brad brace

The crisis is not Euro-centric as it is made out to be. It is global.
The crisis does not seem to affect Asia as much as human life is cheap
fodder in that segment of humanity.

The crisis is also not materialistic or fiscal as made out to be, it
is a spiritual crisis.

There seems to be no solution to the spiritual crisis from the
Eurocentric point of view with the deepest aspects and values of
Christianity having been denied and defaced consistently. Even as
the Judaic notion of Just Law and the Greek philosophical notions
of Quality and Moderation have been chucked into the dustbin of
militarism and consumerism.

As for the Asiatic spiritual solutions, they are multiple, mostly
kaleidoscopic odds and ends, throwbacks to primitivism and animism
and irrationalism or simply prescriptive of treating all crises as
illusion or delusion and reducing the task of salvation to yet another
selfish point of indulgence.

There seems no way out of the global spiritual mess all of which is
finally centred in the “self” of each individual, each tribe, each
ethnic group, each nation and any other human configuration you might
want to name.

Avy

•••

ENVIRONMENT:
Crises Likely to Spur Mass Migrations

As climate change, sea-level rise, earthquakes and floods threaten countries such as Bangladesh, Tuvalu, Vietnam and Tajikistan, the Tokyo-based U.N. University (UNU) warns that by 2050, some 200 million people will be displaced by environmental problems.

This estimated figure is roughly equal to two-thirds of the current population in the United States or the combined population of Britain, France, Italy and the Netherlands.

“All indicators show that we are dealing with a major emerging global problem,” says Janos Bogardi, director of UNU’s Institute on the Environment and Human Security.

The issue of migration, he points out, represents the most profound expression of the inter-linkage between the environment and human security.

Unlike the traditional economically-motivated migrants of today, the environmentally-motivated migration is expected to feature poorer people, more women, children and elderly, from more desperate environmental situations, and possibly less able to move far.

A group of experts who did a two-year research study points out that existing human trafficking networks would gain strength and new ones could emerge as environmental deterioration, climate change and disaster uproot millions of people.

In Bangladesh, women with children, whose husbands either died at sea during cyclone Sidr or are away as temporary labour migrants, are easy prey for traffickers and end up in prostitution networks or in forced labour in India.

Bangladesh is also often considered “the country that could be most affected by climate change” due to projected sea-level rise and flooding from melting Himalayan glaciers. It is also heavily affected by sudden disasters, such as cyclones.

According to preliminary findings, Bangladesh may lose up to one-fifth of its surface area due to rising sea level. And this scenario is likely to occur, if the sea level rises by one metre and no dyke enforcement measures are taken.

Asked if there should be an international treaty to protect the new breed of environmental migrants, Bogardi told IPS: “Yes, there should be a convention or set of treaties and formal recognition of people displaced or migrating due to environmental causes.”

However, he said, such a treaty should be independent of the 1951 Geneva Convention relating to the Status of Refugees.

The new refugees will also come from countries such as the Maldives, Tuvalu, Kiribati, and Palau: small islands in danger of being wiped off the face of the earth due to sea level rise triggered by climate change.

“An entirely different question is how to deal with the disappearance of a state? This is a legal question and international lawyers have already been contemplating ’solutions’ like governments [in permanent] exile or the model of the Sovereign Order of Malta,” said Bogardi.

“While the submergence of an entire state is unique, we expect that the humanitarian [and economic] challenge [measured by the number of people affected] will be much greater in the deltas of Bangladesh, the Nile River, Mekong River or even the Rhine and Mississippi Rivers, than in small island states,” he added.

A three-day conference on environmental migrants, described as the largest ever conference on this issue, is expected to conclude next weekend in Bonn, Germany.

Hosted by UNU, the conference, which is being attended by officials and experts from about 80 countries, also serves as a platform to introduce the fledgling Climate Change Environment and Migration Alliance (CCEMA).

Meanwhile, addressing the high-level segment of the General Assembly sessions last month, the vice president of Palau, Elias Camsek Chin, told member states they must be guided by a single consideration: “Saving those small island states that today live in danger of disappearance.”

Palau and members of the Pacific Islands Forum, including Kiribati, Marshall Islands and Micronesia, “are deeply concerned about the growing threat which climate change poses not only to our sustainable development but also to our future survival,” Chin said.

“This is a security matter which has gone un-addressed,” he warned the General Assembly.

James Michel, the president of Seychelles, a tiny island in the Indian Ocean, said: “It is not right that small island states have to run the risk of being submerged by rising sea levels, whilst some nations refuse to even acknowledge their responsibility for the high levels of environmental pollution which are now threatening the planet’s resources.”

Kiribati’s President Anote Tong told the General Assembly his country has only several decades before its islands become uninhabitable. The 100,000 people in his country must one day move elsewhere, he said.

Asked if any of the countries neighbouring these small island states have expressed their willingness to accommodate the new migrants, Bogardi told IPS: “There is no recognition [yet] of environmentally [forced] migrants, hence there is no specific expression of obligation to let in migrants who migrate due to sea level rise, frequent storm surges or other such environmental events.”

“It is one of our main goals to establish and have accepted three categories of environmental migrants [namely, environmentally motivated migrants, environmentally forced migrants and environmental emergency migrants],” he said.

The latter category of environmental emergency migrants would account for those displaced by natural hazard events like earthquakes, hurricanes, tsunamis etc.

Bogardi said the frequently reported Tuvalu-New Zealand deal on migrants does not refer to accepting migrants for environmental reasons but rather New Zealand providing a labour migration quota for people from Tuvalu through its Pacific Access Category migration programme.

Asked about the possible extinction of some of the low-lying small island states, Bogardi said some small island states could face “disappearance” in the case of more extreme sea level rise than expected in benchmark reports such as the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Fourth Assessment Report (AR4).

Even if sea level rise exceeds expectations, he pointed out, the process is likely to be gradual over decades.

“Increasing sea level would threaten coastal aquifers, thus feasible life and economic activities would diminish much before the islands would disappear,” he said. Consequently, he added, “we expect migratory trends to emerge” or be stronger than at present in the years and decades to come.

“In summary, we expect depopulation as an ultimate coping measure to be implemented gradually before the physical disappearance of those islands. Time scale is decades, if not centuries.”

Immigration Police have identified routes used by human traffickers and smugglers to move their cargo in and out of Kenya.

The most active route was discovered in northern Kenya in Moyale.

Immigration Police say that from Moyale, human cargo is ferried to Garissa, Isiolo then Nanyuki and Voi from where it is taken to Tanzania through Taveta border town.

Another route starts from Moyale to Isiolo and Nanyuki and to Nairobi’s Eastleigh.

Some of the human cargo, comprising girls and boys hidden in trucks carrying beans, is sold into slavery in this sprawling suburb, while the rest is taken to Mombasa destined for South Africa or to Busia for transportation to Burundi or South Africa.

South Africa is the launch-pad to Europe and Canada.

Panya routes

While there are three border points between Mombasa and Lunga Lunga, on the border with Tanzania, there are 820 ‘panya routes’ used by traffickers to transport their human cargo to Tanzania, according to an immigration officer in Lunga Lunga.

The route from Moyale is ideal because the vast expanse of land in Kenya’s north is poorly secured.

“There are only 20 immigration officers in northern Kenya, an area bigger than many European states,” said an immigration officer.

“But there are 4,500 policemen, mostly locals eager to see their people secure jobs in foreign lands and a good number of them collude with cartels.”

Sri Lankans, Pakistanis and Bangladeshis come through Mombasa disguised as ship crews because sailors are not required to have passports.

Ship docks

Once the ship docks, they are moved to Nairobi to await Kenya passports, genuine or otherwise, to move to Europe and North Africa.

The traffickers are reported to poison those who fail to secure jobs in Kenya or passage out of the country to avoid confrontation with victims’ relatives back in Sri Lanka and Bangladesh who would have paid dearly for the service.

“These things happen,” says Immigration spokesperson John Njehu.

