The [him] moderator wonders how the grant decisionmakers decided that the need in Dawei was greater than in other areas …
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Burma receives part of UN emergency fund
Feb 08, 2007 (DVB)—The United Nations said on Wednesday it would allocate US $1.35 million to humanitarian programs in Burma and to help Burmese refugees in neighbouring Bangladesh, courtesy of the new Central Emergency Response Fund.
Of the $85 million allocated to “under-funded emergencies” in 15 countries, $1 million will go to Burmese Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh through the UN Refugee Agency, with a further $354,976 allocated to UNAIDS programs inside Burma, Stephanie Bunker, a spokesperson for the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, told DVB on Thursday.
The UNAIDS money will be channelled through Medecins Sans Frontieres (Doctors Without Borders) Switzerland, Bunker said, to fund HIV/AIDS therapy, counselling and treatment for 2400 people in Tenasserim Division. MSF Switzerland has operated an office in Tavoy, the capital of Tenasserim Division, since 2004.
Announcing the funding in New York on Wednesday, Margareta Wahlström, the UN’s acting emergency relief coordinator, said that the money was unlikely to meet the needs of the countries in question.
“While each of these allocations represents but a fraction of the overall requirements in the individual emergencies, as a whole they help us pursue principled humanitarian action in which those who require aid the most are identified based strictly on need and assisted accordingly,” Wahlström said in a UN statement.
In Burma’s case, only seven percent of people suffering from HIV/AIDS receive the necessary anti-retroviral treatment, UNAIDS figures show.
Of the estimated 30,000-plus Rohingya refugees that remain in Bangladesh, about one third are not registered with UNHCR. Refugees that are registered find that they are unable to earn money, receive education or adequate housing mainly due to Bangladeshi restrictions on the help UNHCR is able to provide.
CERF, an emergency UN fund launched in March 2006, had already allocated $3.8 million to UN programs in Burma in rapid response funding.
In December last year, more than $1 million was disbursed to UNHCR and $52,645 to the International Organization for Migration to tackle the dire health and internal migration problems in Karen and Mon States “in order to decrease morbidity and mortality rates.”
In January, a further $1.5 million in CERF funding went to a UN Children’s Fund health program and just under $1 million to the World Food Program, which provides food aid to people suffering from a lack of food security in areas of Burma including northern Arakan State, Shan State and Magway Division.
But a WFP funding update on Wednesday showed that after receiving this money the organisation had only secured nine percent of the estimated $52 million needed in Burma up to the end of 2009.
CERF has also guaranteed $230,000 for a UN Development Program water and sanitation project in Burma to be disbursed in the coming months and will announce further financial aid for under-funded emergencies worldwide in the middle of the year.
http://english.dvb.no/news.php?id=8633
