The presence of uncontrolled armed groups in the east of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) has led to severe insecurity and displacement of people. The terror these groups have unleashed has included sexual violence, killings, arbitrary executions and other gross human rights violations.

Tens of thousands of refugees have fled to Uganda to escape the violence. Many fled to the Rwamwanja refugee settlement in western Uganda, which is being run by an ACT member.

In the first three months of 2013, the number of Congolese refugees at Rwamwanja rose from 20,000 to more than 50,000, putting huge pressure on the site. By the end of 2013, the settlement housed 54,000.

During the year, our member took over most of the responsibilities of the camp, including water and sanitation, livelihoods, environment and community services (such as security and protection), and looking after the elderly and unaccompanied minors. Our member also works in the Bubukwanga transit centre, which funnels new arrivals to the camp.

However, with the settlement spread over 104km2 and 26 villages, it has been difficult to reach everyone with services and food. Refugees are facing many serious problems, including limited access to basic services and sexual- and gender-based violence.

At the settlement there is an urgent need for more legal and social support, and for more health workers, to respond to those cases that are reported. Available data shows that 85 per cent of the people at Rwamwanja are under 18, and the ACT appeal is particularly addressing the vulnerability of young people to abuse.

South Sudan crisis puts further pressure on the camp

The South Sudan crisis also added to the numbers of refugees arriving in Uganda. Emergency food rations have been diverted from Rwamwanja, leaving the Congolese there on half rations.

ACT’s work on livelihoods – enabling farmers to produce food on the site – has become vital. At the end of the year, Jesse Kamstra, country representative for our member operating the Rwamwanja camp, said: “Thankfully the situation in the DRC is calming down. While most people are still afraid to return, as the last groups of rebels are still being disbanded, some people are returning home. But with the recent influx of 74,000 South Sudanese refugees, agencies are diverting resources away from Rwamwanja. This means that investment in livelihoods, for people to provide for themselves, is important to reduce the suffering of the people there.”

The refugees are uncertain about what the future holds. They are dealing with unfavourable dwellings, rudimentary hygiene and sanitation, and limited food, clothing and medical care.

While ACT’s appeal cannot change all of that at once, our work helps to save lives and provide essential care for the most vulnerable among them.

The ACT Alliance Climate Change Award for 2013 was given May 21st to RDRS Bangladesh for best practice in its project, alleviating poverty through disaster risk reduction, which has been implemented in North West part of Bangladesh.

Speaking at the award ceremony at the Ecumenical Centre in Geneva, John Nduna, ACT’s General Secretary said:  “As an alliance, we clearly have lot of expertise and knowledge on how to reduce disaster risk and adapt to climate change. This, we believe, is expertise that is worth sharing.”

The Climate Award was received by Dr Salima Rahman, Executive Director, RDRS Bangladesh and Morzina Begum, Shapla Boro Khata Union Federation, part of RDRS Bangladesh. RDRS is a member of ACT Alliance.

“The award means a lot for us, especially for our staff and program participants. It gives us a continued encouragement to work in disaster prone area where people continuously struggle with floods, storms and droughts.  In these disasters women and children are affected the most. If we continue to capacitate women we can reach those who need the help. Receiving this award gives us inspiration to continue with this work.” said Salima Rahman when receiving the Climate Award.

“One of the added values of a network like the ACT Alliance is the ability to stimulate mutual sharing, learning and capacity-support among and for its members. The ACT Alliance Climate Award will certainly inspire action by ACT members and others on the ground,” adds Nduna.

For this year’s award, a total of 17 submissions were made by ACT members from Burundi, Kenya, Madagascar, Tanzania, Haiti, Bangladesh, Cambodia, India, Myanmar, Nepal, Pakistan and Switzerland. These projects ranged from community based climate change resilience and adaptation initiatives to comprehensive disaster risk reduction initiatives.

“The project, alleviating poverty through disaster risk reduction, represents an excellent example of linking relief, rehabilitation and development by enhancing local communities’ self-help mechanisms, early warning and individual support to households that are most at risk,” said Peter Rottach, the chair of the ACT community of practice on climate change adaptation, disaster risk reduction and sustainable development.

The ACT Alliance community of practice on climate change adaptation, disaster risk reduction and sustainable development is a group of members that are involved in work on climate change adaptation, mitigation and disaster risk reduction in different parts of the world. This group is responsible for coordinating the award, which is offered once every two years.

