New York : The United Nations has pledged $100 million from the Central Emergency Response Fund to address critical funding shortfalls for humanitarian emergencies in 10 countries in Africa, the Americas, and the Middle East.
In many humanitarian emergencies, funding shortfalls prevent aid agencies from reaching people in need of life-saving assistance, said Acting Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator Joyce Msuya in a statement.
“CERF funding is an emergency cash injection of last resort to avert the worst and save lives when other humanitarian funding is insufficient,” Msuya explained, stressing the importance of continued donor attention to these underfunded crises.
More than a third of the new funding from the fund, managed by the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), will support relief operations in Yemen ($20 million) and Ethiopia ($15 million), where people are suffering from the combined impact of hunger, displacement, disease and climate disasters, she added.
The UN official explained that the new funding package will also support humanitarian operations in countries suffering from conflict, displacement and climate crises, including Myanmar ($12 million), Mali ($11 million), Burkina Faso ($10 million), Haiti ($9 million), Cameroon ($7 million) and Mozambique ($7 million).
Funding also included countries working to combat drought and flooding caused by the El Niño phenomenon (spread of hot water), such as Burundi ($5 million) and Malawi ($4 million).
