NATO anti-piracy flotilla to sail in March

NATO's new anti-piracy flotilla will leave next month bound for the Horn of Africa where it will join an EU task force already patrolling the region, Germany's defense minister said Friday. Defense Minister Franz Josef Jung said Germany will contribute a frigate and a tanker to the six-vessel naval squadron. They will join the EU task force, code-named Operation Atalanta, which is the first naval action undertaken by the bloc. Other nations — including the Netherlands, Spain, Portugal, Canada, Norway, Denmark and the U.S. — also have offered their warships to the anti-piracy force known as the Standing NATO Maritime Group I. [...] Somalia has not had a functioning government since 1991 and nearly half the population is dependent on aid. This is provided mainly by the U.N. World Food Program, whose chartered ships had repeatedly come under pirate attack before the original NATO flotilla arrived in November.

Three UN Agencies Launch Joint Cash Assistance Program

On February 18, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) and the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) launched a joint cash assistance programme for people displaced during the August 2008 crisis in Georgia. Through a WFP led direct cash transfer system, short-term financial assistance will be provided to those who, due to the August conflict left their homes in the Tskhinvali, Java and Akhalgori districts as well as to the Kurta, Tikvi, Eredvi and Azhara communities and those who are currently registered at the Civil Registry Agency of Georgia.

Inflation-wracked Zimbabwe pays workers in US dollars

ZIMBABWE'S new government took its first step towards rebuilding the shattered nation by honouring a pledge to civil servants by paying them in US dollars to counter the impact of hyperinflation. "We will pay every civil servant in foreign currency," Finance Minister Tendai Biti told a news conference in Harare. The armed forces had already been paid, he said. Zimbabwe is grappling with the effects of the world's highest rate of inflation. [...] Mr Tsvangirai explained that the foreign currency payment will enable people to go to work, to feed their families and to survive. Figures from the World Food Program last month indicated that more than half of Zimbabwe's 12 million people did not have enough to eat.

Gov't survey finds health, nutrition problems of Cambodian children

A recent government survey has found that the rising cost of food has halted improvements in child health and nutrition in Cambodia, English-Khmer language newspaper the Cambodia Daily said on Thursday. The percentage of children under 5 found to be "acutely malnourished" has grown in recent years, the paper quoted the Cambodian Anthropometrics Survey, which was issued this week by the government's National Institute of Statistics, as saying. According to the findings, 8.4 percent of children under 5 were acutely malnourished in 2005, but the number rose to 8.9 percent last year. The report also showed a jump since 2005 in the number of young children suffering from ailments such as diarrhea, fever and respiratory infections. "If these numbers turn out to be true, this is a very serious situation and all stakeholders involved (in food security) should take action soon," the World Food Program's recently appointed Country Representative Jean-Pierre De Margerie said.