08 November 2005 - CRINMAIL 728
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- ASIA EARTHQUAKE: International Response Insufficient [news]
- UNITED STATES: Report on Covert Prisons Abroad Spurs UN/EU Probes [news]
- INDIA: Child Rights Programme Implementation in India [publication]
- EMPLOYMENT: Plan International [job postings]
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- ASIA EARTHQUAKE: International Response Insufficient [news]
[LONDON, 7 November 2005] - One month on from the Asian earthquake, Save the Children is calling on the international community to dramatically scale up its response. The earthquake has already claimed nearly 80,000 lives and unless more is done to assist the reported three-and-a-half million homeless and 79,000 injured then thousands more could die from disease and exposure, the charity warns.
One month on from the devastating earthquake less than a quarter (24 per cent or $131m) of the $550m appealed for by the UN has been pledged, and nearly half of this figure ($60m) remains undelivered. The scale of the international response to the UN appeal is in stark contrast to that for the Boxing Day tsunami, when international donors pledged over $700m for immediate emergency relief in the first two weeks alone.
The comparison with the international response to the tsunami is all the more striking given that the need for immediate relief is even more pressing. The earthquake destroyed 70 per cent of houses in the affected areas and damaged the remainder, leaving up to three-and-a-half million people in 15,000 villages homeless and in need of medical care and water and sanitation support. Thousands remain at risk from disease and exposure, with the harsh Himalayan winter just around the corner.
Ken Caldwell, Save the Children's Director of International Operations, says: "Governments have been much slower to release funding than after the tsunami, despite the fact that there are over 50 per cent more people displaced and we are in a race against the weather. Every day, it is getting colder and colder, and people will not survive long in the open or in makeshift shelters. Young children are particularly vulnerable.
For more information visit: http://www.crin.org/resources/infodetail.asp?ID=6518&flag='news'
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- UNITED STATES: Report on Covert Prisons Abroad Spurs UN/EU Probes [news]
[NEW YORK, 3 November] - Pressure mounted on the George W. Bush administration last Thursday to provide details of secret prisons abroad reportedly run by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), where terror suspects are held incommunicado in dark, sometimes underground cells.
According to an investigative article by the Washington Post's Dana Priest, shortly after the September 11, 2001 attacks, the CIA set up clandestine jails for al Qaeda suspects in at least eight countries, including Thailand, Afghanistan and Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. The paper said some were also located in Eastern Europe, although it withheld the specific countries involved at the request of "senior US officials". But Jean-Paul Marthoz, Human Rights Watch's spokesman in Belgium, said independent investigation suggests that the secret CIA installations in Eastern Europe are in Poland and Romania.
Last fall, Human Rights Watch issued a report on "ghost prisoners" held by the CIA at undisclosed locations after being apprehended in places such as Pakistan, Indonesia, Thailand, Morocco and the United Arab Emirates. The group said it was unable to obtain first-hand information on the treatment of these detainees, but added that press accounts have repeatedly cited unnamed government officials acknowledging torture or mistreatment.
"Even in the context of war, the United States is bound by Army regulations and international human rights laws to maintain a list of detainees and where they're being held," said Priti Patel, an attorney with the New York-based group Human Rights First. "But it doesn't appear that Congress has had access to that information."
According to the Washington Post article, interrogators at the so-called "black sites" are permitted to use "Enhanced Interrogation Techniques", including "waterboarding", in which a prisoner is made to believe he or she is drowning. More than 100 people have reportedly been sent to the secret prisons, about 30 of whom are considered major terrorism suspects.
European Union spokesman Friso Roscam Abbing said the EU would conduct an informal inquiry into the allegations, and that if such secret prisons existed, they would violate EU human rights rules. Poland is a member of the EU, and Romania is scheduled to join the bloc in 2007.
The UN Special Rapporteur on torture, Manfred Nowak, said last Wednesday that he too would seek more information about the covert prisons. "Every secret place of detention is usually a higher risk for ill treatment. That's the danger of secrecy," Nowak said, adding that he would seek access to all U.S. detention facilities outside its territory.
[Source: IPS, Inter Press Service News Agency]
To read the article in full, go to: http://www.ipsnews.org/news.asp?idnews=30877
To read the Human Rights Watch report, go to:
http://www.crin.org/violence/search/closeup.asp?infoID=6517
To know more about the work of the Special Rapporteur on Torture, go to: http://www.ohchr.org/english/issues/torture/rapporteur/index.htm
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- INDIA: Child Rights Programme Implementation in India [publication]
The Swiss based organisation, Pestalozzi Children's Foundation (PCF), has worked in India for over 20 years. The PCF country programme was phased out at the end of 2005. Sherly V. Mathew, former PCF Country Co-ordinator in India, compiled a comprehensive paper to document this long-lasting commitment and the lessons learnt. The paper, "Child Rights in Action - Programme implementation in India. Recap of PCF - India Partnership 1983-2004", as well as many more Lessons learnt papers are available on PCF's Partnerforum at: http://www.pestalozzi.ch/partnerforum.
Since 1946, the Pestalozzi Children's Foundation has been supporting marginalised children and youth in the field of education. Established at the end of the second World War to foster war orphans from all around Europe in the Children's Village in Trogen, PCF started working abroad 1982. Today PFC works with partner organisations in Asia, Central America, East Africa and South Eastern Europe, providing the partners with financial and technical assistance to facilitate access to education, to improve the quality of education and to promote intercultural education.
For more information, contact:
Roland Brunner, PCF Director Programmes Abroad
Pestalozzi Children's Foundation PCF
CH - 9043 Trogen, Switzerland
Tel: + 41 71 343 73 42; Fax: + 41 343 73 30
Email: [email protected]
Website: http://www.pestalozzi.ch
Visit: http://www.crin.org/resources/infoDetail.asp?ID=6519
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- EMPLOYMENT: Plan International [job postings]
Director of Programme and Communications
The Director will lead a team responsible for ensuring that Plan has clearly articulated programme strategies and policies, has mechanisms that assess the effectiveness of programmes developed under these policies, and develops external relations and communications activities that raise the profile of the organisation and enhance its ability to advocate and lobby on issues related to children and their rights.
Director of Sponsorship, Grants and Business Development
This is a new role whose purpose is to provide global leadership on developing and improving sponsorship, grants and business development strategies, systems, and services, with specific focus on improving co-ordination and efficiency to ensure high quality services and accountability to all donors (private, institutional and corporate) and to the other stakeholders, while raising the profile and prominence of the department's activities.
Disaster Response and Risk Reduction Co-ordinator
Plan is also looking for someone who is able to take a long-term perspective in the design of its disaster response work to create a comprehensive Disaster Response Framework along the following axis: organisational disaster preparedness; ensuring access to stocks of key materials in strategic locations; tracking a central emergency fund; identifying and maintaining an emergency roster of candidates from across the organisation who can be involved in disaster response; maintaining relations with key disaster actors; etc.
Application deadline: 18 November 2005
For more information:
Email: [email protected]
Visit: http://www.plan-international.org
For more information or to apply for the post of Team Leader - Plan Pakistan Response, advertised in last week's CRINMAIL, please contact:
Tiamta Prasai, Plan Asia Regional Office
2nd Floor, Na-Nakorn Building, 99/349 Chaengwattana Road
Thungsonghong, Laksi, Bangkok 10210, Thailand
Tel: + 66 2 576 1972-4 ext.115; Fax: + 66 2 576 1978
Website: http://www.plan-international.org
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