayas Afeworki before travelling to Ethiopia to meet Prime Minister Meles Zenawi.

"You know that we are in stalemate at the moment, and the secretary-general is the head of the UN. Our hope is that when he comes here he would be able to meet with the leaders," she said. "It is a critical time for UNMEE because of the stalemate which exists within the peace process," she told journalists at a weekly press briefing.

The impasse between the two neighbours over their disputed 1,000-km border has shown no signs of waning. The countries fought a bloody two-and-a-half-year war that claimed tens of thousands of lives over the border dispute. But under a peace agreement signed in Algiers in December 2000, their leaders pledged to resolve tensions through an independent boundary commission.

In April 2002, the Eritrea-Ethiopia Boundary Commission (EEBC) issued its ruling, but this was rejected "illegal" by Ethiopia. Among the contentious issues was the symbolic border town of Badme, where initial skirmishes in May 1998 ignited the border war, and which the EEBC ruled as being in Eritrea. Both countries lay claim to Badme, which has a population of around 5,000, and was the scene of some of the heaviest fighting of the war.

Ethiopia has called for dialogue as a means of resolving the dispute, but Eritrea insists that such dialogue cannot take place until the border has been physically demarcated.

Earlier this year, Annan appointed a special envoy in the person of Lloyd Axworthy to help resolve the stalemate. After meeting Meles, Axworthy had expected to fly to Eritrea to meet Isayas, but the visit failed to materialise. Eritrea has since appointed its own envoy to meet Axworthy.

Annan is also expected to address the forthcoming African Union summit, which opens in the Ethiopian capital, Addis Ababa, on Tuesday.

28/06/2004 - Major Obstacles to Ending Conflict

ADDIS ABABA, 28 June (IRIN) - The commissioner of the Peace and Security Council (PSC) of the African Union (AU) has spelt out four major obstacles to ending conflict on the continent.

Addressing leaders of civil society organisations from all across Africa meeting at AU headquarters in the Ethiopian capital, Addis Ababa, on Sunday, Said Djinnit said limited resources, lack of support for peacekeeping operations and poor conflict early warning systems all served to hamper efforts to resolve the conflicts ravaging Africa. He also highlighted the enormous difficulties facing post-conflict reconstruction, which, he said, would constitute a "huge challenge" for at least the next 20 years in Africa.

Conflicts have crippled Africa. The AU estimates that since the 1960s, Africa has witnessed some 30 conflicts, claiming seven million lives and costing US $250 billion.

By 2010, the AU hopes to have its own stand-by rapid reaction force of 15,000 men, comprising five regional brigades, to quell such conflicts. An early warning system will signal potential crises, while a Panel of the Wise - five independent men and women - will advise the 15-strong PSC.

But without support from both within and outside Africa, Djinnit added, the newly established PSC would not be able to function properly. "If you don't put the resources and the expertise in the right place, the institutions will not function. They will only function if you invest," he said.

The EU is one of the most substantial investors in the PSC, having contributed ?250 million (about US $302.5 million) to the AU's peacekeeping fund. But the AU estimates that its peace fund will require $200 million a year. In 2003, the AU had just over $6 million in its peace fund, compared with the $2.3 billion dollars the UN spent on peacekeeping in Africa.

"Peace is so important, so vital for our people and so difficult to achieve that it needs the involvement of all," Djinnit noted.

The AU has established the Economic, Social and Cultural Council to act as an "interface" to enable allow greater civil society involvement in the EU. The civil society leaders meeting in Addis Ababa on Sunday are vying to establish a greater role within the AU

Tajudeen Abdul-Raheem, the general secretary of the Pan-African Movement in Uganda, who was present, told IRIN that the present role of civil society marked a sea change in African politics. "African leaders cannot rule like before, and African people will not let them rule like before, so you have that confluence for change," he said. "There is no longer hero-worshipping of these leaders. People are now starting to claim their space and recognise that they shape their own futures."

Abdul Mohammed of the Inter Africa Group said the meeting was "significant" because it ensured that civil society had a role to play within the AU. "By no means is Africa doing well, but there is a new sense of purpose, energy, and a new sense of legitimacy, and that is illustrated by engaging with us."

Djinnit told the civil society leaders that they were playing vital role, and that their absence as such had been one of the weaknesses of the AU's predecessor, the Organisation of African Unity (OAU). "For Africa to have houses, water, electricity and health, you must have peace," he stressed. "So long as peace is not achieved, we cannot achieve our other goals."

Unlike its predecessor, the OAU - which was heavily criticised for its policy of non-interference in the internal affairs of African countries - the AU, through the PSC, is empowered to exercise such intervention.

In all, about 10 African countries are in the throes of conflict, and there are currently six different UN peacekeeping missions deployed on the continent.

"No more, never again. Africa cannot sit in Africa and cannot watch tragedies developing in the continent and say this is the UN's responsibility or somebody else's responsibility," Djinnit said. "We have moved from the concept on non-interference to non-indifference. We cannot remain as Africans indifferent to the tragedy of our people," he stressed.

24/06/2004 - POTENTIAL FOR INVESTMENT DESPITE WIDESPREAD POVERTY.

ADDIS ABABA, 24 June (IRIN) - Ethiopia is one of the poorest nations on earth, but it has the potential to be a land of opportunity for investors and businesses, analysts say.

In a newly launched Investment Guide to Ethiopia, the United Nations and the International Chamber of Commence (ICC) spell out three reasons why financiers should look to setting up shop in the country. "There are a number of reasons why potential investors would find it well worth their while to consider Ethiopia as a location for investment," says the guide.

It points to a corrupt-free environment, an enormous and largely untapped domestic market of 70 million people, and what it describes as a near-perfect climate. Most of the population, however, live in poverty, while many rely on food aid.

The 84-four-page guide also cites newly established macroeconomic and policy reforms by the government, which, it adds, has put the country on the road to success. It said foreign direct investment, while small at US $75 million in 2002, was creeping up, and the country was on the brink of membership of the World Trade Organisation.

The UN's Conference on Trade and Development and the ICC said infrastructure was being improved and restrictions lifted. And, according to the US-based Heritage Foundation's 2004 Economic Freedom Index, Ethiopia now ranked as the "second-most improved business environment in the world".

The Ethiopian economy is tiny, its GDP just $6.7 billion, but it is growing at around 5 percent, while inflation is at a low of 1.5 percent. Most of the production is in the agricultural sector, but the service and manufacturing sectors are also growing.

At the launch of the new investment guide earlier this month, Trade Minister Girma Biru said "radical steps" had been taken to ensure progress. "Investment promotion is a dynamic process," he said.

Prime Minister Meles Zenawi has also emphasised the growing role investment could play, describing it as "an engine of development". In an interview on state television, he said the government was wary of "parasitic investors", but welcomed genuine investors to the country. "Therefore, supporting and encouraging genuine investors also involves discouraging illicit practices," he said.

22/06/2004 - LIKELY FOOD SHORTAGE REPORTED.

ADDIS ABABA, 22 June (IRIN) - Unless donors provide additional food aid to Ethiopia, there could be shortages as early as July when the "hungry season" that precedes the November-December harvest starts, the USAID-funded Famine Early Warning Network (FEWS Net) reported.

"Unless new pledges are made, partial cereal shortfalls are almost certain from July onwards, and food aid availability will fall well below 50 percent of requirements by the end of August," FEWS Net said in a report published on Friday.

An estimated seven million people are in need of food aid this year, according to the government and United Nations agencies.

"Despite coordinated efforts by the Ethiopian government, donors and NGOs to respond to the 2004 food aid needs of 7.1 million people, shortfalls remain," FEWS Net said.

It added: "While in some areas food aid distribution so far this year has helped to save lives and protect household resources from further depletion, in other areas inadequate and irregular food aid distributions have failed to prevent malnutrition and in some cases out-migration."

The Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development said that farmers preparing to plant in late June were also facing seed shortages. In areas like the Southern Nations, Nationalities and People's Region (SNNPR), the seed shortfall was as high as 80 percent, it added.

Aid agencies fear that if farmers do not plant enough seed for the main harvesting season from June to September, millions will again need food aid next year. Donors and the Ethiopian government are looking to supply an estimated 16,000 metric tons of seeds to make up any shortfalls as many families are too poor to buy them. So far, just half the seed needed has been provided, although the time for planting is gradually ebbing away.

Hundreds of thousands of farmers around the country are still reeling from a drought in 2002, which left 13.2 million people in need of food aid the following year. Farmers were forced to sell their assets to try and survive the poor harvests that saw production levels in some areas of the country drop by more than a quarter.

FEWS also raised concerns about rainfall in the Somali Region, in eastern Ethiopia and said there was "growing pessimism" regarding water and pasture. "Early cessation of the gu rains raises grave concerns for many parts of Somali Region," it said. "Initial optimism about the season, based on unseasonable rain in January, a timely start in March and well distributed rains in April, turned into a growing pessimism recently with the early withdrawal of the rains in May."

It added that "stress signs" like early animal migration, crop wilting and the poor condition of livestock at such an early stage were already "an issue of serious concern".

10/06/2004 - SMALL FARMERS BATTLING POVERTY

ADDIS ABABA, 10 June (IRIN) - Cooperatives are playing a key role in helping impoverished Ethiopian farmers escape from the cycle of poverty, the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) said on Wednesday.

Ethiopia's cooperatives were vital in helping to promote rural economic development and getting farmers a fairer price for their crops, USAID said in a statement. "Cooperatives are an important means to bring smallholder farmers together to open new markets and receive higher prices for their produce," it said.

USAID has been working with 550,000 farmers organised into cooperatives country-wide. "Cooperatives, through a self-help and business-oriented approach to agriculture have [helped] to achieve organisational growth and market success," USAID added.

The Ethiopian government has also emphasised the key role of cooperatives, which, it believes, constitute one of the cornerstones of the country's agricultural development. Haile Gebre, the Commissioner of Cooperatives, said farmers' cooperatives had helped in the "commercialisation of smallholder farmers" by improving access to markets.

The inability of farmers to access markets has been identified as a major weakness in the Ethiopian economy and is blamed for exacerbating perennial food shortages in parts of the country. Improving markets and farmers' access are also at the heart of the government's US $3.2 billion blueprint - the New Coalition on Food Security - for reversing years of dependency on foreign food aid.

But the cooperatives were most important in the coffee sector, which was reeling from a collapse in world prices and massive oversupply by other countries, USAID added. One million Ethiopians depend entirely on incomes from coffee and some 15 million households benefit indirectly from coffee sales. The commodity also earns the country vital foreign exchange.

USAID said direct sales to international markets from the cooperatives had increased from a few tonnes five years ago to close to 5,500 mt, worth some $10 million, this year. Some 60 percent of exports were now of coffee, although in the last few years the crucial dollars secured from the trade had plummeted from $257 million to $149 million.

Five years ago, Ethiopian coffee farmers were receiving around a dollar per kilogramme; now some are paid as little as one Ethiopian birr (about 10 US cents) per kilogramme. The government has also been forced to slash the taxes it once imposed on coffee exports - revenue vital for developing infrastructure.

Coffee plays an important role in Ethiopian culture. It is proudly used in the ancient coffee ceremony figuring in almost all tourist promotional literature. Visitors to the country are frequently usually be invited to attend the ceremony.

US Ambassador Aurelia Brazeal has also emphasised the importance of "trade not aid" in helping the country - one of the poorest in the world - to redevelop. "There is no amount of aid that can be given to any country in the would that will get it on a path of growth, so you have to look at the private sector and trade," she told IRIN recently.[ENDS]

01/05/2004 - FISTULA HOSPITAL - APRIL 2004

ADDIS ABABA FISTULA HOSPITAL

HOSPITAL REPORT FOR THE QUARTER APRIL 2004.

Imagine arriving for the first time, and seeing the Hospital’s wonderful garden, the bright sunny words, colorful shawls on cold shoulders and smiles that you thought were long since gone.

So daily the women trickle in, dressed in simple clothes, some with shoes and others barefoot. Heads down, eyes sad, shameful of their wet dresses, the smell reflecting their pain in their very stance. How can one not be moved with compassion as we reach out and touch them and hug them, these forgotten untouchables of our world.

This quarter has been difficult for all of us. The AIDS scourge has hit us close to home. Two of our beautiful young nurse-aides have died. They were family; the other aides felt the loss especially because they had walked the hard road of a post fistula patient together; they lived in the hostel together; they knew each other's secret hopes and dreams... Now they are no more.

Protocol is being introduced for retroviral treatment of the HIV + women and believe that this is money well spent, though it will be an additional cost to the hospital, but it is in keeping with our times.

Our regular visiting urologist, Mr. Gordon Williams. has operated on some of the severely injured girls who hove been waiting for ileo conduit surgery. These little women have been prepared some time. They have been able to talk to others with ileal conduits, and our stoma nurse counsels them and explains what will be done and how this will change their lives.

Our patients are reminded that God loves them and cares for them. Melkitu and Mulunish help in teaching the women to read and write in either Oromingo or Amharic, and offering Bibles when requested, to those who have learned to read a little. At the evening school our teacher helps the nursing aides to improve reading and writing skills. Alemstehoye our part time knitting teacher continues to teach knitting and other simple skills to keep the women occupied as they wait.

Healthcare professionals

Drs. Ayele. Asfaw and Belay of the Addis Ababa University Post Graduate Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology have spent two months at the hospital learning how to repair the simpler vesico vaginal fistula. Our hope and prayer is that they will use these skills to operate on simple fistulae in the remoter areas of Ethiopia.

Dr. Gunter from ICRC spent some Time here. He plans to train the ICRC surgeons and gynecologists in repair and management of women with obstetric fistulae. Drs. Giovanni and Igor visited us. They are working in Mozambique and will offer this service To Their patients. Dr. Ibrahim works in Western Sudan. He stayed for one month To learn our techniques to improve his delivery skills in El Fashir,

Dr. Andrew Browning and Dr. Biruk went to Bangladesh in October, To operate and teach medical doctors our method of obstetric fistulae surgery and Dr. Ambaye Woldemichael went to northern Kenya to operate on 40 Sudanese refugees brought in by the ICRC airplane from southern Sudan.

We hope that a midwifery tutor might come and be in charge of grass root level through to nursing level training. She will train up our nursing aides, she will teach our nurses about obstetrics, ensure a good rotation of service training for the regional coordinators. We are excited about the possibility of having her instruct the patients in 'Why I got a fistula also teaching the residents of Desta Mender in basic childbirth methods and identification of high risk mothers. They in turn can share their knowledge with their village women when they go home on holiday.

Hospital facilities

The annexed land was been leveled, the thirty-bed ward and annex is complete.

The storeroom, pharmacy and outreach coordinators office are nearly completed. A rubbish collection area walled off and plans for a larger incinerator and compost site are on the drawing board.

Plans are going ahead for the two of five outreach centres to be built to improve the services to the far reaching places of Ethiopia from whence so many of our poor women come. The Australian Government will help us build one of the centres, which meant that we would be improving the services to the women of Mekelle, Bahrdar and Yirgalem just leaving Harrar and Metu to build! We have now heard that our USA trust wants to build another one for us.

Our Norwegian friend are building Yirgalem Fistula Outreach Centre, Mr. Varnero (our favorite contractor) is building Bahrdar Fistula Outreach Centre, Australia is building Mekelle Fistula Outreach centre and now USA is building the Horror Fistula Outreach Centre we have only one left to build in Metu Western Ethiopia! Our five-year project looks like it will be accomplished within two years!

Dr. Hamlin and Ruth Kennedy visited Mekelle to see the proposed site. The one selected will be in the grounds of the local hospital; we can use the X-ray Department and Laboratory facilities. The kitchen and laundry at not adequate to meet the current demand so we will have our own.

Dr. Biruk is operating in Harrar on more than twenty women waiting for him. He will at the same time discuss with the head of the Health Bureau about where we can build our new centre in that town.

International

Drs. Biruk Tafesse and Andrew Browning assisted some colleagues in Bangladesh. Dr. Ambaye went to Malaysia to participate in the Averting Maternal Death and Disability Conference held in Kuala Lumpur and Dr. Andrew also attended a urogynoecology conference in Italy where much interest was generated.

Dr. Hamlin visited USA for three weeks speaking throughout on The plight of women with obstetric fistulae and our hospital and plans for the future. She was honored everywhere she went. She has received distinguished awards from the American College of Surgeons and the International Federation of Obstetrician - Gynecologists (FI60) during the month of October. This has done much to raise awareness around the world.

Dr. Biruk Tafesse attended the International Federation of Obstetrician Gynaecologists Congress held in Chile where Dr. Hamlin was honored by FI60 and supported in an address given by Lord Naren Patel and a CD prepared specifically for this occasion.

Many doctors are contacting us for more information on how to help obstetric fistulae patients, thus indicating an increase in awareness internationally. Drs. Andrew and Ambaye were invited to WHO Head Office in Geneva to review the Obstetric Fistula Manual, Dr. Andrew has written one of the chapters. The time was -fruitful and we look forward to seeing this manual come out later this year.

Dr. Mulu Muleta was invited to attend a meeting in Bangladesh for the South-east Asian Maternal Morbidity Conference where she presented a paper.

We have had friends from Johnson and Johnson visiting the hospital and the village of Desta Mender and we hosted the Notional Reproductive Health Task Force Meeting here in the Fistula Hospital grounds. Dr. Hamlin was able to talk about the plight of our women and the need for the nation to move together to reduce these tragically high statistics,

STOP PRESS

Dr Hamlin flew to Chicago in January to appear on the Oprah Winfrey Show. Our USA Partner Trust has been deluged with support and enquiries.

Providing a voice for women

The best voice for other women with fistulae is another fistula patient cured. They carry the word far and wide- We are working on Job descriptions for the Coordinators for our new Outreach Centres. These women will be key players in running our centres. They will be trained in management of finances, pharmacy, ward and theatre services as well as providing a voice for these most ostracized of women.

Dr. Biruk has completed a calendar for 2004 which is intended to raise awareness of childbirth injuries. These have now been produced and we are giving Them away to key role players in Ethiopia and posted them abroad to those who play an important part in helping us help women with obstetric fistulae. We pray that these touching portrayals will remind government personnel, international agencies that women have suffered and continue to suffer because services are inadequate for their childbirth needs as a basic human right

30/04/2004 - WORLD BANK

ETHIOPIA: World Bank announces US $3.3 billion debt relief under HIPC

Ethiopia has become the 13th country to obtain debt relief under the Heavily Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC) initiative of the World Bank and IMF, the World Bank reported on Thursday. It said in a statement that Ethiopia, which had made sufficient progress and taken the necessary steps to reach its completion point under the HIPC initiative, had qualified for total debt relief of approximately US $3.3 billion from its various creditors.

"The track record of the Ethiopian authorities in policy and reform implementation has been strong, and the authorities have borrowed prudently despite being adversely affected by a severe drought and lower coffee prices," the statement said.

It added that resources made available by debt relief under the HIPC initiative were being allocated to programmes that would tackle poverty and benefit poor people in Ethiopia.According to the World Bank, Ethiopia has a per capita GDP of about $100, making it one of the poorest countries in the world. Recent national household surveys found 44 percent of Ethiopians living below the basic-needs poverty line.

19/03/2004 - SITUATION IN SOMALI REGION DETERIORATING.

ADDIS ABABA, 19 March (IRIN) - Fears are mounting for the welfare of thousands of internally displaced persons (IDPs) in eastern Ethiopia, the United Nations warned on Friday. Disease, lack of food and dwindling water supplies are hitting the IDPs, the UN said in a special alert.

"There is a need to respond with timely assistance in order to prevent the situation from deteriorating further," said the joint statement issued by the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) and the government of the Somali National Regional State (SNRS). "It is necessary to speed up reintegration efforts from these areas and to secure the return of the IDPs to their areas of origin."

The UN aims to quickly "reintegrate" the IDP families into their original communities and provide transport and medical support to get them home. It is appealing for an immediate sum of US $180,000 to provide support for the IDPs, many of whom are Ethiopians who have come in from neighbouring Djibouti and Somaliland.

The statement issued on Thursday, said conditions in Fafen and Hartishek, the two man camps where the IDPs are gathering, were worsening as food and water were running out. In one area, 7,000 people who had not received water for three months were "placing an additional burden on the limited existing resources", it noted.

"Food allocations to the camps are resented by the local population, who are no longer included in general food distribution," it said of Fafen camp. In Hartishek, the statement added, the town had been hit by a "serious economic decline" affecting local people, and the arrival of thousands of IDPs was fuelling tension. A total of 15,000 IDPs in the camps were facing a "deteriorating situation" and the UN and the SNRS intended to "return and reintegrate" 6,000 of them immediately, the statement said.

"In both these camps the only viable alternative is to move the IDPs back to their areas of origin where they can be incorporated within wider processes of regional development within their home communities," it added. "The current situation necessitates a timely and well-coordinated response from concerned partners."

In Ethiopia there are about 200,000 IDPs displaced by war, famine and drought, many of them women and children. Along the disputed 1,000-km border with Eritrea, some 76,000 IDPs have for various reasons remained unable to go home, often because their areas of origin are contaminated by landmines and unexploded ordnance.[ENDS

05/03/2004 - IRIN Interview with US Ambassador. Aurelia Brazeal

ADDIS ABABA, 5 March (IRIN) - Aurelia Brazeal is the US ambassador to Ethiopia. Last year the US provided over US $500 million in food relief for 14 million people facing starvation in Ethiopia. In an interview, she told IRIN that in the wake of that enormous crisis - an emergency she said was not yet over - the US would now begin refocusing on the country's democratic and economic development.

