Thin Thin used palm fronds and broken wood to build shelter on a remote Burma island after the cyclone. But as heavy rains return, it’s not enough to protect her food or her family. The little rice she has is wet, her clothes are soaked, and every day she waits for help from the government that never comes.
Levels of post-election violence in Zimbabwe are escalating and could reach crisis proportions, the United Nations senior representative in the country said on Tuesday. ”These incidents of violence are occurring in communal farming and urban areas and there are indications that the level of violence is escalating,” Agustino Zacarias said.
Burma’s military regime on Tuesday thanked the United States for a plane-load of aid but said it still was opposed to letting in foreign aid workers to cope with the aftermath of Cyclone Nargis. Burma Vice-Admiral Soe Thein said the needs of hundreds of thousands of storm survivors ”have been fulfilled to an extent”.
An unprecedented Darfur rebel attack on Khartoum is a turning point that could persuade Sudan’s rulers to negotiate seriously with their foes or push Africa’s biggest country towards disintegration. Sudan-watchers believe the key is international involvement and say much more pressure is needed on both rebels and the government.
The United States sent its first aid flight to Burma on Monday, but experts warned the relief effort was floundering and 1,5-million cyclone survivors were at grave risk from hunger and disease. The US military transport plane laden with emergency supplies was permitted to land by the ruling junta.
A furious rescue worker accused Burma’s military junta on Monday of crimes against humanity for refusing to fast-track visas for aid officials desperate to enter the country to help the 1,5-million survivors of Cyclone Nargis. ”They say they will call, but it’s always wait, wait, wait,” Pierre Fouillant of the Comite de Secours Internationaux, a French disaster rescue agency.
The first United States military aid flight landed in Burma on Monday, but relief supplies continued to just dribble into the reclusive state nine days after a cyclone. A C-130 military transport plane left Thailand’s Vietnam war-era U-Tapao airbase carrying 12 700kg of water, mosquito nets and blankets.
A senior Egyptian mediator will on Monday present to the Israeli government a new ceasefire proposal agreed with the Hamas Islamist movement that could halt the conflict in Gaza and begin to resolve the mounting economic crisis that has engulfed the strip.
Gaza’s population has been reduced to a ”subhuman existence” where basic humanitarian needs are going unmet in the face of rapidly deteriorating conditions, according to a senior United Nations official. An Israeli economic blockade on the Gaza Strip has produced shortages of fuel and basic supplies and has closed most private businesses and pushed up poverty rates.
Zimbabwe will not invite election observers from Western countries to monitor a presidential run-off unless they remove sanctions, state media said on Monday. Justice Minister Patrick Chinamasa said Zimbabwe would not bow to pressure to invite election monitors from Western countries and the United Nations.
Zimbabwe braced on Sunday for the return home of the country’s opposition leader, who has vowed to face veteran President Robert Mugabe in a run-off election despite the risk of further violence. Morgan Tsvangirai, who beat Mugabe in a first round of voting in March, is expected in Harare in the next few days.
Desperate survivors of Cyclone Nargis poured out of Burma’s Irrawaddy Delta on Sunday in search of food, water and medicine as aid groups said thousands more people will die if emergency supplies do not get through soon. Buddhist temples and high schools in towns on the outskirts of Nargis’s trail of destruction are now makeshift refugee centres.
Rare peace talks between Somalia’s interim government and opposition exiles have made a slow start in Djibouti, but a senior United Nations official said he was encouraged both sides had turned up. ”I am more than hopeful. The Somalis who I met today are committed to peace and reconciliation,” the UN envoy to Somalia told reporters in Djibouti late on Saturday.
Lying on a sagging mattress and wincing slightly, Anna Lado laughs at the idea that she should have been afraid of giving birth to her first child, now lying in a crib near her in a hospital in south Sudan. ”It’s natural,” she smiles. But in fact, she received a life-saving caesarean in the capital’s teaching hospital.
Zimbabwe’s opposition leader looked set on Sunday to return home from South Africa to face Robert Mugabe in a presidential run-off poll despite a risk of "more violence, more gloom, more betrayal". Morgan Tsvangirai had previously refused to say whether he would take part in the run-off, even though failure to do so would have handed victory to Mugabe.
Somali government officials and exiled Islamist opposition leaders are to hold face-to-face peace talks in Djibouti, the United Nations special envoy to the country said on Friday. Somalia has been wracked by conflict since 1991, with the capital, Mogadishu, plagued by political and civil unrest, food riots and attacks on Western aid agencies.
