Somalia is facing a new food crisis. By the middle of the summer over 5 million people will be in some level of food insecurity. Some 2.2 million of those people will face what is known as a “crisis level”...
The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, better known as OCHA, is the branch of the UN system that facilitates global responses to humanitarian crises. Today, that office released its forecast of manmade and natural disasters that...
Mark Lowcock is the top humanitarian official at the United Nations, serving as the Under Secretary General for Humanitarian Affairs and the UN’s Emergency Relief Coordinator. When a manmade or natural disaster strikes, his UN Office for the Coordination of...
The Syrian war may be entering its final phase. Rebel fighters from various factions are now concentrated in Idlib, in northern Syria. Idlib is the place to which civilians and members of armed groups were permitted to escape as part...
The United Kingdom plays host to a major conference this week intended to raise money and political support for the Syrian humanitarian disaster. There are now over 4.6 million Syrian refugees who have fled abroad, mostly to surrounding countries and...
Today’s map comes from a UN entity called the Central Emergency Response Fund. It shows where some $70 million of funding for humanitarian relief operations were disbursed today. These eight emergencies are not necessarily the biggest in the world...
The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs released it’s mid-year report of the response to humanitarian emergencies around the world. Taken together, these graphics do an excellent job of telling the story of a humanitarian system under enormous...
The British Parliamentarian Stephen O’Brien will replace Valerie Amos as head of the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. This is a key post in the UN system in charge of disaster response. “So far, the married father-of-three,...
