By Jennifer Lazuta Many families in Guinea still rely on streams and lakes for their water needs.DAKAR, 15 June 2015 (IRIN) – It is a cruel irony that many of the top doctors and nurses in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone will not be around to help rebuild their health systems in the wake of Ebola, having succumbed themselves to the virus. For those that are, the biggest challenges are likely to be electricity, sanitation, and, most of all, water.“How is it possible to build, or rebuild, as you may call it, a health institution or hospital without [access to]…
Author: ARIN News
A family sits outside destroyed homes in Accra’s Nima neighbourhood, a few days after heavy rains flooded the city on 3 June. ACCRA, 12 June 2015 (IRIN) – Years of delays and repeated failures to implement and improve sewage and drainage systems in Ghana’s capital, Accra, has led to increasingly damaging and deadly flooding during the country’s annual rainy season. “[Ghana] hasn’t make any serious arrangements in the event of a flood,” said Franklin Cudjoe, director of the Accra-based IMANI think tank. “It is the epitome of neglect.”Thirty-eight-year-old Gertrude Otobia Darko was at home with her eight children and husband on…
By Mamoudou Lamine Kane Khalifa Ould Mohamed Lemine, who fled to Mauritania from his home in northern Mali, sells candy and cookies each week at the local Mberra market, not far from the refugee camp. NOUAKCHOTT, 10 June 2015 (IRIN) – More than 50,000 Malians have taken refuge across the border at the M’berra camp in southeastern Mauritania since fighting broke out in northern Mali in 2012. Despite long-standing tensions between many of the different ethnic groups in Mali’s North, people are coming together at a local weekly market. Click here to see IRIN’s photo feature on how the refugees are not…
Security and humanitarian priorities – out of kilter?NAIROBI, 5 June 2015 (IRIN) – The Nigerian government’s focus on its war against the Boko Haram insurgency is obscuring a growing humanitarian emergency.The violence has driven at least 1.5 million people from their homes in the three conflict-affected northeastern states of Adamawa, Borno and Yobe. The vast majority have been taken in by friends and relatives in the main cities, but the hospitality has imposed a significant burden on their hosts.“People are stressed. People are tired. Things are very difficult,” said Mustapha Zannah, a lawyer in the region’s largest city Maiduguri who…
Nigerian troops in the northeast – how not to win hearts-and-mindsNAIROBI, 3 June 2015 (IRIN) – An Amnesty International report accusing the Nigerian military of the murder of thousands, and demanding the investigation of senior commanders for war crimes, has been welcomed by Nigerian pro-democracy activists. “Stars on their shoulders. Blood on their hands: War crimes committed by the Nigerian military,” says more than 7,000 young men and boys were starved, suffocated and tortured to death in military detention from 2011 in the war against the Boko Haram insurgency. The report, based on hundreds of interviews and leaked military documents, said since…
By Jennifer Lazuta and Lassana Cassama Will Ebola protection outfits soon be seen on the streets of Bissau?DAKAR/BISSAU, 2 June 2015 (IRIN) – The government of Guinea-Bissau has known for months about the risk of Ebola entering the country, but it hasn’t done enough to prepare. Now there is a cluster of cases just across the border. Residents say it will be good fortune rather than good planning if an outbreak is avoided. “I don’t know why we haven’t gotten Ebola yet,” said Edimar Nhaga, who lives in the capital, Bissau. “It certainly isn’t because of prevention measures taken by…
A displaced woman sets up camp in Mali’s Timbuktu regionBAMAKO, 29 May 2015 (IRIN) – A spike in violence in northern Mali has driven the number of people displaced in the country above 100,000, many of them urgently needing food, water and shelter as time runs out before the rainy season begins. The situation is worst in the northern Timbuktu region, where an estimated 23,000 people have been driven from their homes in only a few days, fleeing a marked upsurge in attacks by rebel coalitions and government-controlled militias. Many key players were absent from a peace signing ceremony in…
By Mamoudou Lamine Kane and Jennifer Lazuta Carcasses dot the sandy landscape in southern Mauritania’s Hodh El Chargui region, where a lack of rain has affected both wild vegetation growth and crops. NOUAKCHOTT, 26 May 2015 (IRIN) – Hundreds of thousands of Mauritanians are struggling to feed themselves as they fall victim to the effects of climate change. A chronically hungry country, Mauritania could see the availability of food drop to its lowest level in years if drought continues to ravage crops, livestock and livelihoods. An estimated 1.3 million people will face food insecurity this year, according to the latest…
By Alexis Adele The Holding and Corrections Prison of Abidjan (MACA) is home to more than 6,000 inmates, many of them children.ABIDJAN, 21 May 2015 (IRIN) – Hundreds of children are being kept behind bars in Cote d’Ivoire’s overcrowded adult prisons waiting on trial dates due to the country’s broken post-crisis criminal justice system. According to Ivorian law, the accused have 15 days to be charged before a judge, but this deadline is rarely enforced and many accused – among them young teenagers – are left on remand for months on end. Fifteen-year-old Brahima Keita* (not his real name) has…
Nine-year old Amin working on his family farm in northern Cameroon’s Mayo-Sava district.MAROUA, 19 May 2015 (IRIN) – It’s becoming more and more difficult to find food in Cameroon’s Far North region, residents say, not only because the annual lean season is underway, but insecurity caused by Boko Haram has severely disrupted farming and cross-border trade. As many as 180,000 people in the region could be at risk of an acute food crisis this year, aid agencies and local authorities warn. The malnutrition rate among children under five, which has been above the World Health Organization’s emergency threshold of 15…