Tag Archives: Hunger

Cholera claims unborn children as epidemic spreads Yemen misery

Children wait to be treated at a cholera treatment center in Sanaa, Yemen May 15, 2017. Picture taken May 15, 2017.

By Abduljabbar Zeyad

HODEIDAH, Yemen (Reuters) – One of the latest victims of the cholera epidemic that has killed more than 2,000 people in Yemen had yet to even take her first breath.

Her mother Safaa Issa Kaheel, then nine months pregnant, was brought into a crowded clinic in the Western port city of Hodeidah by her husband, who had to borrow the travel fare from a neighbor. “My stomach started hurting more and more,” said Kaheel, 37, a hydrating drip hooked into her arm.

Once there, she was referred by nurse Hayam al-Shamaa for an ultrasound scan which showed her baby had died of dehydration – one of 15 to perish in the womb due to cholera in September and October, according to doctors at the city’s Thawra hospital.

“I felt like death,” Kaheel said, her voice strained. “Thank god I survived the (delivery), but my diarrhea hasn’t stopped.”

The Red Cross has warned that cholera, a diarrheal disease that has been eradicated in most developed countries, could infect a million people in Yemen by the end of the year.

Two and a half years of war have sapped Yemen of the money and medical facilities it needs to battle the contagion, to which aid agencies and medics say the poor, the starving, the pregnant and the young are most vulnerable.

The cholera ward is full of children – some writhing in agony, others eerily still. The blanket over one boy too weak to move rises and falls with his shallow breathing.

Save the Children said in August that children under 15 represent nearly half of new cases and a third of deaths, with malnourished children more than six times more likely to die of cholera than well-fed ones.

Millions of Yemenis are struggling to find food and the baking desert plains around Hodeidah are hotspots both of hunger and sickness.

Yemen’s war pits the armed Houthi movement against the internationally recognized government of President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi, which is backed by a Saudi-led coalition that has launched thousands of air strikes to restore him to power.

At least 10,000 people have been killed in the conflict.

The country’s health sector has been badly battered while a struggle over the central bank has left public sector salaries for doctors and sanitation workers unpaid.

Soumaya Beltifa, spokesperson for the Red Cross in Sanaa, warned that a lack of funds and health personnel were blunting efforts to eradicate the disease, making it unlikely Yemen would be healthy again soon.

“The cholera epidemic has become a norm, leading to complacency in dealing with the disease, not only by civilians but also from the various (aid) organizations,” she warned.

 

Nearly 400 die as Myanmar army steps up crackdown on Rohingya militants

Rohingya refugees stands in an open place during heavy rain, as they are hold by Border Guard Bangladesh (BGB) after illegally crossing the border, in Teknaf, Bangladesh, August 31, 2017.

COX’S BAZAR, Bangladesh (Reuters) – Nearly 400 people have died in fighting that has rocked Myanmar’s northwest for a week, new official data show, making it probably the deadliest bout of violence to engulf the country’s Rohingya Muslim minority in decades.

Around 38,000 Rohingya have crossed into Bangladesh from Myanmar, United Nations sources said, a week after Rohingya insurgents attacked police posts and an army base in Rakhine state, prompting clashes and a military counteroffensive.

“As of August 31, 38,000 people are estimated to have crossed the border into Bangladesh,” the officials said on Friday, in their latest estimate.

The army says it is conducting clearance operations against “extremist terrorists” and security forces have been told to protect civilians. But Rohingya fleeing to Bangladesh say a campaign of arson and killings aims to force them out.

The treatment of Myanmar’s roughly 1.1 million Rohingya is the biggest challenge facing national leader Aung San Suu Kyi, accused by some Western critics of not speaking out for a minority that has long complained of persecution.

Police officers guard near a house that was burnt down in recent violence in Maungdaw, Myanmar August 31, 2017.

Police officers guard near a house that was burnt down in recent violence in Maungdaw, Myanmar August 31, 2017. RETUERS/Soe Zeya Tun

The clashes and ensuing army crackdown have killed about 370 Rohingya insurgents, but also 13 security forces, two government officials and 14 civilians, the Myanmar military said on Thursday.

By comparison, communal violence in 2012 in Sittwe, the capital of Rakhine, led to the killing of nearly 200 people and the displacement of about 140,000, most of them Rohingya.

The fighting is a dramatic escalation of a conflict that has simmered since October, when similar but much smaller Rohingya attacks on security posts prompted a brutal military response dogged by allegations of rights abuses.

