GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – Malaria cases worldwide fell by 25 percent in the past decade and by 33 percent worldwide thanks to better prevention but threatened shortfalls in funding from governments could slow the fight against the disease, the World Health Organization (WHO) reports. Its World malaria report 2011, published 13 December, shows malaria rates falling in all parts of the world, but the disease is far from eradicated.
“In 2010, there were an estimated 216 million cases of malaria in 106 endemic countries and territories in the world. An estimated 81 percent percent of these cases and 91 percent of deaths occurred in the WHO African Region. Globally, 86 percent of the victims were children under 5 years of age.”
The disease is entirely preventable and treatable, notes the WHO, which makes the number of deaths from it, 655,000 in 2010, “disconcertingly high” even though it was 38,000 fewer than the year before.
Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, president of Liberia (photo: A. Cruz/ABr.)
Leymah Gbowee
Tawakkul Karman
GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – The Nobel Peace Prize in 2011 goes to three women, two from Liberia and one from Yemen, for their “non-violent struggle for the safety of women and for women’s rights to full participation in peace-building work”: Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, Leymah Gbowee and Tawakkul Karma. The first two are from Liberia and the third from Yemen.
“We cannot achieve democracy and lasting peace in the world unless women obtain the same opportunities as men to influence developments at all levels of society” the Norwegian Nobel Committee said in its press release about the award. It notes that UN Security Council adopted Resolution 1325 in 2000, making violence against woman an “international security issue”.
The committee, in announcing the coveted award, described the role of the three, who will share the $100,000 prize in equal parts:
“Ellen Johnson Sirleaf is Africa’s first democratically elected female president. Since her inauguration in 2006, she has contributed to securing peace in Liberia, to promoting economic and social development, and to strengthening the position of women. Leymah Gbowee mobilized and organized women across ethnic and religious dividing lines to bring an end to the long war in Liberia, and to ensure women’s participation in elections. She has since worked to enhance the influence of women in West Africa during and after war. In the most trying circumstances, both before and during the ‘Arab spring’, Tawakkul Karman has played a leading part in the struggle for women’s rights and for democracy and peace in Yemen.”
The Nobel Peace Prize has been awarded 91 times since 1901, with no award in some years. The prize has been shared by three persons on only one other occasion, in 1994, when it was given jointly to Yasser Arafat, Shimon Peres, Yitzhak Rabin.
Only 12 of the 97 Nobel Laureats in the past were women.
The prize was awarded in Oslo, Norway. The founder of the Nobel Prize, Alfred Nobel, was Swedish. In his will, he declared that the Nobel Peace Prize should be awarded by a Norwegian committee. When Alfred Nobel was alive, Norway and Sweden were united under one monarch, until 1905 when Norway became an independent kingdom.
NAIROBI – Wangari Maathai, the first African woman recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize, died after a long struggle with cancer. She was 71.
Maathai’s “compelling life story is inextricably linked with the social and political changes that so much of Africa has been through since the idea of throwing off European colonialism began to gain traction shortly after World War II,” read a BBC commentary published today.
“At first, I was overwhelmed. The Peace Prize is an honor like no other,” said Maathai after being awarded with the Nobel Peace Prize.
“I was surprised because I had no idea that anyone was listening. I quickly realized that although I had been given this great honor, the honor was not just for me.
It was also for the thousands of women who planted 30 million trees throughout Kenya as part of the Green Belt Movement. It was also for those who worked to bring back democracy to Kenya through peaceful means, which we did in 2002.”
Maathai said that after learning of the news that she had been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, she planted a tree in Nyeri, her home region,
Links to: The Green Belt Movement, BBC News
BRAZIL- A 25-year-old woman from Angola has been chosen as the 2011 “Most Beautiful Woman in the Universe.”
Leila Lopes was crowned on 12 September in Sao Paulo, Brazil.
When asked what she would change about herself if she could, Lopes who beat out 88 other competitors to win the title during the 60th anniversary of the world’s biggest beauty pageant, said she wouldn’t change a thing.