Four other projects submitted by Church World Service (Africa), Christian Agency for Rural Development (India), Tanganyika Christian Refugee Service (Tanzania) and the National Council of Churches of Kenya were shortlisted for their notable work.

The next ACT Alliance Climate Award will be given in 2015.

Alarming statistics illustrate the enormous obstacles that remain in the way of eliminating epidemic levels of violence against women and girls. The United Nations indicates that as many as 7 in 10 women in the world report having experienced physical and/or sexual violence in their lifetimes.

In response to these numbers – and to commemorate International Women’s Day on March 8 – ACT Alliance calls on UN member states to fulfil their obligations to eradicate violence against women and girls.

“The international community has a responsibility to implement a global framework to prevent and punish violence against women and girls. States have a legal and moral obligation to stop this most abhorrent form of violence,” says ACT Alliance’s General Secretary, John Nduna.

Violence against women is a universal phenomenon taking many forms: partner violence; early and forced marriage; forced pregnancy; “honour” crimes; female genital mutilation; femicide; sexual harassment; trafficking; and conflict-related violence.

Wars and conflict in particular often lead to an increase in sexual- and gender-based violence.

“In situations of conflict or post-conflict, women’s participation in conflict resolution and peace building is critical to creating a safer environment for them to live in,” says Nduna.

Addressing gender-based violence requires the implementation and enforcement of comprehensive legislative and policy measures at global and national levels; they must entail protection, prosecution and punishment of offenders, as well as support for survivors, prevention and research. Effective legal frameworks must prohibit and criminalise violence against women and girls, as well as prevent violence and safeguard survivors.

ACT Alliance calls on the UN Commission on the Status of Women, meeting this week and next in New York, to work towards the universal ratification of the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women.

Ultimately, Nduna argues, violence against women and girls has not only devastating effects on its victims, but on society at large.

“The future success of sustainable international peace and development depends on stopping the scourge of gender-based violence,” he concludes.

As their country’s civil war drags on, thousands of Syrian families continue to flee the incessant violence for safety in neighboring countries. Yet in many places where they have taken refuge, the struggle to survive remains a daunting challenge.

As of January 17, more than 650,000 Syrian refugees throughout the region had either registered with United Nations officials or have their registration pending, according to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. More than one-third of those were in Lebanon, where a total of 212,445 refugees have already registered or begun the registration process with UNHCR.

Those numbers don’t include everyone, however. Some refugees, unsure of the political landscape, have tried to keep a low profile.

“We haven’t registered yet because when we arrived, we were warned that if we did so, we wouldn’t be able to return to Syria, and we thought we’d be here for just a short time,” said a woman whose family lives in a makeshift tent at the edge of the Bekaa Valley town of Jeb Jennine. She asked not to be identified, saying they had crossed the border into Lebanon without presenting any papers, and now feared deportation.

“Yet now when we call UNHCR to try to make an appointment, they don’t answer the phone. And you’ve got to talk to them on the phone to begin the process. Our neighbors who registered have received vouchers for food and warm things for winter, but we haven’t. We had to borrow a blanket from another family for our children, and at night we just sleep closely together to stay warm,” she said.

Humanitarian needs amidst fractious politics

The refugees are also difficult to count in Lebanon because the government has resisted building large camps for them as in Turkey and Jordan. Instead, most Syrian refugees here are staying with friends or relatives, or renting space in crowded buildings or rustic encampments.

Formal refugee camps are a non-starter in Lebanon, where a sizable population of Palestinian refugees has lingered in “temporary” camps since 1948. The presence of armed factions among these Palestinians contributed to the 1975-90 civil war. And many Lebanese have resisted the assimilation of the Palestinians, who are mostly Sunni, in order not to upset the fragile sectarian balance in their own country.

With Lebanon’s political culture closely linked to Syria’s political factions, no one wants to import the violence that has torn apart cities like Homs and Aleppo. At the same time, there’s broad support for a humanitarian response to the families fleeing the civil war. That tension creates a delicate political balancing act.

“There’s a power struggle in Lebanon, and nobody can agree on something like this,” said George Antoun, the Beirut-based Middle East regional director for International Orthodox Christian Charities, a member of ACT Alliance. “Lebanon doesn’t control its borders, and it has a long and porous border with Syria. People fear a refugee camp might become a base for Syrian militants, or a place that could be attacked by a certain faction within Lebanon, and that would create conflict. It would be hard to prove who attacked the camp, and it could bring Lebanon back to civil war.”

