The Foreign Service Journal, October 2014

THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL | OCTOBER 2014 13 along with helpful background informa- tion. ■ Gwen’s Adventures in the Foreign Service is a blog chronicling the life an d career of an O ce Management Special- ist. With her husband retired and her daughter out of college, Gwen uses the blog to update family and friends on what is happening in her new life as a Foreign Service Specialist. ■ In-Flight Movie is written by a Foreign Service Specialist currently at her second post, in London, with her husband, her preschool-aged son and her “unruly tabby cat,” after two years in Belize. ■ Phenomenal Phnews is co-authored by two Foreign Service Specialists to update their family and friends on their lives in Phnom Penh. Jeremy and Erica have two additional blogs, Home Leave Files: Tales from Visits Back to the U.S. and Our African Home: Tales from Nai- robi, Kenya. ■ e Accidental Diplomat is a newly engaged Foreign Service Specialist of six years, who “became a diplomat quite by accident” and writes about her life in the Foreign Service while planning her dream wedding. ■ e OpSec Blog is written by a Secu- rity Engineering O cer who has served in many countries around the world and traveled to many others providing secu- rity services to U.S. missions overseas. Are you a specialist who has a blog? Let us know! Email your blog to fsblogs@ afsa.org , and we will add it to the list. — Cecilia Dazovi, Communications Intern U.N. Declares Four Countries in “Level 3 Emergency” F or the rst time in decades, the United Nations has declared four of the world’s humanitarian crises “Level 3 Emer- gency, ” the most dire rating the organiza- tion can assign. e four are Syria, South Sudan, the Central African Republic and Iraq, the latter added to the list on Aug. 14. e “Level 3” designation facilitates “mobilization of additional resources in goods, funds and assets to ensure a more e ective response to the humanitarian needs of populations a ected by forced displacement,” according to Nickolay Mladenov, special representative of the United Nations Secretary General. e Inter-Agency Standing Commit- tee, a team of U.N. and nongovernmental humanitarian organizations, is responsi- ble for making the determination, which is given to countries experiencing civil unrest that causes the displacement or removal of thousands of people. Unlike natural disasters, con icts put humani- tarian workers in the cross re, making relief e orts that much more di cult. Iraq became a particular concern after the situation on Sinjar Mountain escalated and thousands of Yazidi families were trapped on the mountain without water, nourishment or any form of sanitation as “Islamic State” ghters surrounded them. Despite numerous Department of Defense airdrops over a weeklong period in August, 1.5 million Iraqis are in need of humanitarian help, according to the U.S. Agency for Interna- tional Development. USAID estimates that 10.8 million people are in need of humanitarian assis- tance in Syria; 2.5 million in the Central African Republic, with 900,000 more displaced; and 1.1 million displaced in South Sudan. “ is is the rst time in our agency’s history that we have been called on to manage four large-scale humanitarian responses at once—in addition to reach- ing other vulnerable populations world- wide and preparing communities ahead