In Somalia, needs will be highest among IDPs and the pastoral destitute when the lean season approaches in October.

Household food security in Kyrgyzstan has deteriorated, with an estimated 25 % of the population - about 1.3 million people - considered food insecure

Both Guatemala and Myanmar were affected by earthquakes during the reporting period. On 7 November, an earthquake of 7.2 magnitude struck the pacific coast of Guatemala, affecting more than 600,000 people followed by a second quake of 6.2 magnitude on 11 November. There were no immediate reports of major infrastructural damage caused by the second earthquake. The 6.8 magnitude earthquake which struck in Myanmar on 10 November, meanwhile, damaged infrastructure but the full extent of the impact remains unclear.

This week, renewed violence between Arakan Buddhists and Rohingya Muslims took place in Rahkin state in Myanmar, affecting an estimated 28,000 people. Sectarian violence between the two communities in June already left more than 75,000 people displaced. Despite a four-day truce that was supposed to come into effect on Friday 26 October, fighting has continued in Damascus province, Aleppo, Idlib, Daara and Deir Ezzor in Syria. The number of flood-affected people in Chad has risen to 700,000, up from 445,000 in September, with 16 of the country’s 22 regions affected.

Link: Global Food Security Update - Issue 8, October 2012

Snapshot, 8 to 15 October

This week, flooding caused by heavy rains affected more than 1.3 million people in Nigeria. Flooding also affected more than five million people in Sindh, Balochistan and Punjab in Pakistan and around 226,000 in Bogra State in Bangladesh. A heavy tropical cyclone hit the south-west coast of Bangladesh on 11th October 2012 displacing 20,000 people and affecting more than 100,000. Armed violence continued to escalate in Syria with heavy fighting occurring in Homs, Daraa, Deir Ezzor, Idlib, Latakia, Aleppo and Damascus.

By Peter Richards Republish

PORT OF SPAIN, Trinidad, Jun 25 2012 (IPS) - It’s the type of honour roll that journalists would prefer not to be on.

But as an emotional Allison Bethel-McKenzie read out the names of the 72 journalists who have made that grim list so far this year, even Trinidad and Tobago’s president, George Maxwell Richards, was moved to plead for “some form of internationally recognised immunity” to lessen the risks to journalists while doing their jobs.

El sistema humanitario internacional no será capaz de hacer frente al creciente número de crisis si no se actúa localmente

La agencia internacional Oxfam ha advertido hoy de que la capacidad de respuesta del sistema humanitario internacional no será suficiente para hacer frente al aumento en el número de personas expuestas a futuras crisis si no se destinan más fondos a los países más vulnerables y se invierta más en prevención y reducción de riesgos ante posibles desastres.

Cooperatives and producer organizations will be increasingly important in efforts to eliminate hunger and reduce poverty, the head of the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) said today.

“FAO needs strong cooperatives and producer organizations as key partners in the effort to eliminate hunger for some 925 million people, and to respond to the many challenges that face our world today,” said Director-General José Graziano da Silva.