With no change in sight in Syria’s protracted war, refugees will continue to flow across the border. UN officials say Lebanon will have 425,000 Syrian refugees by June. As more refugees arrive, their needs for living space and services will put the country’s capacity to host them to an even greater test. That’s why Lebanon appealed to the Arab League for $180 million in emergency aid during a meeting in Cairo on January 13. The Arab League agreed to dispatch a fact-finding team to study the situation.

The ACT Alliance response

Working with UN agencies and other members of ACT Alliance, the IOCC is assisting the Syrian refugees with blankets, heaters and winter clothing. The organisation also works inside Syria in cooperation with the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate of Antioch and All the East to deliver emergency relief items, as well as provide critical psychosocial support to families struggling to survive the harsh winter.

In Lebanon’s Bekaa Valley, the IOCC has provided 2,000 expectant mothers and women who recently gave birth with special personal care kits filled with important basics that are often forgotten and difficult to ask for in a society where women’s needs are not discussed. Each “dignity kit” contains feminine hygiene products and personal care items such as bath towels and new undergarments.

“Providing protection and humanitarian assistance to vulnerable groups such as women with young children is integral to our ongoing relief efforts,” said Mark Ohanian, the IOCC director of programs. “They need someone to support their well-being so that they can continue to support their families.”

**Article by Paul Jeffrey

It looks like any other school yard, any other school day. But it is actually the first school day in Camp Mbere, a refugee camp only a few kilometres from the Malian border in Mauritania. Suddenly a camera attracts the attention and hundreds of children sets of, screaming and laughing. Like any other children.

When Kasongo Mutshaila makes his way through the ocean of screaming children, he can´t help it but laughing. As being the representative in Mauritania Kasongo is heading the ACT Alliance LWF work camp management in camp Mbere.  And he is proud.

“I am so grateful to all our staff working at the front line. It’s a high level of sacrifice on their part”, Kasongo says trying to drown out the laughing children. He says this is a risky environment considering the terrorist attacks in the region.

“The passion and commitment I can see here is stunning”, he says.

A safe haven in dire need of support

Clashes in Mali between Tuareg rebels and the army have left more than 60,000 people internally displaced and a similar number have fled to Mauritania and neighbouring countries. Camp Mbere receives in average more than 1,000 refugees per day, some days even more. In the middle of April the camp is hosting over 55,000 people, more than half of them children.

To Kasongo Mutshaila the numbers are all about needs. The daily rising influx of fleeing people means a constant gap between resources and needs. The needs are extremely urgent and vast, he underlines. With so many people sharing the same area, pressure on already stretched resources are enormous. Health and sanitation, water and food are absolute necessities and at the same time all relying on assets. Assets that simply are not there.

But to Kasongo, the solution is obvious. “We have to down-size the camp” he says. “We are already projecting a population of 80,000 refugees and diving the camp in two gives us the huge advance of easier logistics, less risk of spreading infections and a safer environment.” He has taken up the matter with the head of UNHCR but says that the Mauritanian government might be reluctant at first considering the security and the fight against terrorism.

Experienced aid worker

At Camp Mbere the Lutheran World Federation in Mauritania is head of camp management. That means coordinating all the NGOs working in the camp, analyzing the needs and rescourses, providing the refugees with information and building tents according to all applicable standards.

“Yes, it’s a huge responsibility we have. Besides all the physical practicalities we also need to make the mental situation bearable for the refugees. We need to start giving them psychosocial support to make the day somewhat normal in this abnormal situation”, Kasongo says smiling.

Kasongo knows what he is talking about. He has been an aid worker for almost 15 years. He has headed camps for refugees from Darfur and Rwanda in Congo and Chad, camps 5 times the size of Mbere.

A deepening food crisis is taken its toll

But the fighting in Mali is not the only issue of attention. The UN World Food Program says an early warning about a foreseen famine in Sahel was not followed by an early response.

It is not famine yet, but only rapid action would prevent further deterioration of the food security situation and avoid a full-scale crisis.

Kasongo says that LWF Mauritania, the only ACT Alliance member in the country, is implementing an appeal to assist the drought affected population in Mauritania and Senegal.

The need for sustainable, structural solutions to food insecurity has helped shape ACT’s response to previous years’ crises and will continue to do so as this new humanitarian episode unfolds. ACT is working not only to provide immediate food aid, but also to help people hit by the crisis provide for themselves over the long term.

