According to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), the 2013 Yemen Humanitarian Response Plan urgently requires $702 million in order to provide emergency and early recovery assistance to 7.7 million of the country’s most needy.

“Conflict and instability elsewhere in the region and the ongoing political transition in Yemen have overshadowed the humanitarian crisis,” said the UN Resident and Humanitarian Coordinator, Ould Cheikh Ahmed, adding that there can be no long-term stability without addressing the humanitarian needs of the Yemeni people.

Yemen has been undergoing a democratic transition led by President Abdrabuh Mansour Hadi, who came to power in a February 2012 election. A major milestone was achieved in March of this year with the opening of the national dialogue conference that will feed into a constitution-making process and pave the way for general elections in 2014.

However, more than 13 million people – over half the population – are still in need of some form of humanitarian assistance. Food insecurity and malnutrition persist in the country, as well as outbreaks of fatal diseases including measles. Maternal mortality also remains high at 365 for every 100,000 live births.

The appeal has been revised from January, slightly decreasing from $716 million to $702 million as a result of “improved prioritization and focus for the remaining part of 2013,” OCHA said. Within the revised plan, humanitarian partners have also identified the most critical activities that will help people in greatest and most urgent need.

The Plan is currently only 38 per cent funded, and this shortfall has already led to a reduction in the provision of life-saving assistance.

“The almost complete lack of support for early recovery, livelihoods and capacity-building activities is limiting the ability of humanitarian partners to build the resilience of Yemeni communities,” OCHA said in a news release.

“I urge international and regional donors to provide funding for these critical activities that will have immediate impact, saving the lives and livelihoods of the most vulnerable Yemenis,” Mr. Cheikh Ahmed said.

“I call on the international community to invest now to build the resilience of Somalis and stop the cycle of crisis they have endured for far too long,” John Ging, Director of Operations in the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), said at the end of a two-day visit to the capital, Mogadishu, as well as neighbouring Kenya.

An estimated 1 million people in Somalia urgently require humanitarian assistance and a further 1.7 million need sustained support to avoid falling back into crisis, OCHA said in a news release.

In addition, one in seven children in Somalia is malnourished and polio has recently re-emerged after more than six years without a reported case. But the Somalia Humanitarian Appeal for 2013 is just 33 per cent funded.

While in Mogadishu, Mr. Ging also paid tribute to those that lost their lives in last month’s attack on the UN Common Compound – in which UN humanitarian and development workers reside and work.

Among those killed were one international staff member, three contractors and four Somali security guards. Several Somali civilians were also wounded and killed outside the compound.

“My heart goes out to the families and friends of those who lost their lives defending UN staff courageously,” he stated after visiting the compound. “Their heroism and sacrifice will not be forgotten.”

While in the country, Mr. Ging met Somali Government officials, the leadership of the UN and the African Union Mission in Somalia (AMISOM), humanitarian partners and the donor community.

He called on all those with influence to redouble their efforts to provide a safe working environment for humanitarians and expressed his deepest respect and appreciation for the continued dedication of humanitarian aid workers in Somalia to reach all those in need, despite the risks.

“The day after the attack on the UN compound, humanitarian workers were back out there implementing an emergency vaccination campaign against polio,” said Mr. Ging. “Their commitment to ending humanitarian suffering in all areas of Somalia is unwavering.”

“The protection of civilians is of the utmost importance,” said the acting UN Humanitarian Coordinator, Zakaria Maiga.

“I call on all parties to provide security for the people of Bangui and everywhere in the country, to refrain from further escalation of violence, and to respect international humanitarian and human rights law.”

The Séléka overran the capital city of Bangui on 24 March, forcing President François Bozizé to flee. The developments were condemned by both Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and the Security Council, which called on all parties in CAR to protect civilians.

This is the latest wave of fighting since December 2012 when the rebel coalition launched a series of attacks, taking control of major towns.

Since then, an estimated 173,000 people have been displaced within the country, while more than 32,000 have fled to Cameroon, Chad and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, according to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA).

“We are doing everything possible to step up humanitarian operations throughout the country and need safe access to people in need,” added Dr. Maiga.

Speaking from Bangui, Amy Martin, who heads the OCHA office there, said the security situation appears much calmer with less sporadic gunfire and more people out on the streets.

