Swans swim in London after confirmation the deadly bird flu virus had reached Britain. REUTERS/Toby Melville
Oxfam gets good marks and a verbal spanking, Uganda criticises aid agencies, and mistakes in rebuilding health care for Afghanistan and Iraq.***
Times are tough for journalists in Nepal. The government has slapped down a strict all-day curfew in an attempt to quell planned mass protests, and it isn&${esc.hash}39;t making any exemptions for journalists, who up until now have been issued curfew passes. The Financial Times says diplomats and U.N. officials have also been denied passes and the BBC says international pressure on the king is mounting.
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"Am I the only person who finds it hypocritical of Oxfamto campaign for fair trade while its Christmas cards are printed in China?" That&${esc.hash}39;s Hilary Blume of the British Charities Advisory Trust, writing in Third Sector.
"The alacrity with which the big aid agencies roll out their fundraising machines for every disaster appeal makes my stomach churn."
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But Oxfam gets top marks for media savviness. Yet again they&${esc.hash}39;ve managed to get their appeal for the Horn of Africa&${esc.hash}39;s drought into the top news agenda of a slew of publications and radio shows, getting coverage on the BBC and several British papers and national media in China, France and Spain.
Oxfam&${esc.hash}39;s appeal includes Tanzania, as well as Ethiopia, Kenya and Somalia.
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Drought in the Horn of Africa has won some of the first cash disbursements from the new Central Emergency Response Fund (CERF), set up in December in an attempt to provide immediate cash so the U.N. wouldn&${esc.hash}39;t have to wait for donors to stump up money each time disaster strikes.
Ivory Coast has had some money from it too, IRIN reports. Canvassing views from top aid agencies like Action Against Hunger and Oxfam, IRIN&${esc.hash}39;s reporter found Save the Children was worried the emergency fund might draw funds away from NGOs working on the ground. Only U.N. agencies are eligible to draw from the fund, but they can partner with NGOs.
On the whole, however, the aid workers interviewed seem optimistic about the fund, and say it&${esc.hash}39;s likely to get new donor pledges to make up its target of ${esc.dollar}500 million, even though it&${esc.hash}39;s only been given ${esc.dollar}254 million so far.
IRIN reports that two-thirds of the fund, which should be replenished annually, will be allocated in response to sudden disasters. The rest will be used for life-saving measures in neglected crises.
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Uganda&${esc.hash}39;s defence minister, the highly eloquent Amama Mbabazi, is giving out mixed messages. He usually shies away from putting northern Uganda&${esc.hash}39;s brutal conflict in front of the U.N. Security Council, but now he&${esc.hash}39;s asking the U.N. to approve and supervise Ugandan army incursions to track down Lord&${esc.hash}39;s Resistance Army rebels in neighbouring Congo.
Congolese residents near the border reportedly say Ugandan soldiers have made occasional incursions, but as far as I know, this has not been confirmed by the United Nations.
Mbabazi is very critical of an aid agency report released last month which says the weekly death toll in northern Uganda&${esc.hash}39;s squalid camps is three times higher than Iraq.
He says there&${esc.hash}39;s no doubt the humanitarian situation for displaced people in northern Uganda is unacceptable. But, he says: &${esc.hash}39;It is&${esc.hash}39; unacceptable that certain international NGOs should seek to exploit the plight of (internally displaced persons) for self-serving advocacy, political and resource-mobilisation agendas,&${esc.hash}39; he said.
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To their credit, the International Federation of Red Cross and Crescent Societies is one of the few aid agencies which has long been talking about the risk in the developing world, and it has launched an appeal for ${esc.dollar}13.4 million for work in countries where the virus is devastating farmers&${esc.hash}39; incomes. The money will also go towards preparing for when the disease reaches poultry in other countries.
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The United States could have won more hearts and mindsin Afghanistan and Iraq if it hadn&${esc.hash}39;t made such a mess of improving public health services, according to a report from the RAND Corporation, a U.S. thinktank.
It estimates about 40 percent of Baghdad&${esc.hash}39;s water and sanitation network has been damaged since the U.S. invasion, and efforts to rebuild the crumbling and aging system have moved too slowly amid security problems and looting.
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In contrast, it&${esc.hash}39;s great to see a country&${esc.hash}39;s hopes rising after a war. Liberia has a new bridge to celebrate. It might not sound like much, but a steel bridge across the River Nu means aid workers can drive into Grand Kru County &${esc.hash}39; named "Walking county" by the locals &${esc.hash}39; for the first time in 30 years.
IRIN says the area &${esc.hash}39; once famous for its cattle and pineapples &${esc.hash}39; became one of the most underdeveloped parts of the country during the 1989-2003 war which forced people to trek for hundreds of miles to get medical care.
More soon,
Ruth Gidley
AlertNet journalist
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