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Djibouti

Climate Lessons from a Hotter Arab World

Rachel Kyte's picture

Photo credit: Curt Carnemark/World Bank

This week in Doha, the marble corridors of the Qatar National Convention Center resonate with voices from around the world. Over half way through the UN Climate Change Conference, as ministers arrive and the political stakes pick up, a sense of greater urgency in the formal negotiations is almost palpable. But in the corridors, negotiations are already leading to deals and dreams and action on the ground.

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon opened the discussions by saying we need optimism, because without optimism there are no results. He reminded us all that Superstorm Sandy was a tragic awakening. He reiterated the call for a second commitment period of the Kyoto Protocol, a global agreement and 100 billion in climate finance by 2020.

Meanwhile our focus was firmly on the region ...

Les « Maman Lumière » de Djibouti donnent l’exemple pour changer de comportement et améliorer la santé

Marie Chantal Messier's picture

Mothers discuss child rearing in Djibouti (credit: Marie Chantal Messier).

Nous étions assises sur des tapis de sol, dans la chaleur et la poussière du quartier Moustiquaire, le plus pauvre de Djibouti, pour parler des pratiques d’alimentation des enfants. Des voix se sont soudainement élevées dans le groupe. Plusieurs femmes insultaient et montraient du doigt l’une d’entre elles qui baissait honteusement la tête.

Mes homologues djiboutiennes m’ont expliqué que la femme embarrassée était critiquée parce que son fils ne parlait pas encore à 5 ans. Au lieu de donner de l’eau à boire à son nouveau-né comme le veut la tradition, elle avait choisi d’allaiter son dernier enfant au sein exclusivement jusqu’à l’âge de six mois.  Le groupe pensait que ce choix expliquait les problèmes de développement de l’enfant.

Ma première réaction a été de me dire : « la pression du groupe est un véritable obstacle à la promotion des méthodes d’allaitement optimales à Djibouti ! »

Djibouti’s "Shining Mothers": Role models for behavior change, better health

Marie Chantal Messier's picture

Also available in: FrançaisMothers discuss child rearing in Djibouti (credit: Marie Chantal Messier).

We were sitting on floor mats in the hot and dusty Quartier Moustiquaire, the poorest neighborhood of Djibouti City, observing a group of new mothers and their children discussing child feeding practices. All of a sudden, there was an uproar in the group. One woman had her head bent down in shame, and several other women shouted and pointed fingers at her.  

My Djiboutian counterparts told me the embarrassed woman was being criticized because her 5-year-old son still doesn’t speak.  Rather than follow the ancestral tradition of giving water to her newborn, she chose to exclusively breastfeed her last child until he was 6 months old. The group asserted that this choice had led to the child’s developmental problems. 

My immediate reaction to the scene was, “Peer pressure is a true obstacle to promoting optimal breastfeeding in Djibouti!”

More Precious than Gold?

Cara Santos Pianesi's picture

World Bank President Robert Zoellick will discuss topics other than gold while in Asia this week, in case you’re wondering.

One of those topics is infrastructure, which—to denizens in the developing world who struggle to move goods and people, drink clean water, and keep the lights on—may be more precious than any metal.

 

On Wednesday Zoellick was in Singapore for a prominent infrastructure conference, where he underlined that a focus on infrastructure is a key part of the solid growth agenda the G-20 is trying to tackle. He also noted some important facts. First, infrastructure investment represents two-thirds of growth increase in East Asia and about half of the growth increase in Africa. Second, the World Bank estimates the need for infrastructure investment and maintenance in developing countries will amount to about $900 billion a year.