UN appeal for drought-stricken Djibouti severely under-funded
Donors have provided only 5 per cent of an emergency $7.5 million appeal for drought-stricken Djibouti, leaving the agricultural, food and coordination sectors of the appeal wholly unfunded, the United Nations humanitarian coordination office said today.
Donors have provided only 5 per cent of an emergency $7.5 million appeal for drought-stricken Djibouti, leaving the agricultural, food and coordination sectors of the appeal wholly unfunded, the United Nations humanitarian coordination office said today.
Germany would support the UN Children’s Fund’s (UNICEF) water and sanitation sector, while the United States promised $100,000 to the children’s organization for health services, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said. Still, those contributions amount to only 5.3 per cent of total needs.
“Delayed rains and erratic rainfall have been insufficient to allow the replenishment of water catchments or the regeneration of pastures. Meanwhile, pastoralists from Djibouti and neighbouring areas in Somalia, Ethiopia and Eritrea have been forced to continue seasonal grazing in coastal Djibouti areas, which has exhausted most rural grazing areas,” said OCHA.
In the combined Flash Appeal for Djibouti, launched on 27 April, the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) asked for just under $4 million for emergency livestock feeding and animal health projects; the UN Development Programme (UNDP) for $350,000 for emergency coordination; UNICEF for $300,000 for water and sanitation projects; and the UN World Food Programme (WFP) for $2.6 million for emergency feeding, it said.
UNICEF and the UN World Health Organization (WHO) together also requested $295,000 for particular emergency health care, OCHA said.
This was the latest in a line of disappointing responses to emergency appeals.
As nearly 4 million people faced a famine last week in arid, landlocked, least developed (LDC) Niger, OCHA said, “To date, not a single dollar has been pledged to the Flash Appeal” launched the week before for the West African country.
Late last month, too, WFP said it would have to stop distributing rations to nearly 4 million people in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) over the next two months, after receiving only 230,000 tons out of the requested 504,000 tons of commodities.
About a week earlier, it said that with global food aid declining, lack of donor support was threatening humanitarian supplies. The agency urgently needed $315 million to meet the needs of 2.2 million refugees living in camps, with 75 per cent of the sum required for Africa alone, it said.