In the News

October 26, 2011 4:44AM

Capital unites to help more than a million people hit by Africa famine

Residents, businesses and schools across the Capital have raised more than £125,000 to help people affected by the drought and famine in East Africa.

The Edinburgh Disasters Response Committee appeal, led by local charity Mercy Corps and the city council, has helped more than a million people in Ethiopia, Somalia and Kenya who have been struggling to survive the worst drought the region has seen for six decades. Individuals, schools, businesses and other organisations across the city have made generous donations since the appeal was launched in July.

St James Church in Leith raised £1000 as part of a special harvest appeal, with parishioners also collecting change in jam jars in their homes. Another significant contribution came from Artemis, the Edinburgh-based investment company, which donated £10,000.

Erin Gray, an Edinburgh-based member of the Mercy Corps team, who visited the drought-hit region earlier this year, said: “We are hugely grateful for the help that people in Edinburgh have given. Though rain has begun to reach some of the areas affected and the aid that our teams have been giving is helping, the crisis is far from over. The drought and food crisis are so severe that it will take many months – and good rains early next year – before pastures will regrow, animals recover, food supplies replenish and families get back to any semblance of normality. The autumn rains are usually very brief, and a few days of rain simply isn’t enough to undo the damage of years without a drop.”

The Mercy Corps team has reported rain in Wajir County, Kenya, Jijiga and Gashamo, Ethiopia, and Mogadishu, Galgadud, Mudug and Nugal, Somalia. However, in some areas where they work – such as the Bari and Karkar regions of Puntland in Somalia – it is still not raining.

Ms Gray, who lives in Southhouse, said: “Unfortunately in some places rain may actually increase the problems families are facing in the drought zone. “Water that’s not well captured and stored can be contaminated and carry disease. Drinking this dirty water could lead to outbreaks of diarrhoea and other water-borne ailments. Also, those few animals that are still alive are very weak, and intense periods of rain make them cold and even weaker. When families lose their animals, they have no other way to earn money.”

The 29-year-old added: “On top of all this, we’re still seeing major increases in malnourishment, of children in particular. Our teams are working every day to provide treatment and support to those affected, but the scale of the problem is huge. People simply can’t afford to feed their families, and the drought has taken any way they have of earning enough to support themselves.”

Funds raised in the Capital have gone towards a wide range of relief activities across the drought region, including distributing water and diesel to communities with generators to pump water from below ground to more than 200,000 people in parts of Kenya hardest hit by the drought.

Cash – £20 per family – has also been distributed to more than 1800 households in greatest need, allowing them to buy basics such as rice, oil, onions, tea and milk powder.

The much-needed funds have also been used to provide mobile health clinics and malnutrition screening and treatment for thousands of children and mothers in Ethiopia.

The Mercy Corps team has also distributed hygiene essentials including buckets, towels and laundry soap to more than 2000 families living in camps in Mogadishu, Somalia, as well as water and food basics.

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October 25, 2011 1:03AM

Aid and Afghanistan's economy

Mervyn Lee, Executive Director of Mercy Corps European Headquarters, discusses aid and Afghanistan's economy with other experts in a Guardian global development podcast.

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October 24, 2011 3:22AM

The end for Gaddafi; the beginning for a new Libya

Earlier this week, I was in Tripoli, Libya. I arrived back home to Edinburgh on Thursday - just a few hours before news broke that Gaddafi, the country’s ruler for more than forty years, had died.

In many ways, I’m glad not to be in Tripoli while celebrations take place. Colleagues who are still there tell me that with so many people firing into the air to celebrate, it’s literally raining bullets.

But dangerous celebrations aside, Gaddafi’s end does mean a new beginning for Libya, and one that’s as challenging as it is exciting. Mercy Corps teams have been in Libya since the struggle to overthrow Gaddafi began, distributing food, evacuating people from the frontlines and helping wherever we could. Now, as the war ends, work can begin to rebuild and help Libyans create the new nation they’ve been striving for.

Talking to the team in Misrata - one of the towns hit hardest by the conflict - it’s clear that it’s a time of mixed emotions for local people. Our programme manager there told me the streets have been full of parades of women and children waving flags and cheering and cars honking their horns and with people hanging out of the windows shouting with joy to passers-by.

But she also spoke of how local members of her team have broken down in tears in the office as they realised that the conflict was finally over, that the moment they’d been hoping for for so long had finally arrived.

So many people in Misrata and right across Libya have lost family members and friends in the conflict. As the joy subsides, there will inevitably be deep sadness as those lost are mourned for, and the full price that has been paid for freedom is realised.

Our work helping children recover emotionally and psychologically from the effects of conflict is more important than ever now. Children have been left physically and emotionally scarred by what they’ve seen and experienced across the past few months, and by creating spaces for them to come and feel safe, to play, have fun and process what they’ve been through, we can help them move on.

