16 December 2010
Search and rescue: a man is pulled from the rubble of a supermarket by a UK team a few days after January's earthquake in Haiti. Picture: UK Fire Service
January
Not long after 2010 got underway, Haiti was struck by a massive earthquake. The worst for two centuries, the quake hit south of the capital Port-au-Prince, killing more than 230,000 people, injuring 300,000 and leaving more than 1.5 million others in need of shelter.
Within an hour of receiving reports of the earthquake, DFID's humanitarian response team was helping to co-ordinate relief efforts, working around the clock over the following days and weeks. A field team was en-route to Haiti within 24 hours. The UK provided £20m in humanitarian assistance, including a 64 person emergency search and rescue team, a surgical team and shelter, food, clean water and medical care for more than 380,000 people.
Support for disease surveillance through the World Health Organisation helped ensure that the recent cholera outbreak was identified and responded to promptly.
The UK has since provided an additional £4.9m to address critical needs in health provision, providing 115 doctors, 920 nurses and 740 support staff from the region to boost cholera treatment capacity and treat several thousands of cholera victims over the next two months.
Critical needs in water and sanitation in northern Haiti will be met by supplying 340,000 people with clean water and latrines , as well as public health and water supplies improvements to 231,000 people across the north east of Haiti.
The UK will also provide £2m over the next 18 months to reduce Haiti’s vulnerability to future natural disasters.
Read more about the British government’s response to the Haiti crisis.
March
An innovative ambulance project for women in labour expanded from a pilot scheme to more than 700 vehicles across Madya Pradesh, one of India’s poorest states.
The free transport service called the Janani (Hindi for mother) Express, is enabling women to give birth in hospital.
Part-funded by UKaid, the service is part of Madhya Pradesh's Health Sector Reform programme.
Giving pregnant women access to a safe delivery and newborn care is reducing the number of women and children who die in child birth.
April
In April, we marked International Mine Action Day.
As Ban Ki Moon put it: "This work requires constant vigilance, diligence and collective action on many fronts.
"On this International Day, I salute the mine action workers who brave dangerous conditions and risk their lives in this pursuit.
"Let us all rededicate ourselves to this life-saving cause so that our children can live on a planet free from the threats caused by landmines and explosive remnants of war."
May
May 2010 marked one year on from the end of Sri Lanka’s bitter civil war. After 26 years of fighting, the battle between the Sri Lankan government forces and the the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam came to an end affecting hundreds of thousands of civilians who were caught in the fighting and forced to leave their homes.
Many of these internally displaced persons (IDPs) had to repeatedly move as the battle lines changed. Many people were killed and thousands were injured in the final stages of the conflict.
A large-scale humanitarian crisis unfolded as the IDPs fled the conflict zone, and the UK was at the forefront of efforts to respond.
UKaid from the Department for International Development has since helped to survey and clear villages from landmines, resow land with rice crops, and restore vital shelter, water and sanitation facilities.
Funding has also supported a wide range of critical work to help save lives and enable those displaced by the conflict to return to their home areas.
June
The first ever World Cup on African soil was met with jubilation worldwide. The impact of South Africa’s World Cup goes beyond football however - FIFA committed to make education the lasting legacy by supporting an international campaign called 1GOAL.
Celebrations: primary school children in Rustenberg, South Africa get ready for an England friendly before the World Cup. Picture: Charles Corbett / DFID
1GOAL brought together footballers, fans, charities, corporations and individuals to lobby and achieve the ambitious aim of education for the 69 million children who are denied the chance to go to school.
Led by the Global Campaign for Education, it was proudly supported by UKaid from the Department for International Development.
Value for money and transparency rose to the top of the DFID's agenda with the announcement of a new independent aid watchdog to ensure all UKaid is well spent and the issuing of the UKaid Transparency Guarantee so that people in Britain and overseas can see where aid is being spent. Two wide ranging reviews began with the express purpose of ensuring that the aid money the UK spends in developing countries and through international organisations such as the World Bank and the UN delivers the maximum impact for the world's poorest people.
July
Heavy monsoon rains in Pakistan began at the end of July causing devastating flooding across the country. Around 20 million people were directly affected through ruined property and lost livelihoods. According to our flood monitor, 1.6 million houses were damaged. At the height of the crisis, the flooded area spanned an area the size of England.
Devastation: whole towns were wiped out in Pakistan. Picture: UNICEF/mogwanja
The British government pledged £134 million to the emergency response and led the way in highlighting the scale of the disaster to the international community.
We immediately sent 3,500 tents and around 13,000 shelter kits, providing shelter for some 16,500 families; more than 300,000 water containers; and more than 60,000 blankets.
Our funding towards UN airlifts also made it possible to provide emergency medical care for some 720,000 people in Punjab and Sindh, a one month food package for nearly one million people, and health-care, shelter and safe drinking water for some 350,000 people in hard to access Balochistan and FATA.
Almost five months after the onset of the floods, the situation remains deeply challenging. The majority of the 14 million people who were displaced by the floods have returned to their areas of origin as flood waters receded, apart from in Sindh Province. But with homes, farms and villages devastated, they will need humanitarian relief for months to come.
