The agency has had to hand over its laptops and communications equipment to the government. This will adversely affect its ability to carry out its work, which was reaching some 600,000 people across Darfur, in Khartoum state and the east of the country.
Oxfam GB estimates that its supply of clean water and other programmes can continue to be run by local communities and Oxfam-trained volunteers for a number of weeks but if its appeal to the government fails then its programme will have to close.
Oxfam GB's work in Darfur is its biggest emergency program in the world. It has operated in northern Sudan since 1983 and currently has 450 staff, 90 percent of whom are Sudanese. Oxfam is an independent, impartial non-governmental organization, with absolutely no links to the International Criminal Court. Oxfam does not have an opinion on the Court's activities, and our sole focus is meeting humanitarian and development needs in Sudan.
]]>In early 2003, two rebel groups—the Sudan Liberation Army (SLA) and the Justice and Equality Movement (JEM)—both from Sudan's western region of Darfur, launched major offensives on government bases there. The rebels claimed that Darfur had suffered decades of political marginalization and economic neglect from the Sudanese government in Khartoum. Government forces responded and the fighting escalated. Arab militia, commonly known as Janjaweed and widely believed to be supported by the government, attacked villages, forcing inhabitants from their homes—particularly in those villages and among ethnic groups thought to be sympathetic to the rebels. Now, those rebel groups have splintered into numerous factions and the situation is growing increasingly complex.
Estimates of the total number of people killed vary widely. The Government of Sudan pegs the figure at 10,000, while many activists say the true amount is up to 400,000. Most reports say around 200,000. Violence is one cause of death. Many people have also died from illness and malnutrition—particularly early in the crisis. Since then, the enormous humanitarian response has stabilized conditions in the camps, but renewed insecurity is threatening this progress, and the large-scale displacement of people across Darfur is continuing. Already this year more than 200,000 people have abandoned their homes in the face of ongoing attacks.
Some of Darfur's camps for displaced people are the size of small cities—teeming with tens of thousands of people, many of them having been there so long that they have replaced their makeshift shelters with homes of mudbrick.. But unlike cities in the western world, these dense settlements have no modern conveniences. Pit latrines and water faucets are all communal. Food is cooked over open fires. At night, it's dark. There is no electricity.
Shortages of basic necessities add to the tedium of days spent with little for people to do. For many stranded in camps far from their villages, fields, and pastureland, life has become one long wait—for food rations, for limited amounts of water, for peace. Because of attacks on its convoys, the World Food Program, which helps to feed more than 3 million people in the region, cut rations in half in May and threatened again in early September to suspend some deliveries. In July,2008, about 50,000 people got no food aid at all because of ongoing insecurity. And now, there are fears that malnutrition is rising again.
But leaving the camps is not an option. Many people no longer have homes to return to: The fighting has reduced their villages to ashes. And venturing beyond the perimeter of the camps exposes people to attack. There are continual reports of women being beaten or sexually assaulted when they leave to collect wood for their cooking fires or fodder for their animals.
Almost daily attacks—including vehicles being hijacked, aid workers assaulted, offices robbed—have made it increasingly difficult for humanitarian groups to meet the needs of some of the more than four million people across the region who need help. Darfur is a dangerous, and deadly, place to work.
More than five years after the conflict first erupted, millions of people continue to live in fear without adequate protection—even after the United Nations Security Council passed a resolution more than twelve months ago approving the deployment of the largest peacekeeping force in the world. Known as UNAMID, the force is meant to have 26,000 military officers, police officers, and civilian personnel. But by September, 2008, only a little more than a third of that force is now at work in Darfur—less than 10,000 troops—and they are short of not only things like helicopters, but some of the most basic equipment, too. Troops have been painting their helmets blue—the color the United Nations uses—because there are not enough UN helmets to go around. And forces can't go out on long patrols because they don't have enough ration packs to support those missions.
The international community has failed the people of Darfur by not giving UNAMID the support it promised. Countries around the world are responsible for the delays in deploying the troops and providing for their needs. The ongoing violence—perpetrated by the Sudanese government, rebel groups, and militias—is also hampering deployment. The logistical challenge is enormous in bringing large numbers of troops and equipment from Port Sudan across 1,000 miles of rough terrain—some of it without roads. And the UN's own lengthy procedures slow the works down, too. But Sudan has agreed to the force and it?s up to the international community to work with the government to ensure the troops are deployed.
UNAMID, however, is only part of the solution. A ceasefire and a return to peace talks are also essential.
