Tag Archives: Poverty

Two million children in Congo at risk of starvation, U.N. warns

GENEVA (Reuters) – More than 2 million children in the Democratic Republic of Congo are estimated to be at risk of dying from severe acute malnutrition if they do not get the aid they need, the United Nations warned on Friday.

U.N. humanitarian chief Mark Lowcock will meet donors next week in the country where conditions in many areas are worsening, U.N. spokesman Jens Laerke told a Geneva briefing.

“We have a great responsibility in the DRC…now is the time to stay the course,” Laerke said.

The 2 million children at risk of starvation include some 300,000 children in the Kasai region, Bettina Luescher of the U.N.’s World Food Programme (WFP) said.

(Reporting by Stephanie Nebehay, editing by Tom Miles)

‘Migrate or die’: Venezuelan migrants flood into Colombia despite crackdown

Venezuelans line the street at the border between Venezuela and Colombia, in Cucuta, Colombia February 21, 2018. REUTERS/Carlos Eduardo Ramirez

By Julia Symmes Cobb and Anggy Polanco

MAICAO/CUCUTA, Colombia (Reuters) – The desert wind whipping their faces, hundreds of Venezuelan migrants lugging heavy suitcases and overstuffed backpacks trudge along the road to the Colombian border town of Maicao beneath the blazing sun.

The broken line snakes back 8 miles (13 km) to the border crossing at Paraguachon, where more than a hundred Venezuelans wait in the heat outside the migration office.

Money changers sit at tables stacked with wads of Venezuelan currency, made nearly worthless by hyperinflation under President Nicolas Maduro’s socialist government.

The remote outpost on the arid La Guajira peninsula on Colombia’s Caribbean coast marks a frontline in Latin America’s worst humanitarian crisis.

Venezuelans pray as they gather at a dining facility organised by Caritas and the Catholic church, in Cucuta, Colombia February 21, 2018. REUTERS/Carlos Eduardo Ramirez

Venezuelans pray as they gather at a dining facility organised by Caritas and the Catholic church, in Cucuta, Colombia February 21, 2018. REUTERS/Carlos Eduardo Ramirez

The Venezuelans arrive hungry, thirsty and tired, often unsure where they will spend the night, but relieved to have escaped the calamitous situation in their homeland.

They are among more than half a million Venezuelans who have fled to Colombia, many illegally, hoping to escape grinding poverty, rising violence and shortages of food and medicine in their once-prosperous, oil exporting nation.

“It’s migrate and give it a try or die of hunger there. Those are the only two options,” said Yeraldine Murillo, 27, who left her six-year-old son behind in the Venezuelan city of Maracaibo, some 56 miles (90 km) across the border.

“There, people eat from the trash. Here, people are happy just to eat,” said Murillo, who hopes to find work in Colombia’s capital Bogota and send for her son.

The exodus from Venezuela – on a scale echoing the departure of Myanmar’s Rohingya people to Bangladesh – is stirring alarm in Colombia. A weary migration official said as many as 2,000 Venezuelans enter Colombia legally through Paraguachon each day, up from around 1,200 late last year.

Under pressure from overcrowded frontier towns such as Maicao, Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos announced a tightening of border controls this month, deploying 3,000 additional security personnel.

But the measures are unlikely to stem the flow of illegal migrants pouring across the 1,379-mile (2,219 km) frontier.

At Paraguachon, where a lack of effective border controls has long allowed smuggling to thrive, officials estimate 4,000 people cross illegally daily.

“We left houses, cars. We left everything: money in the bank,” said former electronics salesman Rudy Ferrer, 51, who sleeps outside a warehouse in Maicao. He estimates there are 1,000 Venezuelans sleeping on the town’s streets every night.

‘THE MADURO DIET’

Some 3 million Venezuelans – or a tenth of the population – have left Venezuelan since late Venezuelan leader Hugo Chavez started his Socialist revolution in 1999.

