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Annual Report 2010 / 2011

… male and female, He created them


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EED’s gender strategy follows a two-pronged approach: integration of gender analysis and measures into all its programs and procedures and targeted funding of projects committed to improving the lives of women. The annual report before you takes a look at this latter aspect of our gender strategy.
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New Release

Encounter beyond routine


Documentation on an International Consultation, 17th-23rd January 2010
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The right to future

Nine examples of community based empowerment processes.
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Network

EED is a member of theLogo ACT Alliance


The people of Zimbabwe need more humanitarian assistance


(Bonn/Gaborone, 24.11.2008) The people in Zimbabwe are starving. We cannot wait for a political solution before food aid is going to be provided to the Zimbabwean people. “The world community has to help the people in Zimbabwe,” says Mrs. Claudia Warning, Director International Programmes of the Church Development Service (EED) in Germany.

The suffering of the people should not and cannot be used to put pressure on the political forces in Zimbabwe to come to a solution of the crisis. “The people in power in Zimbabwe do not care about the death of their own people. The suffering of the people is not having an impact as a means of pressure. To the contrary, Zimbabweans need food to have the strength to participate in shaping the political process in the country,” she added. At least 5 million people are in need of food aid.

Humanitarian aid organizations are assuming that in the coming month the number of people in need of food aid will increase to at least five million. But the World Food Programme of the United Nations is already rationing food aid in Zimbabwe. The funds for food aid are too little. Recent fundraising appeals for Zimbabwe hardly find any reaction in public.

Most people in Zimbabwe are living in rural areas. They could only harvest very little in the last season. “For the just started planting season there are no seeds available,” reports Henrike Berger, Regional Representative of the EED Regional Office for Zimbabwe and Botswana in Gaborone. Most people in the rural areas are therefore living on maximum one meal per day, a lot of families can only afford one meal every second day. In their desperation they resort to picking up single grains of maize or rice from the roadside which fell off during transport. Termites are ‘harvested’ and wild fruits and tubers are eaten.

The supply of drinking water has broken down in many places and cholera is spreading. The organization ‘Doctors without borders’ considers at least 1.4 million people at urgent risk of cholera. But the hospitals are closed and there are nearly no drugs available. The big numbers of AIDS-patients are unable to receive the anti-retro-virals they need to survive. Without these drugs they will die soon.

EED  advocates for humanitarian assistance now while the negotiations at the political level continue. EED - on behalf of her partners in Zimbabwe – calls for further funding of humanitarian aid to avoid an even bigger catastrophe. For the distribution of food aid the organizations Christian Care and Lutheran Development Service are ready. They are longstanding partners of EED in development work and at the same time professionals in humanitarian assistance. They have the necessary experience and access to the communities to be able to distribute aid coming through the World Food Programme and ACT International.

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