International press reports indicate that key suspected traffickers, Nagaratnam Thavayogarajah, popularly known as Thavam, and Satkunarasan Satkunasingam (aka Rajan), used Nairobi as a base to ferry hundreds of Sri Lankans to the West.

Their offices were situated in a travel agency and a popular Nairobi restaurant where they charged $12,000 in the late 1990s for passage from Sri Lanka through Kenya and Malawi.

Most baffling

According to police and immigration officials at Busia, the most baffling route is from Somalia to Kenya through Uganda.

Hundreds of Somalis charter planes to Entebbe International Airport from where they get to the Busia border where their passports are stamped.

Instead of crossing into Kenya immediately, they return to Uganda to await nightfall when they cross over into Kenya using ‘panya’ routes.

“We don’t understand why they should go through Uganda immigration and then use ‘panya’ routes to get into Kenya,” says a Busia police spokesman. “We have arrested a number.”

Terror suspect

As these investigations were carried out in Busia, a Canadian of Somali descent was arrested for having inexplicably travelled through Uganda. “He is a terror suspect. We are interrogating him,” police said.

Three in every four foreigners arrested in Busia between May and August entered Kenya through ‘panya’ routes despite their travel documents being stamped in Uganda.

Authorities are convinced that the cartels use Uganda because it does not have sophisticated equipment to detect fake travel documents.

Somalis don’t require visas to travel to Uganda, which is not the case with Kenya. However, Ethiopians don’t require visas to get into Kenya, yet they are required in neighbouring Tanzania.

And to get around this, they come to Kenya and take up new citizenship to allow them passage through Tanzania to South Africa or elsewhere.

About 800 Ethiopians who passed through Kenya are languishing in Tanzania jails. The Indian Ocean has been a free-for-all gateway to and out of Kenya.

Recently, Kenyan authorities rescued a group of Somalis attempting to cross into Kenya by sea from drowning.

“They almost drowned,” said an officer at Lunga Lunga border post.

Sound Design 2008: Taka Tales from Narikel Jingira Island, Bangladesh
(Art Exhibition with Installed Audio, Tea and free Taka Tunes CDs)
flyer: http://bbrace.laughingsquid.net/taka-tunes.jpg
available from brad brace bbrace@eskimo.com

complete recordings sometimes playing now:
http://69.64.229.114:8000

mp3 podcast materials:
http://216.70.118.235/two-taka-tunes-podcast/two-taka-tunes-podcast.html

Scene: extensive, evocative audio field-recordings from a concrete Bangladeshi guesthouse looking back on a thatched bamboo village by the Bay of Bengal, with an exhibit of particularly well-used, framed two-taka banknotes.

bbs: brad brace sound:
http://69.64.229.114:8000
Global Islands Project:
http://bbrace.laughingsquid.net/id.html
http://bbrace.net/id.html

‘Rickshaw Idols’ ride to glory in Bangladesh

On the busy streets of Dhaka, Omar Ali snakes his way through the city’s gridlocked traffic, pedalling passengers around town on his cycle rickshaw.

As one of an estimated one million rickshaw drivers in the Bangladeshi capital, the 45-year-old blends in on his colourful three-wheeler — until one of his clients recognises his face.

Ali is one of three men selected by judges to appear later this month in the final of an ‘American Idol’-type television contest for rickshaw drivers.

The father of four learnt to sing folk songs as a teenager by listening to the radio in his village in northern Bangladesh.

He came to Dhaka 25 years ago to earn money for his family.

Like most drivers on the streets of Dhaka, Ali has legs of steel, a result of working 12-hour days, seven days a week to earn a daily wage of between 150 and 200 taka (two and three dollars).

“In the village I drove a buffalo cart and I would sing,” he says.

“Now in Dhaka whenever I get snarled up in traffic, I sing. It makes my passengers very happy and they sometimes give me 10 percent extra. They get upset in the traffic but the singing helps make it bearable.”

The television show, ‘Magic Tin Chakar Taroka,’ meaning three-wheeler stars, is open to drivers of both pedal and motorised rickshaws who sing Bangladeshi folk songs.

The idea is the brainchild of current affairs reporter Munni Saha, who was inspired after seeing an informal talent show for rickshaw drivers in a school playground on the outskirts of Dhaka.

Better known for making politicians squirm with her tough interviewing techniques, Saha made a five-minute news story about the initiative and from there the plan for a televised talent show gained momentum.

The three-wheelers — still the cheapest and sometimes only mode of transport that can navigate Dhaka’s narrow alleys — are a vital source of income for many in the impoverished country.

The physically gruelling work is often criticised by rights groups as inhumane, but several attempts to eliminate rickshaws from Bangladesh have come to nothing.

“I just felt that as a human being you can’t do so much for low-income people. Maybe they are a rickshaw driver, but they are also singers, so I thought why don’t we help them,” said Saha.

After getting her TV station to support her idea, she put posters on the back of rickshaws to advertise the talent hunt.

Soon after, outdoor auditions at four venues in the city attracted 3,000 men.

The number was whittled down to 20, who appeared in weekly episodes on the ATN Bangla network in September.

As well as gaining a huge following in Bangladesh, the show has rated well with overseas viewers, said Saha, with the station watched via satellite by Bangladeshi expatriates in the United States, Britain, Australia and Africa.

Until now, the best singers have been chosen by three judges, including renowned Bangladeshi singer Momtaz, but the winner will be decided by viewers voting by text message.

Saha said the show’s popularity was likely mean the competition becomes a national event held annually.

The winner of this year’s contest, to be aired on October 31, takes home 100,000 taka (1,460 dollars) and will have a solo album made.

There will also be a best-of CD of the top 10 finalists.

During his long days pedalling, Ali has allowed himself to briefly think about what winning might mean for him and his family.

“Riding a rickshaw is hard on my body and it’s getting harder as I get older,” he said. “If I win I’ll give up the job and start a small business.”

“Every year, we have to increase the heights of the embankments, and the amount of water-logging is growing. It has led to more homeless people, more social conflict and more quarrels between neighbours.”

Bangladesh: a voice for the vulnerable

Regional initiatives, global strategies

We found Fajila and Sirajul tending tomatoes, peppers and other vegetables, but they were in no ordinary garden. This one had no soil; their plants were growing out of what looked like balls of dung, and the bed they were growing them in was a 12-metre-long, 1.2-metre-wide plot of tangled water hyacinths floating on land that is flooded most of the year. Fajila and Sirajul were waist deep in water, practising hydroponic farming.

These weren’t ordinary people, either. Until a few months ago, they were landless peasants from Deara, a village in the coastal area of southern Bangladesh, one of the poorest and most vulnerable places on earth. People there face regular environmental hazards, including cyclones, floods, water-logged land, silting rivers, arsenic in the drinking water, river erosion and the intrusion of salt water. But now they have to cope with climate change, too. Their imaginative use of hyacinths as new “land” to grow crops is part of a concerted attempt by the governments of Bangladesh and the United Kingdom to prepare vulnerable communities for present and future disaster.

No one doubts that climate change is happening in Bangladesh. Government meteorologists report 10%-increased intensity and frequency in cyclones hitting the country, and in the last three years there have been two of the largest storms ever recorded. Peasant farmers report increased rainfall and chaotic seasons, and everyone says it is warmer.

“We are learning about climate change,” says Anawarul Islam, chair of the Deara district of about 2,500 people. “We are experiencing more rainfall every year. The water level in the sea is definitely rising. Every year, we have to increase the heights of the embankments, and the amount of water-logging is growing. It has led to more homeless people, more social conflict and more quarrels between neighbours. There is more poverty and less food security.”

“It’s far warmer now,” says Selina, from the fishing village of Jelepara. “We do not feel cold in the rainy season. We used to need blankets, but now we don’t. Last year, there were heavy rains even in summer. There is extreme uncertainty of weather. It makes it very hard to farm. We cannot plan. We have to be more reactive. The storms are increasing and the tides now come right up to our houses.”

