from PEDRO AGOSTO in Luanda, Angola
Angola Bureau
LUANDA, (CAJ News) – WITH the 29th United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP29) approaching, pressure is mounting on richer countries to commit to pay poorer counterparts as the scourge forcibly displaces millions across Africa.
COP29 will be held in Baku, Azerbaijan from November 11 to 22, on the back of disasters afflicting the African continent, which while contributing the least to global warming, suffers the most.
Amnesty International, the human rights group, noted that so far, richer countries had pledged less than US$700 million of the $400 billion dollars that lower-income countries estimate they need for loss and damage by 2030.
Speaking from Angola, Samira Daoud, Amnesty International Regional Director for West and Central Africa, lamented that African people had contributed the least to climate change, yet from Somalia to Senegal, Chad to Madagascar, but the continent was suffering a terrible toll of this global emergency which had driven millions of people from their homes.
“It’s time for the countries who caused all this devastation to pay up so African people can adapt to the climate change catastrophe,” Daoud said.
Droughts, floods, storms or heat are displacing people within countries and across borders, resulting in human rights violations including loss of shelter, disrupted access to food, health care and education, plus risk of gender-based violence and even death.
Persistent drought and floods have left millions hopeless in the continent.
Southern Africa is bearing the brunt.
In Angola, hunger has forced mostly women and children to migrate to Namibia in search of food, raising the risk of exploitation, trafficking, gender-based violence and disrupted education.
Yet even in Namibia, half the population is food insecure, and the government has declared a drought state of emergency, as have the governments of Lesotho, Malawi, Zambia and Zimbabwe.
These are among the poorest countries in the world.
Tigere Chagutah, Amnesty International’s Regional Director for East and Southern Africa, said national governments did not have the resources to properly respond.
“The countries that caused these rapidly escalating unnatural disasters must foot the bill to address them,” Chagutah said.
– CAJ News