The head of news and current affairs at Mozambique television told VOA an uneasy calm has returned to the capital, Maputo, and surrounding areas hit last week by violent protests over rising prices that left at least 13 dead and hundreds injured.

Police dispersed demonstrators Monday in the northern town of Tete.

Simeao Pongoane said it will be difficult for the security agencies to arrest the allege organizers of the violent protests since he said they used disposable cell phones to call for the strike.

“The latest information we have here is that the situation is calm in Maputo and Matola, the two cities (that) were affected by riots last week. The only problem is that transport is very scarce. Only the public transports were in the streets trying to help people who are going to their places of work. And, the students are also having this problem because of (a) lack of transport,” he said.

Following a cabinet meeting last Friday, President Armando Guebuza’s government called for calm. Authorities have arrested more than 140 people in connection with last week’s unrest.

The protesters were unhappy about what they described as intolerably high food, water and electricity prices. Local media reports that a section of the population stayed home for fear of violence with police on high alert.

Authorities say they are still searching for the ringleaders who sent the first messages. Pongoane said the use of cell phones has made it difficult for police to arrest the organizers of the violent protests.

“It is very difficult to track down the people who initiated the text messages through mobile phones because, in Mozambique, you can get, or buy, from any outlet (phone chips) with untraceable numbers when you use it and then throw it away. So, I find it very difficult for them (police) to trace,” Pongoane said.

He further said that, apart from issuing a press statement calling for calm after a cabinet meeting last Friday, the government is yet to come up with solutions to resolve the concerns of the protesters.

More than half of the country's population are children and 54 per cent of them are malnourished.

Babies account for 30 per cent of child deaths.

While the overall under-fives mortality rate fell from 157 per 1000 in 1990 to 139 in 2000 and 104 in 2008, Save The Children say deaths among the poorest children have remained stubbornly high.

Ten years ago, world leaders agreed on a set of international targets to cut poverty - including a commitment to slash child deaths by 67 per cent by 2015.

But the east African country of Tanzania - like dozens of others - is off-track, an issue world leaders will discuss at a UN summit in New York later this month.

The Record travelled around Tanzania - home of the Serengeti national park - with Save The Children to inspect attempts to cut child deaths and to listen to kids' and mothers' often-heartbreaking concerns.

At Nyango District Hospital in Lindi, as in the rest of the country, pregnant women and under-fives are treated for free.

But the plight of Zinabu Jafari, 41, suggests the system is fundamentally flawed.

Her newborn twins weigh just 1.9kg and 2.5kg and are expected to die without specialist hospital treatment to increase their size.

Yet, for no apparent reason, Zinabu - whose husband left her when he found out she was having twins - has been told she will be discharged from hospital.

The gran-of-one, whose eldest child is 25 years old, said: "My first five children were born at home because there was no hospital.

"The only problem I had was with my fourth children when I bled for a month about five months into my pregnancy but I was OK after that.

"My seventh child was born seven years ago and I had no idea I was going to have twins this time.

"When the first one came out I was surprised my abdomen was still large and was amazed when another baby came out.

"I don't know what has happened to my husband, just that he is leaving.

"I am not sure about my children's future.

In the dark, Suy (Soo-'EE) drifted in and out of consciousness. He does not remember being pulled out and placed among bodies on the sidewalk.

Friends arrived and lifted Suy into a car, heading down bumpy streets, first to a public plaza several miles away where victims were being taken. His family found him there on the ground and took him to a hospital where conditions were filthy and the only treatment consisted of occasional painkillers. Eventually he was moved to a tent clinic outside Sacre Coeur Hospital in Port-au-Prince.

A doctor from an aid group asked Dr. Dan Ivankovich, a spinal specialist from Chicago, to check on Suy.

Ivankovich was incredulous. Under normal circumstances, patients with spinal-cord injuries would be immediately strapped to a backboard to immobilize the spine and avoid additional nerve damage. Most would then go straight to surgery.

Suy's rescuers had no choice but to move him, probably making the injury worse, Ivankovich said.

And 10 days had passed since the quake.

"I said, 'Are you out of your mind?'" Ivankovich recalled.

