Fieldnotes: Blogging on UNICEF's child survival work in the field
Entries from Fieldnotes tagged with 'Somalia'
Clay Aiken: progress in Somalia
UNICEF Ambassador Clay Aiken originally wrote this blog post for The Huffington Post on December 29, 2009. Please consider making a donation today to support UNICEF's lifesaving work for children in Somalia.
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| © U.S. Fund for UNICEF |
| Clay Aiken on a recent field visit to Somolia. |
This past November, while we celebrated the 20th anniversary of the signing of the Convention on the Rights of the Child, a grim milestone was reached in the east African nation of Somalia. The conflict and instability which has characterized that nation for the past 20 years has produced a generation in its central southern province that has never known peace.
In this season of peace and goodwill, this jarring reality should spur us to action so that future generations are not lost.
The mere mention of Somalia conjures in the mind of everyday Americans a place where lawlessness reigns. Indeed, the perception is that no other country has done more to place the issue of maritime piracy at the forefront of our minds and within our headlines.
While this may be true...it's certainly not the whole story.
Last year, in my role as UNICEF Ambassador, I spent five days in northwest Somalia. There's no question that years of civil war and a defunct central government has left much of this nation dangerously unstable. In fact, half the population of Somalia remains internally displaced and in a state of humanitarian emergency.
This tragic reality affects an estimated 3.6 million people, half of whom are children. Over 1.5 million are displaced as a result of conflict, largely between Islamic extremists and government forces. Not only is this population burdened by violence and instability, but also extreme poverty and recurrent food shortages.
There are, however, glimmers of hope. For one, the Somali Transitional Federal Government (TFG) has made overtures to place the well-being of children on its emerging social service agenda.
Malnutrition: a silent emergency
We've been reporting about the child malnutrition crisis quite a bit recently -- in places as varied as Somalia, Yemen and the Philippines.
It's a global crisis, but because it doesn't get much coverage in mainstream media, it's essentially a "silent emergency" for children.
Check out the new Every Child
Please check out the latest issue of Every Child, the U.S. Fund for UNICEF’s magazine. Featuring powerful photos and timely articles on child survival and other key issues, the publication offers a bird’s-eye view of UNICEF’s crucial work—and a look at supporters and partners like you who make that work possible. The cover story chronicles the efforts of UNICEF staff in conflict-ridden places like Somalia, where they often risk their own lives to save the lives of children. The feature spotlights UNICEF’s influential role in helping negotiate cease-fires in several war-torn countries so that children can get lifesaving health care.
Monday UNICEF pic: Somalia
Last week we reported that funding shortfalls could threaten humanitarian assistance activities that are so desperately needed in Somalia. One of UNICEF's key areas of concern is preventing and treating malnutrition in children, so I thought I'd share this photo taken at a UNICEF-supported nutrition program in Jamalaaye, a camp for displaced people in the north-western city of Berbera.
NewsNet: Don't forget about Somalia
I wrote about the deteriorating humanitarian emergency in Somalia—and how funding shortfalls were hampering UNICEF’s crucial work there—more than a year ago. In a March 15, 2008 Fieldnotes post, I cited a BBC story that quoted the country’s then UNICEF Representative, Christian Balslev-Olesen, calling Somalia’s plight the “forgotten crisis.”
Even though the suffering of Somalia’s people has only grown worse since then, much of the world continues to largely ignore it.
The vast majority of recent media coverage has focused on—you guessed it—pirates. Fighting between government forces and militants and concerns about the country becoming a terrorist safe haven have also generated considerable press. But little attention has been paid to the enormous human toll of Somalia’s woes. Read these articles from The Christian Science Monitor, Reuters, and Voice of America.
Humanitarian Action Report gives voice to silent emergencies
Every year, UNICEF releases a Humanitarian Action Report (known as HAR around here), which shines a spotlight on emergencies you may not even know about. You see, for every headline-grabbing emergency we respond to—like last spring's Sichuan Earthquake or the cyclone in Myanmar—there are dozens of lesser-known emergencies that are imperiling children and require strong, focused action from UNICEF and our partners.
