Somali refugees brave fighting in Mogadishu in hope of UN food aid

Despite continued fighting in Mogadishu, thousands of refugees from Somali's drought-hit south are arriving in the capital. Above, refugees queue for food in a camp in the suburbs. Photograph: Mustafa Abdi/AFP/Getty Images

Hit by the worst drought in 60 years, tens of thousands of people are leaving the rural areas of central and southern Somalia for the war-ravaged capital, Mogadishu, where last week the UN's World Food Programme (WFP) started an airlift operation to deliver to 20 feeding centres.

Despite continuing fighting, with troops of the Transitional Federal Government (TFG) and African Union-led forces battling the Islamic militants of al-Shabaab, more and more people are coming into the city, hoping to find relief from a drought that is affecting 11 million in Somalia alone.

The WFP said it has been able to provide 85,000 meals a day in Mogadishu but with mortar shells frequently hitting civilian areas the TFG military offensive that started last week is likely to hamper the delivery of food.

The UN declared a famine in two southern regions of Somalia on 20 July, but Abdirahman Omar Osman, the Somali government's spokesman, said the emergency is even more serious. Every day about 3,000 people arrive in Ifo, Dagahaley and Hagadera, the three camps at Dadaab in Kenya, which now have more than 380,000 refugees, 100,000 of whom arrived this year.

Barack Obama has said the emergency in east Africa has not had the attention it deserved in the US. Speaking during a meeting with the presidents of Benin, Guinea, Ivory Coast and Niger on Friday, Obama asked Africa to play a bigger role in assisting the people affected by the drought.

The UN's Office for the Co-ordination of Humanitarian Affairs has predicted that famine will spread to all of southern Somalia, parts of which are controlled by al-Shabaab, which banned foreign aid in 2009.

After talks with relief organisations, al-Shabaab has allowed some food to be delivered in the past weeks but so far no regular supplies have reached the areas controlled by the Islamist militants, who are linked to al-Qaida.

Djibouti, eastern Ethiopia and northern Kenya have been badly hit as well. The scale of the crisis has even prompted long-time refugees in Dadaab to join the relief efforts. Mosques and Islamic associations in the camps are collecting food and clothes to give to the newcomers.

"We have also asked the population to give priority to the new refugees at the water points," says Mahmoud Jama Guled, who chairs a section of Ifo camp. He said that in his area one water tank is now serving more than 6,500 families.

View the original article here

Iain Duncan Smith has overlooked a key force in fighting poverty

The self-styled "quiet man", the secretary of state for Work and Pensions, Iain Duncan Smith, is proving himself a passionate man when it comes to tackling poverty in our communities.

Not everyone agrees that his "early intervention" strategy – targeted at poverty-trapped mums and toddlers – is the right thing to start with. Nor that the cash involved is anything like enough, or that his scheme will be delivered by the best agencies. Some indeed will balk at the benefits that will accrue to private investors. Others will argue the intervention that's most needed is one that's being abandoned – during pregnancy, when mothers-to-be had hitherto received support to ensure a healthy diet and the best possible start in life for their children.

People like me, following Harvard professor Robert Putnam and David Campbell's recent study of the contribution that faith communities make to societies, American Grace, are wondering why there hasn't been more dialogue with a faith sector, which reaches the most disadvantaged in every community in a way few networks can. Having said that, the secretary of state's attention is at least focused on the right area.

What's needed now however is not more thinktank, top-down work on what we should do for "the poor", but rather a sea change in our approach to how citizens engage in their own redemption.

The coalition government has begun this but in an unbalanced way. They're strong on civic fiscal responsibility. No hand-outs. No free lunches. People contributing where they are able. They know that some of their core voters – as depicted by the tabloids – loathe the so-called "sponging classes".

But they're not at the same time enhancing the non-material aspects of civic responsibility, which are actually the most important. My experience of living alongside the disadvantaged in Blackburn, Cape Town and London's Burnt Oak teaches me that what people want to contribute most is their creativity.

This month a young American, Rye Barcott, has been in London to launch his already well-received non-fiction title, It Happened on the Way to War. It tells the story of how a marine preparing to go Afghanistan and Iraq went to live for a summer in Kibera, Nairobi – Africa's largest slum community – and discovered not only how poverty fuelled terror but how its citizens already understood the politics and the economics of their situation. They just needed someone to walk with them. It didn't take much cash.

Barcott made one strategic intervention of $26 – given to a nurse to set up a vegetable-selling business – that within a year was funding a small clinic, now a leading health-care facility.

More crucially what he gave was time. Time to listen to citizens' ideas, time to help them work out for themselves how to unlock the support they needed.

At one end of the parish I serve there's a part of Burnt Oak with very high levels of deprivation, but with a creativity and energy that its citizens want to be harnessed.

They deserve the "participatory development" found in Kibera. Duncan Smith is right, though not in the way he supposes. It's not all about money. No, it's about listening and giving people the gift that costs the most: time.

View the original article here