This paper was produced by organizations working in the affected countries or advocacy groups with a long-standing commitment to resolving the LRA threat: Broederlijk Delen, Cafod, Christian Aid, Conciliation Resources, Cordaid, Danish Refugee Council, Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre, Intersos, Norwegian Refugee Council, Oxfam, Pax Christi Flanders, Peace Direct, Refugees International, Resolve, Society For Threatened Peoples, Tearfund, Trocaire, War Child UK, World vision.
]]>At the close of 2008, up to five million people faced food shortages and malnutrition was stalking more than one million young children and half a million women. About 80 percent of Afghans depend largely on agriculture to feed their families, but the government has limited ability to support small farmers and respond to spiraling food prices and persistent drought. Lack of access to adequate food is one of the major factors contributing to the country’s high mortality rates particularly among the youngest.
Foreign aid is providing vital assistance to Afghans, but much of the aid is over-centralized, has not brought needed change in the countryside, and in large part is being allocated to the southern provinces which host international forces.
Oxfam has been working in Afghanistan for nearly 20 years and supporting partner organizations in all but two of the country’s 34 provinces.
]]>Oxfam is deeply concerned that the disease, which has sickened more than 8,000 people and killed more than 540, has found its way into the city where countless families are still crowded into makeshift camps scattered across the hills since the January earthquake destroyed their homes. More than one million people remain homeless. The heavy rain and flooding caused by Hurricane Tomas over the weekend has likely allowed cholera to spread, especially given the poor sanitation conditions in the country.
But since the start of the epidemic in Artibonite—and even since the first days following the devastating quake--Oxfam has been preparing for the possibility of an outbreak in the capital. Providing people with clean water, sanitation and hygiene education is the only way to prevent the spread of diseases like cholera. Oxfam is reaching 315,000 people with these services in the Port-au-Prince area.
The organization is now reinforcing those programs in the camps in which it has been working since the quake. It’s chlorinating water and increasing the cleaning of sanitation facilities as well as organizing training sessions on the preparation of oral rehydration salts and homemade rehydration liquids—essential and effective treatment for patients. In addition, Oxfam has increased its training for staffers and community members on disease surveillance and it’s building latrines at the Petite Goave Hospital for a cholera treatment center.
In the Artibonite province, north of the capital, Oxfam has a team of about 25 staffers working on a water, sanitation, and hygiene program that is reaching about 100,000 people in an area called Petite Riviere. The program includes distribution of water purification tablets and powder, soap, buckets, and oral rehydration salts. Oxfam is also repairing and building wells and then purifying the water pulled from them.
But most importantly, the organization is carrying out a massive hygiene education campaign that includes broadcasting radio messages regularly as well as training community members to share information on how to stem the spread of the disease. Large-scale public education sessions in rural villages and towns are part of the program as well—and are helping to quell fears and provide better information.
“The only way to stop the spread of cholera is when each and every person is practicing good hygiene,” said Oxfam press officer Julie Schindall, who is based in Haiti. “That’s as simple as hand washing and drinking clean water.”
Those messages—along with the network of water and sanitation services aid groups have established in the camps around Port-au-Prince—have made a major difference for people: In the nearly 10 months since the quake there had not been a major outbreak of waterborne disease in the capital.
“We kept very vulnerable people safe for a long time,” said Schindall. “But now, clearly, we must throw even more resources into treating the sick and containing the spread of the disease.”
One of the central challenges in tackling problems like this—and one reason humanitarian relief operations are repeatedly launched--is the lack of basic infrastructure across the country and the government’s lack of capacity, Schindall added.
“Clearly in the long term we need to reinforce the government’s capacity to protect people,” said Schindall.
]]>The storm is expected to hit sometime early Friday morning. In the event of the damage it may cause, Oxfam will ensure that the nearly 500,000 people it is now helping will continue to have clean water and sanitation services. The organization is planning to repair latrines and other structures it has built.
