March 18, 2016 (PIBOR) - The medical charity, Medicins San Frontiers (MSF) said it has re-established a limited medical program in its heavily-looted centre in Pibor, South Sudan.
MSF said was forced to evacuate to the United Nations base amid heavy fighting on 23 February and upon return four days later, its team found the medical centre was completely looted, depriving the area's170,000 people of access to secondary healthcare and undermining medical response in Lekonguole and Gumuruk.
“We have managed to open a limited medical program to address the most urgent needs of the population, but we have not returned to business as usual in terms of medical capacity,” Corinne Benazech, MSF head of mission in South Sudan said in a statement.
“Our ability to provide medical assistance has been greatly diminished by the looting of our medical facility two weeks ago. It is women and children who suffer most from reduced access to medical care, not only in Pibor, but also in Lekonguole and Gumuruk,” she added.
MSF called on armed actors to respect the provision of medical care.
Tens of thousands of people have been killed and over two million displaced in South Sudan's worst outbreak of violence since the young nation succeeded from neighbouring Sudan in July 2011.
A peace deal signed in August last year to end the conflict is yet to make meaningful gains, amid continuous violations of a ceasefire agreed upon by both sides involved in the South Sudanese conflict.
According to MSF, the medical charity has also been supporting the provision of primary heathcare services in Lekonguole and Gumuruk from its medical centre in Pibor, but can now only provide the most critical medicines to support the population of those communities.
“We call on anyone in possession of looted medical equipment to return it to MSF. Some of the items that were taken from us have no use or no value outside of a medical facility. If they are returned to MSF, it will help improve the population's access to medical care by allowing for the resumption of more life-saving medical activities,” said Benazech.
However, as MSF continues providing assistance to those mostly in need, it says any further targeting of its medical services could make it very difficult for MSF to sustain life-saving services in the Pibor area.
(ST)
By Armen Chilingaryan
YEREVAN, ARMENIA, Mar 18 2016 (IPS)
Armenia is prone to natural disasters. Eight out of every 10 citizens are likely to experience a natural disaster at some point during their lifetimes – an earthquake, landslide, hailstorm or flooding. Each year, the country incurs $33 million in damage from such disasters.
As a Member State of the United Nations, Armenia joined the Hyogo Framework for Action in 2005, which brought a common understanding, at the global level, of what is needed to minimize the destruction caused by natural disasters.
Immediately after joining this global call, Armenia began to shift its approach from providing humanitarian relief to reducing risk. More than ten years down the line, the country has made every effort to become a safer place to live.
Here’s how. After independence in the early 1990s, many communities in Armenia didn’t have working drainage systems, mudflow channels and soil dams. They now do, thanks to the leadership of the Ministry of Emergency Situations, which pushed for stronger and more conscious urban planning.
In addition, unlike many countries at the time, there was no system in place – neither at national nor at community level – to monitor incoming disasters or coordinate the response once they occurred.
This changed when, in 2010, Armenia set up a national platform and in 2012 a strategy for disaster risk reduction. The region’s first, it extended the responsibility for mitigating risk to many institutions and people concerned, not just the Ministry of Emergency Situations.
Next, disaster risk management has been mainstreamed into the Government’s development plans and is much more proactive, relying on data, research studies, satellite pictures, meteorological sensors and other sources.
These measures would not be effective without proper decentralisation of decision-making. In a country where over 30 percent of the population works in rural agriculture, even one severe hailstorm can have devastating consequences on crop production and national poverty rates.
By decentralising the management of disaster risk to nine regional crisis management centers, preventative actions were vastly augmented, targeting those most at risk.
As a result, hundreds of hectares of land and households have been protected thanks to mudflow channels, dams and cleaning drainage systems. When UNDP installed hail nets in three communities, 95 percent of the yield survived after a subsequent wave of hail storms.
The demand for the nets increased sharply in other areas of Armenia, and a range of NGOs, including CARD, World Vision Armenia and Oxfam started replicating that practice across the country.
