From: Jim Rosenfield <jnr@igc.apc.org>
Newsgroups: soc.culture.african
Date: 07 Nov 92 15:22 PST
Subject: Re: News stories on hunger
Nf-ID: #R:cdp:1471700228:cdp:1471700229:000:52254
Nf-From: cdp.UUCP!jnr    Nov  7 15:22:00 1992


/* Written  3:20 pm  Nov  7, 1992 by jnr in igc:hunger.general */
RTw  11/05 1854  WASHINGTON GIVES $100 MILLION TO U.N. CHILDREN'S FUND

UNITED NATIONS, Nov 5, Reuter - The United States on Thursday donated
$100 million to the U.N. Children's Fund, the largest single cash
donation since UNICEF was established 46 years ago. 

A statement by UNICEF said Edward Perkins, the U.S. ambassador to the
United Nations, handed over a check for $100 million to James Grant, the
American executive director of UNICEF. 

Washington last year contributed $85 million to UNICEF. Congress on
October 6 approved the increased donation as part of the Foreign Aid
Appropriations Bill, which President George Bush signed a day later. 

"This pledge is an indication of UNICEF's vitally important role in
children survival strategies," Perkins said. 

In response, Grant said, "This superb contribution from the government
and the people of the United States represents the gift of life to so
many needy children around the world." 

<<>>
APn 1652  Somalia

Copyright, 1992. The Associated Press. All rights reserved.  

By G.G. LABELLE 

MOGADISHU, Somalia (AP) -- Foreign relief workers trying to feed
Somalia's hungry are growing more worried about their own safety as the
political situation becomes increasingly scrambled. 

Officials of some international charities say friendly Somalis have
warned them their agencies could become targets. 

Violent events occur daily. 

On Thursday, gunmen made off with a white United Nations van in
Mogadishu. 

The day before, two Somali workers were shot at the port when they
refused demands to hand over two sacks of grain headed for the starving.


Foreign workers have been caught in cross fire between rival militias
and roving gangs of bandits. 

"Very sadly, it doesn't help the dying people if we get killed in the
process of trying to feed them," said Rhodri Wynn-Pope, team leader in
Somalia for CARE International. 

The U.N. military commander in Somalia, Pakistani Brig. Gen. Imtiaz
Shaheen, this week urged relief agencies to take extra precautions. 

Ian MacLeod, spokesman for the U.N. Children's Fund, said all aid
workers were warned "to avoid unnecessary movement and not to travel at
night." 

The United Nations and private agencies have about 200 people working in
Somalia and hope to more than double that number before Jan. 1. Their
mission is to get food, medicine and other aid to 2 million people at
risk of starvation. Up to 300,000 already are dead in one of the world's
worst famines. 

Somalia's chief warlord, Gen. Mohamed Farrah Aidid, opposes plans to
deploy U.N. troops to insure food deliveries and criticizes U.N.
agencies. 

His radio station carried a statement last week that charity groups were
interfering in Somalia's internal affairs. That complaint came after
U.N. and private agency officials met with an Aidid foe, Mohamed Said
Hersi, known as Gen. Morgan, about food deliveries into an area
controlled by Morgan. 

Wynn-Pope said the agencies must make every effort to deliver food to
all the starving, no matter the area -- "We are humanitarian aid groups
... We work wherever we can." 

Wynn-Pope said Aidid may have realized his criticism went too far. Aidid
called a meeting with U.N. and charity agencies Friday, presumably to
reassure them about their safety. 

But MacLeod said attacks could come from those not directly under
Aidid's control, such as free-lance gunmen who could take license from
the general's complaints. 

Aidid seems to be moving toward peace with his major enemy in Mogadishu,
Ali Mahdi Mohamed, who controls the northern half of the city. 

The two men were allied in the United SomalI Congress in the war that
ousted President Mohammed Siad Barre nearly two years ago. But they
split and battled for Mogadishu after Ali Mahdi's backers proclaimed him
president. 

Wynn-Pope said attempts at peace could actually unsettle the security
situation, since some militiamen may see an agreement as threatening
their theft and selling of relief supplies. 

Even more worrisome, he said, is that fighting between Aidid and Morgan
forces seems to be intensifying. An Aidid-Morgan war would endanger
delivery of food and medicine to Somalis in the southern interior,
Wynn-Pope said. 

<<>>
UPn  10/28     World Bank provides logistics for Somalia's relief

UNITED NATIONS (UPI) -- The World Bank announced Wednesday a $20 million
grant to the United Nations for logistical support for the distribution
of food and medicine in Somalia where some 1.5 million people are in
danger of starving to death. 

The grant also will cover United Nations' humanitarian operations in
Kenya, Djibouti and Ethiopia. In Somalia the crisis was compounded by
the civil war and local bandits that looted warehouses used by
international organizations in the food distribution campaign. 

Francis Colaco, director of the World Bank's East African department,
said the World Food Program will receive $10 million, the United Nations
Children's Fund $7 million and the World Health Organization $3 million
to help in the food distribution and provide health care services. 

World Bank President Lewis Preston said the prolonged civil war in
Somalia has brought "unprecedented destitution, human misery and
starvation." 

The International Committee of the Red Cross estimated that 1.5 million
Somalians are threatened by the severe famine, which already has killed
one in every six children in the Eastern African country since fighting
began in early 1991 between the two factions that overthrew dictator
Mohammad Siad Barre. 

The warring factions and local clans had prevented on several occasions
international organizations to distribute food in the worst hit areas,
forcing the Security Council to decide to send peacekeeping troops to
guard the warehouses and provide security for international relief
workers. 

The council has allowed more than 4,000 military troops and observers
from a half a dozen countries to participate in the humanitarian
operations, but their deployment has been slow. The presence of foreign
military troops has also irritated some non-governmental organizations
besides provoking the objections from the warring factions. 

