CONTENTS:

1 - AFGHANISTAN: "The most dangerous place to be born"
2 - MYANMAR: Funding shortfall hits Nargis survivors
3 - NEPAL: Battling the Gulf traffickers
4 - PHILIPPINES: High rate of treponematosis among pregnant IDP women


1 - AFGHANISTAN: "The most dangerous place to be born"

KABUL, 26 November (IRIN) - The onset of winter means freezing nights,
cold-related diseases and more problems for the children at an informal
settlement of internally displaced people (IDPs) in the western outskirts of
Kabul city.

"They lack access to adequate food, shelter, healthcare, safe drinking water
and sanitation, education, and are vulnerable to forced labour, sexual
exploitation and many other problems," Paola Retaggi, the coordinator of a Child
Rights Consortium (CRC) led by Switzerland's Terre des Hommes in Kabul, told
IRIN.

Many IDP children either beg or work on the streets while some fall prey to the
insurgents who have been accused by the UN of using children for military
purposes.

"Afghanistan today is without a doubt the most dangerous place to be born,"
Daniel Toole, regional director of the UN Children's Fund (UNICEF) for South
Asia, was quoted in the media as saying on 19 November.

About a quarter of Afghan children die before their fifth birthday (257 per
1,000) mostly from preventable diseases such as pneumonia and diarrhoea,
according to UNICEF. The country also has some of the worst child
malnourishment, stunting, underweight and vitamin deficiency figures in the
world
[http://www.unicef.org/rightsite/sowc/pdfs/SOWC_Spec%20Ed_CRC_Main%20Report_EN_0\
90409.pdf].

Half the country's estimated 25 million population is below 15 but millions of
Afghan children are deprived of their basic rights and are vulnerable to
different forms of violence, aid agencies say.

"Internally displaced children suffer the most among all other children," said
Retaggi of the CRC.

More than 262,000 people are displaced in different parts of Afghanistan,
according to the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR). Conflict, natural disasters, poverty
and communal tensions are among the major factors.

Little help

Between 2002 and 2005 more than one million people were internally displaced in
Afghanistan, according to aid agencies. Most IDPs were accommodated in camps in
Kandahar, Helmand and Herat provinces where UN agencies delivered essential aid.

The UN-backed assistance programme ended in March 2006 and the IDPs were
encouraged to return home in a bid to prevent a protracted emergency.

Many IDPs resettled in their original areas mostly in the northern provinces
but tens of thousands have remained in camps, saying it is still unsafe for them
to move back.

The ongoing conflict and recurrent natural disasters have added to the number
of displaced families in the country over the past few years.

However, the UN and government have opposed the establishment of new IDP camps,
particularly for conflict-affected families, and little sustainable aid has been
provided to them.

"Refugees are assisted and protected by UNHCR but no agency has a clear mandate
to assist IDPs," said CRC's Retaggi, adding that IDP children were particularly
deprived of protection and assistance.

"What we fail to do [for] these children now will with no doubt reflect on the
future of the entire country in a couple of years," Hansjorg Kretschmer, head of
the European Commission Delegation to Afghanistan, told a press conference on 22
November in Kabul.

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2 - MYANMAR: Funding shortfall hits Nargis survivors

BANGKOK, 26 November (IRIN) - A lack of funding is still posing a serious
problem for recovery efforts to help the survivors of Cylone Nargis, the UN
says, despite fresh pledges from donors.

At a Post-Nargis and Regional Partnership Conference, held on 25 November in
Bangkok, donors pledged more than US$88 million for an appeal for $103 million
to cover critical recovery needs - part of the earlier Post-Nargis Recovery and
Preparedness Plan (PONREPP) [http://www.aseansec.org/CN-PONREPP.pdf] released in
December 2008 by the Tripartite Core Group, comprising the Myanmar government,
the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) [http://www.aseansec.org/]
and the UN.

The original appeal called for $691 million for a three-year recovery plan from
2009 to 2011.

"There was very good support and excellent response from the donors - there was
a good acknowledgement of the recognition of the need," said Bishow Parajuli,
the UN Resident Representative and Humanitarian Coordinator in Myanmar.