Ivankovich, an irreverent, 7-foot-tall surgeon used to treating poor patients from the inner city, had just arrived in Haiti with a medical team. Like his idol, Johnny Cash, the doctor wears black — from his leather cowboy hat and boots to gaudy onyx rings and black diamond ear studs.

It's an honor, he says, to help the downtrodden. And he shares that passion with his young patient.

Suy was born poor in southern Haiti and sent as a boy to live with an aunt in Port-au-Prince and attend school. He was one of the lucky ones. More than half the population lived in poverty even before the quake left more than 1 million homeless. About 40 percent of Haitian adults are illiterate, and almost half of Haitian children don't attend school.

Deeply religious, Suy loves his country but hates its poverty. A few years ago, he formed an advocacy group named GRRANOH, a French acronym meaning roughly "group for ideas, research and action for redirecting Haiti." Its volunteers have tutored orphans, fed the homeless, visited hospital patients and raised awareness about Haiti's needs.

"He doesn't have much but with the little he has, he wants to help people," said his girlfriend, Jeanna Volcy.

In the chaos of post-quake Haiti, Ivankovich was equipped to handle amputations and fractures, not spinal cord injuries. Nor was the damaged hospital in any position to host spinal surgery. Suy, meanwhile, had pressure sores on his back from lying prone for more than a week, and the risk of infection was grave.

When Ivankovich mentioned he would be going back to Chicago, the frightened young man pleaded with him.

"Take me with you," he cried, in halting English.

The doctor in black could not turn away. Ivankovich worked with U.S. authorities to help secure a humanitarian visa. Sixteen days after the quake, he flew to Chicago in an air ambulance. It was Suy's first trip out of Haiti.

Activists are pulling out all the stops ahead of a development summit at UN headquarters on 20-22 September. Pro-aid and anti-poverty lobbyists are trying everything from giant letters to banging pans to raise awareness of the high-level event.

The Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) suffer from a lack of widespread public recognition, not least in the summit's host country, the US. Mobilizing popular support and influencing delegates will demand a range of online and offline techniques, according to advocacy specialists, some more quirky than others.

Human rights in general, and gender rights in particular, are at the heart of these calls. Amnesty International, for example, has a 3,865-strong online petition to put human rights at the centre of the fight against poverty. In addition, an enhanced focus on gender rights will likely be reflected in the revised “outcome document” to be signed by global leaders in reaffirming their commitment to the eight goals at the 10-year mark.

Another focus is the financial gaps: approximately US$20-$40 billion could be required annually until 2015 just to meet global targets on reducing child and maternal mortality rates, according to the Partnership for Maternal, Newborn and Child Health.

Awareness-raising

An energized public serves a crucial role in holding political leaders accountable to meeting financial and other commitments to the MDGs, says Lysa John, campaign director for the civil society coalition of more than 160 partners, the Global Call to Action against Poverty (GCAP). It makes an even bigger difference when activists pressure leaders in their home countries.

Passionate rallies cannot always match the impact of a private meeting with top senior officials, however. Most NGOs and advocacy groups have been using this traditional campaign method in the past few months, said Elisa Peter, chief of the UN's non-governmental liaison office in New York.

But the term MDG is not an easy sell, advocacy workers say.

"We're trying to help people understand MDGs as global issues related to hunger, poverty, health, women and children and to use terms they can identify with," said Aaron Sherinian, spokesman for the UN Foundation charity.

According to a 2010 Gallup poll, 68 percent of Americans think the US and UN should be more focused on “issues” such as disease, poverty, education and health, Sherinian says.

When the UN Foundation unveils an “interactive” digital advertisement in Times Square at the beginning of September, it will be with the assumption that "people recognize the issue of the promises more than they recognize the term [MDG] itself", Sherinian explained. "They understand the issue and they get behind the issue."

The term "MDGs" is not widespread on the social change site BloggersUnite.com, where more than 50,000 bloggers log in monthly to post events related to health, climate change and education in developing countries.

"In the world I live in, the issues that the MDGs address are being talked about, but not in those exact terms," said BloggersUnite founder Tony Berkman. "We all have our own approaches to getting the word out about eradicating poverty."

Political will

As well as being little known, the investment and stamina required to maintain the goals in the face of public disinterest and public sector deficits needs a special type of commitment.

