Thursday 17 July 2014


FACTBOX - Communities that uprooted and relocated after disasters

Source: Thomson Reuters Foundation - Mon, 14 Jul 2014 07:00 GMT
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Acehnese people sit near the ruins of a house damaged by the 2004 tsunami in Banda Aceh, Indonesia, on April 14, 2012. REUTERS/Beawiharta
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After disasters strike, communities sometimes have no choice but to build a new life in a new place.
Individual families may weigh the risks and decide to uproot. A government may bar rebuilding in a disaster-hit community – as happened after Typhoon Haiyan in the Philippines, where 200,000 families are targeted for resettlement – and assist people to move to safer ground. Or in some places – like communities near a destructive river in Assam, India – the land may have disappeared altogether.
Obviously, not all natural disasters are linked to climate change, but storms, floods and other weather-related hazards accounted for 98 percent of disaster-related displacement - 31.7 million people - in 2012, according to the Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre (IDMC).
While the figures vary sharply from year to year, depending on disasters, the risk of displacement is expected to rise, IDMC said in a recent report, noting that human-driven climate change is expected to increase the frequency and severity of weather-related hazards.
Here is a chronological list of a handful of communities that have relocated in the wake of disasters, including seismic events like the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami.
Good Friday typhoon in the Pacific Islands, 1907: After a typhoon killed hundreds of people on Pacific Islands in 1907, the German colonial administration helped 300 people relocate from Woleai (in the Federated States of Micronesia) and build a new settlement in Saipan (now the Northern Mariana Islands, a commonwealth of the U.S.).
Hurricane Mitch in Honduras, 1988: After 300 kilometre-per-hour winds tore across Honduras and Nicaragua, non-governmental organisations helped develop housing projects for more than 1,200 families to relocate 35 kilometres away from Tegucigalpa, the capital, to the Amarateca Valley. Divina Providencia and Ciudad EspaƱa were two new communities built.
Great flood of the Mississippi River in the U.S., 1993: After the flood displaced 2,500 people from Valmeyer, Illinois, and nearby farms, the village purchased a 500-acre (200-hectare) plot of farmland nearby for $3 million and relocated the village, its homes, three churches and school.
Indian Ocean tsunami in Asia, 2004: After the devastating tsunami, the Sri Lanka government created a 100- to 200-metre no-construction buffer zone along the coast, which meant thousands of households in Hambantota district had to be resettled. In neighbouring India, the tsunami left 30,000 families homeless in Nagapattinam – a district where two-thirds of the land is below sea level. The identification of suitable land for relocation took nearly six months, and the Tamil Nadu state government ended up buying 364 hectares for $5 million.
Typhoon Frank in the Philippines, 2008: For years before the typhoon hit, several local NGOs in Ilioilo City had been working to relocate the urban poor from flood-prone areas along the city’s riverbanks. Land acquired in 2000, covering 16.2 hectares, was assigned to relocate families affected by Typhoon Frank. One of the NGOs built 172 homes, which were priced between $1,770 and $3,650 each.
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Iraqi Christians' flee violence, fear end of long history

Source: Reuters - Wed, 9 Jul 2014 14:16 GMT
Author: Reuters
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Children of a Christian family, who fled from the violence in Mosul two days ago, stay at a school in Arbil, in Iraq's Kurdistan region June 27, 2014. REUTERS/Ahmed Jadallah
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By Robin Emmott
BRUSSELS, July 9 (Reuters) - The violence in Iraq is hastening the end of nearly 2,000 years of Christianity there as the few remaining faithful flee Islamic State militants, archbishops from Baghdad, Mosul and Kirkuk said on Wednesday.
War and sectarian conflict have shrunk Iraq's Christian population to about 400,000 from 1.5 million before the U.S.-led invasion in 2003, and now even those who stayed are leaving for Turkey, Lebanon and western Europe, the prelates said on a visit to Brussels seeking European Union help to protect their flocks.
The three - Chaldean Catholic Patriarch Louis Raphael Sako, Syrian Catholic Archbishop of Mosul Yohanna Petros Mouche and Kirkuk's Chaldean Catholic Archbishop Youssif Mirkis - are all Eastern Catholics whose churches have their own traditional liturgy but are loyal to the pope in Rome.
"The next days will be very bad. If the situation does not change, Christians will be left with just a symbolic presence in Iraq," said Sako, who is based in Baghdad. "If they leave, their history is finished."
The lightening seizure of the northern city of Mosul last month by Muslim Sunni militants sent many residents fleeing. They wanted to return, Mouche said. "But when they did, they found no water, hardly electricity. There's only fear," he said.
Even in Kirkuk, in the safer Kurdish zone, Christians are leaving at a rate of several hundred a day, Mirkis said. "Our presence was a symbol of peace, but there's so much panic and few Christians see their future in Iraq," he said.
NUNS ABDUCTED
Christianity in Iraq dates back to the first century, when it was said the Apostles Thomas and Thaddeus brought the Gospel to the fertile flood plains of the rivers Tigris and Euphrates.
Iraq is traditionally home to many different Eastern Rite churches, both Catholic and Orthodox, and their presence was once a sign of Iraq's ethnic and religious diversity.
But many have been displaced inside Iraq or forced to emigrate by conflicts ranging from the Iran-Iraq war to sectarian attacks. Unlike their Sunni, Shi'ite and Kurdish neighbours, Christians have no militias to protect them.
Christian leaders across the Arab world, alarmed by the rise of hardline Islamists in the wake of "Arab Spring" uprisings, have tried to emphasize their long histories in the region and have urged their communities not to leave.
Sako said Christians were not being persecuted for their beliefs by the militants, who were once known as the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant but are now called the Islamic State, an offshoot of al Qaeda.
Still, two Chaldean nuns and three children were abducted on Monday in Mosul in broad daylight and churches have been closed in the city, he said. Most of the city's minority population, including Christians and small groups like the Shabak Shi'ite Muslims, have fled.
The visit of the three archbishops was organised by Aid to the Church in Need, an international Catholic group that supports churches in difficult situations. (Reporting by Robin Emmott; Editing by Tom Heneghan)
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Bodies found north of Baghdad as Sunni insurgents turn on each other

