With landmark elections and an important referendum approaching in Sudan, immediate action is needed to bolster the fragile peace process. Caroline Gluck visits communities who have faced violence and displacement.
Five years after the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) was signed, Sudan is once again at a crossroads. The next 12 months will be critical, with landmark elections and a referendum where southerners will decide whether they want to remain part of a united Sudan or secede. There are fears that unless the international community acts now, Sudan could once again face serious instability. A new report from Oxfam calls for immediate action to bolster the fragile peace process.
Last year saw a major upsurge in violence in southern Sudan, with more than 2,500 people killed and over a quarter of a million displaced. In December 2009, Oxfam spoke to communities living in Western and Central Equatoria and Lakes State, who have faced violence and displacement.
1 million Pakistanis fleeing from fighting remain in overcrowded camps, depending on emergency relief to survive. Caroline Gluck talks to people in the camps and looks at Oxfam’s cash-for work programmes in the community.
Girls at Jalozai camp. Photo: Caroline Gluck/Oxfam
I met Marhaba, who introduced herself as a widow and mother of four young children, at Jalozai camp, near the Pakistani city of Peshawar.
She told me that she’d been forced to abandon her home in Upper Dir, north-western Pakistan, during intense fighting and shelling a year ago. As families fled in terror, she became separated from her husband. “I call myself a widow now,” she explained. “I have no idea if my husband is dead or alive.”
Marhaba has ended up living on a site that now houses almost a quarter of a million people: a vast city of plastic tents. Jalozai first opened three decades ago, providing shelter to Afghan refugees fleeing into Pakistan to escape fighting. But more recent arrivals have come from Pakistan’s Swat Valley and other regions in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA).
More than 3 million displaced
Last year, more than 3 million people fled their homes amid military operations in the Swat Valley and surrounding areas, in what was one of the largest and fastest displacements in Pakistan’s recent history. It triggered a major humanitarian response.
But almost a year on, more than 1 million Pakistanis remain uprooted, depending on emergency relief to survive. More than 200,000 have been freshly displaced in recent months by military offensives in tribal areas of Pakistan. While some live in overcrowded camps, the majority have received no official help. They are forced to rent or stay with friends or relatives.
Most, like Marhaba, left their homes with nothing but the clothes they were wearing. “We fled our village barefoot,” she told me, saying it took two nights of travel to reach the safety of the camp.
Daily life is still a struggle. While she has a domicile card, Marhaba doesn’t have her husband’s identity card and that can make it hard to access food and other help from the camp authorities. She often has to wait last in line, hoping for leftovers or help from her brothers-in-law and their families.
Like many, she’s heard that her village has been badly damaged, and she’s reluctant to return to an uncertain future. She’s also not entirely convinced the situation is safe for her children to return.
The government is keen for people to return home. It has recently declared several areas safe and wants families to move back. But many people I talked to in the camps were reluctant, knowing that basic services like electricity, water and hospitals have been destroyed. Opportunities to work are also scarce. And they have received no compensation for their destroyed or damaged houses and livelihoods.
A forgotten crisis
Building a new well in Sijburn village. Photo: Caroline Gluck/Oxfam
Oxfam has been working with many returnee families, running cash-for work programmes so that people can earn some money working on projects that can also benefit the community, like building wells and roads. It is also helping farmers, providing agricultural inputs, tools, cows and goats.
But Oxfam, like many other leading humanitarian agencies, is also sounding an alarm bell: funding for emergency work is drying up. Less than one-third of an emergency fund to help those affected by the crisis has been funded by international donors, and some programmes may have to close.
Pakistan is in danger of becoming a forgotten crisis. And the future remains uncertain for those like Marhaba, now living a hand-to-mouth existence, who prays for things to get better.
Displaced Pakistanis talk about life at Jalozai camp.
As the clean-up operation in Haiti continues, Caroline Gluck reports on Oxfam’s latest initiative and a miraculous birth in one of Haiti’s most devastated communities.
