Category: General

The coronavirus pandemic has taken a toll on many people’s mental health, especially among vulnerable groups like refugees. In Kenya’s urban refugee camps, aid agencies are trying to help people cope with anxiety and depression.

In one of Nairobi’s suburbs, a group of refugee women go through the day’s training activity on how to detect and handle mental health related issues.

The training is to deal with the extra load of mental health issues brought on by the global COVID-19 pandemic.

Refugees already burdened by the trauma of fleeing their home countries must also face the pandemic’s impact on their income and way of life.

The United Nations High Commission for Refugees spokesperson, Eujin Byun, says the agency has had its hands full dealing with this challenge.

“We noticed that the counseling per month has significantly increased during the COVID-19 pandemic so that we added more resources to account for those kind of challenges, so that we bring more therapists, more counsellors so that they can have, in the case that they do the home visits and then the phone counselling, so that refugees can feel they have access to the mental health service and they can fight with the mental health issue,” said Byun.

Psychologist Albert Chumo, who works with refugee women and children, says the pandemic has not only re-opened old trauma cases, but also manifested new mental health concerns.

“Some of them have families, they have children, they are withdrawing from family members, at times some of them would even say like there is not point of living, so they are hopeless,” he said.

Sixty-year-old Esperanza Mukawachina, is a Rwandese refugee who’s lived in Kenya for the last 20 years. She operates a clothing shop on behalf of close to 40 other refugee women who have felt both the economic and mental ravages of the COVID-19 pandemic.

She says the last 16 months have been the toughest of her twenty years of refugee life in Kenya due to the anxiety and uncertainty caused by the pandemic.

“Because of too much stress, and anxiety, you could get an illness you weren’t expecting, I developed high blood pressure, because of worrying too much,” she said.

Women like Esperanza are being helped to navigate the mental health pitfalls by aid agencies like Refushe Kenya. Demand for the agency’s help has been especially high in urban centers.

Mildred Kemunto, a programs officer with Refushe says the agency has had to re-tailor its program due to the pandemic.

“We are doing it on WhatsApp, where one who has a smart phone can access it through the sessions, where we always have one session every month for each member of the groups, where we do the phone sessions, that’s stress management on different issues that affect our women,” she said.

The UNHCR says this approach is working well in the refugee camps in northern Kenya where counseling services are also offered virtually for those refugees in need.

Source: Voice of America

Eswatini deployed soldiers and police to multiple schools Monday as students continued to protest for political reforms.

High school students in Africa’s last kingdom have been boycotting classes for the past month.

Among the students’ demands is the release of two lawmakers who were arrested during pro-democracy protests earlier this year.

“The army is not an enemy of the people, and deploying them in schools doesn’t mean there is war but just an assistance to the other forces to maintain order,” army spokeswoman Tengetile Khumalo said, Agence France-Presse reported.

But Eswatini has been criticized by the international community over the past few months for use of excessive force against protesters. At least 27 people have been killed in clashes with police.

In July, national forces arrested two pro-democracy members of parliament on charges of terrorism for inciting unrest and violating COVID-19 regulations. [[link: https://www.voanews.com/a/africa_arrest-eswatini-lawmakers-condemned-international-community/6208940.html ]]

The arrests of Mthandeni Dube and Mduduzi Mabuza prompted more protests and international condemnation.

Source: Voice of America

The African Union says it wants to partner with the United Nations in a proposed joint mission to support Somalia in its efforts to battle armed extremists and achieve stability.

In a statement, the African Union’s Peace and Security Council said it endorsed an independent assessment team’s recommendation for a hybrid operation that would replace the African Union Mission in Somalia (AMISOM) after this year.

Since 2007, the regional peacekeeping mission, which operates with U.N. approval, has aided Somali government forces in their battle to stabilize the Horn of Africa country, mainly against al-Shabab militants.

The African Union communique notes “grave concern at the worsening security situation in Somalia … in large parts of the country, (which) has detracted attention from the critical processes of state-building and stabilization.”

The hybrid mission was among several options recommended by the assessment team in a report released in May. The plan, which the African Union has proposed to take effect in January, would need approval by the U.N. Security Council and Somalia’s central government.

