Day: November 30, 2022

CAMEROON

ESCALATING INSECRITY DISPLACES OVER 19,300 PEOPLE IN THE FAR NORTH

Several attacks by non-state armed groups (NSAGs) in November in the Mayo-Tsanaga and Logone et Chari divisions, in the far north, led to the displacement of over 19,300 people. Some of the internally displaced persons (IDPs) were hosted by local families, while others were sleeping outdoors. Traditional leaders allocated land to IDPs to build temporary shelters. The internally displaced critically need food, shelter, and drinking water. Prior to the attack, the Mayo-Tsanaga and Logone et Chari divisions were already hosting thousands of IDPs since April, including those displaced due to floods. The security situation is increasingly volatile due to recurrent armed attacks.

MALI

ARMED GROUPS ATTACKED A SITE FOR THE DISPLACED IN THE SOUTHEAST

On 21 November, armed groups attacked the Kadji site for internally displaced persons in the Gounzoureye commune, in the southeast, killing 11 people and injuring one. They set shelters and food stocks ablaze and took away livestock. Since October 2022, humanitarian organizations have been mobilizing to support the internally displaced persons and have thus provided them with food and shelter aid.

CENTRAL AFRICAN REPUBLIC

ATTACK AND KIDNAPPING OF A CIVILIAN IN THE WEST

On 28 November, an attack by armed elements on a mining company’s vehicle on the road between the villages of Nguaguene and Narema, in Nana-Mambere Prefecture, in the west, led to the kidnapping of one civilian gold miner. The other two vehicle passengers reportedly fled into the bush. Armed groups continuously attack civilians, particularly traders and mining artisans, on the Bouar-Niem-Yelewa axis, despite the presence of the Central African Armed Forces in the region.

CHAD

THE GOVERNMENT & HUMANITARIANS CONITNUE TO APPEAL FOR FUNDING

The rain and the river flooding have affected one million people and displaced over 150,000 in the capital N’Djamena. The situation led the government, humanitarian organisations and donors to examine the ongoing response, persistent gaps and challenges. They emphasized the need for an articulated recovery plan and flexible funding to swiftly respond to unprecedented events, worsened by climate change. The 2022 Humanitarian Response Plan, requiring US$70 million, has so far received only $17million, with $8 million in the pipeline, leaving a 60 per cent gap. Combined with funds mobilized by the government, a $30 million gap remains as people’s needs continue to exacerbate due to humanitarian crises.

Source: UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs

On 1 December, World AIDS Day 2022, the World Health Organization (WHO) is calling on global leaders and citizens to boldly recognize and address the inequalities that are holding back progress in attaining the global goal to end AIDS by 2030.

WHO is joining global partners and communities in commemorating World AIDS Day 2022 under the theme “Equalize” – a message highlighting the need to ensure that essential HIV services reach those who are most at risk and in need, particularly children living with HIV, key populations to HIV and their partners.

“With global solidarity and bold leadership, we can make sure everyone receives the care they need,” said Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, WHO Director-General. “World AIDS Day is an opportunity to re-affirm and refocus on our shared commitment to end AIDS as a public health threat by 2030.”

HIV remains a major public health issue that affects millions of people worldwide. But our response is at risk of falling behind.

Of the 38 million people living with HIV, 5.9 million people who know they have HIV are not receiving treatment.

A further 4 million people living with HIV have not yet been diagnosed.

While 76% of adults overall were receiving antiretroviral treatment that help them lead normal and healthy lives, only 52% of children living with HIV were accessing this treatment globally in 2021.

70% of new HIV infections are among people who are marginalized and often criminalized.

While transmission has declined overall in Africa, there has been no significant decline among men who have sex with men – a key population group – in the past 10 years.

Overlapping epidemics of mpox and HIV

Available WHO data show that among people confirmed to have mpox, a high number – 52% – were people living with HIV. Global data reported to WHO suggest that people living with mpox with untreated HIV appear to be at risk for more severe disease than people without HIV.

The current response to mpox shows that transmission can move quickly in sexual networks and within marginalized populations. But it can also be prevented with community-led responses and open attitudes to address stigma, and health and well-being can be improved and lives can be saved.

Delivering for key populations of HIV

This World AIDS Day, WHO recommends a renewed focus to implement WHO’s 2022 guidance to reach the HIV and related health needs of key populations and children.

“People must not be denied HIV services no matter who they are or where they live, if we are to achieve health for all,” said Dr Meg Doherty, WHO Director of the HIV, Hepatitis and STI programmes. “In order to end AIDS, we need to end new infections among children, end lack of treatment access to them, and end structural barriers and stigma and discrimination towards key populations in every country as soon as possible.”

