Discount Products And Travel Deals local and internation news,Events: August 2016

Wednesday, 24 August 2016

These Beautiful Photos Show That It’s Possible To Find Hope In Tragedy

When Ibrahim and Hauna John got married in April in a Cameroon refugee camp it was a very happy ending to a harrowing journey. They had planned to wed in their village in northeast Nigeria, but when Boko Haram militants attacked they fled for their lives and the two were separated.

“It wasn’t easy for me to be separated from the one I love,” Ibrahim said, according to UNICEF, who shared the couple’s love story as part of a 2015 series of photographs showing moments of hope and joy in even the most dire humanitarian situations.
From South Sudanese refugees in Uganda to a group of Syrian children in Jordan, photographers captured the remarkable resilience of people who have been forced from their homes and devastated by conflict. The United Nations’ refugee agency said last year that a record number of people have been forcibly displaced around the globe, and by the end of the year will likely exceed 60 million people.
The camp where Ibrahim and Hauna live, and plan to start a family, is home to nearly 50,000 refugees who fled Boko Haram attacks. Water, food and shelter are in short supply. The extremist group’s campaign of violence in Nigeria and neighboring countries has forced over 2 million Nigerians to flee their homes. Some 90,000 Cameroonians have also been displaced by the militant group’s attacks.
“The very first day we met in the camp, I could not resist her. I had to hold her to my cheek,” Ibrahim said. “Heaven was very close to me that day.”
Scroll down for a look at other photos

Children watch their peers perform skits at Child Restoration Outreach, an organization in Uganda committed to reintegrating street children into society and rebuilding their lives to help families become self-reliant.
Holding her up towards the sky, a father plays with his daughter at a transit center for refugees and migrants in Sid, Serbia. The country is transit territory for refugees passing through to northern Europe.
Kuisang Rumba, a famous Tamang language actor, dances with 9-year-old Jamuna Nepali at a UNICEF-supported Child Friendly Space in Charikot, Dolakha District, Nepal. A 7.8-magnitude earthquake killed more than 8,000 people in Nepal on April 25, 2015, and destroyed massive amounts of property.
Children from South Sudan play at a child-friendly space in a refugee settlement in Uganda. South Sudan’s ongoing civil war erupted in late 2013, two years after it gained independence from Sudan. The crisis has already displaced more than 2.2 million people.
Dunya, 13, displaced from Mosul, Iraq, opens a box of new winter shoes in her caravan in Baharka IDP Camp in Erbil Governorate. In Iraq, many displaced families are struggling to cope with the mounting frustrations of protracted displacement. Half of the displaced are children, who are particularly vulnerable to illness, exposure and fatality due to the cold.
Teenagers play in the sun at a reception center staffed by volunteers, interpreters and humanitarian aid agencies in Opatovac, Croatia. Refugee and migrant children continue to arrive in Europe in record numbers — some traveling on their own. In 2015, more than 1 million migrants arrived in Europe, with the vast majority having crossed the Mediterranean Sea or Turkey.
Mohammed, 5, from Syria, sprays water on his sister and cousins in Jordan’s Zaatari refugee camp. The camp provides some electricity for residents to use at night, but during the day, the family uses water to combat the brutal temperatures. Over half of Syria’s population has been displaced by years of civil war.
Syrian volunteer Kinan Kadouni, 26, carries a young Syrian boy moments after a boat landed on the coast of Lesbos, Greece. The Aegean Sea is especially dangerous in winter due to harsh storms. As a result of dehydration and the cold, many refugees need medical attention and aid.

Here’s Who’s Helping Girls Kidnapped By Boko Haram Rebuild Lives

When kidnapped women are rescued by the Nigerian military from Boko Haram, it is far from the end of their struggles.
A report from UNICEF and International Alert released earlier this month revealed that women who were abducted by Boko Haram are often rejected by their families and communities once they return home.
“Many face marginalization, discrimination and rejection by family and community members due to social and cultural norms related to sexual violence,” the report found.

Girls rescued by Nigerian soldiers from Boko Haram sit at the Malkohi refugee camp on May 5, 2015. They were among a group of 275 people rescued by the Nigerian military and arrived at the camp on May 2.

