Somalia News Gazette

At least two U.N. peacekeepers from Egypt are dead and more are wounded after their convoy hit an improvised explosive device Tuesday, the United Nations Multidimensional Integrated Stabilization Mission in Mali (MINUSMA) said Tuesday.

The explosion happened between the town of Tessalit and the city of Gao, MINUSMA said.

The conflict dates back over a decade when Islamist insurgents began operating in the northern part of the country. Some of the militants are believed to have ties to al-Qaida and Islamic State.

Reuters reports the militants have made gains despite the presence of the peacekeepers.

The conflict has left thousands of people dead and millions displaced, Reuters reported.

Ten peacekeepers have been killed in the first six months of 2022.

Source: Voice of America

At least 500 children have died this year of malnutrition as Somalia deals with record-breaking drought, the U.N. Children’s Fund (UNICEF) said.

UNICEF Somalia says the death toll is just the “tip of the iceberg” as many deaths go unreported.

UNICEF Somalia spokesman Victor Chinyama told VOA the drought is having its worst effects on children, with 400,000 at risk of severe acute malnourishment.

If not reached immediately with emergency support, those children will be in danger of dying, Chinyama added.

“And so far, we have recorded about 500 deaths of children that have been admitted for severe acute malnutrition and this is only a tip of the iceberg because we know that there are many more children whose deaths are never recorded. These children are dying in their homes, they are dying on the way as they travel in search of help,” he said.

“Help is desperately needed at this point,” Chinyama said.

He said UNICEF Somalia has appealed for $112 million in emergency funds for this year but have only received about half.

The worst drought in the Horn of Africa in four decades is set to get worse as the region faces a fifth straight failed rainy season.

Officials in the town of Dolow, on Somalia’s border with Ethiopia and Kenya, say they still host about 10,000 people displaced from the last major drought in 2011.

In a visit Sunday to an IDP camp in Dolow, Mayor Mohamed Hussain Abdi told VOA that are caring for about 3,000 displaced people from the current drought.

Somalis are arriving every day in search of food, water and shelter, Abdi said.

“Dolow is a hub of U.N. agencies and international organizations. Dolow is a borderline area. And that resulted, you know, large number of internal displaced persons come here to seek … help from U.N. agencies and the government,” he said.

Somalia President Hassan Sheikh Mohamed, who was elected in May, appointed that same month a special envoy for drought response, Abdirahman Abdishakur Warsame.

Warsame has been tasked with scaling up aid to those Somalis most in need.

Warsame visited Dolow in June and told VOA that officials were doing everything they could to avert famine.

“That’s why we are calling (on the) international community and international donors to pay attention to Somali drought and increase their level of humanitarian assistance. Also, my government will do as much as possible to facilitate and contribute the assistance of the aid and support to the people who are affected by the drought,” he said.

The U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (UNOCHA) said since January they’ve provided life-saving assistance to nearly 4 million Somalis.

In late June, the U.N. and its partners launched an appeal for nearly $1 billion for a Drought Response and Famine Prevention Plan in Somalia that would target 6.4 million people.

Source: Voice of America

Malawi’s National Organization for Nurses and Midwives says about 2,000 nurses will leave the country this year for jobs in Saudi Arabia and the United States. The group says the nurses were forced to take jobs abroad due to high unemployment in Malawi. Health rights campaigners say the brain drain is alarming as more than half of nursing positions in Malawi’s public hospitals are vacant, which the government blames on lack of funding.

Malawi’s National Organization for Nurses and Midwives said that currently more than 3,000 trained nurses in Malawi are unemployed.

“We feel the pinch that unemployed nurses and midwives have gone through and are going through,” said Shouts Simeza, president of the organization. “Having graduated with a qualification and having been licensed to practice for five years without being recruited is not an easy way of doing things.”

Simeza said the first group of 1,000 nurses is expected to leave for Saudi Arabia in August. The plan is to send 1,000 each year for a five-year project.

George Jobe, executive director of the Malawi Health Equity Network, said he is concerned the nurses going abroad do not know enough about the jobs they are taking.

“Who else has gone to these countries and checked the health facilities they will work in, and under what condition?” Jobe said. “These are some of the issues, but paramount to everything is that we wished these were recruited here.”

Simeza said the organization has received assurances about the work in Saudi Arabia.

Government statistics show that 65 percent of nursing positions in public hospitals in Malawi remain vacant.

Dorothy Ngoma, adviser to the president on maternal mortality and reproductive health, said that unless the government finds a way to boost pay for nurses, many more will leave the country.