QUESTION: How do you assess the democratic and economic process in Ethiopia?

ANSWER: In terms of the democratic evolution, we have just released our human rights report. I think it tries to give a snapshot picture of the past year. But I think it is clear we see a process here that is still evolving and is incomplete in terms of full democratic development.

I think on the economic side, the emergency here last year so dominated the attention of donors that we didn't really have a lot of time to look at other economic developments - the private sector, trade or other parts of the economy. We were trying to address the food emergency and keep people alive. Now we want to do more than keep them alive, and have them move out of destitution towards some sort of sustainable livelihood situation.

On the economic side, I think there are still promises the government has made that it still has to keep, but barring some unforeseen weather conditions that put us back to the drought emergency we had last year, we would like to spend time this year and in the future focusing on those economic and democratic elements needed to get that food security situation going.

Q: What are the US and donors trying to do to help ensure a free and fair election in 2005?

A: Some of the ideas are voter education, voter registration, working with local entities for them to understand the process of the election, and then, at the national level with government entities, working with them to work out accommodations that include what they have done before in terms of making some facilities available to the opposition.

We have communicated to various donors our desire to be helpful, as the donors were helpful in the 2000 election. Our intention is to help the electoral process and, in helping the process, to educate the people on their role in that process.

Q: How are you trying to break the deadlock in the Ethiopia-Eritrea peace process?

A: On Eritrea and Ethiopia, the US supports the UN Special Envoy's [Lloyd Axworthy] approach. We are behind that approach, we appreciate the UN's good offices, and we hope that both countries agree to meet with the special envoy and to start dialoguing about normalisation of relations. So what we are doing in terms of breaking the deadlock is making clear to both countries that we are behind the special envoy's approach.

We have had US government officials visit the area last October and most recently in January this year, because we have made clear that the United States is willing to facilitate conditions for dialogue between the two countries, but we are not going to be negotiating or [performing] any other role. So the visits by those officials have created conditions that have led to the UN special envoy's appointment, and we now support that approach strongly.

Q: Why should Eritrea engage in talks given that a legal decision on the boundary has been made?

A: I know that there is the legal perspective, and we have certainly made our position clear on that, which is that the parties committed [themselves] to [accepting] the Boundary Commission's decision as final and binding. But there is also a political dimension that seems evident now, and for that the parties themselves need to talk and that certainly is permitted under the Algiers Peace Accord.

And on normalisation, there are many areas to be discussed that I can think of. Pastoralists who will live on both sides of the border - how will they be handled, how will they be treated as they come and go? What transit points across the border should be established, what kind of identification is needed? How would trade be facilitated? There are so many areas that could be discussed in terms of normalisation...

Q: What response have you made and what solutions do you see to the violence in Gambella?

A: When the violence first broke out last December, I sent from here some officials from our embassy to Gambella. The Ethiopian government facilitated the visit, so they helped our officials reach Gambella... The main purpose of their visit at that time was also to help American citizens who were caught up in Gambella during this violence, but also to talk to various parties out there to encourage peace.

Since then, in Washington we have released a statement on our position on Gambella, which is to support the government's stated intentions to have an investigation to get to the root causes and also to investigate those people who took part in the violence and take them into the legal process here and [so that they can] be tried for being participants in the violence. And from our point of view, we hope that investigation would include allegations that individual military people and police were also participants in that violence...

Q: Is the terrorist threat still severe in the Horn of Africa?

A: We certainly think the global war on terrorism should include the Horn of Africa and to indicate that, we have a Combined Joint Task Force in Djibouti. That force works with countries that are under its area of responsibility, which includes Ethiopia but also includes Yemen and other countries on the continent to help improve the counter-terrorist abilities of those particular countries, be it government or military.

So we think those kinds of programmes are still needed in the world. Yes, we think this part of the Horn of Africa has terrorists coming and going, how many is unclear, but our emphasis there is to strengthen countries' abilities to fight terrorist on their own through the Combined Joint Task Force.

Q: Is the US going to re-engage actively in Somalia?

A: As you know, we strongly support the IGAD [Inter-Governmental Authority on Development] peace talks on Somalia that have been hosted by Kenya, and we have supported it both with money as well as diplomatically in terms of our interest in those talks. So we hope for the best in terms of the peace process for Somalia, and we recognise that for it to be successful it would require continued interest by the international community, because the institutions in Somalia have basically been weakened or destroyed, and so a lot of continued interest and support would be necessary.

But I don't think we have quite reached that point in the peace process in Somalia to get into any details about what that would mean, but we certainly strongly support the peace talks that have been taking place in Kenya. We are supportive of the peace process both for Sudan and Somalia.

Q: How do you think the peace talks in Somalia could affect Ethiopia?

A: The process of the peace talks in Somalia has not reached a point where the neighbours will be affected. I don't think [there is] and I have not detected any concern here in Ethiopia over a unified Somalia. In fact, from my vantage point, Ethiopia would support a unified Somalia and would find it better to have a unified Somalia than a state that is broken. So I don't think a unified Somalia is seen as a threat to Ethiopia...

Q: The European Union has expressed concern over the scale and pace of the resettlement programme in Ethiopia. Do you share those concerns?

A: The donors and the government have committed [themselves] to looking at lessons learned from last year's resettlement efforts, and then continued to factor in the lessons learned to make adjustments in the programme. We welcome that, because I think there is something to learn each time. What seems to be reflected... is that the numbers of people moved should be commensurate with the resources available. And so finding what those resources will be is important.

>From the US side we have committed to supporting education, health, sanitation, and water issues in resettlement areas as well as ongoing areas, because that is part of our development approach. Lessons learned from the past seem to also include that those resettlement areas closer to roads have done better than those that are far removed from roads. Those that have some health infrastructure have done better in terms of malaria and other diseases that affect people. Having people in place before the long planting season is important...

But the resettlement I don't see as separate from the food security programme. It's not a separate programme, it is part of something larger and should be seen in that light.

04/03/2004 - US Ambassador - Calls for Telecommunication and Banking Reforms

ADDIS ABABA, 4 March (IRIN) - Ethiopia must "get trade going" and get rid of obstacles precluding overseas businesses from investing in the country, the US ambassador urged on Wednesday. Ambassador Aurelia Brazeal said reforms in the country's telecommunications and the banking sectors were vital as a means of stimulating foreign investment.

The ambassador - whose country is Ethiopia's primary aid donor -said trade rather than aid would boost the country's development. "Trade is the answer to help economic growth, not aid," she told journalists at a press conference at the US embassy in the capital, Addis Ababa. "There is no amount of aid that can be given to any country in the world that will get it on a path of growth, so you have to look at the private sector and trade," she said.

"But there are some things that investors look at that are not quite here yet: an open telecommunications market. Investors have got to be able to communicate," Brazeal stressed. "The banking sector is very important in terms of banking sector reform, because you have to be able to move your money in and out," she added.

Brazeal warned that foreign donors would be unable to meet continual emergency needs in Ethiopia and that long-term solutions were needed. Last year alone the US supplied more than $500 million worth of food aid to 14 million people who were in need there.

She said the US "broadly" supported the New Coalition on Food Security - the government's $3.2-billion blueprint aimed at reversing years of dependency. The programme, to be implemented over a period lasting between three and five years, aims to end the hand-to-mouth existence and reliance on international hand-outs of 15 million Ethiopians.

Brazeal also referred to a new approach to aid adopted by the US Agency for International Development (USAID) which focuses on enhancing Ethiopia' s trade capabilities. She said the "realignment" of the aid policy included sectors like health and education, on which USAID was already concentrating, as well as focusing to a greater degree on the private sector.

She went on to say that the US was also seeking to cooperate more closely with the Ethiopian government to help it in its current bid to become a member of the World Trade Organisation. "Looking at private-sector and global-trade issues we think will help adjust the policy environment here to welcome more private-sector development," she said. "We may choose, as a donor, to emphasise parts of that policy over other parts simply because they fit our own orientation."

In conclusion, Brazeal stressed that "it is critical and it is possible to grow the food here in Ethiopia to feed more people, and it has to be done or the emergencies will get so large that other donors cannot respond".

02/02/2004 - AFRICA : Conference delegates in Ethiopia call for end to FGM

ADDIS ABABA, 6 February (IRIN) - African governments faced renewed demands on Friday to introduce and enforce tough laws to stamp out female genital mutilation (FGM) and protect the women of their countries. Leading health and human rights experts on the continent called for legislation to end the practice to which 2 million African women and girls in 28 countries are subjected every year.

Only 16 African countries, including Ethiopia, have adopted laws to protect women and girls from the ancient custom, which is also blamed for spreading HIV/AIDS.

But Berhane Ras-Work, president of the Inter-African Committee on Traditional Practices, said that despite the introduction of legislation, the laws were not always enforced. Speaking during a conference in the Ethiopian capital, Addis Ababa, to mark the international day on Zero Tolerance to FGM, she said more action must be taken.

According to statistics, between 100 million and 130 million women have endured FGM or excision at the hands of unqualified practitioners, often without any anaesthetic or sterilised instruments. The practice is ubiquitous in the Horn of Africa, where, for example, 98 percent of Somali women are estimated to have undergone the procedure. In Ethiopia, it is almost as widespread.

Experts stressed that legislation was not the only way to eradicate the practice, and also advocated "comprehensive community involvement" towards achieving attitude changes.

Dr Olusegun Babaniyi, who heads the World Health Organisation in Ethiopia, said FGM was a human rights violation. "It is due to social reasons relative to the low status of women in society, and affects the physical, emotional and social wellbeing of women. In fact, it is an important form of violence against women," he said.

He stressed that "educating the community is probably the most important way to change the attitudes and practises of long-standing issues like FGM".

The nine women ambassadors to Ethiopia, including those of the US, Germany, Canada, Ireland and Mozambique, supported Babaniyi's comments. In a joint statement read on their behalf, they urged the promotion of advocacy and the involvement of local leaders in helping to bring about changes of attitude and behaviour in the context of FGM.

"The decision-making ability by women for their health and the health of their families needs to be strengthened," the ambassadors said. "Every attempt must be made to maximise the input and participation of local leadership and the community members to stop female genital cutting."

Bience Gawanas, the African Union (AU) social affairs commissioner, said that the AU had established legal frameworks towards helping to enforce a continent-wide ban. She went on to note, however, that only a handful of African governments had bothered to ratify the laws and introduce them into their domestic legislation.

Gawanas said the AU - which has replaced the Organisation of African Unity - had embarked in a "large-scale" campaign to persuade African governments to sign up. Without their commitment, she told the conference, legal and policy instruments to combat violence against women were just "dead letters".

Earlier, Ethiopian President Girma Woldegiorgis told delegates that harmful traditional practices were obstructing development and preventing women from reaching their potential. "Above all, by preventing individuals from utilising their potential and abilities effectively, it hinders them from making a meaningful contribution to their country's development," he declared.

20/01/2004 - ETHIOPIA & ERITREA, : END THE IMPASSE, BRITISH ENVOY URGES.

ADDIS ABABA, 20 January (IRIN) - Ethiopia and Eritrea have been warned that the international community is gradually running out of patience with their stalled three-year-old peace process.

Speaking at a news conference on Monday in the Ethiopian capital, Addis Ababa, Chris Mullin, the UK's foreign minister for Africa, warned the two countries that the West had not ruled out sanctions as a means of compelling them to implement their peace deal.

He said it would take "an act of statesmanship" on the part of Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi to break the current deadlock deal.

Ethiopia and Eritrea fought a bloody two-year border war that ended in a peace deal signed in Algiers in December 2000. Under the agreement, an independent boundary commission was set up to finalise the demarcation of their 1,000-km border. But Ethiopia is contesting elements of the commission's ruling that place the town of Badme, where the war first flared up, in Eritrea, and determine that Ethiopia hand over parts of the Irob area.

"It is very difficult for the outside world to understand when two small, extremely poor countries get involved in a war that consumes perhaps nearly 100,000 lives over a very small amount of territorial difference on the border," Mullin said.

"You have to start compromising and moving towards the bigger picture," he added, saying that the US $180 million a year the international community was paying for the 4,200 United Nations peacekeepers who patrol the border could not go on being disbursed indefinitely.

"Just a little bit of impatience is beginning to occur on the part of those who are funding this arrangement," he revealed.

Mullin said both countries would have to "face up to their responsibilities", stressing that the stalemate could no longer be allowed to persist.

He called on the two countries to recognise that their real enemy was poverty. "This is the war that Ethiopia needs to fight, and we are willing to help it fight it. If neither side is willing to compromise, it is no good saying you want peace," he stressed, pointing out that the deadlock was inhibiting the economic development of both countries.

Mullin's comments came at the end of his six-day tour of Eritrea, Ethiopia and Djibouti.

Fears have grown that in the absence of a breakthrough, tensions between Ethiopia and Eritrea could once again flare up in a resumption of hostilities.

To avert such an eventuality, Ethiopia says, there is need for "a broad-based dialogue" with Eritrea, which, for its part, is unwilling to engage in such talks until demarcation of the border begins.

"We don't think it is a very good idea to have another war over Badme," Mullin said, asserting that Ethiopia must "accept in principle" the boundary commission's decision, and then engage in dialogue with Eritrea. He pointed out that once Ethiopia had accepted the ruling, it would share the "moral high ground" that Eritrea had gained by having already done so. Only then, he stressed, could a move towards talks be made.

Increasing diplomatic pressure has been brought to bear on the two sides to resolve their deadlock in the form of the visits to Ethiopia by German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, and to both Ethiopia and Eritrea by US Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs Donald Yamamoto.[ENDS]

06/01/2004 - ETHIOPIAN WOMEN LIVING WITH HIV

ETHIOPIA: New film depicts the suffering of women living with HIV

© IRIN/Anthony Mitchell

Genet Zewde, Ethiopia's Education Minister ADDIS ABABA, 6 Jan 2004 (IRIN) - Ethiopia’s first-ever film depicting the real-life tragedy being brought about by HIV/AIDS was broadcast across the country on Monday. The documentary is a powerful portrayal of the lives of women in Ethiopia who have become victims of discrimination and stigma because they are infected with the virus.

"It is a very depressing film," said Meaza Ashenafi, who heads the Ethiopian Women’s Lawyers Association, after seeing the premiere of Siwir Enba, or Hidden Tears. The HIV/AIDS pandemic has had a crippling effect on Ethiopia, where, according to government estimates, some 2.2 million people are living with HIV.

One in 10 global deaths due to AIDS happens in Ethiopia, and HIV has orphaned 1 million children there. About 230,000 children have been infected.

The 45-minute film was first shown to government ministers and campaigners fighting the virus at a special screening in the capital, Addis Ababa. It was then broadcast on state television. As yet there are few laws within Ethiopia’s constitution being enforced to protect victims of stigma prompted by HIV/AIDS, such as those losing their jobs or homes.

"This film showed women who have been stigmatised," said Gifti Abasiya, who is the Ethiopian minister of state for women’s affairs. "The more we know about stigma and what is means to women the better we will be able to fight it," she told IRIN after watching the premiere. "The film reflects the situation of Ethiopian women, economically, socially and politically, and this is what we have to change."

Education Minister Genet Zewde said she was considering using the film as an educational tool in the country’s schools. "This film is very important, because it shows the damage that we are doing by discriminating against women who have been infected with the virus. These are real issues, these are true stories and they depict how traditional and harmful practices can have a negative effect on the lives of women in this country," she said.

Already, some 1,500 copies of the film have been made for distribution around the country and for use by NGOs fighting the virus.

The film project was sponsored by the government’s HIV/AIDS Prevention and Control Office. The US-backed Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) also provided support, along with the Walta Information Centre, an Ethiopian media outlet.

Tadesse Wuhib, who heads CDC in Ethiopia, described the documentary as a breakthrough. "This was more than just a film," he said after the special screening. "These were real lives we were seeing, and there is nothing more powerful than true lives and how the virus is affecting them."

12/12/2003 - SEASONS GREETINGS

TO ALL THE DONORS AND READERS OF OUR NEWS.

WE ARE WISHING A WONDERFUL CHRISTMAS TIME AND A LOT OF HAPINESS IN 2004

11/12/2003 - RISKS OF NEW FAMINE IN ETHIOPIA

West 'risks new Ethiopia famine' By Alex Kirby BBC News Online environment correspondent in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia

Will Ethiopians starve again? Ethiopia's efforts to feed itself and avoid another famine are being fatally undermined by Western policy, a senior scientist has told BBC News Online. Dr Tewolde Egziabher, of the country's Environmental Protection Authority, says it can become self-sufficient.

But he says the Western insistence on private sector answers to hunger means Ethiopia cannot construct food stores.

So it has been unable to save the grain left over from good harvests to see its people through subsequent lean years.

Obstructing progress

Dr Tewolde, who represents Ethiopia at many international meetings and is in effect its environment minister, was speaking to BBC News Online here.

This year's harvest is promising He said Western institutions were determined to allow only the private sector to secure its food supply, and this was preventing the government from raising the loans it needed to build granaries and depots.

In the mid-1980s almost a million Ethiopians are believed to have starved to death, and there is concern that millions more could soon be suffering severe hunger.

Asked about the probability of another devastating famine, Dr Tewolde said: "Ethiopia will avoid a food crisis only if the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund and the US Agency for International Development allow us to raise the loans we need.

"Last year about 14 million people, less than a quarter of the population, depended on foreign food aid. This year's harvest is likely to be 60% up on last year's.

"But the Bank, the IMF and Usaid are stopping us borrowing the money to build the stores, the roads and the other infrastructure we need to conserve what's left over.

No action

"I have no doubt Ethiopia could grow enough to feed itself: many years it produces a surplus, and the farmers don't know what to do with all the grain.

Dr Tewolde: Biodiversity champion "The problem is that many people don't have the cash to buy it, and the country hasn't the means to store it.

"For three years from 1999 onwards, we had bumper harvests. If we had an effective private sector we'd have begun building up reserves then, but it didn't happen.

"The North's preoccupation with the supposed potential of the private sector risks preventing us moving towards self-sufficiency, and could possibly create the conditions for another famine.

"I'm not saying it's a deliberate attempt to make us dependent on foreign aid, though. I think it's more a matter of dogma."

Open-minded critic

The desperation of Ethiopians 20 years ago stung the conscience of the world, and provoked a huge international response.

Dr Tewolde, a biologist who completed his doctorate at the University of Wales, UK, led the developing countries in the negotiations which produced the Cartagena Protocol on biosafety.

Farmers "do not know what to do with surplus grain" In 2000 he was a recipient of the Right Livelihood Award, sometimes known as "the alternative Nobel Prize", for "his exemplary work to safeguard biodiversity and the traditional rights of farmers and communities to their genetic resources".

Perhaps surprisingly, he does not rule out the possibility that genetically modified (GM) crops might help countries like Ethiopia.

Dr Tewolde says he does not oppose GMs in principle, but wants extreme caution in their introduction, and believes they should be under public control.

Judged on its merits

He said: "The world has gone nuts. It's the first time you have a new technology like this left entirely in private hands.

"The private sector has emerged as a new god in the last 15 years, and we have to prove this god is fallible."

He told BBC News Online: "I want universities and other public institutions involved in GM research, and I want the results kept in public hands - in other words, no more patents of GM organisms.

"As it stands, it's a technology I don't trust, because it's promoted by vested interests. I want to see it freed from its ensnarement by commerce, so it can be tried in its own right."

11/12/2003 - COUNTRY PROFILE : ETHIOPIA

Ethiopia is Africa's oldest independent country and, with the exception of a five-year occupation by Mussolini's Italy, has never been colonised.

But it has become better known for its periodic droughts and famines, and for its long civil war and subsequent border war with Eritrea.

OVERVIEW

OVERVIEW | FACTS | LEADERS | MEDIA

In the first part of the 20th century Ethiopia forged strong links with Britain, whose troops helped evict the Italians in 1941 and put Emperor Haile Selassie back on his throne. During the 1960s and early 1970s British influence gave way to that of the US, which in turn was supplanted by the USSR.

Although relatively free from the coups that have plagued other African countries, Ethiopia's turmoil has been no less devastating. Drought, famine, war and ill-conceived policies brought millions to the brink of starvation in the 1970s and 1980s.

In 1974 this helped topple Haile Selassie. His regime was replaced by a self-proclaimed Marxist junta under which thousands of opponents were purged or killed, property was confiscated and defence spending spiralled.

With the overthrow of the junta in 1991, political and economic conditions stabilised somewhat, but not enough to restore investors' confidence, which received a further blow with the war with Eritrea in the late 1990s.

Consequently, Ethiopia remains one of Africa's poorest states, with a very low income per capita and a population that is almost two-thirds illiterate.