“Thank God I’m very satisfied with the way God created [...] I consider myself a woman endowed with inner beauty. I have acquired many wonderful principles from my family and I intend to follow these for the rest of my life.”
Born in Benguela province and to Cape Verdean parents, Leila is a business management student in the UK.
Leila Lopes previously said that “Angola’s poor children and the fight against AIDS is a task that the whole society should be engaged in.”
SUDAN – Human rights groups, Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, say Sudanese armed forces “have carried out deadly air raids on civilians in rebel-held areas of the Nuba Mountains that may amount to war crimes.”
“The Sudanese government is literally getting away with murder and trying to keep the outside world from finding out” said Donatella Rovera, Amnesty International’s Senior Crisis Response Advisor.
The rights groups said researchers had investigated a total of 13 air strikes in the Kauda, Delami and Kurchi areas which had killed at least 26 civilians and wounded more than 45 since mid-June.
Further details: Human Rights Watch, Yahoo News
GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – Hurricanes and tropical storms in Asia and North America, torrential rains in Africa: heavy rains and flooding are causing heavy damage and deaths. Irene drifted from a hurricane to a tropical storm by the time it hit New York, and while damage was less than feared, the storm killed 16 people in six US states over the weekend. Staten Island firefighters rowed scores to safety when flooding reached five feet, nearly two metres.
Eastern Uganda has had torrential rains that have rotted crops and poisoned some of the maize aid supplies, with cholera and hepatitis outbreaks feared. A government official says that water purification tablets and mosquito nets are urgently needed to stem poor sanitation related diseases.
Southwestern Nigeria, around the city of Ibadan, has had heavy flooding, with at least 20 people dead after a dam broke.
Fifteen provinces in Thailand have been warned to expect heavy monsoon flooding, as the country hunkers down for continuing torrential rains, with high sea waves of two to three metres expected in the Andaman Sea.
Links to other sites: allAfrica, Bangkok Post, BNO news, NY Times
Europe, with only 29 percent of world’s refugee applications, called on to do more
Update 11:30, latest Somalia figures GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – UNHCR, the Geneva-based refugee organization, barely has time to observe its own birthday, which is in itself a comment on the state of refugee affairs in the world today.The UN Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees is an international treaty created after the second world war to resolve Europe’s refugee problem. It was adopted 28 July 1951.
“This global treaty provides a definition of who qualifies as a refugee – a person with a well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion – and spells out the rights and obligations between host countries and refugees. As the legal foundation on which UNHCR’s work is based, it has enabled the agency to help millions of uprooted people to restart their lives in the last 60 years,” the group notes in an anniversary statement issued Thursday.
Libya’s million, Somalia’s 800,000
Africa has seen a surge in refugees in 2011, with the fighting linked to the demise of several dictatorships. Libya alone has created one million refugees. Somalia is the latest crisis-riddled country to create a massive outflow, with years-long fighting now couple with the worst drought in half a century that has now created a severe famine. More than 800,000 Somali refugees now live outside their country, with the vast majority in the region:
| COUNTRY OF ASYLUM | TOTAL NUMBER |
| Kenya |
351,773 |
| Ethiopia |
81,247 |
| Djibouti |
14,216 |
| Yemen |
180,341 |
| Others |
17,306 |
| Total |
644,883 |
Nearly 1.5 million more Somalis are internally displaced, mostly in the south-central region of the country. More than 100,000 of them have been displaced inside Somalia so far this year.
80% of world’s refugees flee to neighbouring developing countries
Somalia refugees were already fleeing their country in July 2009, before fighting was coupled with famine (photo ©2011 UNHCR / E Hockstein)
Somalia’s refugees now number some 450,000 in neighbouring countries Kenya, Ethiopia and Djibouti, and the numbers are growing daily, says the UNHCR. Tunisia and Egypt have “received the bulk of the exodus from Libya” says the organization, which underscores that four-fifths of the world’s refugees are in developing countries.