“Our main concern is getting the water supply back up and running. Getting the electric supply up and running is also critical to help keep the basic services and hospitals functioning,” Ms. Martin said.

The UN and partners are providing fuel to the hospitals, as well as medical supplies and emergency kits to support medical needs.

While some shops are open, Ms. Martin noted that banks, schools and government offices are still closed.

“People need to buy food. They need to access their money. They need to go back to work so they can get money to buy their food, so it is a huge chain event,” she said.

In the north of the country, Ms. Martin said the UN has “patchwork information” based on the presence of non-governmental organizations (NGOs), and urged greater safety and security for civilians and for aid workers.

The UN has relocated 311 staff belonging to the world body and some NGOs, but is keeping international and national staff in Bangui to “deliver what we can with what we have available and to where we can get to.”

“Until we have security on the roads that permit us to get from Bangui to the interior of the country it is going to be difficult to say we are fully functional again and fully operational,” she added.

The fighting with Séléka is the latest crisis in CAR, which has a history of political instability and recurring armed conflict.

There are currently 1.5 million people in the country who need assistance, and the latest fighting will likely increase that number. According to OCHA, more than 80,000 people are estimated to be at risk of severe food shortages during the upcoming lean season, while 13,500 children under the age of 5 are at risk of severe acute malnutrition.

Ms. Martin said the situation is especially concerning with the agricultural season coming up, and aid workers cannot get seeds and agricultural inputs out to farming communities.

“We already had a fragile situation prior to the crisis so food security support was being planned for many in the north and the north-east,” Ms. Martin noted.

The insecurity makes it “very difficult to ensure that the harvest season will happen and that is critical for the nutritional status of children.”

The UN and the authorities in Bangui have asked donors for $129 million to fund the 2013 CAR humanitarian appeal. OCHA said the humanitarian response plan is now being revised to take into account the additional needs generated by the latest crisis.

Every year, tens of thousands of irregular migrants and asylum-seekers from the Middle East, Asia and Africa cross the Greek land and sea border with Turkey in search of shelter, refuge or just a better life within the European Union (EU). Few of them find it in Greece.

“Greece’s failure to respect the rights of migrants and asylum-seekers is taking on the proportions of a humanitarian crisis. Against a backdrop of sustained migratory pressure, profound economic crisis and rising xenophobic sentiment, Greece is proving itself incapable of providing even the most basic requirements of safety and shelter to the thousands of asylum seekers and migrants arriving each year,” said John Dalhuisen, Europe and Central Asia Program Director at Amnesty International.

While the burden on Greece is great, there is no excuse for the obstacles asylum-seekers face in registering their asylum claims. A new agency set up by law in 2011 to hear asylum applications is yet to process a single case on account of staffing shortages.

In the meantime, at the Attika Aliens Police Directorate in Athens, only around 20 people succeed in registering their asylum application on the one day a week it opens. The queue forms days in advance and stretches hundreds long down the street. Amnesty International spoke to numerous asylum-seekers who had had to fight their fellows to keep their place.

The majority who do not manage – or give up trying – to register their asylum claims run the risk of arrest in mass sweep operations and of being detained in overcrowded, unhygienic detention facilities for up to a year or more.

“The Greek authorities continue to systematically detain asylum-seekers and irregular migrants including unaccompanied children in breach of international standards and seem to use detention – often in appalling conditions – as a deterrent,” said Dalhuisen.

“The situation of unaccompanied children, who are amongst the most vulnerable, is particularly worrying. We found several children detained among adults in very poor conditions during a recent visit at the Corinth detention center.

“Amnesty International has even received reports of people fleeing conflict and war in countries such as Syria being pushed back to Turkey through the river Evros”  said Dalhuisen.

There has also been a dramatic rise of  in the number of racially motivated attacks throughout 2012. Asylum-seekers, migrants, community centres, shops and mosques have been the target of such attacks which have been reported on an almost daily basis since the summer.

A draft presidential decree creating the specialized police units to curb racist violence is a first step towards the right direction, but falls short of  guaranteeing the effective investigations and prosecutions for crimes where victims are reluctant to approach the police for fear of arrest and detention themselves.

EU asylum policy requires asylum-seekers to return to the first country they entered upon arrival in the EU. However, after the European Court of Human Rights concluded in 2011 that Greece lacked an effective asylum determination system, many EU countries have halted the return of asylum-seekers to Greece.