When Millennium Promise Alliance CEO John McArthur spoke at the US House Committee on Foreign Affairs on achieving the MDGs - the first hearing of its kind - in July, he lobbied in terms of domestic politics.

"The MDGs should be, but have not been, a strategic priority for the United States," he said in the hearing. "The President's recent national security strategy placed a strong emphasis on development in the poorest countries."

"For the US to incorporate the goals into its development policy and thinking is hugely important," McArthur later told IRIN.

Super-sized campaigns

During the June hearings, GCAP wrote a 1.8m high open letter to UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, recommending a stronger human rights focus within the MDGs.

UN security stopped it from entering the Secretariat, but Ban's office heard about the roaming letter and invited GCAP organizers to a private meeting, pledging enhanced collaboration with civil society.

GCAP, with Oxfam, Amnesty and others, plans to continue its super-sized campaigning in September. Its partners are planning thousands of events, including a bell-ringing session in Indonesia and a gathering of homeless people to bang on pots and pans in Malaysia, during Stand Up, Take Action, Make Noise for the MDGs events from 17 to 19 September.

In Bhopal, India, university students will sign a compilation of songs about ending poverty. Activists in Italy will gather at various events to make a steady noise mimicking heart beats by pounding on their chests, drums and clapping their hands. Across the Philippines, people will partake in a massive church bell-ringing campaign on 19 September. More initiatives are being announced daily.

GCAP will also display giant signed charters from its networks across Asia, Africa, Latin America, Europe and the Middle East that joined in answering the question of “The World We Want [in] 2015”. Viewers at multiple New York sites can then supplement the charters and write their own expectations and demands for the summit.

"We want to make a noise around the world and it is intended to be a big one," said Rajiv Joshi, a GCAP organizer in New York.

If that noise is clear enough and uniformly pitched, it stands a strong chance of reverberating inside the General Assembly hall from 20 September. It remains to be seen if the activists make it past security with their giant paperwork or not.

"The world economic recession is pushing countries... to enforce austerity," UNAIDS chief Michel Sidibe said in Tokyo, calling on Japan to keep up its financial support to the public-private Global Fund.

The head of the United Nations agency has in recent days stressed the need for the international community to mobilize 10 billion dollars for universal access to HIV prevention, treatment, care and support.

"Governments and donors are second-guessing in terms of their budget and priorities," he told a Tokyo press conference. "For the first time in 15 years, we are seeing the global commitment beginning to falter."

Many patients, particularly in Africa, still struggle to receive expensive care that often requires skills of highly trained professionals, Sidibe said.

In a study in the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM), researchers said that when used on 1,730 patients with suspected TB and suspected drug-resistant TB, the Xpert MTB/RIF test successfully identified 98 percent of all cases.

It also identified 98 percent of patients with a form of TB resistant to rifampin, or rifampicin -- one of the most powerful TB drugs -- and achieved these results in less than two hours.

Anthony Fauci, director of the U.S. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases described the test findings as "impressive" in terms of speed, accuracy and sensitivity.

"Within two hours, you can not only have a diagnosis, but you can also have a good idea of the range of drugs you can use," he told Reuters, adding that such capabilities were "unheard of" with current testing methods.

Doctors say current diagnostic testing for TB -- which involves microscopy in labs with trained experts and can take weeks -- has barely been improved in the last 125 years.

Tests for drug-resistant TB can take months and are notoriously insensitive, so new, more accurate tools to rapidly diagnose TB and its drug-resistant forms are urgently needed.

Streets in Maputo's city centre were eerily deserted after Wednesday's protests which saw seven people, including two children, killed.

In other parts of Maputo, witnesses said police opened fire on protestors in the impoverished suburb of Zimpeto but there were no immediate reports of deaths or injuries.

Schools in the capital were closed and many people remained at home to avoid the protests. In the city centre, where hundreds of protestors fought running battles with police on Wednesday, soldiers were clearing up burning barricades where shops were closed and no public transport ran.

Thousands of people angered by a 30 percent increase in the price of bread and higher electricity and water tariffs took to streets in protests which quickly turned violent.

"I opted to join the protests because life is very difficult with these hikes, the government has turned a deaf ear to our long grievances, they only need us during election time," said Teofilo Pedro, a resident of the industrial surbub of Matola on Maputo's outskirts.