About 160 kilometres away, Julian Francis, a UK development worker with communities living in the chars — the large islands that form in all of Bangladesh’s vast rivers — is seeing river erosion increasing, almost certainly because of greater flows of water. Recently, in torrential monsoon rains, he went out on the mighty Jamuna river. “I visited an area of Kulkandi where four villages with 571 families have been eroded,” he says. “People said the river had come about 1,200 feet [365 metres] inland last year and another 1,000 feet [about 300 metres] this year.”

“Last year,” he added, “528 grants were made to families in one district by the Chars Livelihood Project. But since April this year, 518 grants have been made, and there is now a waiting list of more than 300. I was told the river had not been seen in such a furious state since 1988. [It seems] a new island char had formed in the middle of the river and this has caused the river to change its course … and this is the cause of the increased river erosion.”

Climate change may not be directly responsible for Bangladesh’s water-logged land, the intrusion of salt water or its river erosion, but it is turning a bad situation into a potential catastrophe, driving people such as Fajila and Sirajul to absolute poverty. Cyclone Sidr, one of the most powerful storms ever to have hit Bangladesh, made three million people homeless last November. Meanwhile, food-price inflation has left four million extra people in absolute poverty this year, according to a World Bank official in August.

“There has to be preparation for climate change,” says Raja Debashish Roy, a government environment official. “We are experiencing many changes; some are coming very quickly and others will over years. There is a rise in salinity, more intense tidal waves, floods, droughts and cyclones. We are getting too much water in the rainy season and too little in the dry season. All this has implications for food security. We have to be coping with all these problems, some simultaneously.”

Roy was in London on September 10 for the UK-Bangladesh Climate Change Conference, at which Bangladesh made public its strategy to cope with climate change over the next 10 years. Britain will commit £75 million (US$135 million) to a new international fund for the country to adapt, and Bangladesh itself will contribute US$50 million a year. Other countries and global institutions, including Denmark and the World Bank, also are expected to chip in.

This is the first attempt by any major least developed country (LDC) to methodically address the threat of climate change, and is expected to become a model for others as more global money becomes available after a post-Kyoto agreement is in place.

“Bangladesh is the most vulnerable country in the world in terms of the scale of the impacts expected,” says Islam Faisal, climate-change advisor in Bangladesh for the UK Department for International Development (DfID). “It is the first to develop a strategy and an action plan. The money is not enough in itself to cover the costs of adaptation, but it should kick-start the process and allow the [Bangladeshi] government to access global money.”

That is where Fajila and Sirajul come in. Their hydroponic garden, developed under a DfID-funded disaster-management plan, includes raising houses about one metre above the present high-water line, introducing salt-tolerant crops, encouraging crab and duck farming, and rainwater harvesting.

“More than 70 [adaptation] initiatives have been identified,” says Mamunur Rashid, director of the Bangladeshi government’s disaster management programme.

One of the most successful is an education programme. A local non-governmental organisation, Shushilan, employs a full-time theatre troupe to travel to festivals and villages, informing people about climate change and how to adapt to it. Another sends volunteers to communities, with educational “flip charts”.

The initiatives are popular. “Growing food like this is labour intensive, but we don’t need fertiliser or pesticides, and the food quality is better than food grown in soil,” says Fajila. “At the start, we were very unsure whether it would work, but now we think we can live on what we grow.”

Rashid says: “What was a scientific debate has become a practical one about development. Without actions like this, Bangladesh would be plunged deeper into extreme poverty. It’s about climate change, but also about poverty reduction. It doesn’t need new ideas to adapt to climate change so much as developing what is already there. Climate change comes on top of multiple hazards and difficulties. It could tip people over the edge or, if countries respond, it could help them.”

Roy is optimistic, too. He says: “Bangladesh has always had floods, cyclones and disasters. People are used to dealing with such changes. We have a history of dealing with challenges. We are mentally equipped for climate change, but we do need support to prepare for it.”

Nasima, 35, received serious burn injuries earlier this month as men threw acid on her after she refused to withdraw a court case against those who had allegedly raped her 11-year mentally challenged daughter. ‘What is more brutal for a mother than to receive acid burns instead of justice?’ asks the doctor treating her.

The incidence of men throwing acid on women due to a dispute, rejection of a marriage proposal or being jilted in love is again on the rise in Bangladesh, after a brief lull.

The Burns Unit of the Dhaka Medical College and Hospital (DMCH) received 13 cases this month while 35 cases were received between June and September. The number was eight during the same four months last year.

The burns unit never got this many patients in such a short span, The Daily Star said after speaking to the hospital authorities and the NGOs dealing with this problem that has hit headlines here.

It has also caused concern at home and abroad, especially among women’s organisations.

According to an Acid Survivors Foundation (ASF) report, there were 116 acid-throwing cases from January through August in 2007. The number stood at 125 in the corresponding period this year.

The report highlighted the case of Nasima, 35, who received serious burn injuries earlier this month after she refused to withdraw a court case against men who raped her 11-year mentally challenged daughter two years ago.

‘Aziz and his associates, who raped my 11-year-old daughter, threw acid on me because I did not agree to withdraw the rape case on their orders,’ she said from her bed at the Burn and Plastic Surgery Unit of Dhaka Medical College and Hospital (DMCH).

‘What is more brutal for a mother than to receive acid burns instead of justice?’ asked Samantalal Sen, project director of the burns unit.

Most of the current patients at the burns unit are victims of social violence stemming from disputes over property, failure to pay dowry or refusal of love or marriage proposals.

The incidence of acid violence went down after the enactment of the Acid Crime Control Act and Acid Control Act of 2002. But the situation began worsening again in the past two years.

‘The main reason for the increase is availability of acid,’ said Sen.

People are required to show medical prescriptions to buy narcotic like pethidine, but there is no such thing when it comes to buying acids, adding to their criminal use, he added.

According to the police headquarters, 1,428 cases were filed with acid crime control tribunals from 2002 to 2007. Only 254 people have so far been convicted in 190 of the cases.

Of them, 11 were sentenced to death and 89 got life sentences while 329 accused were acquitted.

But no government or NGO officials could say how many of the death sentences were carried out or how many of the other convicts are doing their time in jail.

‘We don’t know how many of the criminals are being punished. The cases were filed with different courts, we don’t have any nationwide figures,’ Humayun Kabir, additional inspector general (crime 3), said.

Advocate Salma Ali of Bangladesh National Women Lawyers’ Association (BNWLA) said: ‘The poor rate of convictions gets in the way of keeping individuals from committing the heinous crime.’

‘Poor investigation on the part of police and out-of-court settlement are to blame for this,’ she said.

As the criminals are often influential people, they pile pressure on the victims’ families to withdraw cases.

At the same time, the police cannot gather evidence properly as relatives get busy with treating the victims and there is delay in filing cases, destroying vital evidence, experts said.

Parul, 36, was burnt eight years ago when her husband threw acid on her. The acid burnt her entire face, throat and neck while her ears simply melted away. She underwent several plastic and reconstructive surgeries at the DMCH.

Her mother filed a case one and a half months later. ‘My mother was busy with my treatment,’ Parul said.

The almost blind Parul now begs on the streets while her husband Abul remains at large.

‘I’ve been suffering without committing any crime. But the man who did this to me went scot-free,’ she said.

Experts say the government has got to enforce the law strictly and ensure a tough monitoring system to stop misuse of acids, and add that the law must not provide for bail.

Campaign against acid violence needs to be strengthened at the same time, they said.

A baby boy with two heads was born by Caesarean section at a clinic in Keshobpur, 135 km from the Bangladesh capital of Dhaka, on Monday, according to media reports Thursday.

The baby, weighed 5.5 kilograms, was named Kiron, and was moved to a larger hospital in nearby Jessore city.

Kiron was placed under police protection because hospital officials felt that the baby and his mother, 22, were at risk from the anxious crowd of 150,000 that had gathered to see him, gynaecologist Mohamad Abdul Bari said Wednesday.

“He has one stomach and he is eating normally with his two mouths. He has one genital organ and a full set of limbs,” Bari said.

