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STORY: GENEVA / HUMANITARIAN UPDATE
TRT: 1.52
SOURCE: CH UNTV
RESTRICTIONS: NONE
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH / NATS
DATELINE: 2 SEPTEMBER 2011, GENEVA SWITZERLAND
RECENT 2011, PALAIS DES NATIONS, GENEVA, SWITZERLAND
1. Wide shot, exterior Palais des nations
2 SEPTEMBER 2011, GENEVA SWITZERLAND
2. Wide shots, briefing room
3. Cutaway, journalist
4. SOUNDBITE (English) Adrian Edwards, Spokesman, UNHCR:
“At the Kobe camp, in the Dollo Ado area, medical screening of new arrivals is recording severe acute malnutrition among 19 percent of children. At nearby Hilaweyn, the rate is 16 percent while in Melkadida and Bokolmanyo the rates are 10 and seven percent respectively. In July you may recall we spoke about our concerns at the acute malnutrition in Dollo Ado. Severe acute malnutrition is a yet more serious level of malnutrition still, and poses a particular risk for children below the age of five. UNHCR considers a rate of over one percent to be alarming."
5. Cutaway, journalists
6. SOUNDBITE (English) Adrian Edwards, Spokesman, UNHCR:
“For the 156,000 school-age children at Dadaab there is currently one teacher per 100 pupils – and most of the teachers are themselves refugees. Enrolment remains low at 42 percent for primary and five percent for secondary schools. In the case of girls, enrolment is significantly lower. Overall, some 75 additional schools, or 1800 classrooms, we estimate, are urgently needed."
7. Cutaway, journalists
8. SOUNDBITE (English) Jemini Pandya, IOM Spokesperson:
"We are seeing a slow improvement of the situation in the city where there is limited access to food, potable water and fuel, the security situation, as far as we’re concerned, still remains potentially volatile. Individual migrants who’re contacting IOM are telling us that they are scared to leave their homes for fear of being arrested or killed. They claim that even documented migrants are afraid to go out and find food and water because others have done so and have not returned home."
9. Med shot, journalists
United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) spokesperson Adrian Edwards told a briefing in Geneva today (2 Sept) that at the Kobe camp in the Dollo Ado area one in five new arrived Somali child was suffering from severe acute malnutrition.
According to the agency, a rate of one in a hundred is considered alarming.
As a response, additional food distribution points will be set up in Ethiopian camps, extra nutritional feeding centres will be opened and aid workers will ensure that malnourished refugees receive the supplementary food that they need. They'll also go from tent to tent to find starving children who need to be enrolled in feeding programs.
Meanwhile some 40,000 refugees from the largest refugee complex in the world, the Dadaab camp in Kenya, are preparing for the new school term, which starts on Monday (5 September).
The arrival of 156,000 new refugees from Somalia this year, more than half of whom are children, has added to the already pressing needs at Dadaab for more classrooms, desks, stationery, textbooks and teachers.
Few of the newly arrived children have had any formal education in Somalia. To help them settle in, an accelerated learning programme has been set up to teach basic literacy and math skills. 1500 children between the ages of five and 13 are taking part in the programme.
On the situation in Libya, Jemini Pandya, spokesperson for the International Migration Organization (IOM) told journalists that there was increasing concern for migrants in the Libyan capital, Tripoli, many of whom are too scared to leave their homes to try to find food and water.
The IOM said that more and more reports are coming in of migrants in need of assistance and protection. Most migrants are deliberately not congregating in large numbers to avoid being conspicuous or targeted.
A significant rise in food prices and little or no money to buy what is available also means that there are ever-growing numbers of migrants in need of humanitarian assistance.
IOM is continuing its operations to evacuate migrants who want to leave Libya. Nearly 1,600 migrants and vulnerable Libyans have been evacuated by IOM by boat from Tripoli so far - the organisation is now working on evacuation operations by road.
