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This week’s Humanitarian Hook is Sri Lanka, where an aid worker awarded for his tsunami efforts has been murdered, and minorities are in the firing line.
The next issue of Humanitarian Heads Up will appear on Jan. 9.
Have you completed our journalists’ survey? We’d really value your feedback to help make sure we’re giving journalists what you need, and you’ll stand an excellent chance of winning a shiny prize.
Now for some early warning of brewing emergencies and other interesting humanitarian developments. Click here to go straight to useful diary dates.
WHO’S THE BEST – AND WORST – HUMANITARIAN CELEBRITY OF THE YEAR? Love them or loathe them, celebrity humanitarians have helped train media attention on crises from Darfur to Haiti. Some are respected spokespeople for their chosen causes, helping to mobilise public opinion, raise funds and influence policymakers. Others are less effective in commanding respect. As the year draws to a close, we’ve asked the public which famous faces have given the best – and worst – name to “celebrity humanitarianism” in 2007. We’ve consulted aid agency experts to come up with a shortlist in five celebrity categories – actors, musicians, athletes, philanthropists and leaders – but given readers the chance to make their own choice too. We’ll launch the results next week, so keep an eye on Reuters AlertNet. See the survey online and check out the results so far. Call timothy.large@reuters.com“target=”new”>Tim Large in London on +44 (0)7990 560 402 for more information.
THE YEAR’S UNREPORTED STORIES: Every year, international relief agency Medecins Sans Frontieres lists the 10 most underreported humanitarian stories of the past 12 months. The neglected hotspots of 2007 – the 10th annual list – are out on Dec. 20, and you can contact olivia.blanchard@london.msf.org “target=”new”>Olivia Blanchard in London for the details, and to arrange interviews. She’s on +44 (0)207 067 4217 or +44 (0)7770 235 740. As it’s the end of the year, Foreign Policy magazine has challenged readers to see The Top 10 Stories You Missed in 2007. It includes the start of cyberwars, an al Qaeda split, and an explosion of dengue fever as global warming sets in. Blogger Andrew Stroehlein of International Crisis Group gives his take on the list.
ZAMBIA’S WOMEN HIDE AIDS DRUGS FROM HUSBANDS: In Zambia, where 17 percent of adults are HIV-positive, women say they have to hide antiretroviral drugs in their daily maize porridge out of sight of their husbands for fear of being beaten or thrown out. A report from Human Rights Watch finds that domestic violence – and the fear of it – stops many women accessing life-saving medicines. It says the government could save lives by confronting domestic violence alongside health care. The report “Hidden in the Mealie Meal: Gender-Based Abuses and Women’s HIV Treatment in Zambia” is online. For interviews call Nada Ali or Marianne Mollmann in Lusaka on +260 97 9 517913.
SOMALIA’S REBELS REGROUPING: Senior commanders from Somalia’s Islamist movement say they’re regrouping and
about to intensify their offensive against the government’s troops and its Ethiopian allies. Many Somalis credited the Somalia Islamic Courts Council with bringing a semblance of order to Mogadishu. But its attempts to enforce strict sharia law in the moderate Muslim country drew rumblings of discontent after they banned Bollywood films and khat, a mild narcotic leaf chewed throughout the Horn of Africa. An Africa specialist for the U.S. Congress was Saudi Arabia could lead a drive towards peace in the war-torn country, which top U.N. officials describe as Africa’s worst humanitarian crisis.
HAITIAN DIASPORA COULD MAKE OR BREAK PEACE: Haiti’s government should set up a diaspora task force, Belgian-based think tank International Crisis Group argues in a new report. The task force would look at ways to encourage development and reverse the brain drain. Crisis Group says reforming the country – which decades of violence, dictatorship and coups have left the poorest nation in the Western hemisphere – depends on hundreds of Haitians returning from abroad to fill skilled jobs in public administration. Haitians sent home an estimated $1.65 billion in 2006, and the diaspora should be allowed to vote and be encouraged to invest, Crisis Group says. You can contact Crisis Group’s Giulia Previti in Washington on +1 202 785 1601 for more information and interviews with its Latin America experts.