FACTS

OVERVIEW | FACTS | LEADERS | MEDIA

ETHIOPIA FACTS Population: 70.7 million (UN, 2003) Capital: Addis Ababa Major languages: Amharic, Tigrinya, Orominga Major religions: Christianity, Islam Life expectancy: 45 years (men), 46 years (women) (UN) Monetary unit: 1 Birr = 100 cents Main exports: Coffee, hides, oilseeds, beeswax, sugarcane Average annual income: US $100 (World Bank, 2001) Internet domain: .et International dialling code: +251

LEADERS

OVERVIEW | FACTS | LEADERS | MEDIA

Head of State: President Woldegiorgis Girma

Prime minister: Meles Zenawi

Prime Minister Meles: From Marxist to free marketeer Born in 1954, Meles Zenawi joined the fight against the Mengistu regime in the 1970s. Initially a Marxist-Leninist, by the 1990s he had become a proponent of the free market and parliamentary democracy.

Upon Mengistu's overthrow, he was chosen as transitional head of state and was one of the architects of the 1994 constitution, which provided for a federal republic with ethnically-based regions. In 1995 he became prime minister.

MEDIA

OVERVIEW | FACTS | LEADERS | MEDIA

Although the state controls radio and television, the print and broadcast media have seen dramatic changes since Mengistu's demise.

Deregulation has been on the cards for some years but would-be private radio and TV broadcasters still await the green light to apply for licences.

A number of opposition groups beam radio broadcasts to Ethiopia, using hired shortwave transmitters overseas.

The number of privately-owned newspapers has grown, with the weekly Addis Tribune available online. The Walta website also hosts a few pro-government English-language newspapers.

The private press offers quite different reporting to the state-owned newspapers and is often critical of the government.

The relationship between the press and the authorities has sometimes been uneasy and media rights organisations have expressed concern about the jailing of journalists.

The press

Addis Zemen - state-owned daily Efoyta - privately-owned weekly Ilete Addis - privately-owned daily Seifenebelbal - privately-owned weekly Tobya - privately-owned weekly Efoyta - privately-owned weekly Atkurot - privately-owned weekly Wonchif - privately-owned weekly Tomar - privately-owned weekly Mahlet - privately-owned weekly Addis Tribune - privately-owned English-language weekly Television

Ethiopian Television (ETV) - state-owned Radio

Radio Ethiopia - state-owned, operates National Service and External Service Voice of Tigray Revolution - Tigray Regional State government radio Radio Fana - owned by ruling party Voice of Peace - Addis Ababa-based, Unicef-funded station broadcasting to Somalia News agencies

Walta Information Centre (WIC) - privately-owned, pro-government Ethiopian News Agency (ENA) - state-owned

11/12/2003 - SEASONS GREERINGS

To All our donors and readers of our news

We are wishing a wonderful Christmas time and a lot of happiness in 2004 **

** TIPS OF THE YEAR **

Did you know ..

* Ethiopia's New Year was on 12 September

* Ethiopia's Christmas is on 7th January

* Ethiopia has 13 months in a year

* It is now 1996 in Ethiopia

* The Millennium will be celebrated in 4 years time !

10/12/2003 - ETHIOPIA : Plea for more food aid

ADDIS ABABA, 10 December (IRIN) - Seven million Ethiopians could go hungry next year without international aid to make up a chronic food shortfall, the government warned on Wednesday.

Simon Mechale, head of the Ethiopian government's emergency arm, appealed for an estimated US $380 million in food and medical support to help avert a catastrophe.

A further two million people are at risk from shortages and require "close monitoring", he said at the launch of the government's 2004 humanitarian appeal.

His call for support comes as the impoverished nation emerges from one of its worst humanitarian crises where 13 million people have been hit by food shortages.

"The magnitude of the disaster last year was enormous," he told senior United Nations officials, international charities and donors.

"But despite a significant increase in food production we still face many challenges this year," said Simon, who heads the Disaster Prevention and Preparedness Commission (DPPC).

Ethiopia - with a population of 70 million people - is one of the poorest countries in the world where the average annual income is just US $100.

Simon said that this year the government needs 841,000 mt of food and a further US $85 million for health, education and water to support subsistence farmers.

He blamed the reliance on foreign aid on entrenched poverty which meant farmers simply could not afford to feed themselves.

According to the DPPC almost half of the families requiring assistance, have been dependent on aid for almost a decade. A spiralling population has also fuelled dependency.

The UN head in Ethiopia, Sam Nyambi, concurred that continued support was vital particularly in areas of health and nutrition.

Although requirements are still enormous, the government has launched a massive US $3.2 billion five-year rescue package to end its dependency on foreign aid.

The rescue plan aims to ensure that 15 million people - just over one in four of the population - no longer live a hand-to-mouth existence in need of foreign food aid handouts.

Simon commended the international community for its support in addressing the crisis that hit the country last year. "We have saved millions of lives," he noted.

The US was the single largest donor, shipping in one million mt of food. The European Union and UK government also supplied tens of thousand of tonnes.

25/11/2003 - WFP APPEALS FOR FOOD FOR REFUGEES

ADDIS ABABA, 25 November (IRIN) - Tens of thousands of refugees in Ethiopia face severe food shortages early next year, the UN's World Food Programme warned on Tuesday.

It has appealed for US $5.3 million to help feed 123,000 refugees - mainly from war-ravaged Sudan and Somalia.

Wagdi Othman, spokesman for WFP, said that the lack of food could hamper efforts to help Somali refugees return home.

In 2002, over 29,000 Somalis went home, allowing two of the five remaining Somali refugee camps to be closed.

"WFP will face a food pipeline break early in 2004 unless contributions are provided immediately," Othman said.

"Despite progress towards peace in Sudan, refugees are not expected to return home in 2004 and will continue to rely on the international community's assistance," he added.

"A major funding shortage and the resulting break in food supplies would lead to widespread malnutrition among the refugees who depend on WFP and UNHCR assistance, and put lives at risk," Othman noted.

Ethiopia itself is currently reeling from a complex humanitarian emergency that has left 13.2 million in need of food aid.

Othman's comments came as WFP launched two fund-raising concerts in the capital Addis Ababa with Ethiopia's renowned female vocalist Aster Aweke.

Othman also revealed a major study assessing the food needs for 2004 has just been completed. The figures will form the basis of an international appeal in December.

Humanitarian agencies predict as many as nine million people may need food aid despite the government announcing a good harvest this year.

Aid agencies argue that a lack of attention is being paid to health, education and water which are all vital if Ethiopia is to escape the cycle of dependency.

20/11/2003 - ERITREA-ETHIOPIA & ASSAB

ASSAB, 20 November (IRIN) - The straight ribbon of road from the Eritrean port city of Assab to Bure, just over the border in Ethiopia, is deserted. Save for a few camels and their Afar herdsmen, the only moving objects are the patrol cars of UN peacekeepers.

The Kenyan battalion - known as Kenbatt - of the UN peacekeeping mission in Eritrea and Ethiopia (UNMEE) is responsible for ensuring compliance with the ceasefire in this vast, remote southeastern tip of Eritrea.

The wind blows hot, and the lunar landscape is dotted with crumbled volcanic rock. Strange mystical mountains loom up in the distant haze. A far-off peak marks the confluence of three countries - Eritrea, Djibouti and Ethiopia.

The bleak terrain is also dotted with landmines and human remains - a grim reminder of the devastating two-year border war between Ethiopia and Eritrea. The Bure front saw some of the fiercest fighting of the 1998-2000 conflict.

STALLED DEMARCATION

It is here, in sector east, that demarcation of the 1,000 km-long contested border was due to begin. But the twice-postponed operation is now stalled indefinitely as the international community scrambles to salvage the peace process.

In April 2002, an independent Boundary Commission ruled on where a new international border should pass, and the sides - as part of a peace deal signed in December 2000 - agreed that the decision would be final and binding.

But in the months that followed, Ethiopia grew increasingly agitated over the ruling which placed the dusty village of Badme - flashpoint of the war - in Eritrea. Finally, Addis Ababa rejected elements of the decision and called for dialogue to try and resolve the impasse. Eritrea, for its part, says there can be no dialogue until after demarcation, and insists that the border must be marked out in full, rather than sector by sector as advocated by Ethiopia.

The eastern sector is not contested, and the Kenyan peacekeepers are anxious for some action so that they can finish their job and go home. But they believe passionately in their mission and are fully aware of their importance in keeping the two sides apart.

"Our job here is to maintain favourable conditions to allow others to find a lasting solution," says Col Walter Raria, Kenbatt's commanding officer. "Our hope is that a lasting solution will be found and UNMEE will complete its mission successfully."

The Kenyan peacekeepers cover an area of roughly 23,000 sq km, manning checkpoints in the buffer zone between the two countries and patrolling adjacent areas. The 25 km-wide demilitarised buffer region - known as the Temporary Security Zone (TSZ) - is entirely in Eritrean territory and is also patrolled by Eritrean militia and police.

Raria underlines the challenges of operating in such harsh climatic conditions where temperatures can soar up to 50 degrees. Language also poses a barrier, and the Kenyan soldiers have to resort to sign language to communicate with the locals.

"We have a very good working relationship with both sides," Raria points out.

Kenbatt is also active in the humanitarian field, providing health services to hundreds of internally displaced persons (IDPs) in the shadeless village of Debysima, about halfway between the first checkpoint and the Ethiopian border.

"We have requested extra funds to provide more health services and to build a school for the IDPs," Raria adds.

BATTLE SCARS

Huddling with his men under a canopy, away from the blistering heat, Lt Oloko is the platoon commander at the first checkpoint - known as Point 42. Their job, he says, is to check all traffic entering the TSZ, as well as the arms licences of Eritrean militiamen and police.

"We have to make sure they don't come with unpermitted weapons," he explains. Only 20 police and 20 militiamen are allowed into the TSZ each day.

The peacekeepers also have to monitor the number of IDPs in the TSZ, and Oloko reiterates that there are no problems of cooperation. "The only problem is the language barrier," he says.

Driving through the TSZ from Point 42 to the Ethiopian border, the signs of battle are still very much in evidence - charred remains of tanks and other warfare, trenches and hideouts constructed from the abundant black rocks. The two armies faced off only a few hundred metres from each other in a vast, flat terrain offering no cover and no shade.

EAGER FOR DEMARCATION

As the shimmering road passes through Point 60 and arrives at Point 74 - the last checkpoint before the Ethiopian border - signs of life begin to appear. After the desolation of the TSZ, tiny Bure town across the border seems like a veritable metropolis.

The Ethiopian shopkeepers ply their trade from within brightly coloured kiosks, music blares from the main street as locals chat and drink tea. For the nomadic Afar, the town is a staging post before they move on again.

Here, UNMEE military observers from various countries support the humanitarian needs of people in the affected areas. They also monitor the redeployed positions of the armed forces, and check on the activities of the Eritrean militia and police in the TSZ.

People in these border areas are uneasy, the observers say. They hear the radio stations from both sides each broadcasting different reports, and are confused.

"At one point, the people in Bure were afraid that demarcation would take place behind them - they had to be reassured," one observer told IRIN.

"They are a bit scared, but they really want demarcation to happen," he added.

Before the war, the well-constructed tarmac road from Assab - which goes all the way to Addis Ababa - was bustling with trucks taking goods from the port to the Ethiopian capital. Some 90 percent of Assab's cargo was destined for Ethiopia. But for now the port lies dormant, waiting for peace and a new lease of life.

12/11/2003 - ETHIOPIA. AN OTHER DROUGHT LOOMS.

ADDIS ABABA, 12 November (IRIN) - Water shortages in eastern and southern Ethiopia are reaching "emergency proportions" as a result of failed rains, according to the Ethiopian government's federal early warning system (EWS), based in the capital, Addis Ababa. (inserting "eastern and southern")

Pastoralists in the remote Somali Region [now officially classified as the Somali National Regional State - SNRS] and along the border with Kenya in the south are facing critical shortages of pasture for their animals, EWS said in a report on Wednesday. "The performance of the season is worrying," it noted.

The EWS also reported that signs of malnutrition were now appearing among the vulnerable. In particular, it noted, shortages of water and pasture were reaching "emergency proportions" in certain districts, especially those on the border with Somalia in the far east of the country.

The Deyr rains, normally expected in October, and vital to pastoralists in the Somali region, are now a month late. It was the failure of the same rains in 1999 that caused the devastating drought estimated to have claimed 50,000 lives. The failure of this year's Deyr rains also comes in the wake of a country-wide drought which has left 13.2 million people dependent on international food aid.

"It is important to note that in this largely pastoral region, one rain failure or a significant delay in one rainy season can easily result in a drought situation, because the population is very dependent on the biannual rainfall cycle," the EWS said. "Currently, southern highlands, southern and southeastern parts of the country are major concern areas," it added. "They cover most parts of the pastoral areas."

During a meeting in the SNRS capital, Jijiga, on Monday, chaired by the SNRS acting president, Abdi Jibril, senior state officials budgeted an initial US $400,000 to be spent on tankering desperately needed water to affected families. It is understood from humanitarian sources that up to 500,000 people will be in need of this service. Medical supplies are also being sought.

Moreover, the EWS warned that there had been large migrations of pastoralists into Ethiopia from inside Somalia, which has also been hit by poor rains - further exacerbating water shortages.

It added that a team from the government's Disaster Prevention and Preparedness Commission was about to make an in-depth assessment of the potential crisis. "Until then, these areas are major concern areas which need close attention and follow-up," the EWS warned.

12/11/2003 - BRITISH GOVERNMENT PLEDGES US $ 2.5 TO FIGHT

ADDIS ABABA, 12 November (IRIN) - The British government pledged US $2.5 million on Wednesday to combat a massive malaria epidemic threatening 15 million people in Ethiopia. The funding follows an emergency appeal by the UN for $5 million to provide drugs and mosquito nets for affected regions.

British ambassador to Ethiopia Myles Wickstead called on the international community to follow suit and provide financial backing to stave off the crisis. "Malaria is one of the biggest killers in Ethiopia," Wickstead said. "Financial support from the donor community is required urgently to avoid a major epidemic."

Malaria claims around 100,000 lives in Ethiopia each year - 250 people a day - out of a population of 70 million. The government on Saturday warned the public to take greater care given the risk, but acknowledged that the reach of the deadly disease continued to spread.

"The continuous expansion of malaria-affected areas and the corresponding growing number of our compatriots who suffer or die from it has made this scourge one of the major health care challenges facing the country," the ministry of information said in its weekly statement. "Relentless efforts are therefore a must to halt the spread of this epidemic."

Humanitarian organisations say rains in the country have left pools of stagnant water that have provided a fertile breeding ground for mosquitoes.

"The risk of death spread by malaria mosquitoes looms in millions of homes in Ethiopia," the UN Country Team said in a special alert issued in October. It warned that "thousands of deaths" could occur as people already weakened by months of drought and hunger succumb to the deadly disease, and said Ethiopia lacked sufficient drugs for 5 million people.

All forms of malaria are deadly, but the parasite species plasmodium falcifarum, which causes cerebral malaria, is the most lethal, according to Dr Demene Aliu of the disease surveillance section at the World Health Organisation. Left untreated, it could kill a person in three to four days, Aliu said.

10/11/2003 - IRIN interview with UN Special Envoy Martii Ahtisaari.

ADDIS ABABA, 10 November (IRIN) - Former Finnish President Martti Ahtisaari is the United Nations Special Envoy for the Humanitarian Crisis in the Horn of Africa. During a six-day visit to drought-stricken Ethiopia and Eritrea, where 15 million people are facing starvation, he told IRIN that the international community should not overload with too many development initiatives a new five-year food coalition strategy aimed at ending food-aid dependency.

QUESTION: Since you were here earlier this year what has changed?

ANSWER: I was here [at the] end of June, early July, and we visited the southern region. There the situation has improved. It has been possible to close some of the therapeutic feeding centres. But there is a lot of work that still needs to be done.

Q: What areas do you feel that are exacerbating the crisis have not been properly addressed?

A: I think the whole dependence of rain-fed agriculture is a problem in itself. You can see when you come here and fly over areas that are green and flourishing, and then you see the dryness. I think what the government is trying to do is do some harvesting of the rain as well.

Q: Do you think a lack of good governance has played a role in exacerbating the current crisis?

A: I don't necessarily think so, because if the situation is so desperate as it is, there is little room for good governance. You can talk about good governance when the situation is fairly normal, but I would say that if we are looking for the turnaround in a country, the mere fact that you now have a coalition for food security where everyone is participating, including the leadership of the government, and [the] nongovernmental organisations sector and donors and international organisations - those are forums where things can be discussed and also solutions can be found.

Q: Would you like to see some additions to the food coalition strategy?

A. I think the problem is, and this is something I drew to the attention of the donors and NGOs as well, the tendency is which concerns me a little is that we are trying to load the agenda too much, because there are many things that need to be done. If one looks at the society, there are gender issues, there are educational issues, there are many others.

I think it is better now to concentrate on the food-security programme and not to load it so. I use a comparison: you should not try to load the circuit so that soon you are out of electricity. The most essential things are now in place. With time, also one can bring those other issues, which are extremely important. I am not trying to say they are not important, but in order to address those issues you definitely want to have a much more sustained situation.

Q: The international response has been far less in Eritrea. Why do you think that is?

A: First of all, Ethiopia has its past history of droughts. Secondly, the size of the situation here is much greater. It went over 13 million, while the population afflicted by the drought in Eritrea is slightly more than 2 million. So it is not surprising that donors were much more focused on the problems in Ethiopia and the scale of the problems as well, and the preparedness of everybody, including the nongovernmental sector.

Q: Do you think the failure to normalise the relations between the two countries is hampering the relief effort?

A: I don't think it necessarily hampers the relief effort, but of course, from a developmental point of view, one hopes that normalcy would be achieved in relations of any country, and this particularly for the simple reason that one could utilise the manpower for productive purposes, because now unsolved problems are tying up a lot of manpower - I would call it for unproductive use.

Q: Will you raise the unresolved border issue?

A: No, I have not touched the issue at all, because I think it was understood from the beginning that there are a number of issues that one could discuss, but my mandate is to concentrate entirely on - as Secretary-General Kofi Annan asked me - to try to help everybody - governments, international organisations and NGOs - to prevent a humanitarian crisis developing and a disaster developing, and try also to move towards more sustained development and more long-term development.

We have to support the people, but the actual work is done - I think it is important to emphasise - by the government and the donors, who have been very forthcoming, and with the support of the nongovernmental organisations, because in a situation like this the country would not succeed without the support of the NGO sector. For me it is very important that we keep the political issues and the humanitarian issues separate from each other.

Q: US congressmen have put forward a bill to restrict economic aid over the unresolved border issue. Is this something you are against, given those comments?

A: I don't think it matters much; I have no vote in the US Congress. [...] I think one has to take seriously this sort of initiative, because it would be disastrous if we would land in a situation where the donor communities' willingness would start fading away. This year there has been an extraordinary response from the donor community, and now we are moving towards the more sustainable development to reduce dependency. So this is not the time, but it sends a clear message to everybody in the region so that those issues should be addressed as well.

Q: What message would you have for people hit by drought, extremely poor and perhaps who have seen little change in their lives in 10, 20, 30 years?

A: I think they are not starting to see the change. I welcome the government's use of the food aid for food-for-work programmes, because it is a question also, as government have said, of social mobilisation of the people and through the food-for-work [programme] where they can see the benefits directly. I think this will encourage people to do even more locally.

Q: The prime minister said he would like to shift away from food aid, and use cash as a safety mechanism. Is that something you would endorse?

A: I think it is easy to endorse, but it is extremely difficult to implement, because I don't think we will ever reach a situation where the cash would be so freely available, and therefore we have to make the best out of what we have. I think it is good advice for all of us, whether we are talking about many countries or here. And food for work is an innovative way of using food or grain.

In effect, it is actually cash, because people would have to buy that. Obviously, the ideal situation is that you could utilise the cash to a larger extent, and I think both will be utilised in all situations. But let's make best use of the food, because I don't think you can manage to make the change without the food inputs.

Q: So do you feel we are not making the best use of food aid?

A: No, it is not that, because sometimes there is a nearly theological discussion about the food and whether it should be utilised and how it should be utilised. I am a rather pragmatic person in that if people are dying without the livelihood, then food makes an important difference. But in the programme that the government has engaged [in] now - the social mobilisation of people - then I think it is quite natural that food inputs are used for work programmes so people actually see the results of their own work and at the same time get the livelihoods they need.

28/10/2003 - BLINDNESS, MALARIA, FAMINE & POVERTY.

LBC RADIO 97.3 FM

Blindness, Malaria, Famine & Poverty From Thursday 30 October to Wednesday 05 November we will appeal for help through the LBC Radio 97.3 FM with the following message.

QUOTE

This is an Urgent appeal on behalf of the Children of Ethiopia AID. The Children of Ethiopia are increasingly suffering from blindness, malaria, famine and poverty due to persisting natural disasters.

Nearly one million are blind, but 700,000 of them could have had their sight saved with prompt medical treatment. Malaria is the third biggest killer and it is taking more and more lives everyday.

£500,000 will provide medical care to those suffering blindness and malaria. It will also provide health education and small scale farming, to help build a better future for the Children of Ethiopia.

Please give generously, as much as you can. Our lines are open from 9am till 11pm from now until next Wednesday. Call 0870 005 6446 or donate ONLINE at www.childrenofethiopia.com

Please, help give the Children of Ethiopia a brighter future. Call 0870 005 6446. Give hope by giving a donation 0870 005 6446. We are waiting for your call Thank You

UNQUOTE

During this week the progress reports will be updated daily.

Your donation will be appreciated as usual.