With only eight years left before the 2030 goal of ending AIDS as a global health threat, WHO calls for global solidarity and bold leadership from all sectors to ensure we get back on track to ending AIDS and, with that, end new syndemics, such as the recent mpox global outbreak.

Source: World Health Organization

The UN chief is marking World AIDS Day on Thursday with a call to action to end the inequalities which are blocking progress towards stopping the pandemic, and eradicating the virus.

“The world has promised to end AIDS by 2030”, said Secretary-General António Guterres in his official message, but “we are off track.”

“Today, we risk millions more new infections and millions more deaths”, he added, calling on governments everywhere to make the “Equalize” slogan a reality.

He said the “proven practical solutions” exist that can help end AIDS, such as more funding to boost the availability, quality and suitability of services for HIV treatment, testing and prevention.

“Better laws, policies and practices to tackle the stigma and exclusion faced by people living with HIV, especially marginalized populations. Everyone needs respect and to be welcomed.”

He said the many-layered inequalities that perpetuate the pandemic can and must be overcome: “We can end AIDS. If we Equalize.”

Science and solidarity: Kőrösi

Echoing the UN chief’s call to action, and his own core theme for the year, the President of the General Assembly, Csaba Kőrösi, said the AIDS crisis was “ripe for solutions based on science, solidarity and sustainability.”

“We need urgent measures to end inequalities that make people vulnerable to infection. If the international community acts, 3.6 million new HIV-infections and 1.7 million AIDS-related deaths will be prevented this decade.

He called on all Member States and stakeholders, to renew their political and financial commitments to ending AIDS by the ambitious deadline.

A long way to go, to protect the vulnerable

Earlier in the week, HIV activist and Unitaid board member, Maureen Murenga, shared powerful personal testimony to encourage more urgency in the fight against the illness.

Referring to a recent UNAIDS report which indicated that the world’s AIDS response is in danger, with rising new infections and deaths in many parts of the world, Ms. Murenga explained that adolescent girls and young women are still disproportionately affected by HIV.

“(It) is really saddening because when I was diagnosed with HIV 20 years ago, I was an adolescent and a young woman, and I thought that 20 years later we would be telling a different story and not the same sad story,” she told journalists in Geneva briefing ahead of the International Day.

Treatment challenges

Ms. Murenga, a Kenyan national who represents communities living with HIV, faced hostility and stigma when she was diagnosed with the virus in the early 2000s.

Through her organization, the Lean On Me Foundation, adolescent girls and young women living with HIV receive care and support, but inequalities remain in the global approach to treatment and prevention.

“We are still seeing a lot of new infections”, she said. “It means that the treatment is not reaching everyone and where it is, people are not adhering to treatment.”

Nonetheless, progress has been made, particularly in identifying infections, Ms. Murenga said, recalling the torment of her wait for a diagnosis, and the fact that she needed to get herself tested five times before she could accept that she had HIV.

Support structures lacking

“During the time I was diagnosed with HIV, there was a delay in getting results,” she said. “You’d be tested and then you would wait for two weeks to get your results. It was a very difficult time for someone to wait that long.”

According to UNAIDS, adolescent girls and young women aged 15 to 24 years are three times more likely to acquire HIV than adolescent boys and young men in sub-Saharan Africa.

“The driving factor is power,” the UN agency said, citing a study which showed that enabling girls to stay in school until they complete secondary education “reduces their vulnerability to HIV infection by up to 50 per cent.”

Death sentence no more

In 2021, Unitaid noted that more than 38 million people globally were living with HIV, 1.5 million people were newly infected with HIV and 650,000 people died from AIDS-related illnesses.

Despite these stark figures, Ms. Murenga insists that HIV is no longer a “death sentence”. Now, “people can diagnose much faster”, she insisted. “We even have diagnosis like self-test kits where you can do it in confidential and in privacy.”

The last 20 years have also seen significant innovations that have ensured the suitability of treatment regimes for younger HIV patients, albeit with some caveats, Ms. Murenga noted.

Son in peril

“We didn’t have treatment for children and my son was also diagnosed with HIV. So that meant that I could not take drugs to save my life and leave my child to die.

“So, I used to improvise and divide my tablet into two and give (it to) the child. But then I didn’t know whether it was affecting his body organs I didn’t know if the dosage was okay, but I just did it to ensure that he did not die.”

She added: “It took us a while to get medication for children. And even when it came, it wasn’t very child-friendly. And just recently, we have paediatric dolutegravir which is child-friendly but it is the only one, the so children don’t have a variety in case of resistance.”

