Enhanced surveillance for polio is needed across the Horn of Africa. All countries are urged to rapidly identify sub-national surveillance gaps and to take measures to fill them.

05/22/2013 01:35 GMT

by Peter MARTELL

NAIROBI, May 22, 2013 (AFP) - Twenty years since Eritrea won independence from Ethiopia after one of Africa's longest wars, people are bowed down by a repressive government and increasingly frustrated at the lack of rights they fought for.

Opposition parties are banned and anyone who challenges the president -- a former rebel commander who led the war against Ethiopia -- is jailed without trial, often in the harshest of conditions.

The Global Overview collates information from a range of sources and displays it in a manner that allows for quick comparison of different humanitarian crises.

Eritrea is considered one of the most repressive countries in the world; Freedom House, in its annual ranking of countries based on democratic freedom, considers Eritrea “one of the worst of the worst”. Since gaining independence from Ethiopia twenty years ago, the destitute and politically isolated country is often accused by international human rights groups of unlawful executions, tor-ture, and citizen detention.

Operation Highlights

Somalia is the country generating the third highest number of refugees in the world, after Afghanistan and Iraq. UNHCR leads protection and emergency relief interventions targeting 700,000 IDPs out of a total IDP population estimated at 1.1 million and over 2,300 refugees in Somalia.

This document provides an overview of developments in the Mediterranean Basin and other regions of interest from 30 April - 13 May 2013, with hyperlinks to source material highlighted and underlined in the text. For more information on the topics below or other issues pertaining to the region, please contact the members of the Med Basin Team, or visit our website at www.cimicweb.org.

INSIDE THIS ISSUE

North Africa 1
Northeast Africa 4
Horn of Africa 5

GENEVA (14 May 2013) – The United Nations Special Rapporteur on the human rights situation in Eritrea, Sheila B. Keetharuth, today called on the international community to keep Eritrea under close scrutiny until meaningful change is evident in the country.

Refugee Update

Widespread and well above-average amounts of March to May rains fell in East Africa

KEY MESSAGES