Despite four months of violent anti-government protests last year, Chavez’s hand-picked successor Maduro is expected to win a fresh six-year term at elections on April 22. The opposition, whose most popular leaders have been banned from running, is boycotting the vote.

Mechanic Luis Arellano and his children were among the lucky ones who found beds at a shelter in Maicao run by the Catholic diocese with help from the U.N. refugee agency. The 58-year-old said his children’s tears of hunger drove him to flee Venezuela.

“It was 8 p.m. and they were asking for lunch and dinner and I had nothing to give them,” he said, spooning rice into his 7-year-old daughter’s mouth.

Children from Venezuela eat a meal at a dining facility organised by Caritas and the Catholic church, in Cucuta, Colombia February 21, 2018. REUTERS/Carlos Eduardo Ramirez

Children from Venezuela eat a meal at a dining facility organised by Caritas and the Catholic church, in Cucuta, Colombia February 21, 2018. REUTERS/Carlos Eduardo Ramirez

“This isn’t the size they should be,” Arellano said, raising his children’s spindly arms.

Migrants told Reuters they were paying up to 400,000 bolivars for a kilo of rice in Venezuela. The official monthly minimum wage is 248,510 bolivares – around $8 at the official exchange rate, or $1.09 on the black market.

Food shortages, which many migrants jokingly refer to as the “Maduro diet”, have left people noticeably thinner than in photos taken years earlier for their identification cards.

The shelter – where bunk beds line the walls of the bedrooms – provides food and shelter for three days and, for those joining family already in Colombia, a bus ticket onwards.

It will soon have capacity for 140 people a night – a fraction of the daily arrivals.

Colombia is letting the migrants access public health care and send their children to state schools. Santos is asking for international help to foot the bill, which the government has said runs to tens of millions of dollars.

‘NO WORK’ FOR VENEZUELANS

At another shelter in the border city of Cucuta, some 250 miles (400 km) to the south, people regularly spend the night on cardboard outside, hoping places will free up.

The largest city along the frontier, Cucuta has borne the brunt of the arriving migrants. About 30,000 people cross the pedestrian bridge that connects the city with Venezuela on daily entry passes to shop for food.

Conditions are desperate for migrants like Jose Molina, a 48-year-old butcher unable to find work after leaving his wife and son in Venezuela’s northern Carabobo state four months ago.

People sit on a makeshift bed, on a street, where Venezuelan migrants gather to spend the night, in Maicao, Colombia February 15, 2018. REUTERS/Jaime Saldarriaga

People sit on a makeshift bed, on a street, where Venezuelan migrants gather to spend the night, in Maicao, Colombia February 15, 2018. REUTERS/Jaime Saldarriaga

“I feel so depressed,” said Molina, his face puffed and tired after sleeping outside a church. “I got sick from eating rotten potatoes but I was hungry so I had to eat them.”

Molina is so hopeless he has considered returning home.

“My wife says everything’s getting worse and it’s best to wait,” he said. “I don’t want to be a burden to them. They don’t have enough to eat themselves.”

While many feel a duty to welcome the migrants, in part because Venezuela accepted Colombian refugees during that country’s long civil war, others fear losing jobs to Venezuelans being paid under the table.

After locals held a small anti-Venezuelan protest last month, police evicted 200 migrants who were living on a sports field, deporting many of them.

Migrants are verbally abused by some Colombians who refuse them work when they hear their accents, said Flavio Gouguella, 28, from Carabobo.

“Are you a Veneco? Then no work,” he said, using a derogatory term for Venezuelans.

In Maicao, locals also worry about an increase in crime and support police efforts to clear parks and sidewalks.

They already have to cope with smuggled subsidized Venezuelan goods damaging local commerce, and have grown tired of job-seekers and lending their bathrooms to migrants.

Spooked by police raids, migrants in Maicao have abandoned the parks and bus stations where they had makeshift camps, opting to sleep outside shuttered shops. Female migrants who spoke to Reuters said were often solicited for sex.

Despairing of finding work, some entrepreneurial migrants turn the nearly-worthless bolivar currency into crafts, weaving handbags from the bills and selling them in Maicao’s park.

