By Laura Sheahen “When we first came here, we were getting water from the valley, seven kilometers away.” Muhammad is a long-time resident of a camp in Darfur for people who fled violence. He remembers what it was like nearly a decade ago, when thousands of desperate people first arrived. “Farmers were settled closer to ...
The refugees are arriving in semi-desert areas of neighbouring countries, where populations already struggle to cope with lack of food and resources. This wave of people puts huge pressure on the local environment driven by the increased demand for firewood and pasture for livestock.
During Haiti’s earthquake more than a million people lost their homes and the demand for emergency shelter was enormous. Cordaid (a Dutch member of the Caritas confederation) made it one of their long-term priorities to provide people with earthquake- and hurricane-proof housing.
Bishop Pierre Dumas, president of Caritas Haiti, says education, care for the environment and the protection of people’s socio-economic rights are essential to helping Haiti move forward and flourish following its devastating earthquake.
World leaders gathered at UN headquarters in June 2011 to assess progress in the global AIDS response. They noted that global HIV incidence was declining, access to combination anti-retroviral treatment was expanding, and a global movement had been mobilized to respect and protect the dignity of all affected by HIV.
Thanks to Caritas this year, Jean Baptiste Kinda is preparing to harvest his tomatoes, aubergines and other vegetables, and sell them in the local market in Fada to buy some of the things his family have waited for throughout the lean season.
In August 2011, when it stopped raining during the days of cultivation of the land, not all grain was sown. The amount of grain that grew during the following weeks was a lot less than during a normal year. Cornfields have also been plagued by the locusts just before harvest time.
West Africa's Sahel region faced devastating hunger in 2012 after drought left a huge swathe of countries short of food.
This year Gaba is fully engaged with the emergency assistance project of Caritas Switzerland and UNAD (Caritas Chad) that helps people from several regions of Chad who are severely affected by the drought. Help is mainly provided in form of food and new seeds.
Balama was a village once located on the shores of Lake Chad, in the east of the county. Since the 1960s, the lake has been greatly reduced. A changing climate and uncontrolled use of water for irrigated agricultures combined with population pressure, has led to the receding of the lake to 10 percent of its original surface.