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Sri Lanka's Humanitarian Need

845 views · Published 21 April 2009 · 2:28 · Indexed 20 September 2026

Channel: United Nations · 2009 · News & Politics

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United Nations, 21 April 2009 - Daily Briefing by the Office of the Spokesperson for the Secretary-General. The United Nations is gearing up efforts to provide humanitarian assistance to the tens of thousands of people who had fled the fighting in the north of Sri Lanka. Humanitarian agencies were preparing to receive a growing number of displaced.
With regard to financing for their operations, of the $155 million asked for, OCHA had only received $48 million, or only 30 per cent, of which some $10 million had been financed by the United Nations itself through its Central Emergency Response Fund (CERF).
Although food assistance is relatively well funded at 59 per cent, requirements were likely to increase.
In addition, other sectors were not well financed at all: shelter stood at 18 per cent; water and sanitation at 16 per cent; and health at just 15 per cent.
The World Food Programme (WFP) said that given population movements it was hard to be precise, but reportedly about 30,000 to 40,000 had fled the no-fire zone and would be arriving in camps for the displaced in Vavuniya over the next few days.
The Government had requested that WFP extend food assistance for the incoming internally displaced persons, which would bring the total in the camps to between 90,000 to slightly over 100,000 persons.
At the moment, WFP had enough food to feed 100,000 people for the next two weeks and more food was being sent from Colombo.
Meanwhile, the United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR) remains deeply concerned about the plight of the civilian population still trapped inside that conflict zone in that north-eastern coastal pocket, where the situation was reported to be dire.  Yesterday, the Government informed UNHCR that an estimated 35,000, 40,000, or possibly slightly more, people had already fled areas where the military and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) were engaged in heavy fighting.  Of the anticipated 40,000 most recently displaced, so far UNHCR has confirmed reports that some 5,500 people had reached sites in Vavuniya, while another 2,000 new arrivals were recorded in Jaffna yesterday.  UNHCR is still ascertaining the total number of the newly displaced in the two districts.
UNHCR is providing emergency shelter support and non-food aid to the new arrivals and UNHCR staff are also present at the screening point or crossing point in Omanthai on a daily basis, but does not have direct access to the displaced.

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