One month after floods pushed them out of their homes, more than 10,000 flood victims have left temporary government-run shelters in schools, according to the Ministry of Security and Civilian Protection.

Togo’s Zio and Haho rivers overflowed during heavy rainfalls from 15 to 27 July. The Togolese Red Cross estimated six deaths, 80 injuries, and thousands left homeless throughout the country. Government officials said the storms crushed nine bridges, cutting off access to northern flood victims.

The European Union has pledged more than US$1m for bridge repair work and rural road development.

Flood victim Adjoavi Lamega said she knew it was time to leave the school where she sought shelter three weeks ago. “We are almost all from the Adamavo neighborhood. The authorities convinced us that our children needed to start school on time, and that staying here would not help our situation. The camps gave us food to last us a few days, and school supplies for our children.”

Togo’s school year is scheduled to start on 22 September.

Togolese Red Cross volunteers handed out school supplies to departing families with children, along with 50 kg sacks of rice and corn, a 25 kg bag of manioc flour, five litres of cooking oil, about 2 kg of salt, and soap.

Minister of Security and Civilian Protection, Titikpina Atcha, told IRIN that while people cannot control nature, they can control the outcome. “We have no solutions against flooding. Those who are leaving [the camps] should move to safer places elsewhere. It is up to the families to get ready so that they don't face this next year.”

Based on meteorological forecasts, disaster relief staff from international agencies are preparing for additional storms.

West Africa’s rainy season typically lasts from June to September.

IRIN

Poverty is a state of not having enough money to take care of basic needs such as food, clothing and shelter. In other words it is a deficiency or deprivation. Poverty is a social problem that depends on the environment you find yourself in. For example poverty in Europe may not be poverty in Africa. This could be due to the level of development these continents have reached.

Africa is a continent known for its deep history and rich culture but is also known as a continent battling against poverty and disease. Most Africans in rural areas are engaged in either subsistence or commercial farming, but these people cannot be regarded as an average group of people because commercial farmers grow crops and rear animals for sale and so it makes them dependent on people to buy their farm produce.

Subsistence farmers grow crops and rear animals for sustenance of themselves and their families and while he might be able to provide food for his family he might not be able to provide other basic needs like shelter and clothing. Going into the causes of poverty in Africa: our African culture and beliefs have also driven some people to poverty. Take for example a culture that considers giving birth to many children as a sign of blessing from God. This belief could drive someone to poverty because with a large number of children it becomes a problem to cater for each of their needs. Also lack of education leads to poverty.

Some parents don’t see the importance of educating their children while some don’t have enough money to send their children to school. Such parents sometimes prefer sending their kids to hawk on the streets, an activity that doesn’t save them from their state of being poor. Natural disaster brings about poverty, for example the epidemic of bird flu that some time ago affected poultry; it affected not only poultry but also poultry farmers. These farmers lost income at that time because of the reduction in the consumption of poultry and those that were badly affected might have been driven into poverty. Aside from epidemics other natural disasters include floods, earthquakes, and hurricanes.

So also conflicts between and within countries cause poverty. This is so because lives and property will be lost and some people may lose the breadwinner of their family or property such as house and this may lead to poverty. In addition unemployment and laziness makes one limited in satisfying his needs which means poverty for such an individual. Furthermore poverty has its own effects on an individual and on society, which I will highlight below. Poverty leads to child labour which will expose the child to the dangers of being kidnapped, raped or other accidents.

It could also give an individual the idea of prostitution which exposes an individual to sexually transmitted diseases and loss of self-respect and dignity. Poverty leads to an increase in the crime rate such as armed robbery, making a fake of one’s documents, selling of hard drugs and this brings about discomfort to the society at large. Malnutrition is also a negative effect of poverty which could lead-to ill health. Having looked at the causes and negative effects of poverty, I would like to give some possible solutions to this social problem. Talking of a peaceful society, it is observed that work takes place, so also a stable society has a stable economy, that is to say that we Africans should try to resolve all disputes both within and outside our various countries.

