UNICEF FILE: UGANDA

[Marilyn]

How terrible- those poor poor children- it makes your heart break to think that people are deliberately doing this to others.    

[ClayObsessed]

For the rest of my life...I will never forget those scenes.  What must it
have been like for Clay to see them in person.  No wonder he is
changed.  
...shirl

[InAweOfClay]

Words fail me after looking at those people.

Clay must have felt so helpless at this disaster. So different than the tsumani victims who were at least being cared for and on the way to reclaiming a normal life.

Hope the US and Great Britain donations just announced will get to the children somehow.

[lovinclay]

I can't even begin to imagine how Clay delt with these horrors!  God be with those poor children!

[quynn]

On the UNICEF website there is a link to contact your State/Local Government Representatives regarding increasing the funding for UNICEF.  I did this and received e-mails back from them.  And, today, I received a letter in the snail mail from my state Senator thanking me for my interest and concern on the matter and that he would consider the additional funding for UNICEF when voting for the bill.  Don't forget to go to the UNICEF site to contact your Rep.'s and let your voice be heard.  It's very simple and only takes a few minutes of your time.  If we don't speak up for the kids, no one will listen.  THANKS!

[lovinclay]

Hey, Jill

Thanks for the info!  I did this awhile back, but I never received a confirmation from my representitives.  Go figure, huh?

[Pamela]

UN to review Africa's 'silent tsunami'
 
Nairobi, Kenya  
08 June 2005 09:00
 
The United Nations is looking into how best to resolve the problem of internally displaced persons (IDPs) worldwide, a senior UN official has said, describing internal displacement as a neglected humanitarian issue.

"The UN is doing a major review now of displacement worldwide -- looking at how [it] could better structure itself to deal with this situation more effectively," said Dennis McNamara, the special adviser of the UN Emergency Relief Coordinator on Internal Displacement and director of the Inter-Agency Internal Displacement Division in the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.

Speaking to reporters in May in the Kenyan capital, Nairobi, McNamara said the review will be done in 2006.

More attention will be paid to eight countries with acute IDP problems, McNamara said. The countries are Burundi, Colombia, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Liberia, Nepal, Somalia, Sudan and Uganda.

"This displacement issue is one of the big neglected humanitarian problems that we face, particularly in Africa," McNamara said at the end of a mission to Burundi and Uganda. He also held meetings in Nairobi with aid-agency officials working in Somalia.

About 13-million of the world's 25-million IDPs are in Africa, he said. Approximately 10-million of the African IDPs are in Sudan (five million to six million); at least 1,5-million in Uganda; two million to three million in the DRC; and 500 000 in Somalia.

"This is a humanitarian challenge for us," McNamara said. "It is a challenge also for governments, the donors and the host governments. But in addition to being a humanitarian challenge, it is also a challenge in terms of peace-building and trying to recover from conflict."

He said displaced people lack basic support, are destitute and often subjected to abuse.

"They are a very vulnerable category, very impoverished," he said. "Most of them get less assistance than refugees in camps."

He said his department has managed to mobilise UN agencies and their partners to focus more on the IDP problem, but a lot remains to be done. He challenged civil authorities in areas where IDPs are found to help alleviate the suffering of displaced people.

McNamara said: "In Burundi, we have more involvement of the agencies. In Uganda, we have more UN involvement, more NGO involvement. In Somalia, there is more involvement now by the UN family, by the NGOs."

He urged donor governments to provide more resources to make it possible for aid agencies to resolve the IDP crisis.

"We can only get progress if we get support from donor governments," he said. "We do get that support -- but don't get enough of it for these populations."

Illustrating the lack of funding, McNamara said aid agencies have so far received only 20% of the $130-million for which they appealed to fund humanitarian programmes in Burundi this year.

For Uganda, $158-million was requested, but only the food was funded. Many of the other agencies have received less than 10% of the necessary funding.