Laurens Niens' team at Erasmus University Rotterdam analyzed the number of people who would be pushed below an income level of $1.25 or $2 a day -- poverty indicators used by the World Bank -- by paying for four important, widely used medicines.

The Dutch researchers whose work was published in the Public Library of Science (PLoS) Medicine journal on Tuesday said their findings showed that greater effort is needed to encourage the use of cheaper generic drugs in poor countries and to ensure more medicines are made available through the public sector.

The drugs studied were a salbutamol inhaler, used for the management of asthma, glibenclamide, a common diabetes drug, atenolol, which belongs to a drug class commonly known as beta-blockers and is used to treat high blood pressure, and amoxicillin, a broad spectrum antibiotic.
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In Yemen, for example, where seven percent of people live on less than $1.25 a day, buying branded glibenclamide -- sold as Daonil by Sanofi-Aventis -- would impoverish another 22 percent, but buying the cheapest generic equivalent would only push another 3 percent below the poverty line.

In the remote and rural district of Samburu, northern Kenya, where paved roads are scarce and motorised transport hard to come by, reaching the mostly pastoralist and nomadic inhabitants with HIV/AIDS services requires an unusual approach.

John Lokolale, 21, a Samburu Moran (warrior), said he did not know what the word condom meant until recently. "Now I know a condom because I have seen it," he told IRIN/PlusNews. "These days, when I get a girl I tell her I will use a condom because I have a stock in my house. They brought it here with a camel, and I kept many for myself."

The Nomadic Communities Trust (NCT), a community-based health services organization, started using camels to reach the Samburu people with mobile clinics in 2006.

"We realized we had to be innovative ... and we looked around; we are glad camels have come in handy in [delivering] not only condoms but also drugs and other reproductive health services," said Rose Kimanzi, an NCT field coordinator.

The camel clinics offer family planning services, antenatal care, palliative care, HIV testing and condoms. NCT has trained 45 local people to provide information about HIV and condoms and they have so far reached more than 68,000 people.

According to the 2007 Kenya AIDS Indicator Survey, Samburu district has an HIV prevalence of 6.1 percent, slightly lower than the national average of 7.4 percent.

"When people come to places where we have set up camp they can receive all the services," said Kimanzi. "We have witnessed comparatively wide acceptance of condom use and family planning services."

Michael Lol'ngojine, a community health worker trained by the NCT project to provide HIV counselling and testing services in Samburu, said people in the area had gradually changed their attitudes.

"When I started working here [five years ago], you couldn't mention the word condom, or even tell people about family planning; telling them to test for HIV was like an insult," he told IRIN/PlusNews.

"Today I am happy because they now seek services ... When they see the camels, they come along because they appreciate the need to test and they appreciate the need to use condoms," Lol'ngojine said.

"Here people still believe in traditional medicines, and if you don't test them for HIV ... even those who are ailing from HIV-related diseases will just seek herbal treatment."

Kimanzi noted that high levels of poverty, illiteracy and cultural practices like polygamy and early marriage have led to high levels of HIV infection among the Samburu and other nomadic communities in the region, where around 60 percent of the people live on less than a dollar a day.

"Poverty makes many parents marry off their daughters early, putting them at risk [of HIV]. Many of these young girls are married off to men who are already in polygamous unions, and when you mix that with illiteracy, then the situation becomes difficult."

Besides these cultural practices, "Tribal conflicts amongst the Samburu and Pokot [a rival pastoralist group] have hindered the provision of health services, including HIV/AIDS services," Kimanzi said. The two communities carry out frequent cattle raids against each other.

The government struggled to bring HIV/AIDS services to the people, said Dofa Abdi, Samburu District HIV/AIDS and STI (sexually transmitted infection) Coordinator.

"We appreciate any efforts to offer HIV prevention services to nomadic communities here because they do not visit health facilities, nor is it easy to get to them since most government services are static."

Some large charities have already begun handing out money to victims of this summer's devastating floods and others say they have plans to so, continuing a trend that began in earnest after the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami and has picked up pace ever since.

