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As the death toll from Cyclone Nargis climbs above 22,000 dead with over 40,000 missing, Myanmar’s secretive military government may be forced to allow wide-scale foreign aid into the country for the first time in decades. The devastating cyclone made landfall on May 2, savaging the marshy Irrawaddy delta with 105-135 mph winds and rains that caused flooding and landslides and trailing a 12-foot tidal wave that washed whole villages into the Bay of Bengal. Already battling chronic poverty and a crumbling public infrastructure, this disaster may prove to be one crisis too many for the notoriously isolated country to bear without outside help.

Since early February, the violence in the Darfur region of Sudan has dramatically escalated, resembling levels of five years ago when the conflict began. The government has undertaken coordinated attacks to reclaim ground taken by rebel groups, notably Justice and Equality Movement.

The African Union/United Nations Hybrid operation in Darfur, known by its acronym UNAMID, took over peacekeeping operations on December 31 as scheduled, but the force remains critically under-strength, according to United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon. Although 20,000 troops and 6,000 police have been pledged for the joint UN-African Union force, only 9,000 uniformed personnel, including 7,000 troops and 1,200 police, are currently on the ground.

It starts with a seemingly harmless mosquito bite. Within a few days, it suddenly appears as a feeling of coldness, followed by a frightening paralysis in the joints. Fever and sweating follow, and then, suddenly, the malaria symptoms disappear—only to return two or three days later, and every two or three days thereafter. If left untreated, it can cause severe anemia and brain damage in children, and possibly even induce a coma. And for up to 3 million people a year—that’s 3,000 people a day or one person every 30 seconds—it kills.

A decade of conflict in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), in the North Kivu province, has resulted in an enormous humanitarian crisis. Fighting between local and foreign paramilitaries, the Congolese army and the United Nations’ largest peacekeeping force has claimed an estimated 4–5 million lives in the last decade—a death toll greater than any war since World War II.

Although greatly anticipated United Nations/African Union-brokered talks on Darfur did open on October 27 in Sirte, Libya, they were quickly postponed until December. United Nations and African Union mediators are now hoping to persuade the rebels to restart peace talks in early December, but experts are not optimistic. To further complicate the situation, the original three rebel factions have split into more than a dozen different interests, causing even greater instability for residents.

In the past, farmers in western Sudan anticipated the arrival of the rainy season as the start of the planting season. For refugees in the Darfur region of Sudan, however, there is only anticipation of continued misery. Many temporary camps are closed to new arrivals, but thousands of refugees continue to come to the remaining camps, straining resources to the maximum.

There is no letup in the crisis in Darfur, in western Sudan. Refugee camps continue to swell with those displaced from their homes, sheltering up to 100,000 people in areas where the original population was perhaps one-tenth that number.