To read the rest, visit the MAIL & GUARDIAN

[Clayton Clayniac]

If you love him now, you will love him MORE after viewing this photo.

http://www.unicefusa.org/site/apps/s/content.asp?c=duLRI8O0H&b=27736&ct=293670

[Marilyn]

THAT WAS FANTASTIC- PAMELA GAVE US THE LINK EARLIER

WHAT A WONDERFUL WONDERFUL MAN!!

AND IT DOES MAKE ME LOVE HIM MORE!!

[lorilovesgolf]

You can see how much I love that picture - its my new avie!!

[Pamela]

Let's share that picture.  Clay in Uganda for UNICEF.

Photo from UNICEF.ORG

[ChrisieD]

His words and that pic just makes your heart smile. No wonder we love him soo much.

[Clayton Clayniac]

I just adore how that beautiful child is holding onto Clay's fingers, and the look of love on Clay's face!

[Pamela]

Ex-captives prefer bush to home life    
Hudson Apunyo
PADER

Most former child captives of the Lord’s Resistance Army rebels, who have been reunited with their parents, still prefer the bush life to staying at home, according to an official of Caritas.

Caritas is a Catholic NGO involved in rehabilitation of formerly abducted children in northern Uganda.
“Some of the children come back to the rehabilitation centre saying life at home is more difficult than in the bush,” Caritas Regional Director Fr John Felix Opio told Unicef Country Representative Martin Mogwanja in Pader last week.

Opio said the children complained of being stigmatised and called names. He said the children remember how life was good before abduction, but when they return home, they find life worse because of the displaced people in camps.

Mogwanja was in Pader last week with Head of HIV/Aids Technical Cluster Dr Janet Edmondson and Regional Manager Leila Schildt to assess the humanitarian situation.

(c)THE MONITOR

[Pamela]

Focus on Africa.

LIVE 8 Musical Acts To Promote Aid for Africa
More than 1 billion worldwide expected to watch concerts

By Mercedes L. Suarez
Washington File Staff Writer

On July 2 millions of people will gather in concert locations around the globe to hear some of the world’s most popular musical acts and to urge support for Africa as part of an event called LIVE 8.

The concerts were organized by British rocker Bob Geldof to roughly coincide with the Group of Eight (G8) summit in Gleneagles, Scotland, July 6-8. Tens of thousands of people are expected to attend the concerts at 10 locations around the world, with an estimated audience of more than one billion tuning in to live television coverage.

Geldof is most famous as the organizer of the Live Aid concerts 20 years ago, which raised over $100 million to fight the famines sweeping Africa.  However, this time the focus is on encouraging citizens in G8 countries to work toward ending poverty in Africa. “This is not Live Aid 2,” said Geldof.

Concerts will be held in cities in every G8 nation: London, Paris, Berlin, Rome, Philadelphia, Tokyo, Barrie [Canada], and Moscow as well as in Johannesburg, South Africa, and Edinburgh, Scotland. “This is without doubt a moment in history where ordinary people can grasp the chance to achieve something truly monumental and demand from the eight world leaders at the G8 an end to poverty,” said Geldof.

Read the rest at (c)US INFO

Bush Calls for New Initiatives for Africa
By JENNIFER LOVEN, Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON -     President Bush on Thursday called for a $1.2 billion U.S. effort to cut deaths from malaria in Africa in half over five years, part of a range of new initiatives targeted at the continent's problems.

"We know that large-scale action can defeat this disease in whole regions and the world must take action," Bush said in a wide-ranging speech on his Africa policy. "Together we can lift this threat and defeat this fear across the African continent."

Bush also proposed doubling U.S. spending to $400 million on initiatives to promote the education of girls in Africa and said he wanted Congress to approve $55 million over three years to improve legal protections for women in Africa against violence and sexual abuse.

The announcements came as Bush prepares to travel to Scotland next week for a meeting of Group of Eight — the world's seven major industrial democracies and Russia — that will focus on Africa.

