Even the best aid agencies find they can rarely admit their faults. Aid depends on donations, and donors need to feel confidence and trust to hand over money to an aid agency, which means the $126-billion-a-year foreign aid …
somalia
Planet 7 Billion: Five Crisis Hotspots to Watch
The following is a guest post from TIME contributor Joe Jackson.
As the planet’s population climbs towards a new U.N.-projected peak of 10.1 billion by the turn of the next century, competition for resources within and between states will likely intensify. So too, goes the logic, will the number of resulting conflicts over oil, …
Bombardment of Somali Refugee Camp Is Symbolic of Kenya’s Doomed Invasion
Kenya’s hasty invasion of its northern neighbor Somalia took a tragic turn late Sunday when, according to witnesses on the ground, the Kenyan air force bombed a refugee camp sheltering those fleeing Somalia’s famine, killing three children and two adults. A spokesman for the Kenyan military in Nairobi insisted that the bombers killed …
A Novel Response to the World’s Worst Famine: War.
In September, Somalis kidnappers kill a British tourist and his wife; later they kidnap a disabled French tourist, who subsequently dies; then in October they abduct two Spanish aid workers. In reply Kenya, whose economy depends heavily on tourism, sends hundreds of troops into southern Somalia in pursuit of an al-Qaeda affiliate, …
Kenya Invades Somalia. Does It Get Any Dumber?
If the history of war teaches us anything, it’s that invading a foreign country is dicey. Storming across too many borders was the undoing of many of the world’s great conquerors, from Alexander the Great to Napoleon to the Nazis. The last few decades of US foreign policy – Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq – only underline how tricky …
Will We Really Let 750,000 People Starve to Death?
Are we really about to let three-quarters of a million people starve to death? The U.N. thinks we might. Figures describing the famine in Somalia from the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (UNOCHA) paint a consistent, horrifying picture. As of late September, hunger is besieging 12.4 million East Africans, with …
Somalia: A Very Man-Made Disaster
The difference between a drought and a famine is down to man. Texas is in the middle of its worst drought on record right now but cowboys aren’t starving – because Texas, and the US, have government and economy enough to ensure they don’t. Somalia doesn’t have any government worthy of the name and that’s one reason why persistent …
Dispatch from Mogadishu: Looking for Militants in Somalia’s War-Torn Capital
All war is chaos, but after 20 years of fighting Mogadishu resembles perfect anarchy. The streets are surfaced with decades of compacted garbage and to drive them is to be tossed about like a small boat on a rough sea. The buildings still standing are pock-marked with hundreds — generally thousands — of holes from bullets, …
Famine in Somalia: How Do You Feed Four Million Hungry People?
As 13 million in the Horn of Africa seek food assistance, aid workers are facing unique political and logistical challenges in helping an estimated 3.7 Somalis facing the threat of malnutrition and starvation.
While international organizations such as UNICEF and UNHCR, the U.N.’s refugee agency, work with local governments to …
Famine in Somalia: When Does the World Decide to Use the ‘F’ Word?
The word ‘famine’ may be a familiar one, but it is not thrown around lightly by the people who decide when there is one. The fact that most of us today probably associate the term with the 1984 crisis in Ethiopia is testament to its exceedingly careful dispensation; to use it too often would dilute its power to command the …
Is the CIA Helping Run a Secret Prison in Somalia?
An interesting exposé in The Nation, the left-of-center U.S. newsweekly, explores how the CIA has participated in the running of secret detention and interrogation centers in Somalia. The article’s author, Jeremy Scahill, claims the CIA mans an operation in a “sprawling walled compound” by Mogadishu’s airport and sends out …
World’s Greatest Ongoing Humanitarian Disaster Reaches a Crisis Point
With more than 60,000 starving and thirsty Somalis camped outside of the world’s largest refugee camp, what some aid agencies deem the world’s worst humanitarian crisis is facing its “critical days,” according to a UNICEF spokesperson.
Kenya’s Dadaab refugee camp, originally constructed to hold 90,000 people — making it the …
Tragic Deaths Underscore the World’s Worst Humanitarian Crisis
197 mostly Somali migrants died when their overladen boat capsized in the Red Sea. Escaping a world desperately short of water, they met their end by drowning.
That sad irony underscores the collective misfortune of those enveloped by the worst ongoing humanitarian crisis in the world: they were fleeing the parched Horn of Africa, …