One of the big takeaways from the Summit in Sendai, Japan was that reducing the risk of disaster must be a collaborative effort. While governments will lead the fight, a range of other stakeholders must be involved.
Armenia’s policy of decentralisation has also seen the active participation of an uncharacteristically large array of stakeholders including local actors, research centers, NGOs, educational institutions, persons with disabilities, women’s networks and organizations, and vulnerable groups.
Finally, the country has taken advantage of overlapping global initiatives. In 2010, 21 cities in Armenia officially joined the “Making Cities Resilient: My City is Getting Ready” campaign under which cities make a commitment to undertake 10 steps to become safer.
One of them, Stepanavan, situated in the north of the country, was selected as a role model during the Sendai conference. The city administration was the first to place resilience at the core of its urban planning and land-use management efforts.
A year ago today, the Armenian delegation, led by the Ministry of Emergency Situations, showcased these successes to the world. Other countries are beginning to take note; providing all levels of society with the means to identify potential disasters, reduce their risk, and coordinate responses.
Guaranteeing people’s safety at a time of grave environmental risk depends on making that change.
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March 17, 2016 (KHARTOUM) - The Sudan people's liberation Movement - North (SPLM-N) said they shot down a Sudanese military unmanned plane in a rebel controlled area in South Kordofan on Wednesday.
"SPLA/N air defence unit of Heiban sector under command of Brg. Gen. Nimeri Murad, in Nuba Mountains/South Kordofan state on 15/3/016 at 5;00 pm (local time) shot down Unmanned drawn," said a statement released by the official spokesperson Arnu Ngutulu lodi.
Lodi further stated that the drone was mapping schools, hospitals and water sources as well as markets before to bomb it by the Antonov planes.
The government forces have resumed summer attacks on the positions of the Sudanese rebels in the Blue Nile and South Kordofan states since the failure of peace talks to reach a cessation of hostilities deal last December.
In a separate statement on Thursday, the rebel spokesperson said they killed five members of the National Intelligence and Security Services (NISS) in an ambush on the road of West Kordofan-El-Obeid on 16 Mars.
Lodi said that the attack which took place in Alshareet Alramly area in South Kordofan where they captured eight NISS members and destroyed two vehicles and one truck.
The Sudanese army didn't issue a statement on the attack and its spokesperson was not available for comment.
This is the third time, rebels in South Kordofan claim the shot down of unmanned planes.
On March 14, 2012 they said they shot down a Sudanese drone in the disputed area of Jau, near the border with South Sudan.
Also, the rebel group announced the shot down of an unmanned spy aircraft near Abri, Dalami town in the far east of Dilling district in South Kordofan.
(ST)
March 17, 2016 (JUBA) - South Sudan has no forestry policy and its authorities are worried the world's youngest nation could lose its natural forests, unless stringent measures are put in place to curb the rampant rates of illegal logging.
These fears come barely a month after conservationists from the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) warned of dangers the lie ahead as the country's wildlife and natural resources face an alarming expansion of illegal exploitation, trafficking and logging.
The report, the agency said, was based on scientific monitoring and investigations undertaken its team undertook in cooperation with local partners over the past months, which documented a sharp rise in illegal activities in various areas of the young nation.
Cited as an immediate threat to South Sudan's forests were illegal logging, gold mining and charcoal production, among others.
Sadly, however, these illegal activities are reportedly being perpetrated by local and international individuals and actors, including members of various armed groups active in the country.
South Sudan is currently embroiled in a conflict that has killed tens of thousands of the population, displacing nearly two million of them.
According to conservationists, prior to the outbreak of its war in December 2013, South Sudan's extensive areas of untouched natural woodlands, forests, and savannas, were home to wildlife populations including approximately 2,500 elephant, hundreds of giraffes, the endemic Nile Lechwe and white-eared kob tiang, Mongalla antelope migrations, wild dog as well as chimpanzees.