The crisis in Darfur can't be resolved in isolation from other conflicts and tension roiling the region. There is violence in Chad and the Central African Republic. The peace in South Sudan is fragile. UNAMID is not the only peacekeeping force in the region. It needs to coordinate closely with others as any change in security in this part of the world could trigger large movements of people across borders. The peacekeepers must plan together to address the safety of everyone.
]]>Rain has finally returned some green to the pastures on this broad lowland, and as the cows mow down the new blades and inhale them hungrily, Shitaye talks about her own hunger—months-long, paralyzing, intractable. Shitaye is not her real name. It has been changed to protect her security. Drought killed the harvest she had hoped to reap in June. Since January, family meals have consisted of a bit of corn and coffee in the morning with nothing else for the rest of the day. And some days there has been no food at all.
Here, in the West Arsi Zone of central Ethiopia, the convergence of failed rains, chronic poverty, and a wild spike in food prices, like those now roiling other parts of the globe, have left 320,000 people needing relief, according to government figures. Only some of them have gotten aid. Recently, the Ethiopian government more than doubled its figures for those requiring help as a consequence of drought that has gripped parts of the country. Now, the government says, 4.6 million people nationwide—up from 2.2 million earlier this year—need emergency assistance, and 75,000 children are suffering with severe acute malnutrition.
Aid workers report that in northern parts of Ethiopia's Somali region, where most people make their living as herders, rain has not fallen in two years. South, in the Dire district of Oromia's Borena Zone, the 45 days of rain that normally replenish the area between March and May dwindled to 15 last year, and just five this year, leaving pasturelands parched and fields too dry to produce the basic staples people depend on. According to the government, almost 62,000 people live in the district and 90 percent of them now need assistance.
Shitaye, a widow and grandmother of 10, says the current troubles are even worse than the hunger that killed about a million people in Ethiopia in 1984. This time, she says, there is no way families can supplement their meager household stocks by selling things in the market to buy food: Grain prices have climbed far out of reach.
In area markets toward the latter half of June, a quintal of corn was selling for 600 birr, or $64, and teff, a type of grain from which people make a pancake-like bread, had spiraled up to 1,100 birr, or $117, for the same volume—prices that are three times their normal amount.
In West Arsi, a major infusion of food for people and seeds for their fields will be essential to avoid an even deeper crisis next year. In its latest appeal, the Ethiopian government says it needs $325 million to meet the needs of beneficiaries across the country.
Oxfam International is responding to the crisis with a $2.42 million initiative aimed at helping 225,000 people in three regions—Oromia, Afar, Somali. Programs include the provision of clean drinking water for families and livestock, livestock vaccinations and feeding, the distribution of seeds to allow families to plant crops for the next harvest, and cash-for-work initiatives to help people earn some money.
"We're wondering if we'll survive until September," says a man sitting near Shitaye.
"We rest everything on our creator," she adds, cradling one of her grandchildren. "We beg him that everything will turn out to be good."
]]>Ethiopia's finest coffee is grown in the shade of native trees, which allows the coffee cherries to retain their moisture until they are ready to be picked. Without the shade of these generations-old trees, the coffee bushes would produce bitter tasting, inferior quality beans.
Berhanu says he knows it pays dividends to protect the environment. "One of our family plots had its natural shade deforested and so the coffee beans that particular plot yields are not of the expected high quality," says Berhanu. "Our cooperative union will not accept lower-grade coffee to be sold in the international specialty market, so we sell it for local consumption and make less money from it."
To remedy this problem, Berhanu is getting technical support from experts at the local agricultural bureau to reforest the plot with indigenous trees. The agricultural bureau is providing Berhanu and others in the area with tree seedlings.
With the mid-day sun peeking through the canopy of trees and the birds calling in the distance, Berhanu says he is at his best when he is hard at work on his family's coffee plots. "You see, it is not just the coffee bushes that enjoy the shades," he chuckles as he makes himself comfortable under a giant sycamore tree. "After a long day's work, a little rest under the shade of these old trees rejuvenates my soul."
Parents to 12 children, Berhanu and his wife Aster have been growing coffee for the past 10 years. They depend on the income they get from growing world renowned Yirgacheffe coffee to support eight of their children that are still living with them and are attending school.
Berhanu and Aster were new to the coffee business when, in 2001, the price of coffee sank to a 30-year low and the global coffee crisis hit Ethiopia—the birthplace of coffee. Rather than giving up in despair, Berhanu and his family were determined to ride out the storm and come out stronger than when they started. Oxfam America was by their side as it led a global campaign to bring the plight of Ethiopian coffee growers to the attention of national and international policy makers, consumer governments, international coffee roasters and consumers.
