Through its current project – Supporting Local Media to Inform Vulnerable Populations – Internews, in cooperation with Institut Panos Europe, supported monitoring of the media in the Central African Republic during a month-long period in April and May of 2014.

The monitoring was conducted by a team from the Central African self-regulatory body: Observatoire des Médias Centrafricains (OMCA – Observatory of the Central African media sector).

At the end of 1990s I made my first trip to mountainous, landlocked Lesotho, to set up a Panos London project to record interviews with people who were facing resettlement from their highland communities. The construction of a huge dam the following year would take over their valley; their homes, fields, gravestones and grazing lands would eventually be submerged by its water.

This year’s food shortage is worse than usual. Usually when the harvests fail we rely on selling fruit that we collect from wild trees. This money can help us to buy food. But the trees were bare this year, especially the shea tree. The shea butter that women make usually helps fight food shortage, but it won’t be much help this year.

Now women fetch firewood in the bush to be sold to middlemen from Bamako. You can see piles of wood in every corner of the village.

The monsoon season has started now and finally we have made some progress in buying land for people who lost their homes in last year’s flood.

We have concentrated our efforts in Tangi district in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. We have now bought land where new houses can be constructed. We have paid for it and now need a plan on how to divide it up.

These life stories are from the Anosy region of southern Madagascar. In their own words, the indigenous people of Anosy, the Antanosy, describe their lives in the face of climate change, food insecurity and rapid development due to mining. The stories are from four communities: Petriky; Ambinanibe; St Luce and Ilafitisignana and were recorded by community members and staff from our partner, Andrew Lees Trust.

Ambinanibe