Myanmar evacuated more than 11,700 “ethnic residents” from the area affected by fighting, the army said, referring to the non-Muslim population of northern Rakhine.

More than 150 Rohingya insurgents staged fresh attacks on security forces on Thursday near villages occupied by Hindus, the state-run Global New Light of Myanmar said, adding that about 700 members of such families had been evacuated.

“Four of the terrorists were arrested, including one 13-year-old boy,” it said, adding that security forces had arrested two more men near a Maungdaw police outpost on suspicion of involvement in the attacks.

About 20,000 more Rohingya trying to flee are stuck in no man’s land at the border, the U.N. sources said, as aid workers in Bangladesh struggle to alleviate the sufferings of a sudden influx of thousands of hungry and traumatized people.

While some Rohingya try to cross by land, others attempt a perilous boat journey across the Naf River separating the two countries.

Bangladesh border guards found the bodies of 15 Rohingya Muslims, 11 children among them, floating in the river on Friday, area commander Lt. Col. Ariful Islam told Reuters.

That takes to about 40 the total of Rohingya known to have died by drowning.

 

(Reporting by Reuters staff; Editing by Clarence Fernandez)

 

Mosul Old City residents spend hungry and fearful Ramadan under IS rule

Displaced Iraqi family from Mosul eat a simple meal for their Iftar, during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan at a refugee camp al-Khazir in the outskirts of Erbil, Iraq June 10, 2017. Picture taken June 10, 2017. REUTERS/Erik De Castro

By Ahmed Rasheed

BAGHDAD (Reuters) – For Salam, a resident in the Islamic State-held Old City of Mosul, the holy fasting month of Ramadan this year is the worst he’s seen in a lifetime marked by wars and deprivations.

“We are slowly dying from hunger, boiling mouldy wheat as soup” to break the fast at sunset, the 47 year-old father of three said by phone from the district besieged by Iraqi forces, asking to withhold his name fearing the militants’ retribution.

The only wish he makes in his prayers is for his family to survive the final days of the self-proclaimed caliphate declared three years ago by IS’s leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi from a nearby mosque.

The eight-month old U.S.-backed campaign to capture Mosul, IS’s de-facto capital in Iraq, reached its deadliest phase just as the holy Muslim month started at the end of May, when militants became squeezed in and around the densely populated Old City.

Up to 200,000 people are trapped behind their lines, half of them children, according to the United Nations.

Hundreds have been killed while trying to escape to government-held lines, caught in the cross-fire or gunned down by Islamic State snipers. The militants want civilians to remain in areas under their control to use them as human shields.

Many bodies of the dead remain in the street near the frontlines. Four of them are relatives of Khalil, a former civil servant who quit his job after IS took over Mosul.

“Daesh warned us not to bury them to make them an example for others who try to flee,” he said, using an acronym for Islamic State.

Those who decide not to run the risk of fleeing are living in fear of getting killed or wounded in their homes, with little food and water and limited access to healthcare.

“Seeing my kids hungry is real torture,” said Salam, who closed his home appliances shop shortly after the start of the offensive as sales came to a complete stop.”I wish the security forces would eliminate all Daesh fighters in a flash; I want my family to have normal life again.”

Where food can be found, the price has risen more than 20-fold. A kilo of rice is selling for more than $40. A kilo of flour or lentils is $20 or more.

The sellers are mainly households who stockpiled enough food and medicine to dare sell some, but only to trusted neighbors or relatives, or in return for items they need. If militants find food they take it.

Residents fill water from a few wells dug in the soil. The wait is long and dangerous as shelling is frequent.

“The well-water has a bitter taste and we can smell sewage sometimes, but we have to drink to stay alive,” said Umm Saad, a widow and mother of four, complaining that the militants are often seen with bottled water and canned food.

“We have been under compulsory fasting even before the start of Ramadan,” she said. “No real food to eat, just hardened old bread and mouldy grains.”

About 800,000 people, more than a third of the pre-war city’s population, have already fled, seeking refuge either with friends and relatives or in camps. But in areas still held by the militants escape has become harder than ever.

“Fleeing is like committing suicide,” said Khalil, the ex-civil servant, who lives near the medieval Grand al-Nuri Mosque, the offensive’s symbolic focus, where Baghdadi proclaimed himself caliph.

IS’s black flag has been flying over its landmark leaning minaret since June 2014, when the Iraqi army fled in the face of the militants, giving them their biggest prize, a city at least four times bigger than any other they came to control in both Iraq and neighboring Syria.

