Musings From Abroad

Children in Central Africa Republic most impoverished in the world, according to UNICEF

Published

3 days ago

July 3, 2024

According to UNICEF, the three million children living in the Central African Republic are among the most disadvantaged in the world. The nation is very vulnerable to a humanitarian crisis due to widespread malnutrition, limited access to healthcare, and insecurity.

According to the UN Children’s Agency, about 40% of the nation’s children suffer from chronic malnutrition and half of them lack access to health care. Few people have access to hygienic food, clean water, or both.

The situation of the children in the African nation has become “painfully invisible” due to the attention that the war in Gaza and other crises have garnered worldwide, UNICEF representative Meritxell Relano Arana told reporters in Geneva.

“The three million girls and boys of the Central Africa Republic face the highest registered level of overlapping and interconnected crises and deprivation in the world,” she said.

Following a peace agreement reached in February 2019 between the government and fourteen armed groups, violence in the Central African Republic (CAR), one of the world’s poorest nations, decreased.

However, the situation is still unstable because large areas of the country are still uncontrolled.

With nearly 7 out of 10 people living on less than $2.15 per day, the international poverty limit for extreme poverty, the CAR has one of the highest rates of poverty in the world. Even if they spend their whole household budget on food, more than half of them are food impoverished, meaning they cannot buy enough food.

Musings From Abroad

New British PM Starmer declares Rwanda migration deal ‘dead and buried’

Published

1 hour ago

July 6, 2024

Ifeoluwa Dada

Keir Starmer, the newly appointed prime minister of Britain, announced on Saturday that he would abandon the contentious plan to transport thousands of asylum seekers from Britain to Rwanda. This is Starmer’s first significant policy declaration following his overwhelming election victory.

The plan to return undocumented migrants to the nation of East Africa was first announced by the previous Conservative government in 2022, with the stated goal of ending the influx of asylum seekers in small boats.

However, the proposal never saw any people transferred to Rwanda due to years of legal battles. In his first press conference as prime minister, Merkel declared that the Rwanda policy would be abandoned since it would not have served as a deterrence and that just 1% of asylum applicants would have been expelled.

“The Rwanda scheme was dead and buried before it started. It’s never been a deterrent,” Starmer said. “I’m not prepared to continue with gimmicks that don’t act as a deterrent.”

As the most powerful British leader since former Prime Minister Tony Blair, Starmer gained one of the biggest parliamentary majorities in modern British history on Friday. However, he still has several obstacles to overcome, including bolstering the flagging public services and the economy.

During the Downing Street news conference, Starmer fielded roughly a dozen questions and was frequently questioned about how and when he would begin implementing his promised solutions to the country’s problems. However, he provided few details about his plans.

When asked if his government would recognize issues and take action in areas like addressing an overburdened prison system and cutting lengthy wait times to access the state-run health care, Starmer responded that his government would be willing to make difficult decisions and raise taxes if needed.

“We’re going to have to take the tough decisions and take them early, and we will. We will do that with a raw honesty,” he said. “But that is not a sort of prelude to saying there’s some tax decision that we didn’t speak about before.”

As part of an agreement worth 120 million pounds ($148 million), the British government, under the immediate Prime Minister Richie Sunak, disclosed last year that it intended to send thousands of migrants to the nation in East Africa to discourage asylum seekers from using tiny boats to cross the English Channel from France.

In recent times, Europe has become increasingly concerned about illegal immigrants originating from Africa and the Middle East. A record 45,000 people had flown over the English Channel in small boats as of June 2023.

Musings From Abroad

Food Crisis: UN warns that 82 million Nigerians at risk of hunger

Published

2 hours ago

July 6, 2024

Ifeoluwa Dada

The United Nations has urged the Nigerian government to address climate change, pest infestations, and other risks to agricultural productivity after predicting, once more, that 82 million Nigerians, or around 64% of the nation’s population, may be hungry by 2030.

The forecast follows a sustained increase in the nation’s food costs. Nigeria’s food inflation rate surpassed the 40.53 increase from the previous month to a new high of 40.66% in May 2024, according to the National Bureau of Statistics.

Since records have been kept in 1996, this spike in food costs constitutes the biggest annual increase. Nigerian food inflation has historically ranged from -17.50% in January 2000 to an average of 13.42%.

The Food and Agriculture Organization estimated in 2023 that between June and August of 2024, at least 2.6 million Nigerians in the states of Borno, Sokoto, and Zamfara, as well as the Federal Capital Territory, may experience a food crisis.

A government-led Cadre Harmonisé research published in March 2024 estimates that the number of people suffering from extreme food insecurity in the states of Borno, Adamawa, and Yobe is close to 4.8 million, the largest number in seven years. Additionally, organised labour expressed alarm about the nation’s escalating food costs and fuel scarcity as Nigerian workers celebrated May Day in 2024, claiming that the existing state of affairs threatened workers’ survival.

Olisa Agbakoba, a senior advocate for Nigeria, recently issued a warning that the country may soon see a hunger riot and urged the federal government to take immediate action.

The Food and Agriculture Organization’s resident humanitarian coordinator, Taofiq Braimoh, a UN representative, stated recently at the CropWatch Abuja launch: “The government of Nigeria, in collaboration with others, conducts an annual food security survey.” The results this year are concerning: over 80–82 million Nigerians are at risk of severe food crisis by 2030, and about 22 million may experience food insecurity in 2023.

“Nigeria, like many countries, grapples with food insecurity, climate change, unreliable water patterns, pest infestations, and other threats to agricultural productivity. As an agrarian society, our farms’ success directly impacts food availability for our population. Leveraging technology is crucial to strengthening our agriculture sector and ensuring food security.”

The continent has contributed approximately four per cent to greenhouse gas emissions worldwide – significantly less than countries like China and the United States. Yet, African nations rank among the most vulnerable to the repercussions of climate change.