UNITED NATIONS, Nov 28: The amount of 5.3 million dollars, provided by United Nations Central Emergency Response Fund (CERF), will help a population of about 36,000 who have been displaced by the communal violence in the Rakhine state of Myanmar.
According to information available here, the money will help United Nations agencies and their partners carry out activities in the areas of health care, nutrition, shelter provision, water and sanitation facilities.
“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 health care,” United Nations Humanitarian Coordinator in Myanmar Ashok Nigam was quoted as saying in a statement issued in New York yesterday.
The northern part of Rakhine has been the site of religious violence in recent months. The violence was triggered in June, with clashes between ethnic Rakhine Buddhists and Rohingya Muslims, which eventually led to the emergency declaration there.
It left a dozen civilians dead and hundreds of homes severely damaged, while internally displacing up to 1,00,000 people.
Since then, 100 were killed and 36,000 displaced in the wake of a renewed upsurge in violence, beginning in late September, which also left more than 5,300 houses and religious buildings destroyed, the statement said, citing United Nations estimates.
The World Food Programme said 2 million dollars in Central Emergency Response Fund 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,” WFP spokesperson Marcus Prior said, according to the statement.
“The CERF was used immediately to address the new growing needs.
CERF has now allocated more than 10 million dollars to the humanitarian situation in Rakhine this year, the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said in a separate statement.
(UNI)
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