Welcome to CENFACS’ Online Diary!
30 May 2018
Post No. 41
The Week’s Contents
• All in Development Stories project: Only ONE day to go!
• End Ebola in DRC Appeal – Update
• FACS Newsletter, Summer Issue, no. 60: Abstract
… and much more!
Key Messages of the Week’s Contents
The submission of stories for All in Development Stories project for this year remains the 31st of May as initially planned, although we stated last week we will continue to receive stories until next mid-June.
Our storytelling theme is still Poverty Relief and Sustainable Development Stories. However, as CENFACS is emergently appealing for an End to Ebola in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), we are also asking people, those who can, to provide stories about helping the poor people to come out tropical epidemics or diseases or virus outbreaks.
To end our May Stories month, you have on the main menu Poverty Relief and Sustainable Development Stories, as side menus you have the BIG CATS stories (with our call on Making Peace with the Nature) as well as Audio Storytelling, Listening and Short Film experiences. The last course of this year’s storytelling project is Health-enhancing tales. So, there is more to tell and share this month.
Tell and make it to go Top of our May Stories!
Our Appeal regarding the outbreak of Ebola virus disease in the DRC continues. So far, we have received a great response to the appeal. We thank you for your messages of support to this appeal and for the support given to the Ebola stricken places and people in DRC.
As we tweeted last week, Ebola like any other virus outbreaks is a matter of speed and time. For those who want and can help, we deeply appeal to them to support NOW no later to avoid this deadly virus overcomes us by the speed and time, and turns into an epidemic.
Concerning the state of Ebola outbreak itself, it is right to argue that although there could be conflicting reports on the numbers of infected people and fatalities, the common denominator of these reports is as follows: cases of Ebola have been confirmed with laboratory tests, there are confirmed cases of Ebola infected people and fatalities, and contacts of Ebola have been traced.
We have provided under the Main Developments of the Week’s Contents further points about the state of the current outbreak of Ebola in DRC and the update on this appeal.
For those who have not managed to act, CENFACS hope you will consider this health appeal or circulate this message around you to help the victims of Ebola in DRC.
As part of the Main Developments of this Week’s Contents, we have given below the abstract of the 60th Issue of our bilingual newsletter FACS; issue which will be entitled Odyssey of Climate Finance and Insurance for African Children (OCFIAC).
OCFIAC is a long and stormy pathway to take to win the minds of people (not only of the members of the international development community but also of everybody else) about the need to fund and insure children victims of the adverse effects and impacts of climate change. In this walk-through process of financial and insurance empowerment, the African children are our sample that represents other children of the world facing the same climate problems. The abstract below gives you more flavour about the OCFIAC.
Main Developments of the Week’s Contents
• End Ebola in DRC Appeal – Updates
• • The State of Ebola in DRC – Key Points
The following are the key points making the story about Ebola in DRC.
~ Life-saving therapies to patients are to be introduced
~ Vaccinations continue to be given to the stricken people and communities, as well as screening checks are carried out
~ Use of the experimental vaccine, known as rVSV-ZEBoV, has been spread
~ Doctors and other frontline healthcare workers have been treated too
~ Experimental drugs and clinical trials against Ebola virus disease will be tried
~ Energies have been deployed to prevent urban outbreaks
~ Briefly, efforts have been undertaken at vaccination, therapeutic and control levels
•• Update on Appeal to End Ebola in DRC
As we mentioned in this online diary last week, one should aim at the development of a Comprehensive Sustainable Health Strategy to eradicate the Ebola virus disease forever so that in the future we will not have any more new waves or re-appearances of this deadly virus.
Since its discovery in 1976 in DRC, the Ebola Virus Outbreaks appeared in DRC 10 times including this year’s outbreak. Throughout the timeline of its appearances and outbreaks, it has caused human fatalities and sufferings.
Likewise, the overall humanitarian context of DRC needs to be resolved; context which is of the legacies of unfinished business of political democratisation processes and of failing both post-independent and post-Cold War States in DRC and in some other parts of Africa.