The military rulers of Burma went ahead with a constitutional referendum on Saturday despite calls from the outside world to postpone it after the devastation of Cyclone Nargis.The plebiscite was postponed by two weeks in the hardest-hit Irrawaddy Delta and the city of Rangoon, but voting went ahead in other parts of the country.
The United Nations World Food Programme on Friday said two relief flights will be sent to Burma on Saturday, just hours after suspending flights due to ”unacceptable restrictions” by the government. Burma has maintained strict limits on foreign involvement in the relief effort, despite calls for it to allow unfettered access to experts.
The United Nations food agency suspended aid flights to cyclone-struck Burma on Friday after the military government seized two deliveries at Rangoon airport, apparently determined to distribute supplies on its own. Governments around the world have been pressing Burma’s ruling generals to open the country’s borders to desperately needed assistance.
The five major nuclear-armed powers said on Friday the Non-Proliferation Treaty was under threat and cited Iran’s uranium enrichment campaign in a rare joint call for action to shore up the NPT. Iran says it wants only electricity from enrichment, which can also produce atom bomb fuel if the process is adjusted.
Regional mediator and South African President Thabo Mbeki arrived in Zimbabwe on Friday for talks on the country’s disputed elections ahead of a possible run-off that has raised concerns of further violence. The South African leader’s ”quiet diplomacy” approach towards the crisis in Zimbabwe has triggered criticism at home and abroad.
It is tempting to romanticise the lifestyle of nomads in Kenya’s north-east — a land peppered with vast termite mounds which burst from rust-coloured soil like fingers pointing to the cloudless sky. For centuries, Muslim pastoralist tribes have roamed the semi-arid wastelands, in perpetual pursuit of pasture and water.
The United Nations Human Rights Council will hold a special session on May 23 to examine how the world’s food crisis is undermining the right to food for millions of people, officials said on Friday. The rights to adequate food and freedom from hunger are enshrined in international law as basic, universal human rights.
Burma will accept foreign aid but distribute relief itself, an official newspaper said on Friday, after a disaster rescue team from Qatar that arrived in Rangoon on an aid flight was turned back. Outside frustration is mounting at delays by the generals in giving visas to aid workers and landing rights for flights.
Prosecutors for Sierra Leone’s war crimes court are trying to track down -million they say vanished from two United States bank accounts held by former Liberian President Charles Taylor when he was forced from power in 2003. But lawyers defending the former warlord challenged prosecutors to produce evidence that Taylor had salted away state funds for his personal use.
Pressure mounted on the Zimbabwe government on Thursday to admit foreign observers to oversee a presidential election run-off amid fresh claims that pro-government militias were instilling terror in communities in the countryside. Meanwhile, there was still no word on when a second round should take place.
A few aid shipments had arrived in Burma’s main city by Thursday, but the planeloads of supplies and heavy equipment needed to help millions of cyclone victims remain largely stranded outside the country. In a dramatic development, the ruling junta agreed to accept United States emergency aid after last weekend’s cyclone.
A presidential election run-off in Zimbabwe cannot take place given the current levels of violence, the head of a South African contingent of regional election observers said on Wednesday. ”We have seen it, there are people in hospital who said they have been tortured, you have seen pictures,” Kingsley Mamabolo told reporters.
The international community pleaded with Burma’s military rulers on Wednesday to let foreign aid workers and desperately needed relief supplies into the cyclone-crushed country. The United Nations, the United States and France stepped up pressure on the junta to open their doors to foreign aid.
Donor nations pledged a preliminary ,8-billion in assistance to Sudan on Wednesday, aiming to help bolster a 2005 north-south peace deal in the African country still torn by violence in its western Darfur region. Sudan had said it needed ,1-billion up to 2011, on top of -billion in humanitarian aid.
Aid was trickling in on Wednesday for an estimated one million victims of Cyclone Nargis in military-ruled Burma, with the death toll of more than 22 500 expected to mount. France has suggested invoking a United Nations ”responsibility to protect” clause and delivering aid directly to Burma without waiting for approval from the military in Rangoon.
Climate change is harder on women in poor countries, where mothers stay in areas hit by drought, deforestation or crop failure as men move to literally greener pastures, a Nobel Peace laureate said on Tuesday. ”Women are very immediately affected, and usually women and children can’t run away,” said Wangari Maathai.