Nyasa Times-

President Peter Mutharika has declared Malawi a state of disaster as floods have hit most parts of the north following continuous rains for close to two weeks and drought in most parts of the south.

Mutharika made the declaration on Tuesday as vice president Saulos Chilima braved heavy rains to visit muddy and slippery areas of 1700 displaced people camps.
The President has done this in accordance with powers conferred upon him by section 32(1) of the Disaster Preparedness and Relief Act. In a statement released on Tuesday April 12, the day on which the declaration took effect.

Mutharika points out persistent dry spells facilitated by El Nino, inadequate or erratic rainfall and destructive floods as some of the factors behind the current state of affairs.
The declaration will help both local and international organizations to solicit aid for the needy.

Mutharika says the floods and drought will force food production to go down by 24 per cent compared to last year and the number of beneficiaries of relief food will shoot up from the current three million people in government data base.

So far six people have been killed and 10 people are in hospitals with serious injuries following collapse of 1080 houses in Mzuzu alone due to heavy rains.
There are also reports of deaths due to hunger related due to drought in some parts of the country but President Mutharika and his government rejects this year.
Informed by expert advice from Ministry of Agriculture officials, the President said Malawi needs just over three million metric tonnes of maize every year but it is projected that next year Malawi will have 2.4 million metric tonnes. This year Malawi had 2.7 million metric tonnes of maize, signaling a 12.5 percent drop in maize production.
He therefore has appealed for humanitarian relief assistance from international donor community, United Nations agencies, NGOs, private sector as well as citizens of goodwill.

Food and governance experts have hailed President Mutharika for his proactive and pragmatic response to seemingly another year of food shortage.

By Astrid Zweynert

Oxford, England — The custom in Malawi of sending girls to sexual initiation camps is just as harmful as child marriage and must end if the nation is serious about protecting girls’ rights, a teenager who escaped being a child bride said.
Memory Banda, 18, said the tradition of early sexual initiation, seen as a way of preparing pubescent girls for marriage, was forcing girls to have sex and exposing them to the risk of HIV infection.
Banda said even if girls were not sent to the camps, they may receive a night time visit from an older man.
Known as a “hyena”, the man sent by village elders has sex with girls as young as nine to prepare them for marriage.
“It’s forced sex,” Banda, 18, told the Thomson Reuters Foundation in an interview late on Thursday. “Most girls end up being pregnant, and many drop out of school.”
In February, Malawi passed a law banning child marriage and raised the minimum age for girls to marry to 18 in a move hailed by campaigners seeking an end to the practice that affects half of all girls in the country.
Banda’s own sister was married at 11 to a man in his thirties, who had made her pregnant during a sexual initiation.
But Banda escaped her sister’s fate because she was living with an aunt who supported her resistance to early marriage. Banda later joined the Girls Empowerment Network, a Malawi-based charity that for years tried to get lawmakers to end child marriage.
Banda said the priority now was to ensure the new law was enforced and to encourage village leaders to speak out against early sexual initiation.
“The law will make a big difference and have a big impact, but only if we work with communities and girls to address the issues openly,” Banda said on the sidelines of the Skoll World Forum on Social Entrepreneurship.
Malawi has shown signs of progress already with a growing openness to discussing girls’ sexual rights and dozens of communities in the southern African country banning early sexueyal initiation, she added.
Every year 15 million girls are married as children with one in three girls in the developing world married before they are 18, according to campaign group Girls Not Brides.
Critics say early marriage deprives girls of an education, increases the risk of domestic violence, death or serious injuries if they have babies before their bodies are ready.
Yet the practice persists because some societies view girls as a financial burden, others believe a girl should marry as early as possible to maximise her fertility.
(Reporting by Astrid Zweynert; Editing by Katie Nguyen)