BET, the acronym for the three northern regions of Chad – Borkou, Ennedi and Tibesti – comes up regularly in meetings of international aid agencies frustrated by the lack of information and difficulty of access to the remote territory. Drought in 2009 triggered the government’s call for international assistance, but no one really knows the full extent of the problem, according to a local NGO.
Drought in 2009 triggered the government’s call for international assistance, but no one really knows the full extent of the problem, according to a local NGO.
“Everything we eat comes from Kanem and Batha [Chad's west and central regions in the arid Sahelian belt] … why are people not asking how bad things are here? Why is no one coming to assess?” Mahamat Khamis, president of an NGO in Ennedi, the Association for the promotion of local development initiatives, which began as a Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation project in 1999.
The state and the international community are barely present in the north. “Seventy-five percent of the schools are financed by parents; health centers are scarce – the population in the north has been left to fend for themselves,” Jean-Robert Moret, head of the Swiss Cooperation in Chad, told IRIN.
He said the problems in the north were not emergencies, but development problems left unattended could turn into emergencies. The Swiss Cooperation has funded schools, health, demining and environmental activities in Ennedi since the 1990s.
Read more of the story here at the IRIN news service:
CHAD: What’s happening in the north?
Related articles by Zemanta
- Top United Nations Official Urges for Protection of Aid Workers in Chad (netnewspublisher.com)
- Niger Government Endorses Demarcation of International Boundaries in Lake Chad (netnewspublisher.com)
- President of Chad Promises to Kick Start Talks on Lake Chad Basin (netnewspublisher.com)
