#COVID-19

The United Nations Emergency Relief Coordinator, Mark Lowcock, has released $10 million from the Central Emergency Response Fund to help bolster the response to East Africa’s worst desert locust outbreak in decades, which is destroying crops in communities already facing food shortages.

The United Nations, jointly with the Government of Somalia and humanitarian partners, launched the 2020 Humanitarian Response Plan in Mogadishu, calling for $1 billion to provide life-saving assistance and livelihood support for 3 million people, nearly half of whom are internally displaced.

Today, the World Food Programme unveiled the “HungerMap LIVE”, a new tool that monitors food security in more than 90 countries and issues predictions for areas from which data is limited.  The HungerMap presents data collected on a continuous basis, as well as metrics on conflict, climate shocks, population and weather.

While the number of journalists killed worldwide dropped by nearly half in 2019 to the lowest annual toll in more than a decade, they continue to face risks and perpetrators enjoy almost total impunity for these crimes, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization reported today.

The United Nations is in touch with the Government of the Philippines, which is leading the response to the Taal volcano eruption in the Calabarzon region, some 70 kilometres south of Manila.  The Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs says that 18,000 people have taken shelter in evacuation centres.

Food prices around the world are at their highest levels in five years, the food price index from the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) says.  According to FAO, prices rose for the third consecutive month in December, with vegetable oil, sugar, dairy and cereals among the commodities driving up world food prices.