Governments should provide free education at least at primary and secondary level; government should also encourage the uneducated ones through skills appreciation programs such as teaching them how to sew to make them more useful to themselves. Parents should be enlightened on why they should educate their children. We should look for a better way to tap our resources either by providing more machines or even talking to countries that can assist in this aspect. Small and medium scale companies should be encouraged to extract, process and produce our goods instead of exporting them for processing and buying them back at an expensive price.

Parents should be educated on the importance of family planning. International organisations can also partake in the reduction of poverty for example the United Nations, African Union among others. In conclusion, having discussed this social problem, it is left for us Africans to see to its alleviation.

We should all come together, drop all grudges and co-operate as brothers to help one another in our various deprived states. This could be achieved by forming our own international organisations like ECOWAS and the AU to help economically, socially, physically or in any other way possible.  With this strategy in place, our continent will grow and poverty will gradually be eliminated.

An estimated 50,000 people who fled violence in Mogadishu, the Somali capital, are living in difficult conditions, with inadequate food, shelter and sanitation in two towns in Galgadud region of central Somalia, local officials said on 10 October.

The displaced are in the Galgadud regional capital, Dusa Mareb, 500km north of Mogadishu, and in the nearby town of Guri-Eil.

"Our estimate is that since the end of April, between 4,000 and 5,000 families [24,000 to 30,000 people] have arrived in Dusa Mareb," Mohamed Madobe, the district commissioner, told IRIN.

Households in the town, with a population of at least 30,000, are hosting three to four displaced families each, he said. Some of the displaced have sought shelter in abandoned government buildings, while others have set up makeshift shelters, he added.

Madobe said a small number of the displaced returned to Mogadishu in late August, "but since the end of September we are seeing new arrivals. In the last week alone we had a number of buses and trucks bringing in new people".

The influx has not only doubled the town's population but contributed to high price rises of most essential commodities, he said.

An aid worker in Dusa Mareb, who requested anonymity, told IRIN that in the past four months, food prices had more than doubled. As an example, "a 50kg bag of flour has risen to 650,000 Somali shillings [about US$30] from 300,000 shillings [about $14] four months ago."

The price of sugar and rice has doubled over the same period, he added.

A similar situation prevailed in neighbouring Guri-Eil district, 60km to the south.

"Our estimate is that we are hosting about 4,800 families [28,000 people]," Ali Sheikh Mahamud, the district commissioner, said.

He said Guri-Eil has a population of about 25,000 people, and each family was hosting a large number of displaced people. "The population is at breaking point. They were poor to begin with and now they have to help relatives and friends. It is really hard."

Ahmed Moalim, a community leader, told IRIN that his family was hosting four families, "and it is like that in almost all homes".

The aid worker said the International Committee of the Red Cross had distributed food, utensils and clothes to the IDPs in August but "nothing has been distributed since". He said the rations were supposed to last for three months "but the displaced sold some of the food to buy other essential things".

The two district commissioners said the IDPs were facing food shortages, lack of shelter and medicines.

"They are not starving but they are not very far from it," Mahamud said.

He appealed to the government and the international community to assist both the host community and the displaced.

Abas Hassan Warsame, a doctor in Guri-Eil, said that the displaced were getting weaker, and diseases were likely to spread due to overcrowding and lack of proper sanitation facilities.

"If the sanitation conditions do not improve soon, there is a possibility of disease outbreaks, which affect not only the IDPs but the host community as well," said Warsame.

He said most patients were children and pregnant women, suffering from "nutrition-related diseases. Most suffer from poor nutrition, pneumonia, anaemia and diarrhoea."

Since intense fighting between Ethiopian-backed government troops and insurgents began in February, at least 1,000 people reportedly have been killed and more than 400,000 displaced.

The Somali consulate in Yemen’s southern province of Aden has said it is worried about the increasing number of smugglers’ boats being used to ferry African migrants, mostly Somalis, from the Horn of Africa to Yemen. It also expressed concern about the deaths of Somalis and the squalid conditions in which survivors live.

The UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) on 28 September said that in September alone 50 such boats had reached Yemen from Somalia carrying 4,741 people, mostly Somalis and Ethiopians - a 70 percent increase on the same period last year when 30 boats arrived with 2,961 people.

