Author: pr web

The UN Humanitarian Coordinator in South Sudan on Wednesday strongly condemned the continued violence across the country, which is affecting the safety of civilians and humanitarian workers, constraining humanitarian access, and disrupting the delivery of aid and services to thousands of vulnerable people.

 

In a statement, Sara Nyanti, condemned the killing of a nurse working with an international aid organization which took place on 10 February in Agok town, leaving several civilians injured, including aid workers.

 

70,000 displaced

Reports indicate that some 70,000 people have been displaced by the fighting, and humanitarian operations, including healthcare services, have been temporarily suspended.

 

Also on the same day, an aid worker was killed by crossfire during fighting in MirMir in Unity State, said Ms. Nyanti.

 

Since 2013, 130 humanitarian workers have been killed while delivering aid and services, the vast majority of them South Sudanese nationals.

 

Following a recent fact-finding visit to the country, UN human rights experts warned of increased political violence and polarization between communities across the world’s youngest country.

 

Aid and health facilities closed

Additionally, a centre designed as a safe space for women and girls was reportedly looted, a health and nutrition facility temporarily closed, and an access route serving up to to 500,000 people in need in Unity State has been jeopardized, according to the press release issued by the UN humanitarian affairs office, OCHA.

 

A further incident occurred in Unity State, just two days later, when a clearly marked humanitarian vehicle came under fire on its way to a health facility, resulting in grave injury to three health workers.

 

Struggling to survive

According to OCHA, South Sudanese face the highest levels of food insecurity since independence in 2011 and the brutal civil conflict between rival factions began, in 2013.

 

The latest IPC analysis, indicates that between April and July last year, 7.2 million people were estimated to be at crisis phase, of which 2.4 million are at emergency level of need. Around 108,000 people in six counties, faced catastrophic levels of acute food insecurity.

 

“These appalling acts of violence against civilians and humanitarians must stop”, said Ms. Nyanti. “Every day, people in South Sudan are struggling to survive and violence has no place in a country determined to move forward towards peace.

 

“Attacks against civilians and humanitarians and their assets, along with the destruction and looting of aid supplies intended for the most vulnerable are unacceptable. They also severely impact our ability to deliver assistance”, Ms. Nyanti continued.

 

Safe environment needed

Committed to alleviate the suffering of people affected by violence, food insecurity, climate and health crisis in South Sudan, humanitarians risk their lives every day to provide much-needed aid to vulnerable people there.

 

Repeated violence and threats against humanitarians and their assets have resulted in the relocation of workers and the suspension of lifesaving activities in South Sudan.

 

According to OCHA, a total of 322 humanitarian workers were relocated in 2021 alone.

 

“We need a safe environment to operate so that we can focus on what matters most: helping people in need in South Sudan”, the UN humanitarian coordinator reiterated.

 

Expressing her condolences to the families of the aid workers who were killed in Agok and MirMir, Ms. Nyanti reminded that attacks against civilians and humanitarian assets constitute a grave violation of international humanitarian law.

 

The humanitarian community urged all parties to the conflict to respect international law and protect civilians and humanitarian personnel and assets, calling on authorities to conduct a full investigation into the deaths.

 

Source: UN News Center

A senior African Union official said Tuesday that while al-Shabab continues to be the main security threat in Somalia, the AU is also monitoring a possible resurgence of Islamic State.

Francisco Caetano Jose Madeira, special representative of the African Union Commission for Somalia and head of the AU Mission in Somalia (AMISOM), said there has been an upsurge in terrorism-related violence in Somalia, where the electoral process has been dragging out.

“The violence has mainly been perpetrated by al-Shabab, through the use of IEDs, mortar attacks, ambushes, and targeted assassinations of senior government officials, Somali security forces and civilians,” Madeira told the U.N. Security Council. “We have also been monitoring with concern what could be a resurgent Islamic State, as credible reports indicate that the group carried out two improvised explosive device attacks and detonated a vehicle-borne improvised explosive device in November 2021 and January 2022, respectively.”