“Most European countries have taken the right step in stopping the return of asylum seekers to Greece until the country reforms its asylum system. However, they must share responsibility for processing asylum applications and supporting asylum seekers more equally among member states,” said Dalhuisen.

“The current situation in Greece is totally unworthy of the Nobel Peace Prize winning European Union and so far below international human rights standards as to make a mockery of them. Greece needs help but it must also accept its own responsibilities.”

“We really hope that a ground offensive will not happen, because – among many other things – it will also cause a lot of humanitarian problems,” said the Commissioner-General of the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), Filippo Grandi.

The latest wave of violence – which includes rocket attacks against Israel from Gaza, and Israeli airstrikes on Gaza – began on 14 November. A chorus of UN officials, beginning with Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, have appealed for an end to the violence and strongly urged the parties to achieve an immediate ceasefire.

That appeal was echoed by Grandi, who met with refugees living in Gaza, and spoke to staff at a distribution centre which was badly damaged in airstrikes in the town of Jabalia. The centre was subsequently repaired by staff to enable food distributions to thousands of refugees.

Home to nearly 1.7 million people, Gaza is a small but densely populated area, which has been under an Israeli blockade since 2006 and suffers from a faltering economy and rampant poverty.

Speaking at a press encounter with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Jerusalem yesterday, Ban stated his immediate concern is for the safety and well-being of all civilians, in Israel and in Gaza.

“Rocket attacks by Palestinian militants targeting Israel must cease immediately,” he said, while also calling on Israel to exercise maximum restraint. “I strongly cautioned against a ground operation, which will only result in further tragedy.

“I have also stressed that while Israeli rockets may be aimed at military targets inside Gaza, they kill and injure civilians and damage civilian infrastructures. The loss of civilian lives is unacceptable under any circumstances.”

The UN chief noted that innocent people, including children, are being killed and injured on both sides, and appealed to all those commanding, bearing and operating arms to respect international humanitarian law to ensure the protection of civilians at all times.

The Secretary-General arrived in Israel following talks in Cairo with officials of the Egyptian Government and the League of Arab States. He is scheduled to travel next to Ramallah in the West Bank to meet with the head of the Palestinian Authority, President Mahmoud Abbas.

Most UNICEF activities in Gaza are suspended due to insecurity, but five UNICEF-supported emergency psychosocial teams are visiting children and families affected by the violence in their homes or at hospitals whenever conditions permit.

“Terrified by the sounds of air raid sirens, children in southern Israel and Tel Aviv run into shelters several times a day to escape death,” it added in a news release. “In Gaza, many sleep in the cold. Windows are left open for fear of injury from glass shards if windows are blown by explosions. Trapped by the six year blockade and poverty, they have nowhere to go.”

The agency added that medical supplies to treat severely injured patients are urgently needed. Plastic sheeting to seal broken windows, fuel to run generators for hospitals and water and sanitation facilities, and chlorine for water treatment plants are scarce.

Meanwhile, the UN World Food Programme (WFP) was scheduled to begin food distributions for more than 30,000 people to prevent the conflict from deepening hunger in Gaza, which is already a food-insecure area.

“We are deeply concerned about the situation in Gaza and will continue to assist the most vulnerable households, many of whom have been affected by the violence,” said WFP’s Country Director in the occupied Palestinian territories, Pablo Recalde.

WFP has enough food in its Gaza warehouses to cover the food needs of 285,000 people, about 60 per cent of the non-refugee population, for one month. It has enough food outside of the area to last its residents another two months if necessary.

However, access to Gaza is challenging even under normal circumstances, noted the agency, which is concerned about its ability to continue reaching those in need should the conflict escalate.

“We had the opportunity with the Minister of Foreign Affairs to exchange thoughts on critical issues like the developments in Syria and the deteriorating humanitarian situation there and the influx of refugees the conflict  has created.”

In this context, he asked the foreign minister for Greece to intervene, in order to receive greater assistance from the EU to host, refugees coming from the neighboring country, which should be given the opportunity to be repatriated when the crisis in the region is resolved. ”

As stated by the Foreign Minister, the meeting was particularly useful, as it is important to know the positions of SYRIZA in matters of foreign policy, but also to provide the opposition the information needed.