The neighbourhood of Baillergeau in the Carrefour Feuille suburb of Port-au-Prince is one of the most devastated communities I’ve visited in the last two weeks. Densely packed, it’s also extremely poor. Around 85% of the local population is unemployed and the area has had a persistent problem with gang violence in the past.
I’m told that more than a thousand people died in Baillergeau during the earthquake and that 99% of homes, more than 2,000 buildings, were completely destroyed.
Rebuilding in Carrefour Feuille. Photo: Caroline Gluck
Its needs are evident, now more so than ever, but today clean water is being distributed and new latrines are being installed thanks to aid agencies.
Cash-for-work
Oxfam worked in the neighbourhood before the quake, helping people to access food at a time when prices had skyrocketed. This week a new project has begun – paying community members to start cleaning up the area by removing rubbish and waste (see more in the video below):
Our cash-for-work programme means that not only do communities begin to improve their living conditions but also people have an opportunity to earn the money they so desperately need to buy food and other necessities.
Maguerite’s Story
Projects like this can provide a vital boost to the local economy and the money helps those who need it most. People like Marguerite Ulysse, who miraculously gave birth to a baby girl, Neika, just two days after the earthquake struck Port-au-Prince.
When the expectant mother went into labour, her home had collapsed, the nearest hospital had been destroyed and her family had almost nothing with them. Forced to improvise, Marguerite gave birth by night on the grounds of what had once been the local football pitch, currently serving as a camp for families who’ve lost their homes. Marguerite and her family share a small makeshift tin shack on the football field with nearly 30 others. A further thousand are also camped out in the surrounding area.
Soraya Joseph, baby Neika Joseph and mother Marguerite Ulysse. Photo: Caroline Gluck
“My daughter is a blessing from God. We lost everything. But as long as God can help us, I know it will be OK,” she said, cradling baby Neika in her arms.
Now through Oxfam, more practical local support is also available, as Marguerite continues to pray for a brighter future for her new-born baby girl.
Caroline Gluck finds out what’s being done to help the over-burdened Port-au-Prince General Hospital.
It was a relief to read the sign on the wall: no dead bodies after 3.30 pm. My watch showed it was 4pm. Thankfully, when I poked my head into the morgue at the Hôpital Universitē de l’Ētat de Haiti, also known as the General Hospital, the room was empty.
Outside, though, the ground was grimly sticky underfoot – a reminder of how many bodies had been taken to the public morgue for disposal since the earthquake that struck Haiti nearly two weeks ago.
I’d come to the public hospital, one of the largest in Haiti, to look at the work Oxfam had been doing there. My colleague, Karine Deniel, a public health specialist, focussing on preparedness and emergency response work, had been called to the hospital the week before.
She had been visibly shocked by what she saw: the hospital was packed with more than 1,000 patients, many of whom were surgery cases. There was no running water and no electricity.
Outside the morgue, she said, piles of bodies wree laid out covered with flies. There was no water close by for doctors to make plaster casts for those with broken limbs; and water she saw in a bucket used to mop the floor was black. “It smelled bad; it smelt of death”, she said.
A man walks in front of a destroyed cemetery. [Photo credit: REUTERS/Jorge Silva, courtsey www.alertnet.org]
Oxfam installed a 5,000 litre water bladder in the hospital, and also trucked water to the site so that soiled surgery clothes and bedding could be washed, the kitchen could re-open, and workers in the morgue could wash down the floors, and lessen the putrefying sickly smell of corpses.
“Oxfam has helped”, said Hencia Josena, one of the laundrywomen. “Before we had no water, no soap.”
Staff told me nothing could be washed in the hospital after the earthquake struck until Oxfam trucked in water more than a week later. ”Before Oxfam came it was a mess”, said laundry operator, Jean-Robert Deus. “In the surgery room, doctors had blood stains over their clothes.”
Many patients still remain outside the main hospital buildings, many of which were badly destroyed, being treated in tents. They’re scared to go indoors, for fear of after-shocks.