“He was born from one embryo but there was a developmental anomaly.” Bari said.

Babies born with physical abnormalities in Bangladesh and India are often hailed as living gods. An eight-limbed girl named Lakshmi born in India last October was believed by villagers to be a reincarnation of the four-armed Hindu goddess of wealth.

The daily newspaper Samakal said many well-wishers had left money for the baby’s family.

At least 600,000 people have been stranded in Bangladesh in serious flooding.

The army has been called in to help people trapped by the floods.

Much of the country is under water as a result of the monsoon rains, which have caused the rivers to breach their banks.

The worst-hit areas are the districts of Sirajaganj and Bogra, where 14,000 people have sought shelter in relief centres.

The neighbouring Indian state of Bihar has also been affected by flooding, which has been caused by the monsoon rains of the past weeks.

So far nearly 100 people have been killed and hundreds of thousands made homeless.

An estimated 30,000 people including children die of unnatural reasons every year in Bangladesh. Of this 17,000 are children who drowned, said a survey of the Bangladesh Health and Injury.
The BHI survey said the death rate of children in the country from various diseases has declined over the last two years, while drowning of children has increased.
Several studies carried out by the ICDDR’B and the BHI revealed that lack of awareness was largely responsible.
It said that during floods, a large number of mothers and family members keep children busy doing household chores between 9am and 2pm, allowing them to stray out of sight.
According to UNICEF, during the rainy season between June to August last year as many as 946 people die. Of these 816 drowned. The victims were mostly children aged below five years.
Talking to newsmen, UNICEF project officer Sumona Safinaz said many drown during flooding in far-flung areas and these incidents do not get published.
The incidence of drowning of children between one and 17 years of age is more than deaths from pneumonia or diarrhoea, according to Children and Mother Affairs Institute of the Health Ministry.
Another survey carried out by the BHI observed that children usually drown in ponds, ditches, lakes even in dry season.
Sumona said the drowning incidents occur when children go to ponds or lakes without their parents or relatives. Moreover, she said, the mothers often keep their children with their relatives who are not capable of rescuing children.
She said mothers of joint families work most of the day to keep the house running and leave their kids with others.
The studies suggested a massive social awareness projetc and said policy makers, health workers as well as local people can play an active role in a coordinated manner in getting children to keep a safe distance from water-bodies.
It recommended inclusion of information related to drowning in schools and holding discussions with imams.
Five students of Mirpur MDC Model High School between 13 to 15 years of old drowned recently after a boat went down in Dhaka city’s Mirpur area.
The accident took place when 10 students were boating on Mirpur lake as their school ended earlier on that day.
Five of the students swam ashore while the others drowned.
Two days after the Mirpur incident, seven students drowned at Signal point in Cox’s Bazar beach. Three were rescued.

High levels of rape, robbery and murder help keep Port Moresby, the capital of Papua New Guinea, at the wrong end of the hardship table.

In Lagos, expect chaos. There are gun battles in Bogotá. Crime has been a curse in Karachi. But there is nowhere on earth quite like this.

According to a survey by the Economist Intelligence Unit, the capital of Papua New Guinea has beaten all-comers - again - to take a title that no city on earth would covet.

With poverty, crime, poor healthcare and a rampant gang culture, Port Moresby consistently scores highest in the unit’s “hardship” table, meaning it is regarded as the worst place to live among 130 world capitals. Baghdad is not on the list.

According to the unit, most aspects of daily life in Moresby are problematic.

Little bigger than Plymouth, with a population of 250,000, it is a place where murder rates are exceptionally high, thanks mainly to the “raskol” gangs that control large areas of the city.

Tales of their exploits are legion; from bank robberies with M-16 machine guns, to car holdups by mobs armed with machetes.

Rape cases are even worse: in one widely reported incident last year, an injured nurse was dragged away from a car crash to be gang-raped.

Visitors to Port Moresby are advised not to go out after sunset, and to avoid walking the streets in most areas even during the day.

The houses of the wealthy squat behind walls tipped with razor-wire and gates watched by security guards.

The precautions are necessary because a survey of international crime by the Home Office shows that the murder rate there is three times that of Moscow, and 23 times that of London.

The rates for robberies and rapes are just as dire.

But the raskols say much of the violence is meted out by the police, and that they are provoked into retaliation.

The base of Moresby’s Bomai gang can be found up a dark sidestreet in the suburb of Four Mile. At the entrance to their squatter settlement a man is on guard, armed with a walkie-talkie.

“The police we know are very dangerous. They come in to the settlement and raid the people’s food and property and beers,” says Koiva, one of the leaders of the gang.

He has a pattern of welts on his head where he says he was beaten by a police officer with a glass bottle to extract a confession.

Another gang member, Stephen, shows two dark scars on his legs which he says were caused when he was shot in police custody.

Most people living in Port Moresby show little sympathy for the Bomai, whose raids on businesses and residential compounds have made them infamous. “Bloody raskols. Shoot first and ask questions later, that’s what they [the police] should do,” says an Australian expatriate.

Often, that is precisely what happens.

“I think the government are happy every time the police shoot a young man but we have thousands more youths on the streets,” says Peter Gola, a former raskol working at City Mission, a charity that helps the city’s street children.

Most raskols argue that their crimes are driven by the crushing poverty of life.

“We never mean to kill people,” says Koiva. “We’re just trying to scare them and get what we want to get.”

Papua New Guinea has no welfare state, so in rural areas family and clan networks have kept people in food and lodging. That system has broken down in the capital, which sits in an arid part of the country where unemployment rates are estimated to be between 60- and 90%.

A kilo of rice here costs four kina - about 70p - and a tin of fish is three kina, but this is beyond the means of many families.

Most raskols say they get into crime when their parents send them out to make money. Pressured to generate an income, they turn to violence. An armed robbery can easily net more than 100,000 kina (£17,500).

“When that happens, we live like kings,” says Harris, another Bomai member. “If you’re lucky, you eat something good. Maybe chicken.”

But there is some hope for change. Twenty minutes’ drive from Moresby, City Mission’s New Life farm has offered an alternative to the violence for between 5,000 and 6,000 street children since it opened 11 years ago.

The regime is strict: smoking and drinking are forbidden and there is a strong religious flavour to the instruction.

But the founder, Larry George, says the structure and respect of their new lives can work wonders.

“Most of them aren’t bad kids,” says Mr George. “It’s mainly just poverty that’s driving the crime. People can read in the papers about the government stealing millions of kina and get really frustrated.”

Many of the children, he says, end up as security guards, exchanging fire with the raskols who were once their peers.

Global ranking

Best five

1= Melbourne, Australia

1= Vancouver, Canada

1= Vienna, Austria

4 Perth, Australia

5 Geneva, Switzerland

Worst five

126 Phnom Penh, Cambodia

127 Lagos, Nigeria

128 Dhaka, Bangladesh

129 Karachi, Pakistan

130 Port Moresby, Papua New Guinea

Five men who claimed they could solve any problem through supernatural powers and genies they had “domesticated” have been arrested by Bangladesh’s elite security force, an official said Wednesday.

The Rapid Action Battalion (RAB) took the five into custody in a day-long operation on Tuesday after they were accused of swindling people out of large sums of money, captain Rezaul Karim said.

“Every day, these genie-powered godmen place ads in the newspapers claiming they can solve any problem on earth through supernatural powers and genies that they have captured and ‘domesticated,’” Karim said.

“They took large amounts of money from jilted lovers promising they would bring back the ones they love. They claim to have power to reunite separated couples in just 72 hours, win lotteries as far away as in Germany or boost sexual powers,” he said.

The RAB, the country’s top security force, which is normally assigned to fight Islamic terrorists or top Maoist outlaws, stormed dens of other alleged godmen, but many had gone into hiding, Karim said.

The so-called godmen have been flourishing in impoverished Bangladesh, and some of them have millions of followers. The arrests marked the first time the government has sought to rein in their activities.

The emergency government ruling Bangladesh has vowed to stamp out corruption before it holds national elections by the end of the year.

