Sets priority countries, activities for working with FAO

6 June 2013, Rome - Italy has announced it will contribute an additional €6 million to support FAO's strategic priorities including €1 million towards the Organization's emergency programme.

The announcement came at the end of a two-day Annual Review Meeting, during which FAO and Italian officials reviewed the Italy/FAO Cooperative Programme including the results achieved by more than 50 Italy-funded projects with a total budget of US$127.2 million.

Addis Ababa, Ethiopia - The State Minister of Finance and Economic Development of Ethiopia, H.E. Ato Ahmed Shide, and the Vice Minister of Foreign Affairs of Italy, H.E. Mr Lapo Pistelli, signed today the new three year Ethio-Italian Cooperation Framework which envisages new initiatives in the two priority sectors of agriculture and rural development, and provision of basic services (health, education and WASH), with a specific focus on the cross-cutting issues of private sector development, gender and environment.

Financed entirely by eleven donors, the World Bank-administered Emergency Services Support Program (ESSP) Multi-Donor Trust Fund (MDTF) provided key financing for the Palestinian Authority’s (PA) social sector emergency program. This program was successfully implemented, despite the difficult security context, and benefited the entire Palestinian population in the West Bank and Gaza. At the conclusion of the project, public facilities continued to operate at the same or higher levels than the 2007 baselines.

Challenge

By Mariana Osihn

ROME, 25 March 2013 - Italy has moved to empower its leaders to make better informed decisions to reduce the country's overall disaster risk.

The government is in the process of establishing a national disaster loss database in the wake of last year's devastating series of earthquakes and after-shocks that caused EUR13 billion of losses.

The disaster, in the Emilia-Romagna, Lombardia and Veneto regions, resulted in the loss of a stock of Parmesan cheese that alone was worth an estimated EUR200 million.

The Italian Ambassador to Jordan, Patrizio Fondi, has visited the Syrian refugee camp in Zaatari to deliver medical supplies for the Italian-Jordanian field hospital. The supplies will be used to treat respiratory illnesses, diabetes, high blood pressure, reproductive health and children’s conditions, as requested by the hospital’s director.

Supplies of equipment and prefabricated modules

Natural Disasters in Asia

Analyses of EM-DAT disaster statistics for the last decades provide us with insights on the trends and patterns of disaster occurrence and impact, both globally and in individual continents, regions and countries. From 2002 to 2011 worldwide, a total of 3,800 disasters killed over 1 million people, affected 2.5 billion others and caused US$ 1,453 billion of economic damages.

The refugee emergency and food crisis are what most concern the European Union in Mali. The alarm was sounded by Humanitarian Aid Commissioner Kristalina Georgieva upon her return from a mission to Bamako and Burkina Faso, one month on from her last visit.

Italian Development Cooperation has donated food and medical supplies to the population of the Lake Turkana region in north-western Kenya, where communities are suffering extreme conditions and serious shortages of basic supplies.

The Italian donation, of 150,000 euros, was used to buy 74 tons of corn, 47 tons of beans and 22,000 litres of cooking oil. The medical supplies donated include antibiotics, an incubator and equipment for maternity and paediatric services.

Help for about 8200 people

01/01/2013 13:07 GMT

ROME, Jan 01, 2013 (AFP) - An immigrant's body washed up on a beach in Sicily on Tuesday after two boat landings from North Africa in two days, including one in which dozens of migrants were forced to swim ashore by the crew.

The body was found near the seaside village of Tre Fontane, the same area where Italian border police said they had tracked down 48 undocumented migrants on Monday and Tuesday after two separate landings.