Month: July 2022

The U.N. refugee agency, UNHCR, this week reported that global crises have combined to raise levels of acute malnutrition in dozens of refugee sites surveyed, most of them in Africa. UNHCR’s 2021 Annual Public Health Global Review was released Friday.

UNHCR officials say they are concerned by their findings, which show a significant deterioration in the nutritional condition of refugees. Monitoring refugees’ nutritional status resumed last year after stopping in 2020 because of COVID-19 restrictions.

The officials say a third of the 93 sites surveyed in 12 African countries and in Bangladesh showed serious levels of global acute malnutrition, a measurement of a population’s nutritional status, and 14% of locations recorded life-threatening levels of malnutrition.

UNHCR spokeswoman Shabia Mantoo tells VOA the rates of malnutrition are particularly troubling as they were recorded before the war in Ukraine sent food and commodity prices rising.

“This is a key concern because nutritional intake is really key to building healthy and resilient communities,” she said. “The leading causes of illness for refugees remain upper respiratory tract infections and malaria and lower respiratory tract infections. And we had noncommunicable diseases also accounting for about 5% of consultations as well as mental health services.”

These concerns are playing out at a particularly difficult time marked by the COVID-19 pandemic and record levels of people being forcibly displaced by conflict, violence, and natural disasters.

Despite these problems, the UNHCR says gains were made in the inclusion of refugees into national health policies. A survey of 46 countries found 76% included refugees in their national health plans and practically all refugees were able to use primary health facilities.

In another promising result, by the end of last year, the report says 162 countries had included refugees and asylum-seekers in national COVID-19 vaccination plans.

Source: Voice of America

U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said he was outraged after two people were killed and several others were injured when U.N. peacekeepers opened fire during an incident in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo on the Uganda border on Sunday.

The U.N. force, MONUSCO, admitted that some of its peacekeepers had opened fire “for unexplained reasons,” adding that arrests had been made.

Guterres was “saddened and dismayed” to learn of the shooting, a U.N. statement said.

“The Secretary-General stresses in the strongest terms the need to establish accountability for these events,” it said.

“He welcomes the decision of his special representative in the Democratic Republic of the Congo to detain the MONUSCO personnel involved in the incident and to immediately open an investigation,” it added.

Video of the incident, shared on social media showed men, at least one in police uniform and another in army uniform, advancing toward the U.N. convoy stopped behind a closed barrier in Kasindi.

The town is in eastern DR Congo’s Beni territory on the border with Uganda.

After a verbal exchange, the peacekeepers appeared to open fire before opening the barrier and driving through while people scattered or hid.

“During this incident, soldiers from the intervention brigade of the MONUSCO force returning from leave opened fire at the border post for unexplained reasons and forced their way through,” the U.N. mission in Kasindi said in a statement earlier Sunday.

“This serious incident caused loss of life and serious injuries,” it said.

The Democratic Republic of Congo “strongly condemns and deplores this unfortunate incident in which two compatriots died and 15 others were injured according to a provisional roll,” government spokesman Patrick Muyaya said in a statement.

The government said it launched an investigation with MONUSCO to establish who was responsible, why the shooting took place and would ensure “severe penalties” are given.

The U.N. envoy in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Bintou Keita, said she was “deeply shocked and dismayed by this serious incident,” according to the mission’s statement.

“In the face of this unspeakable and irresponsible behavior, the perpetrators of the shooting have been identified and arrested pending the conclusions of the investigation, which has already begun in collaboration with the Congolese authorities,” MONUSCO said.

The U.N. mission said the troops’ home countries had been contacted so legal action could begin promptly, with the involvement of witnesses and survivors, which could lead to exemplary penalties.

Earlier Barthelemy Kambale Siva, the North Kivu governor’s representative in Kasindi, said that “eight people, including two policemen who were working at the barrier, were seriously injured” in the incident.

Kambale Siva, interviewed by AFP, did not say why the U.N. convoy had been prevented from crossing.

There are more than 120 militias operating in the DRC’s troubled east. The U.N. first deployed an observer mission to the region in 1999.

In 2010, it became the peacekeeping mission MONUSCO — the United Nations Organization Stabilization Mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo — with a mandate to conduct offensive operations.

There have been 230 fatalities among the force, according to the U.N.

Last week, deadly demonstrations demanding the departure of the United Nations took place in several towns in eastern DRC.

A total of 19 people, including three peacekeepers, were killed.

Anger has been fueled by perceptions that MONUSCO is failing to do enough to stop attacks by the armed groups.

U.N. under-secretary-general for peace operations Jean-Pierre Lacroix was in the central African country on Saturday to “talk to the Congolese authorities,” he said.

“(They would) examine ways in which we can both avoid a recurrence of these tragic incidents and, above all, work better together to achieve our objectives,” he said.

“We hope that the conditions will be met, in particular the return of state authority, so that MONUSCO can complete its mission as soon as possible. And to leave room for other forms of international support.”

