In addition to the tragedy we witness every day, the war in Ukraine has meant that other terrible bloody conflicts or places where, in order to survive, people need humanitarian aid on which millions of vulnerable people depend for survival, have simply have taken a back seat in most of the world’s major press .
Consistent with its goals of ever-greater fairness in information dissemination, Other News will try to inform you about these forgotten wars and conflicts, s, where not only soldiers, but above all thousands of women and children die, either from bombs or from hunger and disease.
The Editor of Other News, March 15, 2022
Yemen facing ‘outright catastrophe’ over rising hunger, warn UN humanitarians
UN NEWS
Yemen’s already dire hunger crisis is “teetering on the edge of outright catastrophe”, UN agency chiefs said on Monday, as new data analysis from the war-ravaged country indicated potentially record food insecurity.
Today, more than 17.4 million Yemenis are food insecure; an additional 1.6 million “are expected to fall into emergency levels of hunger” in coming months, taking the total of those with emergency needs, to 7.3 million by the end of the year.
Famine to rise five fold
Of extreme concern to humanitarians is the likelihood that the number of people experiencing “catastrophic”– or famine-like – levels of hunger, will increase five fold, from 31,000 now, to 161,000,by 31 December.
“These harrowing figures confirm that we are on a countdown to catastrophe in Yemen and we are almost out of time to avoid it,” said World Food Programme (WFP) Executive Director, David Beasley.
“Unless we receive substantial new funding immediately, mass starvation and famine will follow. But if we act now, there is still a chance to avert imminent disaster and save millions.”
Fight for Marib
The development comes as heavy fighting was reported over the weekend between Yemeni Government troops and Ansar Allah separatists – also known as Houthi forces – around the oil-rich northern city of Marib, which is still under government control, killing and wounding dozens of combatants.
The fighting took place as UN Special Envoy for Yemen, Hans Grundberg, ended his first week of consultations with key Yemeni parties in a push for a peaceful and sustainable future for the country which has been locked in escalating conflict since 2015.
Ahead of a High-Level Pledging Event on the Humanitarian Crisis in Yemen this Wednesday, the UN’s top aid official in Yemen, David Gressly, said in a tweet that funding was “urgently needed to sustain food and nutrition support, clean water, basic health care and protection. Parties to the conflict can reduce aid reliance by reducing restrictions on the economy.”
The warning from the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF), WFP and the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), followed a surge violence across Yemen, which left at least 47 children killed or maimed in January and February.
Lacking the basics
After seven years of fighting, “many households in Yemen are deprived of basic food needs”, said Qu Dongyu, Director-General of the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO).
In a search for solutions, the FAO chief added that the agency was working “directly with farmers on the ground to foster their self-reliance through a combination of emergency and longer-term livelihood support, to build up their resilience, support local agrifood production, and offset people’s reliance on imports”.
Empty stomachs
Highlighting the long-lasting, negative impact on children, UNICEF Executive Director Catherine Russell warned that “more and more children” were “going to bed hungry” in Yemen.
“This puts them at increased risk of physical and cognitive impairment, and even death,” Ms. Russell added. “The plight of children in Yemen can no longer be overlooked. Lives are at stake.”
For 2022, UNICEF alone requires $484.4 million to respond to the humanitarian crisis in Yemen.
According to the latest food insecurity analysis, there’s been a rise in acute malnutrition among children under five in Yemen, and new mothers.
Across the country – already one of the world’s poorest before conflict escalated – 2.2 million children are now acutely malnourished; an additional 500,000 youngsters face severe acute malnutrition, which is a life-threatening condition.
Among the worst-hit governorates are Hajjah, Hodeida and Taizz.
Pregnant or nursing mothers are also at risk from the dire lack of food, with around 1.3 million acutely malnourished, according to the new Integrated Phase Classification (IPC) analysis on Yemen, released on Monday.
“The resounding takeaway (of the IPC findings) is that we need to act now,” said Mr. Gressly, UN Resident and Humanitarian Coordinator for Yemen. “We need to sustain the integrated humanitarian response for millions of people, including food and nutrition support, clean water, basic health care, protection and other necessities.”