The dedication of staff working there both impressed and humbled me. From the laundry washers, to the kitchen staff, to the steady stream of volunteer medics like George Williams, from New York City, who works in the triage area.
“As bad as things are, this is the best humanitarian effort that I have ever seen”, he told me, also praising the “phenomenal” Haitian doctors he had worked with. “It’s the spirit, the humanitarian effort reaching out from all over the world.”
As the Haitian government announce that the search for survivors is over, the focus turns to relief and recovery. Oxfam is getting water and safe sanitation to 80,000 people in seven camps throughout the capital, as well as distributing first aid kits, kitchen kits and bedding. The next step is cash-for-work programmes.
Caroline Gluck reports on the current situation in Haiti.
A Christmas tree with tinsel lay forlornly on the ground with what looked like small presents around that had scattered onto the floor. Next to it, a table was laid out with plates, food and cutlery as though the family were ready to come back for dinner. I could see all this clearly as the front wall of the house had exploded and was pushed out onto the street exposing the family dining room.
It had been like this for the last four days, ever since Haiti’s capital, Port-au-Prince, was hit by a devastating earthquake, said my colleague. Whether the inhabitants of the house, surrounded by collapsed buildings and debris, would ever come back was quite another question.
A resident sits at a destroyed area in Port-au-Prince. [Photo credit: REUTERS/Jorge Silva, courtesy www.alertnet.org]
It’s estimated that two million people were affected by the massive earthquake that hit the Haitian capital last week. Thousands are thought to have been killed, many were injured and the rest of the city’s dazed residents are still reeling from the shock of it all.
Many walk the streets, some barefoot, balancing on their heads bags containing what belongings they could grab before they fled and clutching plastic containers for water. Large numbers are also wearing masks to stop inhaling the thick grey smoke that lingered long after the quake. The masks also offered some protection from the thick stench of dead bodies that lined the streets in the immediate aftermath of the quake and are still turning up wrapped in sheets or pieces of clothing.
It’s thought as many as 30,000 may have been killed in the earthquake while others are still trapped under the debris of collapsed buildings.
Some foreign search and rescue crews who had been working to recover those trapped under wrecked buildings at what was the capital’s top hotel, the Montana, told me that cries could still be heard from those buried beneath the rubble across the capital.
A general view shows the ruins of a neighbourhood after Tuesday’s earthquake in Port-au-Prince. [Photo credit: REUTERS/Kena Betancur, courtesy www.alertnet.org]
Some aid is now getting through to the city. Much of it is coming by truck from the neighbouring Dominican Republic. Some supplies have started to be flown in via the capital’s airport which was affected by the quake and has reopened for humanitarian flights after several days of closure
Oxfam is flying in emergency experts and is starting to distribute water at some of the large makeshift camps that have sprung up at parks and outdoor areas and hospitals.
The needs are enormous as most basic services just aren’t functioning. At the best of times, daily life in Haiti for the 80% or so of the population who have to live on less than two dollars a day, is a daily struggle.
The impact of the quake has made things even worse.
Haiti needs more than a quick fix of emergency aid. It will be many years before the country can really get back on its feet again and fully recover from this massive shock.
![A man walks in front of a destroyed cemetery. [Photo credit: REUTERS/Jorge Silva, courtsey www.alertnet.org]](http://www.oxfam.org.uk/generationwhy/cgi/process_comp/photos/2010/01/haiti1.jpg)
![A resident sits at a destroyed area in Port-au-Prince. [Photo credit: REUTERS/Jorge Silva, courtesy www.alertnet.org]](http://www.oxfam.org.uk/generationwhy/cgi/process_comp/photos/2010/01/.jpg)
![A general view shows the ruins of a neighbourhood after Tuesday's earthquake in Port-au-Prince. [Photo credit: REUTERS/Kena Betancur, courtesy www.alertnet.org]](http://www.oxfam.org.uk/generationwhy/cgi/process_comp/photos/2010/01/haiti.jpg)