“What will happen is that even the ones that are in the mainstream will choose to quit government jobs here and go to the U.S and earn more money,” said Ngoma, who is also a past president of the nurses’ organization. “And there is nothing wrong with that. But, it definitely might cause brain drain and that might not be good for Malawi.”

However, the Malawi government says it cannot hire more nurses now, because of financial constraints.

Source: Voice f America

The French medical aid group Doctors Without Borders reported a jump in cases of malnourished Nigerian children at its Maiduguri nutrition center in the country’s northeast.

The group, known by its French abbreviation MSF, said in a press release July 1 it had recorded an unprecedented influx of malnourished children in its treatment centers between May and June — the highest levels since commencing its project in northeastern Nigeria five years ago.

MSF said it had admitted 2,140 malnourished children this year — about 50 percent higher than cases treated the year before.

MSF said a third of the children were from displaced families barely getting by.

The group warned that cases could worsen between July and September — the so-called lean season, usually when the highest cases of malnourished children are reported every year.

MSF called for immediate action to reverse the negative trends.

“Why we’re saying this now is that this year we have been seeing very early, even when we’re not in the lean season,” said Htet Aung Kyi, MSF’s Nigerian coordinator. “And that’s why we’d like to call for urgent upscale of activities to prevent the future deterioration of the situation in the area.”

MSF responded to the increased malnutrition by extending the capacity of its treatment center from 120 beds to 200 beds.

MSF said its outpatient therapeutic feeding program has also seen a 25 percent increase in enrollment compared with last year.

A camp secretary of the Kawar Maila camp in Borno state, Bukar Bukar, said aid hardly gets to them these days, despite increasing numbers of children suffering from malnutrition there.

“In our camp, they’ve already withdrawn giving the food, that is the reason that the children have malnutrition. Last year we got food, we got everything. One piece of the milk is 700 Naira, we don’t even make that when we go to the market to sell our farm produce. Even last week some people went farming and Boko Haram killed two or three of them,” the secretary said.

For years, malnutrition has been a concern in the conflict-affected Borno state, but trends have been exacerbated by the cumulative impacts of insecurity, displacement, a recent surge in food prices, poverty and lack of access to health care.

“The current ability to respond to that is fairly robust,” said Peter Hawkins, UNICEF’s Nigeria country director. “Insecurity incidences of where capacity might be compromised makes that response mechanism very fragile. We’re concerned that our ability to be able to respond to acute malnutrition — if it is compromised — the situation could deteriorate very quickly.”

MSF said Nigeria needs not only to increase intervention and medical response but also to address other health issues such as measles, cholera and disease outbreaks that could affect children and worsen the situation.

Source: Voice of America

The Tigray conflict in Ethiopia’s north is overshadowing a “persistent cycle of violence” against civilians by security forces and armed groups in the Oromia region, Human Rights Watch said Monday.

The New York-based watchdog said it had documented serious abuses in Ethiopia’s most populous region, including in western Oromia, where an “abusive” government campaign against an armed rebel group had trapped civilians in the crossfire.

This violence has persisted for years without redress while global attention has centered on Tigray, where major combat between federal forces and rebels from the region exploded in November 2020.

“Well before the conflict in northern Ethiopia, there has been widespread impunity for ongoing rights abuses in Ethiopia’s Oromia region, including in areas already suffering from conflict,” HRW said in a statement.

“Many of these abuses still persist and require urgent international attention.”

This culture of impunity “has only emboldened unaccountable security forces and done nothing to prevent further harm,” it said.

Access is restricted to western Oromia, where Ethiopia’s armed forces have been countering a rebellion by the Oromo Liberation Army (OLA) for years.

But summary executions and arbitrary detentions by government forces have still been documented there, HRW said, as have abductions and killings of local leaders and government officials by armed groups.

In June, hundreds of people, mostly from the Amhara ethnic group, were massacred by gunmen in the western Oromia village of Tole.

Local authorities said the OLA was responsible, but the rebels denied any role and blamed a pro-government militia.

Earlier that month, government forces were accused of summarily executing suspected OLA collaborators in the capital of the neighboring Gambella region following an attack on the city.

Oromia was the scene of deadly violence after the murder in June 2020 of Hachalu Hundessa, a popular Oromo singer who gave voice to the frustrations felt by many in the region.

More than 160 people were killed in street demonstrations following his death while Oromo political leaders and opposition activists were rounded up and detained in a sweeping government crackdown.

