Africa

While global spending on weapons is set up to further increase in spite of the economic recession, four major UN agencies and their aid partners have just appealed for $18.3 million to help tens of thousands of refugees who are fleeing into western Ethiopia to escape violence in Sudan’s Blue Nile state.

Over the past year, the world has watched with great interest as the Arab Spring has dissolved decades of repression. Citizens weary of injustice have stood up and demanded control of their destinies. I wish that oppressed people everywhere in Africa could benefit from the dramatic changes we are witnessing in North Africa.

The United Nations committee entrusted with helping countries tackle terrorism has voiced concern at the close connection between terrorists and transnational organized crime, including the illegal movement of nuclear, chemical, biological and other potentially deadly materials.

On 25 September a caravan of awareness on peace and nonviolence is being launched, towards Nouakchott,
capital of Mauritania, by the Mauritanian Association for a World Without Wars and Violence in
collaboration with the Organization for African Integration (OAI). This action will last a week reaching
completion with a march for nonviolence on 2 October this year.

Twenty aid agencies issued an open letter on 21 September urging the international community to “put people’s lives before politics if [we are] to stand any chance of aiding people suffering from the famine in Somalia”.

Considered one of the biggest slums in the world, Kibera is Nairobi’s–and East Africa’s–largest urban settlement. Over one million people struggle daily to meet basic needs such as access to water, nutrition and sanitation. In this community lacking education and opportunities, women and girls are most affected by poverty.

There is so much spin surrounding the Transitional National Council victory in Libya that it is difficult to interpret the outcome, and perhaps premature to do so at this point considering that the fighting continues and the African Union has withheld diplomatic recognition on principled grounds.

Its was expected; nevertheless, the announcement that agricultural development will be among the top cooperation priorities between Israel and South Sudan has raised fresh, deep fears in Cairo and Khartoum that intensive farming techniques and dams construction will end up depriving Sudan and Egypt from a vital portion of their Nile water sharing already scarce quotas.

Somalia is one of the worst humanitarian crises in the world, the UN alerted over a year and a half ago. Now the UN calls on the world to save some 390,000 starving children in famine-ravaged regions. However, those who could really help—the rich, industrialised and oil exporting countries, apparently are now too busy with the ‘promising’ Libyan business.

To begin with, Somalia is situated in the so-called Horn of Africa, bordering with Djibouti, Ethiopia, Kenya and the Indian Ocean. Its territory covers over 637,000 kilometres, hosting around 10 million inhabitants who speak Somali, Arabic, Italian and English, and are mostly Muslim Sunnis.