UN fund gives $5.3 million to assist displaced persons in Myanmar
(Nov. 28, 2012) The United Nations fund has given $ 5.3 million to assist displaced
persons in Myanmar (former Burma). Some 36,000 people who have been displaced by inter-communal
violence in Myanmar’s Rakhine state will benefit from this additional fund provided
by the United Nations Central Emergency Response Fund - CERF, the world body announced
on Tuesday. The funds will enable five UN agencies and their humanitarian partners
to carry out activities in health, nutrition, shelter, water and sanitation, and food.
“Thanks to CERF’s immediate funding, humanitarian agencies are able to respond in
a decisive manner to provide urgent life-saving aid such as emergency shelter, clean
drinking water, food and healthcare,” said the UN Humanitarian Coordinator in Myanmar,
Ashok Nigam. The north of Rakhine state has been the site of inter-communal violence
over recent months. The violence first began in June, with clashes between ethnic
Rakhine Buddhists and Rohingya Muslims, which eventually led the Government to declare
a state of emergency there. The World Food Programme (WFP) said $2 million in CERF
funds enabled the agency to rapidly step up its operations with emergency food assistance
to all 36,000 newly displaced people. “We were already distributing food at the time
of the October needs assessments in Rakhine. Our food stocks were heavily depleted
from distributing since the June communal violence,” said WFP spokesperson Marcus
Prior. “The CERF was used immediately to address the new growing needs.” CERF has
now allocated more than $10 million to the humanitarian situation in Rakhine this
year, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said in a
news release. CERF was created in 2005 to respond in a timely fashion to humanitarian
crises. Globally, the fund has enabled life-saving and immediate help for millions
of people in some 87 countries with $2.7 billion in aid. It is funded by voluntary
contributions from Member States, non-governmental organizations, regional governments,
the private sector and individual donors.