The InterDependent

On December 13, the United Nations Mission in Somalia asked donors for $1.5 billion to support the world’s largest humanitarian mission for the coming year. Despite a massive influx of aid in 2011, as the UN declared famine in the country for the first time in nearly 20 years, some 250,000 Somalis are still at risk of imminent death, and another four million remain in danger.

Incumbent President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf looks poised to reclaim leadership of Liberia today, having won 90.8 percent of the votes in a second-round election boycotted by her opponent.

The gaunt faces and stick-thin bodies of starving families from Somalia and Ethiopia who have walked days without food to reach overcrowded refugee camps in Kenya are a reminder that as developing nations move toward improvement in the daily lives of their people, a cruel act of nature –in this case a catastrophic drought – can undo fragile gains all too quickly.

Up to 166,000 Pakistanis remain without homes and needy as a result of last summer’s epic floods, which affected 20 million people, killed 1,700, destroyed 1.7 million houses and damaged 5.4 million acres of arable land in the country. An estimated 3.2 million people are still living in camps that sprouted spontaneously or were organized by UN agencies.