Follow @{0}A child who attended a Koranic school in Senegal.DAKAR, 21 March 2014 (IRIN) – Despite pledges by the Senegalese government to end child begging and to crack down on the Koranic schools that exploit the tens of thousands of boys, Human Rights Watch (HRW) said in a report released on 19 March that very little has been done. Known as talibés, the children take to the streets each day in Dakar and other urban centres to beg for small change and food. The boys, some as young as four years old, are often under-weight or malnourished, barefoot and in…
Author: ARIN News
Dismantling West Africa’s trade barriers can improve food security DAKAR, 20 March 2014 (IRIN) – Severe food shortages in the Sahel and West Africa are often the result of droughts and poor harvests. But inefficient intra-regional trade also places significant strain on food availability, exacerbating hunger. Poor roads and railways, high transaction costs, lack of sufficient market information, incoherent trade policies by governments and bureaucratic hurdles are among limitations to free trade in West Africa. Import and export procedures are more costly and more time consuming in West Africa than any region of the world, experts say.For instance, according to…
Follow @{0}ATT, former President of MaliBAMAKO, 18 March 2014 (IRIN) – As mali embarks on a difficult period of national reconciliation and the rebuilding of a fractured state, two key figures from the recent past – former president Amadou Toumani Toure and General Amadou Haya Sanogo, who staged a coup in 2012 – are being asked to account for their actions. Coming full circleAmadou Toumani Touré, 65, is known to all as ATT. Often described as “the good soldier”, he was the head of the presidential guard and the Red Berets, an elite parachute regiment. ATT seized power on 26…
A farmer holds what is left of his millet crop after an attack by grasshoppers. (file photo)MARADI/KANO, 14 March 2014 (IRIN) – Farmers in Niger are using dangerous, black market pesticides in unregulated quantities, with little impact on agricultural yield but with potentially severe health consequences, say experts. “In Maradi Region [central Niger], what you discover is that farmers have no fear. It’s horrific. They know the pesticides they are using are dangerous, but they still won’t take the precautions to protect themselves,” said James Litzinger, a pesticide expert and agricultural consultant who is assessing pesticide usage for an NGO…
Follow @{0}Flooding displaced 1.3 million Nigerians in 2012. (file photo)DAKAR, 14 March 2014 (IRIN) – Researchers at the Madrid-based humanitarian research non-profit DARA have developed a new methodology, the risk reduction index, that they say could help more countries assess and reduce the risk of natural hazards and disasters. But an assessment using the index, carried out in six West African countries, found pervasive risks and limited capacity to reduce vulnerability.The index assesses the capacities and conditions – such as human resources, laws and social norms – available for disaster risk reduction (DRR), according to DARA. “Basically, the risk reduction…
Follow @{0}Displaced from Borno State now sheltering in Niger’s Guesseré village.KANO, 14 March 2014 (IRIN) – Humanitarian needs are mounting in northern Nigeria, where Boko Haram attacks have displaced 350,000 people since 2013, 290,000 of them internally; the rest are sheltering in Cameroon, Chad and Niger. But the national response is inadequate and the international response minimal due to access hurdles and political sensitivities. The local government chairman in Madagali District in Adamawa State, Maina Ularamu, told IRIN: “We are grappling with 10,000 displaced people from villages in neighbouring Borno State who have fled their homes… These people have nothing…
Follow @{0}Car displaced in Cameroon’s Garoua-BoulaiYAOUNDE/GAROUA-BOULAI, 12 March 2014 (IRIN) – Up to 130,000 refugees have fled from the Central African Republic (CAR) to Cameroon, many of them wounded from attacks, dehydrated or traumatized, say local officials and aid workers, who are struggling to cope with the speed of the influx. In just two weeks of February, more than 20,000 Car refugees entered Cameroon. Overall, one in five residents of CAR is displaced, either internally or in neighbouring countries. Very few aid agencies are present to respond to the needs of the displaced, and many of the arrivals have not…
Follow @{0}Finding enough food for the children is very difficult,” said Ndeye Diagne. “ Always my children are hungry.”LOUGA/DAKAR, 12 March 2014 (IRIN) – The number of food insecure in the Sahel is expected to grow from 11.3 million in 2013 to more than 20 million in 2014, mainly due to an increase in cases in northern Nigeria, northern Cameroon and Senegal. IRIN went to Louga, in northern Senegal, to find out why the number of hungry is so high. “Nothing was harvested this year in the fields. Nothing at all,” said Ndjouga Ndianye, a farmer from Diama Nguene, a…
Follow @{0}Food shortages are severe in parts of northern MaliBAMAKO, 3 March 2014 (IRIN) – As mali slowly emerges from its 2012 political crisis and the Islamist insurgency in the north, the new government and its partners are focusing on long-term development. But aid groups warn that there are humanitarian needs that must be addressed immediately, particularly ensuring more food aid gets to extremely vulnerable communities in the north.“The humanitarian crisis is still there. There are people out there who are extremely poor and need humanitarian assistance,” said Oxfam country director Mohamed Couilbaly. The World Food Programme (WFP) estimates that…
Follow @{0}Women in Maradi’s Doukou Doukou village rest after watering their small garden plotsMARADI/DIFFA, 3 March 2014 (IRIN) – Farmers in drought-ridden parts of Niger are facing a dangerous combination of stresses – chronic drought, land degradation, pests and poor seeds – which threaten to throw them even deeper into hunger and poverty.James Litzinger, an agricultural specialist studying how farmers use pesticides and fertilizers in Niger’s central Maradi Region, said there is an exponential yield loss when people face these compounded problems: “One [loss] plus one [loss] equals three,” he told IRIN.In 2009, in the journal Comptes Rendus Geoscience, scientists…