Eighty-nine African migrants had died in September and 154 had gone missing and were presumed dead, it added.

On 26 September five boats carrying 600 Somalis and Ethiopians arrived in Yemen; one person had died and 22 had gone missing, UNHCR said. Of the latter, four Ethiopians had died on board one of the boats due to asphyxiation, while 18 others had been thrown overboard, passengers told the UNHCR.

The smugglers had also beaten passengers with iron bars, belts and plastic tubes and some had been stabbed, the UNHCR added.

The UNHCR also expressed concern about Yemeni coastguards firing at the smugglers’ boats, which had caused deaths among passengers.

So far in 2007, 43,897 African migrants have arrived in Yemen. At least 356 others have died and 272 are missing presumed dead, according to the UNHCR.

Shelter

Somalia’s consul-general in Aden, Hussein Haji Ahmed, told IRIN the smuggling of African migrants resumed in earnest in September after a lull of a few months due to rough seas.

Ahmed said survivors had gone to various parts of Yemen in search of a better life. “Most stay without shelter in Aden’s al-Basatin district, where there are over 15,000 Somali refugees.”

He said aid groups, as well as the UNHCR, had provided the new arrivals with basic food and medicines.

“But they’re in desperate need of shelter. I met many of them in al-Basatin and found their [living] conditions very bad. Some had been stabbed by the smugglers, others needed psychological treatment after being mistreated while on their way to Yemen.”

Ahmed explained that while the living conditions of Somalis in Yemen were generally not dissimilar to those in Somalia, Somalis lacked peace in their own country.

“But peace alone is not enough for a person seeking a better life. That is why some Somalis risk their lives by agreeing to be smuggled to Gulf countries where they face as many problems as they had at sea,” he said.

In a bid to build up Yemen’s capacity to deal with the illegal migrants the UNHCR said it would train coastguards and immigration officials on refugee issues, humanitarian law and rescuing people at sea.

The UNHCR is planning to set up a second reception and registration centre in Ahwar on the Yemeni coast. The centre will include a health facility to be run by Médecins sans Frontières.

Somalia's transitional federal government has appealed for urgent humanitarian assistance for hundreds of thousands of people affected by drought, floods and displacement.

"We need urgent assistance if we are to avert an impending humanitarian crisis," Information Minister Madobe Nuunow said on 20 September. "The government will take any step necessary to support those who come to help our people."

He called on international relief agencies to "move quickly before it is too late". "We need help now," he added. The majority of those affected were in southern and central regions, he said, adding: "Some regions are experiencing drought, while others have been flooded."

In the south, the Middle and Lower Shabelle regions and the Middle and Lower Jubas, Bay and Bakol are hosting thousands of displaced while also suffering the effects of drought and floods, he said.

"Mogadishu [the capital] has a lot of people who have fled their homes and are currently in makeshift camps with very little shelter, food or health facilities," said Nuunow.

The situation of internally displaced persons was most problematic. "They are the ones who need greatest attention," the minister said. "The `Deyr’ [short rains] is upon us and most of them don’t have shelter, enough food or medical care."

Displaced by violence

Thousands of people continue to be displaced by violence in Mogadishu between Ethiopian-backed transitional government forces and insurgents, according to civil society groups.

Nuunow said that although there were security problems in Mogadishu, "it was not directed against international agencies and therefore should not be used as an excuse not to help."

According to the August 2007 report of the UN Food and Agricultural Organization's Food Security Assessment Unit (FSAU), the number of people in need of humanitarian assistance has increased 50 percent, from 1 to 1.5 million.

"Those are the figures generally accepted by the humanitarian community," Peter Goossens, the UN World Food Programme country director, said.

According to FSAU, 295,000 require life-saving interventions, and 490,000 face an acute food security and livelihood crisis requiring livelihood support.

In addition, there are 325,000 people who are newly displaced from Mogadishu who need both life- and livelihood-saving interventions, said the report.

At least 8,000 Somalis who fled violence in the capital, Mogadishu, are facing hunger, disease and lack of shelter in Dobley town, near the Kenyan border, local officials said.

