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	Venezuela: Economic Crisis deepens - Urgent Measures needed to address shortages of Medicine, Food by Human Rights Watch   The Venezuelan government has targeted critics of its ineffective efforts to alleviate severe shortages of essential medicines and food while the crisis persists, Human Rights Watch said in a new report. Regional governments should press the administration of President Nicolás Maduro to adopt immediate measures to better address the profound humanitarian crisis, including by exploring avenues for increased international assistance.   The 78-page report, “Venezuela’s Humanitarian Crisis: Severe Medical and Food Shortages, Inadequate and Repressive Government Response,” documents how the shortages have made it extremely difficult for many Venezuelans to obtain essential medical care or meet their families’ basic needs.   The Venezuelan government has downplayed the severity of the crisis. Although its own efforts to alleviate the shortages have not succeeded, it has made only limited efforts to obtain international humanitarian assistance that might be readily available. Meanwhile, it has intimidated and punished critics, including health professionals, human rights defenders, and ordinary Venezuelans who have spoken out about the shortages.   “The Venezuelan government has seemed more vigorous in denying the existence of a humanitarian crisis than in working to resolve it,” said José Miguel Vivanco, Americas director at Human Rights Watch. “Its failures have contributed to the suffering of many Venezuelans who now struggle every day to obtain access to basic health care and adequate nutrition.”   The Venezuelan government has stridently denied that the shortages rise to the level of a crisis. When officials have acknowledged the shortages at all, they have blamed them on an “economic war” waged by the political opposition, the private sector, and foreign powers. The government has provided no evidence to support these accusations.   Human Rights Watch interviewed more than 100 people about the humanitarian situation in June 2016, in Caracas, the capital, and six states – Aragua, Carabobo, Lara, Táchira, Trujillo, and Zulia – and followed up by phone and other media. Researchers visited eight public hospitals, a health center on the border with Colombia, and a foundation that provides health care.   Human Rights Watch interviewed people lined up at several locations to try to buy price-controlled goods as well as health care providers, people seeking medical care, people who had been detained in connection with protests linked to the shortages, human rights defenders, and public health experts.   Shortages of basic medicines and other crucial medical supplies have caused a sharp deterioration in the quality and safety of care over the past two years, Human Rights Watch found. Doctors and patients reported severe shortages – and in some cases, the complete absence – of basic medicines such as antibiotics and painkillers. Supplies lacking or in short supply in public hospitals included sterile gloves, gauze, and medical alcohol.   An August 2016 survey by a network of more than 200 doctors found that 76 percent of the public hospitals where they worked lacked the basic medicines that the network said should be available in any functional public hospital.   In case after case, people facing emergencies and those with chronic medical conditions such as cancer, hypertension, diabetes, and epilepsy, as well as organ transplant patients, said they struggle to find essential medications. The medicines are often unavailable at both public and private pharmacies, are prohibitively expensive if purchased abroad, and are either unavailable or so expensive on the black market – where they also come with no quality guarantees – as to be virtually unobtainable.   The “distress and uncertainty is a daily nightmare,” the mother of a 9-year-old girl with diabetes said about her efforts to find the medicines her daughter needs.   The maternal mortality rate for the first five months of 2016 reported by the Health Ministry was 79 percent higher than the latest available official figures, from 2009. The infant mortality rate was 45 percent higher than 2013 figures. Health professionals told Human Rights Watch that medical shortages and unhygienic conditions in hospital delivery wards are important contributing factors.   Many Venezuelans are finding it increasingly difficult to get adequate nutrition, Human Rights Watch found, particularly lower or middle-income families who rely on items subject to government price controls. Some markets have food and even luxury goods available but at prices that many people cannot afford.   Human Rights Watch researchers found long lines forming whenever supermarkets received goods subject to price controls. People waiting in lines said they were trying to buy items such as rice, pasta, flour, diapers, toothpaste, and toilet paper. Supermarkets often ran out of limited stock long before everyone in line had been served.   In a 2015 survey by independent groups and two leading Venezuelan universities, 87 percent of 1,488 people interviewed in 21 cities throughout the country, most from low-income families, said they had difficulty purchasing food. Twelve percent said they ate only one or two meals a day.   Public health scholars have linked food insecurity in diverse Latin American countries with major physical and mental health problems among adults, and poor growth and socio-emotional and cognitive development in children. In Venezuela, several doctors, community members, and parents told Human Rights Watch that they were beginning to see symptoms of malnutrition, particularly in children.   