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FAMILIES FLEE TALIBAN BATTLE IN POPPY ZONE: Hundreds of people fled the southern town of Musa Qala as Afghan and international forces battled to take it back from the Taliban. The only sizeable town held by the Taliban, Musa Qala in the north of Helmand province is symbolic for both sides in the conflict. Its capture is a major military boost for the Afghan government and its Western backers. The Afghan Red Crescent Society is in the area to see what the displaced people need, U.N. news service IRIN reports. Musa Qala, which is about 165 km (100 miles) north of Lashkargah, has a population of around 50,000 people, who are mostly involved in cultivating or trading poppies.
LOCUSTS AND EXPELLED AID WORKERS IN ETHIOPIA’S OGADEN: It’s a hard time to be an aid worker in the eastern Ethiopian region of Ogaden, where the government has just expelled an Australian and a Briton on charges of diverting food aid to rebels. The Ogaden National Liberation Front (ONLF) has been fighting a long-running insurgency against the Ethiopian government, seeking more autonomy for the underdeveloped, Muslim ethnic Somali region. Several aid organisations were ordered out in July, but the Ethiopian government has since relaxed restrictions, and licensed the United Nations and 19 agencies to work there amid fears of a humanitarian crisis fuelled by the fighting. The worst-hit areas in the conflict have been most difficult for aid workers to access. The famine early warning service FEWS NET says trade restrictions since June and the threat of locusts mean an emergency for herders in the Somali region, who are surviving on wild foods as well as milk and meat from their own animals.
PALESTINIAN SHEPHERDS WATCH THEIR FLOCKS: Palestinian herders in the southern West Bank are facing harder and harder times as the costs of fodder and water rise, along with global grain prices, and grazing land is restricted by Israeli authorities. Global droughts and rising demand for biofuels is pushing up the prices of corn and barley fodder, IRIN quotes a U.N. food security analyst as saying. Debt is forcing many shepherds to sell off their flocks, which in turn means the market price is low. Some herders say the controversial Israeli security barrier has cut off grazing lands, making them more dependent on buying feed for their animals.
IN SRI LANKA, THINGS CAN ALWAYS GET WORSE: As the top U.N. human rights body meets in Geneva on Dec. 10-14, human rights in the troubled island state of Sri Lanka are taking a dive. In the last two weeks of November alone, more than 50 civilians were killed, according to Human Rights Watch, with bombs in Colombo, aerial attacks and claymore mines in the north. Campaigners say that more than 20,000 people have been newly displaced since September by the escalation in fighting between the military and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), bringing the death toll since the war erupted in 1983 to around 70,000. Human Rights Watch has reports on Sri Lanka, and researcher <A HREF=“mailto:”mailto:hoggc@hrw.org">hoggc@hrw.org“target=”new">Charu Lata Hogg in London – where Sri Lanka’s president is due at the end of this week – can give more information and contacts closer to the scene on +44 7906261291.
KOSOVO’S MINORITIES: The deadline to negotiate the future of the breakaway Serbian province of Kosovo has finally passed without result, and the region’s leaders have started talking to their Western backers on a declaration of independence, expected in the first months of 2008. It’s likely to be a turbulent transition to statehood for a territory which, according to Minority Rights Group, is highly segregated into Albanian and Serb areas. “From separate schools to separate hospitals, Kosovo is now more divided than any other society in Europe, MRG’s executive director Mark Lattimer says. Minority Rights Group offers a ”http://www.minorityrights.org/?lid=4546"target="new">briefing on Kosovo, and you can contact <A HREF=“mailto:”mailto:emma.eastwood@mrgmail.org">emma.eastwood@mrgmail.org“target=”new">Emma Eastwood on +44 207 422 4205 to arrange interviews.
COULD CLASHES ON THE GUINEA-MALI BORDER LEAD TO WAR? After months of pleas from leaders in villages along the border between the West African countries of Mali and Guinea, the two governments say they’ll take steps to prevent clashes over land rights. A dozen people have been killed with hunting rifles and machetes, with a further 30 injured in three bouts of fighting in less than six months, IRIN reports. Local leaders are still worried that disputes over land and cattle could escalate into something much bigger. A Malian community representative says: “If nothing is done, the conflicts along the Mali-Guinea border could be the object of armed conflicts between the two countries sooner or later.”
HUMANITARIAN HOOK: Chad – where fighting is breaking out in so many places that aid workers say they can’t keep count
Fighting is breaking out in so many parts of eastern Chad that aid workers say they can’t keep count of the growing numbers of rebel groups, and the violence is slowing food aid deliveries to half a million people. Attacks by armed groups have displaced 180,000 Chadians, and the United Nations has warned that rebel attacks and a steady flow of some 300,000 refugees from conflicts in neighbouring Sudan and Central African Republic have turned Chad into a humanitarian hotspot that threatens to destabilise the region.
