"A 25-year-long $1-billion United Nations aid program for China that fed over 30 million people drew to a close today with the arrival of a final shipment of grain, and a senior UN official urged the world's most populous country to now step up support for hundreds of millions of malnourished people beyond its borders." Full Story
From the Financial Times: "[T]he tsunami showed that only the UN has the universal legitimacy, capacity and credibility to lead in a truly global humanitarian emergency. Days after initiating tsunami relief efforts, regional groups and other core group nations handed over the reins to the UN, in recognition that it alone could co-ordinate some 60 donor countries, military assets from 26 countries and hundreds of international, national and local humanitarian partners....
As we approach the 60th anniversary of the UN's founding, we must summon the courage to listen carefully to our critics and learn from not only our well-publicised failings but also our less-heralded successes. Some of the criticisms are justified, some are not. As Kofi Annan, UN secretary-general, has affirmed, we must fundamentally ramp up our performance, upgrade and modernise our management culture and become the transparent, accountable and effective 21st century institution the world expects the UN to be."
"In a statement marking Saturday's commemoration, the United Nations' World Food Program said it is feeding 1.75 million survivors who lost their homes and livelihoods. The organization has so far moved more than 50,000 metric tons of food using helicopters, planes, cargo ships, landing craft and trucks.
The United Nations pledged this week to stay in the region until rebuilding is complete.
"This is not something that we are going to be able to recover from in weeks or months, it's going to be years," U.N. tsunami envoy Erskine Bowles said after touring Aceh." More...
"A major drive is under way to provide employment for an estimated 40,000 job seekers in the tsunami-hit Indonesian province of Aceh.
International agencies have laid out plans to engage Acehnese in rebuilding their homeland in the next 3 to 5 years.
Three months on, Banda Aceh's river mouth seems ready to breathe life again to a once bustling fish market.
A project called Cash-for-Work under the United Nations Development Programme, was partly instrumental for this clean-up." Read More
UN News Service: "The United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) has received its largest single donation ever from a sporting event - nearly $3.35 million from a fundraising rugby game between the northern and southern hemispheres held earlier this month at Twickenham, England, to help the victims of the Indian Ocean tsunami."
ALERTNET: "Eastern Congo is suffering the world's worst current humanitarian crisis, with a death toll outstripping that in Sudan's strife-torn Darfur region, a top United Nations official said on Wednesday.
U.N. emergency relief coordinator Jan Egeland said that over the last six years the toll in the Democratic Republic of Congo's amounted to "one tsunami every six months" -- a reference to the December disaster which left about 300,000 people dead or missing in Asia.
"In terms of the human lives lost ... this is the greatest humanitarian crisis in the world today and it is beyond belief that the world is not paying more attention," he told a news conference."
From UN News Service: "Visiting Basra in southern Iraq, the senior United Nations envoy to the country pledged the world body's assistance in helping that war-ravaged region to reconstruct.... Nearly two dozen UN funds, programmes and agencies are working under UNAMI to provide humanitarian support to Iraq and coordinate international aid."
UPDATE: Chrenkoff has more: "United Nations Development Programme, too, is helping with the Iraqi electricity sector: it is facilitating the training of Iraqi engineers in Jordan; supplying equipment, expertise and planning to develop better networks; providing spare parts for maintenance of existing infrastructure, and working on new projects which will add between 180 and 200 MW to Iraq's grid."
"A United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) report released last month said the tsunami had dislodged hazardous materials in Somalia, which for years had been used as a dumping ground by other countries for their nuclear waste. The report said the dumping was made easier by the break down of law and order in Somalia after the overthrow of military dictator Mohamed Siad Barre in 1991." Full Story
"Responding to poor road conditions and heavy snow in Afghanistan, the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) is organizing relief airdrops over two remote areas in the centre of the country.
Coalition forces aircraft dropped 40 tons of food provided by WFP over Tulak and Saghar districts in the central Ghor province. WFP's partner, Samander Development Programme, is working with local authorities and community leaders to distribute the food to 7,600 people there." Full Story