East Africa Flood Displacement - Ugandan Hospital, Somali Town Washed Away Amid Virus Battle

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David Anderson/UNSPLASH

Ugandan Hospital, Somali Town Washed Away by East Africa Floods

Hundreds have died and thousands are displaced across Kenya, Uganda, Somalia, Rwanda and Ethiopia. Another hospital in western Uganda was flooded, hospital wards, drug dispensaries and  mortuaries have been impacted, further complicating planning and response to COVID-19, and increasing contagion risks with mass displacements that don’t allow for social distancing. Ethiopia’s Somali region has more than 100,000 people displaced, while casualties are unknown in the Somali town in Puntland, which washed away the entire town. Climate experts in Kenya say the heavy rains are due to the increased temperatures in the Indian Ocean and are a spillover of effects seen last year, when heavy rains and landslides impacted the region. Kenya has lost nearly 200 people and 100,000 are displaced, now living in camps, where authorities fear coronavirus spread could increase as a result. (Reuters)

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Migrants Caught Between Climate and Virus Threats With No Safe Place to Go

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Firdhaus Roslan/UNSPLASH

Caught Between Climate and Virus Threats, Migrants Have No Safe Place to Go

In a new report, Climate Action Network South Asia and ActionAid find Afghans are increasingly being displaced more by climate change than conflict. Weather-related displacements affected 1.2 million Afghans in 2019. One such is Ali Mohamed, a 50-year old farmer who lost his sheep to drought, then the following year, lost his son, two daughters and home in a flood. Now those displaced also contend with the coronavirus, with Afghanistan registering more than 3,600 cases and 100 deaths from COVID-19. With low levels of testing, experts believe the infection rates are likely higher, especially in displacement camps, where temporary shelters are overcrowded - sometimes more than 10 to a tent - and where clean drinking water, healthcare and sanitation are scarce. The Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre (IDMC) has observed instances from the Philippines to North America where climate displaced individuals are being forced to sleep outdoors or sent back to vulnerable conditions instead of shelters or camps due to concerns of coronavirus spread. As the Americas and Asia face hurricane and cyclone seasons in June, displacement, shelter and coronavirus pressures are likely to converge and increase. (Reuters)

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ICG Briefs UN Security Council on Climate Change & Conflict

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Climate Change Is Shaping the Future of Conflict

In a UN Security Council Aria Meeting on the 50th anniversary of Earth Day, the International Crisis Group’s (ICG) President Robert Malley addressed the body, stating that absent global action, climate change could be a slow-moving version of the current COVID-19 pandemic. The climate change conversation, he said, is at an inflection point after decades of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change documenting trends that can initiate or exacerbate violence. He cautioned that peace and security actors should neither overstate nor understate the role of climate change in conflict but certainly, climate change, on its own, puts vulnerable populations at increasing risk. Although data suggests a 10-20% risk of armed conflict associated with every half-degree rise in local temperatures, understanding the precise relationship between climate and conflict is necessary for sound policy prescriptions. Experts may debate details within the findings but there is wide consensus that climate change has an impact on food security, water scarcity, livelihoods, resource competitiveness and can spur migration of “environmental refugees”, all of which can, in turn, play a role in conflict. Malley noted that climate-related conflicts reside in two categories: 1. internal conflicts due to resource-scarcity as seen in Nigeria, where conflicts have risen between herders and farmers, stretching a military already responding to Boko Haram - something we can certainly echo based on our own research on climate displacement in Nigeria and the Lake Chad Basin (see report below) - and 2. conflicts between states over scarce resources, notably water, as seen in the transboundary water conflicts around the Nile river basin. He concluded, noting the impacts COVID-19 may have on the politics of climate change  as economic losses constrain resources and recent drops in oil prices distract investments in renewable energy. (ICG)

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Lebanon’s Refugees & COVID-19

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Lebanon Excludes Refugees from Coronavirus Response at its Own Peril

Lebanon, a State not party to the 1951 Refugee Convention, hosts more than 1 million Syrian refugees and nearly half a million Palestine refugees within its borders, who live in an informal context with rights and access to protection, healthcare, education and others, limited and tenuous, at best. Living conditions are spartan and overcrowded, leaving little room for social distancing during the COVID-19 pandemic. Now, public sentiments are turning against refugees, with some politicians even blaming them for the country’s financial difficulties. The country’s newly formed Council of Ministers have yet to adequately address the needs of refugees in its pandemic response or policy priorities and with refugee rights to access hospitals in times of national emergencies ill defined and disputed, this could lead to disastrous outcomes. Access to services is based on registration, which reportedly runs a gamut of options: UN registered, undocumented and local resident on the basis of sponsorship. Advocates warn that refugees with COVID-19 could be denied treatment if undocumented. Surveillance of refugees is also a concern after 18 municipalities tightened curfews against refugees, some limiting mobility to only between 9am and 1pm, which would impede access to medical treatment outside those hours. Despite these conditions, refugees are leading responses within their communities by translating COVID-19 health information into Arabic in camps, raising awareness on social media, and collecting donations and distributing relief. (The New Arab)

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Some Say Brazil’s Crackdown on Climate Migrants Worsens Climate Crisis

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Brazil is Cracking Down on Climate Migrants While Worsening the Climate Crisis

Rio de Janeiro has about 1,000 favelas - informal communities - where a majority of its poor working class population reside under constant threat of crime, gangs, narco violence, government raids, and where now, as the author puts it ‘climate refugees’ also come to survive. To be precise, they are migrants fleeing weather- shocks in other parts of the country, but now, questionable environmental policies and government response to gang violence, could increase migration while making situations in the favelas worse. Brazil has long seen internal migrations from its Northeast due to disease and El Niño-driven droughts and floods. In one instance in the 1800’s, camps were erected in an effort to dissuade rural migration into urban centers. Droughts are common in the highly under-developed Northeast, where the population is uneducated and underprepared, and the south, equally unprepared to deal with the recurring migrant influx, has caused a situation of growing populations in the unofficial ‘favela’ settlements, where basic services like running water and electricity are scarce. The 2012-2016 drought, affecting 33 million people, was the most severe in decades and forced the government to declare a state of emergency. Now experts are warning that with global warming’s impacts, along with the government’s deforestation of the Amazon rainforest, drier conditions in the Northeast, along with longer dry spells and a water crisis, is likely. (Earther/Gizmodo)

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When Climate Change, Coronavirus & Displacement Meet

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How Climate Change, the Coronavirus Pandemic and Displacement Feed Off Each Other

Global experts warn of the dangers these threats pose, not only to the world’s poorest populations, but for those living on the margins. Maarten van Aalst, Director of the Red Cross Red Crescent Climate Centre says a “perfect storm” has led to situations where impacts of disasters are far worse due to a sequence of shocks many communities are already bearing. He warns that communities are being hit more frequently by the same shocks, resulting in a situation where the total impact is bigger than the sum of the individual shocks. For example, climate change played a role in contributing to the fires that ravaged across Australia and displaced thousands, last year’s cyclones in East Africa contributed to the conditions that exacerbated the breeding of locusts that plagued crops and impacted food security in the region. Across the world, we are witnessing multiple instances of communities hit by one disaster and left reeling, then forced to contend with a second repeat disaster or new disaster before they can even recover. In this context, new crises like Covid-19 with its resulting lockdowns and social distancing that prevent supplies of food and essential medicines to populations already facing crowded evacuations, displacements, poverty and food insecurity is not only devastating but catastrophic. (DW)

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