But some in the humanitarian community remain resistant to the idea, especially those in the larger U.N. agencies, where there are fears that cash can cause inflation and fuel corruption. Many Pakistanis apparently share the same concern. They have preferred to give food, clothes and medicine to flood victims instead of money because of worries it could be misused.
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While aid groups use the term "cash-based programming," actual money is rarely given because of security reasons. The assistance is mostly in the form of checks, vouchers, food stamps or remittances at banks.

Some aid experts say the resistance to cash by some aid groups is as much cultural as anything else. They say it challenges deep-seated and largely unspoken assumptions that Western countries know best what the poor in developing countries need.

Several studies have shown that a main argument once used against giving cash - that recipients would spend it on cigarettes, alcohol or drugs - is not true.

"We can trust people. They are wise enough," said Claudie Meyers from Oxfam GB, which has already given checks of around $60 to 7,000 families in the northwest and plans to give out similar amounts to 40,000 more.

"They can prioritize their needs. If I was in this situation, I would buy food. They do the same."

The WFP, which plans to be feeding 6 million people in Pakistan by the end of September, recently concluded a pilot project in Buner district in the northwest where it gave cash vouchers to people rather than food. It found that recipients spent 70 percent of the money on food and the distribution costs were around five percent cheaper than trucking in food.

The study also reported a significant boost to local shops.
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Paul Harvey, an independent aid consultant who has studied the use of cash in emergency situations, said that so long as aid groups were responsible, it was a very effective response. He said that in reality a mix of food, other aid and cash was often the ideal choice.

"Cash should be part of the tool box and could be used more than it currently it is," he said. "People prefer having cash. It is a more dignified way of doing things."

Families left homeless in the remote Diffa region in southeast Niger and Agadez in the north have not received assistance yet. About 80,000 animals have died in Agadez flooding.

"We must find a way to quickly burn or bury their bodies to ensure water sources are not contaminated," Traore said.

The flooding has only compounded the food security crisis in the West African nations, where nearly 15.2 million suffered from hunger after failing harvests, the OCHA said, citing the government.

According to the international aid group Oxfam, Niger is the country worst-hit by the West Africa food crisis. Before the floods, half the population lived under threat of famine, the group says.

The World Food Programme is working to provide highly nutritious food rations to 670,000 children and their families, Bettina Luescher, a spokeswoman for the agency, said Monday.

"By the end of August, 5.5 million people will have received a full ration," she said.

Still, the agency is continuing to appeal to donors for funds to reach the $230 million needed for emergency operations.

The program has currently received 67 percent of that goal, Luescher said.

"The global financial crisis meant we took our eyes off the MDGs and off the ball," Mr Costello told reporters in Melbourne on Tuesday.

"We retreated, looked inwards, and we're stuck in our bubbles saying `we're only worried about our selves' ... there was certainly a drying up of funds and momentum."

The disadvantage in developing nations was also exacerbated as rising unemployment in the first world resulted in less "remittance" money flowing into the third world, as migrant workers had less extra cash to send home to their families.

Mr Costello spoke at the 63rd annual United Nations' DPI/NGO (Department of Public Information/Non-Governmental Organisation) conference, the world's largest gathering of aid and charity workers and the biggest UN summit yet held in Australia.

The event is focused on assessing global progress towards the MDGs, and Mr Costello said the world could yet meet the MDG defined targets for improved childhood education.

Clear progress was also evident in the now "flattened" rate of new HIV infections globally, he said.

"The MDGs, because they exist, we've seen some three million children's lives saved since the year 2000," Mr Costello said.

Muzamel is just five days old and sleeps peacefully under a makeshift mosquito net, blissfully unaware that her family home is now an island, still surrounded by water one month after the floods hit.

It is a half-hour journey by army motor boat to reach the village of Kot Bodla, across a giant lake which has submerged the family's livelihood -- its cotton and wheat fields -- below five or six feet of water.

Since the floods came, the 30 or so people in the extended family who live here have been cut off, living off their animals and what stocks of food they had, and crowding into the buildings which were not destroyed or dangerously damaged.

"The water came in the night. It was raining," says Lal Bai, the baby's grandmother. "One by one, houses began to collapse. I was so scared and worried about the children; I thought the water was going to come and wash them away. We moved the children from room to room to save their lives.

Since then, nobody has come to help them.

Here in Rajanpur district of south Punjab, some 700,000 people fled their homes. With many of the people who fled stranded on embankments with nothing, the army says it had to give priority to the homeless.

