(IRIN) – A new report by the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) and the Egyptian government says the number of children living in income-poor households is increasing, causing poorer living conditions and a greater deprivation of their rights as children.

Entitled Child Poverty and Disparities in Egypt, and released on 16 February in Cairo, the report said Egypt’s economic growth in the years leading up to the 2009 financial crisis had not adequately benefited the nation’s estimated 28 million children.

“This growth has not led to a proportionate reduction in income poverty or deprivation,” said the study, which is part of a global series of UNICEF studies on child poverty and disparities.

Read more – http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=88203

(IRIN) – Officials are appealing for calm during the campaign period ahead of upcoming historic elections in April as insecurity remains a major concern in Southern Sudan.

Electoral campaigning in the highly charged contest opened on 13 February, two months before three days of polling from 11 April, with the results due a week later.

Officials have called on politicians not to raise ethnic or political tensions in a region already reeling from violent clashes.

“During this period of campaigning, let this period be peaceful – let them not use inciting words that will lead to public disorder,” said Jersa Kide Barsaba, a member of the South Sudan High Election Committee.

“Let them not hate each other as parties, but let them come as one people who are Southern Sudanese, so that these elections will end up as peaceful,” she added.

The elections are a key part of the 2005 Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) that ended Sudan’s 22-year long civil war between north and south, in which an estimated two million people died.

But tensions remain high in the south, with several inter-ethnic clashes between rival groups. More than 2,500 people were killed and almost 400,000 displaced in 2009. The violence affected seven of the region’s 10 states, according to the Office of the Resident and Humanitarian Coordinator in Southern Sudan.

Read more – http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=88167

(IRIN) – Officials in Somalia’s self-declared independent republic of Somaliland have appealed to the international community to provide humanitarian aid for hundreds of thousands of people, especially children, in the wake of prolonged drought. “The affected population is estimated at about 40 percent of Somaliland’s 3.5 million, which is equivalent to 1.4 million people,” Ali Ibrahim, Minister for Planning and National Aid Co-ordination, told IRIN. Following the failure of the Gu and Deyr rainy seasons in 2009, he said help was needed in water-trucking, construction and rehabilitation of boreholes, rehabilitation and desilting of dams, and the supply of medication for affected human and livestock populations to avert an outbreak of epidemics.

Read more – http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=88123

Hesham Gohary says he has been coming to the Health Ministry in central Cairo for weeks in the hope of getting free kidney dialysis treatment, but always leaves empty-handed.

IRIN – The 54-year-old farmer is one of 35,000 low-income kidney failure patients whose collective US$118 million health bill used to be footed by the government, until it recently declared its coffers empty.

“I badly need the dialysis,” Gohary told IRIN. “But it seems so difficult to get free treatment in this country these days.”

Around 35 million of the country’s 80 million people are in the state health insurance system, according to the Health Ministry, and most of the rest are supposed to get free health care.

Read more – http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=88097

IRIN – Eight months after the end of joint military operations by the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and Uganda, many parts of Orientale Province, in northeastern DRC, are still in turmoil, says the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA).

Attacks on civilians by Ugandan rebels and local militias have left 340,000 people displaced, and 30,000 refugees have fled to Sudan.

“Following attacks by the LRA [Lord’s Resistance Army] in December, there has been a 9 percent rise in the number of displaced in Haut Uélé [near the border with Sudan], and an 11 percent increase in Bas Uélé [near the border with the Central African Republic] compared to earlier months,” said Jean Charles Dupin, head of OCHA in Orientale Province.

Read more – http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=88082

(IRIN) – Major routes in Sudan have been cleared of landmines and unexploded ordnance (UXOs) but there are still areas where the devices threaten civilians, as well as affecting aid and development efforts, say officials.

“The existence of landmines… continues to hamper the delivery of humanitarian aid and the return of refugees and internally displaced people (IDPs),” Margaret Mathew Mathiang, deputy chair of the South Sudan De-mining Authority (SSDA) in Juba, told IRIN.

At least 1,903,729 returnees were projected to return home in Southern Sudan by June 2009, according to the International Organization for Migration.

“The implementation of humanitarian and development projects in this crucial post-war period is also affected. For instance, three bulldozers were blown up [along] a certain road in Eastern Equatoria [while] on a road expansion mission,” Mathiang said.

Read more – http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=88073

IRIN – A report on flood damage in the northern part of the Sinai Peninsular was submitted to the Egyptian Cabinet on 28 January.

It said flash floods on and after 18 January left 780 homes totally destroyed, 1,076 submerged and the area suffered material losses of over US$25.3 million.

The destroyed homes would cost the government $3.5 million in compensation, said the report produced by the Crisis Management Centre in north Sinai in cooperation with the Cabinet’s Information and Decision Support Centre.

Read more – http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=87944

IRIN – Aid workers in volatile eastern Chad are anxiously watching discussions over the possible exit of UN peacekeepers, after the government has said it wants the mission out when its mandate ends on 15 March.

“The principal worry for aid agencies is what would be the impact on the security situation,” said an aid worker in eastern Chad who requested anonymity.

“If the Chadian government can create the conditions in which aid operations can go forward in a secure environment, good. But if not, continuing humanitarian work here will be very difficult.” 

The UN Mission in the Central African Republic and Chad (MINURCAT) is charged in part with protecting civilians, including the some 450,000 refugees and internally displaced persons (IDPs) in eastern Chad.

Read more – http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=87818

IPS – As U.S. special envoy to Sudan Scott Gration defended the Barack Obama administration’s new policy toward the war-torn country on Capitol Hill Thursday, NGOs and a U.N. official reacted with disappointment and impatience.

Before the U.S. House of Representatives Subcommittee on Africa and Global Health, Gration faced persistent questioning from some members of Congress over the policy’s inclusion of carrots alongside the sticks favoured by most international organisations.

Read more – http://www.ipsnews.net/africa/nota.asp?idnews=49546

IPS – The guns have gone silent – except for sporadic conflict in parts of the vast South Sudan region, such as the Eastern Equatoria State. It may not be the absolute end of the conflict in the region, but it is a reason for renewed hope.

It has been two decades of bitter civil war in Sudan, the southerners bearing the burden of massive destruction which has left an estimated 1.9 million people dead and four million displaced, according to United Nations agencies.

Read more – http://www.ipsnews.net/africa/nota.asp?idnews=49337