But because of the recent cholera outbreak north of Haiti’s capital, humanitarian groups, including Oxfam, are finding their resources stretched and more supplies will be needed if Tomas turns destructive. Oxfam’s cholera response program is reaching about 100,000 people in the Artibonite province. According to the ministry of health, the outbreak has sent 6,742 people to hospitals and left 442 dead.
Throughout the hurricane season, which started June 1, Oxfam has been preparing for a major storm in Port-au-Prince, the camp-filled capital, and surrounding communities. More than one million people are still living under tarps and in tents since a January earthquake destroyed great swaths of the city. Oxfam has reinforced its water and sanitation facilities, by tying down water bladders, adding extra supports to shower stalls, and taking precautions to ensure that latrines don’t flood. In addition, Oxfam has been clearing canals and digging drains for months.
The organization has also continued its public health campaigns, educating people about good personal hygiene practices that will prevent the spread of waterborne disease, which is crucial if there is flooding. And Oxfam has been distributing extra hygiene supplies, like soap and jerry cans.
If the storm strikes, Oxfam will send out emergency response teams within 24 hours after to assess camps where it works and determine what repairs need to be made and ensure that people have adequate drinking water.
Despite these preparations, Oxfam remains very concerned about the impact heavy rains may have on the spread of cholera, and other diseases. If there is storm flooding and the water does not drain off, waterborne diseases can spread quickly.
In Artibonite, Oxfam’s team of 25 staffers is carrying out a massive hygiene education campaign, through radio messages, training community members to spread information about good hygiene, and large-scale public education sessions in villages and towns. The only way to stop the spread of cholera is when each and every person is practicing good hygiene. In addition to that initiative, Oxfam is also distributing water purification tablets and powder, soap, buckets, and oral rehydration salts in the area of Petite Riviere.
]]>Diop is a grandmother who lives with 15 members of her family in the city of Pikine, Senegal. When late summer rains pounded the region, this low-lying city fared badly. Its poor neighborhoods lack proper drainage, and the city has become an urban lake. In Diop’s house, every room but one is submerged in the still waters of a flood that acts like it’s here to stay.
“Since 2005, we have been suffering from the floods, but we have never seen anything like what is happening this year,” says Diop.
The nearby marketplace is under water, too, so for people who make their living by trade, incomes have vanished. And for the many who, like Diop and her family, buy their provisions day to day as they can, there are practically no stores of food in their homes to fall back on.
Health is a worry, as well: the latrines that are now deep in floodwater are slowly releasing their contents into the streets and schools and homes of Pikine, setting the stage for outbreaks of diarrheal and skin disease. And the standing water is a breeding ground for mosquitoes which, in malarial regions like this, pose serious threats to health.
Oxfam has joined forces with Eau Vie et Environment, a Senegalese partner organization, to assist 28,000 people affected by the floods in Pikine. We are removing water from homes, pumping waste from latrines before it flows into the streets, and distributing soap and other hygiene materials to help residents protect their health under these difficult conditions. For those in greatest need, we are also distributing small sums of cash to enable them to buy essentials for their families.
“Our goal is to provide immediate relief to those who need it most but also to address the longer-term problem of drainage with the local and national authorities whose job it is to prevent disasters like this,” says Oxfam’s Dawit Beyene. “No one should have to live in standing water.”
]]>In the midst of disasters where so many people have lost so much, why does Oxfam make providing soap such a high priority?
First and foremost, it’s because washing hands with soap is such an effective way to prevent the spread of diarrheal disease–which, under the difficult conditions of camp life, can be debilitating and even fatal.
But in emergencies, people have the right not only to health and safety but also to dignity. Soap enables a family to bathe and to wear clean clothes–simple acts with the power to restore a measure of well-being.
In the Pakistan flood emergency, Oxfam has distributed hygiene materials to more than half a million people. They include towels, water-purification tablets, sanitary pads, water buckets, and–no surprise–soap.
