Villagers who fled fighting near Senegal&${esc.hash}39;s southern border rest with their belongings in Guinea Bissau, March 2006. REUTERS/Alberto Dabo
Tranquillity has not been a feature of life on Angola&${esc.hash}39;s border with the Democratic Republic of Congo, where fighting between DRC troops and rebels regularly spills over the border. Now flooding has disrupted life further. In six villages in Uige Province alone, heavy rain has made over 40,000 people homeless and destroyed 3,800 farm fields, according to the Evangelical Reformed Church of Angola (IERA), a partner of Church World Service. Food was already scarce in the area, with many people eating only one meal a day. Rain is now exacerbating problems - haemorrhagic fever is spreading, for example.
***
In West Africa, fighting between Senegalese separatists and Guinea Bissau&${esc.hash}39;s armed forces has caused 5,500 people to flee the city of Sao Domingos in northern Guinea Bissau. Around half have sought refuge over the border in Senegal while the rest have gone to neighbouring cities and to a makeshift camp. Particularly worrying to Jan Egeland, the Under Secretary General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator, is that the authorities are encouraging IDPs to return home despite that fact that landmines have been sown in the area. "Separated from their homes and livelihoods, those who have fled are vulnerable and risk being subjected to undue influence to return to their homes. It is unacceptable that the rights of the displaced, including their right to voluntary movement and return, be ignored," he said on Friday.
***
International aid agencies have known for some time that a new human tragedy is unfolding in the north of the Central African Republic. But while they can just about function in regions such as Darfur and eastern Congo, the level of insecurity in the northern CAR is so bad they cannot operate there at all, says BBC News Online. Now one of its correspondents has managed to visit the normally sleepy village of Bedakusan, in the border region of Chad. There she found 2,500 refugees from CAR, some of the 7,000 people believed to have fled into Chad in recent weeks. Meanwhile, 50,000 more are thought to be hiding in the forest. The refugees say that government troops have been indiscriminately killing any men and boys they find, shooting even children as young as two. CAR&${esc.hash}39;s president Francois Bozize has blamed rebels and bandits for the killings. The United Nations says the refugee situation in neighbouring Chad may become "catastrophic".
***
If you want to display your concern about the world, forget charity wristbands. They are out, say fashion gurus. The next big thing will be "dog tags", little discs of engraved metal hung round the neck in the style of military identification tags. Charities are considering selling them in order to maintain the link between fundraising and fashion that has been so successful with cheap coloured bracelets (More than eight million people in the UK, including Tony Blair, bought a white Make Poverty History band in 2005). First on the market, according to The Independent newspaper, is a Samaritans disc engraved with "24/7" to illustrate the charity&${esc.hash}39;s permanently open telephone lines. The challenge for those who follow will be how to summarise your organisation&${esc.hash}39;s multi-faceted aims in the few characters that can be squeezed onto a tag.
***
Dogs, notoriously, were all that the UN peacekeepers were allowed to shoot during the 1994 genocide in Rwanda. Their failure to protect 2,000 Tutsis who sought refuge in a secondary school in the first days of the genocide lies at the heart of the controversial film, Shooting Dogs, which premiers tonight in Kigali. Groups such as the British-based Rwandan charity Survivors Fund, and Ibuka, the main Rwandan genocide survivors&${esc.hash}39; association, say the film will cause pain and distress to those who lived through the horrors of 1994, according to The Guardian.
That&${esc.hash}39;s it for now.
Aisling Irwin AlertNet journalist
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