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| © UNICEF/NYHQ2007-1416/Anita Khemka |
| In Afghanistan, the maternal mortality ratio (1,800 per 100,000 live births, based on 2005 estimates) is among the highest in the world. The mother of these children died during childbirth; now the siblings look after the baby. |
These are often referred to as "silent emergencies" and they have been increasingly common of late. In fact, between 2005 and 2007, UNICEF responded annually to some 276 emergencies in 92 different countries. Over 50 percent of those emergencies were caused by disasters, 30 percent were caused by conflict, and health-related emergencies made up another 19 percent.
Malnutrition is deadlier than pirates
Most of the news coverage on Somalia lately has focused on those shockingly successful pirates who've been attacking ships and holding them for ransom off the country's coast. But for us here at UNICEF, the real Somalia story is happening on land, where kids and their families are suffering from the horrible side effects of a prolonged civil war.
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| © UNICEF/NYHQ2007-0051/Michael Kamber |
| SOMALIA: Boys attend class at a UNICEF-assisted school in Mogadishu, the capital. |
For quite some time there's been vicious fighting between Somalia's government forces and Islamist insurgents who actually control parts of the country. As usual with conflicts like these, civilians have been hardest hit, as they're forced to flee the fighting and soon find themselves homeless, jobless and cut off from food and other resources.
Recently, neighboring Ethiopia has been withdrawing troops that were in Somalia to buoy the struggling Somali government. They provided a little stability and some argue that, once they're gone, fighting will get even worse.
Four years after THE tsunami
There's no way I can forget the date of the massive 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami: the tsunami struck December 26, which happens to be my birthday. The next day, my husband—who's also a journalist—was on a plane to Indonesia. And in the coming weeks, he would call me every day with vivid descriptions on the devastation. Bodies in trees. Boats somersaulted onto houses. Mile after mile of empty coastline where villages had washed forever out to sea.
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| © UNICEF/NYHQ2004-0886/Shehzad Noorani |
| SRI LANKA, 2004: Minhaz Haque, 15, guides his bicycle through the mud of his neighborhood, destroyed by the tsunami. Many of Minhaz' friends went missing and his family's house was wiped out. |
It feels hard to believe, in some ways, that the tsunami was (exactly) four years ago. I didn't work for UNICEF back then. But since I've been here, I've learned an awful lot about UNICEF's response to the tsunami and I am constantly impressed by just how many children we've helped in the aftermath of the disaster. In the early post-tsunami days, UNICEF stepped in to protect orphans and children separated from family members; supplied clean safe water, basic sanitation, and nutrition to children and families who had lost everything; and began to (yes, even in those very early days) rehabilitate schools. UNICEF actually took a leadership role amongst humanitarian organizations on the scene, coordinating water, sanitation, education and child protection efforts to maximize the efficiency of the overall response. (This is something we do a lot in emergency situations.)
UNICEF workers in dangerous zones
Here at the U.S. Fund for UNICEF, we received word on Monday that a UNICEF worker was tragically killed on Sunday in Somalia. Mukhtar Mohammed Hassan was a dedicated supervisor of UNICEF-supported water, sanitation and hygiene activities—working to get clean water to suffering Somali children in the war-torn country. Hassan’s death came just three days after the killing of another U.N. employee in Somalia. What is really upsetting about these brutal attacks is that they’re not isolated instances. So far this year, fourteen humanitarian workers have been killed in Somalia alone. In addition, attacks on foreign aid workers have forced many international personnel to evacuate the country and leave the work solely in the hands of Somali staff.
