Using food rations to rebuild infrastructure

AFRICA: Challenging the urbanization myths

LONDON, 6 March 2012 (IRIN) - Africa's cities are growing at a frightening rate, as people flood from the countryside to the towns... It is a commonly held view, but a London-based academic, Deborah Potts, has been challenging this received wisdom, asserting that it is based on flawed data, and the rate of urbanization is much lower than people assume. full report

ZIMBABWE: A lean season ahead

MUTOKO, 1 March 2012 (IRIN) - The maize growing on John Gapare's three-hectare plot in rural Mutoko, some 90km northeast of the Zimbabwean capital Harare, is of uneven height and yellowing, with some plants already wilting, and for the first time in nearly a decade the 50-year-old farmer is expecting a poor harvest. full report

ZIMBABWE: Child labour on the rise

HARARE, 24 February 2012 (IRIN) - Widespread poverty, a lack of social services and poor enforcement of legislation are hindering efforts to eradicate child labour in Zimbabwe. full report

ZIMBABWE: More NGO bannings feared

HARARE, 17 February 2012 (IRIN) - Twenty-nine NGOs providing services ranging from alleviating food insecurity to assisting the disabled in Zimbabwe’s Masvingo Province have been banned, sparking fears that this could be the start of a new wave of restrictions like the blanket ban placed on the activities of civil society organizations during the violent and disputed parliamentary and presidential elections in 2008. full report

FILM: Out of Sight: Blind migrants in Johannesburg

NAIROBI, 15 February 2012 (IRIN) - IRIN’s latest film, Out of Sight, explores the lives of blind undocumented migrants from Zimbabwe as they try and eke out a living begging on the streets of Johannesburg. full report

SOUTH AFRICA: Migrants face unlawful arrests and hasty deportations

MUSINA, 14 February 2012 (IRIN) - Four months ago, Clemence Uzizo, 21, a welder living in Soweto, Johannesburg's most populous suburb, made the mistake of venturing out to a local shop without his asylum-seeker permit. Neither the police who arrested him, nor the immigration officials who detained him, verified Uzizo's legal status before deporting him to Zimbabwe, the country of his birth. full report

ZIMBABWE: Deportations rob vulnerable of remittances

HARARE, 10 February 2012 (IRIN) - Thousands of Zimbabwean households are feeling the effects of lost remittances from family members forcibly returned from neighbouring South Africa since that country resumed deportations of undocumented Zimbabwean migrants in October 2011. full report

SECURITY: New report on R2P challenges humanitarians

LONDON, 10 February 2012 (IRIN) - The UN recognizes the international community’s Responsibility to Protect (R2P) civilians during conflict, and this philosophy has quickly become embedded in peacekeeping and peace enforcement missions, but a new report questions some basic humanitarian assumptions. full report

SOUTH AFRICA: Asylum-seekers resort to border jumping

MUSINA, 9 February 2012 (IRIN) - At the Beitbridge border post between Zimbabwe and South Africa, asylum-seekers from all over the continent used to jostle with Zimbabwean migrants to gain entry into a country widely perceived as a place of freedom and safety. full report