(Reporting by Ahmed Rasheed; editing by Peter Graff)

As Yemen faces famine, U.N. works to avert attack on food port

A woman and her children, displaced by the war in northwestern Yemen, are pictured next to their makeshift hut on the pavement of a street in the Red Sea port city of Hodeidah, Yemen May 15, 2017. REUTERS/Abduljabbar Zeyad

By Michelle Nichols

UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) – A quarter of Yemen’s people are on the brink of famine, parents are marrying off young daughters so someone else can care for them and cholera cases are escalating, U.N. officials warned on Tuesday as they work to avert a Saudi-led attack on a key port.

The United Nations has warned the Arab alliance fighting Iran-aligned Houthis against any attempt to extend the war to Hodeidah, a vital Red Sea aid delivery point where some 80 percent of Yemen’s food imports arrive.

“An attack on Hodeidah is not in the interest of any party, as it will directly and irrevocably drive the Yemeni population further into starvation and famine,” U.N. aid chief Stephen O’Brien told the U.N. Security Council, urging all U.N. member states to help keep the port open and operating.

“Yemen now has the ignominy of being the world’s largest food security crisis with more than 17 million people who are food insecure, 6.8 million of whom are one step away from famine. Crisis is not coming, it is not even looming, it is here today,” he said.

The Saudi-led coalition has said it was determined to help Yemen’s government retake all areas held by Houthi militia, including Hodeidah port, but would ensure alternative entry routes for badly needed food and medicine.

U.N. Yemen envoy Ismail Ould Cheikh Ahmed told the Security Council on Tuesday he had made clear to the parties to the conflict that they must reach a compromise to avoid the “horrific scenario” of military action moving to the port.

However, he noted the Houthis and the allied General People’s Congress, the party of former President Ali Abdullah Saleh, did not meet with him in the capital Sanaa to discuss a possible agreement that he had proposed.

O’Brien said a $2.1 billion humanitarian strategy and plan for Yemen was only a quarter funded.

“Yemen is not facing a drought. If there was no conflict … a famine would certainly be avoidable and averted,” he said. “Families are increasingly marrying off their young daughters to have someone else to care for them, and often use the dowry to pay for basic necessities.”

O’Brien also said there had been some 55,000 suspected cases of cholera since April and estimated another 150,000 cases were expected over the next six months.

“Had the parties to the conflict cared, the outbreak was avoidable,” O’Brien said.

(Reporting by Michelle Nichols at the United Nations; Editing by James Dalgleish)

Venezuela protests rage, jailed Lopez supporters stage vigil

Opposition supporters stand in front of a fire during clashes with riot police at a rally against President Nicolas Maduro in Caracas, Venezuela May 3, 2017. REUTERS/Carlos Garcia Rawlins

By Alexandra Ulmer and Diego Oré

CARACAS (Reuters) – Supporters of jailed Venezuelan opposition leader Leopoldo Lopez held a vigil outside his prison demanding to see him on Thursday after rumors about his health rattled the protest-hit country where the death toll from anti-government unrest rose to 36.

Lopez’s wife and mother rushed to a military hospital in Caracas and then the hilltop Ramo Verde jail overnight, after a journalist tweeted Lopez had been taken to a medical center without vital signs.

President Nicolas Maduro’s leftist government, facing a wave of major opposition protests since last month, later issued a short “proof of life” video in which Lopez said he was fine.

Officials accused Lopez’s family of stirring up a media frenzy to get attention and further stoke the protests.

“Today is May 3, it’s 9 p.m. … I’m sending a message to my family and my children that I am well,” said Lopez, 46, standing cross-armed in front of cell bars and looking healthy in a sleeveless white T-shirt.

But Lopez’s wife Lilian Tintori, who says she has not been allowed to see him in over a month, rejected the video as “false” and spent the night outside the jail.

“The only proof of life that we will accept is to see Leopoldo,” she tweeted, as she and Lopez’s mother faced a line of green-clad National Guard soldiers at the prison. They later rotated out with some supporters to get sleep.

Lopez is Venezuela’s most prominent imprisoned politician, and U.S. President Donald Trump in February called for his release after a White House meeting with Tintori.

Venezuelans, already on tenterhooks after the unrest that has killed protesters, government supporters, bystanders and security officials, were shaken by the rumors over Lopez, who was jailed in 2014 during the last major round of protests.

The U.S.-educated economist and leader of the hard-line Popular Will party is accused of inciting violence, and in 2015 was sentenced to almost 14 years behind bars.