CHILDREN OF ETHIOPIA AID

06/10/2003 - A holy book

ADDIS ABABA, 6 October (IRIN) - A holy book looted from Ethiopia by British troops more than a century ago was back home and on public display for the first time on Saturday.

Professor Richard Pankhurst, who campaigns for the return of treasure to Ethiopia, returned the 300-year-old handwritten Book of Psalms to the country last week.

The book, which is written in the old Ethiopian language of Ge'ez, was part of a huge haul taken by British troops after the Battle of Maqdala in 1868. British troops invaded in December 1867 to free a number of diplomats and missionaries imprisoned by Emperor Tewodros II following a dispute with the British government. Tewodros committed suicide, rather than be captured by the British.

"This looting was sacrilege in as much as it was looted from a church," said Pankhurst, vice chairman of the Association for the Return of Maqdala Ethiopian Treasures (AFROMET).

"If the American troops in the recent war in Iraq had started looting mosques and taking things the world would have been outraged," he added.

The biblical Book of Psalms - for which AFROMET paid 750 pounds sterling to a private collector - is now on display at the Institute of Ethiopian Studies (IES) in the capital Addis Ababa.

Getachew Kassa who is in charge of the institute said he was "delighted" at its return. He said the document was vital for academic research.

03/10/2003 - ANTI MALARIA MEDICINES

4 - ETHIOPIA: Vital medicines arrive to combat malaria

ADDIS ABABA, 3 October (IRIN) - Vital anti-malaria medicines to combat a looming epidemic in Ethiopia have been released from customs, officials told IRIN on Friday.

The medicines, worth US $700,000 arrived in the country on 18 August and were released on 2 October. They will be distributed to hard hit areas early next week.

A spokesman from the Ethiopian Customs Authority told IRIN: "The drugs were subject to urgent clearance. We got them out as soon as possible."

Malaria is the third biggest killer in the country and claims around 250 lives a day. Some 40 million people in the country are at risk of infection.

Christiane Rudert, head of health and nutrition at the UN Children's Fund (UNICEF) in Ethiopia, said the drugs were vital in combating the potential emergency.

"UNICEF emptied its global warehouse of anti-malarials and air freighted them to Ethiopia within one week," Rudert told IRIN.

"We are now in the process of distributing the drugs, procured with funds from the US government, to the priority zones," she added.

Among the drugs are desperately needed quinine injections for the worst cases of cerebral malaria that can kill in a matter of days.

Earlier this week the government appealed to the nation for concerted action against the looming malaria epidemic.

Both the ministry of health and the World Health Organisation (WHO) have warned of the vital need to get drugs out to rural areas as soon as possible to avert a crisis.

"We have to get more medicines into Ethiopia fast," Dr David Nabarro, WHO global emergency head warned during his most recent visit to the country.

Around 100,000 people have already been affected by malaria in the last few months in drought-hit Southern Nations, Nationalities and People's Region (SNNPR).

Tens of thousands of insecticide-treated mosquito nets (ITNs) have also been distributed to try and combat the disease.

25/09/2003 - Ethiopians urged to eat RICE

ADDIS ABABA, 25 September (IRIN) - Ethiopians should consider changing their eating habits as part of the fight against repeated famines that have hit the nation, the United Nations said on Wednesday.

Sam Nyambi, the UN country representative in Ethiopia, urged the nation to adopt "diet diversification" as a means of combating recurrent droughts.

"It is a process we want to encourage, even more so in countries that are drought-stricken because you need to expand the ability of a family to survive," Nyambi said.

His comments come as the UN and Japan launched a bid to encourage the impoverished nation to start growing a drought-resistant breed of rice called NERICA (New Rice for Africa).

Currently less than one percent of the 67 million people in Ethiopia eat rice - preferring wheat and a locally grown grain called teff.

Motoyoshi Noro, deputy head at the Japanese embassy in Ethiopia, said the aim was to offer people an alternative with NERICA which has never been grown in the country before.

"The question is how to help the people of Ethiopia who suffer from famine if they have no food to eat," Noro said. "I think Ethiopian people do not like to eat rice but if they have nothing to eat, I think rice is quite sufficient and effective for them."

Currently some 13.2 million people are receiving food aid - almost all of it is wheat and costs rich nations more than US $700 million.

The Japanese are funding a pilot scheme to the tune of US $180,000 to help persuade the country that rice could help feed millions of drought-hit farmers.

NERICA trials are expected to start in the northern Amhara region where some four million people are dependent on food aid each year, regardless of the weather.

10/09/2003 - Eritrea-Ethiopia:End

ADDIS ABABA, 10 September (IRIN) - The peace process between Ethiopia and Eritrea must not "lose momentum" in the crucial run-up to the demarcation of their common border, UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan has urged. In his latest report on both countries, he also called on them to end their "cold peace" and take advantage of the economic potential normal relations would offer.

"While the final steps of the peace process may be the most difficult," Annan stated, "they are also the most important for the future of the two countries and must be taken sooner rather than later". He also said that both countries should be "more actively assisted" in fulfilling the commitments of the peace deal by the international community.

Sir Elihu Lauterpacht, president of the Eritrea-Ethiopia Boundary Commission - tasked with implementing the new border - also urged speedy demarcation. Lauterpacht called on both countries to ensure the security of demarcation teams whose arrival, he stated, was "imminent". "...the Commission has reminded the parties of their complete and sole responsibility, within the areas under their control, for ensuring the safety of all demarcation personnel," he said in the UN report, released last week.

Lauterpacht also noted that the demarcation of the contested 1,000-kilometre border would only take place with the "unreserved cooperation" of the two governments.

The report comes just days before the Security Council meets to extend the mandate of the UN peacekeeping force, UNMEE. Demarcation is also expected to start next month. Annan revealed that the UN demarcation fund urgently requires an additional US $2 million if the process is to start in the east of both countries as scheduled.

The report noted that armed incidents had been increasing in and around the 25-kilometre Temporary Security Zone - a buffer between the two countries. In one incident Ethiopian militia pointed their guns at UN Blue Helmets patrolling the area. Cattle rustling had also increased, Annan noted. He added that "strong protests" had been lodged with Ethiopian officials.

Annan said the increase in tensions might be a "growing unease" because of the uncertainty of an un-demarcated border. "I therefore urge the two governments to do their utmost to prevent cross-border incidents before they escalate," he said. "Even more important, however, is that they proceed with the expeditious demarcation of the border."

10/09/2003 - USA EMBASSY ADDIS ABABA : LAUNCHED OF APPEAL

ADDIS ABABA, 10 September (IRIN) - The United States embassy in Addis Ababa launched on Monday a small grants scheme worth $360,000 to support human rights organisations in Ethiopia.

Aurelia Brazeal, the US ambassador to Ethiopia, said 43 local organisations and charities would benefit from the scheme, aimed at helping to bolster democracy in the country.

Ms Brazeal told representatives of human and civil rights organisations that fostering political pluralism and enhancing economic development would enable people to resist the lure of "extremists".

"We all have a common interest in improving the lives of the Ethiopian people," she said at the launch of the scheme in the US embassy in Addis Ababa. "We believe that political pluralism and economic security are strengthened at the grassroots level and are not only important, but also necessary components of a democracy."

Ms Brazeal said the grants to human rights groups aimed to "empower" women and minority groups, increase literacy, and improve economic growth.

"A healthier Ethiopian economy and democracy means less dependence on donor nations," she noted. "An improved life for all can only be built through building, not destroying, through hope, not despair. These grants are an important part of this ongoing process."

In its most recent human rights report on Ethiopia, released in March, the US Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor said Ethiopian security forces had killed up to 1,500 people in 2002. The report stated that the Ethiopian government's human rights record "remained poor

09/09/2003 - URGENT APPEAL

Appeal to target:

• BLINDNESS - over 900,000 are suffering in Ethiopia only. 80% could have been saved.
• MALARIA - 3rd big killer in Ethiopia only.
• WATER PURIFICATION KITS - To tackle blindness & Malaria.
• SMALL-SCALE FARMING - To tackle blindness & famine.

05/09/2003 - The progress of Polio vacinnation

ADDIS ABABA, 5 September (IRIN) - Almost a million children are being vaccinated in Ethiopia as part of the global polio eradication campaign which aims to eliminate the crippling disease by 2005.

Tens of thousands of children aged between six months and 14 years are being targeted under the joint government and United Nations campaign in remote Somali Region.

The weeklong polio, measles and vitamin A vaccination campaign is aimed at strengthening the fight against the food crisis that has hit the country.

Children weakened by the drought that has affected 13.2 million people in Ethiopia are particularly susceptible to disease, humanitarian agencies warned.

"With some of the highest child mortality rates and lowest immunisation levels in the country, children in Somali region are very vulnerable to diseases like polio and measles," said Bjorn Ljungqvist, who heads the UN' s Children Fund (UNICEF) in Ethiopia.

"It is vital that we use these campaigns to target as many children as possible, and also use this opportunity to strengthen regular immunisation and health services in the region."

Ethiopia is not yet rid of the scourge of polio which needs three years of close surveillance without new cases to be certified polio free.

"This campaign is part of an ongoing effort to eradicate polio from the country and the world," added Angela Benson, acting head of the World Health Organisation.

"It is crucial that we persevere until every child can be guaranteed a life safe from this disease."

01/09/2003 - Chronic food shortage- Major turning point

ADDIS ABABA, 1 September (IRIN) - Ethiopia has reached a "major turning point" in tackling its chronic food shortages, the head of the United Nations in the country stated on Monday.

Sam Nyambi, who heads the UN's Development Programme (UNDP), said "new efforts" were needed to overcome the massive hurdles that spark recurrent food crises in Ethiopia.

His rallying call comes after continuous high level talks in the capital between international and Ethiopian experts over the last six weeks on how to reverse decades of dependency.

"We need to do business differently to address the challenge of rural livelihoods and food security, and we believe that the new coalition is the right way forward," said Nyambi.

"The forum was a major turning point in the country's efforts to find a lasting solution to the issue of chronic food insecurity," he added.

Among key experts at the summit were officials from the World Bank and US Agency for International Development (USAID). They aim to slash food dependency in famine stricken Ethiopia "within two to three years".

During the 1990s, Ethiopia reduced the percentage of its 67 million people who are undernourished from 59 percent to 44 percent, the UN stated.

But both the government and international donors admit far more has to be done to avert emergencies like the current famine which has hit 13.2 million people.

The new task force - which has been urged by non-governmental organisations to take radical steps in tackling the food crisis - is currently preparing a package of proposals.

Among key ideas are improving livelihoods, agricultural and livestock production, access to food, safety net and asset protection, and marketing agricultural products.

The experts are also working on implementation strategies and budgeting, access to land for voluntary resettlement of families in drought-prone areas, and health and nutrition.

The work is scheduled to be completed in late September with donors holding talks in November to raise funds for backing the strategies.

"This is a significant new development, coming at a time when the government's commitment to long-term food security and that of other stakeholders requires new efforts, given the repeated cycles of food appeals and the increasing frequency of droughts," Nyambi concluded.

29/08/2003 - Malaria worsening due to drug resistance

The fight against a growing malaria epidemic in Ethiopia is being hampered because of a resistance to available drugs, humanitarian agencies warned on Monday. The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) warned that the parasite's resistance was "aggravating the epidemic and causing a high death toll". Malaria is already the third biggest killer in Ethiopia with some 100,000 lives claimed each year. More than 40 million people are at risk. But UN agencies also warned that a slow response to "unexpected" emergency needs and a "lack of clarity" on who should have access to free drugs were also exacerbating the crisis.

In particular they cited the Southern Nations and Nationalities People's Region (SNNPR) where high death rates have hit highland areas - traditionally safe from malaria. They also noted that the emergency had not yet reached its peak, adding that the height of the crisis is expected to occur next month.

29/08/2003 - Water distribution aims to combat disease

Vital water purifying equipment is being distributed in Ethiopia's drought-stricken areas to combat the growing threat of water-borne diseases, the United Nations said on Monday. The water supplies will be targeted at women and children in eight hard-hit areas around the country, according to the UN's Children's Fund (UNICEF). "This contribution is particularly significant as safe water is vital to prevent the outbreak of waterborne diseases," said UNICEF head Bjorn Ljungqvist. UNICEF estimates some 4.2 million people are in urgent need of clean, safe water.

It also warns that the end of the rainy season in Ethiopia means unsafe water runs into rivers and contaminates the sources people are now tempted to use. "Consumption of such unsafe water can lead to an increase in water-borne diseases and epidemics," Ljungqvist added. Among the equipment distributed are five water purification kits and some 1,620 emergency drinking water kits which can purify water for household use. The US $775,000 deal is being funded by the Norwegian government and will be supplied to Somali region, Oromiya, Amhara, Gambella, Tigray, Harar, Afar and the Southern Nations and Nationalities People's Region.

18/08/2003 - EMERGENCY FOOD ARRIVING VIA BERBERA

Emergency food aid to tackle Ethiopia's devastating famine is being shipped in through the Somaliland port of Berbera, officials said on Monday.

The shipment - some 15,000 mt tons of wheat from the European Commission - is the first consignment of emergency aid through the port this year.

But the commission - one of the largest donors in Ethiopia - is trying to shift the focus from the impoverished country's reliance on food aid.

Jean-Pierre Pierard, deputy head at the EC in Ethiopia, told IRIN that continual shipments of food aid would not resolve the underlying crisis in Ethiopia - namely poverty.

"Food aid is a partial answer," Pierard said. "It helps today but what we need are long term solutions."

He said member states of the 15-strong European Union, along with the World Bank and the US Agency for International Development, were trying to establish a "common approach".

"We are all worried about the food situation because the numbers needing food aid are increasing," he added. "We cannot keep having a succession of emergencies."

Humanitarian organisations are already gearing up for a potential crisis next year believing that as many as ten million people could need aid.

The EC - which has faced criticism over its level of food aid support to Ethiopia this year - is shipping in around 445,000 mt of assistance.

It is using the ports in Djibouti and Berbera, as well as local purchases of aid in both Ethiopia and the region.

Landlocked Ethiopia traditionally used the ports of Massawa and Assab in Eritrea until war flared up between both countries in 1998.

15/08/2003 - HIV/AIDS

ADDIS ABABA, 15 August (IRIN) - Ethiopia must radically expand the country 's voluntary testing centres if it is to curb the AIDS scourge, a conference heard on Friday.

Gebeyehu Mekonnen, who heads the Family Guidance Association of Ethiopia, said offering testing to the entire population was a vital weapon in the war against the deadly virus.

His call came at a conference sponsored by the UN Children's Fund (UNICEF) on how to "live positively" with HIV.

According to the Ethiopian government, some 2.2 million people are infected although some experts working with HIV/AIDS say it could be much higher. An estimated 600 people are day are dying from AIDS.

Gebeyehu has just returned from a fact-finding mission sponsored by UNICEF in Uganda where the HIV virus has almost been brought under control.

He told IRIN that Ethiopia must "speed up" its campaign and provide hard-to-reach communities with services and awareness campaigns.

"Had we started earlier in the fight against HIV/AIDS we would have saved lives at all levels. The elite need to push this forward and advocate before we are engulfed," he stressed.

"Services should be available to everyone," he added. "Our work should not be limited to seminars, to training centres, the services should be there.

"Voluntary testing must be broadened and also through mobile teams so that every health facility in the country can offer that service.

"Everyone needs to have the knowledge about HIV and to know his or her status," Gebeyehu said.

Although there are several hundred voluntary testing centres around the country, many are erratic and remain closed. Others lack effective counselling.

He said Uganda could act as a positive example for Ethiopia which is still in the "early stages" of the pandemic.

In Uganda, infection rates soared to over 30 percent but massive awareness campaigns and government commitment brought it down to around six percent, he said.

Lisa Bohmer, who head's UNICEF's fight against HIV/AIDS in Ethiopia, says that stigmatisation and silence is resulting in needless deaths.

"People infected with HIV can lead positive lives and become productive members of society," she told IRIN. "But the virus is still shrouded in a veil of secrecy and fear."

05/08/2003 - Families unwilling to go home until border marked.

ADDIS ABABA, 5 August (IRIN) - Families displaced during the Ethiopia-Eritrea war are still not returning home because of the danger of landmines and the impending demarcation of the border.

The Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC) warned on Tuesday that until implementation of the controversial boundary decision takes place, Ethiopian families will be reluctant to go home.

Fighting between both countries, which erupted in May 1998 and ended with a peace deal in December 2000, forced around one million people to flee their homes on both sides of the border.

"Many of these war displaced are unlikely to fully reintegrate into their communities and attain self-sufficiency unless the frontier is demarcated, their lands demined and security ensured," the NRC said.

In its 2003 report on internally displaced persons (IDPs), the NRC said ethnic conflict in Ethiopia was also fuelling displacement and had forced thousands from their homes.

The agency also said the government's controversial resettlement programme - which aims to relocate two million people in three years - was "of serious concern".

"Household vulnerability and displacement have been exacerbated by a controversial resettlement scheme, implemented by the government, which relocated hundred of thousands Ethiopians in 2002," the NRC said.

The organisation added that natural disasters like flooding and the severe drought had forced families from their homes.

"Serious drought and floods have left nearly 20 percent of Ethiopians in need of food aid and forced hundreds of thousands to flee their homes," the report noted.

But despite the scale of the IDP crisis, the NRC says no figures are available for the numbers of displaced people across the country.

The UN's World Food Programme and the World Bank are both offering support to tens of thousands of IDPs - mainly affected by the border war.

05/08/2003 - Feares if Malaria Epidemic.

ADDIS ABABA, 5 August (IRIN) - Fears are mounting of a major malaria epidemic in Ethiopia, officials at the ministry of health told IRIN on Tuesday.

Gezahegn Tesfaye, who heads the department's anti-malaria unit, said the country was bracing itself for an outbreak after the rainy season ends in September.

He also appealed to the international community for additional support in combating any outbreak by providing equipment such as insecticide sprays.

Malaria is the third biggest killer in Ethiopia, claiming around 100,000 lives each year. The last major epidemic was in 1998.

More than 40 million people are estimated to be at risk of malaria in the country, with around 5 million cases occurring annually.

Gezahegn warned that many victims had been weakened due to the severe drought in the country.

"Due to the drought situation many people are malnourished and their immunity is lower," Gezahegn told IRIN. "We are worried that there may be a serious epidemic after the rains."

But although regional health authorities are currently reporting large malaria outbreaks, Gezahegn says that often the data are incomplete and unreliable.

Around 100,000 people have already contracted malaria in the last few months in the drought-hit Southern Nations, Nationalities and Peoples Region (SNNPR). Another 53,000 are affected in northern Ethiopia's Amhara region.

Gezahegn said many regional authorities lacked sufficient "operational funds" - money used to provide nets or chemicals that can treat infected areas.

Ethiopia is one of a number of countries which is aiming to cut malaria cases by half in the next seven years.

The government spends around US $4 million a year to tackle the disease, and US $37 million has been received under a two-year programme from the Global Fund for malaria control.

05/08/2003 - Still struggling to escape the grip of famine.

ADDIS ABABA, 5 August (IRIN) - Ethiopia is still struggling to escape the grip of famine with the numbers in need increasing by more than half a million people, according to a government-led assessment.

The study, due out this week, says the number of victims of the unprecedented crisis now stands at 13.2 million.

The increase by 600,000 people - all requiring food aid - follows an assessment of harvests around the country from the small belg rains which fall in March and April.

The assessment, which also included 14 different humanitarian agencies, notes that key areas of the country are still struggling to combat the famine.

A crucial health reassessment is also expected to indicate an urgent need for drugs in parts of the country - particularly in the south which has been hard hit by the crisis.

In particular, there is an urgent need for drugs to combat malaria and other acute illnesses which are now reaching epidemic proportions in some parts.

The announcement comes as the international community met the 1.5 million mt of food aid needed in one of the largest ever emergencies to befall Ethiopia.

Key areas affected by poor rains include eastern and south Tigray, Wag Hamra and North and South Wello zones in Amhara Region, and the highlands of east and west Haraghe.

The UN's Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) in Ethiopia says the report shows a "less promising" picture for many parts of the country with human and livestock in critical condition.

"With rains unpredictable and erratic, the farmers' strategy of planting and replanting has led to reported shortage of seeds in some regions," OCHA added.

04/08/2003 - Anti-AIDS drugs

ADDIS ABABA, 4 August (IRIN) - For Sister Tibebe Maco there is little reason to note, let alone celebrate, the first distribution of drugs to treat victims of the AIDS pandemic in Ethiopia.

Neither do the hundreds of patients living with the virus that she currently looks after pay much attention. "They are not for us," is their oft-repeated mantra.

Anti-retroviral drugs - which the federal government started distributing last week - are too late for many infected with the virus and too expensive for most of them.

"These people are the real victims," says Sister Tibebe, speaking of the 420 people with HIV/AIDS who her charity, HIWOT, is helping. "They will die simply because they are poor."

ONLY FOR THE RICH

Under the initial government distribution, 2,000 paying patients - the government estimates some two million people are living with the virus - will receive the treatment.

According to health experts, at least 200,000 people could qualify for medical treatment - which effectively is being handled on a first come first served basis.

Argehgne and Bayush, two of Sister Tibebe's patients, married three years ago. Last year they discovered they were HIV-positive.

Argehgne acknowledges he infected his wife, saying he probably contracted the virus before they were married.

