What’s New August 2011

This page lists changes to this site for August 2011.

See below for other updates and to get notified of changes to the site.

Into mid-2011, the world’s worst food crisis is being felt in East Africa, in Sudan, Somalia and Kenya.

Despite successive failed rains, the crisis has been criticized as avoidable and man-made. This is because the situation had been predicted many months before by an international early warning system. Both the international community and governments in the region have been accused of doing very little in the lead up to this crisis. In addition, high food prices have forced food out of the reach of many people, while local conflicts exacerbate the situation.

As the international organization Oxfam describes: 12 million people are in dire need of food, clean water, and basic sanitation. Loss of life on a massive scale is a very real risk, and the crisis is set to worsen over the coming months, particularly for pastoralist communities.

This page also presents news coverage from Inter Press Service on this crisis.

As with the previous year, despite finding less and less time to work on this site, somehow it has continued to grow! In the past year (from August 2010 to end of July 2011) the site received just under 26.9 million page views. This is up from just over 22.5 million page views for the previous year. Visits also fluctuate during the year and time of week, but peak periods were seeing some 70-90,000 page views a day, sometimes well over 100,000.

Although such numbers are always imprecise (just given the nature of the web and wanting to emphasize site performance over accurate stats gathering), this continued rising trend continues to pleasantly surprise me despite finding less and less spare time in recent years to keep it going.

As the web site begins its 14th year, it remains a spare time effort, maintained on my own. That may change in the future, who knows! I must also apologize for the last few months of reduced updates. I’ve even found myself almost 3 months behind on emails, just due to personal circumstances, but hope to get back on track soon.

Thank you so much for your continued support and please do tell your friends and colleagues about the global issues web site if you find it useful.

You can also