After several years of mega-disasters and consequent high funding for disaster response, international humanitarian disaster funding dipped to the relatively low 2009 level.

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Following is UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon’s message to the International Conference on Food Security in Drylands, in Qatar on 14 November:

I am pleased to send greetings to the International Conference on Food Security in Drylands, and I thank His Highness Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad bin Khalifa Al-Thani and the Qatar National Food Security Programme for organizing it. I also thank Qatar for hosting the forthcoming 18th Conference of Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change.

Millions more will go hungry as world struggles to respond to unprecedented food crises and sharply rising prices – Oxfam

PM’s hunger summit welcome & should kick start reforms to end “scandal” of a billion hungry people – “we cannot keep relying on humanitarian agencies to pick up the pieces”

Rising global food prices will force millions more people to go hungry and put massive additional strain on already overstretched humanitarian agencies, Oxfam warned today ahead of this weekend’s global hunger summit in Downing Street.

Ireland Donates €70 Million to Emergency Appeals

It was announced today that Ireland has donated more than €70 million to Red Cross emergency appeals over the last 10 years. Speaking at the Irish Red Cross in Dublin, Annita Underlin - Director of the International Federation of the Red Cross and Red Crescent’s Europe Zone, said that, ‘the generosity of the Irish public has literally changed thousands if not millions of lives around the world’.

Highlights Countries in this issue: - International prices of wheat decreased for the third consecutive month but those of rice continue to increase. Maize prices declined marginally. - In Eastern Africa, cereal prices are at generally high levels with new peaks reached in several countries. - In Western and Southern Africa, prices of coarse grains remained overall low despite some seasonal increases. - In Far East Asia, domestic prices of rice and wheat are moving upward. - In CIS countries, prices of wheat remained virtually unchanged despite ongoing harvests.

Highlights

- The FAO Food Price Index in December slightly surpassed its peak of early summer 2008. The indices of sugar and oils and fats increased the most.

- International rice prices decreased in the first half of January and those of wheat and maize remained firm after increasing in December.

- In Africa, prices of maize, sorghum and millet, the main staples in the region, remained generally low in the past months following bumper 2010 coarse grain harvests.

- In Asia, domestic prices of rice further strengthened in December and are at record levels in several countries.

FACTS & FIGURES

- There have been 706 cases globally this year (635 type 1 and 71 type 3), compared with 1 126 cases at this time last year (387 type 1, 735 type 3, four type 1/3 mixtures). 17 countries have reported cases in 2010, compared with 21 at this time last year.

- As of 28 September, 151 districts have been infected with wild poliovirus in 2010 - an almost 65% reduction compared with the 408 districts infected at the same time last year.

- In September, Sierra Leone and Liberia came off the active outbreak list (no cases in the past six months) while

Five actual or potential conflict situations around the world deteriorated and three improved in August 2009, according to the new issue of the International Crisis Group's monthly bulletin CrisisWatch, released today.

Violence continued to escalate in Chechnya and in the North Caucasus republics of Ingushetia and Dagestan. Intensified attacks by insurgents throughout the month included a suicide bombing on police headquarters in the Ingushetia capital Nazran that killed 25 and injured over 100 on 17 August. As violence in Chechnya worsened, the murder

In 2008, armed conflicts and other situations of violence shattered the lives of large numbers of children, women and men in many countries among which the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Georgia, Pakistan, Somalia, Sri Lanka, the Philippines, Chad and Colombia. Direct attacks on civilian communities, general insecurity and the destruction of livelihoods forced innumerable civilians to flee their homes. Assisting and protecting internally displaced people (IDPs), who are protected under international humanitarian law (IHL) and other relevant international law,