U.N. spokesman Joe Sills said four military battalions will be deployed
to five unspecified areas in Somalia. Small units of those troops had
been doing reconnaissance work in the country in anticipation of the
deployment of the forces from Canada, Egypt, Nigeria and Belgium. 

Pakistan has been sending some of the 500 troops who are to guard food
storages in the capital of Mogadishu. 

The U.N. humanitarian operation in Somalia also was headed to an
internal crisis caused by the resignation of the operation's chief,
Algerian Ambassador Mohammed Sahnoun. Sahnoun submitted his resignation
on Monday to Secretary-General Boutros Ghali, who rejected it,
apparently in a dispute over operational procedures. The diplomat had
been critical of the slow response by international organizations to
relieve the famine in that country. 



Copyright 1992 United Press International  <<>>
WP   10/28     Farm Project Seeks to Break Famine Cycle 

By Jennifer Parmelee 

Special to The Washington Post 

GODE, Ethiopia - Not many miles but a world away from the hunger and
disease of the teeming refugee camps here lie thousands of acres of
fertile land where newly franchised farmers will soon be cultivating
corn, bananas, papaya, lemons and dreams of a better life. 

Green shoots are pushing through the rich loam of the new plots, while
nearby fruit trees offer abundant shade and livestock graze on the
stalks of a recent maize harvest. Everywhere, there is the life-giving
pulse of water pumped in from the deep-flowing Wabi Shebele River. 

The lush swath of land is the 7,400-acre South Gode State Farm, which
Ethiopia's new liberalizing government has begun parceling out to
destitute local farmers - many drawn from the famine-wracked Ogaden
region's shifting refugee population. 

The farm stands out as a glimpse of Eden in the hellish wasteland around
the refugee camps, and within two years more than half of it will be in
private hands as part of a government project to ease the Ogaden's
dependence on massive shipments of relief food. 

"Food aid isn't ultimately the answer to the problems of these people
who have lost everything, including their way of life," said Girma
Melesse, manager of the sprawling South Gode Farm. "If they are able to
farm and settle down, then there will be hope. . . . When they have
their own land, they will have incentive." 

Mohammed Mandid Ahmet, an articulate young man who runs the new farmers'
cooperative at South Gode and has worked extensively with the Ogaden's
nomads and refugees, feels the region must adjust to the reality that
persistent drought and seemingly intractable civil conflict have
irrevocably gutted its beloved nomadic tradition. "How can they go back
to their previous life when there is nothing left out there," he said.
"At least, in the coming years, they can try a new way of life - whether
it is farming or tailoring or handicrafts. This seems like the answer
for now." 

The idea for the South Gode project was first put forth by a group of
local farmers, many recently returned after more than a decade of
war-induced exile in Somalia. Although the Ogaden way of life is
principally nomadic, most of the farm's vast irrigation system was dug
by about 2,000 Somali-speaking local families before the 1977
Ethiopia-Somalia war forced them to flee across the border. 

Many of those families returned in 1991 after the outbreak of civil war
in Somalia and began to petition the government for return of the land
they had worked on. Last spring, the idea was taken up by John "If
(Ogaden refugees) are able to farm and settle down, then there will be
hope. When they have their own land, they will have incentive." 

   - South Gode Manager Girma Melesse   James, manager of a profitable
agricultural cooperative in Britain and a U.N. Development Program
consultant who helped push the project through the tangle of U.N. and
Ethiopian bureaucracy. 

Four hundred 2 1/2-acre plots are now being plowed and seeded with maize
before being handed over to local families selected by lottery. By 1994,
1,600 such plots will be distributed, while Ahmet's farm cooperative
will train beginning farmers and organize a revolving credit system that
will help them purchase everything from seeds to diesel fuel and spare
parts for their water pumps. 

The ultimate aim of the project is self-reliance, a goal James and
others involved with the project acknowledge will require considerable
determination for the farmers to overcome obstacles ranging from the
scarcity of fuel to the security problems that plague the region. 

"It will be a learning experience for all involved, and its feasibility
depends on many factors," James said in a recent interview. "But the
local people are very enthusiastic about the project and, I think,
realize that they will have to turn more and more to settled agriculture
if they are to find a way out of their crisis." 

He noted that two complementary projects would help ensure the success
of the farm intitiative: a World Bank-supported plan to tap natural gas
in the Gode area and a massive, gravity-flow irrigation project 35 miles
to the west that could irrigate more than 80,000 acres - including South
Gode Farm - without fuel. 

Although the chronic crisis situation in the Ogaden has its unique
characteristics, it is also a microcosm of the problems faced by the
entire Horn of Africa. Drought and conflict have stalked the Horn for
decades, exacting a human toll that has left an estimated 25 million
people in need of emergency aid. But at at the same time, in a display
of hospitality unequaled in sheer numbers, each of the three countries
has opened borders to hundreds of thousands of refugees. 

The Horn countries share another common deficiency. Billions of dollars
in international food aid and other emergency relief have poured in, but
sustainable development has proven an elusive dream. This has been
particularly evident in Ethiopia which, because its natural abundance of
rivers, lakes and groundwater have not been developed, has become a
world metaphor for drought. 

In the Ogaden, the Ethiopian government estimates that close to half its
estimated 870,000 inhabitants are in need of emergency aid. Among the
most destitute are nomads whose herds were wiped out by a third straight
year of drought; hundreds of thousands of people who fled the fighting
in Somalia; and the local families who stretched their resources to take
them in. 

Successive regimes in Addis Ababa have neglected the Ogaden more than
any other region. In an area about twice the size of New York state,
there is not a single paved road. Schooling ends at the ninth grade.
Towns lucky enough to be wired for electricity are rationed to a few
hours a day. And only under the year-old government of President Meles
Zenawi did the Ogaden get its first direct link with the outside world -
a satellite phone in Gode. 

