This document was prepared by ECB and ACAPS based on secondary data review, available assessment reports and consultation with key field actors. It provides an update (23 September - 15 December 2011) of the current situation in Eastern Africa with a special focus on Somalia and displacement.

The annex contains general and sector specific background information on Somalia.

It should be used carefully for any decision making without alternate and verified field sources of information.

Asmara, 29 December 2011- The active participation of nationals is decisive for raising agricultural production, ensuring food security, stated the head of the Agricultural Ministry’s branch office in the Central region, Mr. Abraham Daniel.

Speaking at the annual assessment meeting conducted in the Municipality Hall, he explained that as part of endeavors to promote sound ecology, tree seedlings have been planted in about 900 hectares. Other reforestation activities were also carried out in Asmara City and 28 villages of Serjeke sub-zone.

Dear friend,

In the decades I've been working to solve global problems, I've never seen a crisis like the one we're currently tackling in the Horn of Africa.

Millions of people have been displaced by the worst drought and famine in a generation. They need food, water, shelter — and they also need nets.

WHO/AFRO welcome preliminary results of malaria vaccine trials

The World Health Organization’s Regional Office for Africa has welcomed the announcement that trials of a malaria candidate vaccine show promising results by providing protection against clinical malaria in children.

The results were announced at the Global Malaria Forum hosted by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation in Seattle, USA and published in the New England Journal of Medicine.

Kristalina Georgieva
European Commissioner for International Cooperation, Humanitarian Aid and Crisis Response
The role and the coherence of EU policies in changing the global food system
High-level panel "Preventing another Famine in the Horn of Africa", 2011 European Development Days

Warsaw, 16 December 2011 - The famine in the Horn of Africa is the greatest humanitarian crisis that the world is facing. Over 13 million people have been affected. Hundreds of thousands have been displaced. Tens of thousands have already died.

Eritrean migrants fleeing their country are being preyed upon by human traffickers and subjected to organ harvesting in Egypt, say human rights workers in the Eritrean diaspora.

“The problem starts from inside Eritrea because a majority of those victims are Eritreans,” said Tomas Solomon, a spokesperson for Urgent Relief for Eritrean Refugees

“Once they get to Sudan, basically they are told that [the traffickers] can get them to Israel or the West, and they are asked to pay about $2,500, and after paying that they will be taken to Egypt and they are sold,” he added.

Brussels, 8 December 2011

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PRESSE 481

The Council today appointed Mr Alexander Rondos as EU Special Representative to the Horn of Africa.

Regional Displacement Summary

ADDIS ABABA — Eritrea on Tuesday rejected increased UN Security Council sanctions on charges that it supports insurgents in war-torn Somalia, saying the decision will worsen tensions in the Horn of Africa region.

The Security Council on Monday approved further sanctions raising the number of people and entities that can be hit with travel bans and asset freezes.