Europe, by contrast, received 243,000 refugee applications in 2010, 29 percent of the world’s total. Antonio Guterres, the High Commissioner for Refugees, says that “at present, a truly common system remains elusive, as significant differences persist among Member States in their reception and treatment of asylum-seekers. The 60th anniversary of the Refugee Convention, we hope, will give impetus to the establishment of a true Common European Asylum System. Europe could also do more to resettle refugees,” referring to the process through which refugees in one country, usually in the developing world, are permanently relocated to new countries, usually in the developed world.
Japan’s trade with and financial aid for Africa are likely to fall, in the wake of the massive earthquake in early March, a new report from Standard Bank in South Africa says. It notes that bilateral trade between Africa and Japan in 2010 totalled $24 billion, up 30 percent from 2009.
South Africa is most likely to be hit by a drop in trade, but Nigeria could also be affected. Sudan and Tanzania may see aid cutbacks as the Japanese economy struggles to get back on track.
Links to other sites: allAfrica, Standard Bank full report
Laurent Gbagbo continues to insist he won Côte d’Ivoire’s 28 November 2010 presidential election despite opposition from the UN and most world leaders, who have accepted the conclusion of independent election observers that his opponent, Alassane Ouattara, won the race. Gbagbo, who was the incumbent, now says he is banning overflights by the UN and France, with a spokesperson quoted by CNN as saying that “The move was made ‘to stop the transportation of the rebel forces around the country.’”
AU agrees to swearing-in ceremony for Ouattara
His ban comes as the African Union’s Peace and Security Council met in Addis Ababa, 9-10 March, to “to craft a final solution to the post-electoral debacle in the former beacon of stability in West Africa,” according to the Pretoria Institute for Security Studies (ISS) in allAfrica.
“The AU verdict is straightforward and has remained consistent with its original position that recognized Alassane Dramane Ouattara as the duly elected president of Cote d’Ivoire.”
Violence has been on the rise in the country in the past two weeks. Côte d’Ivoire fought a long civil war that came to a halt in 2007, with the 2010 presidential elections designed to ease the country into peace, but there are now fears it will slide into civil war again. UN agencies based in Geneva warn that the number of refugees fleeing the country is rising again.
The ISS, in an analysis of the situation, notes that in its statement at the end of the two-day meeting “the Pan-African organization endorsed the 28 November run-off results as proclaimed by the electoral commission and certified by the United Nations. The organization then called on the Constitutional Council to swear in Alassane Dramane Ouattara as the legitimate president of the country.
“Ouattara’s responsibility is to form a government of national unity and take initiatives to promote national reconciliation. The AU went further with two additional and equally important proposals: the initiative to appoint a High Representative to oversee the implementation of the resolutions; and a timeframe of two weeks for parties to work out its modalities.”
Links to other sites: allAfrica, CNN
The World Bank’s Food Price Watch, published 15 February ahead of the Paris G20 meeting, shows that the World Bank’s food price index rose by 15 percent between October 2010 and January 2011. It is 29 percent above its level a year earlier and is only 3 percent below its 2008 peak, with the result that 44 million people have been pushed into extreme poverty since June 2010, according to the bank. Extreme poverty is defined as living on less than US$1.25 a day.
Wheat prices have doubled and maize (corn) prices rose 73 percent between June 2010 and January 2011. The cost of rice has risen more slowly, slowing down the slide into deep poverty in some parts of the world.
The broader picture hides the multiple facets of the impact of food prices on poverty: maize crops have been good in many African countries, easing the situation there, but in Haiti, fears of cholera, which has hospitalized 150,000 people, is keeping migrant workers out of the rice fields and a ripe crop risks going unharvested.
Links to other sites: allAfrica, The Globe & Mail
Friday in the Arab world has dawned with relative quiet, albeit a likely temporary pause, as the position of several governments in many places shifts.
Egypt: widespread rumours that appear to have started with the New York Times have the US and President Hosmi Mubarak discussing his departure with a three-head government to replace him.
Tunisia: the interim government is dismantling the old Ben Ali regime by replacing all 24 governors and several top security officers.
Algeria: President Abdelaziz Bouteflika has agreed to lift the 19-year-old state of emergency that limits internal travel and is behind other restrictions.