The new South Gode Farm project, though small in scale, seeks to break
that pattern. 

Copyright 1992 The Washington Post  


<<>>

RTw  10/29     MALARIA THREATENS AFRICA WITH THE DEADLIEST MOSQUITOES

 By Nick Louth 

AMSTERDAM, Oct 30, Reuter - From the game parks of South Africa to the
southern fringes of the Sahara desert, Africa is a continent at war with
malaria. 

Casualties are high. Each year the deadly tropical parasite kills
800,000 Africans, mainly the poor, the young, the pregnant and those far
from medical help. 

Another 80 million suffer malaria's shivering, sweating fever but
survive. 

The continent has an armoury of drugs to treat the victims, insecticides
to attack the mosquitoes, plus education and hope. But very little
money. 

Malaria's arsenal is more reliable, and growing: poverty, war,
environmental damage and resistance to drugs. 

But its most feared weapons are two ferocious species of mosquito which
have resisted all attempts to wipe them out. 

Anopheles Gambiae and Anopheles Funestus may not look much different
from other mosquitoes, but they are the perfect carriers for the deadly
malarial parasite. 

"Those two are the most effective vectors of malaria known anywhere,"
said Alan Schapira, medical officer at the World Health Organisation.
"In all of sub-saharan Africa they are completely dominant." 

They carry the most lethal strain of malaria, Plasmodium Falciparum,
responsible for almost all African deaths. 

Malaria is caused by a tiny parasite, carried from person to person
through the bites of adult female mosquitoes of the family Anopheles.
The parasites multiply in the bloodstream, causing fever and destroying
red blood cells. 

Decades of research have not produced a vaccine. War, poverty,
ecological damage and population displacement have disrupted efforts to
educate and organise against the disease. 

The task is more urgent now that some malaria strains are showing
resistance to the drugs widely available to treat it. 

At a two day conference in Amsterdam this week the WHO formally gave up
a strategy of eradicating the mosquito carrier. 

This had been pursued for 50 years, but it was obvious from the late
1960s it was failing, particularly in Africa. 

"There is an unfair accusation that things cannot get done in Africa
because of disorganisation," Schapira said. 

"But even the toughest colonial-type administration, given the African
ecology, would not get far against these species." 

The usual method to fight the mosquitoes is to spray homes with
insecticide.

"But Gambiae is such a rascal because it may rest in a lot of places
outside. I can't see how you could devise a method that would get rid of
Gambiae," he said. 

In just one night sleeping unprotected in rural areas, a person may be
bitten 100 times by infected mosquitoes. 

Other eradication methods attempted include larvae-eating fish, used in
the pools where the mosquitoes breed. 

But malarial mosquitoes can breed in a few drops of water in an old
tyre, a tin can or a cow's footprint. They readily take to urban areas.
In India there is even a type which breeds in rooftop air conditioning
tanks. 

The WHO's new strategy is to contain the disease. It will focus on
earlier diagnosis, fast treatment and earlier detection of epidemics. 

"The access to treatment facilities, no matter how primitive, is the
baseline of the global strategy," said Peter de Raadt, head of the WHO's
tropical disease control division. 

The aim is to cut the death rate in most affected countries by 80 per
cent during the last five years of the century. 

Malaria is responsible for 20-30 per cent of all deaths of children
under five in Africa. Those who survive childhood attacks develop
resistance to the symptoms by adulthood even though they still carry the
parasite. 

However, epidemics can occur among new populations with no previous
exposure to the disease or resistance to its effects. Death rates are
high, and victims succumb rapidly. 

"When a malaria epidemic gets going it grows really fast. Thousands of
people get affected, you have whole families quite sick with fever at
the same time," Schapira said. 

An epidemic in Ethiopia in 1958 is thought to have caused three million
cases and killed 150,000 people. In the worst recent example 25,000
people died in an epidemic in 1988 in the highlands of Madagascar. 

Epidemics can occur after abnormally heavy rains give the mosquito
population new breeding pools. In Burundi a change to rice cultivation,
with the use of paddy fields, had the same effect. 

There are still hopes from both high and low technology that malaria's
march can be reversed. 

Drugs derived from the Chinese sweet wormwood plant have proved the
fastest relief for malaria symptoms, even with the most drug-resistant
strains. 

Injectable forms could be on sale within a couple of years, scientists
say. 

Further in the future, genetic manipulation may produce mosquitoes
unable to carry the parasite but strong enough to displace carriers from
their ecological niche. 

Promoting the use of mosquito nets, especially those impregnated with
insecticides, is already producing good results. 

And in some circumstances even the deadly Anopheles Gambiae mosquito can
be wiped out. 

"Gambiae was inadvertently carried from west Africa to north east Brazil
by steamer in about 1930, and initially caused terrible havoc," Schapira
said. 

But it was less well adapted to Brazil, and it was possible to map its
breeding sites, spray affected areas and kill the larvae. 

"By the 1940s it was completely extinct (in Brazil)," he said. 

REUTER NL PJM VB  <<>>

APn  10/31     Migrant Farmworkers

Copyright, 1992. The Associated Press. All rights reserved.  

By JENNIFER DIXON 

AP Farm Writer 

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The abuse of migrant farmworkers continues today, six
years after Congress passed immigration reforms that were supposed to
lead to higher wages and better working conditions on the farm, a
government commission has found. 

According to a draft report by the bipartisan panel, illegal immigrants
are still crossing the Southwest border in large numbers and many are
finding jobs in agriculture. 

Growers as a result have a surplus of workers and little incentive to
make life better for their hired harvesters, said the draft findings
from the Commission on Agricultural Workers. 