Read the rest at (c)YAHOO

Ease Poverty One Ticket at a Time

In support of Live 8, Tea Party Concerts is uniting with artists to make history. From Saturday, July 2 through Monday, July 4, tickets for select shows* at the Tweeter Center and Bank of America Pavilion will be sold for $18. A portion of these specially-priced $18 tickets will benefit Sir Bob Geldof’s one.org and the Long Walk to Justice. Each “Live 8” ticket buyer will receive a ONE bracelet to commemorate their donation.

“This is a fitting way to show the leaders of the G8 that the demand for them to do the right thing at their July 6th meeting extends far beyond the artists, attendees and global television audience for the Live 8 concerts,” says Bob Geldof. “Our sincere thanks are with the more than 80 artists and the people at Clear Channel Music Group who are making this extended statement possible.”

Clay Aiken
August 28
Available 7/2 at 9AM

Read the rest at (c)TEAPARTY CONCERTS

[Pamela]

Focus on Africa.

Bush Malaria, Education Initiatives Support Africa's Future
USAID's Natsios says aims are to halve disease's fatalities, educate girls

Two new initiatives announced June 30 by President Bush will attack one of the biggest killers in Africa -- malaria -- and support the continent's future by investing in the education of its children, especially girls, according to U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) Administrator Andrew Natsios, who briefed the press the same day at the Department of State in Washington.

The president's malaria initiative aims to reduce malaria deaths by 50 percent in targeted African countries by the end of 2010, Natsios said.  The United States will be responsible for 15 countries under the initiative and will begin work at the beginning of the next fiscal year in Tanzania, Uganda and Angola, he added.

The malaria initiative will ultimately affect countries with a total population of 175 million people, Natsios said, with the goal of getting 85 percent coverage of high-risk populations, which include children under age 5 and pregnant women.

Natsios noted that all branches of the U.S. government collectively spend a total of about $235 million to fight malaria.

The new initiative, he said, will take the fight against malaria to a new level using four proven responses:

-- Supplying long-lasting insecticide-treated bed nets;

-- Using Artemisinin Combination Therapy, which employs an herbal drug derived from the Asian wormwood plant that can be grown in Africa;

-- Providing a dosage of an anti-malarial drug to pregnant women that helps reduce the incidence of absorption of malaria by the baby during childbirth; and

-- Spraying insecticides in people's homes to kill the mosquitoes that are in the house at night.

"If you combine all these together and carefully target them, we know you can reduce the death rates significantly," Natsios said.

The president's education initiative in sub-Saharan Africa will provide $100 million a year over four years, targeting basic education in grades one through 12 in 16 countries.  It will provide scholarships for poor and vulnerable children.

"We are putting a heavy emphasis on scholarships to girls," Natsios said, because research has shown that "perhaps the most powerful investment in foreign assistance you can make is educating girls through high school."  

This will cause child mortality rates to drop, family incomes to rise, agricultural production to increase, family size to decrease, and the number of very early marriages to decline, he explained.  In addition, he said, "if a mother is educated through high school, it's a very high likelihood that she will insist that her children be educated."

The education initiative will also train 500,000 teachers and administrators, begin a school rehabilitation and construction program, produce 10 million new textbooks, and begin to build a textbook publishing and printing capacity in Africa "so these books are printed, published, written in Africa and distributed in Africa by African companies," Natsios said.  "Because we think that's the way of making this capacity develop sufficiently to make the program self-sustainable even after the funding stops."

Thus, the president's education initiative "is a powerful development tool that we believe will change the dynamic in many societies and many countries," Natsios said.

Responding to a question, Natsios noted that "we're facing multiple emergencies" in Africa now.  "The president has pledged with Tony Blair a large-scale effort to deal with the food emergency in Africa, both in terms of food aid, but also in terms of what we call 'non-food assistance,' which includes water and sanitation and immunization programs to make sure that disease doesn't spread and also shelter programs to care for people," he said.

"We urge other donor governments to step up to the plate and to join Britain and the United States in this effort because we cannot do this alone," Natsios said.