A man sells bags made out of Venezuelan banknotes, in Maicao, Colombia February 16, 2018. Picture taken February 16, 2018. REUTERS/Jaime Saldarriaga

A man sells bags made out of Venezuelan banknotes, in Maicao, Colombia February 16, 2018. Picture taken February 16, 2018. REUTERS/Jaime Saldarriaga

“This was made from 80,000 bolivars,” said 23-year-old Anthony Morillo, holding up a square purse featuring bills with the face of South America’s 19th century liberation hero Simon Bolivar. “It’s not worth half a bag of rice.”

($1 = 28,927.5000 bolivar)

(Reporting by Julia Symmes Cobb in Maicao and Paraguachon and Anggy Polanco in Cucuta and La Parada; Writing by Julia Symmes Cobb; Editing by Helen Murphy, Daniel Flynn and Daniel Wallis)

Suspected cholera cases in Yemen hit 1 million: Red Cross

A health worker reviews a list of patients admitted to a cholera treatment center in Sanaa, Yemen

DUBAI (Reuters) – The number of suspected cholera cases in Yemen has hit 1 million, the International Committee of the Red Cross said on Thursday, as war has left more than 80 percent of the population short of food, fuel, clean water and access to healthcare.

Yemen, one of the Arab world’s poorest countries, is in a proxy war between the Houthi armed movement, allied with Iran, and a U.S.-backed military coalition headed by Saudi Arabia.

The United Nations says it is suffering the world’s worst humanitarian crisis. The World Health Organization has recorded 2,219 deaths since the cholera epidemic began in April, with children accounting for nearly a third of infections.

Cholera, spread by food or water contaminated with human faeces, causes acute diarrhea and dehydration and can kill within hours if untreated. Yemen’s health system has virtually collapsed, with most health workers unpaid for months.

On Dec 3, the WHO said another wave of cholera could strike within months after the Saudi-led coalition closed air, land and sea access, cutting off fuel for hospitals and water pumps and aid supplies for starving children.

The ports were closed in retaliation for a missile fired from Yemen by the Houthis. On Wednesday, despite a fresh missile attack on Riyadh, Saudi Arabia said it would allow the Houthi-controled port of Hodeidah, vital for aid, to stay open for a month.

(Reporting by Sylvia Westall; Editing by Kevin Liffey)

War-scarred neighborhoods in Ukraine’s rebel-held Donetsk

War-scarred neighborhoods in Ukraine's rebel-held Donetsk

DONETSK, Ukraine (Reuters) – Ruined houses, shell craters and deserted streets – this is a typical scene in the Oktyabrsky district of Donetsk, the largest city of Ukraine’s pro-Russian rebel region that bears the same name.

The self-styled Donetsk and next-door Luhansk “people’s republics” broke away from central rule in 2014 after months of violent street protests in Kiev toppled Ukraine’s Moscow-leaning president and propelled pro-Western nationalists to power.

In this calm suburb of Donetsk, many people stood aloof of politics. But then fierce clashes broke out between Ukrainian government troops and pro-Russian separatists for control over the nearby Donetsk Airport.

A glistening air hub of steel and glass, specially built for the UEFA Euro 2012 of which Donetsk was a venue, the local airport was leveled to the ground, and many of the buildings in Oktyabrsky shared its fate.

A Reuters photo essay (http://reut.rs/2jONmoo ) captures images of hardship and despair of the dwellers of this district on the frontline of many battles.

Restored water and electricity supplies to local homes, with some households enjoying even gas supplies and heating, give a slight relief to some of the lucky locals as winter cold starts to bite.

“I try to keep away from politics, I only care about my family,” said Marina, aged 30. The woman, her husband and three children, one of whom is seriously ill, lost their house in 2014 when an artillery shell hit it.

“With no money, we were left in the street, with absolutely nothing. Everything burned, nothing was left … even spoons and forks were gone,” she said.