Tsipras also expressed his concerns for the “clouds of war over Iran”, which he said affect “our country directly”, to the extent that the tightening of relations with Israel not only in terms of  know-how and trade, “which we fully accept and would like to promote, but also in terms of military cooperation which is something that concern us, because no way should our country become part of the problem in the Middle East, but part of an investigative solution”.

Avramopoulos and Tsipras both agreed on the need for the country’s foreign policy to be based on national understanding.

There are currently 80,000 Syrian refugees in Turkey, according to the office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, and Greek officials say they expect nearly 15,000 of them to try to enter Greece by the end of September. Greece recently stepped up its border patrols, transferring almost 1,900 border guards from other parts of the country to the northeastern region of Evros, which borders Turkey.

At the same time, local authorities on the islands of the northeastern Aegean are bracing for what is expected to be a growing wave of refugees from war-torn Syria, as measures to reduce the inflow of illegal immigrants via the Greek-Turkish border in the Evros region have put a greater strain on the porous coastlines of Greece’s islands, according to Kathimerini.

Local officials in the northeastern Aegean say that there has already been a significant increase in the number of refugees from Turkey. Their concern is that this wave will grow as the civil war in Syria escalates and that they are ill-equipped to deal with such a large influx.

The report, produced by the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), states that out of the 435,000 displaced persons, nearly 262,000 have registered with the UN as refugees in neighbouring countries including Niger, Burkina Faso and Algeria, while some 174,000 are internally displaced in the northern towns of Timbuktu, Gao and Kidal.

In January, fighting between Government forces and Tuareg rebels broke out in northern Mali. The instability and insecurity resulting from the renewed clashes, as well as the proliferation of armed groups in the region and political instability in the wake of a military coup d’état in March, have led to massive displacement.

Mali is also located in the Sahel region, a semi-arid belt crossing the north of Africa, which exposes it to a risk of famine. The conflict, coupled with food insecurity, has led to a complex humanitarian emergency, the report states.

The report warns that refugees and internally displaced persons (IDPs) are in urgent need of food, shelter and water, and warns that the food security situation is deteriorating in the country as a plague of locusts in northern Mali is now spreading and is threatening agricultural production.

In addition, the report, which was released yesterday, notes that health conditions are also a cause for concern as 140 cholera cases, including 11 deaths, have been reported in the Gao and Ansongo districts in the northern part of the country.

The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) reported that some 4.6 million people are now in need of food assistance. So far, the World Food programme has reached 360,000 people in southern Mali, and over 148,000 people in the north, according to the report. To address this issue, the food relief agency is also organizing activities which include reforestation, prevention of erosion and desertification and soil restoration that will help people achieve longer-term food security.

Earlier this month, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, António Guterres, had called for more funds to assist Malian refugees. So far, donors have provided $95.3 million to respond to the crisis of the $213 million required.

“Hundreds of thousands of people remain trapped in the conflict zone with little access to food, water, shelter and medical services,” said Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs Valerie Amos in a statement.

“In order to respond to these growing needs, humanitarian agencies need unimpeded and complete access to all areas. I remain especially concerned that there continues to be no access to areas controlled by the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement-North (SPLM-N),” she said.

Thousands of people are also crossing into neighbouring countries each day after fleeing conflict and related food shortages in Sudan and, according to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), the number of Sudanese refugees arriving in South Sudan and Ethiopia has more than doubled since April, amounting to 200,000.

“The new arrivals are in a desperate state, with large numbers of children in urgent need of treatment for malnutrition,” Amos said.

While the Sudanese Government announced its acceptance of the Tripartite Proposal of the African Union (AU), the Arab League and the UN for the delivery of humanitarian assistance in South Kordofan and Blue Nile states, the Government has laid out operational conditions that do not allow for the delivery of assistance by neutral parties in SPLM-N-controlled areas, Amos noted.

“I therefore continue to call on the Government of Sudan to deliver on its stated commitment: that assistance can reach all Sudanese people in need,” Ms. Amos said, reiterating the UN’s commitment to work with all parties to “find an acceptable solution for the immediate delivery of assistance to all people in need.”

Ms. Amos also welcomed the joint World Food Programme (WFP) and Government verification exercise that recently took place in six Government-controlled areas of South Kordofan, noting that food distribution had already begun, with the initial aim of reaching more than 100,000 people.