The report focused specifically on communities in the Borno state capital in northeast Nigeria, where around 95 percent of people displaced by Boko Haram violence live.
There are two main reasons families don’t welcome returning women with open arms: First, they are viewed with mistrust, as community members suspect they may have been radicalized by the militants. And second, the returning women are ostracized due to the stigma associated with sexual assault in their communities.
“The recent increase in female suicide bombers throughout Nigeria has reinforced the widely held belief that women and girls exposed to [Boko Haram] are contributing to the insecurity in the region,” the report says.
Two weeks ago, two female suicide bombers killed more than 60 people in a Nigerian refugee camp for people displaced by the Boko Haram insurgency.
Beyond the fear of extremism, there is a widespread negative perception of women who have been sexually assaulted.
“All women and girls who have experienced sexual violence during the conflict face stigmatization from communities,” the report says. “However, the potential rejection has been much more acute for those who have been associated with [Boko Haram] — as abductees, living in ... strongholds, or ‘wives’ of ... combatants either by choice or force.”
When they return home, the women are effectively made three-time victims: once by Boko Haram’s abduction, a second time by the sexual assault and sometimes forced marriage and pregnancy they endure while in captivity and then a third time when they return to their families and are rejected by husbands, friends and community members.

Girls rescued by Nigerian soldiers from Boko Haram line up to collect donated clothes at the Malkohi refugee camp.

Amid these hardships, there are organizations on the ground working hard to support victims, reduce the stigma around sexual violence and re-integrate abducted women and children into communities.
The Federation of Muslim Women’s Associations in Nigeria, facilitates workshops with victims in the Internally Displaced Persons camps, providing a space for them share their stories and connecting them to experts who can provide longer-term services.
“We go into the camp to provide psycho-social support,” a FOMWAN staff member told The Huffington Post. “The women are traumatized, but now they feel free to speak to their experiences.”
Many of the women are returning pregnant, or with newborns or young children, Kimairis Toogood, peacebuilding adviser for International Alert, told HuffPost. After sharing their stories, the women are referred to experts from organizations like the International Organization for Migration, the International Federation of Women Lawyers Nigeria or Save the Children, all of which can continue to provide support services beyond the workshop.
“These are good initiatives, providing a platform for women to express themselves,” Albert Yusuf, project manager for International Alert, said. “That having been said, it is grossly inadequate in terms of the scale of what needs to be done.”
It is estimated that between 500 and 2,000 women and children have been abducted by Boko Haram since 2012. So far FOMWAN has conducted three workshops, serving about 122 women, according to the staff member. They intend to hold five more sessions.
“The methodology that seems to work is women talking to women,” Toogood said. “It allows them to share their stories. Just sit down, have some coffee, talk. It works to break the stigma and allows women to feel empowered.”

A religious leader of FOMWAN conducting a workshop.

Another group working in the Internally Displaced Persons camps is Herwa Community Initiative. They are working with the victims as well as the larger community to reduce the stigma around sexual assault.
“Women and girls need support,” Toogood said. “But there is also a need for the community and men to get support, to remove the stigma.”
Herwa facilitates dialogue between survivors of sexual violence from Boko Haram and community members to change perceptions around sexual assault.
The group assembles around 50 people and asks questions to the survivors about their experiences, and explores negative perceptions among community members around sexual violence, particularly when it comes to Boko Haram abductees.
During the sessions, staff members typically ask participants if they’d be willing to accept women or girls who were abducted once they get back to the community.

A woman rescued by Nigerian soldiers from Islamist militants Boko Haram.

The answers vary widely from community to community:
“Some say they would accept, some would not. But through dialogue, people can express their views freely, and we don’t move on until the question is resolved,” a Herwa staff member told HuffPost. “Most of the people at the start — including survivors — say they would not accept a lady who has been abducted. But by the end, some are willing to change their opinion.”
However, when it comes to children born from sexual violence, the results are not as encouraging.
The babies and toddlers of mothers who were abducted are being rejected, abandoned or abused at even higher rates than their mothers, according to the report. They are perceived as carrying “bad blood.”
“There are some camps where everyone is adamant that they would not accept the children,” the Herwa staff member said. “The memory is still very fresh.”

A malnourished child rescued by Nigerian soldiers from Boko Haram. The freed hostages had been traumatised and malnourished by their ordeal, the military said.

While the rejection of children may seem hard to understand, it is born from tough realities. When Boko Haram recruits young members, they give them assignments to prove their loyalty, the Herwa staff member explained. These assignments can involve killing someone close to them.
The report mentions accounts of women and girls returning from captivity and murdering their parents.
“We have heard of an insurgent who was being tested by the Boko Haram hierarchy,” the staff member elaborated. “They asked him to bring his mother to them. The community leader said to the mother that she shouldn’t go, but she went. The boy was asked to shoot her, and he did.”
While communities showed faith that relationships with the women and girls abducted could be rebuilt, the report says it is unlikely that the fear and suspicion of children will decrease.
The report outlined steps for NGOs and the government to take to ensure communities re-integrate women and children more successfully, including providing health services and emergency contraception for women; making employment opportunities available for women to support themselves and their families; and developing programs to support the children who have been rejected or abandoned.
H/T The Guardian

Children rescued by Nigerian soldiers from Boko Haram sit together at Malkohi refugee camp, on May 5, 2015. They were among almost 700 women and children rescued from Boko Haram’s clutches in the previous week.