"Our estimate is that since the end of April, between 5,000 and 8,000 have arrived in Dobley," Ali Hussein Nur, the district commissioner, told IRIN.

Households in the small town, he added, were hosting two to three displaced families each. Some of the homeless people had set up makeshift shelters under trees. Nur said buses and trucks carrying internally displaced persons (IDPs) had been arriving daily from Mogadishu. "We had three buses bringing about 70 people this morning [11 September]."

Nur said the number of displaced people arriving in Dobley had risen recently. "We have seen more people coming in late July and August than at any time since February," he added, noting that some had crossed the border into refugee camps in Kenya.

Ali Hussein Goni, an official from the Swedish African Welfare Alliance (SAWA), said the IDPs were facing food shortages, lack of shelter and medicines.

“There has been no food distribution in the town for about five months,” said Nur. "We have been making appeals but it seems no one is listening."

Goni said that Dobley, with an estimated population of 15,000 before the influx, had seen the number of residents almost double. "On every street and under every tree you will find people sheltering," he added.

"In my own house, my family of seven is hosting nine people. It is like that in every house," he said.

Abdiaziz Ilmi, 35, who arrived from Mogadishu on 8 September, said: "I came here on Saturday with my family of 12, including my 70-year-old mother, to escape the violence," he told IRIN. He and his family are sharing a compound. "Twenty-four of us live in the compound."

He said so far they had depended on the kindness of the locals. "God bless them, they have been helping us with water and whatever else they could afford."

"WFP [UN World Food Programme] is in the process of verifying IDP caseloads in Lower and Middle Juba regions and the possibility of accessing Dobley," Said Warsame, WFP Somalia Information Officer, told IRIN.

Nur said both the IDPs and locals need immediate assistance. With the onset of the ‘deyr’ rainy season expected in early October and the holy month of Ramadan starting in a few days, many families will face serious food shortages.

"The people [locals] have exhausted their capacity to help," he said.

Persistent insecurity in parts of southern Somalia has limited the ability of aid agencies to provide aid.

Since intense fighting between Ethiopian-backed government troops and insurgents began in February, at least 1,000 people reportedly have been killed and more than 400,000 displaced.

The UN Refugee Agency has expressed concern over the plight of thousands of civilians forced to flee worsening tension and fighting in North Kivu province of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).

The UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) said on 3 September that an inter-agency team had, the day before, met groups of displaced people fleeing from Rubaya and villages in Masisi district walking towards Sake and Mugunga, where there is a site for internally displaced persons (IDPs), about 15km west of Goma.

"They had a few belongings packed in bundles. Mugunga IDP site, which had some 9,000 people at the beginning of August, continues to receive a daily trickle of new arrivals. According to the site leader, himself an IDP, this figure may have doubled in the past three weeks," UNHCR noted in a statement.

The agency said that in Masisi district, an estimated 2,000 newly displaced people had sought shelter around a school building in the centre of Mushake village. Some of the displaced had moved in with their cattle, it added. The displaced lacked blankets and there were concerns they were vulnerable to disease.

Another school close to Mugunga was already hosting an estimated 600 newly displaced people by the end of last week.

"There are fears that more displaced people may be trapped in areas inaccessible to humanitarian agencies. Some of the IDPs have reported … rape and killings of civilians by armed men", according to the UNHCR, whose teams found unaccompanied children among the displaced, as well as parents desperately looking for their children.

The number of people newly displaced because of frequent outbreaks of violence in North Kivu has risen to more than 180,000 and continues to rise, according to UNHCR.

"UNHCR remains concerned that the pursuit of a military solution to the problems in North Kivu would plunge the province into a humanitarian crisis with a potential displacement of hundreds of thousands of Congolese. UNHCR hopes that the current problems in North Kivu can still be resolved through negotiations," the statement continued.

Violence between armed groups and the national army or clashes between rival militias in North Kivu have exacerbated the humanitarian crisis in the war-torn region in recent years. Civilians were often targeted by armed groups fighting each other.

The latest outbreak of fighting has pitted the national army against fighters loyal to dissident General Laurent Nkunda.