The people of Libya are full of hope for their country, and during my stay I met lots of people who were passionate and excited about the role they could play in their nation’s future. Many have already started to give their free time to help, from simple community clean-ups to forming community groups and spaces.

Over the coming months we’ll be helping Libyans like these find ways to have their voices heard and find their feet in their new state. For the revolution to truly succeed, peace to last and democracy to be genuine, the voices of ordinary Libyans like these must be listened to. And that may yet prove the real challenge for Libyans.

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October 24, 2011 3:16AM

'In the provinces a woman has to stay at home. The insecurity makes her a paralysed person'

The young woman's corpse was found stuffed in a bag in the Helmand river. But the murder inquiry was hampered by one simple fact – no-one recognised her face.

She was just one of Afghanistan's invisible females, imprisoned in their homes and hidden behind the suffocating burqa. Like many village women, her birth was never recorded, she never owned an identity card and her death was equally anonymous.

The toll of civilian casualties caught up in the war in Afghanistan is well known. Yet 10 times the number of women killed by bombs and bullets set fire to themselves every year – 2,400, according to the UN. It is a reflection of their increasing anguish, despite being promised a better life a decade ago. Across Afghanistan, progress has been made. More girls are going to school, there are women in parliament, there is a Ministry of Women's Affairs and a law forbidding violence against them. But for the females of Helmand – the British area of operations – much of that brave new world has yet to filter down.

"The capital is a completely different place for a woman compared to provinces like Helmand," explained Samira Hamidi, director of the Afghan Women's Network. "In a conservative province like Helmand, they are expected to stay at home. The impact of the insecurity makes an Afghan woman a paralysed person."

Young girls are still sold off to pay a debt. Many are forced into marriage as young as 12, raped by their husbands and left pregnant at a dangerously immature age. One in 11 women do not survive childbirth. Illiterate and unable to earn a living, they are reliant on their families. If they run away, they are accused of zina (illegal sexual activity). Widows who refuse to obey their family are reduced to begging.

Captain Tabita Hansen, a Danish army officer, recalled a widow turning up at the base with her eight children, having been turfed out of her home when it was occupied by the Afghan National Police. They had compensated her with a bag of wheat.

"She was asking for help. She had literally nothing. It was just horrible. I said: 'I would do anything to help you. I would give you my right arm. But we are not the Red Cross'," explained Capt Hansen. As part of a military Female Engagement Team, Capt Hansen has been the author of one of the micro-finance projects springing up across Helmand, attempting to give women some independence. They have started sewing small cloth dolls – ladies in sparkly outfits with their own mini burqas or cross-legged holy men – in the hope of creating an income.

At the women's centre in Gereshk, Fatimea Noorzai brandished one doll with a strange familiarity – President Hamid Karzai.

"Karzai has given these promises to help Afghans, but so far he has done nothing for women's rights," explained the former headmistress, whose husband was murdered and school burned down. "It is very difficult and dangerous for us. A lot of women in here have no money for food. Either their husbands are dead or they are drug addicts," she explained, a reference to rampant addiction and domestic abuse.

At the Department of Women's Affairs building in the Helmand capital of Lashkar Gah, Saleha – a wizened, pixie-like creature with leathery skin – drew a wrinkled finger ominously across her throat as she said: "If we get out from our home, the Taliban will kill us."

Around her, her fellow village widows sat barefoot and enveloped in black, barely a mouthful of teeth between them. They have been provided with a lifeline by Mercy Corps, one of the few NGOs to brave Helmand's battle zone: chickens and lambs, so they have eggs or meat to sell at the bazaar.

David Haines, Mercy Corps Programme Manager in Afghanistan said: "Opportunities and the level of education amongst women in particular in Helmand are abysmally low, but the thirst for learning is certainly there.

"When we opened registration for one of our vocational training courses for women earlier this year we had more than 3,000 applications within 48 hours."

There are signs of progress: there are new female lawyers and teachers, two of the 25 representatives on the Lashkar Gah council are women and attempts are being made to provide healthcare, including a new maternity unit, built with the help of a British Military Stabilisation Support Team.

Out of the 6,384 police trained in Helmand, 13 are women, used largely for domestic violence cases.

"They take off their burqas and it is like a superman transformation," explained PC Mel Hooper, who has helped to train them. "They are feisty and confident. They work with the men with no issues whatsoever."

Yet only recently one of the new policewomen explained that her own brothers were trying to kill her for taking on the job.

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October 24, 2011 3:11AM

We're reaching out to children traumatised by conflict in Libya

It has already been used to help child survivors of the earthquakes in Haiti and Japan overcome their trauma. Now, charity workers from Edinburgh-based Mercy Corps are using the same psychological support programme - Comfort for Kids - to reach out to children in Libya.