So, following up this Appeal about End Ebola in DRC, we shall work on building a momentum for a comprehensive sustainable health strategy and supporting sustainable initiatives helping to improve the humanitarian contexts for local people and organisations in DRC.
• Odyssey of Climate Finance and Insurance for African Children
Abstract –
Generally speaking, there seems to be no financial and insurance obligation to support the victims of natural disasters at international level although there have been some court cases to demand compensations by the victims. Let us ask these questions. Who will recognize their responsibility in contributing to the air and plastic pollution? Very few people will acknowledge it.
The long journey, and sometimes painful, for not only the international financial development community but everybody to recognize that the victims of the adverse impacts and effects of climate change need both financial backing (and compensation) and cover for their losses, is a matter of debate or controversy. This is let alone the loss of lives from sometimes tragic environmental events.
This lack of recognition happens despite some organisations like the UNICEF (1) call in 2011 for the prioritisation of children in the climate finance and insurance. Just as the Munich Climate Insurance (2) stated in its policy recommendations that “climate risk insurance can support poor and vulnerable people in a concrete way in finding climate-resilient development pathways” (p.49)
Often when financial support and other forms of support are provided to climate victims, they are seen as aid or charitable gesture. Yet, many tend to forget that a great deal of natural disasters is caused by human activities and behaviour towards the nature and the Earth planet. There are countless of examples show that many individuals, companies and governments around the world are responsible for the damages caused to the global environment.
Today, recognizing in the mindset of everybody who pollutes the planet that there is a financial cost as well as a financial and insurance obligation to the victims of this pollution, is still a challenge and may take a long tortuous road.
So, the Odyssey of Climate Finance and Insurance for African Children (OCFIAC) is an exploration and a state of mind of the issues pending or surrounding the resolve from the demand by the children victims of the adverse effects and impacts of climate change to get financial and insurance justice .
The OCFIAC is within the framework of the Odyssey of Empowerment of CENFACS users of the project 3W. The Odyssey of Empowerment (OE) was/is a walk-through account of multi-year processes or experiences that 3W users have had from housebound to the opportunities to use potentials fully, from loneliness to integration to survive and thrive against poverty.
The OCFIAC is an extension and part of the fabric of the OE in searching to empower the children victims of adverse climate change through a financial compensation and insurance cover.
The OCFIAC is a journey to winning the minds of more people to accept or at least to accommodate the idea that climate finance and insurance to the climate victims is not only a donation, but it is a price to pay by every human adversely affecting the climate. This climate adversity then impacts on children’s life and future.
In this journey or struggle for a financial and insurance justice and recognition, African children are a sample of the many children adversely and unduly affected by the climate change.
Like the OE, the OCFIAC is made of relationships of poverty relief amongst the beneficiaries of the OCFIAC – the resisters – around the ideals of Peace, Protection and Sustainability through the projects of Togetherness. It embodies the power of resistance for social mobility and change as well as sustainable development.
The issues pending the resolve include the following:
mobilisation of climate finance for child protection, tracking progress in commitments made for the climate finance budget, sustainability of share in the climate finance flows to child protection, reporting mechanisms and rules of engagement for climate finance needed and received for children, the allocation of fair share between adaptation finance and mitigation finance for children, climate risk insurance for the poor and vulnerable children, affordability and accessibility for the poor children to any climate insurance policy, policy response based on needs not on ideologies, making clean technology fund (CTF) work for poor children from poor nations, ensuring that the equity resulting from converted CFT debt to benefit children from poor nations, a stake to poor children’s needs in the climate finance pledges etc.
To place an order for a free copy of the 60th Issue of FACS, please contact CENFACS.
(1) United Nations Children Funds, Climate Proof Children: Putting the Children First in Climate Finance, Climate Finance Briefing, September 2011
(2) Munich Climate Insurance Initiative, Making Climate Risk Insurance Work for the Most Vulnerable: Seven Guiding Principles, UNU-EHS Publication Series, Policy Report 2016 No.1
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We look forward to receiving your regular visits and continuing support during 2018.
With many thanks
