Day: August 23, 2022

U.N. agencies warn that severe hunger is sliding toward famine-like conditions in the Horn of Africa, particularly in Somalia, as four years of consecutive drought have wiped out peoples’ ability to grow the crops they need to feed themselves.

The World Food Program reports up to 22 million people in Ethiopia, Kenya and Somalia are facing severe hunger. It says hunger and the death of millions of livestock have forced more than 7 million people to leave their homes in search of food, water and grazing pasture for their cattle.

The WFP warns these figures are likely to grow, and conditions will continue to deteriorate, as poor rainfall is forecast for the fifth year in a row.

The WFP regional director for East Africa, Michael Dunford, recently returned from a visit to Somalia and northern Kenya.

Speaking from the Kenyan capital, Nairobi, Dunford says he was particularly struck by the dire situation in Somalia where more than 7 million people are facing a humanitarian crisis. He says this is the worst situation he has seen in the 21 years he has been working for WFP.

“We have a real risk of famine. It has not been declared yet, but already there are over 200,000 people in famine-like conditions, catastrophic levels of food insecurity, with another 1.4 [million] on the edge. So, unless we are able to continue to advocate to raise funding, to scale up our operations, then we will have, I fear, a famine to deal with,” he said.

Dunford says the specter of the 2011 famine in Somalia, which killed 250,000 people, half of them children, looms large over this current crisis. He says WFP is scaling up to reach 8.5 million people across Djibouti, Ethiopia, Kenya and Somalia. He says $416 million is needed to provide lifesaving aid for the rest of the year.

Malnutrition remains high across the Horn of Africa. The U.N. children’s fund reports 10 million children under the age of five are acutely malnourished. It adds that nearly 1.8 million face severe wasting, a condition that is life-threatening.

UNICEF spokesman James Elder says millions of children in the Horn of Africa are literally one disease away from catastrophe.

“When you have got these terrifyingly high levels of severe acute malnutrition in children — and that is 1.8 million of those children in that state right now in the Horn, 1.8 million when you have got those — and then you combine it with a simple outbreak in [a] disease like a cholera, like diarrhea, then you see child mortality rates rise at a petrifying speed,” he said.

Elder notes the number of people without access to safe water in the region has risen from nine million in February to 15 million now.

UNICEF has revised its emergency appeal from $119 million to nearly $250 million. This reflects the growing needs across the region.

Source: Voice of America

The Ministry of Education and Sports (MoES) in Uganda is implementing the Peace Education and Prevention of Violent Extremism project with support from UNESCO's International Institute for Capacity Building in Africa (IICBA) titled, "Youth Empowerment for Peace and Resilience Building and Prevention of Violent Extremism in African Countries through Teacher Development". This project has been supported by the Government of Japan to support the infusion of peace education in teacher education, train teachers and teacher educators to nurture young people to become agents of peace and to make schools safe learning environments.

In pursuance of the above, a one-day workshop was organized for stakeholder engagement in Kampala on July 29, 2022, intended to share experiences on peace education and prevention of violent extremism in selected teacher training institutions in Uganda, drawing over 40 participants. The workshop was intended to;

disseminate the baseline results of a study on peace education and prevention of violent extremism in selected teacher training institutions

discuss the proposed workplan on mainstreaming peace education and prevention of violent extremism by Muni University and Muni NTC, and

share experiences of peace education and prevention of violent extremism in teacher education

This initiative is relevant in the context that the Horn of Africa region where Uganda lies suffers much from ongoing and violent conflicts caused by a variety of factors that has resulted in immense suffering and destructions to both properties and lives. Some of these conflicts have stemmed from skirmish over resources, ethnic-identify stereotyping, marginalization, exclusion and acts of violent extremism, with many of these manifestations still evident and present in this day and age. The guide on transformative pedagogy for peace building (an innovative pedagogical approach that empowers learners to critically examine their attitude and beliefs) developed by UNESCO IICBA therefore provides an anchor for this intervention.