The couple, with their two-year-old son, scraped by on US $1 a day which Argehgne earned labouring in one of the many construction sites in the sprawling capital, Addis Ababa.

But since the virus has taken a hold, more often than not the 30-year-old is unable to work. It means they generally will beg for food or be helped out by Sister Tibebe.

"We do not have enough money for food to eat for a day, let alone to buy drugs," says Baynush. "Food is our priority, the drugs are not for people like us."

POVERTY THE REAL KILLER

Their plight is a tragic reminder of the real killer in Ethiopia - poverty. The government is aware of the need to distribute drugs, but cannot afford it.

With its limited funds, the entire health budget is just US $120 million a year. Only those who can pay will get the chance to buy the drugs.

"We are trying to expand gradually for the paying patient," Mengisteab Waregay, the deputy head of the country's Drug Administration and Control Authority told IRIN.

"The government cannot afford to make the drugs available for everybody particularly at a time when there are 14 million people starving. We are trying our best to make the drugs available for free for patients," he adds.

Although the cost of the drugs has dropped dramatically in recent years - in Ethiopia the monthly cost is around US $40 per person - they are still out of the reach of most.

The government is looking at two ways of ensuring greater supply and reducing the cost - by financial support from the Global Fund and through generic drugs.

Ethiopia is one of two countries on the continent - the other is South Africa - to receive technical support to start producing anti-retroviral drugs.

MOVES IN THE RIGHT DIRECTION

The World Health Organisation (WHO) also adds that the country could soon move towards free distribution of anti-retroviral drugs with support from the Global Fund.

Dr Endalamaw Aberra, WHO national programme officer for HIV/AIDS, says US $28 million has been earmarked for combating the virus for the first year.

Initially Ethiopia had not applied for funding from the fund for anti-retrovirals, believing they were simply too expensive.

"Initially the thinking was it was too expensive for the government to distribute it for free but now things are changing," Dr Endalamaw said. "Now the price has come down."

Dr Endalamaw says that current thinking in treatment is also directed towards improving access to drugs through better health centres and doctors who can administer them.

"Access and equity are always relative so the global thinking is that we have to improve access - perfect equity is not achievable," he stated.

He said only half the population have access to health facilities - a physical barrier to receiving treatment and one reason why the first round distribution was limited to just 2,000 people.

"It is a complicated equation but one we have to address," he adds.

Dr Endalamaw also acknowledges the current distribution round is just a drop in the ocean, but says that health practitioners will gain invaluable experience.

"The big question is how do we make sure that people take the drugs properly," he added. "Hopefully in a few months time we will start giving anti-retrovirals for free."

BLACK MARKET FEAR

The distribution also aims to stamp out a black market in the drugs. One senior health official told IRIN they are selling for around US $150 a month in Addis Ababa.

"We know there are people who get treatment in private clinics," the official said. "It is black market and one way of fighting that is making sure the drugs are available." "The medical danger of course is that if the drugs are poor quality then you could bread resistance in the country which would be extremely alarming," the official added.

But while the government and international organisations look to finance anti-retrovirals in Ethiopia, Sister Tibebe warns of the enormous cost of failing to provide them.

With the country already witnessing an explosion in AIDS orphans - there are some one million in the country at present - she predicts that number will sky rocket.

"The current approach is short-sighted," she says from her small office in the heart of the capital.

"If my patients die, who is going to look after their children, who will pay for that? Better that we pay now, rather than pick up a much larger bill in a few years' time."

31/07/2003 - WFP appeals for aid to feed Somali refugees in Ethiopia

ADDIS ABABA, 31 Jul 2003 (IRIN) - Food for tens of thousands of refugees in Ethiopia will run out in three months unless urgently needed supplies are provided, the UN’s World Food Programme warned on Thursday.

WFP said food aid for 130,000 refugees, who fled fighting in Sudan and Somalia, would dry up by October.

It also also warned that without adequate food aid, a massive repatriation scheme to help Somali refugees return home could grind to a halt.

"Generous donor support is the clear reason for the refugees’ good nutritional status,” said Benedict Fultang, WFP's acting Country Director for Ethiopia.

"A major funding shortage and the resulting break in food supplies will most certainly lead to widespread malnutrition, and put at risk the lives of refugees, especially the women and children."

WFP says it desperately needs US $5.3 million to continue feeding refugees until March 2004.

"The refugees cannot rely on the host population to feed them just at a time when more than 12.5 million people in Ethiopia are threatened by starvation due to a severe drought," added Fultang.

02/06/2003 - Millions of Ethiopians are at risk of starvation

Millions of Ethiopians are at risk of starvation because of a funding shortfall for food aid, the UN’s World Food Programme (WFP) said on Monday.

WFP said it was facing a US $90 million shortfall for its emergency operations in 2003 in drought-stricken Ethiopia. "As we enter Ethiopia’s lean season before the harvest, the number threatened by starvation has shot up from 11 million to 12.5 million, and our best estimates are that it is still climbing," said James Morris, the executive director of WFP. He also criticised the international community for forcing WFP to cut food rations and also to decide on criteria for distribution.

"We have not had enough support to give out a complete cereal ration in Ethiopia, and we and our partners have been forced to reduce it from 15 kilos a month to 12.5 kilos. Currently we have commitments of about half of what we need for the new emergency operation. The threat of a pipeline break in September remains," he said.

Ethiopia is facing a food crisis unparalleled in its history. One in five of the population faces starvation and the aid bill is expected to top $800 million. WFP needs a staggering 230,000 mt more of food aid towards the 2003 requirement of 619,000 mt. Total food aid needed in the country is 1.5 million mt.

"I assure you cutting rations is an action we and our partners only take in desperation. Once again, because governments have failed to provide the aid needed, WFP is forced into an exercise in triage: Who will be fed? Who will go hungry?" said Morris.

Currently the Ethiopian government has topped up ration size to 15 kg - the internationally accepted norm, but only for the most vulnerable families.

One of the areas worst affected by the drought is Southern Nations', Nationalities' and Peoples' Regional State, where one-fifth of the country's population lives. Poor targeting of food aid by the government has been blamed for the chronic food shortages in the region.

26/05/2003 - Sir Bob Geldof returns to the impoverished country as it stands on the brink of yet another disaster

Twenty years ago he helped raise US $60 million to fight the devastating famine that hit Ethiopia. The world vowed never to let it happen again. On Monday, Sir Bob Geldof returns to the impoverished country as it stands on the brink of yet another disaster, and millions once again face starvation.

The drought has provoked renewed dismay that such a tragedy can befall the Horn of Africa country, but also anger as to why has it happened again.

Currently more than 12 million people face starvation - one in five of the population - a disaster that is expected to cost in the region of US $800 million.

LESSONS LEARNT

Both the government and international community acknowledge that while aid may have failed to stave off famine, key lessons to prevent future tragedies have been learnt.

In those two decades, they say, radical changes have been made in tackling crises in Ethiopia - lessons which now underscore that continual food aid is not the answer.

Since the terrible famine of 1984, Ethiopia has continued to face major food shortages in 1992, 1994 and the drought in 2000 where up to 50,000 people died.

Paradoxically, even during bumper harvests, some five million each year face hunger and are dependent on handouts. Many are simply so poor they cannot afford to buy food.

In fact Ethiopia produces more of its own food than most European countries, but with average incomes at just US $1 a day and a cash-strapped government, importing additional food is out of the question.

Yet now key institutions are now playing an integral role alleviating the situation - something that was lacking 20 years ago. Among crucial organisations and systems that have emerged, is the food reserve and the government's improved relief agency - the Disaster Prevention and Preparedness Commission (DPPC).

Simon Mechale, who heads the DPPC, told IRIN that in terms of the population and scale, the current drought is unprecedented in Ethiopia's history.

"This is not a one time problem we are now facing," he stressed. "It is a cumulative effect where the problem has been increasing over the years."

"The problem is one of development - poverty and lack of purchasing power," he said. Unless these are answered the problem will always be there. The development question has not been answered and the poverty has not been eradicated."

The government and aid agencies have prevented the biblical scenes witnessed in the 1980s where tens of thousands packed up and moved to feeding camps, he added.

DONOR RESPONSE

The timely response and awareness of the international community and government mean that far fewer people will die - as long as donors respond.

As yet, the government is unaware how many people may have died in the current drought - but senior sources within the aid community estimate at least 30,000.

"In terms of avoiding mass deaths we have also been successful," Simon said. "The donor community has also been helpful in providing on time whatever they could."

The food reserve - which now can hold up to 400,000 mt - also plays a vital role.

In the past once famine reared its head, donors pledged food which often took many months to arrive in the country.

But under the reserve scheme, donors can pledge the food and borrow against it from the reserve so immediate aid can be supplied.

An early warning system, at the local level which feeds into national resources, means officials have an accurate picture of the country's status.

A warning was sounded for this current drought in mid-May 2002 - well before widespread starvation. However the early warning system is only as good as the response by donors.

GOVERNMENT COMMITMENT

Humanitarian agencies also point to the commitment of the current government compared to the former Marxist military regime - the Derg - headed by Mengistu Haile Mariam.

The government, donors and the non-governmental organisations also work together on Ethiopia's food appeals.

Continual and multi-year assessments are also beginning to replace the annual government food appeal, providing a longer term, more stable approach.

Donors have welcomed the "openness and transparency" which have played a vital role in tackling the current emergency.

Under the Derg command, which was overthrown in 1991, officials covered up the scale of the crisis and restricted the travel of aid organisations. In 1984 the country was also in the midst of a 17-year civil war and food aid for the hungry was used as a political weapon with deadly effects. Mengistu's government lacked both the incentive and willingness to tackle the crisis, with catastrophic results.

This improved relationship between the international community and the ruling Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF) has meant improved aid flows.

REDUCING DEPENDENCY

Paul Turnbull, head of the UN World Food Programme's emergency unit who was in Ethiopia during the 1984 famine, says that more investment is still needed for Ethiopia.

He says that traditionally the size of aid has never matched the scale of the crisis and until it does. Ethiopia will continue to struggle.

"The resources made available both by the government and the international agencies were not commensurate with the scale of the problem," Turnbull said. "Ethiopia is always going to be vulnerable to drought but the question is how to get people to be less dependent on things affected by drought."

"Aid has kept things from being a total disaster," he added. "If food aid had not been stepped up from last year you really could have had millions of people dying."

"This is a huge problem and you do get people who think the Live Aid money that was pumped in should have solved all those problems," he said.

And the lingering cost of that disaster has plagued Ethiopia ever since - a problem that even the head of the DPPC acknowledges they have never been able to shake off.

Consequently since the famines of the 1970s and 1980s, the numbers needing emergency assistance have been increasing at alarming rates.

But despite the enormous strides made, until this and other major hurdles are tackled, Ethiopia will continue to suffer enormous consequences from drought.

POPULATION GROWTH

Significantly, the population back in 1984 was 45 million - population growth rates currently outstrip economic or agricultural growth. There are now 67 million people.

Berahanu Nega, from the Ethiopian Economic Association, argues that unparalleled population growth means the size of land holdings has dropped by half in 20 years.

"How long can you maintain 85 percent of your population in agriculture that requires a tremendous amount of land?" he asks.

As Clive Robinson of the UK charity, Christian Aid, points out: "Ethiopia's problem is a long term one of chronic poverty, asset depletion and entitlement decline."

"Poor people have nothing to fall back on," he says. "For poor people if loss of assets and purchasing power is the problem, livelihood support is the solution and cash may be the best fertiliser."

18/03/2003 - Appeal for more aid

The UN and the Ethiopian government have appealed for more aid to address the humanitarian crisis in the country.

In an addendum to their joint appeal for 2003 issued in December, they estimated that about 20 percent of Ethiopia's population was at risk due to the drought currently affecting the country.

The government's Disaster Prevention and Preparedness Commission (DPPC) and the UN noted that in addition to food, all principal sectors were in need of help including health, water, agriculture and livestock.

"More than 11.3 million people require emergency food assistance totalling 1.46 million mt of food assistance," their statement said. "Another 3.1 million need close monitoring."

"Despite the positive response by the donor community thus far, firm commitments are needed in both the food and non-food sectors," the statement added. "In particular, the availability and access to seeds for farmers is critical."

09/03/2003 - Appeal for non-food aid

ADDIS ABABA, 5 September (IRIN) - Ethiopia on Friday appealed for US $40 million to help fight the devastating crisis which has affected 13.2 million people in the impoverished, drought-stricken country.

Simon Mechale, who heads the government's Disaster Prevention and Preparedness Commission (DPPC), warned that more than just food aid was needed to avert an unprecedented crisis that has already claimed thousands of lives.

The money is aimed at boosting the areas of health and nutrition as well as improving access to clean water and sanitation which are currently massively underfunded.

In a joint appeal with the United Nations, Mechale warned that the crisis was far from over.

He appealed to donors for an additional 200,000 mt of food as a "contingency plan" for early next year - to meet any crisis that might arise.

According to aid agencies, thousands of children have died because of dirty water and poor health facilities which have exacerbated the food emergency.

Sam Nyambi, the head of the UN in Ethiopia, praised the "unprecedented" food response to the "multifaceted" emergency, but added that more support for non-food items was essential.

"One without the other really does not bring us out of the emergency," he told international donors and non-governmental organisations who had gathered at the appeal.

He also told aid organisations that drugs to fight malaria were essential and that effective targeting of food aid must be improved.

Nyambi added that long-term solutions to the chronic food shortages in the Horn of Africa country needed to be addressed in order to avoid repeated crises.

He said that the chronic problems in Ethiopia should be seen as a continual emergency and not just sparked by the failure of rains.

Humanitarian agencies said that all eyes were now focused on the November harvest, the main harvest in Ethiopia, which will be critical in assessing future food needs.

But Veronique Lorenzo, head of rural development at the European Commission, warned that a bumper harvest could result in a price collapse - hitting farmers' incomes. Donors also warned that issues like HIV/AIDS and the looming malaria epidemic must also be addressed.

05/02/2003 - Malnutrition rates in Ethiopia are gradually increasing

Malnutrition rates in Ethiopia are gradually increasing despite widespread efforts to help millions of people facing starvation in the country, according to aid organisations.

The UN’s Country Team (UNCT) said the increase is particularly alarming because the so-called critical period – when current harvests normally run out - has not been reached.

“An increasing trend gives indication of a worsening nutritional and hence humanitarian situation," the UNCT said in its 'Focus on Ethiopia' report. It added that typically at this time of year, when the harvests have been brought in, the malnutrition rates should be falling – not slowly increasing.

“When food is not available the nutritional status is highly dependent on timely and adequate food aid distributions,” the report said. “It will be essential that food is delivered on time and in sufficient quantity to avert a major crisis and loss of life in the coming two to three months.”

Ethiopia is currently facing the prospect of some 11.3 million people needing food aid. In late December, the government along with the UN issued an urgent appeal for help.

Prime Minister Meles Zenawi has also warned that the scale of the drought could eclipse that of 1984 when one million people died.

According to the Irish non-governmental organisation, CONCERN, alarming malnutrition rates - above 15 percent - have been reported in areas of Amhara region.

The increase comes as the World Food Programme said that less than half of the 1.4 million tonnes of relief food for 2003 had been covered so far.

The food is expected to last until the end of May but after that the international community will need to make more donations.

13/12/2002 - Food for the Hungry Prevents Famine

Food for the Hungry is implementing a comprehensive plan to prevent famine in multiple regions of Ethiopia, where officials warn that more than 12 million people could go hungry.

The United Nations and the Ethiopian government say that drought conditions killed 15 percent of the October/November harvest. Thus, families who depend on subsistence farming will not only lack food but also need seeds for replanting. Further complicating matters, many cattle are sick or dying because of inadequate water and grazing. While the price for grain has significantly increased, the price for cattle has dramatically decreased due to the flooded market.

Food for the Hungry is currently providing aid in South Gondar to more than 41,000 people. The three-year program provides food aid in exchange for work on projects that will benefit the entire community. Components of the program include, crop production, forestry and fodder development, water supply, access road construction, micronutrient supply and environmental rehabilitation.

At this time Food for the Hungry has pending proposals for several interventions that would enhance distributions in South Gondar. In addition to expanding their program in South Gondar, Food for the Hungry has proposals for water supply programs in East Shewa and Meta Robi, as well as for food and water programs in the Somali Region.

Food for the Hungry began working in Ethiopia in 1974 through a partner organization to deliver emergency food aid to famine victims. In 1984, FHI became fully established in Ethiopia to undertake relief and rehabilitation activities in response to the severe drought and famine. By 1989, most programs had moved toward long-term development.

Food for the Hungry is an international relief and development agency of Christian motivation, helping those who are affected by floods, famines, earthquakes, war, hunger, and poverty. Projects include agriculture, income generation, health care, water and sanitation, child sponsorship and relief. To help with relief efforts in Ethiopia or for more information, call 1-800-2HUNGER.

29/11/2002 - Interview with Dr Catherine Hamlin, founder of the Fistula Hospital

Dr Catherine Hamlin, 75, founded the world-renowned Fistula Hospital in Ethiopia with her late husband in 1974. In that time they have treated over 20,000 women suffering from appalling birth injuries. Here Dr Hamlin tells IRIN of why more needs to be done to improve a key millennium development goal of maternal health.

QUESTION: Why is it important to tackle fistula?

ANSWER: It is such an enormous problem. The World Health Organisation say 0.3 percent of all women having babies will have a fistula [injury to the pelvic organs caused by a long and obstructed labour]. In Ethiopia that means 8,500 new women every year and some million in the world. There must be an enormous backlog. Now these women are completed neglected. If you had 8,000 men with incontinence of urine something would have been done about them but because they are women they really are second-class citizens in this country – especially the provincial women. They are young women and it is a preventable injury. In Africa these women have been hiding for centuries and their plight is so sad.

Q: How does this injury affect the victims socially?

A: They become complete outcasts from their society. Their husbands desert them especially if it is a first baby. All our girls of 16 or 17 are deserted by their husband so they have no means of livelihood, nobody will employ them because of the stench. Most of the village thinks they have some awful disease so they are put onto the outskirts of the village. One woman we found had spent nine years in a darkened hut and never left it, with food being shoved in once or twice a day. These women have been ostracised by society.

Q: Why does it only now affect developing countries?

A: Well in Europe or America or Australia they have got plenty of hospitals, plenty of doctors and roads to get quick communications. A woman after one day of labour if she is at home will get to a hospital where she will have a caesarian section. She won’t be left in labour for five or six days. The only reason why they deliver is because a baby won’t survive more of two days of labour so the baby dies and shrinks and the woman can squeeze this baby out. Their plight is terrible physical suffering, then to have a dead baby.

Q: Are early marriages or traditional harmful practices to blame?

A: It is more in developing countries because of poverty. A girl of 14 or 15 in Britain can usually have a baby. A lot of teenagers are getting pregnant in the west and they are fully developed. But here if they have been on a poor diet their pelvis will be contracted. Traditional practices only come into it if she gets pregnant before she has fully grown. People think if you get rid of circumcision you will get rid of fistulas but this is not so, it will make no difference whatever. It adds to the problem but is not the cause.

Q: What is the cause?

A: Poverty is an enormous cause and lack of education, enough medical facilities, lack of roads. It is a developmental and gender issue. It is preventable and is to do with the economics of the country. We are one of the poorest here. We have a very difficult country to make roads in. We question the patients and sometimes they are so poor that they have to beg for the money to get to the hospital – these are women that have been in labour for two days. By the time they get to the hospital it could be four or five days since the start of labour and the damage has been done.

Q: What are you doing to tackle these difficulties?

A: We have set up five centres in five provincial hospitals where we get a lot of fistulas where doctors will operate for a few weeks at a time. We get more fistulas from the north were Gondar and Gojam where early marriages go on. But we are getting a lot now from the Oromos. We have a village we have set up for incurable women or girls who are enormously crippled from the damage caused by this long labour. We will have physiotherapists there releasing beds here, so we can turn over more patients. The village will have two purposes, rehabilitation and others who stay there permanently.

Q: Is the problem of fistula increasing in Ethiopia?

A: It is increasing now because the population is increasing. Health facilities haven’t kept up with the population increase. And nobody really wants to practise in the country – no doctor will want to stay there. There is no school for his children, there are no decent houses, and hospitals are poorly equipped. There is no incentive for him to go there and no money for fistulas especially. So he will return to the city and start a private practice to make some money for his family which is understandable. So unless the government will pay doctors to stay in the country and make things better for them I don’t how we are ever going to do much preventive work.

Q: What preventative work can you do?

A: When we go to these hospitals to operate we send some nurses into the villages nearby to talk to the women. We try to help them get a fund for any women that have an obstructive labour. Another possibility is to build small villages near provincial hospitals for women who have had birth problems. We can’t expand here now, certainly not on our budget. With have two main donors and if they pulled out we would be in trouble. So we are trying to set up an endowment of US $7 million that can be used to run the hospital because we are going to have fistulas for a long time yet, unless you build more hospitals and have more doctors in the country. We lose so many doctors. There are more Ethiopian doctors in Washington than in the whole of Ethiopia.

Q: Compared to other health issues how serious is fistula?

A: Well it is not as serious as malaria because it doesn’t cause death. It causes social disability, a few die from kidney failure but most don’t die they just become miserable. So it is not a priority for the government as they have so many other health issues.

