Kadoma, 1 October 2010 (IRIN) - A new wave of farm invasions in Zimbabwe has been dubbed the Fourth Chimurenga (liberation struggle) - the fast track-land reform programme launched by President Robert Mugabe in 2000 was the third - but this time they are not looking to redistribute land, they are looking for gold.

Thousands of unemployed Zimbabweans trying to survive in an economic meltdown that has lasted almost a decade have taken to unlicensed prospecting for gold and other minerals along the country's rivers.

As more and more illegal miners crowd the river banks, people have begun spreading onto farms near the rivers; sometimes they find consenting land owners, who often collude in the illicit enterprise.

Undocumented miners cannot dig openly so they sneak onto the farms at night and use wheelbarrows and sacks to cart away the rocks - which they hope will be gold-bearing - to millers who crush the ore and extract the gold.

BANGKOK, 30 September 2010 (IRIN) - A bed sheet to stop bleeding, broken furniture as splints for fractures, Buddhist temples turned into evacuation centres and bottled water to decontaminate wounds: People are often forced to innovate when disaster hits.

“In the first 24-48 hours of a disaster, the community bears the burden of response. It is a fallacy to rely on external help,” the World Health Organization’s Southeast Asia adviser for emergency and humanitarian action, Roderico Ofrin, told IRIN.

He is attending a regional three-day conference ending on 30 September in Bangladesh’s capital, Dhaka, on strengthening community health systems’ preparedness for disasters.

NGO, government and private sector representatives from 10 Southeast Asian countries discussed primary health care - health care for all that uses appropriate technology, involves the community, and collaborates with other sectors - in emergencies, and shared successful community programmes.

“These answers already exist at the community level, but are not well-documented,” said Ofrin.

OSH, 30 September 2010 (IRIN) - In downtown Osh in southern Kyrgyzstan, heaps of rubble lie in the streets, just outside the charred walls of destroyed homes. The debris makes the streets so narrow in some places that trucks cannot deliver the construction materials provided by international aid organizations for a now urgent rebuilding effort.

“We won’t be able to spend winter in the tent,” said Yashinbek Yuldashev, 53, pointing to a white tarpaulin strung up amid ruins that, until mid-June, had been a single-storey 11-room home to him and 14 of his relatives. “The older people - yes, but the little ones - no.”

The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said in a 3 September report that 1,889 compounds were damaged or destroyed in the June 2010 events. Of these 1,445 were in and around Osh, while 444 were in Jalalabad town and the surrounding area. (The Jalalabad figure has since been revised up to 454.) Of all the compounds surveyed, 90 percent were so severely damaged that they will need to be fully reconstructed.

DAMASCUS, 15 September 2010 (IRIN) - Among the estimated 1.2 million Iraqi refugees in Syria are several thousand Mandaeans, a small religious minority on the verge of extinction in Iraq, and lacking support in Syria.

Several organizations, including the Mandaean Society in Syria and the Spiritual Mandaean Council in Baghdad, have united to assist refugees coming from Iraq by organizing accommodation and support groups for widowed women, but because their numbers are small, Mandaeans as a community are particularly vulnerable.

Support in Syria has been difficult to obtain, either from the Syrian authorities, or from religious organizations, said the Mandaean Associations Union.

Some sources say there are 60,000-70,000 Mandaeans worldwide. They originated from Iraq and revere, among others, John the Baptist.

Like many Iraqi refugees they are facing difficult times financially. “Divorce among Mandaeans in Damascus is on the rise because people can’t get jobs and are running out of money. Over the past three years many have been forced to return to Iraq as their savings have dried up,” said Suhair, a Mandaean and former project coordinator for the US Agency for International Development in Baghdad.