It faces stiff opposition. Last December, a separate U.N. assessment team had proposed that the African Union reconfigure or modify its current mission. But it did not recommend military involvement by the U.N., which already has a diplomatic mission in Somalia.

Somali Foreign Minister Mohamed Abdirizak previously rejected calls for a hybrid plan.

“We prefer an option that emphasizes the Somali transition plan,” he said in an August interview with VOA Somali. That plan “pursues the enemy while building the capacity of the Somali forces and eventually transfers security responsibilities to Somalis.”

The African Union assessment team’s May report recommended the hybrid A.U.-U.N. mission have a mix of police (50%), military personnel (35%) and civilians (15%).

The African Union, U.N. and Somali government would have to decide on the strategic objectives, mandate, size and composition of the new mission, the statement said.

Currently, five countries — including Ethiopia, Uganda, Burundi, Kenya and Djibouti — contribute to the more than 19,000 AMISOM military personnel operating in Somalia. The communique said the African Union wants to expand the number of countries supplying troops.

The communique called for establishing the hybrid mission under the U.N. Charter’s Chapter VII, which it said would “ensure predictable and sustainable multi-year financing for the future mission through U.N. assessed contributions.”

Currently, international donors — mainly the European Union — cover the mission’s operating costs. The IPI Global Observatory has estimated it costs hundreds of millions of dollars each year.

In pressing for the hybrid plan, the African Union communique cited “deep concern” at the political impasse between Somali President Mohamed Abdullahi Mohamed (commonly known as Farmajo) and his prime minister, Mohamed Hussein Roble, and its “significant impact on ongoing political processes. …” The two are embroiled in a fight over the case of a missing female intelligence officer.

Somalia chooses its president through indirect elections. The country is in the midst of a slow-moving election process that could take months. Most lawmakers in the 54-seat Upper House have been elected, but the process to elect 275 members of the Lower House has not begun. The two chambers will vote on a president at a date that has not yet been determined. The next president was expected to have been elected by October 10.

The communique said that the leaders’ dispute is not only negatively affecting the political process and elections but is also delaying discussions on a post-2021 African Union mission.

The African Union seeks immediate consultations with the U.N., the Somali government and other stakeholders to work out transition plans.

Source: Voice of America

The commander of multinational troops fighting Boko Haram has said at least 3,600 of the militants have surrendered since August. Nigeria-born Major General Abdul Khalifa Ibrahim spoke Sunday at the end of a visit to Cameroon.

General Ibrahim, commander of the four-nation Multinational Joint Task Force Commission, or MNJTF, says the number of militants escaping from Boko Haram is increasing by the day.

“I can tell you authoritatively from the beginning of August, about 3,000 Boko Haram members have surrendered. This is just within the Multinational Joint Task Force in Cameroon and in Nigeria,” he said.

He says it is suspected that an additional 600 militants who surrendered within the past two months to the Joint Task Force are former Boko Haram fighters.

Several thousand other defections were reported in May, when infighting broke out among Boko Haram factions after Boko Haram leader Aboubakar Shekau was declared dead.

MNJTF, headquartered in Chad’s capital N’djamena, is made up of more than 10,000 troops from Niger, Cameroon, Chad and Nigeria. Ibrahim says that since August, his forces have launched “ceaseless” raids on Boko Haram camps in the Sambisa forest and the Lake Chad Basin, causing confusion among militants.

The jihadists have not responded to claims that many militants are defecting. Boko Haram usually uses social media platforms to dismiss such claims.

Source: Voice of America

A trial on the assassination of Burkina Faso’s former president, Thomas Sankara, begins Monday, more than three decades after he and 13 others were killed in a 1987 coup. Former President Blaise Compaore, the main defendant in the trial, who lives in exile in Ivory Coast, will not be present at the military court in Ouagadougou.

Sankara is still considered a national hero in Burkina Faso.

Alouna Traore is the lone survivor of an attack that killed former Sankara and 12 others in October 1987. Traore, Sankara’s legal adviser, remembers the day of the assassination.