Read the rest at US INFO

[Pamela]

ON OPRAH:

WEDNESDAY'S SHOW: Ricky Martin Travels to Meet Tsunami Orphans

Three years ago, he walked off the stage. Now, singer Ricky Martin is on an urgent mission: Our cameras follow him inside the tsunami zone. Then, the story Lisa Ling risked her life to tell.

Learn more and talk about this show.

http://www.oprah.com/tows/coming/tows_coming_wed.jhtml

I know this isn't Uganda related, but I thought it might be interesting to see.  I heard about it when it originally aired, but of course I was at work.

I'm going to tape it this time.

[Pamela]

'We are heading for extinction'  
July 7, 2005

By Beauregard Tromp

A skip across the foaming green stream running down the narrow, dusty pathway between rows of huts shepherding one ever downwards, and boisterous sounds emerge.

Hurtling forward from behind a burlap covering to a hut entrance, an old man still clutching his Nile Special beer exclaims in a surprised, drunken slur: "What is wrong? What's going on?"

"My people are dying," comes the answer 100km away in Kitgum.

There, Billy Graham Odong-Kara, an elder from the Acholi tribe sits in front of his house in Kitgum, itself just 60km from the border with Sudan
"The Acholi have a decent, hard-working culture, but these camps have changed all that. Now we have a culture of dependence."

With a population of 67 000, Pabbo - about 30km from the main northern town of Gulu - is among the largest camps for Internally Displaced Persons (IDP) in Uganda.

Neighbours live cheek-by-jowl, their distorted traditional huts - in smaller versions - no more than a stride apart.

A Unicef survey shows that girls between 13 and 17 are most at risk of sexual and gender-based violence. This is blamed on overcrowded living conditions, alcohol abuse and restricted livelihood opportunities.

"The Acholi have a very decent, hard-working culture, but these camps have changed all that. Now we have a culture of dependence," says deputy council chairperson Odong-Kara.

The first IDP camp was formed in 1996 when more than 400 people were killed by the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) in one day.

Today an estimated 80% of people living in IDP camps are women and children.

Read the rest at ©THE STAR (SA)

[Pamela]

UNICEF chief calls for more attention to child abduction in northern Uganda

KAMPALA, 07/24 - Julction by the Lord`s Resistance Army (LRA) rebels in northern Uganda. The call was made by Veneman when visiting some of the former abductees in Gulu, northern Uganda, according to a report from Radio Uganda on Saturday.

She arrived here on Thursday for a three-day visit to Uganda.

During her visit, Veneman also saw some of the "night commuters," children who have to walk from their villages to sleep on verandahs in Gulu town at night for fear of abduction by the LRA rebels.

Veneman regretted to note that some of the children in this part of Uganda have been kept as slaves before either escaping or being released.

It is reported that up to 20,000 children have been abducted by ar.

©ANGOLA PRESS

[Pamela]

Focus on Africa

National Geographic Goes Without Photo 

WASHINGTON -     National Geographic magazine, known for its breathtaking photography, decided this time a picture wasn't worth a thousand words — or even six.

The single-topic September issue, on the complex problems and promise of Africa, is the magazine's first cover without a photograph since 1988 — and only the second since it began using cover photos in 1943.

The white cover is dominated by a bold, brown word — "Africa" — and below that, "Whatever you thought, think again."

The unusual choice was made by the magazine's new editor in chief, Chris Johns, who was a career photographer for 30 years, spending much of that time in Africa. It's the first complete issue published under his direction.

Johns said he wanted to "highlight astonishing stories of renewal, ingenuity and potential heard through unfiltered African voices. These stories counterbalance the bleak headlines of civil war, disease, poverty and extinction."

"Africa isn't one place," Johns said in an interview. "It's a million places. We felt that no single photograph could cover the depth of Africa."

The magazine last went without a cover picture in 1988 when the cover noted the celebration of National Geographic's 100th anniversary.

©YAHOO NEWS

I have subscribed to National Geographic for many years, so I'll post anything interesting concerning the children of Uganda in this thread.