Refugees Who Fled Boko Haram Die Of Starvation In Nigeria Camp

A file photo a doctor treating to a malnourished child at a refugee camp in Yola, Nigeria. Doctors Without Borders says over 1,200 people who fled Boko Haram have died of starvation and dehydration in an aid camp in Nigeria.

LAGOS (Reuters) - More than 1,200 people have died from starvation and illness at an aid camp in northeastern Nigeria that houses people fleeing the militant group Boko Haram, medical charity Medecins Sans Frontières said on Thursday.
MSF said its team found 24,000 people, including 15,000 children, sheltering in the camp located on a hospital compound during a visit to Bama last month — its first trip to the city since it was wrested from Boko Haram‘s control in March 2015.
The city was part of an area around the size of Belgium that was held by Boko Haram for more than six months before being pushed out by the army.
MSF, also known as Doctors Without Borders, said “a catastrophic humanitarian emergency is currently unfolding” at the camp, adding that around a fifth of 800 children who underwent medical screening were acutely malnourished and that almost 500 children had died.
“We have been told that people including children there have starved to death,” said Ghada Hatim, MSF head of mission in Nigeria. “We were told that on certain days more than 30 people have died due to hunger and illness.”
During its assessment, the Doctors Without Borders team counted 1,233 graves near the camp that had been dug in the past year. It said 480 of these graves belonged to children.
More than 15,000 people have been killed and 2 million displaced in Nigeria and neighboring Chad, Niger and Cameroon during Boko Haram‘s seven-year insurgency, in which the group has tried to create a state adhering to sharia, Islamic law.
Nigeria’s army, aided by troops from neighboring countries, has recaptured most of the territory that was lost to the group. But the jihadist group, which last year pledged loyalty to Islamic State, still regularly stages suicide bombings.

Mother's Plea: Swap Captive Girls for Boko Haram Militants

Nigeria Kidnnaped Girls — Esther Yakubu, left, mother of one of the kidnapped school girls, watches a video released by Boko Haram during a briefing in Abuja, Nigeria. Sunday Aug. 14, 2016 . The mother of one of the Chibok girls kidnapped more than two years ago by Nigeria's Islamic extremists on Sunday saw the first proof her daughter is alive — a video of her begging Nigeria's government to exchange detained militants for the girls' freedom. (AP

The mother of a kidnapped Chibok schoolgirl appealed Monday for Nigeria's president to free detained Boko Haram militants in exchange for the more than 200 girls held captive, as the Islamic extremists have offered.

A Boko Haram video posted Sunday shows dozens of the 218 girls who were abducted from a remote school in April 2014, with one saying that "some" have died in military airstrikes.

Nigeria's defense ministry disputed that Monday. "It is extremely difficult and rare to hit innocent people during airstrikes because the operation is done through precision attacks on identified and registered targets and locations," spokesman Brig. Gen. Rabe Abubakar said in a statement.

In the video, one of the kidnapped girls begs their parents to press Nigeria's government to free detained Boko Haram members so that the schoolgirls can be freed in a prisoner swap.

"The government should just release the militants," her mother, Esther Yakubu, told The Associated Press. She wept when she watched the first proof of life of her daughter since her capture.

"All the girls that have been rescued have rescued themselves. Not any government has rescued them, no army rescued them," she said.

Dozens escaped on their own within hours of the mass abduction of 276 students that shocked the world. In May, a lone Chibok girl escaped from the Sambisa Forest stronghold of Boko Haram, saying she was led to freedom by her disillusioned Boko Haram "husband."

The Bring Back Our Girls campaign is also pressing for a prisoner exchange, saying President Muhammadu Buhari "rode to power" on the back of their cause but has done nothing tangible to free the girls. Buhari won March 2015 elections in part because of former President Goodluck Jonathan's failure to rescue the girls.

"Mr. Buhari can absolutely afford to trade terrorists' lives for schoolgirls," said human rights lawyer Emmanuel Ogebe, whose Education Must Continue campaign is paying to educate some of the escaped Chibok girls in the United States.

He questioned the president's sincerity, noting that Buhari said in May that he had not watched a proof-of-life video sent by Boko Haram to encourage negotiations, apparently as early as January.

