FEAST OR FAMINE

I am currently in Kampala, Uganda, where a one-day workshop was held on October 16, 2009 by the parliamentary legal and gender committees to debate the inclusion of a clause to the Marriage and Divorce Bill to enable men to divorce their wives if they are permanently frigid. Female Members of Parliament introduced the debate to cater for men "silently suffering in marriage." The debate also proposes that spouses who force their partners to have sex, if convicted, should face five years imprisonment or a fine. The law currently allows women to divorce permanently impotent men, but there is no clause to support men. The Bill also allow spouses to deny each other sex on reasonable grounds (such as poor health, child birth, and surgery). The Marriage and Divorce Bill is currently under scrutiny and review. MARTINA NICOLLS is an international aid and development consultant, and the author of:- The Shortness of Life: A Mongolian Lament (2015)...

I am currently in Kampala, the capital of Uganda, where the heads of state summit on refugees, returnees and internally displaced persons (IDPs) is taking place from October 19-23, 2009. The African Convention on the Protection and Assistance of Internally Displaced Persons aims to be the first legally binding instrument to address IDPs and international human rights standards. The Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre (IDMC) and United Nations agencies estimate that Africa has 11 million of the world’s 25 million IDPs, most of whom have been forced out of their homes by conflict. Sudan has the largest number of IDPs in Africa with an estimated 4.5 million in 2009. Most of these are from the western region of Darfur (where I was working in September). The Democratic Republic of Congo, since the start of the military operations against the militia in the east in January, has nearly 900,000 displaced persons. This brings the total number of displaced across North and South Ki...

I spoke with many women in West Darfur, in the areas of Azerni, Sanidadi, and Um Tajok about water. While water points have been installed by aid companies, there are not enough. They are not in reach of all women in the surrounding communities who walk up to an hour to fetch water in jericans. The queues are often long and the waiting time can be up to an hour. If they time it right, they can fill up their two jericans in five minutes if there's no queue. It's not the walking and the queue they mind so much, but they fear conflict and the toll it takes on their children who need to be fed and washed. Often the hand pumps are broken and it can take three weeks to fix, so they have to travel further for water in the meantime. Men from the village have been trained to fix the pumps but the parts can't be purchased in their markets, so they need to travel to El Geneina or to a larger market. For a small family, the women need about 6 jericans a day. For a la...

West Darfur is hot, dry and dusty in September. Low-lying houses are spread across the dark, flat surface of its capital, El Geneina. The rainy season has ended. Each year at this time, since 2005, an annual study of nutrition and food security has been conducted for the Sudan Ministry of Health. Twenty-four Ministry of Health received training to collect data on children’s health and nutrition and to undertake anthropometric measurements to assess the levels of malnutrition. Data collection will occur for the first two weeks in October 2009 in the areas of Azerni, Sanidadi and Um Tajok, after which qualified staff in the Ministry will undertake data entry, expected to take a week. By late October I’ll receive the data to analyse and write the report for the Global Relief Alliance and the Sudan Ministry of Health. The data comprises four surveys: (1) food security and household questionnaire; (2) mortality questionnaire; (3) breast feeding questionnaire; and (4) anthropomet...

In West Darfur, a desert hedgehog scuttled into my room one night. A nocturnal animal, it feeds on insects, spiders, mosquitoes and occasionally small snakes and scorpions. It’s smaller and lighter in colour than its European cousin, and is quite common across northern Africa.

I have just spent time in El Geneina in West Darfur to conduct a Nutrition and Food Security assessment. The rainy season has finished and the crops are not yet harvested. It is the “hungry season”. Despite a spate of kidnappings of aid workers, and the reduction of aid workers in the region, down from 700 in January 2009 to 400 in August, joint United Nations and African Union (UNAMID – United Nations-African Mission in Darfur) has announced that a safe environment for aid workers is crucial to any resolution to the Darfur conflict. The Humanitarian Aid Commission (HAC) says most of the abductions have been carried out by bandits seeking ransom. Consequently, many aid workers rarely work outside the main cities. The acceleration of attacks on aid workers could have a devastating impact on getting emergency relief, health and nutrition information, and small aid projects to many Darfuris. My work took me to three World Relief/Global Relief Alliance operational areas: Azerni, Sa...

As part of the overall strategy for eliminating and preventing child labour in India, aid agencies seek to increase economic security to the families who withdraw their children from hazardous work by encouraging savings and alternative livelihoods. Since most of the parents of child labourers work in the informal sectors with irregular incomes they lack economic security. Child labour is viewed in India not as a labour problem but as a development issue requiring multi-sectoral interventions and civil society partnership. Active district leadership is therefore considered crucial in the implementation of activities to reduce child labour. In some districts, mothers of child workers enrolled in formal schools, transitional education centres and vocational training centres are organized into Self-Help Groups (SHGs). SHGs were formed with the specific objective of providing economic security to the child worker families in order that the need for the child’s earnings is obviated. ...