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From Our Own Correspondent: Excuses run dry in Zimbabwe

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Zimbabwe_Water_hi056758981.jpg

23/11/2019 GMT

Excuses run dry in Zimbabwe

BBC World Service - From Our Own Correspondent, Excuses run dry in Zimbabwe

Is drought letting Zanu-PF off the hook? And stories from Somaliland, France and Cambodia

Is a dire drought letting Mnangagwa's government off the hook? Plus, fish in Somaliland, Yazidi refugees making a new life in France and the online appeal of Cambodian Buddhism

Zimbabwe is in the grip of a serious drought - and climate change could make matters even worse. Supplies of food, water and power are all intermittent now - but is natural disaster also providing cover for human mismanagement? Emmerson Mnangagwa's government assured Zimbabweans it would make their lives easier, but two years in, Stephen Sackur asks whether it's delivered on any of those promises. 

Pascale Harter introduces this and other stories from BBC correspondents, journalists and writers around the world.

Somaliland, in the Horn of Africa, is another nation facing the consequences of climate change: as grazing and water sources shrivel up, its pastoral nomads' traditional way of life is becoming more and more precarious. Amy Guttman talks to people involved in a clever plan to improve livelihoods - and vary the national menu - by making it possible to shift from goat and sheep herding to fishing. 

The Yazidi religious minority of northern Iraq suffered some of the very worst of the crimes committed by the Islamic State group: mass murder, abduction, kidnapping and rape. It's easy to see why some Yazidi families might never feel safe in their homeland again. Chris Bockman reports from a village in southwest France, with its own long history of sheltering refugees from conflict, which has taken in dozens of Yazidi survivors. 

And Sophia Smith Galer meets some of Cambodia's most revered Buddhist monks - to hear why they're taking to social media to spread calm and raise awareness of environmental and social challenges. These days, hidden in the saffron robes, you're much more likely to find a smartphone. 

Image: A woman fetches water from a well in Harare, Zimbabwe. Credit: Reuters/Philimon Bulawayo)

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