Yemen: The largest gatherings against the government in two weeks of protests, 3 February, brought out several thousand people in what turned out to be mostly peaceful calls for the president to step down, in a country where unemployment runs at 40 percent.
One-quarter of jobs to go
The BBC’s long-discussed budget cuts have finally hit, and it means that five countries will lose World Service broadcasts entirely, while in some other countries programming will be reduced. The five are: Macedonian, Albanian and Serbian services plus English for the Caribbean and Portuguese for Africa.
Audiences are expected to fall by 30 million to 150 million. The BBC is looking to save £46 million a year.
The cuts, needed to meet the government-mandated savings of 16 percent, involve the loss of 480 jobs initially, with a total of 650 within four years, out of 2,400 jobs currently.
The BBC in September 2010 had already announced programming cuts that including dropping daily hour-long special coverage of Wimbledon tennis and the Proms music programmes.
Some of the cuts will be offset, the BBC says, by be looking for partnerships in India, Pakistan and sub-Saharan Africa. It also plans to increase online videos.
The BBC World Service began operating in 1932.
Links to other sites: China Digital Times on the impact on Chinese BBC service, Guardian, Rapid TV News, Telegraph
2010 equal to 2005 and 1998, confirms global warming trend
Extreme weather events listed but no direct link made
Australian desert (photo: ©2010 Peter Brodbeck, flickr)
(video, El Niño, La Niña) Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) - Those who thought 2010 was hotter than usual were right: it was one of the warmest years on record, sharing the top hot slot with 2005 and 1998, the WMO (World Meteorological Organization) said in Geneva 20 January.
But if you were sitting in Scandinavia or the eastern US in December 2010 you’ll be right in thinking you’ve just experienced exceptional cold, with parts of Norway and Sweden having temperatures -10C below normal.
Eastern Canada and Greenland had unusually warm weather in December, however.
Higher temperatures did not affect the world evenly, but 2010 was exceptionally warm in much of Africa, southern and western Asia, Greenland and Arctic Canada, “with many parts of these regions having their hottest years on record” since the start of what the WMO calls instrumental climate records.
Greenland's snow and ice suffered from unusually warm weather in Decembe 2010
“The 2010 data confirm the Earth’s significant long-term warming trend,” WMO Secretary-General Michel Jarraud said in a statement. “The 10 warmest years on record have all occurred since 1998.”
The WMO is a United Nations organization that provides a place where member states’ national weather and meteorological services work together.
Arctic sea-cover at all-time low in December
In Geneva you don't have to be a millionaire to pay a fortune for housing, but being wealthy eases the pain
[Video]London, England (GenevaLunch.com) - Luanda in Angola is the world’s most expensive city for expatriates, according to the latest Cost of Living Survey from Mercer. Tokyo is in second position, with Ndjamena in Chad in third place. Moscow is in fourth position followed by Geneva in fifth.
Moscow (4), Geneva (5) and Zurich (8) are the most expensive European cities, followed by Copenhagen (10).
Karachi, Pakistan, is ranked as the world’s least expensive city for expats. The survey found that Luanda is three times as costly as Karachi.
The survey covers 214 cities across five continents and measures the comparative cost of over 200 items in each location, including housing, transport, food, clothing, household goods and entertainment. It is the world’s most comprehensive cost of living survey and is used to help multinational companies and governments determine compensation allowance for their expatriate employees. New York is used as the base city for the index and all cities are compared against New York.
Currency movements are measured against the US dollar. The cost of housing—often the biggest expense for expats—plays an important part in determining where cities are ranked.
A water cleanup and education programme is getting underway in the northern state of Zamfara in Nigeria, with help from international aid agencies, after more than 163 deaths and over 353 cases of lead poisoning in recent months. Illegal mining for gold appears to have triggered the epidemic, letting lead enter the water system. Children and pregnant women are particularly at risk: 111 of the deaths have been children, most of them under age five. Nigerian authorities say there have been no new deaths reported in the past week, but that educating the population to the danger is a daunting task, with the problem spreading partly because of people working with contaminated, shared tools.