The government says he is a dangerous agitator, pointing to his involvement in a brief 2002 coup against the late Hugo Chavez, when Lopez even helped arrest a Cabinet minister.

“They’re inventing that something or other has been done to Leopoldo to put together a big, pretty show, so that we forget the 43 deaths he caused,” said Socialist Party No. 2 Diosdado Cabello, in reference to those killed during unrest in 2014.

Lopez’s supporters say he was tried in a kangaroo court because he had been viewed as a future presidential hopeful and a threat to Maduro. Others in the opposition deem him a divisive hothead who took to the streets too early and say his supporters exaggerate incidents to get support.

HUNDREDS JAILED

Over 1,700 people have been arrested, with 597 of them still jailed, since the unrest began in early April, according to rights group Penal Forum. Hundreds have been injured, often in confusing street melees between stone-throwing youths and security forces firing tear gas and water cannons.

Maduro’s call on Monday to rewrite the constitution has energized the protest movement, and images of a military vehicle running over a demonstrator on Wednesday caused further outrage.

The opposition is so far maintaining momentum despite fatigue, injuries, disruptions to daily life, and fears that protests will end up flopping like so many times in the past.

Still, none of their demands have been met so far and Maduro has said he will not bend to them.

Demonstrators are seeking early elections to remove Maduro and bring an end to a devastating recession that has food and medicine running short. The government says the opposition wants a coup and many demonstrators are simply vandals.

Various groups of students took to the streets on Thursday.

One group of several hundred from Venezuela’s Central University tried to reach a highway but were blocked by National Guard soldiers firing tear gas.

“We’re going to stay here until this corrupt and lying government falls,” said Ines Delgado, 22, with anti-acid indigestion medicine smeared on her face to neutralize the effects of tear gas.

The death toll in violent Venezuela’s month of unrest has been creeping up, reaching at least 36 after two latest cases.

A 38-year-old policeman in Carabobo state, Gerardo Barrera, died overnight after being shot during a protest, the public prosecutor’s office said on Thursday.

And Juan Lopez, a 33-year old president of a student federation at a university in the western Anzoategui state, was gunned down during a student assembly on Thursday, the public prosecutor’s office added. A member of the public approached him, shot him several times, and then fled on a motorcycle.

With international pressure piling on Maduro, famed Venezuelan conductor Gustavo Dudamel, who directs the Los Angeles Philharmonic, came out against him in a letter decrying repression.

(Additional reporting by Andrew Cawthorne, Andreina Aponte, Corina Pons, Eyanir Chinea, Brian Ellsworth; Writing by Alexandra Ulmer; Editing by W Simon, Andrew Cawthorne and Andrew Hay)

Millions of Nigerians face hunger in wasteland recaptured from fighters

A family is pictured in their straw grass home at the IDP camp at Gamboru, Borno, Nigeria April 27, 2017. REUTERS/Afolabi Sotunde

By Alexis Akwagyiram

BANKI, Nigeria (Reuters) – When he heard that the Nigerian army had declared his family’s home town of Banki free from Boko Haram militants and safe to return, Bukar Abdulkadir did all he could to bring his family back to the place they had fled three years ago.

It took nine months of hunger, selling most of the food rations they received at their refugee camp in Cameroon, to save up for the cost of a two-day journey in a lorry container back across the border into northern Nigeria.

But instead of returning to till the familiar fields of home, they came back to a desolate wasteland littered with the rubble of destroyed buildings and burnt cars, where they were herded into a crowded camp by soldiers.

The once thriving town, which the army retook in September 2015, has been razed to the ground. Along with some 32,000 other homeless inhabitants, Abdulkadir’s family are now confined to the camp amid the ruins, guarded by troops who do not let them out unescorted, officially to protect them from explosives strewn across farmland.

“I can’t provide for my family because I can’t farm,” said Abdulkadir. “If the market opened I could do something to make their lives better,” he added in a voice cracking with emotion as he gazed at his children.

Nigeria’s security forces have succeeded in recapturing most of the territory once held by Boko Haram Islamist militants after years of an insurgency in which civilians were often the targets. But instead of bringing a joyous end to the conflict, the victories have revealed communities gripped by hunger.

Some 4.7 million people in northeast Nigeria depend on food aid, some of which is blocked by militant attacks, some held up by a lack of funding and some, diplomats say, stolen before it can reach those in need.

Millions of Nigerians may soon be in peril if the situation deteriorates, as authorities expect, when the five-month rainy season begins in May and makes farming impossible in areas that are now accessible.

