Why the United Nations is Suddenly Warning About Drought and Famine in Somalia Mark Leon Goldberg June 5, 2019Somalia is facing a new food crisis. By the middle of the summer over 5 million people will be in some level of food insecurity. Some 2.2 million of those people will face what is known as a "crisis level" of food insecurity -- this is the kind of food insecur...
The UN Releases Its Estimate of How Much Money Will Be Needed to Pay for Humanitarian Crises in 2019 Mark Leon Goldberg December 4, 2018The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, better known as OCHA, is the branch of the UN system that facilitates global responses to humanitarian crises. Today, that office released its forecast of manmade and natural disasters tha...
PODCAST: The UN’s Top Humanitarian Official Discusses the Crisis in Yemen and the Challenge of Funding Crisis Responses Mark Leon Goldberg November 4, 2018Mark Lowcock is the top humanitarian official at the United Nations, serving as the Under Secretary General for Humanitarian Affairs and the UN's Emergency Relief Coordinator.When a manmade or natural disaster strikes, his UN Office for the Coordinatio...
A Final Showdown Looms in Syria. The UN Warns it Could be a “Bloodbath” Mark Leon Goldberg August 23, 2018The Syrian war may be entering its final phase. Rebel fighters from various factions are now concentrated in Idlib, in northern Syria. Idlib is the place to which civilians and members of armed groups were permitted to escape as part of evacuation deals f...
The Syria Humanitarian Crisis Enters a New Phase Mark Leon Goldberg February 3, 2016The United Kingdom plays host to a major conference this week intended to raise money and political support for the Syrian humanitarian disaster. There are now over 4.6 million Syrian refugees who have fled abroad, mostly to surrounding countries and 7.6 m...
Infographic of the Day: The World’s Most Neglected Humanitarian Emergencies Mark Leon Goldberg August 5, 2015Today's map comes from a UN entity called the Central Emergency Response Fund. It shows where some $70 million of funding for humanitarian relief operations were disbursed today. These eight emergencies are not necessarily the biggest in the w...
Infographic of the Day: Humanitarian Relief’s Scary Funding Gap Mark Leon Goldberg June 17, 2015The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs released it's mid-year report of the response to humanitarian emergencies around the world. Taken together, these graphics do an excellent job of telling the story of a humanitarian system under enormo...
Meet the UN’s New Humanitarian Chief Mark Leon Goldberg March 11, 2015The British Parliamentarian Stephen O’Brien will replace Valerie Amos as head of the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. This is a key post in the UN system in charge of disaster response. “So far, the married father-of-three, who currentl...
Here’s How Much It Will Cost to Stop Ebola Mark Leon Goldberg September 16, 2014The UN releases a new funding assessment.
