Day of the African Child focuses on children affected by conflict and crisis

Forty years after the Soweto Uprising, many children across Africa are still struggling to find their voice.

Each year the Day of the African Child remembers June 16, 1976, when 10,000 black school children protested in Soweto against the poor quality of their education, demanding their right to be taught in their own language.

Hundreds of the young students were shot and more than 100 people were killed in the protests of the following two weeks.

This year’s theme of ‘Conflict and Crisis in Africa: Protecting all Children’s Rights’ has special significance in Somalia and South Sudan.

Amir Manghali, Islamic Relief’s regional desk co-ordinator, said: “Hundreds of thousands of children here are embroiled in suffering, witnessing the brutality of conflict.

“Today, many families in South Sudan are walking long distances, carrying heavy luggage on their heads, and hoping to get to safety.

“In Somalia, many remain trapped in camps and social injustice continues to manifest itself in the form of poor health facilities, lack of education and poverty.”

He added: “Conflicts are depriving innocent children of their right to food, clean water and education, and leaving girls more vulnerable to rape, assault and sexual exploitation.”

In the capitals of Mogadishu and Juba, more than 32,000 children have received health services from Islamic Relief in camps for internally displaced people.

Our projects in water, sanitation, hygiene and health have enabled 47,500 girls in Somalia and South Sudan to go to school instead of spending long hours collecting water.

Islamic Relief pilots waste separation scheme to encourage recycling across Grozny.

Recycling is virtually non-existent in Chechnya, but Islamic Relief has been running a pilot scheme to encourage people to separate their waste.

While countries like Austria and Germany are recycling 60% of their rubbish, and the UK and USA recycle around 40%, in Russia only five per cent of rubbish is currently being recycled.

And in Chechnya recycling has made barely a dent in the waste stream.

To raise awareness, Islamic Relief rolled out separate waste containers for plastic bottles and metal cans across Grozny, while running collections for paper and film.

The scheme is part of the wider scheme started in July 2015 to empower vulnerable young people through education and income generation projects.

Money raised through the recycling scheme has been used to repair the project training centre.

The programme has now been applauded by the Chechen Environmental Ministry which held an event in Grozny Arboretum on World Environment Day, awarding certificates and letters of thanks to youth activists for their work.

Selima Salamova, Islamic Relief’s programme manager, said: “Separate waste collection saves power, provides cheap raw materials for industry and reduces the harm we inflict on the environment that will last even longer than us.

“It also saves natural resources and creates jobs.

“It will take between 200 and 500 years for most of the waste that’s piled up in landfill and in the sea to decompose, but one tonne of waste collected separately saves 13 trees, 32 litres of drinkable water and 2.6 barrels of oil.

“The young people who have participated in this campaign should be at the forefront of future waste disposal practices.”

Emergency food distributions are planned where floods have cut off people in remote villages.

Islamic Relief is one of the few INGOs that has been able to access the most hard-to-reach areas on the outskirts of flooded Beledweyne town on the Ethiopian border (200 miles north of Mogadishu), with our field staff using a tractor and “improvised canoes” to get to stranded people.

Aid workers have reported that some families are living on rooftops.

The government has confirmed that around 70,000 people have been displaced so far, with teams on the ground stressing that the number is increasing day-by-day.

Farming communities, consisting mainly of minority clans in the area, are the worst affected with fears that flooded fields will lead to a serious scarcity of food in coming days.

Sixteen deaths have already been confirmed, with an outbreak of diarrhoea believed to be responsible for the deaths of 15 children and one older person.

Amir Manghali, Islamic Relief’s regional desk co-ordinator in Somalia, said: “People have not been able to have a decent burial because there is no dry ground where they can be buried.

“This is a desperate situation.”

He added: “There are problems with sanitation as there are now no toilets or latrines in this area.

“Most have been flooded and the water that people are using to drink and wash with is the same water from the latrine.

“The water is muddy, dirty and smelly and this is the water people are drinking on a daily basis.

“With a lot of stagnant water around there are now fears of a malaria outbreak, so in the coming days it’s going to be really hard for people here to survive in these conditions.”

The Islamic Relief team in Somalia is now working on an urgent response, delivering 1,000 food packs to feed 6,000-7,000 people in the most vulnerable, hard-to-reach households, but this supply will only be enough to last 10-11 days.

Islamic Relief began working in Somalia in 2006, providing Ramadan food parcels and Qurbani meat to poor families in the Puntland region. Our country office is in Mogadishu, with other field offices in Garowe (Puntland) and Hargeisa (Somaliland).

Naser Haghamed accepts the Leadership Award for Social Sector & Philanthropy on behalf of the Islamic Relief family.

Naser said: “I am honoured and delighted to receive this award on behalf of Islamic Relief. However, I would like to dedicate this to the children of Syria.”

Global Good Governance Awards, popularly known as ‘3G Awards,’ are presented to governments, corporates and non-governmental organisations (NGOs) for excellence in transparency, good governance and social responsibility. The award was presented by Cambridge-IFA at a ceremony that took place in Istanbul on Friday 27 May.

“This award honours excellence in the development of society through exceptional generosity and long-term commitment of time, expertise and financial or organisational support.” – Cambridge-IFA

Naser’s acceptance speech:

At the World Humanitarian Summit on May 23-24 we have a team of delegates speaking out about the issues that matter to the people we work with across the world.

