A group of more than 350 non-governmental organizations (NGOs) concluded a U.N. forum in Melbourne, Australia, on Wednesday with a call for world leaders to step up their commitments to achieving the U.N. Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), the Australian Associated Press/Sydney Morning Herald reports (Rose, 9/1).

Congolese Community Leaders Warned U.N. About Security; 240 Rape Victims Now Identified “Congolese community leaders say they begged local U.N. officials and army commanders to protect villagers days before rebels gang-raped scores of people, from a month-old baby boy to a 110-year-old great-great-grandmother,” the Associated Press reports. The Walikale Civil Association…

The World Bank on Tuesday issued a report (.pdf) calling for an more integrated approach to worldwide water management, PANA/Afrique en ligne reports (9/1). “We can’t properly tackle global priorities of food security, renewable energy, adaptation to climate change, public health and urbanization unless we manage water better,” Julia Bucknall, water sector manager for the World Bank, said, according to a World Bank press release (8/31).

Court Accepts China’s First HIV Discrimination Case, State Media Reports  “A municipal court in central China has accepted the country’s first lawsuit alleging work discrimination because of HIV status, state media reported Tuesday,” the Associated Press reports (8/31). “The lawsuit alleges city officials denied the plaintiff, a recent college graduate,…

Monkeypox Prevalence Surges In Smallpox ‘Vaccine Naive’ In Congo The New York Times reports on monkeypox cases, which are “surging in tropical Africa.” Researchers found that “monkeypox was 20 times as common” in nine rural Congolese districts as it was 30 years ago, the newspaper writes, citing a study published in the…

Flash floods have “worsened an already chronic humanitarian crisis caused by drought” in central Africa where aid agencies have warned that “10 million people are already facing severe food shortages, particularly in the landlocked countries of Chad and Niger, after a drought led to the failure of last year’s crops,” the Independent reports. “Now unusually heavy rains [in Niger] have washed away this year’s crops and killed cattle in a region dependent on subsistence agriculture,” and where only 40 percent of people affected by the food shortages are receiving aid, according to the agencies, including Oxfam and Save the Children.

Pakistani government officials say the death toll from the country’s flooding stands at more than 1,600 and it could rise significantly as flood waters recede and more bodies are identified, CNN reports (8/28). “There is no official estimate of the number of missing because mass displacements have made accounting for them almost impossible,” according to Reuters (Haider, 8/29).

“Flooding has displaced an additional 1 million people in Pakistan’s Sindh province in the past two days, according to new U.N. estimates released Friday,” CNN reports.

Cameroon will need approximately $4.8 million for its emergency response to the cholera outbreak, which has killed nearly 300 people in the northern part of the country, Agence France-Presse reports.

UNICEF estimates that about 3.5 million Pakistanis only have access to contaminated water, the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said on Wednesday in a statement, Bloomberg Businessweek reports. Approximately 2.5 million flood survivors now have access clean water (Gale, 8/26).