Day: July 27, 2021

GENEVA – The UN refugee agency warns about 24,000 Eritrean refugees trapped in two camps in northern Ethiopia’s Tigray province are in great danger as fighting among armed groups escalates.

Concerns are growing for the safety and wellbeing of thousands of Eritrean refugees in Mai Aini and Adi Harush camps as fighting intensifies in Tigray’s Mai Tsebri area.

The UN refugee agency reports aid agencies have been unable to access the camps since July 14. It says conditions for the refugees have become increasingly dire and worrisome since then.

UNHCR spokesman Babar Baloch says members of armed groups have infiltrated the camps. He says the Eritreans are living in constant fear. He says they are facing intimidation and harassment and are cut off from humanitarian assistance.

“We have received disturbing and credible reports in recent days from Mai Aini camp that at least one refugee was killed by armed elements operating inside the camp,” Baloch said. “The latest death is in addition to the killing of another refugee on 14 July.”

Baloch says he does not know which of the armed groups is responsible for the killings. However, his agency, he says, has received credible reports that people with guns are operating inside the two refugee camps.

He says the UNHCR has been appealing to the local authorities and the Ethiopian refugee agency to provide safety for the refugees and to grant aid agencies access to the camps. He notes the Eritrean refugees have been without humanitarian assistance for the last two weeks.

“Trapped refugees need urgent life-saving assistance,” Baloch said. “Clean drinking water is running out, no healthcare services are available, and hunger is a real danger. The last food distribution to both refugee camps was done in late June, which provided them rations for just one month.

Baloch says recent armed clashes in Afar region to the east of Tigray have displaced thousands of people, among them about 55,000 Eritrean refugees. He says concerns for their safety also are growing as armed confrontations are taking place near where the refugees live.

Source: Voice of America

ABUJA, NIGERIA – A Nigerian court has ordered the secret police to release five suspects detained for wearing T-shirts criticizing President Muhammadu Buhari, their lawyer said Tuesday.

The men were arrested early this month by the Department of State Service (DSS) during a church service led by a well-known evangelical pastor in the Nigerian capital Abuja.

They had been wearing T-shirts with the slogan “Buhari Must Go!” inside the church when they were arrested and detained.

The church was accused of aiding the arrests, but it denied the allegation.

On Monday, the federal high court Abuja ordered the DSS to release the suspects, lawyer Allen Sowore told AFP.

“The judge ordered their release forthwith without any condition. But we have not got a certified true copy of that order,” he said.

He said his clients were yet to be freed.

“Unfortunately, the judge has not signed the order. So, we just came here [to the DSS office] thinking that they will act on the order of the court, but they have not acted.”

Buhari, a former army commander, has come under fire after his government recently banned Twitter, a move Western allies and critics warned undermined freedom of expression.

Officials announced the ban after Twitter removed a remark from Buhari’s personal account for violating its policies.

The Nigerian leader is also under pressure to tackle the country’s insecurity.

The security forces are battling an Islamist insurgency in the northeast, a surge in mass kidnappings by criminal gangs in central and northwestern states, and separatist tension in parts of the south.

Source: Voice of America

KUJE, NIGERIA – Some Nigerian companies are using coconut and palm shells to make charcoal briquettes in an effort to slow ongoing deforestation. Nigeria banned charcoal exports after a World Bank report showed the country lost nearly half its forest cover in just a decade.

Nothing goes to waste at the coconut processing facility started by Emeka Ugwueje 10 years ago outside Abuja.

“We began thinking inward to say, ‘OK, let our waste become the necessary energy to make fire’ and this is where we have come,” Ugwueje said.

The shells burn for about an hour before turning from brown to a carbon-rich black derivative.

They are cooled, ground and later manually molded into briquettes.

But Ugwueje said there’s a plan to scale up mechanically.

“We intend to introduce several types of machines. Among them is the molder, the cutter, and the drying system – a dehydrator that will bring these briquettes into a more solid form,” Ugweuje said.

Major environmental repercussions

Ugwueje’s company, SFK Coconut, which makes products made from coconut, is one of many in Nigeria using coconut briquettes as fuel in place of wood charcoal.

Experts said Nigeria’s huge charcoal market causes major environmental repercussions. Charcoal from here is mostly exported to Europe and the United States.

A 2017 World Bank Report showed Nigeria lost nearly half of its forest cover between 2007 and 2017 as a result of the charcoal trade. The report also predicted Nigeria’s forests could be completely gone by 2047.

Political will is missing

Conservationist David Michael Terungwa, executive director of the Global Initiative for Food Security and Ecosystem Preservation, said a lack of compliance with Nigeria’s charcoal export ban is to blame for continued deforestation. He also cites a lack of political will to address the problem.

“I think the issue is compliance and compliance monitoring, and enforcement by the regulatory agency,” Terungwa said.

He was referring to Nigeria’s National Environmental Standards and Regulations Enforcement Agency.

For years, Nigerian authorities have been encouraging tree planting to replace decimated forests.

But experts say in the absence of adequate monitoring systems, Nigerians must make a conscious effort to use other alternatives to tree-derived charcoal for fuel.

Source: Voice of America