Somalia, UN appeal for $80m emergency aid to avert floods crisis

Somalia and the UN have appealed for $80 million to provide emergency relief to thousands  affected by the recent floods in the country warning little was coming through from the $1.5 billion appeal for 2018.

The appeal which came following a joint meeting in Mogadishu is expected to provide urgent support to over 750,000 affected by the recent floods, 229,000 of this displaced. Thousands of others were displace in this past week as cyclone Sagar hit Puntland and Somaliland regions.

“Unlike in 2017, when funding came in very early in the year to support the famine prevention, less than $370 million has been recorded to date in 2018,” the UN Humanitarian Coordinator for Somalia, Peter de Clercq, said at the launch in Mogadishu of the so-called Somalia Flood Response Plan.

“This is a fraction of what we require to address the existing case load prior to the onset of the flooding,” he added.

The appeal however falls within the broader 2018 Humanitarian Response Plan which sought $1.5 billion for the humanitarian needs of more than five million people affected by drought and conflict across the country.

The funds will cover response priorities including services in camps for internally displaced persons (IDPs), the provision of emergency services in schools, food assistance to displaced communities, and health and nutrition in flood-affected areas.  Other priority areas include the provision of transport to deliver humanitarian assistance and family protection, as well as the provision of shelter, water, sanitation and hygiene facilities.

In a communique Sunday, the stakeholders called on the Federal Government to ease and facilitate import of relief supplies and remittances while urging state governments to ‘temporarily suspend new bureaucratic requirements’ and boost security to facilitate access for humanitarian agencies to deliver aid in time.