Madeira said as they monitor the activities of both terror groups, a clear picture is emerging.

“Al-Shabab appears emboldened by its determination to disrupt the ongoing electoral process,” he said.

He pointed to an attack last Thursday in Mogadishu in which a convoy of Somaliland election delegates was targeted, as an example of this trend.

“With regards to a possible resurgence of the Islamic State, this must be judged within the context of Daesh’s emerging regional presence in East Africa,” he said, referring to IS by its Arabic acronym. “One that is characterized by a proliferation of funds, equipment, and transfer of terrorist tactics.”

The latest report of the U.N. secretary-general on Somalia, which came out last week, also details attacks by pro-Islamic State groups, including attacks on the Somali military and at a market. Several al-Shabab attacks are also detailed.

U.N. chief Antonio Guterres’ special representative in Somalia, James Swan, also addressed council members.

He said al-Shabab continues to pose the major security threat in the country, through the widespread use of improvised explosive devices.

“Political divisions and prolonged delays in the elections have allowed insurgent forces to make some recent gains,” he said. “The group’s modus operandi remains unchanged, with Banadir region and South West State the center of its attacks.”

He said in recent months, operations have also intensified in Hirshabelle and Galmudug states as the group has tried to exploit local political and security tensions.

Swan said Somalia’s national elections are now more than one year behind the constitutionally stipulated schedule. Upper House elections have concluded but just 130 of 275 seats in the House of the People have been filled.

Swan, as well as most Security Council members, called on the electoral bodies and political leaders to speed up and complete the elections.

 

Source: Voice of America

GENEVA — The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, or IPCC, has begun a two-week meeting to consider a report that assesses the impact of the world’s changing climate and how humans might adapt.

Hundreds of scientists meeting virtually will lay out the latest evidence on how past and future changes to the Earth’s climate system are affecting the planet.

The report under review is the second of three installments that will comprise the IPCC’s Sixth Assessment Report, which will be released later this year.

In August, the scientific body approved the first contribution of Working Group I, which dealt with the physical science basis of climate change.

The second part, currently under review, highlights the role of social justice and diverse forms of knowledge, such as indigenous and local knowledge, might play to strengthen climate change action and reduce the risks.

The chair of the IPCC, Hoesung Lee, said the report focuses on solutions and productive areas for action.

“It will be more strongly integrated, the natural, social and economic sciences. And it will provide policymakers with sound data and knowledge to help them shape policies and make decisions. The need for the Working Group II report has never been greater because the stakes have never been higher,” he said.

The United Nations-backed IPCC was established in 1988 to provide political leaders with periodic scientific assessments regarding climate change. The panel previously issued five assessment reports that spotlighted climate change as an issue of growing global importance.

The Paris Agreement on climate change calls for limiting human-induced global warming to well below 2 degrees Celsius, preferably 1.5 degrees Celsius, above pre-industrial levels. The IPCC warns that mark will be exceeded this century, unless drastic action is taken.

Secretary-General of the World Meteorological Organization, Petteri Taalas, said weather-related disasters have been increasing dramatically over the past two decades.

He said vulnerable areas in tropical latitudes, especially in Africa, Southern Asia and the Pacific are suffering the worst impacts of climate-driven disasters.

He said he often uses a sports analogy to communicate the seriousness of climate change to humanity.

“We have at the moment Winter Olympics going on in China. We have high-performing athletes. And if you give them doping, then they perform even more expertly. So, that is what we have done with the atmosphere. We have been doping the atmosphere,” said Taalas.

The contribution by Working Group III, dealing with the mitigation of climate change, will be finalized in April. The concluding synthesis of IPCC’s Sixth Assessment Report will be made in September.