The couple says they have come a long way since the coffee crisis, which threatened their livelihoods and caused a shock to the country's coffee economy. Gone are the days when they had to sell whatever meager assets they had to put food on the table. "Our living conditions have improved significantly," says Aster. "As a mother, I dream of even better things for my family, but right now, I am secure knowing that my family is well fed, healthy, and that my children go to school".
It was just a little over a year ago that 238 coffee growers in Werka came together to form a primary cooperative under the Yirgacheffe Coffee Farmers Cooperative Union. Soon after Werka joined the Union, membership shot up to 300 when word got out that Oxfam America was launching a project to support coffee quality improvement by funding the purchase of an eco-friendly coffee washing station.
As a natural extension of its global campaign and advocacy work to help Ethiopian coffee growers earn better prices, Oxfam America is increasingly investing in coffee quality improvement, focusing on eco-friendly coffee processing. This is one component of Oxfam America's effort to help cooperatives produce quality coffee and generate additional premium by selling their beans on the international specialty coffee market. The Werka project is one of three such projects that Oxfam America has funded in three different coffee growing regions of Ethiopia.
The funding for Werka and the other two cooperatives was made available as an interest free revolving loan of about US$ 150,000 each to be paid back in five years to be re-invested in another cooperative, yielding much higher returns on initial donor investment. Financing the equipment with a loan makes cooperative members accountable for the loan repayment and solidifies the fact that they are the real owners of the investment.
By utilizing eco-friendly coffee processing, the cooperatives will not only increase their income as a result of selling washed coffee but also address environmental pollution related to the conventional coffee processing method. In the conventional method the coffee pulp and mucilage are removed from the beans and get discharged into nearby streams and ponds where they decompose and deteriorate the water quality of ponds and streams that the local community uses for household consumption. The eco-friendly method of processing reduces the amount of organic waste from the washing process and cuts water usage by 98.5 percent.
Members of Werka cooperative are eagerly awaiting the next coffee harvesting season to begin using their newly installed eco-friendly washing machine. They say having such a facility on site will allow them to kill two birds with one stone—increase their income by selling washed coffee and also in the process conserve the environment that is so crucial for their ability to continue producing high quality coffee. With minimum additional investment, the accumulated pulp and mucilage, which are organic by-products of washed coffee, can be converted into bio-fuel, fertilizer, and animal feed to boost the income of coffee growers; Oxfam America has plans to invest in such a pilot project in 2008.
"Producing high-quality coffee will give us the legitimacy to demand better price in the international market," says Berhanu, his fingers moving nimbly as he carefully picks the ripened coffee cherries and places them in a basket. "So, the way I see it, the Werka project represents the best combination of solutions—earn more for our hard work, while at the same time preserving the environment that we depend on for our livelihoods."
]]>In April, the Ethiopian government announced that 2.18 million people now need emergency food assistance. Citing the toll water shortages have taken on crops and pastureland, Ethiopia has asked donors for $67.7 million in aid to help it meet the nutritional needs of people in six of the country's nine states, as well as needs for emergency water provision, animal care, and seeds. The government has also said an additional 947,383 people would have their emergency needs met through Ethiopia's existing safety net.
Oxfam and the local groups with which it partners are responding to the crisis in the Somali and Oromia regions through a multi-pronged approach which not only addresses the immediate requirements families have for water, but also provides some help to reduce the risk of hardship during the next water shortage.
In Ethiopia, the daily chore of fetching water usually falls to women and children. In drought situations, when local sources such as shallow ponds or wells dry up, the trek for this essential resource becomes even more grueling.
The Liben Pastoralist Development Association, an Oxfam partner working in the southern part of the country, realized how acute the water shortage had become when it began receiving reports of women, some of them pregnant, walking more than 18 miles from their villages to the nearest water point. Laden with 20-liter jugs of water, some of those women miscarried. Others delivered their babies along the road.
In one part of the Somali region, Oxfam learned that people were selling jerricans of water for 30 birr, or about $3.20—a small fortune in a country where poverty is widespread. Some private businesses had even started importing water from Hargessa in Somaliland.