The situation in Sindh remains critical. Up to 350,000 families remain displaced by protracted inundation of the right bank of the Indus in northern Sindh. These people are hard to reach and will need humanitarian relief well into next year – especially shelter, with winter setting in across Pakistan.
The UK will continue to work to get people out of dependence on relief by restoring livelihoods and basic services, particularly for education and health, in the affected areas.
Read the full story on the DFID response or visit the floods monitor to see where and how UKaid is helping people affected by the floods in Pakistan.
August
In August, Secretary of State for International Development Andrew Mitchell and Minister Without Portfolio Baroness Warsi flew to Pakistan to see how UKaid was helping those affected by the flooding.
“It is difficult to comprehend the extent of this tragedy,” he said at the time. “Nothing could have prepared me for the horrific scenes of destruction and devastation I have seen today.”
Andrew Mitchell flew on to New York to address a UN General Assembly where he announced the UK was doubling its aid to the flood relief:
"The additional help announced today will mean that tens of thousands of people will get food, shelter and medical help,” said Mitchell. “But we need to support Pakistan for the long-term as well as giving short-term relief and I want the people of Pakistan to know the UK is standing by them."
Read the full story on the DFID response or visit the floods monitor to see where and how UKaid is helping people affected by the floods in Pakistan.
August also saw the peak of a desperate food crisis unfold in Niger, Chad and parts of Mali. It became clear that an estimated 3.3 million people in Niger alone were facing severe food shortages as a result of poor rains and harvests in 2009.
They were among 4.6 million men, women and children across West Africa’s Eastern Sahel region facing the very real risk of starvation.
A massive humanitarian emergency response got underway, in partnership with the government of Niger, UN, NGO and Red Cross agencies, as well as donor countries like the UK, to help those in desperate need.
The World Food Programme issued news that it was starting a major round of feeding in Niger for 670,000 young children and their families as part of an emergency operation to reach as many as 8 million food-insecure people in the drought-stricken West African country.
"The current humanitarian situation in Niger and Chad is dire and millions of people are desperately in need of food,” said Stephen O'Brien, Parliamentary Under Secretary of State for International Development.
Across the region, the UK was swift to respond to this crisis, providing food aid to feed over 810,000 people, treating over 85,500 malnourished children and providing seeds to more than 81,000 families across the Sahel.
Read more about the crisis in Niger and the UK's humanitarian support.
September
September saw the United Nations Millennium Development Goals (MDG) Summit in New York City. World leaders, civil society organisations and prominent figures from the worlds of business and entertainment gathered to agree on the action needed to meet the MDGs by 2015 and lift millions of people out of poverty.
Nick Clegg, Deputy Prime Minister and Andrew Mitchell, International Development Secretary represented the UK.
The UK focused its efforts on securing a major push on the most off–track MDGs, particularly women’s and children’s health.
More than a third of a million women have died during pregnancy or childbirth in the past year and 25,000 children die every day. The overwhelming majority of these deaths are easily preventable.
Read the full outcomes from the summit plus a message from His Royal Highness the Prince of Wales.
October
The rainy season across West Africa caused flooding in almost every country in the region, with Benin particularly badly affected. By the end of October, around 680,000 people had been affected, over 150,000 homes damaged or destroyed and 43 people killed.
The government of Benin declared a national emergency and called for international aid in response to the crisis that affected more than half of the country.
The UK was quick to respond to the flood-stricken nation through emergency support to Care International.
UKaid has helped to provide 50,000 people with food and clean drinking water, hygiene and cooking kits, shelter and mosquito nets.
Read about the response and see what life was like on the ground in our photo gallery.
November
November’s UN summit in Cancun, Mexico marked a turning point in the international negotiations towards a global climate change deal. Building on progress made at the Copenhagen Summit in 2009, countries reached a range of agreements including establishing a Green Climate Fund to help developing countries tackle climate change and new mechanisms to enable developing countries to access low carbon technology and adapt to climate change.
Achieving progress on a climate deal is crucial to tackling global poverty. The world’s poorest people are hit first and hit hardest by climate change. People in developing countries are already suffering the effects of flooding, rising sea levels, drought, crop failure and the destruction caused by natural disasters.
Read about the outcomes from the Cancun Summit here.
December
World AIDS Day is marked every year on 1 December. It is a day to reaffirm our commitment to universal access to HIV prevention, AIDS treatment, care and support.
Significant progress has been made in curbing the spread of the epidemic. The spread of HIV has halted with the number of new infections falling by 19% since 1999, according to UNAIDS.
More than five million people have access to life-saving antiretroviral treatment - a tenfold increase over five years. However, of the 33.3 million people globally living with HIV, 2.1 million were children.
Nearly 1,200 children become infected with HIV every day, representing nearly one in six new infections globally.
This year we looked at prevention of mother to child transmission programmes in Zimbabwe and South Africa – programmes which are giving hope to a new generation.
The latest UNAIDS report tells us that young women aged 15-24 in sub-Saharan Africa are as much as 8 times more likely than men to be HIV positive.
That’s why the UK government is strongly committed to empowering women and girls, by focusing on their sexual and reproductive health and rights, and addressing the underlying drivers of the AIDS epidemic such as gender inequality, gender based violence and poverty.
Read more about World AIDS Day and prevention of mother to child transmission.