Shelter Centre

JOHANNESBURG Friday, February 05, 2010 (IRIN) - Economic conditions in most southern African countries declined as a result of the global recession, pushing many more people towards greater food insecurity. According to a new food security update which focused on some southern African countries, food prices have risen and are still climbing in several countries.

At least 17,000 illegal migrants from the Horn of Africa leave their countries for South Africa annually, most of them transiting through Kenya, according to the U.N.'s International Organisation for Migration. Many of them pay thousands of U.S. dollars to people smugglers to reach their destination.

The majority come from Somalia where violence has killed some 21,000 civilians since the start of 2007 and uprooted a further 1.5 million people. The Horn of African nation has not known peace for two decades.

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Source: UNHCR African leaders adopt a seminal convention that will provide legal protection and assistance to millions of internally displaced people.

Source: IRIN With increasing natural disasters, including floods, storms and droughts, hitting the continent, more people in Africa are likely to be displaced, creating a challenge for governments, the UN warns.

Date: 22 Oct 2009
Source: UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights

Source: UNHCR The African Union opens a visionary summit meeting to address the festering problem of forced displacement on the African Continent.

Source: Reuters * Pact of major political importance * Implementation a concern By Katie Nguyen and Frank Nyakairu KAMPALA, Oct 22 (Reuters) - An African Union (AU) pact providing rights for millions of ...

Source: AlertNet

African countries are expected to adopt a convention granting rights to millions of ...

Date: 21 Sep 2009
Source: Food and Agriculture Organization

The Africa Obama Didn't Visit
Antiwar.com
He has already sent more aid and more weapons, about 40 tons in the last six weeks, to the barely functioning Transitional Federal Government (TFG), ...

NAIROBI Wednesday, May 20, 2009 (IRIN) - Several large African cities are at risk from rising sea levels and intense storms, experts warn.

NAIROBI Wednesday, May 06, 2009 (IRIN) - Ineffective disaster management systems, poor funding and lack of relevant data for planning risk-reduction activities have taken their toll on sub-Saharan African countries, specialists said.

International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) - Switzerland Bangui (ICRC) – The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) has just completed a distribution of food and other basic necessities to nearly 1,700 people who fled the villages of Moudou 1, Moudou 2, Kengar and Bocayanga, in Kabo sub-prefecture between Kabo and Moyenne Sido, approximately 375 kilometres north of Bangui.

MORIJA Thursday, February 19, 2009 (IRIN) - Two years ago Mopeli Mofoka, 39, left his wife and child in Maseru, Lesotho's capital, and joined the more than 50,000 men pushed by poverty and unemployment in their home country to seek work on mines in neighbouring South Africa.

DAKAR Wednesday, February 04, 2009 (IRIN) - An international financial recession threatens to worsen the “severe medical workforce crisis” faced by almost 60 African and Asian countries, according to the UN World Health Organization (WHO). The fewer health workers there are, the less chance a woman has to survive childbirth and a child his or her infancy, according to WHO.

NAIROBI Wednesday, January 28, 2009 (IRIN) - As many as 250 million people in Africa may not have enough water to meet their basic needs by 2020 because of climate change, a specialist in poverty, environment and climate change said on 27 January.

AGADEZ Tuesday, April 21, 2009 (IRIN) - Health workers in northern Niger, a popular crossing for sub-Saharan migrants travelling to northern Africa and beyond, have reported an increase in migrants hospitalised for meningitis at the state’s regional hospital.

JOHANNESBURG Monday, April 06, 2009 (IRIN) - As the Zambezi River's waters continue to rush over the broken banks in northeastern Namibia, swallowing villages, the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) has announced that it will launch an initiative to build the resilience of people affected each year by seasonal flooding.

JOHANNESBURG Thursday, March 12, 2009 (IRIN) - A repeat of the xenophobic violence that swept through South Africa - killing at least 62 people and displacing 100,000 others - will return if the government continues to ignore its origins, says a report by the International Organization for Migration (IOM).

Foreign Policy In Focus
Making Peace or Fueling War in Africa
Foreign Policy In Focus
With at least a temporary withdrawal of Ethiopian troops and the election of moderate Islamic leader Sheikh Sharif Ahmed as president of the transitional Somali government, there is at least the option of a new beginning in that country. ...