Congress created the panel as part of the Immigration Reform and Control
Act of 1986 to assess the law's impact on the farm labor market. The
commission includes members appointed by the Reagan administration and
congressional leaders. 

The Associated Press obtained a draft copy of the recommendations the
commission will consider at a meeting this week in Puerto Rico, from a
source close to the panel. 

"This is going to be the document that they're going to be asked to make
final decisions on," said the source, who spoke on condition of
anonymity. 

If the draft recommendations are adopted, the report is sure to be
controversial with farmers who have long enjoyed cheap labor and special
exemptions from wage and labor laws. 

Farm labor activists say the findings reflect the harsh realities facing
as many as 4 million migrant and seasonal farmworkers. Agriculture is
one of the most hazardous occupations in the country, and migrant
workers are among the poorest workers. 

Many live in squalid housing and follow the harvests in overcrowded,
unsafe vans and trucks. Their children are sometimes at their side in
the fields because there is no day care, and child labor laws are less
stringent for agriculture than other industries. 

Health experts at a recent hearing on Capitol Hill testified that
migrant workers also face a "harvest of illness, injury and death" from
pesticide poisonings, parasitic infections, machinery accidents,
tuberculosis and AIDS. 

The commission said Congress and federal policy makers should reconsider
agriculture's special exemptions from labor laws and regulations. It
said workers should get overtime pay, workers compensation insurance and
unemployment insurance, and have the right to organize and bargain
collectively. 

The Immigration Reform and Control Act was supposed to improve
conditions on the farm by reducing the availability of vulnerable,
illegal workers. 

The law included penalties against employers who knowingly hire an
illegal immigrant, but the report said those sanctions have been
"largely ineffective" because of widely available counterfeit documents.


The law also allowed more than 1 million undocumented farmworkers to
seek amnesty. Many of them have, in turn, drawn friends and family
members to the United States, adding to the number of illegal
immigrants. 

"The resulting labor surplus has reduced any incentive employers may
have had to change their personnel practices in ways that would lead to
improvements in the lives of seasonal farmworkers," the report said.
"The declines in real wages and annual earnings for farmworkers, which
had begun almost a decade ago, have continued." 

The panel said illegal immigration must be curtailed and recommended
tougher border controls and enforcement of employer sanctions. 

"A stable and reliable work force is critical to the agricultural
industry's health and provides clear benefits for both workers and
employers," the report said. "One prerequisite to achieving such
stability is the curtailment of the employment of unauthorized workers
in agriculture." 

The panel also recommended aggressive regulation of farm labor
contractors (crew leaders) and the development of a fraud-proof work
authorization document for all persons legally authorized to work in the
United States. 

Farm labor housing must also improved, while the children of migrant
farmworkers should have the same opportunities for education, health and
child care as other workers' children. 

The commission is dominated by big agricultural interests, and a
farmworker advocate hopes their presence gives the recommendations more
sway on Capitol Hill. 

"Because of who is making these recommendations, there is some hope they
will get serious consideration," said Michael Hancock of the Farmworker
Justice Fund. "By and large the findings are sound, and reflect the
harsh realities facing farmworkers currently and historically." 

<<>>
RTw  10/31     SOMALI WARLORD WARNS OF BLOODSHED IF U.N. DEPLOYS

 MOGADISHU, Oct 31, Reuter - Somalia's most powerful warlord has warned
of unprecedented bloodshed if the United Nations tried to some 4,000
troops to guard famine relief activiities. 

"This dangerous plot will only lead to fierce confrontation which will
in turn result in unprecedent(ed) bloodshed," faction chief Mohamed
Farah Aideed in a statement passed to Reuters on Saturday. 

The statement came in response to the resignation of former U.N. special
representative Mohamed Sahnoun, who quit on Thursday after he was
rebuked by Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali for publicly saying
the U.N. acted too late in Somalia's famine. 

"We believe it (Sahnoun's resignation) has much to do with sinister
plans being plotted by the Secretary-General of the U.N., (especially)
his transparent desire to invade Somalia with foreign troops," Aideed
said. 

Aideed, one of several warlords who have carved Somalia into clan
fiefdoms since rebels ousted dictator Mohamed Siad Barre in January
1991, opposes deployment of any more than 500 Pakistani troops he agreed
to in August. 

Political analysts said Sahnoun had got all the warlords to agree to
full troop deployments except Aideed, who had effectively slowed the
U.N. relief operation to a trickle. The famine is still killing 1,000
people daily, officials estimate. 

REUTER AHH MR  <<>>

RTw  10/30     AID WORKERS TRY TO RESUME HELPING SOMALI TOWN

 By Aidan Hartley 

BARDERE, Somalia, Oct 31, Reuter - Aid workers struggled on Friday to
resume operations in Bardere, where up to 300 people are dying of famine
every day, after the Somali town was cut off for weeks by clan fighting.


"The immediate aim is to lower the death rate, which is 300 a day," said
Bob Allen an official with the international agency CARE. The onset of
rains this week threatened to double that figure, he added. 

Young men strong enough to wield sticks held back crowds of
skeleton-thin peasants who fought and wailed for rice as the first
steaming vats were carried into a camp for 8,000 displaced people on the
outskirts of Bardere. 

"A lot are so weak they can't even get to the feeding centres," said
Allen. 

One woman died curled up on the ground while waiting for food. Within
minutes her corpse was covered by flies. 

Relief staff said the scenes of mass death were the worst they had seen
in Somalia, where 300,000 people may have died in a famine that started
after clan rebels ousted dictator Mohamed Siad Barre in January 1991 and
the country spiralled into chaos. 

"I never saw a rate of death like this. One hundred fifty-two died
during last night. In Ethiopia it was never the same," said Benoit
Miribel of the French charity Action Internationale Contre la Faim
(AICF). 

Relief efforts were disrupted by clan fighting this month and aid
workers were forced to leave three times. 