Nearly 100 people have fallen victim to mass hysteria, a temporary psychiatric illness, in Bangladesh, the Independent newspaper reported Tuesday. The endemic illness broke out in the southwestern district of Jessore, 164 km southwest of the capital, between July 2 and July 7.

A total of 70 students were admitted to hospital.

Mass hysteria became rampant in the country last year with several hundred people suffering from it. Most of them were students.

Mass hysteria usually affects specific groups, mostly students aged between 13 and 25, and is usually accompanied by headache, convulsion and loss of consciousness.

The disease spreads quickly from one person to another.

Experts say anxiety and worry are the two main precipitating causes of the psychological problem, which is aggravated by malnutrition, tension and lack of tolerance.

Human Rights Watch called on Friday for Bangladesh’s emergency government to charge or release thousands of people it has detained in the past eight days.

At least 10,000 people — many of whom have ties to the country’s two main political parties — have been arrested since May 28.

Police say the operation is expected to last one month and is aimed at improving security ahead of the country’s scheduled return to democracy with elections due by the end of the year.

The main parties — the Awami League and Bangladesh Nationalist Party — say the arrests are part of a political crackdown by the emergency government, which has already detained both parties’ leaders.

New York-based Human Rights Watch described the arrests as “arbitrary” and said they could result in a breakdown of the country’s prison system, already under pressure.

“The timing and targets of the arrests are a dead giveaway they are politically motivated,” said Brad Adams, the group’s Asia director, in a statement.

“It’s obvious they are paying the price for the political parties’ refusal to accept the government’s conditions to participate in the elections.”

The arrests began days after the two parties said they would boycott talks with the army-backed administration on organising elections unless their leaders were freed.

Local newspaper The Daily Star said 13,465 people had been arrested since the crackdown began. Police chiefs were unable to confirm that number Friday.

The military-backed government, which came to power in January 2007 after emergency rule was imposed and elections cancelled, last year detained thousands of party activists in a bid to clean up the country’s graft-ridden politics.

More than 150 top politicians have been arrested during the drive while dozens of former ministers and ex-lawmakers have been jailed for up to 20 years.

“Our politicians were corrupt, but we had enough money to buy food,” says Shah Alam, a day labourer in Rangpur, one of Bangladesh’s poorest districts, nostalgic for the days before the state of emergency imposed in January last year. He has been queuing all day for government-subsidised rice. Two floods and a devastating cyclone last year, combined with a sharp rise in global rice prices, have left some 60m of Bangladesh’s poor, who spend about 40% of their skimpy income on rice, struggling to feed themselves.

In the capital, Dhaka, a debate is raging about whether this is a famine or “hidden hunger”. The crisis is not of the army-backed interim government’s own making. But it is struggling to convince people that the politicians it locked up as part of an anti-corruption drive would have been equally helpless. They include the feuding leaders of the two big political parties, the former prime ministers Khaleda Zia of the Bangladesh Nationalist Party and Sheikh Hasina Wajed of the Awami League.

The state of emergency, imposed to silence riotous politicians and repair corrupted institutions, can barely contain the growing discontent. This week thousands of garment workers went on strike for higher pay to cope with soaring food prices. The crisis has emboldened the political parties, which have been calling more loudly for the release of their leaders.

The army’s main headache is Sheikh Hasina, whose party is widely expected to win the election. Her detention on corruption charges has made her more popular than ever. Senior leaders of the League say it will boycott the election if the courts convict her. The threat might be empty. But it is a risk the army cannot afford to take. The patience of Western governments, which backed the state of emergency, is wearing thin. Human-rights abuses continue unabated. And they fear the political vacuum might be filled by an Islamist fringe, whose members this week went on a rampage to protest against a draft law giving equal inheritance rights to men and women.

The election will almost certainly take place. And, unlike in the past, rigging it will be hard. Bangladesh has its first proper voters’ list. Criminals will be banned from running. But to hold truly free and fair elections, the army will need to reach an accommodation with the parties. There is talk of a face-saving deal allowing Sheikh Hasina to go abroad for medical treatment, in return for a promise that the League will not boycott the election. Hardliners in the army will not like it. But they have largely been sidelined. With food prices likely to remain high and rice yields half those of India, Bangladesh desperately needs to secure food aid, investment and trade.

It also badly needs to sustain the rising flow of billions of dollars in remittances, which have lifted millions of Bangladeshis out of poverty. This complicates the government’s stated plan of considering prosecution of those who assisted the Pakistani army in a campaign that left 3m Bengalis dead in the country’s liberation war in 1971. Saudi Arabia, which accounts for 40% of total remittances, objects to an international war-crimes tribunal. If the two big political parties had their way, a large number of leaders of Jamaat-e-Islami, Bangladesh’s largest Islamist party, would stand trial.

It appears unlikely that the army will walk off the pitch and let the politicians run the country without altering the rules of the game. The interim government has already approved, in principle, the creation of a National Security Council, which would institutionalise the army’s role in politics. Last month the army chief, General Moeen U Ahmed, extended his term by one year in the “public interest”. His term now runs out in June 2009. But many Bangladeshis still doubt that he will go down in history as that rare general who gave up power voluntarily.

About 20,000 workers rioted over high food prices and low wages on Saturday close to the Bangladesh capital Dhaka, police said, amid spreading global unrest over soaring grocery costs.

Police fired tear gas and used batons to break up the protests and at least 50 people were injured, most of them police officers.

About 20,000 textile workers from more than a dozen factories went on the rampage in Fatullah, 20 kilometres (12 miles) south of Dhaka, demanding better pay amid soaring rice prices, police chief Bhuiyan Mahbub Hasan said.

Police said they wrecked cars and buses, vandalised factories and hurled bricks and stones at police.

“They became unruly demanding higher wages, saying their current wages don’t even meet basic food needs,” police sub-inspector Shafiqul Islam said.

Hasan said representatives of the manufacturers, labour and the military would meet in an attempt to defuse the unrest.

The riots came after the government said food prices, notably rice, which is a staple in Bangladesh, had doubled in the past year due to a massive production shortfall after devastating floods and a cyclone.

The price of rice is a key issue in impoverished Bangladesh, where households are estimated to spend nearly 70 percent of their income on food.

The Bangladesh violence came amid mounting unrest globally over soaring food costs.

At least five people have died in similar protests over high food and fuel prices in Haiti, while disturbances have rocked Egypt, Cameroon, Ethiopia, the Philippines, Indonesia and other countries in the past month.

The country’s food minister said early this month that the domestic grain output shortfall and global food price rises had created a “hidden hunger” in the country and that it had intensified in recent months.

The country’s garment manufacturers and the unions said the workers are badly hit as they earn some of the lowest salaries in the world.

The basic minimum monthly salary of a garment worker is only 25 dollars.

“The 25 dollars basic minimum salary was fixed in 2006. But since then prices of rice and other food items have doubled or tripled,” said Nazma Akhter, president of the United Garments Workers Union.

“With our poor salary, it is now impossible to buy three meals a day. Some of us are even going hungry some days,” said Jamal Uddin, a sweater machine operator, who earns 30 dollars a month.

Akhter said the workers have been demanding salary raises from the owners, but “they rejected our pleas. Foreign buyers have even cut the prices of our items in the recent months.”

Last month, the Bangladesh Garments Manufacturers and Exporters Association urged the government to distribute subsidised rice to 2.5 million workers, fearing the food price hike could cause unrest in the industry.

“We know their pain and how difficult the situation is. But if you see the prices we got for export, you’ll be amazed to find out the buyers are now cutting their offer prices,” said association president Anwar ul Alam Chowdhury Parvez.

The UN’s most senior emergency relief co-ordinator has given warning that spectacular food price rises will trigger riots throughout the developing world. A year ago his remarks might have been prescient. Now they are a statement of fact: in Haiti, five people have died in the past week and thousands more have been reduced to eating biscuits made of soil and cooking oil as food riots drag the western hemisphere’s most fragile and impoverished democracy back to the brink of collapse. In Egypt, where wholesale rice prices have more than doubled since October, food price inflation has triggered the worst urban unrest for a generation. From Yemen to Uzbekistan, simple hunger has emboldened citizens to protest against regimes more used to cowed docility.