However, over the past two years of armed conflict, the various armed forces across the country, WCS said, have been implicated in several cases of large-scale illegal exploitation of natural resources.
“The situation of uncontrolled illegal logging, mining, poaching, charcoal trade, and other natural resource exploitation in the country is getting worse,” acknowledges Jaden Tongun Emilio, the chairman natural resource management group for South Sudan.
He calls for the enactment of a natural resource enforcenemt law.
“We need to work together at local, state, and national levels to ensure that the foundation for future development of the country is secured through sound and transparent natural resource law enforcement and integrated management,” stressed Tongun.
Despite concerns from conservationists and authorities, John Aguer considers forest logging and charcoal production as his livelihood.
The wood, which Aguer converts into charcoal and sometimes to build good shelter for his family, is his only means of making a living.
"I usually cut dry trees around the forest and I burn charcoal out of it," the 35-yearl old tells the African Independent, through a translator.
He adds, “As for now, I consider this the only source of my survival.”
Although there is no information on the exact number of forests in the country, forests and woodlands, according to 2009 figures from the Agriculture and Forestry ministry, cover an estimated 29 percent of the land area in South Sudan or 191,667 square kilometres.
A 2010 study conducted by the United Nations Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO), estimated that a high rate of up to 2,776 square kilometres of forests and other wooded land were being lost annually in South Sudan.
PRINS Engineering, in a 2011 study, discovered that the forests of the Imatong Mountains, rising to 10,456 feet (3,187 meters) in southern South Sudan were part of the Eastern Afro-montane ecosystem, rated by scientists as one of Africa's biodiversity hot spots.
These forests, it said, are homes to many endemic and possibly unique species, but scientists have yet to study the region's species.
Policy makers, however, say de-forestation remains a threat to forests, but absence of a forestry policy in the country worsens it.
“It is illegal to cut down trees in the forest reserves,” Beda Machar, the Agriculture and Forestry minister told a recent symposium.
But in the absence of laws, he admitted, deforestation will continue to negatively impact on the country's rain patterns and eco-system.
WCS's conservationists also cited the expansion of unregulated charcoal production along, allegedly involving several members of the South Sudanese army (SPLA).
“Illegal logging has occurred in and around Southern National Park and Lantoto National Park (involving Ugandans in complicity with local South Sudanese) and further illegal logging has been reported in forest reserves in the Yambio area,” it further notes.
But while South Sudan makes progress towards fully implementing the peace accord signed in August 2015, there is an urgent need for the Transitional Government of National Unity, State, and local stakeholders and international partners to work together to halt this exploitation crisis, secure the natural resource base for the future development of the country, and prevent further conflict, says WCS.
“The country is highly vulnerable to slipping into a situation in which various individuals and groups take advantage of the governance vacuum to engage in illegal and unsustainable activities plundering and destroying the natural resource base,” conservationists warned.
“This risks exacerbating corruption, armed and political conflict, and undermining future development, and stability in the country”.
Edmund Yakani, an activist, called or full implementation of all wildlife, forestry, mining and the environmental laws of South Sudan.
“Sustainable peace and development will only become a reality if the nation's natural assets are secured, conserved and sustainably utilised for the development of the country and its citizens,” he said.
The country's Imatong forests, experts say, have been heavily degraded and deforested, and Mount Dongotomea is now bearing the brunt of clearing that threatens to fragment the ecosystem further. The mountain's tree cover has reportedly been reduced by two-thirds since 1986, and, if deforestation in the area continues, the natural forests of will also disappear before the end of the decade.
However, as many people get involved in commercial agriculture, deforestation practices may be hard to control given the growing interest of foreign entities in South Sudan's large spans of land.
With more than a third of its population moderately or severely food insecure, South Sudan is among the most food insecure countries in Sub-Saharan Africa. FAO and World Food Program estimate that a significant proportion of the nation's population, as high as 33% in the lean season, depends on food aid to ensure a minimum level of nutritional intake.
(ST)