COULD THE RIO GRANDE RUN DRY? The river that divides the United States from Mexico has been immortalised in song and cinema, but it might not be around forever. Mexican farmers on the border with Texas say they’re heading toward a water crisis from a combination of overuse and dams. Under a 1944 treaty, Mexico is required to transfer water to the United States every two years from two dams on the border. “They have taken our water and these lands are dying. Our children are emigrating to the United States, some illegally,” a farmer told Reuters. The landscape is already dotted with abandoned villages, and Mexican cities are set to double their population over the next 20 years. The Texan side is under heavy pressure too, with an influx of immigrants, trade growth and a retiree boom. “It is going to be disastrous unless there is a change. Companies, farmers, and government at the local, state and federal levels need to work out a solution,” said Leslie Hopper of the Texas-based Sul Ross State University, which has set up a research centre to study the Rio Grande.
FEED ANIMALS TO PROTECT PEOPLE FROM DROUGHT: The cheapest way of helping African herders through droughts would be to keep their animals alive, Boston-based researchers from Tufts University say in a new policy briefing. When their animals die from starvation or sickness, nomadic communities often have no safety net but international aid. Buying new animals isn’t cheap, especially when livestock is scarce and the price goes sky-high. Researchers suggest that in some cases it would be three times more expensive to restock a herd of animals than to keep them alive by feeding them. You can find the policy brief from Tufts’ Friedman School of Nutrition and Policy online or contact berhanu.admassu@fic-et.org“target=”new”>Dr. Berhanu Admassu in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, for more information.
AN IRAQ-STYLE URBAN TERROR CAMPAIGN IN NIGER? A rebel movement that has already IRIN. Niger’s government told Reuters last month that rebels from the Nigerian Movement for Justice (MNJ) were plotting a campaign of “urban terror” in Niger as part of their campaign for autonomy in the north. But an MNJ spokesman in Belgium said his group didn’t target civilians and he blamed the army for the blasts, saying they did it to turn public opinion in their favour.
COLOMBIA’S WAR-DISPLACED, THE POOREST OF THE POOR: The millions of Colombians displaced by more than four decades of conflict are among the poorest in the country, according to a study by the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) and the U.N. World Food Programme. After talking to people in eight cities, it says children in 25 to 52 percent of displaced families can’t afford to eat three meals a day. Many families are living on less than $53 per month per person. Yves Heller of the ICRC is in Bogota on +57 1 313 8630. Meanwhile, Human Rights Watch has denounced death threats against officials from the Organisation of American States who are verifying the demobilisation of right-wing paramilitaries. Contact Jose Miguel Vivanco in Washington on +1 917 519 8363 for more on that. And the Regional Indigenous Council in the province of Cauca has put out a passionate plea for global attention after the death of a 23-year-old Indian activist at the hands of anti-riot police. Contact them by acincauca@yahoo.es“target=”new”>email.
HUMANITARIAN HOOK: Sri Lankan tsunami aid hero killed in run-up to third anniversary, as country slides deeper into crisis
The Sri Lankan Red Cross is mourning the abduction and murder of a man it named “best volunteer” for everything he did after the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami. Sooriyakanthy Thavarajah was kidnapped in front of his family from his home in the northern peninsula of Jaffna, adding to the war’s death toll of 70,000 people since 1983. Sri Lanka is a dangerous place for aid staff, with 17 workers from Paris-based group Action Contre la Faim massacred in a single incident in 2006.
The tsunami, which killed more than 35,000 people in Sri Lanka, underlined the ethnic divisions between the Buddhist Sinhalese majority and the mainly Hindu Tamil minority who accuse the government of discrimination. London-based Minority Rights Group argues that Sri Lanka’s anti-terrorism laws feed into a deteriorating human rights situation in which most of the victims of killings, abductions and disappearances are ethnic Tamils and Muslims. MRG says the country reached crisis point in 2007, with at least 3,500 civilian deaths and close to 290,000 people displaced during the year.
The Sri Lankan government is threatening to outlaw the Tamil Tigers if rebels continue to mount large-scale attacks, in a move which would put the prospect of renewed peace talks further out of reach. A ceasefire was agreed in 2002 and the rebels dropped their demand for an independent state, settling for regional autonomy. But violence has surged since the end of 2005 and the Tigers have reverted to their original demand for all-out independence.
