WMO Annual Climate Statement Confirms 2012 as Among Top Ten Warmest Years

GENEVA, 2 May 2013 (WMO) The World Meteorological Organization’s Statement on the Status of the Global Climate says that 2012 joined the ten previous years as one of the warmest — at ninth place — on record despite the cooling influence of a La Niña episode early in the year.

Today at the G-8 Foreign Ministers meeting in London, the United States joined G-8 partners in support of the United Kingdom’s Preventing Sexual Violence Initiative, and reaffirmed its commitment to work with the international community to strengthen global coordination and individual countries’ capacity to prevent sexual violence; promote justice and accountability; and provide care for survivors of such violence.

Lessons learned from Hurricane Sandy are high on the agenda of a meeting convened by the World Meteorological Organization to review the 2012 tropical cyclone season in the Atlantic and eastern North Pacific and prepare for the forthcoming season.

The Hurricane Committee of WMO Regional Association IV (North and Central America and the Caribbean) meets in Curacao 8-12 April to discuss how to strengthen warning services and regional coordination to protect lives and property.

Earlier this year, in the State of the Union address, President Obama called upon us to join the world in ending extreme poverty in the next two decades. It was an extraordinary moment, as the President set forth a vision for one of the greatest contributions to human progress in history.

Haiti – IOM Haiti has received additional funding of US$100,000 from the U.S. Department of State, Bureau of Population, Refugees and Migration (PRM), to continue a programme that began in 2009 aimed at discouraging dangerous irregular migration from Haiti’s North-Western coast.

Thirty-two countries* will participate in a full-scale tsunami alert exercise in the Caribbean on 20 March 2013. The goal is to test the reaction capacity in countries of the Caribbean and adjacent regions, including the East Coast of Canada and the United States, the Gulf of Mexico and Bermuda. The exercise was organized under the auspices of UNESCO’s Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission (IOC).

La France, les Etats-Unis et Haïti inaugureront la maternité de l’Hôpital de l’Université d’Etat d’Haïti (HUEH) à l’occasion de la journée internationale des droits des femmes, le vendredi 8 mars 2013. Cette inauguration s’inscrit dans le cadre de la reconstruction de l’HUEH financée par les trois pays.

La maternité est l’un des seuls bâtiments de l’hôpital à avoir résisté au séisme du 12 janvier 2010 mais elle était en très mauvais état. Malgré cela, elle était fortement fréquentée : 6 000 accouchements par an, 15 000 consultations en gynécologie et 12 000 en prénatal.

An estimated $9 billion of public and private funding has been spent on disaster recovery in Haiti since the 2010 earthquake. Of that, $2.25 billion in public funding has been disbursed by the United States alone. But despite the large amount of public money involved, it is nearly impossible to track how it has been spent and what has been achieved. The transparency and accountability of US spending in Haiti needs to be improved. Here we suggest three steps to do so: Require prime contractors to report subcontracting data Adopt the International Aid Transparency Initiative

République dominicaine – Plus de 200 travailleurs migrants haïtiens ont reçu cette semaine des cartes d’identité pour travailleurs temporaires, délivrées par la Direction générale de la migration (DGM) de la République dominicaine, dans le cadre des efforts déployés pour améliorer la capacité du Gouvernement à traiter les cas des travailleurs migrants.

Ce groupe de migrants, auparavant vulnérables, pourra désormais traverser la frontière pour aller à Haïti et regagner la République dominicaine sans frais, et circuler librement à l’intérieur de la République dominicaine.