Officials are wary, noting previous negotiations have failed because officials have been duped into talks with the wrong people.

"We are being extremely careful," Information Minister Lai Mohammed said in a statement. "We want to be doubly sure that those we are in touch with are who they claim to be."

A fighter who speaks in the video hints at who could mediate. "We want the government to know that ... we don't trust you, we only trust a few journalists."

The video was posted Sunday by Nigerian journalist Ahmad Salkida, who lives in Dubai and is known to have good contacts in Boko Haram. Salkida said the video was sent to him by Abubakar Shekau's wing of Boko Haram.

On Sunday night, Nigeria's military declared Salkida a wanted man, claiming he has "information on the conditions and the exact location of these girls."

Salkida responded Monday that "my status as a Nigerian journalist who has reported extensively, painstakingly and consistently on the Boko Haram menace ... is an open book."

Boko Haram Survivors Are Starving To Death As Aid Falls Short

A boy suffering from severe acute malnutrition at one of UNICEF’s nutrition clinics in the Muna informal settlement on the outskirts of Maiduguri on June 30.

The people of northeast Nigeria are about as tough as they come. Their remote region is ground zero for many of the world’s most vexing problems, including an Islamic militant insurgency, crippling poverty, and the devastation wrought by climate change.
Now, the United Nations warns that the area may face a new calamity: famine.
People in the region “are used to coping with extreme hardship, exploiting every and any option they can to keep their families going,” U.N. Humanitarian Coordinator Stephen O’Brien told the U.N. Security Council on Wednesday. “But … this suffering has pushed them to the absolute limit ― it is unlike anything they have felt before.” He called it “a humanitarian catastrophe.”
The hunger crisis has been growing since militant group Boko Haram captured swaths of northeast Nigeria in 2014, crippling agriculture and the local economy and displacing more than 2 million people. The insurgency by Boko Haram extremists, who in recent years have killed more people in terror attacks than the Islamic State, has left more than 20,000 people dead.
The fighting has further isolated the region from the rest of the world. That means the humanitarian crisis brewed mostly out of sight until Nigeria and its allies began pushing Boko Haram out of camps, villages and towns over the last year.
Aid groups are just beginning to reach areas that were recaptured, and representatives said they’ve been horrified by what they’re finding.
In mid-June, more than 1,000 people were evacuated from the Nigerian town of Bama so they could receive medical treatment. Aid group Doctors Without Borders said 39 percent of the town’s children were severely malnourished.

“When we saw that, we realized the severity, and it was a shock,” said Isabelle Defourny, Doctors Without Borders director of operations. A week later, the aid group’s staff reached the town for the first time with a military escort and found more than 1,200 graves, including 480 for children, had been dug in the past year.
Humanitarian officials with decades of disaster experience said the situation was among the worst they’d ever seen.
“What we have uncovered and assessed is deeply, distressingly alarming, even for those of us who have witnessed such depths of humanitarian need before,” O’Brien told the U.N. Security Council. “I have been traveling throughout this region on and off for the past 37 years [and] I have never heard such fear and desperation. This is a new terrible.”
Bruno Jochum, Doctors Without Borders general director, called it “a large-scale humanitarian disaster” and urged the U.N. to set up an emergency food pipeline. “Probably the medical and epidemiological indicators are the worst we are facing today in the world,” he said.

A young girl at the Muna settlement for displaced people. UNICEF estimates that some 50,000 children in northeast Nigeria are at risk of dying from malnutrition and related causes without immediate assistance.

“This is about as bad as it gets,” Toby Lanzer, U.N. assistant secretary general in the Sahel, told The Guardian this month. “There’s only one step worse ― and I’ve not come across that situation in 20 years of doing this work ― and that’s a famine.”
The numbers are daunting. The U.N.’s Children Fund estimates that nearly a quarter-million children in the region are severely malnourished, and some 50,000 will die without immediate treatment.
That warning, stark as it may seem, may not capture the full extent of the crisis. Only half of the estimated 500,000 to 800,000 people in displacement camps in northeastern Nigeria’s Borno state are reachable by aid agencies, Defourny said. Most of them are living in isolated towns destroyed by fighting, taking shelter in the remaining structures while under military guard. In the town of Bama, for example, 15,000 people, mostly women and children, are living in a hospital compound with no latrines, poor access to water, and little food, Defourny said.
Outside the camps, aid groups have no clear picture of how many people are still trapped in their villages, or how bad their situation is. Thousands continue arriving in urban areas, many in poor health recounting stories of ongoing fighting and starvation back home.

