© 2009 OCHA
Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) - Geneva observes the first world humanitarian day today 19 August to coincide with the death of Sergio Vieira de Mello, the UN’s top official in Iraq who died in 2003 along with 21 others in a bomb explosion at UN headquarters in Baghdad. As headquarters of the UN in Europe, Geneva is holding an event in the Parc des Bastions this afternoon at 17:00 which includes officials from the UN and the city and canton of Geneva. Many organizations involved in humanitarian work have set up stands to demonstrate their work, and there will be concerts of classical and jazz music.
Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) - The UNHCR (UN High Commissioner for Refugees) reports that 35 people drowned Wednesday off the coast of Yemen’s Abyan region in the Gulf of Aden, after one of two smugglers’ boats capsized. Some 220 people were making the passage from near Bossasso in Somalia, with 117 people on the boat that overturned.
Updated 14:40 The captain of the US ship Maersk Alabama, being held hostage in a lifeboat, tried to escape by swimming away, it appears, but was recaptured. CNN carries the unfolding story. A US naval ship, with negotiators who are talking to the lifeboat holding a kidnapped US ship’s captain, is moving in closer to the lifeboat, reported the BBC earlier in the day, while CNN says that the US FBI has been involved in the negotiations.
A “high-seas drama unfolded off the coast of Africa” writes the International Herald Tribune, in the notorious Horn of Africa waters: a cargo ship, the Maersk Alabama, became the first US ship to be taken by pirates. Within hours the crew had retaken the ship, which they disabled before the pirates boarded, but the captain, Richard Phillips, had been taken away and is being held hostage. A US naval destroyer, the Bainbridge, is standing by.