Using the summit’s five “core responsibilities”, we’ve set out what we want to see change and why.

These are the commitments we are making to improve humanitarian work and create a #BetterWorld:

Core responsibility one: Political leadership to prevent and end conflicts

1. Islamic Relief commits to strengthening cross organisational frameworks on conflict and risk analysis, and will continue to invest in staff capacity for conflict sensitivity, ensuring a minimum of 15% of any conflict transformation programming goes towards supporting inclusive resilience to conflict, including the participation of women.

Core responsibility two: Uphold the norms that safeguard humanity

1. We are calling on States to do more to protect humanitarian corridors and ensure the safety of local and international staff, and Islamic Relief commits to support this by engaging constructively in intergovernmental processes to enhance the implementation and robust monitoring of International Humanitarian Law, in conformity with Resolution 2 of the 32nd International Conference of the Red Cross and Red Crescent in 2015.
2. Islamic Relief commits to continue to actively promote humanitarian principles in our programmes; building a common humanitarian discourse between religious and secular values and practice.
3. Over the next five years, Islamic Relief will roll out training on International Humanitarian Law with supporting Islamic theological teachings to our staff. We will also seek to roll out such capacity building to local civil society partners within 10 countries where we have committed to build civil society capacity for disaster preparedness and resilience.

Core responsibility three: Leave no one behind

1. Islamic Relief is a ‘Call to Action’ partner – in the next five years we are committed to transforming the way gender based violence is addressed in all our humanitarian programmes. Our goal is to develop faith literacy to promote women’s and girl’s participation, leadership and empowerment in humanitarian settings.
2. Islamic Relief commits to strengthening inclusive approaches to programming by improving organisational capacity to meet the needs of all women, men, girls and boys of different ages and abilities through the introduction of mandatory training in the induction of all new programme staff.
3. In line with our commitments under the Inclusion Charter, Islamic Relief commits to collect and to utilise data (fully disaggregated by sex, age and disability) for different population groups where possible in all humanitarian responses over the next five years.
4. In the next five years, Islamic Relief will continue to ensure the drive to meet minimum standards in relation to child protection/safeguarding, gender, age and disability inclusion in all programming with particular focus on humanitarian action.

Core responsibility four: Change people’s lives – from delivering aid to ending need

1. Islamic Relief commits to improving our inclusion of faith leaders and institutions within disaster risk reduction and response planning and delivery. Islamic Relief will actively engage faith leaders and institutions in all its humanitarian response operations.
2. Islamic relief is committed to the development of a best practice guide for inclusion of faith and faith representatives in psycho-social provision when serving communities of a particular faith by 2017.
3. Islamic Relief remains committed to complementing the efforts of national disaster coordination bodies in countries where IR has operations, taking part in ongoing joint preparedness planning to strengthen resilience from community to national level.
4. Islamic Relief is committed to utilising approaches that integrate faith institutions, values and expertise in climate change adaptation and food security at community level, influencing disaster risk reduction (DRR) planning of relevant national governments in at least three of the countries where we work that are worst affected by climate change.
5. Islamic Relief is committed to promoting and disseminating the Islamic Declaration on Climate Change in at least 10 Muslim-majority countries by 2021.
6. In addition to its work on the Islamic responsibility to tackling climate change, Islamic Relief will support at least four additional joint declarations in support of gender justice and inclusivity, tackling poverty and inequality, and promoting sustainable economic growth by 2021.
7. Islamic Relief commits to ensuring it is accountable to communities and people affected by crisis. In this regard we are committed to the ‘Core Humanitarian Standard on Quality and Accountability’. We will identify best practice and learning, and ensure continuous improvement. Islamic Relief staff and local partners’ capabilities will be built accordingly.
8. Islamic Relief shares the view that changes are required within the humanitarian system, and our own organisation, so that southern-based national actors can play an increased and more prominent role in humanitarian response. We have therefore endorsed and committed to the ‘Charter for Change’ which commits us to review and adapt our way of working to ensure that we increase direct funding to local partner NGOs, increase transparency, and ensure that we support – not undermine – local capacity through our interventions.

Core responsibility five: Invest in humanity

1. Islamic Relief commits to encouraging the use of Islamic social finance for humanitarian funding, particularly through sensitising Muslims and governments of Muslim-majority countries to its application for this purpose, but also through expanding its own Islamic endowment (waqf) and Zakat programmes.
2. Islamic Relief commits to continue building our internal capacity to carry out cash-based programming. As part of this commitment, by 2018, we expect to: ensure that all of our cash-based programming will be in line with sectoral good practice, and increase the proportion of cash-based interventions within our humanitarian programming by 10%.
3. Islamic Relief commits to support the UN in its intention, stated in the Secretary General’s Report, to ensure that counter-terrorism or counter-insurgency measures do not inhibit humanitarian action or prevent funding for humanitarian operations. We will also support calls to provide for necessary exemptions to allow humanitarian organisations to engage in dialogue and coordinate with all parties to armed conflict in order to reach those in need and alleviate suffering.
4. Islamic Relief will continue its efforts to work with the banking sector, financial institutions, regulators and other key stakeholders to ensure full cross-stakeholder engagement on the myriad of issues related to counter-terrorism financing that impede the delivery of aid.
5. Islamic Relief commits to engage, wherever possible, with efforts to support non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and community-based organisations (CBOs) to better understand how to adhere to current legislation and due diligence requirements – including understanding application for special exemptions where these exist.