Source: United Nations

South Africa’s free press has been largely successful at resisting efforts by the Chinese government to influence its content, say analysts, affirming a recent study by the U.S.-based think tank Freedom House.

“In South Africa, we have a deep historical suspicion of state media,” said Anton Harber, professor of journalism at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg.

South Africa’s wariness of state media, he said, stems from the country’s legacy of apartheid, the former state policy of racial segregation and discrimination that ended in 1994. Under apartheid, the media was censored.

“SA’s media is resilient and will always be skeptical when it comes to certain issues being shaped in a certain line of thought,” said Reggy Moalusi, executive director of the South African National Editors’ Forum.

The Freedom House report, titled “Beijing’s Global Media Influence 2022,” said South Africans as a whole, including journalists, are highly skeptical of Chinese state narratives. It said that, despite success by the Chinese government in building ties with the ruling African National Congress party, “coverage of China in South African media remains overall diverse … and often critical of the Chinese government.”

Areas of concern

Even with a democratic government and free press, the Chinese government still attempts to influence South Africa’s media environment, according to the2022 findings by Freedom House, which studied China’s media influence in 30 countries around the world from January 2019 to December 2021.

A private Chinese company with links to the Chinese Communist Party (CPP), StarTimes Group has invested 20 percent in local satellite provider StarSat, which offers Chinese state media television channels, the report said.

Another example cited in the report is South Africa’s Independent Media group, which publishes some 20 newspapers in the country. Since 2013, the group has been 20 percent owned by a Chinese consortium whose shareholders include state media. Its digital version, Independent Online, is the second most-read news site in the country.

Independent Media regularly publishes content from Chinese newswire Xinhua as well as Chinese state perspectives. “None of its outlets carry much negative commentary on China,” Freedom House said.

The company’s outlets published 16 articles, interviews and speeches by the Chinese ambassador and consul generals between 2020 and 2021, the report found. It also gives print space to local South African academics and political figures who support Beijing’s line.

Its foreign editor wrote an op-ed during the pandemic with false claims about COVID-19’s origins. Independent Media journalists have attended media junkets to China and one freelancer told Freedom House researchers that topics for articles and related links are sometimes directly provided by the Chinese embassy.

One example of China’s apparent influence on independent media took place in 2018 when columnist Azad Essa was abruptly let go after writing an article condemning Beijing’s treatment of the Uyghur Muslims.

When contacted by VOA for comment, the group’s editor-in-chief Aziz Hartley responded, “Editors have complete autonomy over their respective publications and their reporters are bound by the principles of unbiased, ethical and objective reporting.”

China’s efforts to influence the media landscape in South Africa were shown to have slowed in recent years, the report found.

The other side

Shao Hesong, second secretary at the Chinese embassy in Washington, referred questions to the Chinese embassy in South Africa, which did not reply to repeated requests for comment.

In a July op-ed published by state media China Daily, Dennis Munene, executive director of the Nairobi-based China-Africa Center at the Africa Policy Institute, made a case for more cooperation between China and African media.

Under the Chinese government’s China-Africa Vision 2035 program, he said, China and Africa “plan to strengthen cooperation in news coverage, creation of audiovisual content, training of media professionals and media technologies.” He argued there is the need for “more in-depth media exchanges’” and said Beijing “can develop technological tools for fact-checking on issues related to Sino-Africa relations.”

Africa findings

While South Africa has a high level of resilience against the Chinese government’s influence due to its diverse media landscape, the study found, the other African nations studied were a mixed bag.

“Our research found that Beijing is trying some of the same tactics in Africa as it does in Western countries, such as signing content-sharing agreements, paid advertorials, or placing ambassador op-eds,” Angeli Datt, a senior research analyst at Freedom House, told VOA.

In Nigeria, attempts at influence from China were “very high” — the fourth highest of all 30 countries surveyed — and while there was some resilience, it was less robust than in the other three. The Chinese embassy in Nigeria has reportedly contacted editors and even paid journalists not to cover negative stories, according to Freedom House.

In Kenya, there were “high” efforts by China to influence the media, but the East African country also had a “notable” level of resilience. For example, a Chinese state-owned company threatened to sue a Kenyan newspaper, The Standard, over its investigative reporting on abuses at a railway run by the firm. The paper refused to retract the story, and the Chinese embassy canceled its advertising with the paper.

Global media influence

Of the 30 countries studied from around the world, Beijing’s efforts at influencing the media were deemed “high” or “very high” in 16 of them, and only half of all those surveyed were found to be resilient to the messaging, the other half vulnerable.

“The Chinese government, under the leadership of President Xi Jinping, is accelerating a massive campaign to influence media outlets and news consumers around the world,” the report said.

Source: Voice of America