Day: August 10, 2022

GENERAL OUTLOOK

ETHIOPIA

In Ethiopia, nearly 10 million people, including 4.4 million children, are in urgent need of humanitarian assistance in drought-impacted areas. (UNICEF, Jul 19 2022)

Four consecutive failed rainy seasons have brought on severe drought in Ethiopia’s lowland regions of Afar, Oromia, the Southern Nations Nationalities, Peoples’ (SNNPR) and Somali regions. Water wells have dried up and millions of livestock have died, resulting in mass displacement. Malnutrition rates are increasing at an alarming rate due to the drought. Across the four drought-impacted regions, an estimated 600,000 children will require treatment for severe acute malnutrition by the end of the year. In the Somali region, there has been a 43% increase in severely acute malnutrition admissions (SAM) for under 5 children in May 2022 compared to May 2021.

KENYA

Drought conditions have persisted in ASAL counties (Arid & Semi-Arid Lands) following multiple failed successive rain seasons. This has led to conditions of severe to extreme vegetation deficit coupled with challenges of access to water. This has led to increased trekking distances to water points and grazing sites for livestock, leading to worsening livestock body condition scores and mortalities in some pockets of Garissa, Wajir, Marsabit, Isiolo, and Mandera.

The trend in the distance trekked by livestock in search of water sources from grazing areas, compared to the previous month, has continued to worsen across most counties.

74% of counties were above the Long Term Average with most counties being on a declining trend.

SOMALIA

The drought emergency has worsened. 7.7 million people, or about half of the population, require humanitarian or protection aid. At least 7 million people have been affected by the drought, with 918,000 displaced in search of water, food, and pasture, including members of minority groups. Available reports point to a reasonable chance that famine may occur in 17 districts if crop and livestock production fails, food prices continue to climb, and humanitarian aid is not sustained to reach the most vulnerable populations.

The number of districts under Operational Priority Area (OPA) 1 has increased from 26 to 34 due to a spike in the number of people facing catastrophic levels of food insecurity (IPC Phase 5). There is need for urgent humanitarian assistance to be scaled up to avert catastrophic hunger & starvation.

Source: Action Against Hunger USA

The National Prosecuting Authority in South Africa says at least 14 men out of dozens arrested face rape charges in an attack on a group of women who were making a music video earlier this month.

A court on Wednesday charged seven men in connection with the gang rape, prosecuting authority spokeswoman Phindi Louw Mjonondwane told VOA, adding that seven more would face rape charges tomorrow.

They are all part of the 80 men initially arrested in a major police sweep following the incident, she confirmed.

The women had been making a music video two weeks earlier in the mining area of Krugersdorp outside Johannesburg when they were attacked by a group of masked, armed men.

Mjonondwane said all of those charged with rape were foreign nationals, including from Lesotho and Zimbabwe.

“Seven accused appeared at the Krugersdorp Magistrate’s Court facing charges ranging from multiple counts of rape, sexual assault, contravention of the immigration act, as well as robbery with aggravating circumstances,” she said.

Many of those arrested are believed to work as illegal miners, known here as zama-zamas. The incident has sparked anger in local communities, as well as xenophobia, with mobs attacking the zama-zamas.

Police had said they would use DNA kits to try to identify the alleged attackers from among those rounded up, as well as a police lineup. However, Mjonondwane would not comment on how those charged had been identified.

Despite having a very high rate of rape and gender-based violence, South Africa — which celebrated Women’s Day on Tuesday — was shocked by the brutal attack.

Police recorded more than 36,000 rapes in fiscal 2020-21.

Source: Voice of Americas

At the end of a dusty track in southwest England where the River Thames usually first emerges from the ground, there is scant sign of any moisture at all.

The driest start to a year in decades has shifted the source of this emblematic English river several miles downstream, leaving scorched earth and the occasional puddle where water once flowed.

It is a striking illustration of the parched conditions afflicting swaths of England, which have prompted a growing number of regional water restrictions and fears that an official drought will soon be declared.

“We haven’t found the Thames yet,” said Michael Sanders, on holiday with his wife in the area known as the official source of the river.

The couple were planning to walk some of the Thames Path that stretches along its entire winding course — once they can find the waterway’s new starting point.

“It’s completely dried up,” the IT worker from northern England told AFP in the village of Ashton Keynes, a few miles from the source, noting it had been replaced by “the odd puddle, the odd muddy bit.”

“So hopefully downstream we’ll find the Thames, but at the moment it’s gone,” he said.

The river begins from an underground spring in this picturesque region at the foot of the Cotswolds hills, not far from Wales, before meandering for 350 kilometers (215 miles) to the North Sea.

Along the way it helps supply fresh water to millions of homes, including those in the British capital, London.

‘So arid’

Following months of minimal rainfall, including the driest July in England since the 1930s, the country’s famously lush countryside has gone from shades of green to yellow.

“It was like walking across the savanna in Africa, because it’s so arid and so dry,” David Gibbons said.

The 60-year-old retiree has been walking the length of the Thames Path in the opposite direction from Sanders — from estuary to source — with his wife and friends.

As the group members reached their destination, in a rural area of narrow country roads dotted with stone-built houses, Gibbons recounted the range of wildlife they had encountered on their journey.

The Thames, which becomes a navigable, strategic and industrial artery as it passes through London and its immediate surroundings, is typically far more idyllic upstream and a haven for bird watching and boating.

However, as they neared the source, things changed.

“In this last two or three days, [there’s been] no wildlife, because there’s no water,” Gibbons said. “I think water stopped probably 10 miles away from here; there’s one or two puddles,” he added from picturesque Ashton Keynes.

Andrew Jack, a 47-year-old local government worker who lives about 15 kilometers (9 miles) from the village, said locals had “never seen it as dry and as empty as this.”

The river usually runs alongside its main street, which boasts pretty houses with flower-filled gardens and several small stone footbridges over the water.

But the riverbed there is parched and cracked, the only visible wildlife were some wasps hovering over it, recalling images of some southern African rivers during the subcontinent’s dry season.

‘Something’s changed’

There will be no imminent respite for England’s thirsty landscape.

The country’s meteorological office on Tuesday issued an amber heat warning for much of southern England and eastern Wales between Thursday and Sunday, with temperatures set to reach the mid-30s Celsius.

It comes weeks after a previous heat wave broke Britain’s all-time temperature record and breached 40 degrees Celsius (104 degrees Fahrenheit) for the first time.

Climate scientists overwhelmingly agree that carbon emissions from humans burning fossil fuels are heating the planet, raising the risk and severity of droughts, heat waves and other such extreme weather events.

Local authorities are reiterating calls to save water, and Thames Water, which supplies 15 million people in London and elsewhere, is the latest provider to announce forthcoming restrictions.

But Gibbons was sanguine.

“Having lived in England all my life, we’ve had droughts before,” he said. “I think that it will go green again by the autumn.”

Jack was more pessimistic as he walked with his family along the dried-up riverbed, where a wooden measuring stick gauges nonexistent water levels.

“I think there are lots of English people who think, ‘Great, let’s have some European weather,’ ” he said. “But we actually shouldn’t, and it means that something’s changed and something has gone wrong.

“I’m concerned that it’s only going to get worse and that the U.K. is going to have to adapt to hotter weather as we have more and more summers like this.”

Source: Voice of Americas