Violence to blame
Conflict is widely blamed for creating Yemen’s disastrous economic slide in recent years – and for driving up hunger levels – as the Yemeni Rial’s depreciation pushed food prices in 2021 to their highest levels since 2015.
Albeit happening thousands of miles away, the Ukraine crisis prompted by the Russian invasion is expected to lead to “significant import shocks” and higher prices, as 30 per cent of Yemen’s wheat imports come from Ukraine.
“Peace is required to end the decline, but we can make progress now,” insisted Mr. Gressly. “The parties to the conflict should lift all restrictions on trade and investment for non-sanctioned commodities. This will help lower food prices and unleash the economy, giving people the dignity of a job and a path to move away from reliance on aid.”
Myanmar: ‘Appalling’ violations demand ‘unified and resolute international response’
UN NEWS
Security forces in Myanmar have killed at least 1,600 people and detained more than 12,500, since the military coup last year, the UN rights office said on Tuesday.
In a new report warning that serious rights abuses uncovered in Myanmar may amount to war crimes and crimes against humanity, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Michelle Bachelet, appealed to the international community to take “concerted, immediate measures to stem the spiral of violence” there.
The report’s findings indicate that military and security forces bombarded populated areas with airstrikes and heavy weapons, and deliberately targeted civilians.
“The appalling breadth and scale of violations of international law suffered by the people of Myanmar demand a firm, unified, and resolute international response”, the UN rights chief underscored.
Gross rights violations
The report, released for the 49th regular session of the UN Human Rights Council, upheld that Myanmar’s military and security forces have shown “a flagrant disregard for human life,” explaining that many have been shot in the head, burned to death, arbitrarily arrested, tortured or used as human shields.
Lauding the determination of Myanmar’s people opposing the coup, she called on the international community to do all it can to resolve the crisis and hold perpetrators of gross violations of international human rights law accountable.
Detained, displaced and murdered
Covering the period since last year’s 1 February military takeover, the report is based on interviews with more than155 victims, witnesses, and advocates, whose accounts were corroborated using satellite imagery, verified multimedia files, and credible open-source information.
And yet, its findings represent only a fraction of the violations and abuses Myanmar’s people have been subjected to during the violent nationwide crackdown.
Besides the killings and mass detentions, at least 440,000 have been displaced with 14 million in need of urgent humanitarian assistance, the delivery of which has largely been blocked by military forces.
Mass killings
The report found reasonable grounds to believe that the army, officially known as the Tatmadaw, conducted widespread and systematic attacks against civilians in patterns of conduct that may amount to crimes against humanity.
In July, soldiers in Sagaing Region killed 40 individuals in a series of raids and villagers found some of the victims’ remains with their hands and feet still tied behind their backs.
In December, soldiers in Kayah State burned the bodies of up to 40 men, women and children. Locals described discovering their remains in several trucks, with bodies found in positions indicating that they had tried to escape and were burnt alive.
“Meaningful action by the international community is urgently needed to stop yet more individuals from being stripped of their rights, their lives and their livelihoods,” said the High Commissioner.
Abhorrent suffering
Detainees reported facing torture and other forms of ill-treatment during lengthy interrogations in military detention centres across Myanmar.
The OHCHR report includes alleged crimes of ssexual violence, including rape; detainees being suspended from the ceiling without food or water; being forced to stand for extended periods while in solitary confinement; electrocution, sometimes alongside injection of unidentified drugs; and forcing Muslim prisoners to ingest pork.
While most of the gross human rights violations documented were carried out by security forces, at least 543 individuals – including local administrators, their families and alleged informants – were also reportedly killed due to their perceived support of the military.
Anti-coup armed elements claimed responsibility for 95 of the incidents.
Standing strong
Despite spiralling violence however, the UN human rights chief attested that “the will of the people has clearly not been broken.”
