On August 14th, Mudslides in Freetown, Sierra Leone killed 1,000 people, mostly inhabitants of the urban slums in the hills above the capital. Despite its portrayal as a natural disaster caused by days of heavy rain, “the tragedy was entirely man-made,” as writer Lansana Gberie states bluntly. The result of environmental degradation, lack of disaster preparedness and substandard housing for the poor, these deaths could have been avoided.
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Rome – When officials and experts from all over the world started the first-ever environmental summit hosted by China, they were already aware that climate and weather-related disasters were already seriously beginning to set the international agenda – unprecedented floods in South Asia, strongest ever hurricanes Harvey and Irma, and catastrophic droughts striking the Horn of Africa, among the most impacting recent events.
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The terrorism fever and the migrant crisis have contributed to change the international cooperation of the European Union. No longer only an instrument to close the gap with inequality, to build new commercial opportunities and for growth, the money allocated for international cooperation has also been invested to “instruct”, with lots of money, the countries with strong migratory pressure in order to stop the migrants before they cross the Mediterranean.
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Aug10
Military equipment, police tranining, centers for repatriated migrants and computerized systems for the collection of digital fingerprints that will guarantee, in Europe, the identification of the country of origin of migrants therefore making easier their expulsion. The objective: control the migrations from Africa and reinforce for this scope the governments of the countries of origin and transit of those who would want to cross the Mediterranean.
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Niamey, Bamako – As of several months ago, in Niger as in Mali, two of the principal stops of the itinerary of the migrants of the Sub-Saharan Africa towards Europe, the routes and stories of the people journeying are changing. In fact, following the arrival of the initial financing of the EU Trust Fund for Africa, created at the Euro-African meeting at Valletta in November 2015, these countries’ migratory policies are adapting to the requests of the European Union to stop or at lease contain the flow of the “Central Mediterranean”, subjecting a good part of the aid for development to signed agreements for repatriation and the externalization of the community frontiers south of the sands of the Sahara.
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This week, some 40 African finance and trade ministers, along with a large contingent of senior U.S. government officials will descend upon the coastal city of Lomé, Togo for the annual African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA) Forum.
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