An assessment team that traveled to the Borena zone in southern Ethiopia reported in March that more than 17,000 animals had died since January in the 11 districts it visited. Herding families in the area depend on those animals—cows, goats, sheep, camels, donkeys—not only for food but also as a critical source of income. The team found that drought had prompted the closing of 29 schools in that area because there was no water for the students. And local officials told team members that many elderly residents were showing signs of malnutrition—a possible indication that the Borena people were using one of their traditional coping strategies. In their culture, the first priority of women during food shortages is to invest in the youngest generation: children eat before their elders do.
Families in these dry pastoral areas have developed a number of ways to cope with recurrent drought. Some of them have been able to keep reserves of hay on hand for their animals when the pasture dries up. Sometimes, people slaughter their cows and goats and use the meat to help feed their families. When they can, they hunt for wood to sell or to turn into charcoal. If families lose their entire herds, other families contribute animals to get a new herd started.
But over the years, the persistent crises have depleted the assets of many people and exhausted their ability to cope. For herders, their traditional means of managing are also running headlong into modern realities. For instance, the populations of both people and their animals are growing. The allocation of communal grazing areas to private investors and a system of regionalization is limiting the amount of land herders can have access to. And bush, once burned off by fires that have since been banned, continues to encroach on valuable pastureland.
One of the consequences of the current crisis is a plunge in the value of animals. Without enough water or pasture they become sick, and many die. The Gayo Pastoralist Development Initiative, an Oxfam partner, reports that the drop in value of livestock has been extreme in districts such as Dire and Dillo in the Borena zone.
And herders are facing a double hit. As they are earn less for their animals, they are simultaneously confronted with spiraling costs for grain—a food staple. Gayo notes that grain prices have jumped by almost 100 percent in some districts.
To help ease some of the severe hardships caused by the drought, Oxfam is working with four local groups to distribute water, provide needy animals with feed and veterinary care, and rehabilitate a series of local ponds so they can provide water in the future.
With support from Oxfam, the Liben Pastoralist Development Initiative's plans have called for providing drinking water to 6,000 people in two areas in the Liben District of the Oromia region's Guji Zone. The water is being trucked in from wells about 28 miles away and stored in four large tanks—and providing enough to allow each person about 4 gallons a day.
The Liben group is also transporting hay and a wheat-bran feed into the region to help shore up the strength of the animals on which people depend. But in an indication of how challenging it can be to work in remote areas, the nearest place Liben can find the necessary fodder is Addis Ababa, Ethiopia's capital, more than 370 miles to the north.
In the Dillo and Dhas districts of the Borena Zone, Action for Development is restoring three wells that typically serve 4,000 to 5,000 head of livestock each day. But because of the drought and shrinking water supplies elsewhere, the number of animals relying on water from these sources could double. The plan calls for the purchase of generators and sub pumps to get these wells running at maximum efficiency.
Like the Liben group, Action for Development is also trucking water in to Dillo and Dhas to help more than 5,000 people with access to a clean supply. The trucks are transporting the water from wells up to 34 miles away.
An estimated 13,500 people and 2,500 head of cattle will benefit from a series of projects the Gayo Pastoralist Development Initiative is also carrying out with Oxfam's help, including the restoration of two ponds in the Borena zone. Ponds provide one of the central sources of water for animals in the area, but during long dry spells they dry up, especially if silt has made them shallow.
By hiring local people to deepen the ponds, Gayo is able to provide families with an important source of income while also helping them to increase the holding capacity of these critical water sources.
"Rehabilitation of ponds during the dry season tremendously increases their capacities and enables them to serve for a longer period of time during drought," said Gayo in its grant application to Oxfam. Gayo pointed to its successes with three ponds in the Moyale area during the 2006 drought.
"The three ponds rehabilitated in response to the drought have still enough water and serve the community at the moment," Gayo said.
]]>The reservoir is at the base of large, steep hill, more like a small mountain really. At the top is a spring, from which water flows through pipes to the pond. It was constructed three years ago by a nearby organization called Action for Development with support from Oxfam America. Before then Jarrso's clan members had to herd their cows up the steep hill, the only means to get water in the dry season. Every day cows would expire on the path up to the spring.
"During the dry time there is no grass to eat," Jarsso says. "They could not climb, so we pushed them up, and some would die." There were years in which more than 10 a day would die on that hill.
Piping the water down the hill helps tremendously. More cows can access the water, the herders and their families can retain more of their wealth and can better survive the dry season, and they get clean, fresh water to drink and cook with, and wash their clothes in.