The government’s narrative of “economic war” has provided a rationale for using authoritarian tactics to intimidate and punish critics. It has lashed out at medical professionals who express concern about shortages, threatening to remove them from their positions at public hospitals. It has threatened to cut off the international funding of human rights organizations. And it has responded both to planned marches and spontaneous demonstrations about shortages with severe beatings, detention, and unjustifiable prohibitions on protests.   Some people have been prosecuted in military courts, in violation of their right to a fair trial.   The Venezuelan government should take immediate and urgent steps to articulate and carry out effective policies to address the crisis, including by seeking international humanitarian aid, Human Rights Watch said. It should stop intimidating and punishing critics. Member countries of the Organization of American States should maintain close and continuous oversight of the situation, until the Venezuelan government shows results addressing the political and humanitarian crisis. United Nations humanitarian agencies should publish an independent assessment of the extent and impact of the shortages, as well as what is needed to address them.   “Without strong international pressure, in particular from the region, the Maduro administration may well fail to do what is necessary to alleviate this crisis, and the dramatic consequences of the humanitarian crisis that Venezuela is facing may only get worse,” Vivanco said.   http://bit.ly/2e4sHrB http://bit.ly/29IT9ID http://www.hrw.org/news/2016/08/08/venezuelas-deepening-crisis Visit the related web page
	Libyan oil wars and the battle for Tripoli by Chris Stephen IRIN News   It’s flying under the radar, but the Libyan capital is shuddering through its worst violence since fighting first broke out mid-2014, while oil wars rage out east amidst signs of increased Russian involvement. What does this battle for economic and political power mean for Libya’s civilians?   As a galaxy of militias battle for control of central Tripoli, residents cower from tank and artillery fire. For the city’s population of 1.5 million, the clashes come after two years of growing violence and deprivation as basic services fall apart.   Meanwhile, far to the east, the army of one of Libya’s three competing governments has recaptured two oil ports, al-Sidra and Ras Lanuf, seized by yet another militia earlier this month.   The ports’ recapture offers hope that oil production – along with gas Libya’s only revenue earner – can revive. But who will control those revenues depends on an unresolved struggle between an elected parliament based in Tobruk, the UN-backed Government of National Accord in Tripoli and a third would-be administration, the National Salvation Government, also in the capital.   How did we get here?   Libya’s many militias have been sporadically clashing and wrangling for control of Tripoli (and the country) since the 2011 overthrow of Muammar Gaddafi, but fighting escalated after parliamentary elections in June of 2014. A group from Misrata, Libya’s third city, together with Islamists refused to accept defeat at the ballot box and coalesced into a militia alliance called Libya Dawn.   The fighters captured the capital from rival militias in seven weeks of fighting. Foreign embassies fled the country, the national airport went up in flames, and since then foreign airlines have stayed away from Libya, as have most foreigners. Even the UN judges the city unsafe and mostly works from neighbouring Tunisia.   The Government of National Accord was installed in Tripoli in March last year, with the UN predicting it would unify the country. Instead, it has failed even to unify Tripoli – its presidency members confining themselves to the city’s naval base as militia battalions rule the streets, including some allied with the National Salvation Government.   Such is the chaos of the last few days in Tripoli that there are no accurate figures for the dead and wounded from city hospitals, one of which, Habda, was twice hit by shellfire and set on fire on Tuesday and evacuated.   For citizens of the capital, the horror of street fighting adds to their daily want and compounds their security fears.   “The most difficult thing about life here is the uncertainty,” one Tripoli housewife, who requested to remain anonymous, told IRIN.   “My husband and son go to work each day, the kids go to school, and you hear the distant battles, you hear the latest kidnapping, you wonder: will they be safe?”   It’s true that for Tripoli, abnormal is becoming normal. The GNA has failed to get a grip on public services. The city endures power cuts that last for days, because generating plants break down or because fuel is seized by militias.   Loss of power in turn means loss of water from pumping stations. Besides, the city’s drinking water depends on a long pipeline from the desert interior, the so-called Great Man-Made River, which is now in dire need of maintenance. But security concerns are paramount right now in Tripoli.   Beyond the tanks and the shelling and the clashes, avoidance of kidnapping has become an art form. Gagaresh, in the downtown area, is still a thriving hub for those with money, its coffee bars crowded, but even to there people are travelling to and fro in groups now to avoid abduction.   