Two weeks ago, a UN report confirmed that May was the bloodiest month in Darfur since the United Nations peacekeeping mission deployed in 2007. State sponsored violence, clashes between rebel groups, and regular banditry have resulted in over 400 people killed that month.
65 years ago today, the world entered the age of nuclear weapons. Ban Ki Moon is in Hiroshima, along, for the first time, a U.S. government official, for a ceremony marking the anniversary of the Atomic bombing of Hiroshima. From UN News Center:
Mariko Hall of the World Food Program reports on the ICT aspect of the humanitarian response to massive flooding in northwest Pakistan:
The IT Emergency Preparedness and Response team of WFP is deploying an emergency mission to support the team of five national ICT staff in Islamabad currently managing the operation.
Jimmy Carter and Kofi Annan tag teamed for an op-ed about the value of vaccination campaigns in the fight against child mortality, which is part of MDG4. Childhood vaccines have a great track record when properly implemented. In fact, they call vaccination campaigns against Measles and Polio among the "world's most successful childhood health interventions." The problem is, these gains are starting to slip. The two Elders explain what needs to be done:
Ed note: we are pleased to introduce Corbin Hiar to our roster of contributors. Corbin is a journalist at PBS MediaShift. He has covered environmental issues for Mother Jones, The New Republic, The Economist and its sister publication More Intelligent Life and will be covering the international climate talks for Dispatch.
Over at Passport, David Kenner argues that the tree-shooting incident shows that UNIFIL is a failure. I fear, though, that Kenner undermines his argument with this concluding statement.
On August 4, Kenyans went to the polls to vote on a new constitution. The vote had raised the specter of violence which marred the 2007 elections, when 1,300 people died and 300,000 were displaced. In the months leading up to the referendum, fears were again raised when a bomb killed six people at a rally in Nairobi in June. As of Wednesday night, though, the vote has been reported to have gone smoothly and without major incidents.
Poor rainfall last year means children are beginning to starve in Niger. UNICEF is putting that number at 400,000 severely malnourished children. As I have said before, this is the biggest humanitarian emergency that you have never heard about. Here is the latest video dispatch from UNICEF.
Ed note: In February, U.S. Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair released the Annual Threat Assessment of the U.S. Intelligence Community.