Lal Bai's daughter gave birth without hope of medical help - a girl who now sleeps tightly bound in a green scarf, three black dots smeared on her forehead to keep away evil spirits.

Her family has little idea what the future holds after such terrible floods -- even in all the stories of their ancestors they had heard of nothing like this.

They know the immediate future will be hard. The cotton was just three weeks away from being picked when the floods hit. They do not expect to be able to sow wheat in the winter. They do not have enough food for their goats, sheep and buffalo.

Mining prospectors in Luapula Province, northern Zambia, have forced small-scale farmers from their land at gun point, according to villagers in the region.

"We have a lot of battles going on over land; people's right to land is being violated by manganese miners, time and again," said Ignatius Musenge of the Zambia Land Alliance, a land rights NGO based in Mansa, the provincial capital.

Luapula Province borders the mineral-rich Katanga region of the Democratic Republic of Congo, and has deposits of manganese, cobalt, citrine and copper; some reports claim there are also deposits of diamonds, uranium, gold and tin.

"We are handling about 20 complaints per week on average, and so far we have had more than 500 people evicted [since 2009] in various parts of Mansa as a result of manganese mining," Musenge told IRIN. People forced from their land have been given no compensation or alternative land.

"They [prospectors] are chasing us from our own land," Peter Mwila told IRIN. "Is this country just for the rich? The chief [traditional ruler] gave me a 10-hectare piece of land many years ago, where I have been farming. But early this year someone came and chased me with a gun, saying I was farming on his mining area, and I am now living with my uncle in the next village."

President Rupiah Banda's government has permitted exploration to gauge the extent of the province's mineral deposits, and has allowed small-scale mining activities, but residents claim that once mineral deposits are discovered they are evicted from their land.

Lister Zimba, who was "chased from her land" in Mansa district in May 2010, told IRIN: "The only thing I have is this land, where I do my farming. So, what happens to me now? The chief gave us land; people with money got the land from us."

Nowhere to go

"Where can we go? This is the only land we [I, my husband and three children] have lived on. We have no jobs, why should they take even the little that we have?" she said.

Mining - particularly in Copper Belt Province, northern Zambia - contributes 80 percent of the country's foreign earnings, and since 2003 has been the main driver of its annual five percent growth rate. But the commodities boom, tempered by the 2008 global slowdown, has failed to improve the livelihoods of most of Zambia's 12.4 million citizens.

About two-thirds of Zambians survive on less than US$1 per day, and only about 500,000 people have formal employment, but these statistics become more extreme in Luapula.

The province is one of poorest of Zambia's nine provinces, poverty levels are an estimated 78 percent - compared to the national average of 64 percent - and only three percent of Luapula's 775,353 people have access to formal jobs, according to the 2008 Labour Force Survey Report released in June 2010 by the Central Statistical Office.

One of the few large industries, a battery factory, closed in the 1990s and there is an expectation that large-scale mining operations could transform the province's economic fortunes.

Chief Ndake, a member of the House of Chiefs, a body of traditional rulers, warned that pro-market policies could push poor people living on customary land into deeper poverty if they were evicted.

In Zambian law, land is held by customary tenure, and although the government has encouraged citizens to take title to their land, many are unaware of the need to do so, and the state has the authority to revoke any untitled land awarded by traditional rulers.

"The powers that we have [as traditional rulers] to give land to the people are not actually honoured; in fact, the villagers living in rural areas are termed as squatters. The millions and millions of Zambians who have lived on this land for more than two, three centuries up to now, they are squatting," Chief Ndake told IRIN.

"It is only those who have settled on statutory land, where there are all those title deeds, that are settled permanently, and this law becomes very effective when there is an investor coming, when there is timber to be produced, when there are mineral deposits," he said.

Kennedy Sakeni, a former parliamentarian living in Mansa, is one of the small-scale miners accused of evicting people from their customary land.

Wild allegations

"Those are just wild allegations - they want to create problems where there are no problems. Others want to eat with both hands; you compensate them today, tomorrow they come back and ask for more money," he said.

"The truth is, I have seven mining licenses for [digging] pits in different places, and wherever there are fields of cassava [a staple food] in any of my mines, I have compensated them [local people]. In certain areas, where I am not mining just now, the people still have their cassava fields intact," he said.