Fighting between the warring factions has intensified in the south,
where most of the two million people of the peaceful Rahanwein
agricultural clans are at immediate risk of dying. 

A handful of aid workers went into Bardere on Friday to help distribute
16 tonnes of wheat and the high-nutrition famine food unimix airlifted
into the town, 330 km (200 miles) southwest of the capital Mogadishu. 

All United Nations and CARE staff then flew to Nairobi in the afternoon.
Members of the AICF and the International Red Cross remained but the
relief operation could collapse again at the first hint of unrest. 

Officials said they feared for security in the town, which was captured
from Mogadishu-based warlord Mohamed Farah Aideed on October 13 by the
clan forces of Ahmed Warsame and Mohamed Said Hersi Morgan. 

Aideed has vowed to retake Bardere but Warsame and Morgan, Siad Barre's
son-in-law, said they had repulsed a counter-attack not far from the
town on Thursday. 

"He was beaten badly," said Morgan. 

The two leaders told reporters they were advancing on the Aideed-held
major port of Kismayu, 425 km (265 miles) south of the capital. 

U.N. and other relief officials also met the bush warlords for the first
time but said they were sceptical that the town was completely safe from
another attack. 

Allen and other staff said they could not move into the bush to reach
240,000 famine victims surrounding Bardere until they were sure it was
safe. With the arrival of food in the town, thousands are expected to
swell the current population of 16,000. 

Relief workers want units from the 3,500 U.N. troops, called for by the
U.N. Security Council but not yet deployed, to be stationed in crisis
spots such as Bardere. 

But they said Aideed was the main obstacle to this. He has rejected
calls for more than the 500 Pakistani troops which arrived last month.
His two rivals in Bardere said they would accept the troops. 

REUTER PAR MS SM  <<>>
APn       1755  BRF--Somalia-Sophia Loren

Copyright, 1992. The Associated Press. All rights reserved.  

GENEVA (AP) -- Sophia Loren has agreed to visit Somalia and Kenya next
month to focus world attention on the refugee crisis in the Horn of
Africa, the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees said Friday. 

High Commissioner Sadako Ogata issued a statement saying that she would
formally appoint Ms. Loren as a goodwill ambassador on Nov. 18. 

"Sophia Loren has expressed great concern for the situation in the Horn
of Africa," Mrs. Ogata said. Tribal warfare, anarchy and famine in the
region have created one of the worst humanitarian disasters in recent
memory. 

About one million Somalis have fled the chaos in their homeland for
refuge in Ethiopia, Kenya and Yemen, the agency said, adding that
millions still in Somalia risk starvation. 

Ms. Loren will travel in Kenya and Somalia for six days starting Nov.
21, and will visit hospitals, feeding centers and an orphanage,
according to the statement. 

<<>>
APn  10/30     Baby Growth

Copyright, 1992. The Associated Press. All rights reserved.  

By PAUL RECER 

AP Science Writer 

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Babies grow in spurts, sometimes up to a half-inch in
24 hours, and will often turn fretful and irritable just before it
happens, according to a study published Friday in the journal Science. 

Researchers report that measurements of 31 infants during their first 21
months of life show that babies may have no growth for a number of days
and then suddenly sprout up to a half-inch in length within a short
period. 

Dr. Michelle Lampl of the University of Pennsylvania, co-author of the
study, said that the growth spurt is almost always preceded by a period
in which the baby is restless and seemingly unhappy. 

"Just before they grew, they would become very cranky, very fussy and
very, very hungry," said Lampl. "It's the same behavior as when children
are ill. This was reported by the parents of all of the children." 

She said mothers and grandmothers have been saying for generations that
babies grow in spurts, but the claim was thought to be just folk wisdom
and not scientifically correct. 

"The mothers and grandmothers were right," said Lampl. "I think it shows
that they have been excellent observers of children." 

In conducting the study, the researchers measured three babies daily, 10
on a weekly basis and 18 on a semiweekly basis. The study included 19
males and 12 females. 

Lampl said they found the babies would go for up to 63 days with no
growth and then suddenly add length within a very short time. She said
such a growth process requires a furious rate of cell growth within only
hours. 

One of the babies measured daily added a half-inch in one 24-hour
period, while an infant that was measured weekly added almost a full
inch between measurements. 

Lampl said she was amazed by the findings. 

"I expected fast growth," said Lampl, "but not a half-inch within 24
hours." 

Other co-authors of the study were J.D. Veldhuis and M.L. Johnson of the
University of Virginia Health Sciences Center. 

Science, which published the study, is the journal of the American
Association for the Advancement of Science. 

<<>>
UPn  10/30     U.N. names new chief for relief operations in Somalia

UNITED NATIONS (UPI) -- Secretary-General Boutros Ghali on Friday
appointed a former Iraqi ambassador to the United Nations to head the
humanitarian relief campaign in Somalia. 

Ismat Kittani will replace Algegian Ambassador Mohammed Sahnoun who
resigned after strongly criticizing the international community for
failing to bring an effective assistance program to Somalia. Thousands
of people have died of famine because of the civil war there. 

Kittani was Iraq's permanent representative at the United Nations from
1985 to 1989 and served as a special adviser to Ghali until Friday. 

Ghali's spokesman, Joe Sills, said Kittani will take up his post in
Somalia next week. Sills said Ghali informed the Security Council
Thursday of the new appointment and expressed "regrets" that Sahnoun had
resigned. 

Sills said the "main problem" in the relief campaign in Somalia has been
the slow deployment of troops to help in the food distribution and guard
warehouses against looting. 

He said Ghali has expressed frustration that only a few military units
have arrived in Somalia even though the Security Council has authorized
the sending of more than 4,000 military troops to the country, including
500 Pakistanis to provide security at the Mogadishu port. 



