UNOCHAThe United Nations Central Emergency Response Fund (CERF) has provided US $5.3 million in additional funding to provide urgent supplies to some 36,000 people displaced by the sectarian violence in Rakhine State in October.
“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 Burma, Ashok Nigam.
According to a statement on November 27 by the UN’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (UNOCHA), the $5.3 million will go towards the activities of five UN agencies and their humanitarian partners. One of the five, the World Food Programme, which received some $2 million of the CERF funding, said that it would be able “to rapidly step up its operations with emergency food assistance to all 36,000 newly displaced people.”
The financial response comes soon after the unveiling of a revised plan for Rakhine State which would support urgent humanitarian aid to 115,000 displaced persons up until June 2013.
On November 20, the UN’s Ashok Nigam announced that, in cooperation with the Burmese government, the UN was seeking an additional US $41 million to treat victims of the violence between Muslim Rohingyas and Rakhine Buddhists in the restive state in western Burma.
Related article: November 20; “UN, Govt to announce revised Rakhine plan”; http://www.mizzima.com/news/inside-burma/8435-un-govt-to-announce-revised-rakhine-plan.html