Fatumata, 28, knocks the leaves of a thorny tree with a long metal pole and picks them up off the dry and dusty ground one by one. “We normally only feed these leaves to our animals,” she explains, “but the situation is so difficult now that we are eating them ourselves.”

When asked if there is any nutrition in them she shrugs. “No, but we don’t have any choice. It’s an obligation. It’s all there is.”

Fatumata is from Tinakoff in northern Burkina Faso, a village like hundreds of others across the region that have experienced zero harvests. The latest humanitarian reports state that 1.6 million people in the country are in need of food aid.

The rains came late last year and when they arrived they were pitiful. Months of toil in the searing Sahelian heat came to nothing. “There are no crops and no pasture for the animals,” explains Elmamoune eg Fereby Baye, the village chief. “This is the worst experience we have had since I was village chief. It’s the worst experience I have lived through.”

“The animals are hungry and skinny so we can’t sell them, so we don’t have any money to buy any food. It’s all about animals here. If the animals are not in good health, then neither are we.”

Elmamoune fears for the well-being of his villagers: “It’s very, very difficult, very worrying, to such an extent that I can’t sleep.”

Tahya Wellet Etawantaw, 30, is also having sleepless nights. “We used to have 50 animals and now we have nothing,” she explains wearily. “I have to rely on my neighbours to feed my children. If they have nothing, they don’t eat. Or I go out to beg for food that I can come home and cook.”

Tahya’s eight-year old daughter Sohat is suffering from small pox, but she can’t take her to the health centre as she has no money to pay for any treatment. Her husband lingers outside the house listening to the conversation, but he refuses to come and speak with us. “He is a Peulh herdsman,” says Aisseta Kabré, resilience officer for Christian Aid, a member of ACT Alliance. “it is very difficult for him to admit to anyone that he no longer has any animals.”

The current situation in northern Burkina Faso represents a perfect storm for an acute food crisis. People were still recovering from the drought in 2010 when the rains failed last year. And the poor harvest has contributed to exhorbitant food prices.  A cereal trader in the northern town of Gorom Gorom explained how a 100kg bag of millet (a staple crop in Burkina) had almost doubled in price from 14,500 cfa (£18) this time last year to 27,500 cfa (£34).

The conflicts in neighbouring Ivory Coast and Libya have also had a profound effect. “After animals, people here depend on the Ivory Coast to earn a living,” explained Elmamoune. According to a World Bank report, remittances from Ivory Coast go to a third of households in Burkina Faso, especially the poorest, and are the most significant migration flows in the whole of sub-Saharan Africa. As a result of both conflicts 420,000 migrants have returned to Burkina Faso.

Akmoudou, Fatumata’s husband was one of them. He went to work in the Ivory Coast to earn money for his family and was doing well with fishing and building activities but that all changed when civil war broke out in 2010.

“During those times we went five days without eating, we couldn’t go out of the house,” he explains. “Many of my friends died. I managed to escape and came back here.” Someone paid for him to get from Abidjan to Ouagadougou but he had to sell a cow to pay for him to travel the 280 km home from the capital.

He adds: “I’m a poor person here now. There is no work. There is nothing. In the dry season we plant and there’s no rain, there’s nothing, it’s poverty.”

The village chief explained how it was so bad in Tinakoff (6km from the Malian border) that herders started to leave for Mali to find pasture, but because of the violence there involving the Touaregs, Malians were fleeing to come to Burkina Faso.

People in northern Burkina are welcoming their troubled visitors, but it is becoming more and more difficult, especially as people are coming with their cattle, putting extra pressure on the already scarce or non-existent pasture. Fearing conflict, the Burkinabé government has deployed helicopters to monitor the situation on the border.

All of these contributing factors means that this current crisis in Burkina Faso is much worse than the one in 2010 and is perhaps one of the worst in history.

Cristina Ruiz of Christian Aid who is currently overseeing an emergency food distribution in the north of the country said: “It’s not unusual for people to experience malnutrition in Burkina Faso and to use coping mechanisms like eating one meal a day or food that is usually only meant for animals, but that normally happens a lot later.”

She concluded that: “If we don’t react soon there could well be a famine situation all over northern Burkina Faso in April. People cannot stand more than two months in this situation.”

Days later, The Alliance for Technology Development Assistance, supported by Christian Aid, started distributing emergency food, seeds and cash for work to over 54,000 people in the north of the country. And Akmoudou, Fatumata, Tahya and their children will be among the first to benefit.