“Throughout the tumult and violence of the past year…they remain committed to seeing a return to democracy and to institutions that reflect their will and aspirations.”
Looting and attacks on aid workers rise as hunger adds to unrest in South Sudan
By Kaamil Ahmed – The Guardian
UN says 70% of the population will struggle through the coming season as humanitarian workers are killed and supplies raided
Looting of emergency food supplies and attacks on aid workers are rising in South Sudan, where hunger is causing unrest.
A security vacuum is fuelling the violence as communities take up arms to fend for themselves amid unprecedented food shortages, aid agencies have warned.
The UN has said 70% of the country’s population will struggle through the coming lean season.
There is concern among aid agencies that the regularity of attacks is a symptom of the widespread unrest prompted by a lack of government services and insecurity, rather than coordinated action by organised militias.
Two humanitarian workers were killed in separate incidents in February in the Abyei region and neighbouring Unity state in the north of the country, and there have been numerous attacks this year on aid convoys, warehouses and medical teams.
The Norwegian Refugee Council said its warehouses were looted four times in February in Unity state, depriving about 23,000 people affected by flooding of crucial aid. The attacks led aid workers to leave, meaning the agency had to suspend some operations.
A World Food Programme (WFP) warehouse in Leer, Unity state, which has become a focal point for people displaced by fighting in the region, has also been looted. Almost 40,000 people had arrived in the town in Unity state by the end of February due to fighting nearby. Last week a convoy of WFP trucks delivering food was ambushed in Jonglei state.
“There is a proliferation of criminality and an increase in a lack of security, and attacks on aid happens within that context,” said Annette Hearns, deputy head of the UN’s office for humanitarian affairs. “The proliferation of guns, limited access to livelihoods, and the gap between those who have and those who do not further drives violence.”
Hearns said the government must protect civilians and secure roads to allow crucial aid to reach those in need.
“Ultimately, it’s the most vulnerable of the most vulnerable who suffer most,” she said.
An estimated 8.9 million people in South Sudan are in need of humanitarian aid, including 680,000 people affected by floods since May 2021.
Agencies are organising the delivery of supplies to flood-prone states such as Jonglei before the rainy season starts, to ensure they reach areas that have been cut off in recent years.
The UN said at least 130 humanitarian workers, mostly from South Sudan, have been killed in the country since 2013. Five died during 370 violent attacks recorded last year.
Médecins Sans Frontières said a health team was robbed at gunpoint and two of their vehicles were burned in the Yei district of Central Equatoria state this month, forcing them to temporarily halt operations.
Two years after South Sudan’s two leading factions agreed to form a unity government after years of fighting, the circulation of weapons has continued.
September’s UN report on the proliferation of small arms in South Sudan found the uncontrolled flow of weapons had contributed to tension, including between farmers and herders competing for shrinking resources. Between June and September last year, at least 440 people were killed and 64 subjected to sexual violence in Tambura county in the country’s Western Equatoria state, it said.
Recently, the UN reported 50,000 people were displaced by fighting in Abyei, on the border with Sudan, “allegedly driven by longstanding territorial disputes, inter-tribal tensions and revenge seeking”.
Abraham Diing Akoi, a South Sudanese researcher, said the absence of government intervention was forcing communities to fend for themselves, including by arming their youth.
“When the government cannot provide you basic things like schools, healthcare and medicine, people understand that the government is not functional,” he said.
“You have to survive so you get [what you need] for yourself. That can include looting humanitarian supplies or going to another community to take cattle.”
Nicholas Haysom, head of the UN mission in South Sudan, told the UN security council this week: “The dire economic situation and its impact on youth has resulted in a surge in criminality and xenophobic hostility towards humanitarians and peacekeepers.”
Marwa Awad, with the WFP in South Sudan, said three years of flooding had worsened food scarcity.
“People are losing their livelihoods, cattle, homes, land and crops. So imagine you are struggling to survive or build a stable future because of conflict, displacement and high food prices, then the floods come to finish you off. Sadly, people here do not get a moment’s rest,” she said. Tue 15 Mar 2022
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