The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent societies has appealed for 167 million dollars to support aid projects in 1998 to benefit more than ten million vulnerable people in fifty-six countries The organisation says that the focus of its activity has moved away from large-scale refugee and population movements and is now increasingly occupied by natural disasters and socio-economic dislocation. From Geneva Owen Bennett-Jones reports.

The Red Cross says that over the last decade its work was dominated by large-scale population movements such as those in former Yugoslavia. But in 1998 it expects to be increasingly concerned with natural disasters such as the floods in North Korea where the organisation is now providing food and medicine to two-point-six million people and the Red Cross says the El Nino weather pattern continues to cause considerable suffering in many countries.

It says that in Papua New Guinea, for example, an El Nino related drought followed by heavy rains left half a million people short of food and clean water More than 20% of the Red Cross funds are now devoted to the effects of floods, earthquakes and cyclones and that compares with an average of just seven per cent in previous years. But the organisation is also active in countries where the economic performance is so poor that many people need social assistance.