DABAFAYED, Ethiopia: Down a sandy track past a desiccated animal carcass lies a cluster of half-built huts that Ethiopia’s government and aid agencies hope will blunt the worsening toll of repeated droughts.
The soon-to-be village of Dabafayed is intended as a new, permanent home for once-nomadic herders made destitute by the country’s back-to-back droughts.
The lifestyle change is drastic but necessary, officials say.
“We can’t talk about a normal state of affairs anymore when drought has become almost perennial,” said Achim Steiner, head of the UN Development Programme (UNDP), during a recent visit to the resettlement site.
If predictions prove correct, Ethiopia will soon face its fourth consecutive year of drought, with the lack of rain hitting pastoralist herders worst.
Robust responses by Ethiopia’s government and foreign aid agencies, and the absence of war, have prevented a repeat of the disastrous famines of the 1970s and 1980s that killed hundreds of thousands.
Ethiopian officials argue the policy of relocating rural communities to areas closer to roads, clinics and schools — known as “villagization” — drives development, but rights groups say it is forced displacement designed to better control the population.
With competing humanitarian emergency demands the UN and aid agencies are seeking strategies to enable drought-prone areas, such as the southeastern Somali region where Dabafayed is located, to weather the months when water cannot be found.
Though they have trekked this arid region with their livestock for generations, some ethnic Somali herders say they are ready to settle down rather than face what seems like drought without end.
“You can count on the government, and the NGOs are there giving us assistance,” said Halima Hussein, a resident of a displaced persons camp for herders such as herself whose animals have died of thirst.
“It will be at least better than staying in the bush and herding animals.”
Somali herders can lose everything during drought: from their wealth in the form of animals, to their portable homes, which need pack animals to carry them.
Halima experienced all of this. “We lost our animals. Where will I go back to?” she asked, waiting in line with dozens of other women to draw water from a borehole.
Ethiopia is drought-prone but the Somali region has been badly affected in recent years, forcing aid agencies to last year seek $1.4 billion (1.1 billion euros) to respond to the water shortage.
Donors pledged all but a fifth of the money asked, but Ethiopia’s humanitarian situation worsened when fighting intensified last September between the Somalis and Ethiopia’s largest ethnic group, the Oromos, killing hundreds and leaving a million homeless.
The UN believes it will need $895 million to respond to this year’s drought and Ethiopia’s parliament this month chipped in five billion birr ($182.7 million, 148.9 euros) for disaster response, state media reported.
These emergency funds pay for food, water and fodder that keeps people and animals alive, but officials say it ultimately does little to alleviate the privation of drought-hit nomads.
“The climate is changing, there’s more people in this region, and new ways of making a livelihood are going to be needed if we’re going to find a way through this problem,” said Mark Lowcock, the UN’s top aid official.
The Somali region is desperately poor, lacking the economic dynamism of other parts of Ethiopia. The UN says it will assist resettled herders to become farmers.
More than four million people are estimated to live across Ethiopia’s Somali region.
Aid workers are trying not only to get emergency food to hungry people but to come up with ways to prevent them from starving in the first place.
Beyond just cushioning people from future droughts, the UN’s Ethiopia head Ahunna Eziakonwa-Onochie said the strategy is to offer services such as schools to nomadic communities that were otherwise hard to reach.
“How do we turn a crisis into an opportunity?” Eziakonwa-Onochie said.
“Now that they are forced, actually by the circumstances... into sedentary kinds of lives, we start to see that opportunity to provide education in a more consistent way for the kids.”
The nomadic herder lifestyle is common across Africa and has long defied government attempts to change it.
But Ethiopia spends more time and money exerting control over its people than most, and officials say they believe they can reshape Somali herders.
“If we give pastoralists water and they don’t have to go 50, 100 kilometers to find it, is that not good?” said Anwar Ali, humanitarian adviser to the Somali regional state.
“We’re not changing the nomadic lifestyle, we are just improving it.”
Halima is among those eligible to live permanently in Dabafayed. Despite knowing no other life but the nomad’s before the drought took it all away, she’s ready for the change.
“I’m not going anywhere, I don’t have any place to go,” she said. “This will be my permanent arrangement.”
Worsening Ethiopian drought threatens to end nomadic lifestyle
Worsening Ethiopian drought threatens to end nomadic lifestyle
UK travel disrupted as Storm Bert fallout continues
- There were more 200 flood warnings and flood alerts in place across England and Wales
There were more 200 flood warnings and flood alerts in place across England and Wales, while trains from London to the southwest were canceled and rail services in central England were severely disrupted.