To find out more:
MEDIA CONFERENCES, COURSES, PRIZES AND FELLOWSHIPS
Ongoing: The Media Institute of Southern Africa (MISA) arranges exchanges for journalist members in Southern African countries, allowing them to work for between three weeks and three months at a news outlet in the region
Jan. 10: Deadline for submission of entries to the World Press Photo competition
Jan. 12: Deadline for submission of entries to the C�rculo de Periodistas de Bogot� journalism prize competition for Colombian journalists
Jan. 14: Deadline for submission of entries to Communication prize in Ecuador for journalists whose work contributes to the growth of the community
Jan. 16: Deadline for submission of entries to the Awards for Excellence in Health Care Journalism, organised by the U.S.-based Association of Health Care Journalists
Jan. 21-23: Conference in Bangkok on Asia-Pacific media issues, including the politics of blogging, 2008 Olympics coverage and Myanmar, organised by the Hawaii-based East-West Centre
Jan. 25: Deadline for submission of entries to the Mondi Shanduka Newspaper Awards, for journalists in South Africa
Jan. 25: Deadline for professionals and amateurs to enter their videos for the first International Alternative Channel Citizen Journalist Contest
Jan. 30: Deadline for journalists who have tried to expose corruption to nominate their work for the Award for Best Investigative Report on Corruption in Latin America and the Caribbean
Jan. 31: Deadline for journalists from Central and Eastern Europe to apply for the European Journalism Fellowship, a sabbatical year at the Journalisten-Kolleg at the Freie Universit�t Berlin
Feb. 15: Deadline for investigative journalists or teams whose reports have spanned at least two countries to submit their work for a biennial award from the Center for Public Integrity
Mar. 15: Deadline for radio scriptwriters to apply for the African Farmers� Strategies for Coping with Climate Change competition
CALENDAR DATES
Dec. 19
- U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice tentatively expected to visit Israel and Palestinian Territories
- U.N. Security Council meets to consider future of Kosovo
Dec. 20
- Muslim festival of Eid el-Adha
- Nigerian criminal trial of U.S. drug maker Pfizer over 1996 drug trial resumes
Dec. 21
- Six French humanitarian workers accused in Chad of trying to smuggle 103 African children to Europe will go on trial, N’Djamena, Chad
Dec. 22
- Ivory Coast government troops and rebels controlling country’s north to start disarming before forming new national army
Dec. 23
- Uzbekistan presidential elections
- Thailand general elections
- Britain tentatively expected to hand over control of Basra province to Iraqi forces by Christmas
Dec. 24
- Ethiopian court rules in the case against two Ethiopian civil society members charged with treason following bloody protests after controversial elections in 2005
Dec. 26
- Third anniversary of Indian Ocean tsunami
Dec. 27
- Tentative date for start of nine-day peace congress for eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, as reported by the BBC
- Kenya presidential and parliamentary elections
Dec. 30
- First anniversary of execution of former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein
Dec. 31
- Mandate of U.N. peacekeeping mission in Democratic Republic of Congo expires
- African Union peacekeeping mission in Darfur will expire and authority expected to be transferred to a combined force, United Nations-African Union Mission in Darfur (UNAMID)
- Two-year term of five of the 10 non-permanent members of the 15-nation U.N. Security Council – Republic of Congo, Ghana, Peru, Qatar and Slovakia – expires
- Chief prosecutor of the U.N. war crimes tribunal for Balkans, Carla del Ponte, due to step down
- Mandate of the U.S.-led multinational force in Iraq expires
Jan. 1
- 200th anniversary of the abolition of the Transatlantic Slave Trade Act
- Japan takes over G8 presidency
- UNAMID due to take over from African Union
Jan. 5
- Georgians vote in presidential elections. Will also decide if parliamentary polls should be brought forward from Autumn 2008 to Spring and vote in plebiscite to decide if their ex-Soviet state should push forward with its drive to join NATO
Jan. 7
- War crimes trial resumes of former Liberian President Charles Taylor, The Hague, Netherlands
- British security restrictions on hand luggage expected to be lifted
- Third round of U.N.-sponsored peace talks between Morocco and Western Sahara’s independence movement, Polisario (to Jan. 9)
Jan. 8
- Pakistan general elections
Jan. 9
- U.S. President George W. Bush expected to visit Israel and Palestinian Territories (to Jan. 11)
Jan. 10
Jan. 14
- Centre-leftist Alvaro Colom will be sworn in as Guatemala’s new president
Jan. 15
- Launch of new book by aid expert Hugo Slim, “Killing Civilians: Why it happens and how to prevent it”. nsip1@chathamhouse.org.uk” target=”new”>Register by emailing Chatham House, London.
- Mandate of U.N. and French peacekeeping forces in Ivory Coast expires
Jan. 18
- Ashura festival. Thousands of Shi’ite Muslims travel to Kerbala, Iraq, to mark the death of Imam Hussein, one of Prophet Mohammad’s grandsons
Jan. 20
- Republic of Congo local elections
Aug. 10
by
emanuele cremaschi
at
Wed Dec 19 17:36:53 UTC 2007
(ed. Mar 12 2008)
Milan,
Italy
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