The UK Government has pledged an additional £26.4m in funding for Somalia to deal with the crisis and World Vision UK wants the government to pressure other leaders around the world to follow suit.

Sarah Pickwick, World Vision UK’s senior conflict advisor, said: “We urge International Development Secretary Penny Mordaunt to put pressure on the international community to follow Britain’s lead in responding urgently to this crisis before it’s too late.

“In 2011, a failure by the international community to act quickly meant that 260,000 people died from a devastating famine in Somalia. We cannot and must not let that happen again.

“Somalia cannot wait. Half of the 5.4 million people in need of assistance are children, and 1.2 million children under five years old are projected to be malnourished this year.”

The charity commended Mordaunt’s commitment to provide extra funding but stressed the importance her “strong words are backed up by equally strong action”.

In support of The Federal Government of Somalia, on Tuesday the United Kingdom and United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) convened an event in London to draw urgent attention to the humanitarian crisis in Somalia and the need for a swift and substantial response.

2-year-old Cady…

Lanre Haastrup and Takesha Thomas say the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) in Strasbourg, France, has “decided to abandon justice” when considering their son Isaiah’s case.

The couple had asked the ECHR to intervene after losing two legal battles in England.

An ECHR spokesman on Tuesday said three judges had examined issues and declared the couple’s application “inadmissible”.

Mr Haastrup on Wednesday said judges had not listened to arguments.

A High Court judge has given doctors permission to provide only palliative care to Isaiah against the wishes of Mr Haastrup and Miss Thomas.

Mr Justice MacDonald analysed evidence at hearings in the Family Division of the High Court in January.

Specialists at King’s College Hospital in London had said providing further intensive care treatment was futile and not in Isaiah’s best interests.

Mr Haastrup and Miss Thomas, who are both in their 30s and from Peckham, south-east London, subsequently failed to persuade Court of Appeal judges to overturn Mr Justice MacDonald’s decision.

Miss Thomas told a private trial in January: “I am a Pentecostal Christian. “For me, I don’t think it is right to say who should live or who should die.

“If God wants to take the person, He will.”

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Catholic Agency for Overseas Development (CAFOD) said it has extreme concerns after anti-Muslim rioting flared again in the hills of central Sri Lanka on Wednesday despite a state of emergency.

The government has ordered popular social media networks to be blocked to stop the violence from spreading. The police also ordered a curfew across much of the region for the third straight day, trying to calm the situation.

In the small town of Katugastota, Ikram Mohamed, a Muslim said Sinhalese Buddhist mobs burned down the textile shop he worked in. He and the owner had closed the shop on Wednesday morning when police announced the curfew. They returned to find it destroyed, and clothing and dressmaker dummies smoking in the ruins.

“There are many good Sinhalese people,” he said. “This is being done by a few jealous people.”

Muslims own many of the small businesses in Sri Lanka, a fact that many believe has helped make them targets as Buddhist-Muslim relations have worsened in recent years amid the rise of hard-line Buddhist groups, which accuse Muslims of forcing people to convert and destroying sacred Buddhist sites.

Area residents said mobs swept through at least two towns in the central hills, attacking two mosques and a string of Muslim-owned shops and buildings.

Sri Lanka has long been divided between the majority Sinhalese, who are overwhelmingly Buddhist, and…