Source: Voice of America

Whether it’s abstinence, avoiding nightclubs, limiting sexual partners or pushing for a swift vaccine rollout, Spain’s gay community is on the front line of the monkeypox virus and is taking action.

“With this monkey thing, I prefer to be careful. … I don’t have sex anymore, I don’t go to parties anymore, and that’s until I’m vaccinated and have some immunity,” said Antonio, a 35-year-old from Madrid who declined to give his last name.

Antonio, who often went to nightclubs and sometimes to sex parties, decided to act as cases continued to increase.

Spain on Saturday reported its second monkeypox-related death.

Outside of Africa, the only other such death has been in Brazil.

More than 18,000 cases have been detected throughout the world outside of Africa since the beginning of May, according to the World Health Organization (WHO).

Spain is one of the world’s worst-hit countries. The health ministry’s emergency and alert coordination center put the number of infected people at 4,298.

As cases increase globally, the WHO has called on the group currently most affected by the virus, men who have sex with men, to limit their sexual partners.

Lack of vaccines

“This is not like Covid, the vaccine already exists, there’s no need to invent it. If it wasn’t a queer disease, we would have acted more — and faster,” said Antonio.

Like other members of the gay community, he believes the authorities have not done enough.

NGOs have denounced a lack of prevention, a shortage of vaccines and stigmatization linked to the virus.

This is despite the WHO declaring the monkeypox outbreak a global health emergency.

Early signs of the disease include a high fever, swollen lymph glands and a chickenpox-like rash.

The disease usually heals by itself after two to three weeks, sometimes taking a month.

A smallpox vaccine from Danish drug maker Bavarian Nordic, marketed under the name Jynneos in the United States and Imvanex in Europe, has been found to protect against monkeypox.

It took Antonio three weeks to get an appointment to be vaccinated, after logging on to the official website every day at midnight.

Appointments “are going as fast as tickets to the next Beyonce concert,” another said.

So far, Spain has only received 5,300 doses, which arrived in late June.

The Spanish health ministry declined to comment when contacted by AFP.

‘Anyone can catch it’

Nahum Cabrera of the FELGTBI+ NGO, an umbrella group of more than 50 LGBTQ organizations from all over Spain, insists there is an urgent need to vaccinate those most at risk.

That means not just gay men, but anyone who has “regular sex with multiple partners, as well as those who frequent swingers’ clubs, LGTBI saunas, etc.,” he said.

“It risks creating a false sense of security among the general population, and they relax into thinking that they are safe and that it only happens to men who have sex with men,” he said.

The target age group for vaccination is those ages 18 and 46, he added.

Older people are vaccinated against smallpox which was eradicated in Europe in the early 1970s.

“We are facing a health emergency… that affects the LGBTI community, so people think it is insignificant, that it is not serious,” said Ivan Zaro, of the Imagina MAS (Imagine More) NGO. “This is exactly what happened 40 years ago with HIV.”

Image director Javier spent three days in hospital in early July after becoming infected.

The 32-year-old, who is in a monogamous relationship, said he still did not know how he had caught it.

“I warn everyone,” he said. “It’s an infectious disease, anyone can catch it.”

Source: Voice of America

The UN refugee agency, UNHCR, Friday called for more to be done to protect African refugees and migrants from traffickers on their way from the Sahel and the Horn of Africa toward North Africa and Europe.

UNHCR spokeswoman Shabia Mantoo says traffickers take advantage of African refugees fleeing persecution and violence and of migrants fleeing poverty and climate shocks, subjecting them to appalling abuse.

“Some of them are left to die in the desert. Others suffer repeated sexual and gender-based violence, kidnapped for ransom, torture and many other forms of physical and psychological abuse,” said Mantoo. “So, the human trafficking issue is widespread and is incredibly alarming.”

The report issued by the UNHCR and the Mixed Migration Center at the Danish Refugee Council, is based on information from 12 countries, from Burkina Faso and Cameroon to Somalia and Sudan.

Mantoo tells VOA human traffickers and smugglers use technology and online platforms to advertise their services to unsuspecting victims. She says traffickers employ the internet to identify, groom and recruit victims, including children.

She says the UNHCR is urging governments and the private sector to work together to crack down on the use of the Internet by traffickers.

“These same digital technologies can be leveraged to actually counter the issue and counter trafficking by helping empower communities with trustworthy information, to better protect themselves and also be aware of the risks that they might face on these journeys …to ensure that there are protection services available for the people who are taking these precarious and perilous journeys, to prevent and end the human trafficking and smuggling rings,” said Mantoo.

The report provides tailored information for refugees and migrants on services available on different routes. The UNHCR is calling for the creation of shelters and safe places, better access to legal services, and specialized services for children and female survivors of trafficking and gender-based violence.

UNHCR officials stress the importance of identifying critical locations to serve as so-called last stops – places where refugees and migrants can get information about the dangers that lie ahead before they embark on journeys across the Sahara.

Source: Voice of America