]]>For the past ten days, Oxfam has been responding to the flooding in the Mexican states of Oaxaca, Veracruz, Tabasco, and Chiapas.
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Skin diseases have leapt from 260,000 to 860,000 cases, acute diarrhea has leapt from 200,000 to 610,000 cases, and acute respiratory infections have leapt from 200,000 to 670,000 cases.
The UN appeal was hastily prepared when the floods began and does not reflect current needs. Since it was launched, the number of people affected by the floods has increased from 14 million to 21 million with 10 million displaced and eight million in need of immediate assistance as the floodwaters have flowed south and inundated much of Punjab and Sindh provinces.
Oxfam warned that the two most important areas for disease prevention and treatment are the least funded. Just 30 percent of the money needed for water and sanitation and 50 percent for health have been received.
Neva Khan, head of Oxfam in Pakistan, said:
“Just in the past week, the estimated number of people affected has increased by three million. But funding levels have stayed the same. More people have gotten sick and more people have fled from the floodwaters. If we are to avert the spread of waterborne disease, then clean water, sanitation, and medical supplies are vital. It is shameful that these essentials have attracted such paltry levels of donor funding.”
So far, only 2.5 million people have been provided with clean water, which is vital to prevent the spread of water-borne disease. Lack of funds are preventing agencies from scaling up. The World Health Organization warns that if the affected population is not immediately provided with clean water, sanitation, and hygiene materials, we may see as many as six million new cases of acute diarrhea in flood-affected areas.
The current UN appeal is due to be revised in the next week and is likely to be triple the amount of the initial appeal, which stands at $459.7 million.
Although some donors have been generous, others are lagging behind. The United States leads donor countries with $185 million pledged for the crisis. The UK has contributed over $64 million to the flood appeal and Australia pledged more than $31 million. However, countries like France have contributed less than five million dollars to date. European ministers are due to discuss the crisis in Pakistan in Brussels tomorrow.
Khan continued:
“It’s essential that donors step up to the plate. The people of Pakistan are depending on them. Those who have been generous will need to be more generous still, and those who have not given their fair share must do so. The levels of funding are not commensurate with need and compare unfavorably with other crises. Even counting pledges outside the UN appeal, the aid money only works out at $40 per affected person. By contrast, after the Kashmir earthquake in 2005, commitments in the first month amounted to $570 per affected person.”
Ibrahim and her family of six are from Mardan, in Pakistan’s northwestern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province. Four weeks after they were forced from their home by rising waters, they are living in a tent in an overcrowded camp with four thousand other flood survivors.
She knows they are among the lucky ones. Since the Ibrahims arrived at the camp in the town of Nowshera on 4 August, they have had a tent for shelter and access to clean water and food. But she’s worried about what the future holds for her family
“Before the floods came, life was hard but good,” says Ibrahim. “We had our own home. My husband worked as a watchman for a local company, and we had some livestock that brought us some extra money.
“Then the rains started and the river began rising. We had never seen anything like it. We got up for prayers at 5AM, and the water level was higher than we’d ever seen it before. Then it started coming into the house. By 12PM, we knew we had to leave.
“Now, even the office where my husband worked was washed away, so he has lost his job. There is nothing we can do but stay in the camp and wait. We are thankful for help, but it is very hot here all the time. We have tea and bread in the morning and curry in the evening. But at home, we all ate three times a day and we had tea 24 hours a day. At night, we only have two camp beds and some plastic mats for the eight of us.”
The Ibrahims’ story is typical of many of those affected by the floods. Some are living in government-run camps; others are making do by the side of the road.
“We can rebuild our home but it will take time,” says Ibrahim. “There’s no water or electricity, and all the rooms are filled with mud. Every day, we go to clean and to make sure no one has taken whatever has been left.
“I am scared about the winter. We think it will take two or three months at least to make our house so we can live in it again. We need to go home before winter comes. We have no winter clothing or bedding. What will we do if we have to live in a tent? We need to be back in our home.”
