United Nations Humanitarian Fund gives an additional $5.3 million for the Rakhine emergency in Myanmar

(Yangon, 27 November): The United Nations Central Emergency Response Fund (CERF) has provided $5.3 million in additional funding to provide life-saving assistance to some 36,000 people displaced by the recent violence in Rakhine State, Myanmar.

This is the second allocation by the UN Emergency Relief Coordinator Valerie Amos to help fund urgent humanitarian operations in Rakhine state following inter-communal violence that first began in June leaving some 75,000 people displaced. In October, another 36,000 were displaced in the wake of a renewed upsurge in violence.

CERF has now allocated more than $10 million to the humanitarian situation in Rakhine this year. The funds will go towards activities outlined in the recently revised Humanitarian Response Plan which now is addressing the needs of 115,000 displaced people up until June 2013 at a cost of some $68 million. The current shortfall is $41 million.

“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, Mr Ashok Nigam.

The $5.3 million will go towards the activities of five UN agencies and their humanitarian partners so they can carry out activities in health, nutrition, shelter, water and sanitation, and food.

The World Food Programme says the $2 million in CERF funds enabled the organization 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. The CERF was used immediately to address the new growing needs”, said WFP Spokesperson Marcus Prior.

Since its launch in 2006, CERF has provided $71 million in response to disasters and underfunded emergencies in Myanmar. Rakhine State has received $32 million in total including life-saving funds that went towards 70,000 people displaced as a result of Cyclone Giri in October 2010. The CERF contribution to Rakhine is 45 per cent of the overall amount allocated by the CERF to Myanmar from 2006 to 2012.

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.