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| © UNICEF/ HQ03-0452/Shehzad Noorani |
| IRAQ: A UNICEF worker speaks with a man who lost several family members when an explosion destroyed his brother's home in the Baghdad neighborhood of Zafarania. |
Somalia is one of many countries right now where humanitarian organizations including UNICEF are working under highly dangerous conditions, and are even specifically targeted with violence. As Jen Banbury reported last month, Afghanistan has also become increasingly volatile of late. In mid-September, a suicide bomber ran a car into a U.N. convoy, killing a driver and two World Health Organization doctors. And according to Reuters, 94 aid workers have been killed in Iraq since 2003.
Clay Aiken: Give the gift of growing up
UNICEF and Malaria No More are teaming up to defeat malaria—a completely preventable disease that still kills one child every 30 seconds worlwide. But as UNICEF Ambassador Clay Aiken puts it in this short video, "It doesn't have to be this way." He shows how insecticide treated bednets provided by UNICEF are being used to protect children from malaria in Somalia.
Somalia: Keep spreading the word
UNICEF Ambassador Clay Aiken recently returned from Somalia, where UNICEF provides children in the war-torn nation with health care, education, nutrition, clean water and sanitation. This is the second in a series of blog posts he will write about his experience in the field.
For children in Somalia, the situation is dire. But, it's just amazing to me that UNICEF is still able to make a difference in children’s lives in one of the most dangerous places on earth.
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| © US Fund for UNICEF / 2008 / Nick Ysenburg |
For instance, while I was in northwest Somalia—where 45 percent of the population are children and women—I observed how UNICEF improves water, sanitation and hygiene conditions for everyone in the region. One of the ways they do this is by drilling "borewells" so that clean drinking water is easily accessible and readily available. Without these borewells, children would have to walk hours to fetch water instead of going to school and getting an education.
NewsNet: Crises in the Horn of Africa
UNICEF and other aid agencies have warned that a combination of crises in the Greater Horn of Africa—including drought, conflict, disease and rising food and energy prices—is imperiling the lives of children and their families.
A broad array of news organizations has covered the potentially calamitous situations in Ethiopia, Somalia and other countries in the region, focusing particular attention on the threat of malnutrition. Read these reports from IRIN, AllAfrica.com and Bloomberg News.
Here's also a recent UNICEF Television report on malnutrition in Ethiopia:
Somalia: Where is the outrage?
I recently returned from a UNICEF field visit that took me to northwest Somalia. What I saw there was both amazing and heartbreaking. In many ways, the children I was able to meet are doing better than their counterparts in the rest of Somalia. But in other respects, the situation there is still quite serious.
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| © US Fund for UNICEF / 2008 / Nick Ysenburg |
| UNICEF Ambassador Clay Aiken with children he met on his recent visit to Somalia. |
Spotlight on Somalia
You may have heard, UNICEF Ambassador Clay Aiken was in Somalia, meeting lots of children and learning about the catastrophic conditions under which they struggle to survive every day. Once Clay is back in the U.S., he'll be blogging right...
More news on the food crisis
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| © UNICEF/HQ99-0619/Giacomo Pirozzi | |
The growing food crisis
If you've followed the news at all in the last few weeks, you're probably aware of the developing worldwide food crisis. This has been THE story of late, and it's news we are watching very closely.
So what, exactly, is going on? Well, a whole lot, actually. First off, destructive weather events (which, some argue, are due to climate change) have caused whole seasons of crops to fail in certain parts of the world. In Bangladesh, for instance, Cyclone Sidr tore through the costal districts of the country last November and now, six months later, there's no rice harvest. In Somalia, the worst drought in decades is scorching plant life and killing livestock.
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| © UNICEF/ HQ98-0527/Giacomo Pirozzi |
[NewsNet] Somalia's forgotten crisis
Somalia’s worsening conflict, and UNICEF’s efforts to help its youngest victims, drew several headlines over the past month. The BBC, Voice of America and NPR covered UNICEF’s emergency appeal to help thousands of under-nourished Somali children. UNICEF's efforts in the conflict-ridden country have been hampered by serious funding shortfalls.
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