The programme combines a psychological training workshop for adults with an interactive workbook that helps children tell their story of how they have been affected by the conflict in Libya.

Around 5000 children and 500 parents and teachers in Benghazi, Misrata and the Nafusa mountains will benefit from group counselling, play activities and sports before the end of the year.

Ashley Proud, programme officer for Mercy Corps, spent two weeks in Benghazi last month. She said: "Misrata was under siege for a month and a half so children were exposed to a lot of violence. Kids have all kinds of responses to traumatic situations and they're usually very resilient, but the focus on the younger group is to work with teachers and parents so that they're able to recognise actions from kids that aren't normal and know how to deal with them."

There are two psychological support programmes being used in Libya - Comfort for Kids, which is aimed at five to 11-year-olds, and Moving Forward for 11 to 18-year-olds.

Comfort for Kids includes football, volleyball and putting on plays which integrate some of the children's experiences during the conflict.

Moving Forward features similar activities, with the youngsters also getting involved in community activities.

Ms Proud, 33, said: "In Libya, the rubbish collection system is not working at the moment so Moving Forward includes sweeping the streets and taking the rubbish out of the city centre."

Ms Proud, who lives in Marchmont said: "We have also been doing emergency programmes; evacuating people who are working in Libya and who are not Libyan, and distributing food.

"We are looking at working with the new government to help them set up new government structures."

Mercy Coprs has funding for the psychological support programmes in Libya - which together cost around £170,000 - until December, and hopes to extend it into next year.

Ms Proud said: "Setting up a new government is quite a big challenge, and I think it will take a long time for that to be put in place. It's not just the removal of Gaddafi - it will be a long raod to recovery."

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October 24, 2011 2:54AM

Pakistani prime minister cancels UN trip to deal with floods

Pakistan's prime minister has cancelled a trip to attend the United Nations in New York, where he planned to rebuild frayed relations with the US, saying he needs to co-ordinate emergency aid for flood victims at home.

Yousaf Raza Gilani's decision was intended to stave off criticism made last year when Pakistan's president, Asif Ali Zardari, visited a French castle as epic floods ravaged the country. But it was also testament to the seriousness of this year's calamity.

Aid agencies are scrambling to southern Sindh province where vast swaths of farmland have been inundated, more than 300,000 people are living in rough shelters and many more are at risk of malaria, dengue fever and food poisoning. Some 230 people have already died, and torrential monsoon rains continue to pound the region, smothering villages in as much as two metres of water.

"The TV images are not as dramatic as last year but the situation is extremely serious," said aid worker Jeffrey Shannon of Mercy Corps, speaking from Sukkur. "You have fetid, stagnant water, filled with human waste and decomposing animals, which has nowhere to go. In some places it's turning black and starting to smell, and the malaria season is well under way. That's not good."

Some of the worst affected areas were still struggling to recover from last year's floods, which swamped one-fifth of the country. "The wrath of Allah has hit us twice," villager Azrah Bibi told the UN news service IRIN.

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October 24, 2011 2:49AM

City charity worker reveals full horror of East Africa drought

A worker with the Edinburgh-based Mercy Corps charity has spoken of the horror in East Africa after meeting locals in the grip of the region's worst drought for six decades.

The charity's spokeswoman, Erin Gray, who lives in Southhouse, has been in East Africa for almost a fortnight, first spending time in Ethiopia's Somali region, before moving on to north-eastern Kenya.

She said: "This emergency is immense and very, very serious, and the crisis extends far beyond the camps.

"Thousands of ordinary families have nothing and are on the brink of starvation and death from thirst, with barely any support from the outside world.

"I have been really shocked at exactly how bad conditions are.

"The land is just dust as far as you can see and people are living in huts with nothing to sleep on and hardly anything in which to clothe their children.

"There's a huge shortage of cardboard boxes because people are feeding what livestock they have left with them. It really is horrific."

Ms Gray added: "You see people sitting on dust and children with flies on their faces; it's really upsetting. It has not rained for three years, so there's just nothing.

"Mercy Corps teams here are doing what they can, trucking water to thousands, providing fuel for water pump generators and gearing up to give food vouchers and other support, but the need is so great that it can't be enough."

Ms Gray, 29, said she had come across some "heartbreaking" stories of families in Wajir County, north-eastern Kenya, who are struggling to get by.

Among them was Fatima, a little girl who, as the eldest child in her family, collects five 5-gallon jerry cans of water every day and carries them home - a journey that can take two hours to complete.

Ms Gray added: "I also met a family of 12 who'd been surviving on one 10-litre jerry can of water for every three days. There is no water point within walking distance.

"Now Mercy Corps is tanking in water, they are happy they have more to drink, but told me, 'Now we can drink, but still we worry - what will our children eat?'.

"A community of nomads who'd settled by a dusty stretch of road miles from anywhere, as all their animals had died, told me they were desperate.