“Do not attempt to travel on any route today,” Great Western Railway, whose trains connect London to Bristol and Cornwall, said on X.
Amongst those killed during the storm include a dog walker who in North Wales, and a man who died when a tree hit his car in southern England.
Major roads in Northamptonshire and Bristol were closed, while fallen trees on rail lines cut off services between London and Stansted Airport, Britain’s fourth busiest hub.
The disruption comes after Storm Bert hit Britain late on Friday, bringing snow, rain and strong winds.
The Met Office kept a warning for strong winds in place for northern Scotland on Monday and said the storm would clear from that part of the country early on Tuesday.
DHL cargo plane crashes into a house in Lithuania, killing at least 1
- The Lithuanian airport authority identified the aircraft as a “DHL cargo plane
VILNIUS: A DHL cargo plane crashed into a house Monday morning near the Lithuanian capital, killing at least one person.
Lithuanian’s public broadcaster LRT, quoting an emergency official, said two people had been taken to the hospital after the crash, and one was later pronounced dead. LRT said the aircraft smashed into a two-story home near the airport.
The Lithuanian airport authority identified the aircraft as a “DHL cargo plane flying from Leipzig, Germany, to Vilnius Airport.”
It posted on the social platform X that city services including a fire truck were on site.
DHL Group, headquartered in Bonn, Germany, did not immediately return a call for comment.
The DHL aircraft was operated by Swiftair, a Madrid-based contractor. The carrier could not be immediately reached.
The Boeing 737 was 31 years old, which is considered by experts to be an older airframe, though that’s not unusual for cargo flights.
UN chief slams land mine threat days after US decision to supply Ukraine
- The outgoing US administration is aiming to give Ukraine an upper hand before President-elect Donald Trump enters office
- Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky called the mines ‘very important’ to halting Russian attacks
SIEM REAP, Cambodia: The UN Secretary-General on Monday slammed the “renewed threat” of anti-personnel land mines, days after the United States said it would supply the weapons to Ukrainian forces battling Russia’s invasion.
In remarks sent to a conference in Cambodia to review progress on the Anti-Personnel Mine Ban Treaty, UN chief Antonio Guterres hailed the work of clearing and destroying land mines across the world.
“But the threat remains. This includes the renewed use of anti-personnel mines by some of the Parties to the Convention, as well as some Parties falling behind in their commitments to destroy these weapons,” he said in the statement.
He called on the 164 signatories — which include Ukraine but not Russia or the United States — to “meet their obligations and ensure compliance to the Convention.”
Guterres’ remarks were delivered by UN Under-Secretary General Armida Salsiah Alisjahbana.
AFP has contacted her office and a spokesman for Guterres to ask if the remarks were directed specifically at Ukraine.
The Ukrainian team at the conference did not respond to AFP questions about the US land mine supplies.
Washington’s announcement last week that it would send anti-personnel land mines to Kyiv was immediately criticized by human rights campaigners.
The outgoing US administration is aiming to give Ukraine an upper hand before President-elect Donald Trump enters office.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky called the mines “very important” to halting Russian attacks.
The conference is being held in Cambodia, which was left one of the most heavily bombed and mined countries in the world after three decades of civil war from the 1960s.
Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Manet told the conference his country still needs to clear over 1,600 square kilometers (618 square miles) of contaminated land that is affecting the lives of more than one million people.
Around 20,000 people have been killed in Cambodia by land mines and unexploded ordnance since 1979, and twice as many have been injured.
The International Campaign to Ban Landmines (ICBL) said on Wednesday that at least 5,757 people had been casualties of land mines and explosive remnants of war across the world last year, 1,983 of whom were killed.
Civilians made up 84 percent of all recorded casualties, it said.
Philippine VP Duterte labelled ‘mastermind’ of assassination plot
- Security agencies at the weekend said they would step up their protocols
MANILA: The Philippines justice department on Monday labelled Vice President Sara Duterte the “mastermind” of a plot to assassinate the country’s president, giving her five days to respond to a subpoena.
Duterte is being asked to explain herself in the wake of a blistering weekend press conference where she said she had instructed that President Ferdinand Marcos be killed should an alleged plot to kill her succeed.
“The government is taking action to protect our duly elected president,” Justice Undersecretary Jesse Andres said at a Monday press briefing.
“The premeditated plot to assassinate the president as declared by the self-confessed mastermind will now face legal consequences.”