However, "what must be underlined is that the $103 million is only for needs
identified until July 2010, and moreover this need doesn't include many other
critical elements", he told IRIN.

Nargis struck Myanmar in May 2008, killing at least 140,000 people and
affecting another 2.4 million, mostly in the Ayeyarwady and Yangon divisions.
Damage was estimated at more than $4 billion.

Recovery threatened

Thierry Delbreuve, head of the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian
Affairs (OCHA) in Myanmar, said there had been a sharp drop in contributions to
recovery activities in the Ayeyarwady Delta.

"Pledges were made this year but very little has trickled down so far," he told
IRIN, adding that there was also a need for funding for general humanitarian
assistance outside the delta in areas such as Chin state and the border regions.

Before the 25 November announcement, only $120 million of the $691 million had
been committed, with $64 million received, according to the UN.

Parajuli warned that a lack of funding would stop recovery activities.

"It is a big challenge," he said. "Several NGOs and UN agencies have started
cutting down staff because of a lack of funding. If there is no new funding,
some of the critical activities could be stopped."

With money just trickling in for the PONREPP, the TCG decided in October
[http://www.asean.org/CN-PR-25th-TCG.pdf] to launch an appeal for the $103
million to address critical gaps in education, health, livelihoods, shelter, and
water, sanitation and hygiene until July 2010.

The money will be used to provide 17,800 new houses, 40 new schools and 16
cyclone shelters, as well as livelihood programmes, water and sanitation
facilities, education facilities and health services, ASEAN said.

Delbreuve said support for the restoration of livelihoods was crucial, with
indebtedness growing among survivors who had borrowed money to rebuild their
homes. However, he said shelter was the most important need identified for now.

"Only 10,000 individual shelters delivered by humanitarian agencies can be
considered truly durable with cyclone-resistant features," Delbreuve told IRIN.

"There is still an overall gap of 178,000 households that require urgent
shelter assistance and have been waiting for support from the humanitarian
community for over a year," he said.

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3 - NEPAL: Battling the Gulf traffickers

NEPALGUNJ, 26 November (IRIN) - Barely a year ago, Lalita Rai, 22, travelled to
Kuwait escorted by a local job broker, who had promised her a good position at a
beauty parlour. Instead she was tricked into working as an unpaid servant for a
local household.

As soon as she got into a taxi from the airport in Kuwait, the broker took her
passport and showed her to the house. He promised to return to fetch her, but
she never saw him again.

Lalita protested against working as a servant, but she was beaten and locked in
the house.

"It was a trap. I had trusted this man," Lalita told IRIN in her house in
Nepalgunj, nearly 500km southwest of the capital. Finally, in October this year,
she escaped, although she refused to say how she returned to Nepal.

Jamuna Chaudhary, 18, underwent a similar ordeal. Tricked into working as a
domestic servant for a household in Abu Dhabi, where she had gone with the help
of a local broker, she was sexually abused by her employer and his friends.

"I am lucky to be alive and back home," said Jamuna, who finally escaped with
the help of the Nepal embassy in Abu Dhabi, which arranged and paid her flight
home.

Foreign incomes

Foreign employment has become an important source of income in Nepal, with
remittances contributing 18 to 22 percent to gross domestic product, according
to a 2006-2007 report on trafficking in Nepal by the National Human Rights
Commission (NHRC). [http://www.unodc.org/pdf/india/Nat_Rep2006-07.pdf]

Officials from the NHRC say Gulf countries are one of the main trafficking
destinations for labour.

"There is of course a great need to decide how to stop this crime to protect our
women and we will be developing a special programme for that," Sarbadeb Ojha,
Nepal's Minister of Women and Children, told IRIN.

"We usually pay attention to the trafficking of Nepalese girls to India's
brothels but we often forget that large numbers of women are also trafficked to
the Gulf," he added.

"The trend of trafficking to the Gulf for labour is a growing problem, as it is
often a challenge to control this," Biswo Khadka, director of a national NGO,
Maiti Nepal, [http://www.maitinepal.org] told IRIN.

"This is a serious problem that needs to be addressed strongly, or a lot of
Nepali women will face enormous risk of being trafficked and victimised," he
said.

