Zambia is one of the southern African countries affected by torrential rains and floods. Exact figures are not available yet, but it’s believed thousands of people have been displaced or otherwise affected so far. Officials expect that figure to climb much higher.

Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon today called on donors to respond quickly and generously to a $3.8 billion United Nations humanitarian appeal, stressing that for the poorest of the poor, early funding means the difference between life and death.

Thirty four aid workers were killed in Afghanistan this year. The U.N. accused militants and criminals of these misdeeds. It also called on armed groups to stop attacks on humanitarian convoys so food can reach millions of poor Afghans.

Russia's government has allocated $300,000 to help North Korea recover from the flood devastation that has ravaged the country in August. Recent flooding in North Korea killed hundreds of people, displaced some 300,000 and destroyed a sizeable portion of the country's crops.

The European Commission is preparing a new emergency humanitarian decision of €2 million to help the estimated 500,000 people directly affected by the record high torrential rains that struck the Democratic People's Republic of Korea in the past weeks.

The European Commission allocates €4 million in humanitarian aid for victims of the fighting in Nahr el Bared refugee camp

Israeli authorities have stopped a convoy of trucks carrying UN humanitarian aid to Gaza at Israel's Kerem Shalom crossing near Egypt, Cairo's MENA news agency said Tuesday.

The European Union has allocated 30 million euros ($40.2 million) for humanitarian aid to violence-torn Gaza, the 27-nation bloc's executive body said Wednesday.

Implementing best-practice standards for emergency international food aid will improve the quality, timeliness and appropriateness of food aid, reports Daniel Maxwell, PhD, research director for Food Security and Complex Emergencies at the Feinstein International Center (FIC), part of the Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy at Tufts University.

The World Food Program (WFP) says it has been able to successfully feed up to three million internally displaced people in Sudan's conflict-ridden province of Darfur. The organization says it has been able to do this even though problems of security remain and it still has no access to certain areas.

Hundreds of people from West Africa are gathering in Sikasso, Mali, this week, to bring attention to problems they say developed countries are ignoring. The anti-globalization and anti-poverty campaigners call their meeting a people's poverty forum that is intended to counter the G-8 summit of the world's wealthiest countries this week in Germany.

United Nations aid workers operating at the Palestinian refugee camp in northern Lebanon that has been the scene of deadly clashes this week have now registered and relocated 25,000 people away from the fighting, the UN agency caring for them reported today.