“The United Nations humanitarian chief today announced the allocation of some $72 million from an emergency fund to assist people in neglected crises in 12 countries around the world,” the U.N. News Centre reports. “This latest allocation brings the total amount provided by the U.N. Central Emergency Response Fund (CERF) to an unprecedented $172 million in a single year, the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said in a news release,” the news service writes. U.N. Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs Valerie Amos said, “This money will save lives by ensuring that humanitarian organizations can continue to support the most vulnerable men, women and children caught in the midst of devastating disasters and conflicts,” according to the news service (7/16). “The funds will support vital humanitarian aid in Bangladesh, Chad, Colombia, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK), Haiti, Madagascar, Mauritania, Myanmar, Niger, Pakistan, the Philippines and Somalia,” according to the OCHA press release, Xinhua reports (7/17).

Meanwhile, a new report from HelpAge International — endorsed by Save the Children U.K. — examined the 2012 Consolidated Appeal Process (CAP), “which covers both U.N. and [non-governmental organization (NGO)] relief activities, [and found] about two percent of project proposals targeted older people, and about four percent were specifically aimed at children under five,” Thomson Reuters Foundation notes. “Only around 55 percent of these projects were actually funded,” according to the report, which found “projects for young children fared better, getting 12 percent of the $5.8 billion donated by governments, while those for older people were allocated a mere one percent,” Reuters writes. “Of 2,800 projects analyzed from last year’s CAP, ‘2,446 made no mention, at any point, of two groups that are likely to make up over one third of the population, and whose needs are distinct from those of other groups,’ the report said,” according to the news service (Rowling, 7/17).