As French military air strikes continued for the sixth day, the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) estimates that at least 30,000 Malians have fled their homes, according to a report by the U.N.’s news agency, IRIN.
(via IRIN Africa | Fear, rumour and relief as air strikes continue in Mali |
The United Nations’ news agency, IRIN, reports on desperate circumstances in the Mbéra refugee camp in eastern Mauritania which is home to 55,000 Malians. Just under one in five children “is malnourished, and 4.6 percent are severely malnourished - two to three times the national average, according to a just-released November survey by NGO Médecins sans Frontières (MSF).”
Children under five “are dying mainly from a combination of malnutrition and malaria, respiratory infections and diarrhoea, according to MSF head in Mauritania Karl Nawezi, who describes the situation as ‘alarming and unacceptable’”.
For the full story (which you’re unlikely to to read about on the front page of any western paper, much less see on the nightly news) go to: IRIN Africa | MAURITANIA: Refugees face “alarming” malnutrition, mortality rates
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Moulkheir Mint Yarba, a Mauritanian woman who escaped from slavery in 2010, talking to the United Nations’ news agency, IRIN, about her parents. Yarba was born into slavery and “was repeatedly beaten and raped by her master, bearing seven children by him, one of which her owners killed, she says, to punish her.” In 2007, just after slavery was finally outlawed in Mauritania, she was transferred to another family, who continued to abuse her and her children, and raped her daughter. Her daughter became “pregnant by her master who then forcibly aborted the pregnancy.” |
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Moulkheir Mint Yarba, a Mauritanian woman who escaped from slavery in 2010, talking to the United Nations’ news agency, IRIN, about her parents. Yarba was born into slavery and “was repeatedly beaten and raped by her master, bearing seven children by him, one of which her owners killed, she says, to punish her.” In 2007, just after slavery was finally outlawed in Mauritania, she was “passed on to another family, who continued to beat her and her children, and raped her daughter.” Her daughter became “pregnant by her master who then forcibly aborted the pregnancy.” |
IRIN Africa: Anti-slavery law still tough to enforce in Mauritania
The United Nations’ news agency, IRIN, reports that “dozens of slaves have escaped or been liberated since slavery was finally criminalized in Mauritania in 2007, but thus far just one slave-owner has been convicted and imprisoned, according to anti-slavery campaigners.”