The NGO, which has been fighting trafficking for more than 16 years, is finding
it increasingly difficult to prevent such movement to the Gulf, since the women
travel through neighbouring India, and from there they fly to the Middle East.

The traffickers, posing as employment agents, easily take the women through the
open 1,690km border between India and Nepal's south, choosing areas where there
are no police checks.

In 2008 alone, the NGO helped to save nearly 17,000 girls and women, rescuing
them from traffickers as they were crossing the border.

Better enforcement needed

"A large percentage of the Nepalese female workers are illiterate and
impoverished and they have no choice but to work abroad for the sake of feeding
their families, and they do that even at the risk of being killed," said Saru
Joshi, regional coordinator for the UN Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM).

The UN agency helped the Nepalese government to introduce the Foreign Employment
Act in 2007, which helps to protect and guarantee women's security and rights
when seeking jobs abroad.

However, NGOs complain that implementation of this law - which forbids women
from working overseas in informal sectors such as domestic service because of
the abuse they are subject to - has not been enforced strictly.

Meanwhile traffickers are difficult to prosecute. "Unfortunately, the
traffickers go scot-free due to a lack of enough evidence, and it is very
difficult to prove their crime," said Anu Tamang, president of the Shakti Group,
an NGO formed by survivors of trafficking.

According to the government's Foreign Employment Department, more than 20,000
Nepalese women work abroad, mostly in the Gulf, and many are at risk.

"These women cannot even report to the police, [either] in Nepal or abroad, as
they have no legal contract," Ganesh Gurung, chairman of the Nepal National
Network on Migration, told IRIN.

"The only way to protect them is to increase police vigilance and prevent them
from [being trafficked] across the border," he said.

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4 - PHILIPPINES: High rate of treponematosis among pregnant IDP women

COTABATO, 26 November (IRIN) - Health experts report a high rate of
treponematosis among pregnant displaced women in conflict-hit Mindanao.

Treponematosis refers to a group of non-venereal infections, as well as the
bacterium Treponema pallidum, the cause of syphilis.

"We are aware of these cases and are closely following the situation,"
Elizabeth Samama, provincial health officer at the Datu Piang Regional Health
Centre, told IRIN in Cotabato city.

"We will need to confirm them," she said, referring to the need for further
testing and research.

Médecins Sans Frontières Switzerland (MSF) reported that 25.5 percent of women
undergoing antenatal and post-natal care have tested positive for the medical
condition.

"It may be yaws," said Samama, the most widespread form of treponematosis which
is also endemic to the region.
[http://www.who.int/neglected_diseases/diseases/yaws/en/index.html].

Transmitted from person to person by direct skin contact, or through breaks in
the skin as a result of injuries or bites, yaws generally affects children
younger than 15 in underprivileged, remote rural communities, say health
experts.

Resembling syphilis in its early stages; yaws is marked by red skin eruptions
and ulcerating lesions in the nose, mouth and ears, they say.

The disease eats away at the skin, cartilage and bones of those infected and is
fast re-emerging in poor, rural and marginalised populations of Africa, Asia and
South America.

But the need for further testing cannot be discounted.

"This may or may not be sexually transmitted syphilis," said Sue Averill, MSF
medical coordinator in Cotobato, noting that there are four types of bacteria
which can turn the test positive - one of which is sexually transmitted.

"That's the dangerous one. That's the one that can be transmitted from mother
to child and has a high mortality for both the mother and child. The test does
not differentiate between the two [venereal and non-venereal], but the treatment
is the same," she clarified.

Health experts recommend early screening for syphilis, ideally in the antenatal
visit.

Additionally, screening can be repeated in the third trimester if resources
permit, to detect infection acquired during pregnancy. Those women who do not
receive antenatal care should be tested at delivery.

According to the World Health Organization (WHO), sexually-transmitted syphilis
remains a leading cause of peri-natal mortality and morbidity in many parts of
the world, despite widely available and affordable technology for diagnosing and
treating infection in pregnant women.

Among pregnant women in the early stages of syphilis who are not treated, an
estimated two-thirds of pregnancies end in abortion, still-birth, or neo-natal
infection.

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