News Briefs: July 13, 2006
Shipment bound for Sierra Leone
The latest shipment of goods sent to Freetown, Sierra Leone, started its journey from the CLWR warehouse in Winnipeg, on Wednesday. This is CLWR’s second shipment of the year to Freetown. Sierra Leone, on the coast of West Africa, is a country that had long been plagued with civil war until 2005.
Included in the shipment are a variety of kits, quilts, blankets, baby bundles, hospital items and soap valued at $65,881 CDN. Specifically, 1,400 of the new CLWR We Care kits are being shipped, plus 1,751 quilts, 781 blankets and 1,050 layettes. Some of the goods are measured by weight, and include 1,000 pounds of clothing, 231 pounds of hospital goods, and 425 pounds of soap.
CLWR collects material goods and donations from individuals, member congregations and groups committed to the relief and development work that the agency performs. For shipments such as the one bound for Sierra Leone, CLWR works closely with local Lutheran World Federation contacts for logistics and support.
CLWR News Service
2005 Humanitarian Accountability Report released
A new report out this week highlights the challenges non-governmental organizations (NGOs) face in being accountable to the people they are trying to help. Released by the Humanitarian Accountability Partnership (HAP), the report explains how NGOs have historically been more accountable to donors than to aid recipients. HAP is one of several international partnerships that are looking at ways in which agencies can be more answerable to those they help.
“I see white people come to camp, with others, to give aid. I have no idea who they are or what specific objectives they want to achieve. …I consider my interaction to be limited to receiving aid …I do not feel that we are important in the view of NGOs when it comes to interaction.” says Ibrahim Sulaiman Abbaker, of Darfur, Sudan, as quoted in the HAP report.
Some of the issues highlighted in the report include:
- Delays in getting aid to areas in urgent need.
- Lack of consultation with local people.
- Lack of project involvement on the part of local people.
- “Forgotten emergencies,” that is, emergencies that did not receive sufficient attention by aid agencies.
Part of the solution, according to The One World Trust’s Global Accountability Project (GAP), is incorporating four key elements into the actions of NGOs: transparency, participation, evaluation and complaints/redress. The HAP report also emphasizes the need for timely, efficient and predictable transfer of resources to crisis areas.
CLWR works diligently to include local people in its project work, including partnering with local aid agencies that are aware of cultural sensitivities and needs. In its long-term project work, CLWR also incorporates leadership training at the local level, gender equality education, and other initiatives that empower disenfranchised and marginalized persons.
For a copy of the HAP report, visit www.hapinternational.org.
CLWR News Service
Poll: Sudan most dangerous place for children
Sudan, Uganda and Congo are the world’s three most dangerous places for children due to wars that have brought death, disease and displacement to millions, a Reuters AlertNet poll showed on Tuesday. AlertNet, a humanitarian news website run by Reuters Foundation, asked 112 aid experts and journalists to highlight the world's most dangerous places for children.
Around half of respondents picked Sudan as one of their three choices, with many singling out the troubled western region of Darfur. Some 1.8 million children have been affected by a three-year conflict in Darfur, according to the U.N. Children’s Fund (UNICEF), where they risk being recruited to fight and are especially vulnerable to disease and malnutrition.
“Everyone has lost family, seen villages burn, seen relatives raped, been raped,” said U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees Antonio Guterres. Guterres, who selected Congo, Uganda and the Sudan/Chad border, where some 200,000 refugees from Darfur eke out an existence, pointed to the physical and psychological consequences of living in crowded, under funded camps “which are not conducive for a healthy child development.”
In southern Sudan, children also suffer the effects of low-level violence, poverty and a lack of basic services. The region is struggling to recover from a 21-year civil war with the north that killed two million people, as 600,000 refugees, forced to flee the country, trickle home.
“The most dangerous places are those conflict zones where children are actively recruited into the fighting forces, and the current worst offender...is Uganda’s Lord’s Resistance Army,” said Gareth Evans, head of the International Crisis Group think tank.
More than two million children worldwide have died as a direct result of armed conflict in the past decade, and about 20 million have been forced to flee their homes, according to UNICEF. More than a million have been orphaned or separated from their families.
Reuters AlertNet
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