 

Source: Voice of America

WASHINGTON — As few as three major criminal groups are responsible for smuggling the vast majority of elephant ivory tusks out of Africa, according to a new study.

Researchers used analysis of DNA from seized elephant tusks and evidence such as phone records, license plates, financial records and shipping documents to map trafficking operations across the continent and better understand who was behind the crimes. The study was published Monday in the journal Nature Human Behavior.

“When you have the genetic analysis and other data, you can finally begin to understand the illicit supply chain — that’s absolutely key to countering these networks,” said Louise Shelley, who researches illegal trade at George Mason University and was not involved in the research.

Conservation biologist Samuel Wasser, a study co-author, hopes the findings will help law enforcement officials target the leaders of these networks instead of low-level poachers who are easily replaced by criminal organizations.

“If you can stop the trade where the ivory is being consolidated and exported out of the country, those are really the key players,” said Wasser, who co-directs the Center for Environmental Forensic Science at the University of Washington.

Africa’s elephant population is fast dwindling. From around 5 million elephants a century ago to 1.3 million in 1979, the total number of elephants in Africa is now estimated to be around 415,000.

A 1989 ban on international commercial ivory trade hasn’t stopped the decline. Each year, an estimated 1.1 million pounds (500 metric tons) of poached elephant tusks are shipped from Africa, mostly to Asia.

For the past two decades, Wasser has fixated on a few key questions: “Where is most of the ivory being poached, who is moving it, and how many people are they?”

He works with wildlife authorities in Kenya, Singapore, Hong Kong, Malaysia and elsewhere, who contact him after they intercept ivory shipments. He flies to the countries to take small samples of tusks to analyze the DNA. He has now amassed samples from the tusks of more than 4,300 elephants trafficked out of Africa between 1995 and today.

“That’s an amazing, remarkable data set,” said Princeton University biologist Robert Pringle, who was not involved in the study. With such data, “it becomes possible to spot connections and make strong inferences,” he said.

In 2004, Wasser demonstrated that DNA from elephant tusks and dung could be used to pinpoint their home location to within a few hundred miles. In 2018, he recognized that finding identical DNA in tusks from two different ivory seizures meant they were harvested from the same animal – and likely trafficked by the same poaching network.

The new research expands that approach to identify DNA belonging to elephant parents and offspring, as well as siblings — and led to the discovery that only a very few criminal groups are behind most of the ivory trafficking in Africa.

Because female elephants remain in the same family group their whole life, and most males don’t travel too far from their family herd, the researchers hypothesize that tusks from close family members are likely to have been poached at the same time, or by the same operators.

Such genetic links can provide a blueprint for wildlife authorities seeking other evidence — cell phone records, license plates, shipping documents and financial statements — to link different ivory shipments.

Previously when an ivory shipment was intercepted, the one seizure wouldn’t allow authorities to identify the organization behind the crime, said Special Agent John Brown III of the Office of Homeland Security Investigations, who has worked on environmental crimes for 25 years.

But the scientists’ work identifying DNA links can “alert us to the connections between individual seizures,” said Brown, who is also a co-author. “This collaborative effort has definitely been the backbone of multiple multinational investigations that are still ongoing,” he said.

They identified several poaching hotspots, including regions of Tanzania, Kenya, Botswana, Gabon and Republic of Congo. Tusks are often moved to warehouses in another location to be combined with other contraband in shipping containers, then moved to ports. Current trafficking hubs exist in Kampala, Uganda; Mombasa, Kenya; and Lome, Togo.

Two suspects were recently arrested as a result of one such investigation, said Wasser.

Traffickers that smuggle ivory also often move other contraband, the researchers found. A quarter of large seizures of pangolin scales – a heavily-poached anteater-like animal – are co-mingled with ivory, for instance.

“Confronting these networks is a great example of how genetics can be used for conservation purposes,” said Brian Arnold, a Princeton University evolutionary biologist who was not involved in the research.

 

Source: Voice of America