The Chief Guest at the workshop Ms. Annet Kajura, the Assistant Commissioner TETD at MoES advised the teacher trainers to be role models and messengers of peace. She revealed that, "the teaching profession is one which can transform all other professions and you therefore have an extra responsibility to play as agents of peace and role models to younger generation."

Mr. Charles Draecabo the National Projects Coordinator in his address to the teacher educators emphasized the need to integrate the promising practices documented in the report and use it to model program content that promote peace in the minds of learners. Mr. Draecabo added, "without peace, any efforts that you would like to do, will be in futility."

Ms Victoria Kisaakye, the Senior Programmes Coordinator for Capacity Development for Education at IICBA in her remarks highlighted that the Institute focuses on improving the quality of learners through effective teaching in an environment that fosters peace. She stated that, "schools can be hubs for peace building in the communities where they are situated and the role of education in peace and resilience building remains very critical because it plays a transformative role." She together with Ms Eyerusalem Azmeraw, shared several training materials developed by IICBA and introduced a virtual campus on peace education for teacher educators that want to undertake an online course.

The workshop recommended the need to scale up the training on the prevention of violence to all the teacher training institutions and universities as well as developing a module targeting teacher educators' personal wellbeing and Psychosocial support where they are facing challenges that are impacting on their lives. The other request will be for UNESCO to support more youth-based training for university students to prevent violence in the colleges that has become rampant.

Source: UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization

Conservation groups say the rate of rhinoceros poaching in Africa has dropped significantly since a peak in 2015.

The latest figures on the animal whose horns are coveted in traditional Chinese medicine are recorded in a report by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) and the NGO Traffic.

The report covers 2018 through 2021. It notes an increase in the number of rare black rhinos by just over 12 percent from 5,495 to 6,195; however, it says the number of white rhinos fell from just over 18,000 to 15,942. That's also a change of 12 percent.

The report says overall there was a decrease, with about 22,137 rhinos, black and white, left in Africa at the end of 2021.

IUCN Rhino expert Sam Ferreira says the reason they aren't seeing the results of a decreased poaching rate yet is that the drop needs to be sustained over a longer period.

Ferreira says he believes it wasn't, as some experts have suggested, the COVID-19 lockdowns that made the difference, but improved policing and community involvement.

"I think that what is really important is that the arrests decreased from 493 in 2018 to 279 in 2021," Ferreira said. "Now again, we don't know what exactly is sitting behind these things. But it does suggest that there are interventions, critical interventions that range states and particularly managers on the ground are doing that are having some consequences on the decisions that people make to poach or not to poach rhinos."

The IUCN Traffic report says since 2018, several education campaigns have been delivered to more than one million people.

The WWF's global practice leader, Margaret Kinnaird, says conservationists use everything from social media to classic campaigns with posters to educate the public.

"For WWF, we've worked a lot with Chinese travelers in particular that are going overseas where they are visiting markets that have, for example, elephant ivory and rhino horn potentially for sale," Kinnaird said. "The point there is to change the hearts and minds of those people who are approaching markets and thinking about taking a gift home. Or thinking about buying something for a medical cure. And just giving them alternative ideas for the sort of gift or product they would take home."

Kinnaird says the smuggled horns go primarily to Asia and are sold through illegal markets in the Mekong region and in China, particularly in markets in Cambodia, Myanmar and Vietnam.

She says the horns are marketed from all four of the major rhino range states, the most coming from South Africa but also Kenya, Namibia and Zimbabwe. South Africa accounts for 90% of all reported poaching on the continent, mostly of white rhinos.

Kinnaird says that, while it is good news that poaching rates have dropped, more needs to be done to ensure the animal doesn't become extinct.

"We need to improve our crime-related intelligence and make sure we're targeting the right people, not the little people on the ground, we need to get at the big bosses, the kingpins, the organized criminals," Kinnaird said.

The IUCN Traffic report was prepared for a U.N. convention on endangered fauna and flora taking place in Panama in November.

Source: Voice of America