This part of Nigeria is the western edge of an arc of hunger stretching across the breadth of Africa through South Sudan, Somalia and into Yemen on the Arabian peninsula. The United Nations believes as many as 20 million people are in danger in what could become the world’s worst famine for decades.

ALREADY BROKEN

“This camp is already broken,” said a field worker responsible for food distribution to children at the camp in Banki, asking not to be identified while he discussed the conditions endured by residents of the destroyed town.

Three hundred women and children were queuing for water in the scorching sun. Fatima Mallam, a widowed mother of three, said she had to wait five hours. The field worker said that was now normal for the camp. There are only 14 working boreholes to provide water for the 32,000 people.

“When the rainy season comes there is likely to be an outbreak of cholera and other diseases because people defecate in the open,” the worker said.

Lured by news of the army retaking territory lost to Boko Haram, some 152,000 people like Abdulkadir and his family have returned from neighboring Cameroon and Niger since the start of the year, according to the U.N. refugee agency.

But as Boko Haram continues to stage suicide bombings and hit-and-run attacks, most end up in already stretched camps unable to resume farming, the main activity in the northeast.

Thousands of others are arriving in camps daily from parts of the northeast where the army, aided by troops from neighboring countries, has pushed the Islamist militants out of most of the territory they controlled until early 2015.

At another northeastern camp, in Gamboru-Ngala, army units were trying to accommodate a new influx of thousands.

“We only have four nurses and one medical doctor to cater for this number of people so it is not enough to deal with their medical challenges,” said Army Lieutenant Colonel Patrick Omoke.

“There is no secondary health facility in the whole of Ngala local government,” he said. “A lot of people come in – shelter is a major challenge now.”

Aid agencies and military officials say the rainy season, beginning in the next few weeks, will make many roads impassable, increasing the dependence on food aid as farming halts and the movement of goods becomes restricted.

Cesar Tishilombo, who heads the sub-office of the U.N. refugee agency in Maiduguri, a state capital, said up to three million people were at risk of famine in areas recently recaptured from Boko Haram. Aid agencies working in Nigeria faced a funding crisis, he said.

“The pledge has been $1 billion plus. People have pledged but the promises are not translating into cash,” he said, adding that his agency had received just $11 million of the $70 million it had requested.

Western diplomats say corruption and government mismanagement are partly to blame for the failure of aid to reach those in need.

“Nobody knows who is in control,” said one diplomat, describing overlapping systems of authority at the local, state and federal levels that make it difficult to organize aid.

“There is corruption at every level, from drivers up to state and federal government,” said another diplomat, adding by way of example that 12 trucks might leave a depot with food aid and only two arrive at distribution centers to feed the hungry.

A spokesman for President Muhammadu Buhari declined to comment on the assertions of corruption in aid deliveries, but the president has acknowledged that graft is a serious problem hindering recovery in areas recaptured from the militants.

Last month the authorities launched an investigation into allegations that funds allocated to contractors to help rebuild the insurgency-hit region had been misused. The presidency said the investigation was linked to another probe into $43 million in cash found in a flat in the commercial capital Lagos.

(Additional reporting by Felix Onuah and Paul Carsten in Abuja; editing by Peter Graff)

Veteran aid expert Egeland warns of ‘Biblical’ famine in Yemen

A family eat breakfast outside their hut at a camp for people displaced by the war near Sanaa, Yemen September 26, 2016. REUTERS/Khaled Abdullah

By Tom Miles

GENEVA (Reuters) – Yemen faces a “famine of Biblical proportions”, veteran aid expert Jan Egeland warned on Wednesday during a visit to the war-battered nation, expressing fury over the failure of the “men with guns and power” to end the crisis.

Yemen’s two years of civil war have pitted the Iran-aligned Houthi rebel group against a Saudi-backed coalition, causing economic collapse and severely restricting the food and fuel imports on which Yemen traditionally depends.

The United Nations conservatively estimates that more than 10,000 people have been killed, according to data from the health facilities that are still functioning. Experts fear the real figure is much higher.

Egeland, who heads the Norwegian Refugee Council and also advises the U.N. on Syrian humanitarian operations, told Reuters by telephone from the Yemeni capital Sanaa that although Yemen’s war was smaller than Syria’s, it had led to an epic disaster.

“All our efforts through the World Food Programme reached 3.1 million of 7 million people who are on the brink of famine. So it means basically that 4 million people got nothing in April and these people are staring into the naked eye of starvation.