Links to other sites: AllAfrica (nan), Reuters
Title: Lecture: Africa 50 years of independence
Location: Geneva
Link out: Click here
Description: As public events are organised to commemorate 50 years of independence, authors and observers of different origins get together to discuss and debate their analyses of decolonisation.
Date: 2010-05-06
Vevey, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – Food multinational Nestlé says its profits fell by more than 40 percent in 2009 compared to the previous year largely because of a hefty profit in 2008 from the sale of Alcon eye-care company. Net profit in 2009 was CHF10.4 billion, down from CHF18b in 2008.
Sales slipped from CHF109.9b to CHF107.6b but the company says that new markets, particularly in Africa and Asia, are growing well. CEO Paul Bulcke, Nestlé chief executive struck a positive note: “With organic growth of 4.1 percent achieved in last year’s challenging environment, we were able to grow substantially faster than our industry.”
Luanda, Angola (GenevaLunch) – The match was off to a slow start and the score remained low, but in the end what mattered was the one goal that gave Egypt a 1-0 win over Ghana for the title of the Africa Cup of Nations.It is the seventh time Egypt has taken the title, and it is the first time in any major football tournament that a team has won three successive titles. The winning goal came only five minutes before the end of an otherwise unexciting match, with substitute Mohamed Nagui coming “almost out of nowhere”, reports allAfrica, which notes that it was his fifth goal of the tournament, making him the top scorer despite not starting in a single game.
Links to other sites: allAfrica photo essay, BBC photos, GhanaWeb
Microsoft founder and philanthropist Bill Gates says that Africa will begin to reap the rewards of money invested in it, in his second annual public letter linked to the world of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. “With better seeds, training, and access to markets, farmers in poor countries will be able to grow more food. The world will find clean ways to produce electricity at a lower cost, and more people will lift themselves out of poverty.” The upbeat appraisal notes that better education and health pilot programmes to reduce infant mortality in the first 30 days after birth have been shown to be effective. More widespread vaccination programmes are also playing a key role in improving overall health, says Gates. In a separate interview with CNET, where he talks about the problems encountered during the past year of the foundation’s work he says that adult male circumcision, surprisingly, turns out to be one of the hopes for reducing Aids in Africa.
Links to other sites: allAfrica, CNET, The Gates Notes, Bill Gates new web site, launched 24 January
African roads are the world's worst, for numbers of accidents (image: WHO, click on image to view larger)
Geneva / Bern, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – Roads kill 1.3 million people every year – some 3,000 people a day – and the United Nations estimates that the number will rise by 60 percent in the next few years. Half of those who die are pedetsrians, cyclists and motorcyclists. Switzerland’s transport minister, Moritz Leuenberger, told the first ministerial level world conference on road safety, which opened in Moscow Thursday 19 November, that deaths and injuries can be reduced if safety regulations are increased and enforced. He pointed out that Switzerland has reduced its road traffic deaths more than fourfold since 1971 despite a large increase in traffic during that time.
Leuenberger, who presided over one of three key discussions at the United Nations WHO conference, says that safety education campaigns are essential, but they can’t hope to compete with James Bond style advertising on the part of the automobile industry.
African elephants, from a painting by Gail Van Lingen
Gland, Switzerland and Harare, Zimbabwe (GenevaLunch) – Evidence appears to be growing that poaching is on the rise in Zimbabwe and that international gangs are working with local poachers, based on converging reports from several sources. The increased poaching affects elephants and rhinos. Several species of both are on the protected species lists published by Gland-based IUCN (International Union for the Conservation of Nature).
The government-run The Herald newspaper in Harare reported 3 November that at least 200 rhinos have been poached in the past three years, “as locals increasingly network with international syndicates in the illegal trade of the horns, the Parliamentary Portfolio Committee on Natural Resources, Environment and Tourism” was told by parks officials 2 November. Reporters were asked to leave the room when statistics were given for the current population. The Herald estimates the populations for white and black rhinos to be 500 and 300 respectively.