Her family changed several apartments, moving from one friend to another, before deciding that they would restore their house, using the bricks that had remained intact to build new walls. But they fast ran out of cash to buy construction materials.

The fragile ceasefire agreed in 2015 is often shattered by outbursts of gunfire and explosions of shells.

More than 8,000 private homes and more than 2,000 apartment houses were badly damaged in Donetsk, according to data provided by its administration. Most of these homes are uninhabitable and cannot be rebuilt.

A total of 64 temporary shelters for those who lost their homes in the war have been organized in various parts of Donetsk, a city of around one million residents.

Sometimes, student hostels accommodate the homeless. They include Alexandra Nikolayevna, 68, who survives with her several grandchildren at “University Hostel No.4” mainly due to handouts of humanitarian aid.

The fourth year of this ordeal has failed to shatter her political views. “We must be only with Russia, we only hope for (Russian President Vladimir) Putin to take us under his wing,” she repeats. “Anyway, everyone says it’s Russian land.”

The feeling of relative normalcy which prevails in most parts of Donetsk, dissipates when you realise the city center is just slightly more than 10 km (6.3 miles) from the frontline.

The war is felt in the volatile rates of several currencies circulating in the city, in low wages and poor quality of local food.

And it is felt in the families which lost loved ones in the war that has claimed a total of more than 10,000 lives so far.

(Reporting by Alexander Ermochenko; Writing by Dmitry Solovyov; Editing by Richard Balmforth)

Venezuela’s chronic shortages give rise to ‘medical flea markets’

Venezuela's chronic shortages give rise to 'medical flea markets'

By Anggy Polanco and Isaac Urrutia

SAN CRISTOBAL/MARACAIBO, Venezuela (Reuters) – Venezuela’s critical medicine shortage has spurred “medical flea markets,” where peddlers offer everything from antibiotics to contraceptives laid out among the traditional fruits and vegetables.

The crisis-wrought Latin American nation is heaving under worsening scarcity of drugs, as well as basic foods, due to tanking national production and strict currency controls that crimp imports.

The local pharmaceutical association estimates at any given time, there is a shortage of around 85 percent of drugs.

Sick Venezuelans often scour pharmacies and send pleas on social media to find treatment. Increasingly, however, they are turning to a flourishing black market offering medicines surreptitiously bought from Venezuelan hospitals or smuggled in from neighboring Colombia.

“Here I can find the vitamins I need for my memory,” said 56-year-old Marisol Salas, who suffered a stroke, as she bought the pills at a small stand at the main bus terminal in the Andean city of San Cristobal.

Around her, Venezuelans asked sellers for medicine to control blood pressure as well as birth control pills.

“People are looking for anticonvulsants a lot recently,” said Antuam Lopez, 30, who sells medicine alongside vegetables, and said hospital employees usually provide him with the drugs.

Leftist President Nicolas Maduro says resellers are in league with a U.S.-led conspiracy to sabotage socialism and are to blame for medicine shortages.

RISKS

In the middle of a market in the humid and sweltering city of Maracaibo, dozens of boxes full of medicines including antibiotics and pain killers are stacked on top of each other. The packaging is visibly deteriorated: The cases are discolored and some are even dirty.

Doctors warn these drugs — usually smuggled in from Colombia, a few hours’ drive from Maracaibo — pose risks.

“We’ve found that a lot of them have not been maintained at proper temperatures,” warned oncologist Jose Oberto, who leads the Zulia state’s doctors association.

Still, some Venezuelans feel they have no choice but to rely on contraband medicine.

“I had to buy medicine from Colombia, and it worried me because the label said ‘hospital use,'” said retiree Esledy Paez, 62.

But they are often prohibitively expensive for Venezuelans, many of whom earn just a handful of dollars a month at the black market rate due to soaring inflation.

Norkis Pabon struggled to find antibiotics for her hospitalized husband to prevent his foot injury from worsening due to diabetes.

“But the treatment costs 900,000 bolivars ($9.43; twice the minimum wage) and I do not know what to do,” said Pabon, who is unemployed.

