With the World's Attention on Ukraine, Suffering Is Rising Elsewhere

[marmar]

With the World's Attention on Ukraine, Suffering Is Rising Elsewhere
Ukraine isn't the only place where children are dying because of the Russian invasion. With all attention on the war there, aid money is drying up in other regions – including in Somalia, which is experiencing a devastating drought.

By Heiner Hoffmann in Somalia
31.03.2022, 18.00 Uhr


(Der Spiegel) A teenage girl is squatting on the dusty ground, her long robe covering her entire body, right down to her feet. Beneath the dress, blood is dripping into the sand. Everyone knows it, but she wants to keep it hidden from view. The young woman is having her period, but here in the camp, neither pads nor tampons are available – indeed there isn’t even anything to eat. So she squats on the ground, for several days running, and hopes that it will soon come to an end.

She's surrounded by plastic tarps rippling in the wind, stretched as they are across branches bound together to create dome-shaped shelters. It is a camp for displaced people, set up by the Somalian government in the southern part of the country. A water truck comes by every now and then, but residents of the camp have to take care of everything else themselves. They all used to be cowherds, but the persistent drought has killed off their livestock, and their livelihoods. More than 4 million of the country’s population of 16 million have been affected.

Among the makeshift tents, small mounds of earth can periodically be seen. They are graves, and they used to be at the edge of the camp. But every day, dozens more people show up and build shelters for themselves. A tent city that has expanded beyond the dead.

....(snip)....

"The war in Ukraine has distracted attention from the catastrophic drought in Somalia," wrote the UN’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) earlier this month. That became abundantly clear on a recent Wednesday evening on the other side of the Gulf of Aden in Yemen. The country is still suffering from a brutal civil war, with the UN describing the situation in the country as "still one of the largest humanitarian crises in the world."

A major donor conference was scheduled to bring in money to make a dent in the suffering. Conference organizers warned ahead of the gathering that suffering in other parts of the world cannot be ignored despite the war in Ukraine. But in the end, only a third of the 3.9-billion-euro target was collected. The UN expressed "disappointment" over the result. .........(more)

https://www.spiegel.de/international/world/humanitarian-catastrophe-in-somalia-with-the-world-s-attention-on-ukraine-suffering-is-rising-elsewhere-a-0613875e-ea9e-42e6-9c7c-de1ae7a78517

[TygrBright]

1. Why do they waste our time with this trivia? There are Oligarchs who still aren't rich enough!! n/t

[childfreebychoice]

2. Syria, Yemen, Lebanon...and yet oligarchs, worldwide

Will never have enuf.smh