“We will have a famine of Biblical proportions, if it continues like now with only a portion of those in greatest need getting humanitarian relief,” he told Reuters after visiting Sanaa, the port of Aden and the town of Amran.

Egeland, a former head of the U.N. humanitarian office, said the crisis was not getting the international attention it needed because few journalists or diplomats could get into the country.

“MAN-MADE CRISIS”

“I’m coming out of here angry with those men with power and guns, inside Yemen, in regional capitals and international capitals who are not able to fix this man-made crisis,” Egeland said. “It’s not rocket science.”

Half a million children could die at any time, and many are already doing so “quietly and tragically” in their homes, he added.

Egeland urged the United States and Britain to help stop the war. They are allies of Saudi Arabia, leader of the alliance seeking to restore the internationally recognized Aden-based government of President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi.

In a separate statement, he also appealed to Saudi Arabia, Iran and the United Arab Emirates to stop adding “fuel to this fire”. The Sunni Muslim Gulf Arabs see Shi’ite Iran, their arch foe, as bent on regional domination, something Tehran denies.

Egeland said all relevant countries should work toward securing a ceasefire and “meaningful peace talks” as well as the lifting of economic restrictions and sanctions that have exacerbated the humanitarian crisis.

Last month a U.N. pledging conference for Yemen raised promises of $1.1 billion, about half of what is needed for the year. Without an immediate and massive injection of new cash, Egeland said, the aid flow will halt by July.

But the key to ending the humanitarian crisis is reviving the shattered, economy, as it is not possible to maintain a nation of 27 million people with aid injections, he said.

“When people have no income and the prices of food in the market have tripled, hungry people can only afford to look at the food in the market. They cannot afford to buy it,” Egeland said, adding that there were no food stocks left in Yemen.

“There are no reserves, there are no warehouses there like in many of the other wars I have visited. Everything goes straight into hungry mouths,” he said.

(Reporting by Tom Miles; Editing by Gareth Jones)

UN seeks to avert famine in Yemen, where a child dies every 10 minutes

U.N. Secretary General Antonio Guterres attends the High-level Pledging Event for the Humanitarian Crisis in Yemen at the United Nations in Geneva, Switzerland April 25, 2017. REUTERS/Denis Balibouse

By Stephanie Nebehay

GENEVA (Reuters) – The United Nations needs massive funds to avert famine in Yemen and warring parties there must ensure humanitarian aid can be delivered, U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said on Tuesday as he opened a donor conference in Geneva.

A U.N. appeal for $2.1 billion this year for Yemen, where Guterres said a child under the age of five dies of preventable causes every 10 minutes, is only 15 percent covered.

Two years of conflict between Houthi rebels aligned with Iran and a Western-backed, Saudi-led coalition that carries out air strikes almost daily have killed at least 10,000 people in Yemen, and hunger and disease are rife there.

Nearly 19 million people or two-thirds of the population need emergency aid, Guterres said, renewing a call for peace talks and urging all parties to “facilitate the rapid and unimpeded passage of humanitarian aid by air, sea and land”.

“We are witnessing the starving and the crippling of an entire generation. We must act now to save lives,” he added.

“All infrastructure must remain open and operational.”

Yemen’s Prime Minister Ahmed Obeid Bin Daghr said his government, which controls only part of the country, would allow access for aid supplies. “We are ready to open new corridors for this aid,” he said.

Initial pledges announced at the conference included $150 million from Saudi Arabia, $100 million from Kuwait, 50 million euros ($54.39 million) from Germany and $94 million from the United States.

The World Food Programme (WFP) has committed $1 billion to Yemen and reached a record 5 million people last month with rations but needs to scale up deliveries to reach 9 million who are deemed “severely food insecure”, its regional director Muhannad Hadi said in an interview.

They include some 3 million malnourished children.

“REAL FAMINE THAT WILL SHAME US”

“If the international community does not move right now, and if WFP does not get the right funding and support to address all needs, I think the cost of that will be real famine that will shame us in coming months and weeks,” Hadi told Reuters.

Yemen imports 90 percent of its food, 70 percent of which passes through the strategic Red Sea port of Hodeidah. Concerns are growing about a possible attack by the Yemeni government and its Arab allies, who say the Houthis use it to smuggle weapons and ammunition.

“We are concerned about (all) facilities in Yemen because at this stage we can’t afford to even lose one bridge or one road network let alone to lose a major facility like Hodeidah port,” Hadi said.

“In order to achieve security in this region, we have to address the food security needs. It’s impossible to have security in the country while people are hungry,” he said.