But the reservoir does not help one ongoing problem: herders are reporting that good pasture for grazing their cattle is harder and harder to find, and not just in the dry season. Jarsso and others in his clan say there are three main reasons for the disappearing pasture:
"The Borena people have many different methods for coping with drought," says Abera Tola, director of Oxfam America's program in Ethiopia. "But some of these bushes are new to them, and the increase in tick infestation may both be related to changes in the climate. We want to research this to find ways to help them."
Bilalo Jarsso said the Borena are trying to survive despite these challenges, and are accustomed to traveling two to three days at a time looking for decent pasture.
"We used to find grass somewhere," he said. It is becoming more and more difficult now.
Oxfam America's partner AFD is helping herders take a more active approach, teaching the Borena to manage their range land more aggressively and actually clear away the encroaching bushes to improve the pasture for grazing. This would be particularly crucial in the dry season, says Tolusa Kemaio, a project officer for AFD.
"The dry season is a very serious time here," he says. "People really struggle, and they can't just slaughter their animals to survive."
]]>A crowded camp sheltering 25,000 people from the horrific violence of Darfur's five-year-old conflict may seem an unlikely venue, but this is no ordinary pop concert. The tunes are traditional, but the lyrics talk of hygiene and explain how people can avoid fatal diseases. Kaltoum is one of a dozen women who have teamed up with Oxfam to hold weekly music festivals in Shangil Tobai in North Darfur. The concerts bring an afternoon of fun to people who have had fled attacks on nearby villages—but they educate as well as entertain.
"Singing is a part of our lives and we like to sing whenever and wherever we can," says Omer, sipping a small glass of extra sweet tea after the concert ends. "We enjoy it, and the people listening enjoy it, but most importantly our singing now helps change people's lives for the better."
"We take Oxfam's advice about good health and sanitation and put it to our own music," she continues. "You can see the songs changing listeners' behavior. The camp is much cleaner now and there are far fewer cases of malaria and diarrhea. Children wash their hands now without being told. When you tell young children to wash they don't always do as they're asked—but when we sing it to them they join in and have fun, and they really pay attention."
The songs change over time to reflect the needs in the camp, adds Zaharisa, another member of the group. "We used to sing about the need to clean the latrines regularly, but now people are doing this well so we no longer have to sing about it. At the moment my favourite song tells people how to safely and hygienically dispose of waste and get rid of rubbish."
Zainab Basher, an Oxfam health promoter in Shangil Tobai, helps the women organize the concerts. She says the impact has been enormous.
"We hear women and children singing the songs at home and work, and the communities keep asking us when the next performance will be," says Basher. "Now the women perform at weddings and religious festivals, as well as the weekly concerts. Each community has its favorite singers, and keeping latrines and water points clean has become a source of pride. Everyone wants to keep their area of the camp the cleanest. Participation in regular clean-up campaigns has increased greatly."
As the conflict has dragged on five long years, Basher says she and the Oxfam team have had to adapt their work. "We held committee meetings, we visited people's homes, and we trained individuals to become community health mobilizers, but the longer people are here in the camp, the more these methods become routine and ineffective. We needed something new and exciting, so we approached the women singers and they were very keen to help."
The concerts are held in different areas of the camp each week, attracting an audience of hundreds each time.
"We want as many people to hear the songs as possible," says Omer. "Oxfam gives us megaphones for the concerts, to make them louder. The next step is to get cassette recorders to tape the concerts, which we can hand out as gifts to neighbours and relatives so people can listen to the messages at home. Not everyone can sing but we still want to involve them somehow. Some of the women who can't sing are good at playing drums, while others help us write the lyrics."
All over the world, children like to imitate their favourite pop stars. Darfur is no different, and Kaltoum and the women have inspired a new generation of singers who meet every week at the Oxfam health centers in the camp. One popular chorus goes:
"Let us go to school to read,
Let us learn to be healthy,
Let us clean ourselves,
All children, let us do this."
Manahir, a 15-year-old girl from the camp, leads a group of children aged 5 to 16. Some sing, some bang on small drums, and others just clap and cheer. A chant of "clean the jerry can, clean the latrine" gradually gets faster and the drums louder, until the children lose their breath and burst into applause.
"We have great fun, and we learn at the same time," says Manahir. "My friends and I come to the center every day from all over the camp."
Nearby, as the women's concert reaches its finale, another singer named Mahasa takes the megaphone and leads a chorus in praise of Basher and the Oxfam team's recent distribution of blankets and jerry cans for carrying water.
"We thank the aid agencies and the people around the world who send us these things when we have nothing," she says. "If they didn't help us we wouldn't be able to stay here in the camp. We'd have to go home and be attacked all over again."
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