“These people don’t want handouts,” says Neva Khan, Oxfam’s country director in Pakistan. They want to return to their villages, rebuild their homes, and recreate their lives. Oxfam is among the agencies working to provide them not just with emergency short-term help but with the resources they will need over the long term.
In order to do this, she adds, we need much more help from supporters.
For those living in the camps, uncertainty is a constant companion. “I don’t know when we will be able to go home,” says Ibrahim.
Today, she is speaking for millions.
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On August 16, Oxfam's Qasim Berech set out from the city of Mangora in Lower Swat with a team of five people and 100,000 packets of water-purification powder. Their destination—the city of Bahrain—had been cut off from aid for two and a half weeks, so there was no time to lose.
The water-purification powder he and the team are distributing in Upper Swat is a high-tech substance that in less than half an hour can remove dirt, pollutants, bacteria, and viruses from a big bucket of water. But the method of delivering it is distinctly low-tech: walking, with a few short rides along the way.
At 9:00 AM, they headed off in a van, but after an hour and a half came to the end of the road—literally. Faced with washed-out bridges and roads, they had to unload their cargo, hire local men to help them carry it, and set out on foot—in the rain.
When the roads improved, they hired a car again; when they hit another collapsed bridge, they shouldered the cartons and began walking—over and over throughout the day.
"We're not alone in our travels," wrote Berech. "We stop and ask some men that we pass where they're from. Most have come from remote parts of the Upper Swat and have walked for at least a day. They're heading for Fatehpur to collect food being handed out by the aid agencies. For most of these people, this will be the only food they will have had for days. They're hunched over and carrying sacks of wheat flour, oil, rice, pulses, sugar, salt, and biscuits on their backs—enough to keep their families going for a week or more. There are women, too, collecting water from the river for their families. They know they shouldn't drink it. It will make their children ill, but they have no choice."
It rained throughout the day, and the steep climbs became slick with mud.
"It's difficult to keep your footing in this kind of mud. Everyone is struggling, but no one complains," he wrote. "There are frightening moments, too. Because many bridges have been completely swept away, locals have done the best they can with whatever is to hand. We cross several bridges that are just pieces of wood held together with rope. They’re pretty dangerous. I cross holding on tightly as the bridge shakes from side to side."
The team finally reached Bahrain at 4:00 PM.
"We're all tired and soaked but we know it was worth it. We manage to distribute powder sachets to nearly 3,000 households. At 30 sachets per family, that will give them clean water for 15 days." He added, " We will go back again as many times as we need to."
]]>The Layyah district is among the worst hit in Punjab. Some 364 villages are completely destroyed, displacing 300,000 individuals, according to an assessment by the Doaba Foundation, an Oxfam partner providing relief to the affected communities in the district. The district government here has established 22 relief camps for displaced people.
With an Oxfam team, I visited a camp that houses 2,600 people in the Karor sub-district. It's a well-managed camp: there are water pumps and 16 latrines, eight each for men and women. A local philanthropist provides cooked food. Two police officials keep watch at the entrance.
In and outside the camp premises, we saw all kinds of animals: buffalos, cows, goats, sheep, and camels with their little ones. People were arranging fodder for their animals and were sitting close to them. "They are very poor people to whom a loss of a hen is unbearable, and they have lost everything, including their homes," said a relief worker from the same district. Most people living in the camp do not own any land, and animals are all they have.
The Doaba Foundation is doing wonderful work in coordination with the district government and rescue agencies. They have also helped to register 937 individuals in 20 camps and have distributed 445 hygiene kits. Each kit contains:
Zubair Iqbal, the camp manager, said that the heavy rains during the last three days have created difficult health and hygiene conditions.
According to locals, faulty building practices have contributed to the damage. Nazeer Ahmed, a volunteer working in the camp, said: "Traditionally, there were 10 tributaries to the Indus River that now stand blocked, thanks to building on that land. And since there had been no floods in years, people had moved into the river bed. The damage was inevitable."