(Writing by Corina Pons and Alexandra Ulmer; Editing by Sandra Maler)

Checks for free: a Mexican plan to combat poverty

Checks for free: a Mexican plan to combat poverty

By Anthony Esposito

MEXICO CITY (Reuters) – An opposition alliance in Mexico wants to launch a universal basic wage to combat the poverty that blights the lives of almost half the population, touting an experimental reform discussed globally as a solution to job losses from automation.

The center-right National Action Party and center-left Party of the Democratic Revolution are running on a joint ticket with the leftist Citizens Movement (MC) for next July’s presidential election, and the income plan is a key part of their manifesto.

Officials inside the alliance say details of the plan are still being worked out, though its contours are emerging.

A basic income of 10,000 pesos ($537) per year for everyone, including children, could be provided by consolidating funds from federal, state and municipal welfare programs, Jorge Alvarez, an MC congressman working on the plan told Reuters in a recent interview.

“If you multiply that by four or five, which is the typical size of a Mexican family, you get an annual income of 40,000 to 50,000 pesos per family, Alvarez said, adding that providing the income to children could be conditional on school enrollment.

Home to the richest man in Latin America, Carlos Slim, Mexico is laden with oil and minerals, boasts a large manufacturing base and has the world’s 15th biggest economy. But poverty has remained stubbornly stuck above 40 percent of the population for decades.

Government social development agency Coneval defines poverty as a person living on no more than 2,925 pesos a month in cities and 1,892 pesos in rural areas. The agency also takes into account other factors like healthcare and education.

Getting to 40,000 or 50,000 pesos per family could be achieved “without increasing taxes,” Alvarez said.

Still, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development argues that providing an unconditional basic income to everyone of working age would do little to combat poverty if not funded by extra taxes.

The idea of universal basic income has gained currency due to the increasing robotization of the workforce. Finland is running a pilot project to test whether unconditional payments could serve as a plausible alternative welfare model.

Mexico has seen job growth in recent years thanks to a manufacturing boom, and could face a smaller workforce as robots take over more tasks.

Swiss voters rejected a basic income plan in a referendum last year, while the defeated Socialist candidate in France’s presidential election this year, Benoit Hamon, championed it, saying it would be funded by a tax on robots that replace human labor.

Mexican gross domestic product was worth $1.046 trillion in 2016, according to the World Bank, but some 53.4 million Mexicans, or 43.6 percent of the population, live below the poverty line, according to Coneval.

($1 = 18.6239 Mexican pesos)

(Editing by Dave Graham and Jonathan Oatis)

In Mexican slum, a decades-long wait for quake relief

In Mexican slum, a decades-long wait for quake relief

By Carlos Jasso

MEXICO CITY (Reuters) – I first visited Camp No. 3 a few days after the Sept. 19 earthquake.

After reporting from collapsed buildings around the city, this was a different type of shock. Row after row of tiny tin shacks crammed into a small lot hidden behind a high fence in the middle class neighborhood of Lindavista.

Here, hundreds of families who lost their homes in an earthquake 32 years ago are living in deplorable conditions, with children and grandchildren born during the interminable wait for promised government-subsidized homes.

The 1985 earthquake was a defining moment for the Mexican capital. The death toll is still disputed, but at least 5,000 were killed. Some say many more died.

Three decades on, hundreds of its victims are still living in hovels in encampments across the sprawling city of 20 million and now the latest quake has made thousands more people homeless.

Maria de Lourdes Rosales, 64, who lost her home in the 1985 earthquake, answers her phone in her house at the camp known as No.3 in Mexico City, Mexico, October 16, 2017. The camp was founded in 1985 after an earthquake, which killed around 5,000 people. REUTERS/Carlos Jasso

Maria de Lourdes Rosales, 64, who lost her home in the 1985 earthquake, answers her phone in her house at the camp known as No.3 in Mexico City, Mexico, October 16, 2017. The camp was founded in 1985 after an earthquake, which killed around 5,000 people. REUTERS/Carlos Jasso

On first impression the camp is a little menacing, the smell of marijuana hangs in the air and residents warn of thieves and petty crime they blame on new arrivals – people who have moved in to occupy shacks left by families who have received new homes.

