Like millions of other Americans, I have watched the devastating news about Pakistan continue every day. Shelter, food, clean water and medical help are urgently needed after the massive monsoon rains that hit the country early this month. While help has been coming in, and nearly half of the UN’s requested $460 million has been pledged, the needs are still staggering.

Up to 6 million people will need food assistance over the next three months, over 5,000 schools have been damaged, 7.9 acres of crops have been damaged or lost, and 4.6 million survivors are still without shelter. The Pakistan Government estimates that up to 20 million people have been affected by the flooding and more flooding is predicted.

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon visited Pakistan on Aug.15. He spoke of the “heart-wrenching” destruction and suffering that he witnessed, saying, “These unprecedented floods demand unprecedented assistance.”

The UN’s emergency relief coordinator, John Holmes, also said: “This is a disaster which has affected many more people than I have ever seen. What we saw confirms the scale and urgency of the needs.”

The UN has already delivered food to nearly 800,000 people and provided access to clean drinking water to nearly 1.4 million and medical supplies to 1.8 million people. With its partner agencies, the UN plans to help at least 8 million Pakistanis in the coming weeks.

Our solidarity with people around the world requires urgent action.

It is our responsibility, as people who care about others, to ensure that the humanitarian impact of this disaster does not escalate even higher. By assisting the UN agencies who are working on the ground, UNA-USA can make a difference.

I know you have a lot of choices to make – there are many worthy nongovernmental organizations making appeals simultaneously, but I urge you – as a supporter of the United Nations - to give directly to the most pre-eminent UN organizations, such as:

     The World Food Program

     UNICEF

     Central Emergency Response Fund (Yesterday, I personally donated to CERF,a humanitarian relief effort.)

     You can also donate $10 to UN High Commissioner for Refugees the using your cellphone to text the word “SWAT” to #50555.

From UNA-USA's InterDependent

After a rocky July, the United Nations got off to a much better start in August, and on several continents. It began with Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon’s success in getting Israel to participate in an international inquiry into the Israeli commando raid at the end of May on a convoy of ships carrying humanitrian aid to Gaza, in which nine civilians died. Israel’s participation is an important development, in the light of its consistent refusal to deal with UN investigations into its actions.

Nothing at the UN comes without controversy, however, and there have been reports that Israel has attached conditions to the work of the four-member panel named on August 2. Whether or not that would hinder the inquiry by the panel, which will meet for the first time on August 10 to plot its work, may or may not be a crucial issue. The panel was not formed to reopen investigations, but to review those already done by Israel and Turkey. Three of the ships in the aid flotilla were registered in Turkey, and most of those who died were Turkish citizens.

Susan Rice, the United States ambassador to the UN, focused on the limited mandate of the panel in welcoming its formation. “The panel, which has the support of both Israel and Turkey, will receive and review the reports of each government’s national investigation into the incident and make recommendations as to how to avoid such incidents in the future,” she said. “This panel is not a substitute for those national investigations. It complements them, affording Israel and Turkey the opportunity to present the conclusions of their investigations to the international community.”

The panel will be led by a former New Zealand prime minister, Geoffrey Palmer, and his deputy, Alvaro Uribe, the outgoing president of Colombia. Turkey and Israel will nominate the other two members. (A parallel, separate international inquiry, focused on violations of international law, has been ordered by the UN Human Rights Council.)

Before the week was out, Israel got good news on an unrelated issue from UN peacekeepers on the Israeli-Lebanese border, who supported unconditionally the Israeli claims after a brief firefight, that they had not strayed into Lebanese territory, as Lebanon had charged.

At the same time in Kenya, a referendum on a new constitution for the country was held peacefully with the help of the UN Development Program’s governance experts. Following an election in 2007, political violence killed about 1,000 people. Kenya’s political leaders –some of whom are under investigation by the International Criminal Court -- moved quickly after the killings to begin instituting reforms, including the creation of an independent electoral commission to oversee future voting.

At that point, UNDP, working with the commission and the government, began playing a central role in a constitutional review, while also offering support on building consensus and public awareness about constitutional reform. The results were apparent in the August 4 constitutional referendum, which produced a huge turnout of voters, who approved the new constitution with a 67 percent "yes" vote. There were no reports of serious violence.

In Latin America, it was the UN Environment Program that reported a breakthrough. The government of Ecuador and the environment program announced that they had agreed to establish a trust fund to protect Yasuni National Park in the Amazon region. The park, rich in natural diversity and a World Biosphere Reserve since 1989, sits atop about 846 million barrels of crude oil. That oil will not be extracted under the new agreement, signed on August 3, if the trust fund is able to raise at least half of the $7 billion that the oil, if exploited, would bring to Ecuador.

The UN Development Program, which will administer the trust fund, estimates that if the accord can be implemented, it will prevent the release of more than 400 million tons of carbon that would have resulted from burning the oil if it were extracted. Ecuador will now be asking governments for contributions to the campaign to keep the oil underground.

Rebecca Grynspan, associate administrator of UNDP, called the establishment of the environmental trust fund a model instrument for cooperation “directed towards the search for economies that are in harmony with society, nature and the planet.”