He says the president got up, adjusted the tracksuit he was wearing and told the other meeting attendees that he was the one the attackers were looking for. He went out the same door he came in. He walked out of the room with his hands up and headed outside, carrying no weapon.

Sankara was a popular figure whose influence was felt across West Africa and beyond.

“He came to be known by some people as the Che Guevara of West Africa… with a big focus on grassroots issues, so really focusing on the well-being of ordinary people,” said Paul Melly, an analyst at Chatham House, a U.K. policy institute.

Fourteen defendants stand accused of carrying out the assassination or conspiring to, including former top-ranking military officials and former politicians.

Compaore was ousted in a coup in 2014 after 27 years of rule and has been in exile in Ivory Coast ever since. His lawyers denounced the trial as “political” last week.

A previous trial for the Sankara assassination was held under Compaore’s rule, but that judgment was dismissed as politicized and invalid by the transitional government after Compaore was ousted.

Prosper Farama is one of the lawyers for the Sankara family. He expects the trial to last four months and says the Sankara family lawyers have amassed irrefutable evidence implicating the defendants.

He says there are many witnesses who will be heard from the military, civilians, politicians of the time. … For example, the driver who drove the commandos to the execution, is alive and able to give clear testimony, according to Farama.

Maitre Mathieu Some is representing one of the defendants, Gilbert Diendere.

He thinks the trial is being held in a context that makes the work of judges difficult, a context in which there are prejudices. He says people have already made up their minds about who carried out the assassination, which jeopardizes the presumption of innocence — the main principle of a fair trial, as far as he is concerned.

Nonetheless, the trial has gripped the country. Traore as well as the families of those killed hope to receive justice 34 years later.

Source: Voice of America

Some days, all Tsimamorekm Aly eats is sugary water. He’s happy if there’s a handful of rice. But with six young kids and a wife to support, he often goes without.

This is the fourth year that drought has devastated Aly’s home in southern Madagascar. Now more than one million people, or two out of five residents, of his Grand Sud region require emergency food aid in what the United Nations is calling a “climate change famine.”

“In previous years there was rain, a lot of rain. I grew sweet potatoes and I had a lot of money… I even got married because I was rich,” said Aly, 44.

“Things have changed,” he said, standing on an expanse of ochre dirt where the only green to be seen is tall, spiky cacti.

Climate change is battering the Indian Ocean island and several U.N. agencies have warned in the past few months of a “climate change famine” here.

“The situation in the south of the country is really worrying,” said Alice Rahmoun, a spokeswoman with the United Nations’ World Food Programme in Madagascar. “I visited several districts… and heard from families how the changing climate has driven them to hunger.”

Rainfall patterns in Madagascar are growing more erratic — they’ve been below average for nearly six years, said researchers at the University of California at Santa Barbara.

“In some villages, the last proper rain was three years ago, in others, eight years ago or even 10 years ago,” said Rahmoun. “Fields are bare, seeds do not sprout and there is no food.”

Temperatures in southern Africa are rising at double the global rate, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change says. Cyclones, already more frequent in Madagascar than any other African country, are likely getting stronger as the earth warms, the U.S. government says.

Conflict has been a central cause of famine and hunger in countries such as Ethiopia, South Sudan, Somalia and Yemen, when fighting stopped people moving to find food. But Madagascar is at peace.

“Climate change strongly impacts and strongly accentuates the famine in Madagascar,” President Andry Rajoelina said while visiting the worst-affected areas earlier this month. “Madagascar is a victim of climate change.”

The country produces less than 0.01% of global carbon dioxide emissions, the World Carbon Project says.

Half a million children are expected to be acutely malnourished in southern Madagascar, 110,000 severely so, the U.N. Children’s Fund says, causing developmental delays, disease and death.

Nutriset, a French company that produces emergency food Plumpy’Nut, opened a plant in southern Madagascar last week. It aims to annually produce 600 tones of therapeutic fortified food made of peanuts, sugar and milk for malnourished children.

The Malagasy government is also giving parcels of land to some families fleeing the worst-hit areas. Two hundred families received land with chickens and goats, which are more drought-resilient than cows. They were also encouraged to plant cassava, which is more drought-resilient than maize.

Source: Voice of America