Speaking to reporters an hour later, Duterte said she planned to respond to the subpoena.
“I will gladly answer the questions they want to ask, but they must answer my questions as well,” she said.
“We’ll just talk there when I get the subpoena.”
In his first public comments on the matter, Marcos earlier in the day vowed to “fight back” in the face of a threat he called “disturbing.”
The Marcos-Duterte alliance that swept to power in 2022 has collapsed spectacularly in the lead-up to next year’s mid-term elections, with both sides trading allegations of drug addiction.
Duterte, who is facing potential impeachment hearings, told reporters early Saturday that she herself was the subject of an assassination plot and had instructed that Marcos be killed should it succeed.
In the expletive-laced press conference, Duterte also singled out first lady Liza Araneta-Marcos and presidential cousin Martin Romualdez as potential targets.
“I said, if I die, don’t stop until you have killed them,” she claimed to have told a security team member regarding the trio.
Hours later, the presidential palace said it was treating the comments as an “active threat.”
“That sort of criminal attempt must not go unchallenged,” Marcos said Monday. “As a democratic country, we need to uphold the law.”
“The vice president is not immune from suit. She can be the subject of any criminal or administrative case,” Andres told reporters, adding the subpoena was in the process of being served.
He added that a manhunt was underway for the “assassin” allegedly engaged by Duterte.
Duterte, daughter of former president Rodrigo Duterte, was Marcos’ running mate in the 2022 presidential election that saw their ticket win in a landslide.
She remains his constitutional successor should he be unable to finish his six-year term.
But she is currently facing an investigation in the House of Representatives, led by Romualdez.
Both Romualdez and Duterte are widely expected to run for president in 2028.
Duterte’s Saturday press briefing came shortly after House officials threatened to transfer her chief of staff Zuleika Lopez — being held for contempt — from the lower chamber’s detention center to a correctional facility.
Lopez has been detained since Wednesday, when she was cited for allegedly interfering in a probe into Duterte’s finances.
Duterte stepped down from her cabinet post of education secretary in June as relations between the two families reached breaking point.
Months earlier, her father had accused Marcos of being a “drug addict,” with the president the next day claiming his predecessor’s health was failing due to long-term use of the powerful opioid fentanyl.
Neither have provided any evidence for their allegations.
In October, Duterte said she felt “used” after teaming with Marcos for the 2022 poll.
An average of 140 women and girls were killed by a partner or relative per day in 2023, the UN says
- The agencies reported approximately 51,100 women and girls were killed in 2023
- The rates were highest in Africa and the Americas and lowest in Asia and Europe
UNITED NATIONS: The deadliest place for women is at home and 140 women and girls on average were killed by an intimate partner or family member per day last year, two UN agencies reported Monday.
Globally, an intimate partner or family member was responsible for the deaths of approximately 51,100 women and girls during 2023, an increase from an estimated 48,800 victims in 2022, UN Women and the UN Office of Drugs and Crime said.
The report released on the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women said the increase was largely the result of more data being available from countries and not more killings.
But the two agencies stressed that “Women and girls everywhere continue to be affected by this extreme form of gender-based violence and no region is excluded.” And they said, “the home is the most dangerous place for women and girls.”
The highest number of intimate partner and family killings was in Africa – with an estimated 21,700 victims in 2023, the report said. Africa also had the highest number of victims relative to the size of its population — 2.9 victims per 100,000 people.
There were also high rates last year in the Americas with 1.6 female victims per 100,000 and in Oceania with 1.5 per 100,000, it said. Rates were significantly lower in Asia at 0.8 victims per 100,000 and Europe at 0.6 per 100,000.
According to the report, the intentional killing of women in the private sphere in Europe and the Americas is largely by intimate partners.
By contrast, the vast majority of male homicides take place outside homes and families, it said.
“Even though men and boys account for the vast majority of homicide victims, women and girls continue to be disproportionately affected by lethal violence in the private sphere,” the report said.
“An estimated 80 percent of all homicide victims in 2023 were men while 20 percent were women, but lethal violence within the family takes a much higher toll on women than men, with almost 60 percent of all women who were intentionally killed in 2023 being victims of intimate partner/family member homicide,” it said.
The report said that despite efforts to prevent the killing of women and girls by countries, their killings “remain at alarmingly high levels.”
“They are often the culmination of repeated episodes of gender-based violence, which means they are preventable through timely and effective interventions,” the two agencies said.
