Full Coverage: Asia and the Pacific

26.09.2008 With millions displaced and many still awaiting rescue in India’s flood-hit Orissa state, a leading development charity calls for the declaration of a "national calamity", to allow the rapid deployment of federal resources.
+ Over 10 million affected as Indian floods worsen

26.09.2008 New regions in India have been severely affected by flooding, with more than 10 million people, half of them children, directly affected in Bihar and Orissa, two of the country's poorest states.

25.09.2008 The Middle East Quartet (EU, Russia, UN, US) is failing to make progress on improving the lives of Palestinians and improving the prospects for peace, a group of aid agencies said today.
+ Palestinian TV stations suffer in power struggle between rival factions
+ OneWorld Palestine Guide

22.09.2008 With the United Nations and other international humanitarian agencies vacating the besieged Tamil rebel stronghold of Kilinochchi, the Sri lankan government has responsibility for maintaining essential supplies to tens of thousands of civilians in the area.
+ Tamil Tiger trap
+ OneWorld Sri Lanka Guide

22.09.2008 More than 99 per cent of all maternal deaths occur in developing countries, with about 84 per cent concentrated in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia, says a new report by the UN Children's Fund.

19.09.2008 As the 21 September International Day of Peace approaches, UN agencies call for a halt to hostilities in Afghanistan to allow polio immunization to take place.

17.09.2008 Corruption is a serious threat in humanitarian assistance, Sarah Bailey of Britain’s Overseas Development Institute (ODI) told a meeting in London.

15.09.2008 A group of mine clearers win the Nansen Award for enabling hundreds of thousands of refugees and internally displaced people to return home.

12.09.2008 The rate of deaths of children under five continued to decline in 2007, according to the UN Children's Agency, which warns that under-nutrition is a contributing cause of more than one-third of the 9.2 million under-five deaths worldwide.

11.09.2008 Ending executions for crimes committed by children in just five countries - Iran, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Pakistan, and Yemen - would result in universal implementation of the prohibition on the juvenile death penalty, says a leading rights organisation.

09.09.2008 China is set to launch a $3.5 billion research project for genetically modified crops to help address the demand for food in the world's most populous nation.

05.09.2008 The six-month prison sentences imposed on four Iranian cyber-feminists for "publishing information against the government" are an outrage, says a media freedom group.

04.09.2008 Demands by developing countries and campaigners for immediate improvements to make aid work better for the poor have been blocked at an international meeting by the US, Japan and the World Bank, according to an international development charity.
+ International aid transparency initiative launched
+ UK plan for ending abuse of aid
+ Action Needed So Aid Works Better for the Poor, Zoellick Says

04.09.2008 Major food and soft drink companies are "using a persuasive array of techniques" to market unhealthy products to children in the Asia-Pacific region, claims a new report.

04.09.2008 Efforts to tackle the floods in north-east India that have affected over 2.7 million people must be increased urgently to avert a secondary disaster due to disease, an international agency has warned.

02.09.2008 Concern over reports of women being abused in flood relief camps in the Indian state of Bihar has been voiced by an international aid charity, as another warned that Children living on highways to escape floods are being killed by traffic.

01.09.2008 Christian Aid is providing £200,000 in aid to the flood victims in the Indian state of Bihar.