Boniface Nkata, Zambia's deputy minister of mines, said government was concerned at the rising number of evictions. "There's very serious tension in terms of mining activities in the district [Mansa]," he acknowledged.

"But ... government cannot be blamed where someone is evicted from the land they have been occupying illegally, without valid documentation - they are squatters. Those who are driving them out are permitted to do so, because they should not come and find their minerals tampered with," Nkata told IRIN.

"The law is very clear - even when your chief gives you land, you should obtain title deeds for it from the ministry of lands. Then, any investor will have to partner with you, or just mine outside your farm area," he said.

"We can't have a situation where anyone does what they think is right. As government, we can only call on all our investors to offer some form of compensation to the affected people, to ease their relocation or resettlement."

The government intended to open the mineral wealth of the province to international investors after a two-year exploration period, "so that they can develop the province, invest in corporate social responsibility, pay tax," Nkata said.

"These mining activities have the potential to improve the economy of Zambia significantly, and I think we should look at the bigger picture."

More than 50 million Americans are on Medicaid, the federal-state program aimed principally at the poor, a survey of state data by USA TODAY shows. That's up at least 17% since the recession began in December 2007.

"Virtually every Medicaid director in the country would say that their current enrollment is the highest on record," says Vernon Smith of Health Management Associates, which surveys states for Kaiser Family Foundation.

The program has grown even before the new health care law adds about 16 million people, beginning in 2014. That has strained doctors. "Private physicians are already indicating that they're at their limit," says Dan Hawkins of the National Association of Community Health Centers.

More than 40 million people get food stamps, an increase of nearly 50% during the economic downturn, according to government data through May. The program has grown steadily for three years.

Caseloads have risen as more people become eligible. The economic stimulus law signed by President Obama last year also boosted benefits.
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Close to 10 million receive unemployment insurance, nearly four times the number from 2007. Benefits have been extended by Congress eight times beyond the basic 26-week program, enabling the long-term unemployed to get up to 99 weeks of benefits. Caseloads peaked at nearly 12 million in January — "the highest numbers on record," says Christine Riordan of the National Employment Law Project, which advocates for low-wage workers.

As the devastating floods in Pakistan continue to cause misery for millions of families, Save the Children reports that tens of thousands of newborn babies and their mothers could be in serious danger.

At least half a million pregnant women have been affected by the floods, with more than 100,000 of them due to give birth in the next few months, according to the United Nations. Many will be forced to deliver in temporary shelters, with no access to clean water or health care and often surrounded by contaminated flood water.

Sonia Khush, Save the Children's director of emergency preparedness and response, said: "We know that mothers are giving birth in flimsy or crowded shelters, steps away from stagnant water and debris. And we know the dangers for newborns are extreme — the first hours and days of a child's life in the developing world are the riskiest, even without the added complications posed by a disaster of this scope. Displacement, increased impoverishment, crowded living conditions, disease and infection are further imperilling the lives of mothers and their newborn babies in Pakistan."

Even before this disaster, Pakistan had a high infant mortality rate, with 1 in 20 babies dying within the first month of life.

"This is a child survival crisis," said Khush. "Dengue, malaria, diarrhea and other infections are sickening hundreds of thousands of people. All of these diseases are treatable but can be fatal — especially to children — if not addressed. Our fixed and mobile health clinics are seeing hundreds of people every day, including pregnant women, new mothers and children. We are working to reach as many children and adults as quickly as possible."

Throughout this crisis, Save the Children has been helping mothers and babies survive. Aid workers have carried pregnant women across swollen rivers to safety, and delivered lifesaving care to women giving birth in appalling conditions.

For example, Abida, pregnant with her first child, was forced to flee her home in Sindh to escape the flooding. She went into labor in a school where she was sheltering along with 2,000 other people. Save the Children aid workers helped her and her new baby boy by providing medicines and a special kit for newborns.

Save the Children has so far reached over 160,000 people through emergency medical care and distribution of food, tents, shelter kits, hygiene kits and other supplies. Save the Children is working in all four provinces through UN clusters and in partnership with national, provincial and district administrations, to provide assistance to flood-affected families. Save the Children has been working in Pakistan for more than 30 years.

