floods

Hundreds of thousands of people affected by Pakistan’s 2012 floods disaster still need urgent help both to meet their immediate needs and to rebuild their homes and livelihoods.

Pakistan is one of the world’s most hazard-prone countries, with each humanitarian crisis costing lives and money and deepening the alarming levels of poverty and malnutrition.

Oxfam India’s CEO Nisha Agrawal is in the UK this week to mark 60 years of Oxfam working in India, responding to emergencies and helping to pull millions of people out of poverty.

Oxfam warned that devastating floods in Niger are affecting more than 500,000 people, most of whose basic needs are not being met.

International aid agency Oxfam and leading West African farmers network ROPPA today welcomed an initial forecast of an improved harvest in the Sahel region but warned governments and the UN that the food crisis is far from over.

Agriculture is highly sensitive to climate variability and weather extremes.

New research shows that the full impact of climate change on future food prices is being underestimated.

Climate change is making extreme weather much more likely. As the 2012 drought in the USA shows, extreme weather means extreme food prices.

The people of Assam are facing two disasters, creating one of the worst humanitarian crises in the last decade. The most severe floods in the past 14 years have affected around two million people across 27 districts of Assam, while ethnic tensions have displaced hundreds of thousands of people.

Lack of funds and limited relief stocks will severely hamper the Pakistan government’s and aid agencies’ ability to respond to further flooding this monsoon season, a consortium of 51 international and more than 150 national humanitarian organisations warned today.