Mercy Relief and Filipino partners revive ecosystems for Zambales’s coastal communities with integrated livelihood, water sanitation, healthcare & ecotourism projects

On March 12, Tzu Chi Foundation started work on the second phase of permanent housing project in southern Taiwan for survivors of Typhoon Morakot, which struck the island in August 8, 2009. It aims to move 254 families into their new homes by the second anniversary in August this year. A total of 954 families live in the first phase. Previously, all lived in mountainous areas; after the typhoon, the government designated these areas as too dangerous to live in.

Meranti dumped over 350 millimetres (14 inches) of rain over the past 24 hours in Chinfeng, Taima and Tajen township in southeast Taiwan's Taitung county, an area still reeling from last year's devastating Typhoon Morakot.

"Since Wednesday, rain has kept falling in the area," Hsu Yu-chang, an official at the Taitung county government, told AFP.

The downpour caused landslides, cutting

This annual report focuses on the work of the Asia Pacific zone office in 2009 to provide leadership and guidance to the International Federation efforts to increase the impact of Asia Pacific national societies' humanitarian activities. 2009 has been a very busy but productive period as the zone office has responded to multiple disasters simultaneously, while carrying forward several new initiatives designed to increase the impact of its work with Asia Pacific national societies. Many national societies across the zone have maintained a high

Summary:

The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies' (IFRC) East Asia regional office serves to support and build capacities within the national societies of the East Asia region. The region includes China, Mongolia, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK), the Republic of Korea, and Japan. The IFRC has programmes that support the national societies in China, Mongolia and the Democratic People's Republic of Korea.

The IFRC continues to support the Red

The signing and exchanging of notes officially marked the appropriation of approximately 23.1 billion yen (approximately 11.8 billion pesos) for the two (2) loans, namely, the Development Policy Support Program 3 (DPSP3) and the Emergency Budget Support Japanese ODA Loan. In addition, the signing and exchanging of notes officially marked

ADB is providing a $1.4 million grant from its Technical Assistance Special Fund for the fourth phase of the Phnom Penh Plan for Development Management. The People's Republic of China is providing a supplementary grant of $500,000 from its Regional Cooperation

Geneva - In the past decade, nearly 60 per cent of the people killed by disasters died because of earthquakes, the Center for Research on Epidemiology of Disasters (CRED) revealed today in a joint press conference with the United Nations International Strategy for Disaster Reduction (UNISDR).

"Earthquakes are the deadliest natural hazard of the past ten years and remain a serious threat for millions of people worldwide as eight out of the ten most populous cities in the world are on earthquake fault-lines," said Margareta Wahlström, UN Special

By Thin Lei Win

BANGKOK (AlertNet) - Name a natural disaster, any disaster. Be it a typhoon, earthquake, volcanic eruption, landslide or tsunami -- all 10 countries that make up Southeast Asian bloc ASEAN have experienced them all.

The region suffered 152 natural disasters in 2008 according to ASEAN, with the biggest being Cyclone Nargis which tore through Myanmar killing nearly 140,000 people.

More recently, a 7.6-magnitude earthquake hit Indonesia in October, around the same time successive typhoons battered