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News Alerts
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| 26 June 2009: Today the seventh report of the Secretary General on the protection of civilians in armed conflict was discussed in a Security Council open debate, under the Turkey presidency. The Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator, John Holmes, opened the debate and his statement was followed by those of 47 States, as well as those of by the representatives of Palestine and the African Union. |
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| 23 June 2009: The World Drug Report 2009, the flagship publication of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), will be launched in Washington DC tomorrow 24 June. The report gives evidence of trends in world drug markets. A special chapter of the Report examines the impact of drug-related organized crime, and what to do about it. While there are positive trends in Southeast Asia such as a likely drop in opium consumption and a levelling of poppy cultivation, the data highlights the growing issue of amphetamine-type stimulants production, trafficking and consumption, and the continuing prevalence of heroin use in East Asia. |
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19 June 2009: Due to the combination of high food prices and the current global economic downturn, the number of hungry people is projected to reach a historic high in 2009 of 1.020 billion, according to Food and Agriculture Organization’s (FAO) new estimates urban poor will probably face the most severe problems in coping with the global recession, because lower export demand and reduced foreign direct investment are more likely to hit urban jobs harder, explains the FAO. But rural areas will not be spared. Millions of urban migrants will have to return to the countryside, forcing the rural poor to share the burden in many cases.
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June 17 2009: Annual financing from all sources must increase to $25 billion by 2010 in order to achieve national universal access target to HIV prevention, treatment and care, concludes UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon in his report to the General Assembly General on progress made in the implementation of the Declaration of Commitment on HIV/AIDS and the Political Declaration on HIV/AIDS .
Introduced at the opening of the 16 June General Assembly meeting on the implementation of the 2001 Declaration of Commitment on HIV/AIDS and the follow-up Political Declaration of 2006, the report notes that the pace of new infections continues to outstrip the expansion of treatment programmes, and commitment to HIV prevention remains inadequate.
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16 June 2009: The 2009 edition of the World Disasters Report focuses this year on early warning and early action in light of the growing number of people whose lives have been disrupted by natural disasters. Launching the report at UN headquarters during a press briefing , the Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Diplomacy at the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies said that 326 natural disasters were reported worldwide in 2008, the lowest figures for the decade, according to the Centre for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters (CRED). However, the number of people reported killed by natural disasters - 235,736 – was the second highest of the decade.
The report also highlights disparities in the way people were affected by natural disasters. In fact, 76 % of disasters in 2008 occurred in the developing world but those countries suffered 99 percent of the deaths. Clearly the humanitarian impact was much worse in developing countries. The necessary response was what the report called “early warning - early action”. Instead of waiting, it was crucial to prevent, or at least prepare, for disaster. While risk could not be reduced to zero, failure would be minimized with greater investment in prevention.
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| 12 June 2009: Some 218 million children -– one sixth of the world total – are still involved in child labour, although the practice has been outlawed by International Labour Organization (ILO) Convention 182, said Deputy Permanent Representative of the Netherlands Piet de Klerk during a 12 June press briefing at UN headquarters. Stressing his country’s efforts to fight child labour, Mr. de Klerk also presented Peter de Ruiter, author of A World for Children: Growing up Without Child Labour. The book seeks not only to raise awareness of the incidence of child labour but also shows where it had originated and how it was sustained by those who profited from it. It also offers solutions promoting action against child labour. |
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| 5 June 2009: The number of Somalis forced from their homes in Mogadishu has now topped 96,000 since the start of fighting between government forces and armed opposition groups on May 8, reports the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). In neighboring Kenya, the number of new arrivals from Somalia spiked from an average of 100 a day to nearly 200 over the past week. Since the beginning of the year, almost 32,000 people have crossed into Kenya, bringing the total number of Somali refugees in the country to more than 297,000 (see ReliefWeb map on Displacement in Somalia as of 05 Jun 2009 [pdf]). |
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| 4 June 2009: Two million people displaced from Pakistan’s northwestern areas urgently need assistance with food, clean water, shelter and emergency health care, Some sectors have already indicated that supplies such as food and essential medicines may not be sustainable beyond early July unless the international community rapidly and generously responds to these acute needs, reported OCHA’s spokesperson at the daily noon briefing at headquarters in New York. As of 4 June, the Humanitarian Response Plan remains only 22% funded (See ReliefWeb Humanitarian Snapshot on Pakistan [pdf]) |
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| 4 June 2009: The Emergency Relief Coordinator, Mr. John Holmes, designated today Martin Mogwanja as Humanitarian Coordinator for Pakistan. Prior to his appointment as UNICEF Representative in Pakistan in January 2007, Mr. Mogwanja was the UNICEF Representative in Uganda for six years, as well as the Humanitarian Coordinator in the country between 2005 and 2007. Fikret Akcura, the Resident Coordinator for Pakistan, will continue to be the Head of the UN Country Team. |
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| 3 June 2009: The countdown to Copenhagen has started with the kick off of the second round of UN Climate Change Talks in Bonn. Until 12 June, delegates from 182 countries will be negotiating key documents that will be the basis for the United Nations Climate Change Conference that will take place in Copenhagen from 7 to 18 December. Open to all the State Parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCC), the current discussions will focus on amendments to the Kyoto Protocol but also on long-term cooperation, enhanced action on adaptation, mitigation and finance, technology and capacity building. Also, learn more about the humanitarian consequences of climate change with OCHA's advocacy campaign. |
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3 June 2009: IRIN’s new slideshow Burmese Refugees in Thailand tell the story of 9 refugee camps hosting close to 150,000 people. Many of them have been calling these small leaf-roofed cities home for a decade or more.