A strong sense of community prevails among the 1985 earthquake survivors, necessary perhaps for families who share outdoor toilets and use bared electric cables to heat water to bathe.

And as I have seen among many of Latin America’s poorest people, there is resourcefulness. Most families had some kind of work, many setting up small businesses like food stands selling tacos, or makeshift photocopy shops on the roadside.

One woman made her living charging for toilet paper and access to a bathroom.

According to the leaders of the Lindavista camp, its ramshackle shacks are home to around 750 people, divided into roughly 250 families.

There are almost 200 children who are the grandchildren of those originally resettled here, according to local leaders.

At least six such camps exist in the capital. Mexico City’s housing institute said that since 2016, it has delivered 173 homes to victims of the 1985 quake and expects to hand over 120 more before the end of next year.

A cross is displayed at the home of Martha Mejia at the camp known as No.3, in Mexico City, Mexico, October 17, 2017. The camp was founded in 1985 after an earthquake, which killed around 5,000 people. Mejia lost her home in the 1985 earthquake. REUTERS/Carlos Jasso

A cross is displayed at the home of Martha Mejia at the camp known as No.3, in Mexico City, Mexico, October 17, 2017. The camp was founded in 1985 after an earthquake, which killed around 5,000 people. Mejia lost her home in the 1985 earthquake. REUTERS/Carlos Jasso

Click on http://reut.rs/2go1OS4 for related photo essay

(Reporting by Carlos Jasso; Additional reporting by Noe Torres; Writing by Frank Jack Daniel; Editing by Toni Reinhold)

South Sudan refugees scrounge for scraps as rations slashed in Uganda camps

FILE PHOTO: South Sudanese refugees gather with their belongings after crossing into Uganda at the Ngomoromo border post in Lamwo district, northern Uganda, April 4, 2017. REUTERS/Stringer/File photo

By Pacato Peter Obwot

PAGIRINYA, Uganda (Reuters) – Hunger is forcing desperate refugees from South Sudan to steal food from poverty-stricken locals in northern Uganda, residents say, after a funding crisis compelled the United Nations slash rations in refugee camps by half this month.

More than 875,000 refugees have fled into neighboring Uganda since South Sudan’s civil war broke out in 2013, and the cuts come nearly two months after the United Nations warned the situation was at breaking point.

Ugandans say they have caught hungry refugees taking crops, vegetables or livestock after the World Food Programme (WFP) was forced to cut monthly rations from 12 kg of maize a month to 6 kg.

“The refugees are stealing, they stole a goat at night and their foot marks were traced up to the camp,” said Otti John, 62, who lives near the northern Pagirinya refugee camp.

Another resident, Vukoni Scondo, 29, told Reuters three refugees were arrested for stealing pumpkins from her garden.

A parched and stony stretch of plateaus and savannah, Pagirinya hosts some 35,000 refugees about 30 km south of the border with South Sudan.

Camp authorities there say there has been no violence yet, but worry about clashes if stealing continues.

“These people will go to steal food from nationals and it can cause fights,” said Robert Baryamwesiga, camp commandant for Uganda’s Bidi Bidi, the world’s largest refugee camp.

Many refugees feel they have no choice. There is just not enough money to feed them, said Lydia Wamala, spokeswoman for the U.N. food agency in Uganda. WFP needs $109 million to provide full rations for the May-October period but so far has only received $49 million.

Food prices in East Africa have shot up due to a regional drought. The crisis has fueled widespread hunger in Somalia, parts of Kenya and Ethiopia and famine in South Sudan.

Africa’s youngest nation, South Sudan was sucked into civil war after President Salva Kiir fired his then vice president and rival, Riek Machar, in 2013.

A regionally mediated peace pact signed in 2015 failed within months. Massacres in the capital of Juba sparked violence across the country, fracturing it along ethnic lines.

