Extensive Flooding Sweeps Across Africa

Thursday, September 27, A.D. 2007

Heavy rains across west, central and east Africa have caused some of the worst flooding “in recent memory” and brought widespread damage, including the destruction of homes, farms and local infrastructure, as well as displaced hundreds of thousands of people.

Members of the global alliance of Protestant and Orthodox relief agencies, Action by Churches Together, are assisting tens of thousands of some of the most vulnerable flood victims in Ghana and other small west Africa countries and across the continent in Chad, Uganda and Sudan and into Ethiopia in east Africa.

As millions of people in this part of the world already live “on the margins” of life, such extensive flooding only compounds and exacerbates problems like malaria, cholera and other water-related diseases and the loss of crops and farmlands and thereby, food insecurity and malnutrition.

Week of Compassion is anticipating a number of ACT appeals over the next several days in response to the flooding and will respond on behalf of Disciples in the U.S. and Canada.

Church Relief Workers Abducted in Darfur

Three ACT-Caritas staff in Darfur, Sudan, are now free after being detained by an armed group and released into police custody. The three were held for close to 30 hours and work for ACT-Caritas through ACT member, Norwegian Church Aid (NCA). Immediately after the incident, all non-life-saving ACT-Caritas operations in and around Zalingei were suspended and non-essential staff were sent home.

John Distefano, director of the ACT-Caritas Darfur Emergency Response, said, "We express our thanks to all who helped in their release. A team is also currently investigating the matter." The three staff left the police station yesterday and will be taken to ACT-Caritas offices in Nyala. They will go through a standard debriefing interview and medical assessment and will be reunited with their families.

"We have strict security protocols in place to safeguard our staff and ensure that we don't inadvertently put those we assist at risk, but security is very fluid in this area," added Mr. Distefano.

Over the past two months insecurity had already reduced the ability of the ACT-Caritas operation to provide humanitarian assistance in and around Zalingei. The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) reported in August that insecurity is negatively affecting the quantity and quality of aid to hundreds of thousands of people in Darfur.

WOC Director, Johnny Wray, and CWS Emergency Response Communications Officer, Chris Herlinger, recently returned from visiting ACT-Caritas operations in the Zalengei area and heard repeatedly that security and protection (or the lack thereof) is the major concern facing displaced persons in the camps and the staff of the humanitarian agencies working in Darfur. Click here to read a story from Darfur by Herlinger.

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