The U.N. called on April 5 for safeguarding of the port, where five cranes have been destroyed by airstrikes, forcing ships to line up offshore because they cannot be unloaded.

U.N. Emergency Relief Coordinator Stephen O’Brien told the conference the United Nations and its humanitarian partners are scaling up and are prepared to do more, “provided there are resources and access”.

(This version of the story corrects figure in para 2 to $2.1 billion instead of $1.2 billion)

(Editing by Catherine Evans)

Exclusive: With Nigeria’s northeast facing famine, WFP funds could dry up in weeks – sources

Children attend a class at a primary school in Muna Garage IDP camp, Maiduguri, Nigeria November 7, 2016. UNICEF/Naftalin/Handout via REUTERS

By Paul Carsten

ABUJA (Reuters) – The United Nations’ World Food Programme could in a few weeks run out of funding to feed millions living on the brink of famine in Nigeria, four people familiar with the matter said, intensifying one of the world’s largest humanitarian crises.

In the northeast, 4.7 million people, many of them refugees from the conflict with Islamist insurgency Boko Haram, need rations to survive, according to the World Food Programme (WFP), one of the main aid groups handing out food. Many of those living in camps for displaced people say they already barely get enough to eat.

“With the money they have right now, and if they won’t cut rations, they can only go to May 18,” one person said, citing talks with the WFP, who asked to not be named because they were not authorized to speak to media.

The WFP was “reasonably certain” it would get enough funding to last until late June, the person added.

“All humanitarian crises globally are woefully underfunded and for WFP Nigeria is in one of the worst situations for funding,” a WFP spokeswoman said.

“We are trying to save lives. We need over the next six months $207 million for Nigeria. At the moment the program is 13 percent funded for 2017. It’s extremely low. Of the four countries facing famine it is the least funded.”

The conflict with Islamist insurgency Boko Haram, which seeks to establish a caliphate in Nigeria’s northeast, began in 2009 and shows no sign of ending. It has killed more than 20,000 people and displaced more than two million.

Nigeria’s northeast is now teetering on the brink of famine, aid organizations say, pointing to two years of missed crop harvests in what was once a breadbasket for the country, and the high likelihood of missing a third.

The approaching rainy season increases the risk of disease spreading, especially within camps for the displaced, adding more stress to efforts to respond to the humanitarian crisis.

The wet season also means tens of thousands of refugees are attempting to return home to farm, despite facing serious dangers, saying there is not enough food provided in the camps to sustain them.

CONTINGENCY PLAN

In a meeting on Monday with the WFP in Nigeria’s capital Abuja, donor countries and organizations, criticized the group for not having a satisfactory contingency plan if funding starts to dry up, two of the people with knowledge of the talks said.

The WFP spokeswoman said meetings with donors were genial, open and frank.

“When we are funded and able to get out to the field we are getting to people. This crisis can be averted and we want people to understand this will work if it’s funded. We can avert the famine.”

The U.S. Embassy in Abuja said the U.S. government was working “urgently and cooperatively with our partners in an effort to address the critical humanitarian needs in northeastern Nigeria”.

“There is not adequate funding to sustain the global response to those needs here. Additional resources must be found urgently so that feeding does not stop,” the embassy said in emailed comments to Reuters.

The WFP and donors have also locked horns over who is to blame for the lack of funding reaching the aid organization, with the U.N. agency saying the money promised has not been released to them and donors arguing that basic paperwork still has not been submitted, the two people said.

“There’s a dark cloud hanging over them that they’ll cut rations,” one person said. “It shouldn’t be this way.”

The WFP, along with other groups, has come under fire in Nigeria for its slow reaction to the humanitarian crisis in the northeast, only launching a full-fledged response last year while other aid organizations had been in the country since at least 2014.

On Wednesday, the U.N. children’s fund said its response to the crisis “remains severely underfunded”, a warning echoed by many other aid groups.

The United Nations says it needs $1.5 billion in humanitarian aid this year for the Lake Chad region – which spreads across parts of Nigeria, Niger, Cameroon and Chad – and $457 million had been pledged for 2017 by late February.

Despite the Nigerian army saying the insurgency is on the run, large parts of the country’s northeast, particularly in Borno state, remain under threat from Boko Haram. Suicide bombings and gun attacks have increased in the region since the end of the rainy season late last year.