Q: How do you then convince large donors?

A: It is very easy - you just describe their plight. These women are ruined for life. This is to do with childbirth, it is to do with young people – you are giving a new life to a young girl. How do they support themselves? People are touched.

29/11/2002 - Fading hope for Children hit by drought

At the tender age of seven Nuria Ibrahim shouldn't have to worry about starvation or death. But like many children in Ethiopia she soon learnt the harsh realities of life in one of the poorest countries in the world.

The familiar cloud of despair once again hangs over Ethiopia where famine has a stranglehold on 15 million people - one in four of the population.

Nuria, dressed in tatty, dirty rags, knows that starvation and death are not far away. "I am very worried about the hunger," she says sitting on a rock and drawing shapes in the dust. "But I would rather die quickly than starve slowly waiting for food," she adds, her chilling words spoken so matteroffactly.

Like almost all the children in Goro Abu village, some 500 kilometers east of Addis Ababa, she longs for a better life, away from her fragile, impoverished existence.

"I would just like to be able to go to school and learn," she says. "Then I would become a teacher and my family could always eat."

Her modest ambitions are unlikely to ever become reality in a country where even in a good year five million people need food handouts. Her parents, subsistence farmers eking out a pitiful day-to-day existence, could never afford to let their daughter study.

Instead Nuria is "fostered" - a tradition in Ethiopia where families hire out their children to work for others, hoping to pay for a single meal. Each day she must be up by sunrise and look after six bony, emaciated cattle that belong to a more fortunate neighbour.

Her parents receive next to nothing for the grueling 12 hours she spends wandering with them, searching for pasture in the rocky, sun-parched hillsides. But in Ethiopia she is lucky. Nearby, sitting in the shade to escape the relentless sun and 35 degrees heat, a father prays for rain - not for his crops, they have already failed. Kalif Adem, 30, prays for rain to soften the concrete-hard land, baked from months of blistering heat, so he can dig a grave for his dying daughter.

"What can I do but wait for rain," says Kalif, who had already lost one child three months ago due to the insidious affects of the drought. "We have lost everything," he adds wearily. "And now I am going to lose another daughter." His daughter Tamima, her face bloated from hunger, is just three years old.

Within a few days, maybe a week at the most, she too will probably be dead. Such a tragedy is not hard to find amid the drought and famine threatening the country. With her skin sagging over her grotesquely protruding skeletal frame, she also has malaria - all too common among the children who have been weakened by hunger. Little Tamima has seen her hair fall out and now her stomach bulges - clear signs of severe malnutrition that has a stranglehold on the region. Her mother Raso, 25, cradles her sick daughter, who is too weak to cry or whimper. "I have already buried one child," she says. "It is too much to have to bury another. We are waiting for starvation. It will get us."

As Raso spoke, her daughter lifted her hand to her mother's mouth as if gesturing for food. At full stretch she exposed the extent of her fragility. Yet surrounding their village fertile-looking fields belie the unfolding humanitarian tragedy.

It is the third year the rains have failed. In total there are 94,000 suffering in this district alone, deep within the parched region of eastern Ethiopia.

The late rains mean that the yellowing crops will never mature. Wilting maize and sorghum - the staple diet of the region - remain uncollected in the fields.

Officials say the entire harvest has failed.

At this time of year the peasants would normally have food reserves to last until March or April - when the next small harvest would be due. Now they have nothing.

And never far away are huge, flesh-eating carrion storks, nicknamed "undertaker birds", which in the words of a village elder "go wherever there is death". They serve as a stark reminder of the countries fragile existence.

But despite the scale of the tragedy in East Hararghe international charity Save the Children are but just one of a handful of organizations struggling to help. Director John Graham, who has lived in Ethiopia for five years, warns that more help is needed to avert the disaster.

"What we have been able to do so far is prevent this situation becoming a lot worse by distributing food for the last six months," said Graham, whose organization have been working in East Haraghe for over ten years.

"But now because the harvest has obviously failed we are going to need to have a much bigger response for a much longer period of time.

"We are very worried about the amount of assistance that is going to be coming and we really need a massive international push or these people will deteriorate very quickly.

"At the same time we cannot forget the long term to help retain water, plant trees, terrace the land to reduce the loss of water and soil to preserve their future.

"In that way we can stop people like Nuria from losing hope," he adds.

The government estimates lack of rain and the failed harvests will have catastrophic effects with some 15 million people in desperate need of food within two months.

Ethiopia's Prime Minister Meles Zenawi, who rules the coalition Ethiopian Peoples Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF), says the drought is worse than in 1984. Then a million people starved to death. And senior UN officials are already describing the drought as the "great human catastrophe of the 21st century".

The scale of the looming disaster also places a massive burden on already overstretched relief agencies reeling from famines in southern Africa and chaos in Afghanistan.

The United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) says they do not have enough food to start the mammoth task of feeding millions in Ethiopia next year. Rations have already been cut. By early next year they will need 2.2 million tons of food - so far WFP have around 100,000 tons. For the first three months of 2003 alone they need Euros 80 million worth of food for the first quarter of 2003 alone - some 300,000 tons of food. To feed 15 million people for the year will cost over Euros 750 million.

Malnutrition rates in some of the worst affected areas of the country are in excess of 25 percent. According to World Health Organization (WHO) figures 15 percent is seen as critical and merits emergency intervention.

"Donor contributions have covered the most acute needs over recent months, but by early next year the number of drought affected Ethiopians will rise dramatically. The food aid pledges received so far are nowhere near enough," said Georgia Shaver, WFP Representative in Ethiopia.

"In the worst-case scenario, up to 14 million people will require around two million tons of food aid. If donors respond quickly, we can still help avoid immense human suffering in Ethiopia," she adds.

As yet the mass migration to the refugee camps that marked previous famines in Ethiopia has still not occurred. Families are slowly dying in their scattered villages, unnoticed by the rest of the world.

But gradually families are beginning to move. Tens of thousands of people have already started to migrate in a bid to seek refuge in one of Ethiopia's most precious national parks. Some 20,000 people fled to Bale Mountains in the south of the country - in search of food. There, the government says, children have started starving to death.

Concern is also growing that the massive influx will devastate the eco-system of the region which is home to one of the world's rarest animals - the Ethiopian Wolf.

The destruction of the environment by the huge rural population - around 90 percent of Ethiopia's 65 million live in the countryside - is often blamed for exacerbating droughts.

Rising food prices in the main towns - maize per kilo has jumped by some 200 percent and sugar prices increased by a quarter - have also hit families. Plummeting livestock prices - from 500 Ethiopian birr (euros 60) to just 50 birr (euros 6) - for a cow has also helped aggravate the problem by wiping out their ability to cope by selling livestock.

Schools are also empty, as some 40 percent of children have dropped out, having to travel in search of food and water for their families.

At present some six million are in need of food aid until the end of the year. But the main crop - which should be harvested this month - has almost completely failed.

The results from the harvest - known as the meher and which provides 80 percent of food for the country - are expected soon. But experts say the drought has wiped out around a half.

Sprawled across her mother's lap, Tamima, who was once a normal healthy girl barely registers anything. Flies settle on her shrunken skull. They linger for a few seconds longer than they ought to because she is oblivious to their presence, too weak to make even the slightest of movements necessary to disturb them.

Many aid agencies accuse western governments of laziness and dwindling aid packages that has in past years have defeated attempts to break the cycles of famine in Ethiopia. Only with a long-term commitment from rich nations will countries like Ethiopia begin to stand on their own two feet, they say.

As many humanitarian organizations are quick to point out, after the global attention begins to fade, so does the much-sought-after cash. As a result every few years or so children die unnecessarily. The effects are also exacerbated by usual Third World problems, war and debt.

Ethiopia is one of the poorest countries in the world where the average annual income is just US$120. Its entire annual GDP could just about pay off the euros 7 billion in debt it owes to rich nations. Interest payments alone account for 10 percent of GDP each year.

It has also recently emerged from a bloody conflict with its Red Sea neighbour Eritrea which cost both countries a million euros a day.

Its booming population - it has almost doubled since 1984 - place a further drain on the faltering economy. It means the country is actually getting poorer despite the billions of dollars in aid that has been poured in the last two decades.

And according to aid agencies Ethiopia has never fully recovered from that tragedy which hit the northern most part of the country. With each passing year the subsistence farmers only serve to get poorer. Their livelihoods are gradually becoming unsustainable. Save the Children argue that radical steps must be taken and that aid should be switched to longer more sustainable development plans.

Instead of keeping people starving for years just on erratic emergency handouts their strategy involves building up the livelihoods of families so that they can cope with droughts and natural disasters. But to do so they need the financial backing of wealthy nations and the international community at large.

UN emergency head Kenzo Oshima also warns that the international community needs to sit up and take notice before it is too late and break the cycle of dependency.

"We sincerely hope that the international community will understand the crisis that is in the making in this country and in other parts of the Horn so that the assistance that is needed will come in time," he said.

He, like all other aid agencies, is also desperate to avoid scenes of 1984 and the slow response by the international community to the severe drought of 2000 that claimed 10,000 lives.

In 1984 some eight million people were hit by the drought - almost half the number this time. But organizations are quick to point at the differences between then and now.

The aid industry is vastly more sophisticated and spotted this current drought at an early stage. The country is also free from civil war that raged during the eighties in Ethiopia and devastated the region under the former Marxist dictator who ruled with an iron fist during the eighties.

But even so the Ethiopian government's emergency arm says the crisis is unparalleled in their recent history. Simon Mechale, head of Ethiopia's Disaster Prevention and Preparedness Commission (DPPC), said: "While we can say now that the measures so far taken have helped minimize human suffering, the real challenge of averting a disaster is ahead of us. "The single most prominent and demanding need is for food. "Unlike recent crises in Ethiopia," he warned "this crisis will have an impact on many more Ethiopians."

Officials have said the drought is particularly devastating because of the effects it will have on the coming year. At best, they say, seven million people will need food aid although they admit that they are now facing the worst-case scenario of 15 million.

In the village of Goro Abu, their future depends on a swift response to the unfolding catastrophe. For Nuria, like many children in Ethiopia, her hopes and dreams have little chance of fruition. But for the moment it is her hopes of survival that outweigh all else.

12/11/2002 - Debt and Famine in Ethiopia

The international public seems to be hardly aware of the current crisis in Ethiopia, which could have dimensions even surpassing the imminent food shortages in Southern Africa. Ethiopia is facing a famine of such catastrophic proportions that it could be even worse than the crisis of 1984 which led to Bob Geldof's Band Aid appeal. According to the Ethiopian Government, up to 15 million Ethiopians could soon die of hunger if no action is taken. This means that the number of people involved in this disaster is up to three times higher than in 1984. The Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi and the United Nations' World Food Programme have called for a massive international relief operation that could be the largest ever mounted. As much as 200 million tons of food aid may be needed.

According to Mr. Zenawi the Ethiopian government could have done more to avert such a crisis. However, he claims that the government simply lacked the money to improve the country's water storage and irrigation system.

If these suggestions are correct, they give the strongest support to the call for full and immediate debt relief for poor countries and show the shortcomings of the HIPC initiative.[1] From 1998 to 2001, Ethiopia paid a total of 536 million US dollars to her international creditors. If she had been able to use this money for improving the country's agricultural sector and for introducing safeguards against droughts, the current crisis might have been avoidable. Considering this, the fact that Ethiopia and other poor countries still have to spend a large amount of their revenues to service their external debt, becomes even more unbearable.

For how much longer will the international community bear witness to this insupportable situation? It is time to act now. First of all, the HIPC process has to be sped up, as those who are starving or have to live in inhuman conditions cannot wait until the international community thinks that their governments are worthy to receive debt relief. The ultimate goal, however, must be that countries around the world are given the right to declare themselves bankrupt under an internationally agreed insolvency process, which respects basic human rights more than monetary obligations.[2]

Klaus Teufel Jubilee Research

Sources:
Radio 4 morning show from November 11
World Bank News release 2002/124/S
"HIPC Initiative: Status of Implementation", August 2002

11/11/2002 - Massive famine stalks Ethiopia

Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi has warned that his country faces a famine worse than that of 1984 which killed nearly one million people and sparked a big international relief effort.

The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies renewed an appeal for aid, calling for $11m to alleviate drought suffering across Ethiopia, where much of the population already lives in abject poverty.

Prime Minister Meles Zenawi told the BBC that some six million people already needed food aid and the number facing starvation could rise to 15 million early in the new year if international donors did not come to the country's aid.

Mr Meles said it was "like living through a recurring nightmare".

"If [the 1984 famine] was a nightmare, then this will be too ghastly to contemplate," he said.

The Ethiopian Government was already barely able to keep its people alive let alone supply adequate food, he said, and could not afford to buy in extra stocks itself.

He predicted that the number of people who could be hit as a result of the new drought might be three times the number affected during the earlier famine.

Bob Geldof, the driving force behind the 1984 relief effort Live Aid, said the new crisis suggested that famine relief programmes of recent decades were "untenable".

Out of sight
Mr Meles said he feared that people in developed countries might be lulled into thinking that the drought was a manageable problem because there were no pictures on TV screens of skeletal figures as there were in the 1980s.

Ethiopia still lacked the facilities to conserve rainwater, Mr Meles added.

During a visit to the village of Dir Fakar, 200 kilometres south of the capital Addis Ababa, BBC Today programme correspondent Mike Thomson saw vital watering holes reduced to dustbowls surrounded by fields of failed crops.

Some local people are already resigned to death from starvation, our correspondent says.

Georgia Shaver, the World Food Programme's director in Ethiopia, says that while up to 14 million people needed food aid across six countries in southern Africa, "in Ethiopia we could have the same number in just one country".

EU effort
Speaking to the BBC, Mr Geldof said that the new crisis in Ethiopia showed that current ideas about famine prevention did not work.

"Live Aid, if it did nothing else, put this at the very top of the political agenda... and yet we see 15 million people in one country alone. That's frankly untenable," he said.

"It means that all your nostrums hitherto haven't worked."

He criticised the European Union which, he said, was spending huge sums on agricultural subsidies at home which could be better spent in Ethiopia and other trouble spots.

Michael Curtis, a spokesman for the EU's commissioner for Development and Humanitarian Aid, said the EU had contributed 60m euros - the equivalent of 100,000 tonnes of cereal - to Ethiopia to date in 2002 and planned to donate more.

He said the EU was also working alongside the Ethiopian Government and the United States to create irrigation systems.

Andrew Pendleton, who advises the charity Christian Aid on Ethiopia, pointed out that Ethiopia's ability to cope with the drought was hampered by its continuing foreign debt, which eats up at least 10% of the state's revenues.

"That is an enormous amount of money to take away from a country that is critically poor," he said.

05/11/2002 - Migrant Children Starving to Death in Bale

At least 10 children have starved to death among drought-stricken families who fled to one of Ethiopia's most important national parks seeking refuge.

The children were among some 20,000 people who have descended on Bale National Park in search of food, according to the UN's Emergencies Unit for Ethiopia (EUE).

It said the region, in southeastern Ethiopia, is facing a looming social and environmental crisis unless urgent action is taken.

"The migrants left their homes due to persistent and cumulative drawbacks in their livelihoods," the EUE said. "Farmland shortages and recurrent failure of rains and periodic drought conditions and hence harvest failures forced them to leave."

It said the crisis had been exacerbated by a severe drought in the east of Ethiopia which has hit more than two million people. The EUE said that figure is expected to increase.

Bale is home to the highly endangered Ethiopian Wolf and is vital for the ecological system of the surrounding area, including large parts of the arid Somali region. "The migrants do not have food, shelter, clothes, cooking utensils and access to medical services," the EUE said.

"Coughing and malnutrition was visible in the population, particularly in children, older people and nursing mothers. Lack of sanitation is aggravating the problems," it added.

"The food situation in the lowlands of Bale Zone is generally bleak and currently 144,800 people are under humanitarian assistance," it noted.

10/09/2001 - Sowing the Seeds of Famine in Ethiopia

Crisis in the Horn
More than 8 million people in Ethiopia - representing 15% of the country's population - had been locked into "famine zones". Urban wages have collapsed and unemployed seasonal farm workers and landless peasants have been driven into abysmal poverty. The international relief agencies concur without further examination that climatic factors are the sole and inevitable cause of crop failure and the ensuing humanitarian disaster. What the media tabloids fails to disclose is that - despite the drought and the border war with Eritrea - several million people in the most prosperous agricultural regions have also been driven into starvation. Their predicament is not the consequence of grain shortages but of "free markets" and "bitter economic medicine" imposed under the IMF-World Bank sponsored Structural Adjustment Programme (SAP).

Ethiopia produces more than 90% of its consumption needs. Yet at the height of the crisis, the nationwide food deficit for 2000 was estimated by the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) at 764,000 metric tons of grain representing a shortfall of 13 kilos per person per annum.1 In Amhara, grain production (1999-2000) was twenty percent in excess of consumption needs. Yet 2.8 million people in Amhara (representing 17% of the region's population) became locked into famine zones and are "at risk" according to the FAO. 2 Whereas Amhara's grain surpluses were in excess of 500,000 tons (1999-2000), its "relief food needs" had been tagged by the international community at close to 300,000 tons.3 A similar pattern prevailed in Oromiya, the country's most populated state where 1.6 million people were classified "at risk", despite the availability of more than 600,000 metric tons of surplus grain.4 In both these regions, which include more than 25% of the country's population, scarcity of food was clearly not the cause of hunger, poverty and social destitution. Yet no explanations are given by the panoply of international relief agencies and agricultural research institutes.

The Promise of the "Free Market" In Ethiopia, a transitional government came into power in 1991 in the wake of a protracted and destructive civil war. After the pro-Soviet Dergue regime of Colonel Mengistu Haile Mariam was unseated, a multi-donor financed Emergency Recovery and Reconstruction Project (ERRP) was hastily put in place to deal with an external debt of close to 9 billion dollars that had accumulated during the Mengistu government. Ethiopia's outstanding debts with the Paris Club of official creditors were rescheduled in exchange for far-reaching macro-economic reforms. Upheld by US foreign policy, the usual doses of bitter IMF economic medicine were prescribed. Caught in the straightjacket of debt and structural adjustment, the new Transitional Government of Ethiopia (TGE), led by the Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF) - largely formed from the Tigrean People's Liberation Front (PLF) - had committed itself to far-reaching "free market reforms", despite its leaders' Marxist leanings. Washington soon tagged Ethiopia alongside Uganda as Africa's post Cold War free market showpiece.

While social budgets were slashed under the structural adjustment programme (SAP), military expenditure - in part financed by the gush of fresh development loans - quadrupled since 1989.5 With Washington supporting both sides in the Eritrea-Ethiopia border war, US arms sales spiralled. The bounty was being shared between the arms manufacturers and the agribusiness conglomerates. In the post-Cold War era, the latter positioned themselves in the lucrative procurement of emergency aid to war-torn countries. With mounting military spending financed on borrowed money, almost half of Ethiopia's export revenues was earmarked to meet debt-servicing obligations.

A Policy Framework Paper (PFP) stipulating the precise changes to be carried out in Ethiopia had been carefully drafted in Washington by IMF and World Bank officials on behalf of the transitional government, and was forwarded to Addis Ababa for the signature of the Minister of Finance. The enforcement of severe austerity measures virtually foreclosed the possibility of a meaningful post-war reconstruction and the rebuilding of the country's shattered infrastructure. The creditors demanded trade liberalization and the full-scale privatization of public utilities, financial institutions, State farms and factories. Civil servants including teachers and health workers were fired, wages were frozen and the labor laws were rescinded to enable State enterprises "to shed their surplus workers". Meanwhile, corruption became rampant. State assets were auctioned off to foreign capital at bargain prices and Price Waterhouse Cooper was entrusted with the task of coordinating the sale of State property.

In turn, the reforms had led to the fracture of the federal fiscal system. Budget transfers to the State governments were slashed leaving the regions to their own devices. Supported by several donors, "regionalization" was heralded as a "devolution of powers from the federal to the regional governments". The Bretton Woods institutions knew exactly what they were doing. In the words of the IMF, "[the regions] capacity to deliver effective and efficient development interventions varies widely, as does their capacity for revenue collection". 6

Wrecking the Peasant Economy Patterned on the reforms adopted in Kenya in 1991 (see Box 9.1 ), agricultural markets were wilfully manipulated on behalf of the agribusiness conglomerates. The World Bank demanded the rapid removal of price controls and all subsidies to farmers. Transportation and freight prices were deregulated serving to boost food prices in remote areas affected by drought. In turn, the markets for farm inputs including fertiliser and seeds were handed over to private traders including Pioneer Hi-Bred International which entered into a lucrative partnership with Ethiopia Seed Enterprise (ESE), the government's seed monopoly.7

At the outset of the reforms in 1992, USAID under its Title III program "donated" large quantities of US fertilizer "in exchange for free market reforms":

[V]arious agricultural commodities [will be provided] in exchange for reforms of grain marketing... and [the] elimination of food subsidies...The reform agenda focuses on liberalization and privatization in the fertilizer and transport sectors in return for financing fertilizer and truck imports.... These program initiatives have given us [an] "entrée" ...in defining major [policy] issues... 8

While the stocks of donated US fertiliser were rapidly exhausted; the imported chemicals contributed to displacing local fertiliser producers. The same companies involved in the fertiliser import business were also in control of the domestic wholesale distribution of fertiliser using local level merchants as intermediaries.