 Copyright 1992 United Press International  <<>>

WP U.N. Asks U.S. for Help in Somali Relief Effort

By Trevor Rowe 

Special to The Washington Post 

UNITED NATIONS, Oct. 29 - The United Nations has asked the United States
to provide air and sea transport to ferry equipment and peace-keeping
troops to war- and famine-torn Somalia in an effort to speed lagging
humanitarian relief efforts there. 

Officials here say the plan is to move equipment into the country ahead
of peace-keeping forces from Canada, Belgium, Egypt and Nigeria, thus
shortening the time required for an eventual deployment of the troops.
The United Nations will not dispatch an additional 3,000 peace-keepers
to Somalia until all of the country's warlords and clans give their
approval to the deployment. 

A senior U.N. official said today that "we expect that in a few weeks
we'll see a considerable shift" in the refusal of warlords to give the
go-ahead to the deployment. His remarks were aimed at Gen. Mohamed Farah
Aideed, one of Somalia's most powerful warlords. 

"Aideed is the problem, but his position is weakening. He's losing
ground to other warlords," the official said. "The leaders in the other
regions are going along" with the deployment. 

At present, warlords in only two of five zones in Somalia have agreed to
the U.N. deployment. In Mogadishu, 500 Pakistani troops are said to have
now begun patrols, weeks after their arrival in the capital, officials
here said. In Somalia's northeast, a Canadian battalion is expected to
take up positions by the first week of December. 

"The question is do we wait for an agreement as every day 1,000 Somalis
die, or do we go ahead and start moving equipment forward while working
on an agreement?" a Western official asked. 

The new U.N. plan comes amid growing concern that unless international
relief efforts intensify, an estimated 250,000 Somalis could die by the
end of the year and an additional 4.5 million could face starvation.
Concern intensified this week when Mohamed Sahnoun, the top U.N.
official in charge of relief efforts in Somalia, resigned after he
criticized the U.N. effort and then was reprimanded by Secretary General
Boutros Boutros-Ghali. 

So far the United States has not responded to the U.N. request that it
provide military aircraft and pay for chartering ships to carry heavy
equipment such as armored personnel carriers to Somalia. 

The Security Council has authorized the dispatch of a total of 3,500
peace-keepers to Somalia. Even with agreement of the warlords, U.N.
officials predict conditions there will be dangerous and that all five
battalions of peace-keepers will be heavily armed. Copyright 1992 The
Washington Post  <<>>

APn 0027  Somalia-US Airlift

Copyright, 1992. The Associated Press. All rights reserved.  

By EDITH M. LEDERER 

Associated Press Writer 

MOMBASA, Kenya (AP) -- When U.S. Air Force Capt. Casey Seabright started
flying food to famine-stricken Somalia in early September, he never saw
children. Now they're playing in villages near the airfields. 

"It's pretty heartwarming -- it makes you feel like you're doing
something," said the 30-year-old navigator from St. Paul, Minn., who is
on his second tour with the U.S. military airlift operating from the
Kenyan port of Mombasa. 

Marine Cpl. Thomas A. Burr, one of few American servicemen to visit
Mogadishu, said he was overwhelmed by the devastation in Somalia, where
drought and civil war have led to anarchy. 

"I almost wanted to cry," said the 22-year-old satellite communications
operator from Alexandria, La. "It took a long time for the world to
answer. Now that we're here, maybe it will be over." 

Since late August, the U.S. military has ferried food to famine-stricken
towns in Somalia where at least 100,000 people have died and two million
more are threatened with starvation. 

So far, 14 C-130 Hercules aircraft have delivered more than 10,560 tons
of food, sometimes confronted by gunmen on the tarmac. On Sept. 18, a
plane was shot up in Belet Huen, and last week anti-tank mines on the
runway halted flights for two days. 

The United States has contributed about five percent of the nearly
200,000 tons of aid that has reached Somalia since January, and less
than 20 percent of the 55,000 tons the United Nations estimates is
needed every month. 

Some relief agencies have criticized the Americans for being overly
cautious and delivering less than they could. 

But airlift commander Marine Brig. Gen. Frank Libutti said the food
delivered by the United States adds up to over 35 million meals --
enough to feed Washington, D.C. for two weeks. 

"We've made a difference in terms of tackling hunger," said the
47-year-old from Huntington, New York. 

Yet the airlift cannot meet all of Somalia's food needs. Ultimately, the
ports that have been plagued by security problems must be reopened. 

Some relief experts estimate that half the food is looted by the
freelance gunmen and clan-based militias who have become the de facto
rulers of the country. But agencies receiving food from the American
effort report that 90 percent is getting to the needy, according to Army
Lt. Col. Robert Donnelly, spokesman for the airlift. 

More than 600 service personnel are part of Joint Task Force Provide
Relief. The Marines and soldiers came with tents and sleeping bags, but
the entire task force is being housed in luxurious beach-front hotels
along the Indian Ocean. 

"We still don't believe it," said Army Spec. Craig Hysell, 25, of
Dallas, Texas, a military policemen and Gulf War veteran who was
cultivating his tan by the pool at the Nyali Beach Hotel. "It's got sort
of a dream quality to it. .... Peacetime with no tensions is great." 
<<>>
RTw  11/01     U.N. OPERATIONS FACE UNCERTAIN FUTURE IN SOMALIA

 By Jonathan Clayton 

MOGADISHU, Nov 1, Reuter - Three months after the world's attention
finally focused on Somalia, U.N. operations in the Horn of Africa
country face an uncertain future -- caught between feuding warlords and
the world body's own bureaucracy. 

After a week which saw the U.N.'s special envoy dismissed for
criticising his employers and growing conflict in the famine-devastated
south, aid workers say they fear relief work risks running aground in
the quagmire of Somali politics. 

