UN releases USD 70 million for humanitarian emergencies

United Nations: The United Nations is releasing USD 70 million from an emergency fund to provide humanitarian aid to millions of people forced from their homes by violence and instability from Sudan’s conflict-wracked Darfur region to Myanmar.

UN humanitarian chief Stephen O’Brien said today that nearly 60 million people have been forcibly displaced around the world and the international community is facing “a crisis on a scale not seen in generations.”

He said the USD 70 million will help people “in some of the world’s most protracted and chronically underfunded emergencies.”

O’Brien said USD 21 million will go to humanitarian partners in Sudan and Chad for people from Darfur, USD 33 million to agencies in Eritrea, Ethiopia and Somalia, USD 8 million for neglected and displaced people in Myanmar and Bangladesh, and USD 8 million for Afghanistan.