Source: Reuters - Mon, 14 Jul 2014 20:06 GMT
Author: Reuters
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Burnt vehicles belonging to the Iraqi security forces are seen on a road leading to Samarra at Salahuddin province July 12, 2014. REUTERS/Thaier Al-Sudani
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By Isra' al-Rubei'i and Maggie Fick
BAGHDAD, July 14 (Reuters) - Residents of a town north of Baghdad found 12 corpses with execution-style bullet wounds on Monday following fighting between rival Sunni insurgents that could eventually unravel a coalition which has seized much of northern and western Iraq.
The incident points to an intensification of infighting between the Islamic State and other Sunni groups, such as supporters of former dictator Saddam Hussein, which rallied behind the al Qaeda offshoot last month because of shared hatred for the Shi'ite-led Iraqi government.
Police in Muqdadiya, a town 80 km (50 miles) northeast of the capital, said residents from the nearby town of Saadiya found the 12 corpses on Monday after fighting overnight between Islamic State fighters and the Naqshbandi Army, a group led by Saddam allies.
Since the Islamic State swept through Iraqi cities and proclaimed its leader caliph of all Muslims last month, there have been increasing signs of conflict with other Sunni groups which do not necessarily share its rejection of Iraq's borders or its severe interpretation of Islam.
Washington, which recruited other Sunni fighters to defeat al Qaeda during the U.S. surge offensive in 2006-2007, hopes other Sunnis will again turn against the Islamic State and can be lured back into a power-sharing government in Baghdad.
The White House has pressed for an inclusive government but so far Shi'ite Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki has ignored calls from Sunnis and Kurds to step down in favour of a less polarising figure who would allow Sunnis a greater voice.
Saadiya, a mostly Sunni town, was overrun by Islamic State militants on June 10, the same day the city of Mosul fell to the insurgents. It is in Diyala, a mainly rural province where lush irrigated fields have long sheltered armed groups that resent the arrival of outsiders.
Residents say the town is a stronghold of Naqshbandi Army fighters who supported the Islamic State when it swept into the area, but have since clashed with the group.
A doctor in the Baquba morgue, where the corpses were taken, said the men all bore bullet wounds to their heads and chest, though there was no sign of torture. He said the men had been dead no more than 24 hours.
The people who found the bodies said the men were Naqshbandi fighters in their 20s and 30s, and blamed the Islamic State for the execution-style killings. The Saadiya residents brought the corpses to police in Muqdadiya because the police in their town fled on June 10 when the insurgents swept in.
Local government official Ahmad al-Zarghosi, who also fled, told Reuters that he estimated 90 percent of the town had left to the north. Zarghosi, speaking from the town of Khanaqin, said fighting had been raging for a week between Naqshbandi locals and the Islamic State militants.
MILITANTS IN HUMVEES
Though local people said the Naqshbandi Army enjoys strong support in Saadiya, the Islamist militants are far better equipped. They have been seen with heavy weapons and military vehicles including Humvees in towns they seized last month, equipment apparently taken from the army which received billions of dollars' worth of U.S. hardware in recent years.
Infighting between Sunni insurgents could doom their attempt to reach Baghdad, as well as prospects for consolidating control under the Islamic State's black flag in regions they have taken.
Though the Islamic State, then known as the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), led last month's offensive, it relied on support from fellow Sunnis eager to drive out forces loyal to Maliki's government.
A key ally for ISIL was the Naqshbandi Army, believed to be led by Ezzat Ibrahim al-Douri, Saddam's former deputy and the only top member of the dictator's entourage still at large since the 2003 U.S.-led invasion that toppled him.
An audio recording of Douri's voice surfaced on a website loyal to Saddam's ousted Baath Party on Saturday night with a message heaping praise on the al Qaeda offshoot, although apparently acknowledging divisions among insurgent ranks. The authenticity of the recording cannot be verified.
Iraq's national army and allied Shi'ite militias have been fighting the Islamic State for days over a military base next to Muqdadiya and trading control of nearby town of Sadur, which Maliki's military spokesman said on Sunday the army had retaken.
The bodies of three Sunni men arrested on Sunday in Muqdadiya on terrorism charges by Iraqi SWAT forces turned up dead in the town of Abu Saida 10 km (six miles) away, police said. A morgue official in Baquba said the men had been shot in the head and chest. Further details were not immediately available.
In the Kurdish controlled-town of Qara Tippa near the Iranian border, two members of Kurdish peshmerga forces were killed and five others wounded when a suicide bomb attack hit their local headquarters.
Though the front line has yet to reach Baghdad, frequent bomb attacks are striking the capital. Three separate explosions occurred before nightfall on Monday, killing at least eight people and wounding more than 20. (Additional reporting by Kareem Raheem in Baghdad; Editing by Dominic Evans, Peter Graff and David Stamp)
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