Musings From Abroad

UNHCR warns refugees from Somaliland moving into already troubled Ethiopia

Published

2 years ago

March 9, 2023

The United Nation and Ethiopian refugee agencies have announced that about 100,000 people fleeing fighting in Somaliland, have taken refuge in a month in a remote area of Ethiopia already suffering from severe drought.

The UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) estimates that 98,000 people have arrived in three Ethiopia woredas (districts) bordering Somaliland since February 6. The commissioner cited Citing authorities in the Doolo administrative zone, part of Ethiopia’s Somali region and located at the southeastern tip of the country, more than 1,300 km off the bad road from Addis Ababa.

An Ethiopian government agency said at a press conference in Addis Ababa with Mamadou Dian Balde, UNHCR representative in Ethiopia said the figures will be corroborated with the registration that has started, Tesfahun Gobezay, director general of the Refugees and Returnees Service (RRS).

The latest figures available on Monday show that “29,000 refugees have already been registered and the numbers are increasing”, he said, adding that the refugees were “mainly women and children”.

If their number is confirmed, the arrival of these refugees will swell by 40% of the population of the three woredas concerned, about 236,000 people who are already suffering severely from the drought affecting their region and more broadly part of the Horn of Africa.

“It is an area lacking infrastructure and with little socio-economic development, which has been struggling with a drought for four years,” Tesfahun recalled. However, its inhabitants, “affected by the drought and various challenges, were the first to help” the refugees, “even before we arrived, they hosted them in their homes and shared their little food.

Shelter, food, water, medical aid: the needs are numerous and “quite urgent”, underlined Mr. Dian Balde, considering it “very important that our support does not only take into account the refugees but also their hosts”.

Moreover, the refugees “tell us: ‘we want to go home’. They are not people who want to remain refugees (…) They are therefore also calling for finding ways, solutions to the current problem (in Somaliland) so that people can return home,” he insisted.

Somaliland is Somalia’s self-declared independent region, formerly a British territory, Somaliland unilaterally declared its independence from Somalia in 1991, when the country was plunging into chaos from which it has not yet emerged.

Musings From Abroad

UN Security Council deliberates stance on Sudan war

Published

3 days ago

November 13, 2024

Ifeoluwa Dada

The UN Security Council is discussing a British-drafted resolution calling on Sudan’s warring parties to stop hostilities and permit safe, quick, and unimpeded assistance supplies across borders and front lines.

The world’s largest relocation crisis began in April 2023 when the Sudanese army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces engaged in a power battle ahead of a planned transfer to civilian administration.

Waves of ethnically motivated violence have resulted, with the RSF mostly to blame. The RSF has blamed the action on rogue actors and denies causing harm to civilians in Sudan. Two RSF generals were named last week by a Security Council committee in the first U.N. sanctions levied during the ongoing conflict.

“Nineteen months into the war, both sides are committing egregious human rights violations, including the widespread rape of women and girls,” Britain’s U.N. ambassador, Barbara Woodward, told reporters at the start of this month as Britain assumed the Security Council’s presidency for November.

“More than half the Sudanese population are experiencing severe food insecurity,” she said. “Despite this, the SAF and the RSF remain focussed on fighting each other and not the famine and suffering facing their country.”

According to diplomats, Britain wants to vote on the draft resolution as soon as possible. A resolution must receive nine votes or more to pass and not be vetoed by the United States, France, Britain, Russia, or China.

Nearly 25 million people, or half of Sudan’s population, require aid, according to the U.N., since 11 million people have abandoned their homes and famine has spread to displacement camps. Of those, around 3 million have departed for other nations.

In its draft language, Britain “demands that the warring parties immediately cease hostilities” and “demands that the Rapid Support Forces immediately halt its offensives” throughout Sudan.

It also “calls on the parties to the conflict to allow and facilitate the full, safe, rapid, and unhindered crossline and cross-border humanitarian access into and throughout Sudan.”

Additionally, the draft urges that assistance deliveries continue to be made through the Adre border crossing with Chad “and stresses the need to sustain humanitarian access through all border crossings, while humanitarian needs persist, and without impediments.”

Sudanese authorities have permitted the U.N. and relief organisations to enter Darfur through the Adre border crossing for three months, ending in mid-November.

Musings From Abroad

South Africa worry Trump’s victory might affect climate fight

Published

7 days ago

November 10, 2024

Ifeoluwa Dada

South Africa’s environment minister has expressed concern about the potential effects of Donald Trump’s victory on climate change negotiations.

The demise of Germany’s coalition government this week and Trump’s election coincide with COP29 negotiations to address global warming, which experts credit for this year’s devastating hurricanes, floods, and heatwaves.

“We are concerned about America because we don’t know what they’re going to do … how (it) is going to approach COP,” South African Environment Minister Dion George told Reuters.

“Mr. Trump said that he would withdraw from the Paris Agreement, but we don’t know what will happen,” George added in a telephone interview on Friday.

International partners are concerned that the prospect of an administration led by Trump, who has called climate change a hoax, will de-motivate poor and middle-income countries who want rich nations to shoulder more of its financial burden.

South Africa, which is one of the world’s top 15 greenhouse gas emitters and accounts for 30% of the continent’s emissions, has accepted $11.6 billion from rich nations, mainly in loans, for a switch from coal to renewable energy.

This is seen as a potential model for other ‘Global South’ countries who say financing pledges of $100 billion, which took years to come through, are insufficient.

“It’s certainly not enough. We need another target,” George said. “But then the question is: as the voter base is shifting in developed economies, are they actually going to pay it?”

The South African minister said he had been reassured by German officials that Europe’s stance at the COP29 climate talks will not be hurt by Berlin’s political crisis.

George said that Jennifer Morgan, Germany’s state secretary for international climate action, had contacted him to say it will be up to the European Union to maintain leadership.

“Their position is not changed and that is how they will approach COP,” George said, adding: “They’re on Team Europe. The European Union and German have clearly set out their objectives.”