"There is no water for 25km, but they and their remaining donkeys are too weak to make the journey, and they have no money to buy water or food.

"The only water they'd had all week was a tanker from Mercy Corps.

"Their children were dusty, dazed, coughing and clearly severely malnourished."

An 11-strong team from Mercy Corps, which has its European headquarters in the Capital, has already supplied water to 55,000 people in East Africa in less than a month.

Ms Gray also recently met a grandmother in Wajir County by the name of Halima, as well as her three disabled grandchildren, who, unable to walk or speak, were lying in the dust.

She said: "Halima doesn't know how old she is. She and her family were nomads, herding around 300 goats. All but five died in the drought, so a month ago they had to settle in a village because they couldn't survive. Before, they used to eat meat and drink milk, and sell goats when they needed money, but now they have nothing."

The Edinburgh Disasters Response Committee appeal, led by Mercy Corps, is raising funds at mercycorps.org.uk.

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October 24, 2011 2:44AM

Give them hope

In the past two weeks, I have travelled with Mercy Corps emergency teams across drought-stricken Ethiopia and northeastern Kenya. I’ve seen sights that will stay with me for the rest of my life.

The land here has not seen a drop of rain in three whole years. Water points have dried up, the animals people here depend on for income have died, and no-one can grow or afford to buy food. There’s nothing but red dust and the skeletons of dead livestock for miles. More than 11 million people are living at very real risk of starvation and dying of thirst, and it’s getting worse every day.

Earlier this week I met a family who’d walked for days in search of water but had to stop - still miles from the nearest source - because they were too weak to continue. When the Mercy Corps emergency water truck found them, they’d barely had a sip of water for the past four days. The children were dazed, terribly thin, dusty and very clearly on the brink.

Unfortunately, this family is just one of thousands right across the region, and their story is all too common. Children like little 8 month old Ladan, who I found sat in the dust, barely clothed and covered in flies while her mother searched for water, are struggling to survive. Those who are older, like 10 year old Fatima, are sent out to walk miles every day for water, and when they find it must struggle to drag the heavy containers back home through the heat and dust. Many are too weak to make the journey.

Water is so scarce that even wild animals are desperate – on Tuesday I saw a school’s plastic water storage tank that had been ripped open by hyenas to get at the last few drops it held.

Our teams are doing what they can, and already we’ve helped almost a million people survive. Mercy Corps emergency health clinics are treating starving children and mothers to help them recover, we’re giving out food to those who need it most as well helping farmers find ways to keep their livelihoods going. Most importantly we’re giving water to thousands who have no other way of getting it at all. But with need this great, it’s simply not enough.

I know times are hard back in the UK, but having seen the situation here first hand I know that the recession is nothing compared to what families and children in East Africa are going through.

Please, give whatever you can afford and help us save lives. Every penny goes to help those who need it most, and just £30 could feed a family here for a month. You can donate online at www.mercycorps.org.uk or by phoning 0800 066 5766. Thank you.

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October 24, 2011 2:32AM

Scottish aid worker tells of devastating famine in east Africa

A Scottish aid worker has told of the "extreme" crisis facing families in the Horn of Africa as the area struggles with its worst drought for six decades.

Erin Gray, from Mercy Corps, is helping to get water to the region, where 12 million people are facing starvation.

The UN has declared a famine in some parts of Somalia, and with the situation getting worse aid agencies are renewing their calls for donations.

There has been no rain for three years in some parts of the drought area, which stretches across Somalia and takes in parts of Kenya, Ethiopia and Djibouti.

The Mercy Corps has been trucking in thousands of litres of water and the Disasters Emergency Committee has raised £50m for the region, but the wider UN appeal is short of funds despite a high-profile campaign featuring actor Ewan McGregor.

Ms Gray, 29, said the experience of seeing families barely surviving on meagre supplies of food and water was heartbreaking.

Among the victims was a three-year-old boy, Abdi, who was too weak to stand and whose family of nine were sharing a single cup of porridge a day.

She said: "On Wednesday I met a family of ten who had been walking for miles looking for water. They had to stop, they were too weak to continue. They'd not had a sip of water for four days. It's really extreme.

"We're asking people at home to not turn away, to recognise exactly how serious the situation is, to care and understand, and most importantly to reach into their wallets."

Anyone who wants to donate can visit the Mercy Corps website or call 0800 066 5766.

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Ethiopia, Kenya, Somalia July 21, 2011 8:45AM

Famine in Horn of Africa is as Deserving of American Help as a Tsunami or Earthquake

I’ve witnessed many different kinds of disaster zones during my years working with the aid agency Mercy Corps – earthquakes, floods, tsunamis – but I’ve never seen anything as devastating as people caught in the slow, vice-like grip of a severe drought – and the hunger that follows.

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