"Last week was disastrous," said Mike McDonagh of the Irish charity
Concern. "The country has been going downhill. Tension is increasing
just like it was last year before the civil war." 

The resignation of Mohamed Sahnoun, the U.N.'s respected special
representative for Somalia, after he was reprimanded for publicly saying
the U.N. acted too late to save thousands of Somalis from starvation,
has dismayed many relief groups. 

Since his appointment by Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali last
April, Sahnoun had worked tirelessly to put food in the mouths of
millions and broker a peace accord between rival clan-based factions. 

Now many fear his painstaking work could count for nothing. 

"The forced resignation of Sahnoun is a total disaster both for the
hopes of peace and famine relief in Somalia," said Rakiya Omaar of the
human rights group Africa Watch. 

Aid workers and United Nations officials here say Sahnoun's exit at a
time of renewed conflict could spell disaster for efforts to deliver
sufficient food aid to a land where an estimated 1,000 people are still
dying each day. 

Boutros-Ghali acted within hours to fill the vacuum created by Sahnoun's
departure on Thursday, appointing Iraqi U.N. career diplomat Ismat
Kittani to succeed the Algerian. 

But political analysts say the delay before Kittani's expected arrival
in Mogadishu at the end of this week will lose the U.N. valuable time as
it tries to stop the fighting spreading and secure an accord on the
delivery of food supplies. 

One of Somalia's most feared warlords, General Mohamed Farah Aideed, is
battling to recapture the southern town of Bardere which he lost three
weeks ago to rival Mohamed Siad Hersi Morgan, son-in-law of deposed
dictator Mohamed Siad Barre. 

Aideed, who controls most of the capital Mogadishu, has sent
reinforcements to the area, but political analysts say his power is
waning as a fragile alliance with other clans begins to collapse as they
switch to the side of his foes. 

"As his alliances collapse, he is liable to lash out and lash out
viciously," said one senior U.N. source. 

Until now, Aideed has barred the deployment of about 500 U.N. Pakistani
troops sent to Mogadishu over a month ago to guard relief supplies from
looters.

Relief workers say the troops are vital to ensure food reaches the needy
in a land ruled by gunmen only loosely controlled by warlords like
Aideed, but he will not allow them to take up position until he has
reasserted his control. 

"If Sahnoun, with all the respect he had won among Somalis, could not
get him to agree (with deployment), then what hope is there for his
successor?," asked one Horn of Africa specialist. 

Aid workers say they fear that other warlords, seeing that Somalia's
complex web of clan loyalities is being redrawn, will try to cash in on
Aideed's isolation. 

"If that happens there could even be fresh fighting in the capital
itself," added the specialist. 

Sahnoun frequently bemoaned the fact that U.N. bureaucracy prevented a
swifter response to the tragedy in Somalia, where two-thirds of the
nation of seven million people need emergency assistance. 

In mid-September, the U.N. announced a 100-day plan to flood the country
with food and medicine, but only a fraction arrived. Plans for sending a
further 3,700-strong relief protection force are also badly delayed. 

Aideed has said there will be "fierce confrontation and unprecedented
bloodshed" if they seek to deploy in his areas -- the epicentre of one
of the worst famines this century. 

"The U.N. has lost direction. They do not seem to have any idea what to
do next," said a senior official with an aid organisation with months of
experience in Somalia. 

The U.N. pulled out of Somalia in January 1991, just before rebels
ousted Siad Barre and then fell on each other. 

REUTER JMC AHH RFS JP  <<>>
RTw  11/05     TRIBAL WARFARE HEAPS MORE WOE ON SOUTHERN SUDAN

 By Zelda Anderson 

MUNDRI, Sudan, Nov 5, Reuter - The tall Dinka tribesmen wear castoff
European dresses that barely reach their knees. 

The women wear ivory bracelets above the elbow but metal armulets made
from mortar shells on their wrists. 

Their clothing tells the story. Sudan's Dinka people, perennial
survivors, are destitute victims of war. 

The men's dresses are handouts plucked from the bottom of some suburban
drawer in Europe and packed in a plastic bag to be donated to Third
World needy.

The men do not mind. It is all the clothing they have after fleeing
across some of the world's most hostile terrain to escape certain death.


Now they and their families await uncertain food supplies from the
rebels' relief organisation or any aid agency which undertakes to bring
supplies from distant Uganda, a nine-day trek from Kampala across a war
zone and glutinous mud. 

Trapped in a nine-year war between rebels and the Khartoum government,
the Dinka are victims of tribal clashes between feuding wings of the
rebel Sudan Peoples Liberation Army (SPLA). 

Early this month, 1,000 Dinka marched into this garrison town because
they could take no more. They walked for 200 miles (320 km), surviving
on grass and water from puddles. 

"A man came to me one morning and said: "My people have decided to move
or they will starve," said Charles Akulep of the Munich-based Action
Africa In Need (AAIN) charity. 

"We have been told another 7,000 are arriving, but we don't know when." 

The newcomers have fled to escape massacres by their ethnic cousins, the
Nuer, following a split in the SPLA between its Nuer and Dinka
leadership. 

The mainstream, led by John Garang, draws its support from Dinka. The
breakaway Nasir faction groups mainly Nuer. 

Dinka living in the Jonglei province on the East bank of the Nile have
fled to areas under Garang's protection to escape reprisal by the Nuers
armed by the Nasir faction. 

The fugitives say a Nuer militia raided their villages in the middle of
the night with automatic weapons and hand grenades and burned people
alive in their huts. Young girls and cattle were taken away as bounty. 

One hundred thousand have fled Jonglei and thousands have been
slaughtered in the biggest swamp in the world. They cross the 20 km (12
mile) Nile in dugout canoes. 

Their stories are impossible to verify in this wilderness but aid
workers familiar with the long history of insurrection and tribal
carnage of southern Sudan believe them. 

