Last month, Michael J. Kavanagh of the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting went back to eastern Congo to find out what happened. Together with Lisa Biagiotti and Taylor Krauss, he produced the story of Pascal and Vestine.

Read Michael’s post on what he saw in Congo’s most remote areas: War still rages on in corners of eastern Congo.

About 3.2 million Somalis– 43 per cent of the population — are in desperate need of food and other humanitarian assistance. Hundreds of thousands have come to the Hawa Abdi refugee camp in Afgooye and now get by only with assistance from aid organizations like the World Food Programme. Malnutrition has doubled at the camp in the past two months, leaving children on the brink of death.

Though the WFP attempts to help with nutritional products like “plumpy,” aid workers are often the targets of violent attacks.

Below, watch Worldfocus’s report on the dire situation in Somali refugee camps. Also, view our recent report on Somalis fleeing to Yemen: Somalia struggles with famine, fear and flight.

On Tuesday, Yemen announced it would ban entry of Ethiopians and Eritreans in response to an influx of refugees, though Somalis are still permitted entry.

Dr. Maximo Migliori of Doctors Without Borders describes the scene at the village of Ahwar in southern Yemen, where refugees wash up on shore — dead or alive.

Below, bloggers in Yemen, Somalia and elsewhere in the region discuss the refugee dilemma and international coverage of Somalia.

Yemeni blogger Omar Barsawad expresses his amazement that Yemen, itself extremely poor, has aided Somali refugees in ways that richer countries have not.

The “Yemenade” blog assesses Yemen’s resources, arguing that they are insufficient and that the international community must take action.

A blogger at “East African Philosopher,” raised in both Kenya and Somalia, discusses the most recent Transparency International report, which listed Somalia as the world’s most corrupt nation. He argues that Somalia is a failed state rather than a corrupt one and criticizes the U.S.’s handling of Somali warlords.

Blogger Nick Wadhams, a freelance journalist based in Kenya, argues that press coverage of piracy ignores the seriousness of the crisis in Somalia.

Journalist Rob Crilly responds, claiming attention on Somalia in any form is an improvement and suggesting journalists “smuggle in some of the serious stuff just below your reference to Johnny Depp.”

The recent pirate attacks brought international attention to war-torn and drought-stricken Somalia. The country’s ongoing fighting — a result of a power vacuum and conflict between warlords and insurgents — has received less attention, though it has displaced over 160,000 Somalis this year alone and left millions hungry.

Worldfocus producer Bryan Myers reflects on his experience covering the conflict in the 1990s: Remembering Somalia before the pirate attacks.

Photo courtesy of Flickr user ISN Security Watch under a Creative Commons license.

Maria McFarland, a senior researcher at Human Rights Watch, speaks with Martin Savidge about Colombia’s displaced population and the role of the U.S. government.


Maria McFarland of Human Rights Watch discusses Colombia’s displaced population and the role of the U.S. government. /files/2008/10/th_intv_mcfarland.jpg /files/2008/10/th_intv_mcfarland.jpg ]]> http://worldfocus.org/blog/2008/10/02/armed-groups-displace-people-in-colombia/1565/feed/ http://worldfocus.org/blog/2008/10/01/georgia-conflict-forgets-womens-health-needs/1527/ http://worldfocus.org/blog/2008/10/01/georgia-conflict-forgets-womens-health-needs/1527/#comments Wed, 01 Oct 2008 16:44:19 +0000 Worldfocus http://worldfocus.org/?p=1527

Irene is 21 years old, 9 months pregnant and lives in a tent city in Gori, Georgia.

Some 128,000 Georgians were displaced following the Georgia-Russia conflict that began in August.

Louise Lee-Jones is a Worldfocus contributing blogger and guest columnist for the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting. She reports from Georgia about the challenges facing Georgian youth and women, who have fled their homes following the recent fighting. On the Pulitzer Center’s blog, “Untold Stories,” she writes about the Georgian women left without adequate reproductive health services.

The Forgotten Women of Gori

Irene smiles shyly as she waits to be seen in the small tent that is the reproductive health clinic in Gori Tent City. She is 21 years old and is nine months pregnant with her first baby. Her baby is due in the next few weeks and she wants to have it in the hospital when the time comes. Fortunately, the hospital in Gori wasn’t destroyed unlike many others in the areas to the north of the city.

Irene fled her home with her husband and his family when the fighting between the Russian and Georgian forces came too close for comfort. Fearing for their lives, they fled first to her husband’s sister’s house and then to a camp for displaced people. The camp is near their home in Gori and they’ve been living there for the last month. “We are all staying together in one tent, with other people” says Irene. “There are eight of us in one tent. It is ok, but noisy and there’s no privacy,” she adds.

I’ve come to Georgia as part of a fact finding delegation from the European Parliamentary Forum on Population and Development to assess the reproductive health needs of the displaced people in the region.

Most of the delegation is made up of MPs and MEPs but I am representing Marie Stopes International (MSI).

So why was MSI included? MSI, together with Columbia University, coordinates a multi agency, multi country programme which brings together 10 leading service delivery and advocacy organisations to scale up comprehensive reproductive health services in crisis settings. The programme, known as the Reproductive Health Access, Information and Services in Emergencies (RAISE) Initiative, helps refugees, internally displaced people (IDPs) and returnees in crisis areas such as Colombia, Northern Uganda, and Darfur in Sudan.

The reproductive health needs of displaced people are often neglected, even once the immediate priorities have been addressed. Yet failure to address these needs at the outset of an emergency stores up problems for women and the broader population.

To read more, visit the original post.

The views expressed by contributing bloggers do not reflect the views of Worldfocus or its partners.

Photo courtesy of MSI/RAISE/Louise Lee-Jones.