As conflict in eastern DRC has worsened in the past few months, people continue to flee across the border to Uganda. Oxfam is delivering clean water and sanitation in the Rwamwanja camp, now home to upwards of 25,000 refugees.
The last time I came to Dadaab was in July 2011. Famine had just been declared in Somalia and refugees were pouring into the camp at a rate of 1500 people per day. People had walked for upwards of 30 days to reach the safety of Dadaab and were weak, malnourished and traumatised from the journey.
One year after South Sudan’s independence (9 July 2011), the combination of severe economic crisis, poor rainfall in 2011 and ongoing conflicts have combined to create the country's worst humanitarian crisis since the end of the war in 2005. Fertile and resource rich, South Sudan has huge potential to feed its own population, yet nearly half of its 9.7 million citizens literally don't have enough food to eat.
The Friends of Yemen conference taking place today offers a critical opportunity to make a difference in the lives of millions of ordinary Yemenis. Yemen is facing a severe humanitarian crisis with 10 million people - 44 percent of the population - without enough food to eat. Millions of people are unable to afford to feed their families, and are being driven deeper in poverty.
Please help us raise the visibility of this crisis today by sending messages about Yemen on twitter and sharing this blog to your social networks.
“The main problem in Somalia is gastrointestinal diseases, (like) diarrhea, parasites, giardia, and hepatitis. The public system doesn’t provide safe water,” said Mohamed Hassan, a Public Health Coordinator working in Mogadishu.
My field visit from Hyderabad to Mirpur Khas was like déjà vu. As we traveled to selected Union Councils (UCs) of Mirpur Khas (Digri, Jodo, Nau Kot and Fazil Phambiriya) I saw acres and acres of land on which cotton and sugar cane should have been growing, now inundated. Hundreds of people recently displaced because of the monsoon rains and consequential flooding running after trucks and vehicles for help; mostly women, children and elderly taking shelter under makeshift tents on the road side.
It’s often the unexpected things that cause the most impact. My five day visit to Sindh province in southern Pakistan in the first week of September proved to be no exception.
The trip had been planned for weeks; I was going to visit our local partners and projects in the province to see the progress being made in helping flood ravaged communities to recover after the catastrophic 2010 floods. What I hadn’t anticipated was that I would find myself in the midst of another flooding emergency.
In the camps where Oxfam works in Port-au-Prince, displaced people are beginning to pay for their own water
For the hundreds of thousands of earthquake survivors Oxfam has been working with in camps scattered across the Haitian capital of Port-au-Prince, now is a time of transition.
For more than a year, Oxfam has been providing free chlorinated water – up to 79 million gallons a month – to help prevent the spread of disease by ensuring people had a clean and reliable source for drinking and cooking.
I rarely stray far from my desk. Although I am working on the earthquake and cholera response in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, my assignment as finance manager keeps me in the office. If the opportunity to see my colleagues’ work arises, I take it. It really helps me to connect the stack of contract and payment documents on my desk with something physical. When John Kanani, Public Health Engineer told me that he was going to hold a meeting with masons at Corail camp, north of the city I asked if I could come along.
Before activities were stopped due to violent demonstrations, Oxfam was providing clean water, sanitation services and hygiene education to 300,000 people living in slums in the city of Cap Haitien. Elodie Martel is leading Oxfam’s cholera response program in Cap Haitien in northern Haiti, and sent in this report on Tuesday, 16 November.