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| 26 May 2009: Reiterating its serious concern at the worsening humanitarian situation in Somalia and expressing its concern that serious crimes, in particular killing and maiming, have been committed against civilians and humanitarian staff, the Security Council authorized the African Union Mission in Somalia (AMISOM) peacekeeping force there to maintain its existing mandate until 31 January 2010. |
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| 26 May 2009: The number of Somalis fleeing the latest escalation of fighting in and around Mogadishu has surpassed 67,000, reports the United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR). . Intense fighting between the government and opposition forces erupted in several north-west areas of Mogadishu on 8 May. Most of the displaced are heading towards the Afgooye corridor, south-west of Mogadishu, where a number of large makeshifts camps have mushroomed over the past two years. These sites already host an estimated 400,000 internally displaced people (IDPs). |
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| 19 May 2009: The UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) reports that the number of people displaced by fighting in Pakistan’s North West Frontier Province has surpassed 1.45 million. UN High Commissioner for Refugees António Guterres, who has just concluded a three-day visit to Pakistan, continues to call for urgent and massive international help from governments and donors for those left homeless by fighting. |
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30 April 2009: Adopting a presidential statement, the Security Council expressed its intention to bolster its measures to protect war-affected children. Determined to take action by the end of July, the Security Council decided to target parties who not only recruit children as combatants, but those who kill, maim, rape or commit other grave sexual violence against them. Capping a day-long debate by adopting this statement, the Security Council had before it the Secretary-General latest annual report on children and armed conflict. The report , which covers compliance and progress in ending six grave violations against children caught up in armed conflict, lists 56 violators, including 19 who have been listed for more than four years.
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23 April 2009 :An IRIN film has today been awarded Best Documentary at the International Drugs and Harm Reduction Film Festival. The film, "A Cleaner Fix" takes a close-up look at HIV/AIDS and drug use in Indonesia, through locally-run interventions such as needle exchange programmes. IRIN Senior Editor for Asia, Brennon Jones, accepted the award in front of hundreds of delegates to the "Harm Reduction 2009" conference in Bangkok.
IRIN's film was picked from a field of more than 70 films. An e-mail from organisers said the award was a "real acknowledgement to the effort IRIN has undertaken to raise the profile of a subject matter through the medium of film."
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| 7 April 2009: The Humanitarian Country Team in Madagascar is seeking US$ 35.7 million to prevent the deterioration of the humanitarian situation in a country where the majority of the population lives on less than $1 a day. The Flash Appeal for Madagascar prioritizes the delivery of emergency aid to more than 3 million people. Political violence, recent cyclones and a drought have caused a delay or cessation of a number of aid and development projects across the country. It has also worsened the situation of the Malagasy population who has had disruptions in basic social services and is living in a climate of fear and uncertainty. |
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| 7 April 2009: Top United Nations officials have called for a concerted effort to refocus the world’s attention on the global food crisis. At a press briefing on the General Assembly thematic debate on the global food crisis and the right to food experts explained that the crisis existed due to structural causes. The Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food, Olivier De Shutter, said that these causes include the dependency of agriculture on volatile prices of oil, the threat of climate change and an unfair trading system. “In a world such as ours, hunger does not result from there being too little food available. Hunger is there because people do not have the purchasing power, because people are marginalized, because people are discriminated against. And this is what the right to food has to bring to the debate,” Mr. De Shutter added. |
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| 3 April 2009: The United Nations launched an appeal today seeking US$ 691 million to cover urgent pre-monsoon needs in the delta as well as activities outlined in the three-year recovery plan (PONREPP). Earlier this week, the UN Resident and Humanitarian Coordinator, Bishow Parajuli, said that the level of humanitarian assistance that is being provided in Myanmar is much lower than the actual needs of the people. He stressed the imminent need for sustainable shelter and agricultural support ahead of the monsoon season and immense humanitarian and development challenges in other parts of the country. |
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OCHA's other news websites:
ReliefWeb: serving the information needs of the humanitarian relief community
IRIN: Integrated Regional Information Networks
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