Increased output was recorded in commercial farms and in irrigated areas (where fertilizer and high yielding seeds had been applied). The overall tendency, however, was towards greater economic and social polarisation in the countryside, marked by significantly lower yields in less productive marginal lands occupied by the poor peasantry. Even in areas where output had increased, farmers were caught in the clutch of the seed and fertilizer merchants.

In 1997, the Atlanta based Carter Center - which was actively promoting the use of biotechnology tools in maize breeding - proudly announced that "Ethiopia [had] become a food exporter for the first time".9 Yet in a cruel irony, the donors ordered the dismantling of the emergency grain reserves (set up in the wake of the 1984-85 famine) and the authorities acquiesced.

Instead of replenishing the country's emergency food stocks, grain was exported to meet Ethiopia's debt servicing obligations. Close to one million tons of the 1996 harvest was exported, an amount which would have been amply sufficient (according to FAO figures) to meet the 1999-2000 emergency. In fact the same food staple which had been exported (namely maize) was re-imported barely a few months later. The world market had confiscated Ethiopia's grain reserves.

In return, US surpluses of genetically engineered maize (banned by the European Union) were being dumped on the horn of Africa in the form of emergency aid. The US had found a convenient mechanism for "laundering its stocks of dirty grain". The agribusiness conglomerates not only cornered Ethiopia's commodity exports, they were also involved in the procurement of emergency shipments of grain back into Ethiopia. During the 1998-2000 famine, lucrative maize contracts were awarded to giant grain merchants such as Archer Daniels Midland (ADM) and Cargill Inc. 10

Laundering America's GM Grain Surpluses US grain surpluses peddled in war-torn countries also served to weaken the agricultural system. Some 500,000 tons of maize and maize products were "donated" in 1999-2000 by USAID to relief agencies including the World Food Programme (WFP) which in turn collaborates closely with the US Department of Agriculture. At least 30% of these shipments (procured under contract with US agribusiness firms) were surplus genetically modified grain stocks. 11

Boosted by the border war with Eritrea and the plight of thousands of refugees, the influx of contaminated food aid had contributed to the pollution of Ethiopia's genetic pool of indigenous seeds and landraces. In a cruel irony, the food giants were at the same time gaining control - through the procurement of contaminated food aid - over Ethiopia's seed banks. According to South Africa's Biowatch: "Africa is treated as the dustbin of the world...To donate untested food and seed to Africa is not an act of kindness but an attempt to lure Africa into further dependence on foreign aid." 12

Moreover, part of the "food aid" had been channelled under the "food for work" program which served to further discourage domestic production in favour of grain imports. Under this scheme, impoverished and landless farmers were contracted to work on rural infrastructural programmes in exchange for "donated" US corn.

Meanwhile, the cash earnings of coffee smallholders plummeted. Whereas Pioneer Hi-Bred positioned itself in seed distribution and marketing, Cargill Inc established itself in the markets for grain and coffee through its subsidiary Ethiopian Commodities.12 For the more than 700,000 smallholders with less than 2 hectares that produce between 90 and 95% of the country's coffee output, the deregulation of agricultural credit combined with low farmgate prices of coffee had triggered increased indebtedness and landlessness, particularly in East Gojam (Ethiopia's breadbasket).

Biodiversity up for Sale The country's extensive reserves of traditional seed varieties (barley, teff, chick peas, sorghum, etc) were being appropriated, genetically manipulated and patented by the agribusiness conglomerates: "Instead of compensation and respect, Ethiopians today are ...getting bills from foreign companies that have "patented" native species and now demand payment for their use."13 The foundations of a "competitive seed industry" were laid under IMF and World Bank auspices.14 The Ethiopian Seed Enterprise (ESE), the government's seed monopoly joined hands with Pioneer Hi-Bred in the distribution of hi-bred and genetically modified (GM) seeds (together with hybrid resistant herbicide) to smallholders. In turn, the marketing of seeds had been transferred to a network of private contractors and "seed enterprises" with financial support and technical assistance from the World Bank. The "informal" farmer-to-farmer seed exchange was slated to be converted under the World Bank programme into a "formal" market oriented system of "private seed producer-sellers." 15

In turn, the Ethiopian Agricultural Research Institute (EARI) was collaborating with the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) in the development of new hybrids between Mexican and Ethiopian maize varieties.16 Initially established in the 1940s by Pioneer Hi-Bred International with support from the Ford and Rockefeller foundations, CIMMYT developed a cosy relationship with US agribusiness. Together with the UK based Norman Borlaug Institute, CIMMYT constitutes a research arm as well as a mouthpiece of the seed conglomerates. According to the Rural Advancement Foundation (RAFI) "US farmers already earn $150 million annually by growing varieties of barley developed from Ethiopian strains. Yet nobody in Ethiopia is sending them a bill." 17

Impacts of Famine
The 1984-85 famine had seriously threatened Ethiopia's reserves of landraces of traditional seeds. In response to the famine, the Dergue government through its Plant Genetic Resource Centre --in collaboration with Seeds of Survival (SoS)-- had implemented a programme to preserve Ethiopia's biodiversity.18 This programme - which was continued under the transitional government - skilfully "linked on-farm conservation and crop improvement by rural communities with government support services". 19 An extensive network of in-farm sites and conservation plots was established involving some 30,000 farmers. In 1998, coinciding chronologically with the onslaught of the 1998-2000 famine, the government clamped down on seeds of Survival (SoS) and ordered the programme to be closed down. 20

The hidden agenda was to eventually displace the traditional varieties and landraces reproduced in village-level nurseries. The latter were supplying more than 90 percent of the peasantry through a system of farmer-to-farmer exchange. Without fail, the 1998-2000 famine led to a further depletion of local level seed banks: "The reserves of grains [the farmer] normally stores to see him through difficult times are empty. Like 30,000 other households in the [Galga] area, his family have also eaten their stocks of seeds for the next harvest."21 And a similar process was unfolding in the production of coffee where the genetic base of the arabica beans was threatened as a result of the collapse of farmgate prices and the impoverishment of small-holders.

In other words, the famine - itself in large part a product of the economic reforms imposed to the advantage of large corporations by the IMF, World Bank and the US Government - served to undermine Ethiopia's genetic diversity to the benefit of the biotech companies. With the weakening of the system of traditional exchange, village level seed banks were being replenished with commercial hi-bred and genetically modified seeds. In turn, the distribution of seeds to impoverished farmers had been integrated with the "food aid" programmes. WPF and USAID relief packages often include "donations" of seeds and fertiliser, thereby favouring the inroad of the agribusiness-biotech companies into Ethiopia's agricultural heartland. The emergency programs are not the "solution" but the "cause" of famine. By deliberately creating a dependency on GM seeds, they had set the stage for the outbreak of future famines.

This destructive pattern - invariably resulting in famine - is replicated throughout Sub-Saharan Africa. From the onslaught of the debt crisis of the early 1980s, the IMF-World Bank had set the stage for the demise of the peasant economy across the region with devastating results. Now, in Ethiopia, fifteen years after the last famine left nearly one million dead, hunger is once again stalking the land. This time, as eight million people face the risk of starvation, we know that it isn't just the weather that is to blame.

11/03/2001 - NETHERLANDS TO AID EDUCATION

ADDIS ABABA, 5 November (IRIN) - Six million schoolbooks are to be printed and distributed to children throughout Ethiopia, the Dutch government announced on Wednesday.

Mieke Vogels, an education expert with the Netherlands embassy, told IRIN that a massive shortfall of textbooks was hampering teaching efforts across the country. "The quality of education is being negatively influenced by the fact that lots of children have to share textbooks," she said after her government announced a grant of US $3 million to fund the printing and distribution of the textbooks.

According to official statistics, there is on average of one textbook for every two children nationwide, but in some rural classrooms even teachers have no books.

Ethiopia has one of the poorest levels of education in the world, with about half the population receiving no teaching at all. However, under the government's current $100 million Education Sector Development Programme (ESDP), the number of children attending schools has increased dramatically.

When the ESDP was first launched in 1998, just 30 percent of children were attending school; now, by contrast, half the country's 7 million children are receiving education. Under the programme, 15 million textbooks are being printed and distributed.

Meanwhile, Ethiopia has become one of 23 countries "fast-tracked" by the World Bank for massive financial investment in its education sector.

Vogels noted that girls were often overlooked in terms of access to textbooks. "More often than not it is the boys who take the books home," she said. Currently one-fifth more boys than girls attend school in Ethiopia.

Experts argue that education is one of the key weapons for reducing poverty and inequality and boosting economic growth. About 120 million children worldwide do not go to school, most of them girls.

The United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) is developing strategies to get more girls into schools, in concert with the Ethiopian education ministry, and aims to have the same number of girls as boys receiving education by 2005. It says that at present, many girls stay at home because they are needed for domestic chores, or because of early marriages.

Under the United Nations Millennium Development Goals all children must receive primary education by 2015.

In Ethiopia, the education ministry argues that alternative basic education could be a means of attracting marginalised children and achieving educational goals. Alternative - or informal - basic education allows people to have access to schooling outside the state sector, allowing children and adults to attend lessons in villages where there are no schools, and at times that suit them.

10/04/2000 - Mr Tony Blair visit in Ethiopia.

ADDIS ABABA, 7 October (IRIN) - British Prime Minister, Tony Blair, flew into Ethiopia on Wednesday to discus the plight of the world's poorest continent at a meeting of the new Commission for Africa that he helped to create.

The 17-member commission itself faces a challenge, though: the perception among its detractors that it is simply "a talking shop". Such critics maintain that while Africa's problems are well known, the political will to pay for the solutions is lacking.

The commission, however, rejects accusations they are repeating what is already known and that it is simply a talking shop.

"There is no point in us reinventing the wheel," commission spokeswoman Nicola Savage said. "We are working very closely with existing initiatives. We can also mobilise international support, particularly the G8 behind the initiatives that are proposed.

"Look at the make-up of the commission - these are all people of political significance. We have two prime ministers, one president and three finance ministers," she noted. "That is what the commission has to offer."

Africa is the only continent to have grown poorer in the past 25 years, according to Blair. It is strapped by colossal debt totalling US $305 billion and accounts for just a little over two percent of world trade.

Investment in the continent has also shrunk to $11 billion a year. More than 26 million Africans are infected with HIV, 95 percent of the world's total. An estimated 15 million Africans have died from the virus while 44 million children do not go to school.

Conflicts have claimed over seven million lives and cost $250 billion with 186 coups d'etats and 26 major wars in the past half century. According to the UN, some half-dozen African countries are suffering from serious armed conflicts, among them Burundi, Côte d'Ivoire, the Democratic Republic of Congo and the Sudan.

It is against this background that the commission is expected to focus on good governance, peace and security issues, culture and debt relief during its two-day meeting on 7-8th October.

The idea to push the continent's problems to the top of the world's agenda came from former pop star, and long time campaigner against African poverty, Bob Geldof. Geldof, the inspiration behind Live Aid in 1985 and a commission member, has warned that failure would leave the prime minister wearing "a badge of shame".

"It took 20 years for Africa to go from an issue of charity to one of justice," he said in Ethiopia on Saturday. "Next year Britain is president of EU and chair of the G8. It has massive political power - and is the anniversary of Live Aid. If the recommendations of the Commission are watered down by the bureaucrats I will say, 'we are not doing enough, we could have gone further'," he added.

It is hoped that Geldof will be able to reach out to millions around the world who seldom give Africa a thought - just as he did when he organised the Live Aid concert that helped raise over $150 million in total after the Ethiopian famine in 1984.

Blair's own motivation comes from a long held belief that Africa's poverty is a "scar on the conscience of the world". The Commission, which Blair will chair, brings together leaders from the developed world and Africa. Of the 17 commissioners, nine will be from Africa.

The Africans include President Benjamin Mkapa of Tanzania, Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi, Kingsley Amoako of the Economic Commission for Africa and Anna Tibaijuka, the Executive Director of UN Habitat.

It met in London in May and will publish a final report in April. It aims to tie in with - Nepad - the New Partnership of Africa's Development - Africa's most important economic blueprint. But for an African commission, critics say, no one from the African Union, the pan-African body that represents the continent's 53 nations and is pivotal for Nepad, is on the panel.

Privately AU officials admit it was a "missed opportunity" not to join up, but add they have been "struggling for years" without recognition or real support. "We are sceptical because the solutions are already known," one senior official said. "All the arguments for fair trade are known but still the subsidies are continuing."

Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo, who currently holds the chairmanship of the AU, earlier accused wealthy nations of not meeting their promises. "The list of unfulfilled commitments by our development partners is growing long," he told African leaders attending a summit in Ethiopia in July.

Obasanjo says Africa needs an extra $64 billon to fill an annual resource gap of 12 percent of Africa's GDP in order to achieve a 7 percent annual economic growth rate. Aid organisations also question the real purpose of the commission.

The charity, ActionAid called on Britain to increase its aid to Africa from 0.44 percent of GDP to the UN target of 0.7 percent. Richard Miller, director of the UK-based organisation, said: "Live Aid was about feeding the world. Now we need to change it. The commission must avoid being a talking shop. If the poor could eat words, Africa's problems would have been solved years ago. Africa needs concrete action."

He added: "Those with real power are the west's finance ministers. These are the people who control the World Bank and IMF. For 20 years they have been pressing poor countries to privatise their public services and open their markets to foreign trade and Africa is still poor. It is no good talking about helping Africa while hanging on to outdated and discredited policies."

09/04/2000 - UK aid to famine-ravaged Ethiopia slashed by half

Britain has halved its aid to Ethiopia, despite a drought which has triggered the worst food shortages in the Horn of Africa since the terrible famine that killed a million Ethiopians in the mid-1980s. Despite fresh evidence of the massive scale of the disaster threatening Ethiopia, International Development Secretary Clare Short has cut Ethiopia's three-year aid programme from £39.3 million to £19m, because of fears that renewal of war with Eritrea will stop the cash from getting through to projects to tackle poverty and illiteracy.

The revelation of the decision by Short's department to reduce Ethiopia's level of long-term aid, comes amid accusations from the Ethi-opian government that major Western donors, including the European Union, have exacerbated the famine crisis by failing to deliver promised shipments of food aid.

Ethiopian officials claimed yesterday that their government had distributed hundreds of thousands of tonnes of food aid from its own stores after receiving written assurances from Western donors that the supplies would be replenished as soon as possible.

The aid was distributed throughout the country in 1998 and in the early months of last year to cope with serious shortfalls in food. However, the donors never made up the loss, leaving the government with only 30,000 tonnes to meet the current crisis - enough for only two weeks' emergency distribution.

Burhane Gizaw, the deputy commissioner of the government's Disaster Prevention Planning Committee, said that the European Union alone had failed to replenish 78,000 tonnes from the stores.

'It is grossly irresponsible to say the least. To promise help and then not deliver it is worse than never promising anything at all, " he said.

The separate decision by Short's Department for International Development to cut its levels of assistance to Ethiopia comes amid a restructuring of Britain's aid package to Africa.

Short is cutting Mozambique's aid budget by £24 million, saying that the country, devastated by floods in February and March, is cash-rich and its government is too 'weak' to see long-term aid projects through successfully.

And in the most controversial move, Short is increasing levels of aid to Zimbabwe and Sierra Leone, despite international condemnation of President Robert Mugabe for his threat to declare war on white farmers, and the lack of credibility of the peace process in Sierra Leone.

The decisions, revealed in an annual report published last week by Short's department, are likely to shock members of the public who have given vast sums towards famine and flood relief in Africa.

Tory international development spokesman Gary Streeter said: 'If this is correct ... this is morally reprehensible and repugnant.'

Patrick Smith, of Africa Confidential, added: 'You can make an ethical case against Ethiopia because of the war, but not against Mozambique, which has done almost everything right, post civil war. It's a very strange decision.'

The decisions are in line with a strict policy laid down by Short that her aid budget must be used for long-term projects to eradicate poverty, not as an emergency fund for short-term disaster relief.

But in Ethiopia this weekend it was the issue of the missing food aid that was most pressing. For in addition to the non-delivery of EU food aid, the US government owes the Ethiopian Emergency Food Security Reserve (EFRS) 90,000 tonnes. Most of this food is expected to arrive by the end of the month; it was meant to arrive in November but loading at docks is said to have taken longer than expected.

The food is desperately needed as famine starts to bite. Though exact casualty figures are difficult to find, at least a dozen children a day are dying at a single refugee camp in the south-eastern Ogaden province visited by The Observer last week.

00/00/0000 - SOMALIA-TSUNAMI OVER 10,000 PEOPLE AFFECTED.115 PEOPLE LOST THEIR LIFE.

NAIROBI, 31 December (IRIN) - UN agencies appealed on Friday for immediate assistance to communities on the Somali coast that were affected by the earthquake-generated tsunami which devastated much of South Asia on 26 December.

"We need to act now and mobilise the needed resources," Wafaa El Fadil, a humanitarian affairs officer with the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), who was in a UN assessment team that flew over some of the affected areas on Thursday, told a news conference in the Kenyan capital, Nairobi.

She said the team had seen "considerable damage to structures" in the Hafun peninsula, one of the worst affected areas on the Somali coastline. The aerial mission had also seen some damage to structures in Bender Beyla, she added.

El-Balla Hagona, the UN Development Programme's director for Somalia, said that unlike other affected countries in Asia, Somalia lacked the "indigenous capacity to assess the damage" caused by the tsunami.

"That has placed that responsibility on the UN and its collaborators," Hagona said.

The remoteness of the affected areas was making efforts to assess the damage and estimate the number of affected people difficult.

"The aerial survey has not provided a complete assessment," Balla said.

El Fadil described the affected areas as "remote and harsh". "Accessibility is an issue," she told IRIN, adding that it had not been possible to assess the effects of the tsunami on the livelihoods of Somali coastal communities yet.

Thomas Thompson, a logistics officer with the World Food Programme (WFP), who was also on the aerial assessment team, told the news conference that the tsunami had compounded the effects of a four-year drought that had already ravaged northern Somalia.

"There is need for us to act immediately," he added.

WFP has started food distributions in Hafun. The agency used two all-terrain trucks on Wednesday to transport the first 12 mt of food from Foar, where regular WFP lorries got stuck. The 60 km trip from Foar to Hafun took the four-wheel-drive vehicles seven hours through mud and water because the tsunami damaged the only road, the UN said in an update.

An estimated 114 people were killed in Somalia when the tsunami, triggered by an earthquake in the Indian Ocean, struck the Horn of Africa coastline on Sunday, according to relief workers and local authorities. About 10,000-15,000 affected people were in need of immediate assistance.

The newly created Somali government and authorities in the self-declared, autonomous northeastern region of Puntland appealed for international relief assistance on Tuesday.

There were reports of more displaced people in Bander Beyla, Baargaal and Eyl, according to OCHA, which was coordinating efforts to assist those affected. It said the most urgent needs included food, medicine, shelter materials, cooking utensils and clothes.

Sunday's tsunami waves also slammed into Tanzania, where at least 10 people, mostly children, died, police in the commercial capital, Dar es Salaam, said.

In Kenya, authorities sealed off the beaches on Monday to prevent people from exposing themselves to the danger posed by the rushing waters. Sources said three people died, but police confirmed one. The beaches were later reopened.

Damaged infrastructure was also reported in the Indian Ocean islands of the Seychelles and Madagascar.

The tsunami, caused by an earthquake off the Indonesian island of Sumatra, hit coastal areas in the archipelago, as well as in Sri Lanka, India, Bangladesh, Thailand, Indonesia, The Maldives, Malaysia and Myanmar, leaving a trail of death and destruction. Nearly 135,000 people are known to have been killed by the surging waves.

00/00/0000 - FOOD DISTRIBUTION IN DROUGHT-HIT AREAS STILL INADEQUATE

NAIROBI, 4 June (IRIN) - The distribution of food and other relief items in drought-affected areas of Ethiopia has remained inadequate, and donors need to expedite food deliveries to avert shortages before the end this month, a famine-alert agency said on Thursday.

"Food aid carry-over and new pledges meet only 64 percent of Ethiopia's May-December 2004 assessed needs [and] donors need to expedite deliveries to avoid a shortage of physical supplies before the end of June," the USAID-funded Famine Early Warning System Network (FEWS Net) said in a report.

It said only 174,286 mt of food, or 57 percent of the total required, had been delivered to those in need between January and April 2004, and that pockets of acute malnutrition remained throughout the country.

According to FEWS Net, several consecutive years of drought and incomplete recovery from previous livelihood shocks have weakened the resilience of many rural Ethiopian households, leaving them unable to meet their food consumption needs without outside help.

The revised Humanitarian Appeal for Ethiopia, adjusted in February, concluded that 7.1 million people would require 872,301 mt of emergency food assistance during 2004. In addition, non-food requirements in agriculture, livestock, health, nutrition, water and sanitation for the year were estimated at US $85 million.

"The survival of extremely food-insecure households during the 'hunger period' in June-August will be determined in large part by the actions of donor agencies and the government," said FEWS Net. "At a minimum, already-pledged resources must be delivered on time in order to reduce uncertainties and fluctuations of income sources of these food-insecure households."

