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Eastern Congo: long-suffering, long neglected
As the eyes of the world focus on Gaza, eastern Congo plunges yet again into a deadly conflict which threatens the lives and futures of tens of thousands of people. While hopes are rising that a...
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Safe and Slovak
With Deputy Prime Minister Robert Kalinak While the budget talks were taking place (and ultimately going nowhere) in Brussels I was in Bratislava, visiting government ministers, NGOs, volunteers and...
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Back to the Sahel and a crisis averted – for now
In Burkina Faso the first line of humanitarian action came from the local people. Arriving hungry and exhausted from Mali, families forced to flee the fighting in the north of the country found their...
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Surviving in a city far away from home
The Traore family is divided by the conflict in northern Mali. Forty two people have run south to Bamako, the country’s capital, and are living in just two rooms of a half-built house in the city’s...
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In Lebanon, with Syria’s children of war
The boy’s name is Ali, he is six years old and he was born and raised in Aleppo, Syria. With a shy smile and some prompting from his teacher he handed me a drawing. I wasn’t sure what to make of it...
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While the world did not end
Millions of people thought, talked and wrote about the end of the world which was predicted to arrive upon us yesterday. The Internet, the news and the social media have been full of content on this...
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Stories of struggle and hope: What it means to be an urban refugee
Urban refugees have a tough and poignant life – often fleeing death and unimaginable hardship, many of them end up in large cities – impoverished, vulnerable and unseen. To tell their story and raise...
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Haiti, three years after the earthquake
I visited Haiti for the first time shortly after the earthquake struck in 2010. I will never forget the devastation I saw nor the courage of the Haitian people. The whole world then stood by Haiti –...
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What next for Mali?
©WFP/Rein Skullerud The fact that so much has changed in Mali since I was here last month only goes to prove what an unstable world it is. Admittedly, the warning signals were there back in December...
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The bitter taste of success at the Syria pledging conference
Last week in Kuwait the United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon was able to ramp up over $1.5 billion in pledges to meet the urgent humanitarian needs of the Syrian people whose lives have been...
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Running out of time
Witnessing the tragedy that is the Syrian civil war unfolding over the last two years has at times seemed like watching an episodic television series which you can duck in and out of, turn on or tune...
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CAR, the forgotten country
I start writing this story wondering how many people will read it. The Central African Republic, or CAR as it is usually abbreviated in the news, a country of 4.4 million people, has been going...
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A tragic week in the USA
As always when I am in Washington, I go to see Craig Fugate at FEMA. We start our meeting on a sober note, with me expressing sympathies for the loss of life and the injuries in Boston, and European...
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Living on the frontline of climate change
Just as the EU’s new climate adaptation strategy was being launched I was visiting the Siti Zone in Ethiopia’s Somali Region together with my colleagues Connie Hedegaard, the Commissioner in charge of...
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Celebrating Europe’s day… or not?
Today we celebrate Europe’s Day, but these days there seem to be few reasons to celebrate in Europe. The crisis is still biting hard, youth unemployment is a daily reality for 5,6 million Europeans...
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On the Syrian border
There were eight of them, the women and children came first followed by their menfolk carrying all their most precious possessions. Exhausted and frightened, they were helped across the last few sandy...
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A better tool for European solidarity
This is a great day, not just for Europe but for the safety of the world. Today we launch our Emergency Response Centre here in Brussels. It’s a state-of-the-art operations centre which will be on...
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The children of Syria
If things are very bad in Jordan they are even worse in Lebanon, I discovered when I visited the Bekaa Valley. In the few short months since I was last there there has been a palpable rise in tension...
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A more prepared partner in disaster response
Two years ago in Moscow, I visited the state-of-the-art emergency response centre of EMERCOM, the Russian Ministry for Emergency Situations. Back then, we in Europe had our own Monitoring and...
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The Battle of Qusayr
(Photo: AFP - Miguel Medina) I have been following with a sinking heart the tragic events in Qusayr, a town on the Syrian-Lebanese border which has become the focus of a deadly struggle between the...
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