The U.N. on Tuesday issued its 2012 consolidated appeal process (CAP), or joint appeal, for $1.5 billion to fund 350 projects in Somalia, “where famine and conflict have already cost tens of thousands of lives,” the Guardian reports (Chonghaile, 12/13). “The $1.5 billion appeal is based on a realistic assessment of the emergency needs of four million people in crisis, tens of thousands of whom will die without assistance,” Mark Bowden, the U.N. humanitarian coordinator for Somalia, said, Agence France-Presse notes.

This year, “[d]onors contributed more than $800 million of the one billion dollars requested … to help some 12 million people affected by East Africa’s worst drought in decades,” according to the news agency (12/13). “Bowden called donors’ response to the 2011 appeal ‘outstanding’ in the face of famine declared earlier this year in six parts of southern Somalia,” VOA News writes (Majtenyi, 12/13).