Public order is at risk in at least 33 countries, according to the World Bank. But the high food prices bringing misery to poor consumers offer the chance of transformative change to poor producers. These are, principally, the rice growers of India, China and South-East Asia, whose output would fetch twice what it commanded just six months ago if they had free access to world markets. Securing this access, and the investment in agricultural infrastructure that would follow, is the only long-term solution to an accelerating global crisis.

The factors bringing the age of cheap food to such a shuddering halt are well understood. Devastating droughts wrecked last year’s grain harvests in Australia and sub-Saharan Africa. The breakneck - and ill-advised - replanting of farmland for biofuels in the Americas helped to double world wheat and livestock feed prices between 2006 and 2007 alone, while high oil prices are transmitted to agriculture via the rising cost of planting, harvesting and distribution. Above all, soaring Indian and Chinese demand for land-intensive meat and dairy products are fuelling food price inflation with global impact and little sign of slowing.

The emerging economic superpowers account for more than a third of the world’s population but less than a quarter of global food output. India and China must, therefore, take urgent steps to modernise their farming sectors as fast as their export-led manufacturing. But no amount of investment in irrigation or high-yield crops will ease the current crisis unless developed as well as developing economies can agree to lift trade barriers instead of impose them.

The EU, on paper at least, has led the way with an undertaking to scrap large-scale food subsidies provided it can keep smaller ones for as-yet undefined “sensitive” commodities. The Philippines has followed by lifting rice import tariffs out of an urgent need to buy more on world markets. But the same emergency has led Vietnam, one of the world’s largest rice producers, to introduce new export tariffs.

Vietnam’s dilemma is acute and repeated across the developing world. Its people cannot go hungry for the sake of its exports, and its Government’s first duty is to craft safety nets for the most vulnerable. But beyond that, the solution is not to hoard food but to grow more of it, and to sell it on open markets that reward the most efficient farmers. That will take political courage and an unsqueamish approach to GM foods. Affordable food and social stability will require a greater openness to science and trade.

Asian countries curb exports to avoid shortfalls as ‘perfect storm’ nearly doubles price in three months.

Knee-deep in muddy water, her face smeared with sandalwood paste and a broad-brimmed hat for protection against the broiling sun, Samniang Ketia grins broadly at her good fortune to be in the rice growing business as she replants shoots for the next harvest two months off.

The 37-year-old, who leases a small plot of land in Samblong, central Thailand, knows the price of rice has rocketed - in some cases nearly doubling in three months - and that she is about to reap the benefit when she sells what her family does not eat.

But the price rises have a downside and spawned a new phenomenon: rice rustling. One night, one of Samniang’s neighbour’s fields was stripped as it was about to be harvested. Local police have now banned harvesting machines from the roads at night while on the northern plains farmers are camping in their fields, shotguns at the ready.

“I’ve never heard of it happening before, that people have stolen rice,” said Lung Choop, 68, who grows rice on his smallholding. “But it’s happening now because rice is so expensive. I guess I’ll have to guard my own distant fields when they’re ready.”

Across Asia the suddenly stratospheric rice prices have prompted countries to ban exports amid fears that shortages could provoke food riots.

While prices of wheat, corn and other agricultural commodities have surged since the end of 2006, partly because of extra demand for biofuels to offset rising oil prices, rice held fairly steady.

However, prices for the staple food of about 2.5 billion Asian people rocketed two months ago. Thai rice, the global benchmark, which was quoted at just below $400 (£200) a tonne in January rose to $760 (£380) last week.

Aware that shortages of such a vital staple could spell trouble at home, Asian governments have moved to ensure their people get enough to eat at a price they could afford, an insurance policy which has in turn raised prices further.

Late last week, Cambodia banned all exports for two months to ensure “food security”, following the lead of Egypt, a major exporter. Vietnam, which ships 5m tonnes abroad each year, on Friday declared a 20% cut in exports.

India started the ball rolling late last year. With dwindling stocks, the large exporter introduced curbs that effectively banned exports, around 4m tonnes. Pakistan and China also introduced curbs.

Hopes that India would re-enter the market within the next few months were dashed on Thursday when it raised the minimum price for exports from $650 a tonne to $1,000, effectively maintaining the ban, which was escaped only by the foreign currency-earning premium basmati.

The Philippines is potentially among the biggest losers - with 91 million people, it cannot feed itself. After its farmers warned of a looming shortfall Manila’s fast-food outlets offered to serve “half portions” of rice to conserve stocks. The Philippines’ president, Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, has also pleaded with Vietnam to guarantee 1.5m tonnes of rice this year.

While Indonesians took to the streets of the capital, Jakarta, in protest at rising prices even Thailand, the world’s largest exporter, is bracing itself.

The country produces 30m tonnes of rice a year, and aims to export 8.5m tonnes. Last year 9.5m tonnes was sold abroad and more may be exported this year, prompting ministers to consider curbs. “A rice shortage in the local market is very likely,” said Prasert Kosalwit, director general of the Thai government’s rice department.

Rice shortfalls were reported in southern Thailand as traders from the northern rice belt bought up stocks at inflated prices.

With global rice stocks at their lowest level since 1976, analysts expect price rises to continue until the end of next year. Some analysts predict it could hit $1,000 (£500) a tonne before farmers, spurred by the high prices, plant more crops and increase supplies.

Demand outstripped supply by nearly 2m tonnes last year. The predicted shortfall this year is more than 3m tonnes on the 424m tonnes required.

Across Asia, with its vast and growing population, there is little if any extra land to bring into production, and it may take several years for any “supply response” to materialise.

Growing urbanisation over the longer term in countries such as China and India is cited as a key factor in the shortfall, where the increasingly affluent middle classes demand more meat and dairy products, with land turned over to growing feed for livestock.

Rising wealth in Africa has also become a factor. Oil-rich Nigeria is now the largest importer in Africa, a continent which takes the lion’s share of Thai exports, about 40%. Asia soaks up 35%.

Severe weather across Asia has also damaged production. Record icy temperatures were recorded in China and Vietnam, the latter of which also suffered a pest outbreak. Bangladesh endured a devastating cyclone while Australia suffered a prolonged drought.

“It’s been described as a ‘perfect storm’ of factors that have pushed prices to their highest levels since the 1970s,” said Adam Barclay, of the International Rice Research Institute.

The World Food Programme is also alarmed. The extra cost of feeding the 28 million “poorest of the poor” spread across 14 Asian countries will cost $160m a year and it has asked three dozen donor governments for the cash, part of a $500m global appeal to offset rising food prices.

“The real danger with rising rice prices is that the ‘working poor’ will simply be pushed into the category of ‘poor’ who will look to us to feed them,” said Paul Risley, spokesman for WFP Asia. “There are hundreds of millions living at, or just below, the poverty line of $1-a-day, spending 70% of their day-labour wages on food.

“If food costs double they’ve no opportunity to increase their earnings and no alternative but to reduce what they and their families eat.”

GENEVA - Climate change could erode the human rights of people living in small island states, coastal areas and parts of the world subjected to drought and floods, the U.N. Human Rights Council said on Friday.

In its first consideration of the issue, the 47-member forum endorsed a resolution stressing that global warming threatens the livelihoods and welfare of many of the world’s most vulnerable people.

The proposal from the Maldives, Comoros, Tuvalu, Micronesia and other countries called for “a detailed analytical study of the relationship between climate change and human rights”, to be conducted by the Office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, headed by Louise Arbour.

“Until now, the global discourse on climate change has tended to focus on the physical or natural impacts of climate change,” the Maldives’ ambassador to the United Nations in Geneva, Abdul Ghafoor Mohamed, told the session.

“The immediate and far-reaching impact of the phenomenon on human beings around the world has been largely neglected,” he said. “It is time to redress this imbalance by highlighting the human face of climate change.”