(Additional reporting by Stephanie Nebehay in Geneva; Editing by Susan Thomas)

Venezuela’s Maduro jeered by crowd as unrest grows

Demonstrators clash with riot police while ralling against Venezuela's President Nicolas Maduro's government in Caracas,

By Maria Ramirez and Alexandra Ulmer

SAN FELIX, Venezuela/CARACAS (Reuters) – Angry Venezuelans threw objects at President Nicolas Maduro during a rally on Tuesday, as protests mount against the unpopular leftist leader amid a brutal economic crisis and what critics say is his lurch into dictatorship.

State television footage showed a crowd mobbing the vehicle that Maduro was standing on as he waved goodbye at the end of a military event in San Felix, in the south-eastern state of Bolivar. Amid the commotion, people threw objects at Maduro, who was wearing a traditional Venezuelan suit and a yellow-blue-red presidential sash, while his bodyguards scrambled.

The state broadcaster then halted transmission.

In a separate video shared on social media, voices yelling “Damn you!” were heard as the vehicle apparently transporting Maduro, a former bus driver and union leader, tried to make its way through the crowd.

Five males, aged 15, 17, 18, 19 and 20, were arrested for throwing “sharp objects” against Maduro’s vehicle, according to a report by a local National Guard division seen by Reuters on Tuesday night.

Further details were not immediately available. The Information Ministry did not respond to a request for information, although Socialist Party officials tweeted that Maduro had been received by a cheering crowd in San Felix.

However, the opposition, which has been protesting in the last two weeks to demand early elections, pounced on the incident as evidence that Maduro is deeply despised amid food shortages and spiraling inflation.

“The DICTATOR only needs to leave Miraflores (presidential palace) to see how the people repudiate him!” opposition lawmaker Francisco Sucre, from the state of Bolivar, said on Twitter amid a flurry of commentary on social media.

“They cannot give a standing ovation to the man responsible for the worst humanitarian crisis in our history!” Sucre added.

The incident drew immediate parallels with last year, when authorities briefly rounded up more than 30 people on Margarita island for heckling Maduro, a rare sight given that the president’s appearances typically are carefully choreographed and show only cheering supporters wearing red shirts.

Videos published by activists at the time showed scores of people banging pots and pans and jeering Maduro during a visit to inspect state housing projects. Authorities later accused opponents of “manipulating” videos.

Venezuela's President Nicolas Maduro (2nd L) in San Felix, Venezuela

Venezuela’s President Nicolas Maduro (2nd L) in San Felix, Venezuela April 11, 2017. Miraflores Palace/Handout via REUTERS

TWO DEATHS

Venezuela’s opposition on Tuesday pilloried what it says is repression during anti-Maduro protests after authorities confirmed a second death in unrest in the last week.

The state prosecutor’s office said in a statement on Tuesday that a 20-year old man had been fatally shot in the neck on Monday night at a protest in the city of Valencia. Opposition lawmakers said the man, Daniel Queliz, was killed by security forces while he was protesting.

His death comes on the heels of the killing of 19-year-old Jairo Ortiz on the outskirts of Caracas on Thursday in the area of an opposition protest. A police officer has been arrested.

After years of protesting with little results, street action had ebbed until a Supreme Court decision in late March to assume the functions of the opposition-led congress sparked outcry, with condemnation at home and abroad.

The court quickly overturned the most controversial part of its decision. News that the national comptroller on Friday had banned high-profile opposition leader Henrique Capriles from office for 15 years drew broad criticism, too.

Venezuelans have been suffering food and medicine shortages for months, leading many to skip meals or go without crucial treatment.

Opposition leaders announced another round of protests in Venezuela’s more than 300 municipalities for Thursday, saying scattered demonstrations would stretch security forces thin.

Maduro says that under a veneer of pacifism, the opposition is actually encouraging violent protests in a bid to topple his government.

State officials via social media have shown images and videos of demonstrators vandalizing public property and throwing rocks at police.

“Who is taking responsibility for damage to public property and persons?” Defense Minister Vladimir Padrino said on Twitter, posting pictures of demonstrators kicking police officers and breaking into an office of the Supreme Court. “What is their agenda? Terrorism, chaos, death?”

Most of the protesters are peaceful and say street action is their only option after authorities last year blocked a recall referendum to remove Maduro. Local elections, due last year, have yet to be called.

Still, many Venezuelans are pessimistic that street protests will yield any change, while others abstain out of fear of violence or because they are too busy searching for food.

(Additional reporting by Brian Ellsworth and Diego Ore; Writing by Alexandra Ulmer; Editing by Lisa Shumaker and Leslie Adler)