There are no telephones, electricity or tarmac roads around Mundri.
Development never reached the town. The broad avenues and high-rise
banks of Khartoum are 1,200 km (750 miles) away. 

Elephant grass has taken over the area, towering even over the tall
Dinka. The only landmarks are the occasional carcass of a truck blown up
by a mine in the guerrilla war. 

Mundri "hospital" is a shell. AAIN wanted to start a preventive health
care clinic but found emergency needs were more pressing and switched
its focus. 

"There was no point concentrating on preventive health when everyone was
dying of hunger," said Akulep. 

James Makoi was brought to the hospital last month with a shrapnel wound
in his arm. It had been there nearly a year and his efforts to gouge it
out with a knife failed. 

In the conflict, the SPLA wants to break the domination of the Moslem
fundamentalist government in Khartoum over the Christian and animist
people of the vast bush and swamp of southern Sudan. 

But the government's hand has been strengthened by the split in the SPLA
and there are many allegations by Garang's faction that the Nasir group
is a government-funded wrecking tactic. 

The murky killing of three aid workers and a journalist in eastern
Equatoria last month has poisoned relations between the United Nations
and the SPLA rebels it holds responsible for their deaths, which appear
to have been "executions." 

But AAIN staff say they feel safe and will not leave. 

In recent months, fighting between the rebels and with the government
has sounded alarm bells in the offices of aid agencies stationed in
Kenya. 

They fear that a new emergency on the scale of Somalia is lurking in the
remote region because war has wrecked farming and shows no sign of
ending. 

Mundri is another age. There is no cash economy. Barter is the currency.
The market sells only tobacco and nuts. The last delivery of goods was
five years ago, before the SPLA besieged and overran the town. 

"Life here would be difficult, even if there had been 100 years of
peace," said a visiting Western relief official. 

REUTER AJH JCH  <<>>
RTw  11/04     ENVIRONMENTAL TOXINS TURNING UP IN MEXICAN BABIES

 By Christine Tierney 

MEXICO CITY, Nov 5, Reuter - Lead, pesticides and other toxic residue
from Mexico's ravaged environment are turning up in babies' blood and
mothers' milk, raising serious doubts about the health and vigour of
upcoming generations. 

Paediatricians are reporting dangerous levels of lead in babies and
toddlers and a surge of respiratory infections among children living in
Mexico's smog-choked cities. 

Along the northern border lined with assembly plants, researchers deny
that a rash of cases of anencephaly -- babies born without brains -- is
linked to the industrial waste dumps dotting the region but they have
not identified the cause. 

A six-year study by the National Institute of Perinatology has found
lead levels considered worrisome by the U.S. Centres for Disease Control
in the umbilical cords of 41 per cent of the 240 Mexican babies tested
since 1988. 

"By 18 months, 75 per cent of these babies had lead levels above 10
(micrograms per deciliter of blood), and that's what worries me," said
Stephen Rothenberg, chief of the institute's developmental neurobiology
department. 

Inhaling or swallowing lead, which is emitted by cars and factories and
is also found in paints and Mexican leaded ceramic glazes, can cause
retardation. New research is showing that even lead levels previously
considered innocuous, such as the amount found in the Mexican babies,
can cause damage. 

A U.S. study estimates that children with lead levels above 10
micrograms can lose up to eight Intelligence Quotient points, or eight
per cent of the average person's intellectual potential. 

"In this range, our concern is not so much what happens to the
individual but what happens to a population that suffers an eight per
cent IQ-point loss. What's the result for that society?" Rothenberg
said. 

Dozens of playgrounds and amusement parks have been built on lots along
Mexico City's crowded highways. As they play, children ingest large
amounts of lead from emissions belched out by the three million cars in
circulation. Ninety-three per cent of the petrol sold in the capital
last year was leaded. 

Even in remote villages with little traffic or industry, children absorb
lead from colourful -- but lead-lined -- ceramic dishes fired in cheap,
low-temperature ovens. 

An even more frightening study at the Sonora Technological Institute
found high levels of pesticides, five of which are banned in the United
States, in the blood of 32 newborns and in their mothers' milk. 

A technician at the institute said the consequences were unclear as so
little is known about the way pesticides work except that they usually
attack the nervous system. 

In Mexico City, the thick smog has led to a surge in respiratory
problems among children. "The contamination is a major cause of many of
the acute and chronic respiratory infections I see," said paediatrician
Jose Huerta Lopez. 

Chronic exposure to ozone, unleashed when the sun's ultraviolet rays
strike hydrocarbons, prematurely ages the lungs. Last year ozone levels
in Mexico City exceeded the limit considered dangerous by the World
Health Organisation on 172 days. In contrast, the ozone did not reach
the dangerous level once last year in smoggy Los Angeles. 

Studies by Mexico's National Paediatric Institute show a direct
correlation between ozone levels and asthma attacks in children. "I see
many more cases of children with respiratory problems than I did 10
years ago," Huerta said. 

In addition to new sources of contamination, attributed to decades of
lax environmental supervision, children are still afflicted with
traditional ailments associated with poverty. 

Infant diarrhoea, usually caused by bad water, killed 14,000 children
under five in 1990, the Health Ministry said. 

"It's a very serious problem in Mexico, and one that's characteristic of
all developing countries," said ministry spokesman Carlos Espinosa
Martinez. 

The government has enacted programmes to provide potable water, shut
down dirty industries and reduce auto emissions in Mexico City by
restricting car use to six days a week. But some doctors worry the
improvements will come too slowly to benefit the current generation of
children. 

One doctor who asked not to be identified said his colleagues were too
busy saving lives to worry about education and broader public health
issues. Research is underfunded and viewed as alarmist in some official
quarters, the doctor said. 
<<>>      

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