With an estimated 90 percent of Chad’s armed forces currently fighting in the east, analysts say it’s left armed groups in other parts of the country to do as they please. Ambushes – often on aid convoys – are common in the countryside, and local rights activists say politicians hire bandits with impunity. Armed attacks in the south take place near to international oil activity. A U.N. aid worker was killed in southern Chad on Dec. 6, and observers say crime has been high in the capital, N’djamena, with reports of roaming gangs of youths attacking people indiscriminately.
Oxfam wants the EU to speed up deployment of a force on a U.N. mission to protect several hundred thousand refugees and the aid workers caring for them in eastern Chad. An EU force of up to 3,700 solders, around half of them French, is due to deploy soon to the border with Sudan’s troubled Darfur region. But some EU countries have refused to make up a shortfall in vital resources, and the launch of the mission in the former French colony – originally mooted for early this month – has been delayed.
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 elsewhere in the region
Dec. 15: Deadline for application for Knight Fellowships at Stanford . Fellows receive a stipend of $60,000 plus tuition and benefits for the nine-month programme.
Jan. 10, 2008: Deadline for submission of entries to the World Press Photo competition.
Jan. 12, 2008: Deadline for submission of entries to the C�rculo de Periodistas de Bogot� journalism prize competition for Colombian journalists.
Jan. 14, 2008: Deadline for submission of entries to Communication prize in Ecuador for journalists whose work contributes to the growth of the community.
Jan. 16, 2008: 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, 2008: 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, 2008: Deadline for submission of entries to the Mondi Shanduka Newspaper Awards, for journalists in South Africa.
Jan. 25, 2008: Deadline for professionals and amateurs to enter their videos for the first International Alternative Channel Citizen Journalist Contest
Jan. 30, 2008: 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, 2008: 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, 2008: 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, 2008: Deadline for radio scriptwriters to apply for the African Farmers� Strategies for Coping with Climate Change competition.
CALENDAR DATES
Dec. 12
Dec. 13
- Launch of World Disasters Report from the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent societies
- Meeting in Rome of Nobel Prize winners (to Dec. 15). U.S. actors George Clooney and Don Cheadle receive the 2007 Peace Summit Award from the Dalai Lama after their work raising money for displaced people in Darfur, Sudan.
- Carla del Ponte, prosecutor at the U.N. war crimes tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, holds farewell news conference, The Hague, Netherlands
Dec. 14
- Final day of U.N. Conference on Climate Change, Bali, Indonesia
- “Reading Photographs in Crisis”
, symposium at University of Leeds, England to analyse the politics, ethics and poetics of images of atrocity and crisis.
- Screening of documentary, Total: The people vs. Burma, at a debate in Brussels. Tickets are free, <A HREF=“mailto:”mailto:conference2007@asf.be">conference2007@asf.be“target=”new">reservations by email
- Western Sahara’s independence movement Polisario due to hold its congress, Tifariti, Morocco (to Dec. 16)
- Destruction of 18,000 weapons handed over by Colombian right-wing paramilitaries as part of the peace process in progress, Bogota
- Zimbabwe’s ruling ZANU-PF party opens extraordinary congress to officially endorse President Robert Mugabe as candidate for March 2008 presidential election
Dec. 15
- Deadline for Sudan’s northern army to leave the country’s semi-autonomous and oil-rich south
- Ethiopian court rules in case against civil society members charged with treason following bloody protests after controversial elections in 2005
Dec. 16
- Launch of Keeping Africa Small
and Subsistence Farmer, two documentaries criticising ethical Christmas gifts, London. Press kits, trailers and more information available from <A HREF=“mailto:”mailto:world.write@btconnect.com">world.write@btconnect.com
“target=”new">Ceri or Viv on +44 (0)208 985 5435
- Deadline for Sudan’s northern army to leave the country’s semi-autonomous and oil-rich south
- Final candidate list for Pakistan elections due to be published
- Parliamentary elections in Kyrgyzstan
- Spanish actor Javier Bardem and MSF host London screening of a
film on silent crises followed by panel discussion on how the mainstream media reports on humanitarian crises
- Second phase of assembly elections in western Indian state of Gujarat
- National conference of African National Congress, South Africa
Dec. 17
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
- Nigerian criminal trial of U.S. drug maker Pfizer over 1996 drug trial resumes
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
- Britain tentatively expected to hand over control of Basra province to Iraqi forces by Christmas
Dec. 26
- Third anniversary of Indian Ocean tsunami
Dec. 27
- 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
- Joint U.N.-African Union peacekeeping mission in Darfur 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
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
by
emanuele cremaschi
at
Wed Dec 12 15:05:59 UTC 2007
(ed. Mar 12 2008)
Milan,
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