The report said surveys conducted between November 2003 and April 2004 had also showed that in eight of 17 woredas (districts), Global Acute Malnutrition rates met or exceeded 10 percent, a situation defined as "serious" by the Ethiopian Emergency Nutrition Assessment Guideline standards.

"Notably, the rates in Somali region exceed the critical intervention threshold of 15 percent, indicating an emergency situation," it said, adding that the areas of greatest concern included the entire Somali region, Gurage and Silti zones of the Southern region, and the resettlement sites.[ENDS]

00/00/0000 - MAJOR RELIEF EFFORTS UNDER WAY

ADDIS ABABA, 8 June (IRIN) - A major relief effort is under way to avert a potential crisis from affecting the government's controversial resettlement scheme, humanitarian sources told IRIN on Tuesday. Some 250,000 people are being provided with supplementary food as families who moved under the scheme face serious shortages.

Two therapeutic feeding centres have been established in one resettlement region to prevent children from starving, and to combat the malnutrition that is breaking out. Mobile food storage centres, plastic sheeting to shelter families and 64,000 mosquito nets to prevent malaria are all being moved in to avert a crisis.

The humanitarian sources told IRIN that whereas the scheme, under which 2.2 million people are being translocated over three years, had not yet assumed the proportions of a crisis, it was a "situation of serious concern".

Aid agencies involved in the scheme, which was launched last year, say they fear the heavy rains now falling in the country will only make matters worse. A recent assessment found that families were not getting enough food, moderate and severe" malnutrition was breaking out at some sites, and children were suffering from disease. The assessment urged the government to slow down the rate of resettlement so that the needs of relocated families could be assessed.

Meanwhile, the World Bank will, in a matter of days, launch a further study to examine, among other things, the overall management of the programme.

Whereas some of the 80 resettlement sites country-wide have been praised, many others are riddled with problems, including high death rates, lack of water, and widespread malaria and other diseases. Aid agencies have expressed particular concern over Oromiya State, where there are 55 resettlement sites with rising levels of malnutrition and even deaths among children.

Prime Minister Meles Zenawi has urged the international community to support the programme, which, he says, will alleviate food shortages country-wide. "The resettlement programme is being carried out because it is believed to be a viable option to achieving food security in a short time," he said in a recent interview. "It is all about moving people from scarce, depleted and arid and semiarid areas to relatively fertile localities."

He emphasised that relocated families would each receive two hectares of land, as well as fertilisers and seeds, and were expected to become food secure within a year. But he also admitted in the interview, which was shown on Ethiopian television, that "no matter how hard we worked, we are not yet in a position to say that there are no problems".

The UN World Food Programme and the UN Children's Fund are both providing support for the government's emergency arm, the Disaster Prevention and Preparedness Commission (DPPC), to help prevent further problems. The DPPC is distributing food, but many resettled families cannot mill hand-outs of grain, so it is often inedible for children.

Resettlement is not a new phenomenon in Ethiopia. The former military regime, which was overthrown in 1991, resettled 600,000 people during its 17-year rule. About 33,000 people are believed to have died during the then forcible translocation. But it is the scale and size of the current programme that has caused concern.

The resettlement programme is part of the government's $3.2-billion rescue package aimed at reversing years of dependency in the country. With funding from the international community, the government is trying to slash food dependency for 15 million people in the country. For the last 15 years 700,000 mt of food aid has been imported annually to meet the food demands of the spiralling population, which now stands at 70 million.[ENDS]

00/00/0000 - MALNUTERITION LOOMING IN OROMIYA REGION

NAIROBI, 24 August (IRIN) - Ethiopia's south-central Oromiya region is threatened with rising malnutrition levels, hunger, disease and water shortages as a result of inadequate and erratic rainfall, the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), said.

OCHA, in a report issued on Monday, warned that a crisis would be inevitable unless more seeds were made available to farmers, saying that its recent field mission to the region had predicted a poor harvest of the main food crops - maize and sorghum.

It said that little amounts of seeds had been provided to farmers too late, and that serious shartages of water would follow if the dry spell persisted.

In mid-August, the Ethiopian government disaster prevention commission warned that the number of people in need of food aid had risen to more than 7.6 million as a result of crop failure and lack of pasture following poor long rains earlier this year.

More than 6.6 million people in the Horn of Africa country were already dependent on food aid following a prolonged drought that hit the region in 2002 and 2003. The needy would now require nearly 500,000 mt of assorted foodstuffs between August and December, the commission said.

It said the areas hardest hit by the crop failures included the Southern Nations, Nationalities and Peoples Region, North and South Wollo zones in the Amhara Region and East and West Haraghe zones in the Oromiya region, according to the report.

Earlier, OCHA had also warned that a potential humanitarian crisis was looming in the Somali region of Ethiopia where the long rains had failed and up to 1.3 million people in 14 districts were likely to need emergency aid until the end of the year.

To strengthen capacity and respond to the humanitarian needs in the region, OCHA has established a new office in the regional capital, Jijiga to support Ethiopian authorities, UN agencies and NGOs. The Somali National Regional State government also announced it was reassigning 600 employees to 51 districts.[ENDS]

00/00/0000 - 750,000 CHILDREN VACCINATED AGAINST POLIO.

ADDIS ABABA, 27 October (IRIN) - Ethiopia has completed the vaccination of 750,000 children against polio as it seeks to eradicate the last traces of the paralysing disease in the country. The campaign comes amid fears that polio could re-emerge in Ethiopia after new cases were discovered close to the border of neighbouring Sudan.

Although no case of wild polio virus has been detected since 2001, Ethiopia is still not certified free of the virus. Under World Health Organisation (WHO) guidelines, a country can only be declared free if no cases of the disease are detected for three years.

"Ethiopia is no longer on the list of priority countries," Bjorn Ljungqvist, the head of the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) told IRIN. "However, there is the threat of importing wild polio virus from countries still harbouring the virus due to intense transmission in Nigeria and the recent transmission of polio virus to Sudan, which borders Ethiopia."

The four-day polio campaign was launched on Friday in key areas of the Oromia region, around the capital, Addis Ababa. Some 1,250 vaccinators and 3,750 volunteers took part.

Dr Femi Oyewole, acting WHO head in Ethiopia, said the country could not afford to be complacent in combating polio. He added that increased vigilance was needed as low immunization coverage posed a "real danger" of importing the disease.

The vaccinations were launched as polio immunization campaigns were carried out across Africa and Asia to reach out to more than 300 million children. Fewer than half of children in Ethiopia are immunised against preventable diseases - globally killing some 11 million children before their fifth birthday. The polio virus now circulates in no more than 20 countries, down from 30 in 1999 and 125 in 1988 when the campaign was launched. These are mainly in South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa. In these areas, national immunisation days and intensive house-to-house campaigns have been conducted to wipe out the virus.

Poliomyelitis - polio - is a highly infectious and incurable disease caused by a virus that affects mainly children under three years of age. It invades the nervous system and can cause total paralysis in a matter of hours. The virus enters the body through the mouth and multiplies in the intestine. Initial symptoms are fever, fatigue, headache, vomiting, stiffness in the neck and pain in the limbs. One in 200 infections leads to irreversible paralysis, which is usually in the legs.

More than 14 million children were vaccinated in Ethiopia in the last two years against the crippling virus. More than 550-million children across the world were vaccinated. WHO, Rotary International, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and UNICEF spearhead the Global Polio Eradication Initiative, to which the national immunisation days are linked.

00/00/0000 - RULING PARTY WANTS MORE WOMEN IN PARLIAMENT.

ADDIS ABABA, 29 October (IRIN) - Ethiopia's ruling party is imposing female quotas on candidates in a bid to have more women in parliament, officials said on Friday. Women are guaranteed up to 30 percent of seats in the national elections for the incumbent Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF).

Opposition groups have also taken up the "historic" move as political parities battle it out in the run up to the May 2005 federal and regional elections.

Ethiopia's parliament has just 42 female members, contrasting with 505 men. Education Minister Genet Zewdie is the only female member of the 16-strong cabinet.

"For the country to be a true democracy women must be properly represented, Ethiopia Beyene, the vice chairman of the parliament women's affairs standing committee, said. "The current number of women in parliament is just not good enough. Women have a major contribution to make so this is a very important step."

In the regional elections half of all candidates must be women, added Ethiopia, who has represented the EPRDF in parliament for the last nine years.

African nations are setting the pace on female representation. Rwanda has the largest number of women parliamentarians anywhere in the world, with 49 percent of seats, whereas in the US, France and Japan women hold one in 10 seats.

Ethiopia - which has less than half of the world average for female parliamentarians at 7 percent of seats - has faced stinging criticism for its poor impact in promoting women. World Bank President James Wolfensohn described the lack of women's empowerment as "a national disgrace" during a four-day visit to the country.

A UN report on good governance released earlier this month also showed that Ethiopia lagged behind other African countries when it came to giving women a voice. There are also just four women ambassadors representing the country abroad.

Ethiopia said the minimum requirement of female candidates would be 25 percent. She said it was unlikely that there would be much opposition to the new scheme.

While the move has been welcomed in Ethiopia, initiatives to try and boost the number of women in other countries' parliaments have often proved controversial. In the UK, women-only shortlists for vacant or winnable seats were ruled illegal.

The EPRDF, which ousted Marxist dictator Mengistu Haile Mariam in 1991, won 479 seats in the assembly in the last national elections in 2000. The four-strong coalition party, headed by Prime Minister Meles Zenawi, has put in place laws on affirmative action to help promote women into public life.

In education there are different entrance levels for university admission for men and women to promote greater equality. Even so, the 30-percent quota for women at the university level has not been met. Ethiopia, whose constituency is in Addis Ababa, said that traditional barriers like access to education could hamper attempts at greater equality through parliament.

Although a massive drive by the government has seen a huge increase in female enrolment rates, only one in five girls finishes primary school without repeating her education and just a third of women can read or write. She said that the government was still aiming to ensure that half of candidates would eventually be women, although no date on that target has been set.

The next Ethiopian general elections are only the third democratic ballot in the country's history. All have been convincingly won by the EPRDF. Ethiopia's legislative branch consists of a bicameral parliament: the 110-seat House of the Federation and the 548-seat lower chamber of the House of People's Representatives.

00/00/0000 - BBC NEWS

'No rop' in world hunger deaths All but one of the 16 hungriest nations are in sub-Saharan Africa A child still dies of hunger every five seconds, eight years on from a pledge to halve the world's hungry by 2015, a United Nations agency has said. The annual UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) report says present levels of hunger cause the death of more than five million children a year.

The number of chronically hungry people has hardly budged since 1996.

But the FAO says the target of halving that figure remains within reach, and has urged richer nations to do more.

'Ruined lives'

It argues that fighting hunger is a good investment, saying the global costs of achieving the 2015 target pale against the price of not acting.

The State of Food Insecurity in the World 2004 report says hunger and malnutrition cost about $30bn (£15.5bn) each year in direct medical expenses, with indirect costs costing billions more.

Enlarge Image

The FAO estimates an annual funding increase of $24bn (£12.4bn) to reach the hunger target would be repaid almost five-fold in increased productivity and income.

Lynn Brown, chair of the report's working group, said: "The number of hungry people remains intolerably high, progress in reaching them unconscionably slow and the costs in ruined lives and wasted resources incalculably large."

A worsening situation in China and India, the world's most populous nations, is largely blamed by the FAO for the recent rise in hunger levels.

However, all but one of the countries with the highest levels of hunger are in sub-Saharan Africa.

Governments set the target of cutting the number of undernourished people by half in 2015 at the UN World Food Summit in 1996.

But by 2000-2002, the number of chronically hungry in developing nations stood at 815 million, only nine million fewer than the estimate made a decade earlier.

The FAO's Hartwig De Haen said the 2015 target was "ambitious but still feasible

00/00/0000 - ETHIOPIAN CHILDREN SEEK ANSWERS

Half of Africa's population is made up of young people. It is they who are often hardest hit by the continent's poverty, and they who face the challenge of creating a better future. BBC Africa Live invited eight Ethiopian children to put their questions to UK Prime Minister Tony Blair's Commission for Africa, which is examining how to pull the continent out of poverty.

Zerehun: 18, teenage leader - "Where does the money go?" I am an orphan. I had to fend for myself from when I was young. I used to shine shoes on the streets of Addis Ababa until a local organisation Focus on Children at Risk helped me to go to school. I am now 18. I head the Ethiopian Teenager's Forum and also work with UNICEF. Developed countries donate a lot of money to Africa for issues like HIV and Aids. But sometimes we do not know where the money goes. How will the Commission for Africa make sure the money goes where it is supposed to ? ”

Abraham: 11, student "Will the Commission help farmers?" I come from a poor family. I live with my father, a construction worker, and my mother, brother and two sisters. I want to ask the Commission about the problems facing farmers in Ethiopia. . Ethiopia is poor, but our soil is rich. We have lots of rivers and lakes, but our farmers have to wait for the rains to water their crops. When the rains do not come there is always a problem .My . government cannot manage this problem, so what will the Commission for Africa do to help our farmers?

Leya: 13, aspiring journalist "Give us back our treasure” I want to be a journalist when I grow up. I am 13. My father is dead and my mother used to be a nursery school teacher, but no longer. Her school fell down. Now my mother's sister who is also a teacher supports the family of six. This is my question to the Commission. My country is poor, but it is rich in history. We have many tourist attractions and many treasures, but some of the treasures are in European countries. For example, Britain has the Magdala treasures which were stolen by the English soldiers in 1834. Will the Commission of Africa help to return them?

Zeleke: 13 aspiring pilot "Why can't all children go to school?" I want to be a pilot when I am older. I am 13 now. I want the Commission for Africa to tell me what it intends to do about education. African children suffer. They suffer from poverty and from conflict. Often they cannot go to school. Here in Ethiopia, half of the children, especially the females, do not learn. So how will you make sure that every child goes to school?

Linda: 16, aspiring writer "Help rural girls get an education." I am 16. My parents both work in a bank. I want to be a writer when I grow up. I want to know what the Commission for Africa will do about education, especially for girls in the countryside. The situation for girls in Addis Ababa is quite difficult, but it is far worse for girls born outside the city. What is the Commission for Africa going to do to change this? How can you make sure that girls in the country are given the same educational opportunities as girls in the city?

Adiam 16, student. People in the countryside are dying. I am 16 and I come from a middle class family. Compared to most children in Ethiopia I feel privileged. I am concerned that people do not have the same opportunities as I have. I want to ask the Commission about HIV and Aids. Improving agriculture might be the answer to Ethiopia's problem, but how can this happen unless the issue of HIV and Aids is tackled? Many of our brothers and sisters in the countryside are dying from the disease. They do not have the same access to information that we do in the city, through our TVs and radios. Sometimes there is not even electricity in the country. What is the Commission planning to do about this?

Aklilu: 15, student "Can we trust Tony Blair?" I am 15 and I want to know if we can trust the Commission for Africa? The chair of the Commission is the UK Prime Minister Tony Blair. Whilst he is engaged in a war in Iraq that has killed thousands of children what can he really promise children in Africa?

Helina: 15, student. "Stop spoon-feeding governments." I want to ask the commission about spoon-feeding African governments. Why do donor countries give money directly to our African governments which they sometimes keep to themselves? Why not invest in industries and create jobs instead? Then people can learn to fend for themselves and break the cycle of aid.

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Comments

Ethiopians and all Africans need dynamic economic changes. A commission is not an answer. Encourage investors to invest in Africa.

Binyam, Ethiopia

00/00/0000 - ETHIOPIA-ERITREA: UNMEE warns of continuing border incidents

The UN Mission in Ethiopia and Eritrea (UNMEE) has expressed concern over "continuing incidents of violence" along the disputed 1,000 km border between the countries. At UN-hosted Military Coordination Commission talks on Saturday between the armed forces of Eritrea and Ethiopia in Nairobi, Kenya, the commander of the UN peacekeeping forces in the region, Maj Gen Rajender Singh, called on both sides to try and resolve the hostility.

The UN has frequently warned that small-scale events, if left unchecked, had the potential to spiral out of control and evolve into a larger crisis. "He appealed to the Eritrean and Ethiopian delegations to cooperate in addressing these incidents with more vigour in the future," a UNMEE statement said. Eritrea's Col Zecarias Ogbagaber told the meeting that the stability of the 25 km-wide demilitarised zone could be threatened by localised occurrences.

00/00/0000 - OGADEN REBEL GROUP, OFFERS TO END WAR

An armed rebel group waging a bloody guerrilla war in lawless eastern Ethiopia on Tuesday offered a truce to end its decade-old fight against the government. The Ogaden National Liberation Front (ONLF) offered peace talks in a neutral country to try to bring an end to the fighting that has plagued this arid region. The decision was announced in a statement following an exchange of letters between Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi and Ogadeni clan elders in an attempt to secure peace in one of the poorest and most remote parts of the country.

Key elections are scheduled to take place in the region in just over a month, which could tip the balance in Ethiopia's 15 May national elections, where partial results have the government and opposition parties on level pegging. "The ONLF is ready to engage in negotiations with the government in order to find a just and lasting solution to the conflict between the people of the Ogaden and Ethiopian regime if such talks are conducted in a neutral country," the statement said.

00/00/0000 - EU PLEDGES FUNDS TO HELP END HUNGER

ADDIS ABABA, 27 July (IRIN) - The European Union pledged on Tuesday to provide 60 million Euros (US $71.9 million) to help end hunger and food aid dependency for five million people in Ethiopia.

The funds, from the European Development Fund, will help finance the government's pilot safety nets scheme, in which hungry people are each given food or US $0.60 a day in return for doing public works like road building.

Delays in distribution of aid to hungry families have, however, sparked concern.

UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan said earlier this month that the delays had fuelled high malnutrition in many parts of the impoverished country.

The EU also gave 8.5 million Euros to Ethiopia and Eritrea to fight the threat of famine and help 1.5 million people. The funds will largely be spent on medical and nutritional assistance, basic water supplies, livestock support, and protection of civilians in war-ravaged regions. "More than half the population is malnourished and only 50 percent of Ethiopians have access to safe drinking water," an EU statement said. Eritrea, after five years of poor rains, also faces critical humanitarian needs.

"Water shortages and the poor quality of the water that is available have had a negative impact on communities that are already highly vulnerable," the EU said. "The nutritional status of the population is badly affected by livestock losses."

00/00/0000 - SOMALIA. 100,000 need urgent humanitarian assistance - UN

NAIROBI, 22 September (IRIN) - More than 100,000 people in southwestern Somalia's Gedo district are in urgent need of humanitarian assistance, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said on Tuesday.

Some 59,000 people faced a livelihood crisis, OCHA spokeswoman Elizabeth Byrs told reporters in Geneva, Switzerland. Another 53,000 were in a "humanitarian emergency". In a UN News Service report, Byrs said that in the lower Juba region in southern Somalia, which recently flooded, 10 to 15 cases of severe malnutrition and 20 to 30 cases of moderate malnutrition were being admitted each week to local health facilities run by Médecins sans Frontières Holland.

OCHA reported that a UN appeal for US $162 million in aid to the war-scarred Horn of Africa country had yielded only $71 million, less than half the amount needed.

The agency warned that about 1 million people across Somalia - including 400,000 internally displaced persons - urgently needed assistance.

Meanwhile, a new nationwide campaign to stem the spread of polio in Somalia will start in the capital, Mogadishu, on Thursday, an official of the UN World Health Organization (WHO) said, adding that there had been confirmed cases in the city.

"We have already confirmed two cases, and 20 other [suspected cases] are under investigation," said Faten Kamel, a regional medical officer for the WHO.

She explained that immunisation teams would move from house to house vaccinating all children under age five. She appealed to parents, health professionals, community leaders and members of civil society organisations to support the campaign, which would be launched in the rest of the country on 28 September.

Somalia had been polio-free since October 2002, but there has been growing concern that polio outbreaks in neighbouring Ethiopia and Yemen would spread.

Although five national immunisation campaigns were conducted in Somalia this year - most recently in June, July and August - to prevent the risk of a large-scale epidemic, insecurity in the country and low routine vaccination rates could still result in the rapid spread of the virus.

Six countries - Afghanistan, Egypt, India, Niger, Nigeria and Pakistan - remain polio-endemic, and the virus has continued to spread to previously polio-free countries. In total, 10 previously polio-free countries - Angola, Cameroon, Chad, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Indonesia, Mali, Somalia, Sudan and Yemen - had been re-infected in late 2004 and 2005.

00/00/0000 - MAIN OPPOSION COALITION MERGES TO FORM PARTY

The four parties that make up Ethiopia's largest opposition alliance, the Coalition for Unity and Democracy (CUD) have merged to form one party, an official of the coalition said on Thursday.

The All Ethiopia Unity Party, the Union of Ethiopia Democracy Party, Rainbow Ethiopia and the Ethiopian Democratic League announced their unification on Saturday. Members of the new party elected Hailu Shawel to continue as chairman of the new party and Birtukan Mideksa to serve as vice-chair.

"This merger means a strengthening of the opposition, added force to the opposition," Hailu Araya, CUD spokesman, told IRIN.

"Our vision is eventually to unite all the opposition parties in Ethiopia, but in the immediate future we are focused on consolidating the CUD alliance," he added.

Hailu said the opposition demonstration to protest against the results of the 15 May national elections - planned for 2 October - was still "on schedule" but was dependent on the administration of the capital, Addis Ababa

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