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has made the fight against climate change one of his top priorities, and encouraged all U.N. agencies to incorporate it into their work.

Experts say global warming could cause rising sea levels and intense storms, droughts and floods which would restrict access to housing, food and clean water for millions of people.

The Human Rights Council, which wraps up its latest four-week session in Geneva on Friday, also agreed to appoint an independent expert to assess countries’ human rights obligations linked to safe drinking water and sanitation.

Under the resolution introduced by Germany and Spain, that expert will clarify what can be done to stop discrimination in their provision.

“This issue is very important for quite a large number of people,” Doru Romulus Costea, Romania’s ambassador who serves as council president, told a news briefing.

Russia voiced concern that the council’s foray into water and sanitation issues may unduly stretch its agenda and complicate its work, and Canadian diplomat Sarah Geh stressed that setting up the post did not create a human right to water.

U.N. member countries have set a goal of halving the proportion of people who lack access to safe drinking water and basic sanitation services — such as toilets — by 2015.

COX’S BAZAR, Bangladesh: Bangladesh authorities called of searches at sea Monday for about 50 passengers missing from a people-smuggling boat that sank off the southern coast near Myanmar waters, killing at least five people, police said.

The wooden fishing boat went down Sunday near Saint Martin’s island, about 120 kilometers south of the coastal resort town of Cox’s Bazar, said local police officer Mohammad Jasimuddin, who had been coordinating the rescue effort.

Survivors said the boat was carrying more than 100 people, Jasimuddin said. Five bodies have been recovered so far, Jasimuddin said.

He said about 50 people were still unaccounted for, and that about 50 others swam ashore or were rescued by fishing boats.

One survivor, Hashem Mollah, told police that he and his cousin had each paid 20,000 takas (US$298) to a trafficking syndicate to carry them to Thailand, from where they had planned to travel to Malaysia for better jobs, Jasimuddin said.

The Bangladeshi villager said he swam for nearly three hours to shore after the overcrowded boat sank in deep seas. Many others did not make it, he said.

Jasimuddin said police were trying to find the traffickers, based on information from survivors.

Searches for the missing by police and coast guard speed boats were called off late Monday, he said. However, he said rescuers were still looking out for any more bodies or survivors along the shoreline.

Jasimuddin said the passengers were poor Bangladeshi villagers, and Myanmar refugees from camps at Cox’s Bazar, 300 kilometers south of the national capital, Dhaka.

Several thousand Myanmar refugees, mostly Muslims known as Rohingyas, have fled to Bangladesh over the years, claiming persecution by Myanmar’s military junta and economic hardships.

In the last three months, police and the coast guard have arrested about 500 people - Bangladeshis and Myanmar refugees – in the same waters, mainly on human trafficking or illegal entry charges.

Boat and ship accidents are common in Bangladesh, a delta nation with about 250 rivers. They are often blamed on poor navigation, unfit vessels and lax enforcement of safety regulations.

TAFALBARI, Bangladesh - International donors pledged hundreds of millions of dollars Wednesday to rebuild Bangladesh’s cyclone-ravaged coast, but help wasn’t coming fast enough for thousands of homeless survivors who fought over meager rice handouts.

The government said it had promises of $390 million in international aid, much of it a $250 million pledge from the World Bank. But relief officials were struggling to get desperately needed rice, drinking water and tents to people in remote villages wrecked by the storm.

In Tafalbari, a dusty collection of crushed tin huts and flooded fields, fistfights erupted in a crowd of villagers who had spent fruitless hours waiting for food outside a relief center.

Several thousand people surrounded the small aid station set up by a local humanitarian group. Workers had to shut the gates against the tide, admitting just a few people at a time.

“I didn’t have enough food before the storm hit. We have hardly eaten at all since the storm,” said one frustrated villager, Juddistir Chandar Das, 45, who lost the home he shared with his wife and three children.

In the nearby village of Purba Saralia, relief officials used clubs to fend off a crush of hungry people pleading for rice.

“I’ve been waiting since dawn. I have nothing to eat and my children are hungry,” said Kabir Howlader, 25, one of thousands who gathered at a fire station that had been converted into a relief center.

Officials at the center said the government had provided only enough rice to feed 1,200 registered residents, but there were far more than that outside the gates.

Abdul Bashar, 62, was not on the government list and would likely not get any rice. “I have nothing to eat; I will have to beg to Allah,” he said.

With most wells of safe drinking water ruined by the cyclone, the need for clean drinking water was becoming critical to ward off deadly waterborne diseases.

“We are concerned about diarrhea,” said Renata Dessallien, the top U.N. official in Bangladesh. “There is no question this will be a problem.”

Health workers were distributing water purification tablets to people as they handed out bottled water, said Mohammad Abdul Baset, a government health official in the town of Barisal.

The storm, which tore along Bangladesh’s southwestern coast Nov. 15, destroyed 458,804 houses and damaged 665,529 more, affecting some 4 million, the government said.

For those awaiting help, the World Bank’s announcement of a huge aid package couldn’t be more urgent.

“Of course Bangladesh is still in the rescue and relief phase, but as it moves into recovery over the next few days, our commitment is a signal to government of the scale of what we can offer if needed,” said Xian Zhu, the World Bank’s director in Bangladesh.

The $250 million will support immediate needs like food, medical care and small loans to fishermen and farmers. But it is also meant for longer-term projects such as building emergency shelters and improving infrastructure, the statement said.

Earlier in the day, the European Union announced $9.6 million in aid. The American Red Cross said it would provide $1.2 million to help get clean water to people and build emergency shelters.

“The problem is that aid workers need hours to reach these remote areas. Poor communications are also hampering our work,” said Anwarul Huq, a spokesman for the Bangladesh Rural Advancement Committee, the country’s largest nonprofit development organization.

In many places, aid workers had to clear fallen trees and debris to get to survivors, Huq said, adding that rescue work also was hampered by a shortage of boats.

The official death toll stood at 3,167, said Lt. Col. Main Ullah Chowdhury, a spokesman for the army, which is coordinating relief and rescue work. The Disaster Management Ministry said 1,724 more people were missing and 28,188 people had been injured.

Local media reports said more than 4,000 people might have been killed. The Bangladesh Red Crescent Society has suggested the final figure could be around 10,000.

DHAKA, Bangladesh — Aid workers struggled Friday to help hundreds of thousands of survivors of a cyclone that blasted Bangladesh with 150 mph winds, killing a reported 1,100 people, savaging coastal towns, and leaving millions without power in the deadliest such storm in more than a decade.

Rescuers — some even employing the brute force of elephants — contended with roads that were washed out or blocked by wind-blown debris to try to get water and food to people stranded by flooding from Tropical Cyclone Sidr.
The damage to livelihood, housing and crops from Sidr will be “extremely severe,” said John Holmes, the U.N. undersecretary-general for humanitarian affairs, adding that the world body was making millions of dollars in aid available to Bangladesh.

The winds wreaked havoc on the country’s electricity and telephone lines, affecting even areas that were spared a direct hit, and leaving the full picture of the death and destruction unclear.

By late Friday, about 24 hours after the cyclone roared ashore, officials were still struggling to get reports from many of the worst-hit districts.

Dhaka, the capital city of this poor, desperately crowded nation of 150 million people, remained without power. Winds uprooted trees and sent billboards flying through the air, said Ashraful Zaman, an official at the main emergency control room.

The government’s most recent announcement put the death toll at 242, but officials in the Dhaka control room had little up-to-date information. Dalil Uddin of the Ministry of Disaster Management said the official toll would go much higher.

The United News of Bangladesh news agency, which has reporters deployed across the devastated region, said the count from each affected district left an overall death toll of at least 1,100.

Holmes said his U.N. agency believes that more than 20,000 houses have been damaged in the hardest-hit districts, and that the death toll is expected to climb beyond the government’s figures.

About 150 fishing trawlers were unaccounted for, he said.

