NAIROBI, 23 December 2015 (IRIN)– El Niño is the largely unwanted Christmas gift – a warming of the tropical Pacific causing drought and floods that will peak at the end of this month, but will impact weather systems around the globe into 2016.
This year’s El Niño has been steadily gaining strength since March. It’s likely to be one of the most extreme events of this nature yet seen, with the UN’s emergency aid coordination body, OCHA, warning that “millions will be impacted”.
23 December, 2015 (IRIN)* – Already the Arabian Peninsula’s poorest country, the rise of the Houthi insurgency and Saudi Arabian-led airstrikes intended to oust them from power led to a full-blown humanitarian disaster.
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And then in November, coastal regions were hit by the most powerful storm in decades, causing displacement and flooding.
The UN estimates that by the end of the year, 21.1 million people – 82 percent of the population – were in need of some sort of humanitarian assistance.
23 December 2015 (ICAN)*– It has been another busy and successful year for ICAN, with 121 nations pledging “to fill the legal gap” for the prohibition and elimination of nuclear weapons, and a UN working group established to advance this goal. Here are some of the highlights:
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29 January: Latin American and Caribbean leaders call for a ban
The leaders of all 33 Latin American and Caribbean nations meet in Costa Rica and adopt a declaration supporting a treaty banning nuclear weapons. They also formally endorse the Austrian Pledge, later renamed the Humanitarian Pledge.