Donate to Oxfam's flood relief and recovery efforts in Pakistan.
]]>As we approach Row 1A—one of the neat lines of white tents that make up the Corail resettlement camp, two figures wave at us energetically. Marceline Philidor and her daughter Sabine are as welcoming as when I saw them last, over a month ago. Their family was among the first group of people to be moved from the Petionville Golf Club—where they faced an imminent threat of flash floods—to this site about 15 km outside Port-au-Prince.
Marceline is busy cooking some rice on a small stove, but she pulls up some plastic chairs for us under the awning in front of her tent - one of the few small patches of shade in this vast, sun-baked camp. I ask her what life has been like these last two months.
“Well, life is the pretty much the same here now as when we moved in. Not much has changed. We have our tent. We have enough water from Oxfam to drink and cook and wash. We’ve received food, too, and rice, oil, beans and flour from World Vision. We still have the latrines from Oxfam, and there are enough for everyone, although it would be nice to have our own toilet, or a toilet to share with several families, and keep them clean between us.”
Oxfam has been concerned since the Corail site was selected in April that the area is isolated and doesn’t have markets close by. I ask Marceline what they have been living on and whether they’ve been looking for work outside of the camp.
“I’ve done some work - digging the trenches for drainage here in the camp, making them deeper—so we will have a little money soon. I’ve been the one working, because I had my identification with me when they offered the work, so I signed up. My husband goes out almost every day looking for work. Sometimes he takes the tap-tap (Haitian mini-bus) that goes from here to town, and costs 15 gourdes. But we don’t have much money, so often he has to walk.”
Marceline’s husband, David Deronoil, joins us and tells about his search for work.
“I go regularly into Delmas, to all the old places I used to work before the earthquake. I was a metal worker and then a driver. Often I have to walk, so I leave here at 4:30 in the morning, and I usually arrive around 11.” He pauses. “A man shouldn’t stay at home and not work. He should be able to go out and work to support his wife and child. But there are no jobs.”
Marceline once sold goods at a market stall, and she would like to re-open her business. “But I wouldn’t start it here,” she says. “I would go to one of the markets nearby, in Bon Repos. People say they might create a new market there so people here can work. I don’t know if it’s true. We’ve been asking to have a market and a hospital and a school for the people living here in the camp.”
School is an important topic for David.
“Aside from getting work, our main priority is Sabine’s education. Education is very important. I don’t want my daughter to grow up sitting around here, not learning anything. I want her to go to school and learn. To get an education. There’s a good school in Bon Repos; I would like to take her there, but we would need money. Like before the earthquake.”
I ask David and Marceline what their thoughts are about the future. David shrugs. “I wouldn’t mind having a house here. We like it here; we don’t hate it. And we don’t want to go back to Port-au-Prince. It’s too crowded and there are no homes there. I wouldn’t mind having a home here, or even building one myself.”
He smiles, looking around his tent. For now there isn’t much around their little home—just one or two plants sheltered by the side of the tent—but it’s clear he’s picturing what it could be like.
“We would like a little place to plant trees, so that they could give us shade and we could have mangoes to eat. And some space to keep chickens. Then we could have chicken to eat. We need a real home. We need some privacy. We also need to be able to have fun sometimes, have some kind of recreation.” He laughs. “Maybe watch the world cup on TV!”
He becomes serious again. “But we don’t know if there will be homes. There are rumors that they might be moving us again. So we don’t know.”
Although Corail is designated as a temporary relocation site, nobody knows how long people like David and Marceline will live here. These families need—and have the right—to start earning a living again, to send their children to school, and to have a clear idea when they will finally have a home again. The government of Haiti, with the support of international and national organizations, has the responsibility to develop and implement a housing, resettlement, and job-creation strategy that will get people back into homes and communities, and earning incomes. This is the crucial next step to help Haitians rebuild their lives for the long term.
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