Many were later released, but some remained in detention despite court orders for their release, HRW said.

“Ethiopia’s government and its partners should no longer ignore the mounting tragedies affecting families throughout Oromia. There is a deep need for structural reforms of the abusive security apparatus and for social repair,” HRW said.

“The government can start by facilitating credible independent investigations into the serious abuses by its own forces and by armed groups, as communities demanded.”

Source: Voice of America

Democratic Republic of Congo President Felix Tshisekedi will meet his Rwandan counterpart, Paul Kagame, for talks in Angola this week, officials said Monday.

There were no details on what they would discuss, but the neighbors have been at diplomatic loggerheads since a surge of attacks in eastern Congo by the M23 rebel group — which Kinshasa accuses Kigali of backing.

Rwanda denies supporting the rebels and has, in turn, accused Congo of fighting alongside insurgents — a faceoff that has raised fears of fresh conflict in the region.

The meeting is likely to take place on Tuesday or Wednesday in Angola’s capital, Luanda, according to the officials — two of them from Congo and one Rwanda — who did not wish to be named.

Earlier on Monday, Kagame said he did not mind Rwanda being excluded from a regional military force set up in April to fight rebels in east Congo, removing a potential stumbling block to the initiative.

Congo had welcomed the plan but said it would not accept the involvement of Rwanda.

“I have no problem with that. We are not begging anyone that we participate in the force,” Kagame told Rwanda’s state broadcaster in a wide-ranging interview.

“If anybody’s coming from anywhere, excluding Rwanda, but will provide the solution that we’re all looking for, why would I have a problem?” Kagame said.

At the end of March, the M23 started waging its most sustained offensive in Congo’s eastern borderlands since capturing vast swaths of territory in 2012 and 2013.

Rwanda accuses Congo’s army of firing into Rwandan territory and fighting alongside the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda, an armed group run by ethnic Hutus who fled Rwanda after taking part in the 1994 genocide.

Recent attempts to stop the violence militarily have proven unsuccessful, and in some cases backfired, security analysts and human rights groups say.

Despite billions of dollars spent on one of the United Nations’ largest peacekeeping forces, more than 120 rebel groups continue to operate across large swaths of east Congo almost two decades after the official end of the central African country’s civil wars.

Source: Voice of America

Sudan’s leading general said Monday the country’s military will withdraw from negotiations meant to solve the ongoing political crisis after a coup last year, allowing civil society representatives to take their place.

In televised statements aired on Sudan’s state television, General Abdel-Fattah Burhan also promised that he would dissolve the sovereign council that he leads after a new transitional government is formed. The council has governed the country since the military took power in a coup last year.

Since the coup, the U.N. political mission in Sudan, the African Union and the eight-nation east African regional Intergovernmental Authority on Development have been trying to broker a way out of the political impasse. But talks have yielded no results so far. Pro-democracy groups have repeatedly said they will not negotiate with the military, and they have called for it to immediately hand the reins to a civilian government.

Burhan did not specify any dates or who would replace the military at the negotiating table. After the ruling council is dissolved, he said, the army and the powerful paramilitary known as the Rapid Support Forces will be placed under a new governing body responsible for the country’s defense and security.

Sudan has been plunged into turmoil since the military takeover upended its short-lived transition to democracy after three decades of repressive rule by former strongman Omar al-Bashir. The military removed al-Bashir and his Islamist-backed government in a popular uprising in April 2019.

Burhan’s statements come after a deadly week for the country’s pro-democracy protesters. On Thursday, nine people were killed and at least 629 injured by security forces in anti-military demonstrations, according to the Sudan’s Doctors Committee, which has tracked protest casualties.

Sudanese military authorities have met the near-weekly street protests since the coup with a crackdown that has so far killed 113 people, including 18 children.

Western governments have repeatedly called on the generals to allow peaceful protests but have also angered the pro-democracy movement for engaging with the leading generals.

Source: Voice of America

Police in Nigeria say they have rescued 77 people, including children, from a church basement in the southwestern state of Ondo.

Reports say some of the people had been in the Whole Bible Believers Church for as long as six months and had been convinced they would soon witness the second coming of Jesus Christ.

While some of the people are reported to have been kidnapped, others came freely. One young woman told Punch, a Nigerian publication, that she had decided to join the church because “my parents were leading me away from God and I want to make heaven.”

Authorities conducted the raid on the church after complaints from parents.

The pastor and other members of the church have been arrested, police said.

Source: Voice of America