Hasanul Amin, assistant director of the cyclone preparedness program sponsored by the government and the Bangladesh Red Crescent Society, said about a dozen teams had been deployed to the worst-hit areas in the country’s southwest.

But it was slow going. In the village of Sharankhola, some people waited for hours to get dry biscuits and rice, according to Bishnu Prasad, a United News of Bangladesh reporter on the scene.

“We have lost everything,” a farmer, Moshararf Hossain, told Prasad. “We have nowhere to go.”

The cyclone swept in from the Bay of Bengal and roared across the southwestern coast late Thursday with driving rain and high waves, leveling thousands of flimsy huts and destroying crops and fish farms in 15 coastal districts, officials and witnesses said.

Sidr spawned a 4-foot-high storm surge that swept through low-lying areas and some offshore islands, leaving them under water, said Nahid Sultana, an official of the Ministry of Food and Disaster Management.

At least 650,000 coastal villagers had fled to shelters where they were given emergency rations, said senior government official Ali Imam Majumder in Dhaka.

Volunteers from international aid agencies, including the U.N. World Food Program, Save the Children and the U.S.-based Christian aid group World Vision, have joined the relief effort.

World Vision is putting together seven-day relief packages for families that will include rice, oil, sugar, salt, candles and blankets, according to Vince Edwards, the agency’s Bangladesh director.

The World Food Program was sending rations for up to 400,000, Holmes added.

Edwards said debris from the storm has blocked roads and rivers, making it difficult to reach all the areas that had been hit.

“There has been lot of damage to houses made of mud and bamboo, and about 60 to 80 percent of the trees have been uprooted,” Edwards said.

An elephant was pressed into service to help clear a road in Barishal, 75 miles south of Dhaka, pushing a stranded bus and moving a toppled tree.

By Friday night, work had resumed at the country’s two main seaports — Chittagong and Mongla — as well at Chittagong and Dhaka airports, authorities said.

The storm spared India’s eastern coast. Weather officials had forecast only heavy rain and flooding in West Bengal and Orissa states.

Bangladesh is prone to seasonal cyclones and floods that cause huge losses of life and property. In 1970, between 300,000 and 500,000 people were killed by a cyclone, and some 140,000 died in 1991. Dozens of other cyclones have taken more than 60,000 lives since 1960.

The most recent deadly storm was a tornado that leveled 80 villages in northern Bangladesh in 1996, killing 621 people.

After the 1991 cyclone, foreign donors and Bangladeshi government agencies began building emergency shelters — concrete boxes raised on pillars, each able to hold anywhere from a few hundred to 3,000 people.

More than 2,000 shelters have since been built.

Cyclone death toll rises to 1,723

The number of people killed by the cyclone, Sidr, that tore through the country on Thursday has run into 1,723, according to armed forces division.

Death toll exceeds 2,000

A massive search and rescue operation went ahead in southern Bangladesh Saturday, revealing decaying bodies tossed by a devastating cyclone that left at least 2,185 people dead and hundreds missing. More than 5,000 people were injured in the worst-affected coastal belt, rescuers said as thousands of soldiers and civilian volunteers went into action.

At least 300 more bodies were located of people killed in Friday’s cyclone which triggered mudslides and flash floods.

Most deaths occurred in the Patuakhali-Barisal zone and offshore islands where nearly 450 people, including children, were found dead, said a spokesperson of the national flood warning and control centre.

Rescue teams have now reached most of cyclone-hit Bangladesh where the
death toll now stands at 2,400. It is thought that around one million
families have been affected by Cyclone Sidr which struck on Thursday.
There are fears the final toll could be much higher. The storm is believed
to have destroyed rice harvests in many areas, as well as the shrimp farms
and other crops. Cyclone Sidr is the most destructive storm to hit
Bangladesh in more than a decade.

Three million people affected, over 270,000 houses destroyed, the need is enormous.

Oxfam today launches a Bangladesh Cyclone appeal, calling on the British public to donate £2m for the cyclone stricken area.

The appeal comes as the scale of devastation and necessary relief effort becomes apparent. Hundreds of thousands of Bangladeshis are returning to their homes to find complete ruin - an estimated 273,000 homes have been lost, crops are damaged and there are increasing water and sanitation concerns.

“The scale of this disaster is enormous,” says Heather Blackwell, head of Oxfam in Bangladesh. “Up to three million people are affected. We are seeing families who have lost everything. The British public are incredibly generous and we urgently need their support to help us save and rebuild people’s lives.”

Oxfam has been working with local partners since Cyclone Sidr struck on Thursday, with teams in the worst-hit southern districts of Daerhat, Pirojpur, Barguna and Patuakhali assessing and providing urgent relief such as sanitation and food and water. The money raised will be used to continue to provide immediate relief to over 80,000 people - essential sanitation, food and water, shelter, well and latrine cleaning, and debris clearing, as well as helping people get back on their feet.

One of the world’s poorest countries, Bangladesh has already faced huge damage from severe floods in July.

“People here are resilient,” says Blackwell. “However the scale is such that it will take months for people to be able to return to their normal lives. With an estimated 75 per cent of crops in the Southern region destroyed, this disaster will require a long-term relief effort. Oxfam will be here working with our partners in months to come.”

Oxfam is concerned that with an increase in global warming, natural disasters such as the one that has hit Bangladesh are becoming more frequent.

“We have seen an unprecedented number of disasters this year and we have seen time and time again that the world’s poorest people are being hit the hardest. The public have responded generously this year. We need them to dig deep again as we scale up our crucial work here.”

DHAKA, Nov. 20 — The death toll from cyclone which hit Bangladesh last Thursday night reached 3,447 at 11 a.m. Tuesday, according to the Bangladesh Army disaster management wing.

The number of injured stood at 3,322 and the missing numbered 1,063, private news agency bdnews24 reported quoting the army report.

Meanwhile, the death toll by the Food and Disaster Management Ministry stood at 2,819 till 1 p.m. Tuesday.

An official of the Ministry said, as the army rescue operation has reached more isolated areas and received more information, their figure over the death caused by the cyclone is higher.

The armed forces have reached 90 percent of the affected areas with rescue and relief mission till Monday, and the helicopters covered most of the remote places.

So far, the armed forces have reached 100 percent of affected sub-districts level and 70 percent of village level.

The terrible cyclone hit more than 20 out of the country’s 64 districts, affecting over 3 million people of 900,000 families, leaving nearly 300,000 homeless.

The deadly cyclone Sidr was one of the fiercest cyclones that had hit the region of Bangladesh in the 131 years between 1876 and 2007.

Bangladesh government Monday made international request to assist the cyclone victims and post-cyclone rehabilitation.

So far, the donor countries and agencies have pledged emergency aid of 140 million U.S. dollars.

• • • Relief Reaches All Bangladesh Cyclone-Hit Areas, Donors Pledge Hundreds of Millions in Aid

Relief workers in Bangladesh say they have reached the last remaining pockets of the country devastated by last week’s cyclone that killed some 3,500 people and displaced millions others.

The military is flying helicopters and cargo planes to deliver badly needed food, medicine, tents and clean water.

Relief officials say many victims have lost everything and will need months to recover. They also warned the death toll could climb significantly after all the victims in isolated areas are accounted for.

The World Bank offered up to $250 million to help the nation recover from the deadly storm, while the United Nations said it had authorized almost $9 million in aid.

The director of U.S. Foreign Assistance, Henrietta Fore is in Dhaka to offer more than $2 million in aid.

Two U.S. naval ships, U.S.S. Essex and The Kearsarge carrying some 30 helicopters are scheduled to arrive in the Bay of Bengal by the end of the week to help distribute 35 tons of emergency aid.

The Australian government pledged $3 million toward emergency relief, while the European Union more than $9.5 million.

Cyclone Sidr is the worst natural disaster in Bangladesh since 1991, when a cyclone and storm surge killed around 143,000 people.

The head of Bangladesh’s emergency government, Fakhruddin Ahmed, said the country was facing a national crisis and called on Bangladeshi citizens to help those in need.