Aid agencies warned yesterday that 10 million people are already facing severe food shortages, particularly in the landlocked countries of Chad and Niger, after a drought led to the failure of last year's crops. As many as 400,000 children are at risk of dying from starvation in Niger alone, according to Save the Children.

Now unusually heavy rains have washed away this year's crops and killed cattle in a region dependent on subsistence agriculture. Organisations including Oxfam and Save the Children say that the slow international response to the emergency means that only 40 per cent of those affected are receiving food aid. As many as four out of five children require treatment for malnutrition in clinics.

Such is the shortage of international aid that the United Nations World Food Programme has had to scale back its £57m operation to feed eight million people in Niger and instead concentrate its efforts on the most vulnerable – children under two – according to Oxfam.

Save the Children says the increased malnutrition rate could swiftly be followed by an increase in the number of children dying from disease because of floods in Niger caused by heavy rain over the past few weeks. "Stagnant pools of water have been contaminated by animal carcasses and are a breeding ground for malaria-carrying mosquitoes. This has increased the threat of malaria, respiratory disease and diarrhoea – the biggest killers of young children," the organisation said.

"After six months without proper nutrition, these children have little resistance to disease," said Severine Courtiol, Save the Children's Niger manager. "There is little children can do to avoid coming into contact with this contaminated, disease-ridden floodwater. That's why it's critical we make sure they get enough food so they are strong enough to fight off and recover from sickness."

Robert Bailey, Oxfam's west Africa campaigns manager, said that some food was available in marketplaces in Niger, but was too expensive for ordinary households to afford. As a result, many were reduced to eating leaves and berries.

The Summit on the UN Millennium Development Goals is fast approaching. If we are serious about beating global poverty, the empowerment of women farmers must be high on the agenda. Why?

Did you know that women produce more than half of the world’s food but earn only 10% of the world’s income? And although women produce up to 80% of food in the developing world, they often are not able to grow enough to feed themselves and their families.

Over a billion people go hungry every day, and 60% are women. This is not just today, this week or this month—it’s every day. Hunger continues to be the single biggest risk to health worldwide and poses a greater threat than AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis combined.

Concern Worldwide passionately believes that we can and should give this crisis the attention it deserves, and that women play a vital, yet unrecognized, role in the fight against global hunger.

Agatha Akandelwa is one of these women. These days, she takes care of 21 people in her Zambian village, including her grandchildren and several children of sick and deceased relatives. But sometimes it’s hard to find food for her large extended family.

“Our food situation becomes very diffic
ult every year, starting in about September and lasting right through until January. During that period we only get about one meal per day. I really don’t feel good during that time. As an adult, I can go all day without food and then get up and go to the field the next day, but I get really concerned for the children during the hungry times.”

Concern Worldwide works daily with women farmers like Agatha. We help provide them with tools, training and a little money to invest in seeds—and the women farmers have seen a significant impact. They’ve not only been able to grow enough to feed their families, but they’ve also been able to use the income from their surplus crops to send their children to school and keep their families healthy.

Women farmers are responsible for growing, harvesting, preparing and selling the majority of food in poor countries. They are on the front lines of the fight against hunger, but far too often they do not have a seat at the table with policy makers or aid organizations.

Until recently, policies designed to address hunger have failed to adequately value the role of women farmers as crucial players in providing their families and communities with food for both consumption and sale. There must be a reform of land tenure rights, as well as property and inheritance laws as measures to help women farmers succeed.

The US, with its new Feed the Future Initiative—a $3.5B commitment to improving the global food supply—has already made investment in women and girls a key part of the program. Unless world leaders focus on women farmers, the target they set to halve poverty and hunger by 2015—one of eight UN Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) originally set in 2000—will not be reached. It’s that simple.

Concern Worldwide’s Women Can’t Wait campaign urges the international community to listen to women like Agatha and to increase support for women in the fight against global hunger. The campaign, which collects signatures via online petition, urges world leaders to allocate crucial funding in support of women in the developing world and to make sure that such funding actually reaches women to help bring about real, lasting change.

The campaign will culminate at the Summit on the UN Millennium Development Goals that will be held Sept. 20—22, 2010 in New York, at which time Concern representatives will present the signatures to the assembled dignitaries.