A boy plays with snow near ruins in the Chechen capital of Grozny
Today&${esc.hash}39;s blog starts the week quoting one U.N. official who says drought today could lead to fighting tomorrow, and another who gives a clue to the world&${esc.hash}39;s most neglected forgotten conflict.Scientists and social commentators are increasingly warning that wars over scarce and precious basic resources like water will become commonplace in the fairly near future.
More and more aid agencies are ringing the alarm bells as loudly as they can about food shortages in East Africa, and now the U.N. Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM) says drought in the Horn of Africa has brought the risk of conflict over scarce resources.
It&${esc.hash}39;s an issue for women because it&${esc.hash}39;s usually they who hold families and communities together, so UNIFEM&${esc.hash}39;s Nyaradzai Gumbonzvanda argues that&${esc.hash}39;s an extra reason to take women&${esc.hash}39;s needs very seriously indeed.
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We seem to be quoting humanitarian aid tsar Jan Egeland every other day at the moment, but AlertNet&${esc.hash}39;s Tim Large interviewed him at the start of the Dubai International Humanitarian Aid and Development Conference.
"Sudan and Congo are the two worst wars of our generation,"Egeland said. "The accumulated death toll is several times that of Rwanda&${esc.hash}39;s genocide for each."
Egeland called for the spotlight to be shone on an even more neglected war. How many people know there&${esc.hash}39;s a crisis in Central African Republic ? In case you need reminding, it&${esc.hash}39;s next to Chad. Egeland says more than 100 refugees are crossing the border every day, on the run from armed groups who storm villages, loot homes and terrorise civilians.
An AlertNet crisis briefing on CAR is coming soon.
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Grozny, capital of the Russian republic of Chechnya, is one of the most heavily bombed cities in the world. It&${esc.hash}39;s littered with landmines from two brutal Russian crackdowns on a separatist insurgency &${esc.hash}39; both the insurgency and the crackdown are still going on &${esc.hash}39; and now the prime minister wants to clear the streets of rubbish and burnt-out cars.
At the start of his Keep Chechnya Clean campaign, Britain&${esc.hash}39;s Guardian newspaper reported pro-Moscow Prime Minister Raman Kadyrov as saying: "Cleanness must become a cult respected by all Chechens."
Grozny was almost entirely destroyed by Russian bombing in 1999. Tower blocks and factories are still in ruins, and tens of thousands of people live without water or basic services.
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Imagine seeing a cloud of yellow, poisonous dust heading for your house as you&${esc.hash}39;ve only just hung your washing out to dry.
That was the reality in South Korea over the weekend, where around 165 people are killed every year by clouds of sand mixed with toxic dust, which pass over Chinese industrial regions before hitting the Korean peninsular and Japan every spring.
After the worst dust storm since 2002, meteorologists say more are on the way, and desertification is making the problem worse.
So better head inside fast if you see that yellow cloud coming&${esc.hash}39;
Ruth Gidley AlertNet journalist
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