One-third of African babies could avoid becoming ill with malaria with a new treatment method against the disease, according to the authors of a study published 17 September in the Lancet. By giving young uninfected children doses of the traditional anti-malarial drugs on a regular, but not continuous basis, the children build up their immunity to the disease, and its resistance to the drugs decreases, the study finds.
Malaria causes almost one million deaths a year world-wide, according to Geneva-based Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, mostly among children under the age of five. Based on findings involving almost 8,000 children in four countries in Africa, the research finds that if extended to all of Africa, some six million cases of malaria could be prevented.
Between 350m and 500m people are infected every year, mostly in the world’s poorest countries. The situation is aggravated by deteriorating health systems, war and climate change. Traditional drugs have been used for almost 30 years and the disease is becoming increasingly resistant to them, reducing their effectiveness.
Africa now has one billion people, according to a report jointly released by Population Reference Bureau, a Washington-based non-profit organization, and USAid, the US government aid agency. The population growth is occurring mainly in sub-Saharan Africa where women tend to have more children than elsewhere in the world: 5.3 on average versus 2.6 worldwide. But Africa overall is currently the continent with the world’s fastest growth rate and fastest projected rate to 2050. Among the many details the report provides on the population, its notes that while Africa has one-seventh of the world’s population, it has one-quarter of the world’s refugees. AllAfrica, “2009 World Population Data Sheet” report and world population clock, data
A new report indicates that several agricultural technologies which have been used successfully in China’s rural areas are appropriate for Africa and could be used to help the continent better feed its population. The report is to be published in full in August by the African Agricultural Technology Foundation but one section, written by a group from Stellenbosch University in South Africa says, reports SciDevNet, that “the Chinese government’s investment in rural economies is now paying huge dividends. The country can feed its 1.3 billion people despite only nine percent of its land being arable, and it provides food security for 20 percent of the world’s population.“ A key difference between China and Africa, the report notes, is that the former has shared finances between rural and urban areas, while in Africa most government money goes to urban areas.
[includes AllAfrica video, world media coverage] Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) - Africa is back on the world media map for more than poverty and wars: US President Barack Obama’s speech Saturday 11 July in Accra, Ghana, sparked widespread interest, nowhere more than in Africa itself.
Jeremiah Lengoasa, World Meteorological Organization
Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – A major effort to bring useful weather information to the people who need it in Africa was highlighted at the Global Humanitarian Forum (GHF) conference which opened in Geneva, Switzerland, 23 June. Five thousand mobile weather stations are to be deployed throughout Africa in the next decade, the GHF announced 18 June.
At today’s conference, World Meteorological Organization’s (WMO) Jeremiah Lengoasa noted that traditional weather reports worked on a 300km scale of resolution, while farmers and fishermen required weather information on a 5-10km scale.
As the World Health Organization (WHO) announces phase six of the pandemic A/H1N1 swine flu 11 June, a curious fact jumps out from the map that the organization publishes each day with its statistics. Not one sub-Saharan African country has reported a single case of the new flu. The only African country with officially reported cases is Egypt, with 10 (11 June).
On the face of it, the populations in many of Africa’s countries would be prime candidates for contracting flu. They are poor, often malnourished, suffering from war and disease in many places, and crowded into teeming cities with poor provision of basic services. How have they avoided A/H1N1?
Undercover officers in the Democratic Republic of Congo discovered a baby gorilla in a suspected trafficker’s bag under a pile of clothes, according to the head of Virunga National Park. The gorilla is said to be in poor health but is responding well to treatment. Gorillas are worth up to $20,000 on the black market, according to the official. CNN
The African First Ladies Health Summit in Los Angeles, California USA brought together 15 spouses of African heads of state. The women joined together with health care policy experts and aid organizations to address issues such as: HIV/AIDS, maternal/child health, and girls’ education. The summit was jointly organized by US Doctors for Africa (USDFA) and African Synergy Against AIDS and Suffering. AllAfrica
Flooding in Bujumbura, Burundi displaced more than 8,000 people and damaged more than 1,200 homes. An excess of rain combined with a lack of drainage channels caused the flooding. Victims are currently depending on charity for food and shelter, and certain areas remain inaccessible. All Africa