More than 3 million people, a third of the population, have fled their homes, creating Africa’s biggest refugee crisis since the Rwandan genocide.

Most refugees head to Uganda, which allows them free movement, the right to work and access public services such as education and healthcare. Around 85 percent of them are women and children.

But an average of 2,000 South Sudanese arriving every day since July has left aid agencies unable to cope, forcing some refugees back into the violence to feed their families.

An elderly man in Pagirinya said he knew of at least three families who had returned to their homes in South Sudan this month to seek food.

Refugee Peter Obore, 26, said would soon follow them since he could not feed his wife and their young baby. “I will also leave with all my four brothers and my wife,” he said.

(Additional reporting by Elias Biryabarema in Kamapala; Writing by Elias Biryabarema; Editing by Katharine Houreld and Alison Williams)

U.S. coaxes Mexico into Trump plan to overhaul Central America

A member of the military police keeps watch during a routine foot patrol at El Pedregal neighbourhood Tegucigalpa, Honduras, May 3, 2017. REUTERS/Jorge Cabrera

By Gabriel Stargardter

MEXICO CITY (Reuters) – The United States is plotting an ambitious attempt to shore up Central America, with the administration of President Donald Trump pressing Mexico to do more to stem the flow of migrants fleeing violence and poverty in the region, U.S. and Mexican officials say.

The U.S. vision is being shaped by Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary John Kelly, who is due to give a speech about his goals for Central America in Washington on Thursday.

Kelly, who knows Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador well from his time as chief of the U.S. Southern Command, helped the administration of former President Barack Obama design his Alliance for Prosperity. That $750-million initiative sought to curtail Central American migration through development projects as well as law-and-order funding to crack down on the region’s dominant gangs.

Kelly aims to re-tool the Obama-era alliance without a large increase in American funding by pressing Mexico to shoulder more responsibility for governance and security in Central America, and by drumming up fresh private investment for the region, U.S. and Mexican diplomats say.

“What we’re going to see is … greater engagement directly between the Central Americans and Mexican government … (and) a more intense effort to integrate the economic side of this effort with the security side,” William Brownfield, the U.S. assistant secretary for International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs, told Reuters.

“We’re going to see a strategy that has already been developed, but it is going to be pushed harder and more aggressively in the coming year, and the year after.”

The reshaped alliance stands in contrast to some of the isolationist views jostling for power in the White House. Still it’s consistent with Trump’s foreign policy efforts to pressure China to do more to tackle the North Korea nuclear threat and to get European allies to pick up more of the tab for NATO.

The plan also puts Mexico in a delicate spot. President Enrique Pena Nieto has repeatedly expressed his desire to preserve the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), which has become a pillar of Mexico’s economy.

But he must avoid the appearance of capitulating to Trump, who has enraged the Mexican public with his threats to withdraw from NAFTA and force Mexico to pay for his proposed border wall.

“We want to be on good terms with them, because we’re dealing with a much more important issue,” said a senior Mexican diplomat who was not authorized to speak publicly. “In return, we want a beneficial NAFTA renegotiation.”

Neither Kelly nor the DHS responded to requests for comment.

“The prosperity and security of Central America … represent a priority of Mexico’s foreign policy,” the country’s foreign ministry said in a statement.

“The Alliance for Prosperity … is a valuable tool that can be strengthened with the participation of other governments.”

A MAN WITH A PLAN

The new-look Alliance will be firmed up in Miami next month, when U.S., Mexican and Central American officials will meet to negotiate various issues, including Mexico’s role, according to a draft U.S. schedule obtained by Reuters.

Mexico’s Foreign Minister Luis Videgaray has said publicly Mexico is willing to work with the United States in stabilizing Central America, without giving much detail.

In private, though, local officials say cash-strapped Mexico lacks the money to invest significantly in the region – a fact that hasn’t eluded the United States.

“We do not have significant expectations of major … financial contributions by the government of Mexico at this time,” Brownfield said.