How did the situation get so bad?
First, the Boko Haram insurgency destroyed the local economy. Farmers couldn’t farm, markets shut down, and millions fled to escape the fighting.
Second, neither Nigerian authorities nor international aid agencies have yet mobilized a humanitarian response robust enough to meet the need. This is partly due to ongoing fighting. The U.N. on Thursday temporarily suspended aid operations in Borno state, with the exception of Maiduguri, after Boko Haram militants attacked a humanitarian convoy, injuring a UNICEF employee and a contractor.
But some aid workers criticize humanitarian organizations, including U.N. agencies, for being too slow to recognize the extent of the crisis and to respond. Additionally, the Nigerian government didn’t make clear its need for aid, claiming that Boko Haram had been defeated and the displaced population could return home.
Some ex-government officials say Nigerian authorities deliberately covered up the extent of the crisis to avoid international embarrassment.
“We were not aware of the gravity of the situation. We were not fast enough,” Defourny said. “People in this region have already lost a lot of life due to political violence, and today they are dying because of something else, malnutrition, that is avoidable.”

A woman carried her daughter to the nutrition clinic in Muna. Over 2 million people have been displaced by the deadly insurgency by militant group Boko Haram.

Nigerian officials in recent weeks have sounded the alarm with more urgency. Last month, Nigeria’s minister of health declared a nutrition emergency in Borno state, and the local government has appealed for international assistance.
Aid groups have urged the government to lift bureaucratic barriers in order to facilitate the entry of aid, as reports begin to circulate that corruption ― soldiers demanding protection money, or government workers pilfering aid supplies ― is slowing the response.
“Taking from these people is like stealing from a corpse,” said one police officer in a Nigerian displacement camp, according to Foreign Affairs.

A makeshift hut in the Muna settlement. Aid workers say groups have not moved fast enough to bring aid to the region, and the government underplayed the crisis.

With limited aid, people in northeast Nigeria are doing all they can to help their community survive. About 90 percent of displaced people in the region are staying with extended families or community members, and schools and empty buildings in Maiduguri have been repurposed to house displaced families.
Samantha Power, the U.S. ambassador to the U.N., on Wednesday recalled a university security guard she met in northeast Nigeria, who had taken in more than 50 relatives displaced by the violence.
“He is a national hero and there are tens of thousands of such heroes across the region,” Power told the U.N. Security Council. “I think we of greater means should all be inspired by these heroes to do much, much more.”SUBSCRIBE

ISIS Announces Nigeria’s Boko Haram Has A New Leader

A video posted online shows Boko Haram leader Abubakar Shekau, who has reportedly now been replaced by new leader Abu Musab al-Barnawi.

CAIRO, Aug 3 (Reuters) - Islamic State has named a new leader of Boko Haram, the Nigerian militant group which last year swore allegiance to it.
Abu Musab al-Barnawi was named Islamic State’s governor for West Africa in a two-page interview in its weekly magazine, al-Naba, which was circulated late on Tuesday.
Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari, a former military ruler who took office last year, has made it a priority to defeat Boko Haram, which has tried to create a state adhering to strict sharia law in the northeast during a seven-year insurgency.
Boko Haram controlled a swathe of land in northeast Nigeria around the size of Belgium at the end of 2014 but was pushed out by Nigerian troops, aided by soldiers from neighboring countries, early last year.
In the interview, al-Barnawi said Boko Haram was “still a force to be reckoned with” and that it had been receiving new recruits.
Despite having been pushed out of most of the territory it controlled, Boko Haram has carried out suicide bombings in northeast Nigeria and neighboring Cameroon, Niger and Chad, focusing on busy public areas such as markets and mosques.
Fulan Nasrullah, a security analyst, said al-Barnawi had been a senior figure within Boko Haram who was previously the group’s military commander.
The Islamic State publication did not mention Abubakar Shekau, who was the group’s leader and represented the Nigerian jihadists in videos during an insurgency that has killed about 15,000 people and displaced more than two million.
Shekau, whose death has been reported on numerous occasions by the army only for him to reappear in videos, was last seen in a video circulated in March in which he seemed to suggest he was ailing and Boko Haram was losing its effectiveness. A video emerged the following week saying there would be no surrender.
In June, a senior U.S. general said Boko Haram had fractured internally, with a big group splitting away from Shekau over his failure to adhere to guidance from Islamic State. The Nigerian group swore allegiance to Islamic State, based in Syria and Iraq, in March 2015.
That assessment came days after U.S. officials said they had seen no evidence that Boko Haramhad so far received significant operational support or financing from Islamic State militants, concluding the loyalty pledge had so far mostly been a branding exercise.