Appearances are important too. A student explained why he is careful not to clean his car or replace a cracked windscreen. “I want this car to look bad,” he told IRIN. “I don’t want a militia guy to see it. Then, maybe he’ll take it.”   In the east, home to the Sirte Basin, oil fields which produce the bulk of Libya’s income, forces controlled by strongman Khalifa Haftar – backed by Russia and Egypt and allied with the Tobruk government – have taken control of oil terminals from a group of militias from Benghazi.   Russian special forces are reported, by unnamed US and Egyptian sources, to be playing an increasing role in the oil-rich region, raising eyebrows in Western capitals, especially in light of Moscow’s Syrian exploits.   Libya’s eastern oil ports had been closed for the past two years thanks to a dispute over control and export, but Haftar turned them on – along with the revenue stream – when he captured them in September.   The terminals matter politically – since the fighting, the Haftar-allied Tobruk parliament has voted to withdraw its already tentative support for the GNA as well as a UN-backed peace process – as well as economically.   Without oil, the country could fall into an even deeper economic crisis. It’s already suffering from a crippling cash shortage. Along with rival governments, Libya has two rival central banks: one in Tripoli uses dinar currency printed in Britain; one in the east uses similar but not identical dinar notes printed in Russia.   With billions of dinars worth of banknotes arriving, the country should be awash with money. But instead the banks have been restricting supply in a mostly unsuccessful bid to control runaway inflation.   Only a few local banks are authorised to issue cash, and often with a limit of 300 dinars ($214 at the official exchange rate, more like $50 in real terms) per customer each week.   Long lines form outside banks when word goes around they may be open for a day, and riots have broken out as frustration boils over. Earlier this month, a man was shot outside the prominent Aman Bank. Relatives seeking revenge fired four rockets into the building, and in the ensuing night of fighting it burned to the ground.   The World Bank says 60 percent of the country’s $25 billion budget goes on a inflated public sector, with corruption enabling many to get non-existent state jobs. With the economy in such a shambles, incomes from these phantom positions are some of the few means of survival.   The country’s largest employer is Misrata’s Naseem dairy. Employing only 900 people, it announced in March that it may have to close because the financial chaos means it can’t get credit to import milk powder and packaging.   Money shortages are made worse by galloping inflation, and restricting cash has not stopped the value of the currency plummeting as the price of goods has sky-rocketed. Dollars now cost around six dinars on the black market, more than three times the official rate of 1.4.   “Looting is rife here,” complained one Tripoli resident. “Even [Abdul Raouf] Kara [the leader of the Deterrence Force, a militia that is the nearest thing Tripoli has to a police force] can’t stop it. Last week alone my neighbours were stopped in the street [by gunmen] and cash and mobiles [phones] were taken.”   The situation is worse still for migrants, mostly from sub Saharan Africa. Some arrive in the capital after long treks through the desert hoping to buy a place on a boat to Europe, while others are simply desperate for any work they can find.   Many of the estimated 275,000 migrants in Libya fall victim to human smuggling. Some are trapped in notorious detention centres, while the unluckiest of all meet their death at sea. Another 313,000 Libyans are internally displaced, in desperate need, with aid agencies helping where they can.   Life is somewhat easier in eastern Libya, where the Tobruk parliament has achieved some semblance of order. Militias have largely been banished, replaced by regular police and troops, and tribal councils have been set up to help with welfare.   Schoolbooks have been printed and distributed across the country and Benghazi is soon to reopen its airport – delayed because militias trapped in pockets in the city centre target it intermittently with Grad missiles.   Those militias are trapped in three tiny enclaves, along with families short of food and water. The UN has mediated one ceasefire but only a dozen civilians took that opportunity to evacuate, leaving the situation deadlocked. Elsewhere in the city, life is returning to something like normal, with teams of volunteers painting fresh white lines on rutted streets.   But this is the exception, not the rule, in Libya at the moment.   According to the World Health Organization, “Libya’s health care system has deteriorated to the point of collapse.” There are chronic medicine shortages in hospitals, since government payment systems have broken down. There is not enough water to drink.   The one thing not in short supply is weapons and ammunition to fuel the fighting.   Most people are trapped here: Few Libyans were able to get visas anywhere, even before President Donald Trump’s US travel ban.   It’s not surprising that nostalgia is all the rage. Social media is full of posts showing photographs from Tripoli in bygone eras: under the early years of Italian occupation, or after World War II when Libya emerged as an independent nation (in 1951). The photographs show a clean, neat city of winding boulevards and a glittering coast – a city from another world. Visit the related web page
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