However, he said it was reasonable to expect Mexico to help train Central American officials, and deepen coordination along its southern border. Mexican government agencies could also work more closely with their southern counterparts, he added, citing the example of Colombia, which is training Central America’s police forces at the United States’ behest.

Brownfield said the re-designed plan would be executed by the State Department and development agency U.S. AID, working closely with the DHS. The Inter-American Development Bank (IADB) is working with U.S. AID to design mechanisms for luring fresh investment, he added.

IADB President Luis Alberto Moreno told Reuters the Miami meeting, coordinated with DHS officials, aimed to deliver “an investment shock” to create jobs and prevent migration.

However, the Mexican diplomat who requested anonymity expressed concern the new plan could presage a deeper militarization of Central America. The region’s armies have launched violent attacks on the powerful “Mara Salvatrucha” and “Calle 18” gangs, sparking accusations of rights abuses.

Mexico, which is also grappling with widespread violence, is open to training Central American security forces, the diplomat said, but won’t send troops to fight the gangs given its long-standing policy not to intervene in foreign conflicts.

The “Alliance for Prosperity” was cooked up by the Obama administration after a 2014 surge in child migrants from Central America. It aimed to stabilize Central America with funding for security and development. But critics say the focus skewed heavily toward funding for tackling drug smuggling and gangs.

Brownfield pointed to falling homicides in Honduras, where the murder rate has dropped to 59 killings per 100,000 people last year from 90.4 in 2012, as evidence it is starting to yield results. Still, Central America remains one of the most violent regions on earth.

Mexican diplomats say U.S. and Central American officials for years quietly pressed Mexico to join the alliance – pressure they ignored until Trump was elected, threatening to scrap NAFTA.

“Now we’re facing a different scenario because we have an American government pressuring us on lots of issues,” said the Mexican diplomat. “We want to be on good terms with the United States.”

(Additional reporting by Patricia Zengerle in Washington; Editing by Frank Jack Daniel and Marla Dickerson)

Iraq faces challenge of educating Mosul’s displaced children

Iraqi children stand behind the doors of their home during a fight with Islamic State militants in Rashidiya, North of Mosul, Iraq, January 30,2017.

By Ayat Basma

MOSUL, Iraq (Reuters) – Yousef, 14, pushes a wheelbarrow through a sprawling camp in Iraq running errands for pennies, the only source of income for his family of 11.

On a good day, he makes 2,000 dinars ($1.70) but if business is slow he scrambles to find leftover bread and food to sell to sheep owners in the crowded Khazer camp, near Mosul, home to Iraqis displaced by the fight against Islamic State.

“Eleven people and I am the only one supporting them. My father is old,” Yousef told Reuters, adding that he does some trips for as little as 250 dinars.

Like millions of children in the country, Yousef’s hopes of an education ended when Islamic State swept through northern Iraq in 2014.

Many parents opted against enrolling their sons in Islamic State-run schools for fear they would be recruited to join the militant group, leaving the children to find jobs to help support their family.

A report by the U.N. children’s agency UNICEF last year said that almost 3.5 million Iraqi children of school age were missing out on an education, with more than half a million estimated to be at work rather than in class.

The need for income was heightened after the World Food Programme said on Friday it had halved the food rations distributed to 1.4 million displaced Iraqis because of delays in payments of funds from donor states.

Ahmed Ali, a former factory worker in Mosul, said his children had to go to work as he could not find a job.

“It is a very painful situation. Of course I feel sorry for them. What did he do to deserve this? My son is eight years old now and he doesn’t know how to write down his own name,” Ali said.

With the recapture of eastern Mosul last month, there is hope that children will begin returning to school.

Twelve-year-old Mortada is one of those keen to ditch his work selling empty plastic bottles and catch up on three years of lost education.

“Of course, school is better than work. In the future, I want to be a doctor or a pilot,” he said.

($1 = 1,181.0000 Iraqi dinars)

(Writing by Patrick Johnston in London; Editing by Alison Williams)