A UN-led convoy is currently moving to areas beyond Government control in Kachin, the spokesperson for the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), Jens Laerke, told reporters in Geneva.

The convoy is carrying life-saving items to some 5,100 displaced people in camps along its route between Maija Yang town and Bhamo. The items include food, special nutrients for children, household kits, hygiene kits and sanitation supplies such as water tabs.

Since June 2011, fighting between the Kachin Independence Organization and the Government of Myanmar has forced an estimated 100,000 people from their homes. An estimated 60,000 of those displaced are living in areas beyond the Government’s control. OCHA said it hopes this is the first of many convoys to those areas.

“The cross-line convoy represents a positive step forward by the Government to help all people in need across Kachin State,” said UN Humanitarian Coordinator Ashok Nigam.

Previously, the agency had been unable to reach these people because of lack of access but also because of a shortage in funding – $ 50.9 million had been requested, of which only $ 4.2 million had been received.

“With this CERF funding, UN agencies will be able to better meet the needs of the influx of people fleeing the increasingly desperate situation in Syria,” said the acting Humanitarian Coordinator in Jordan, Andrew Harper.

“With the hard climate expected during the approaching summer, the most urgent and basic need is to provide clean water and shelter,” he added in a news release issued by the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA).

The Jordanian Government, which estimates that there are currently more than 500,000 Syrian refugees in the country, requested UN support to set up and service a new camp in Azraq town to take the pressure off the Za’atari camp, which has reached full capacity with over 100,000 people.

The CERF allocation will support the first phases of the establishment of the new camp, which is expected to accommodate up to 110,000 refugees by the end of the year.

The funds will be channelled through the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) to assist the first 50,000 vulnerable refugees in need of life-saving shelter and non-food items as well as water, sanitation and hygiene services in the new camp.

Yesterday the UN reported that the total number of people in need of assistance as a result of the ongoing conflict in Syria is now 8.3 million, representing about 38 per cent of the country’s population. This figure includes some 6.8 million in need inside Syria and 1.5 million who have sought refuge in neighbouring countries, including Jordan.

OCHA has called the situation in Syria a “humanitarian catastrophe” and warned that funding for the response has not kept pace with the growing needs. UN aid agencies and their partners, who appealed for $1.5 billion at the start of the year for the humanitarian response to the Syrian crisis, are expected to announce a revised funding appeal early next month.

Launched in 2006, CERF enables the fast delivery of life-saving assistance to people affected by natural disasters and other crises worldwide. It is funded by voluntary contributions from Member States, non-governmental organizations, regional governments, the private sector and individual donors.

Since May 2011, the Fund has provided more than $84 million to support life-saving operations in Syria and in neighbouring countries.

“The needs are rising exponentially and we are broke,” UNICEF spokesperson Marixie Mercado told reporters in Geneva. “In concrete terms this means that by June we will stop delivering 3.5 million litres of water every day to Zaatari camp.”

Donors have so far contributed $12 million to UNICEF against an appeal of $57 million for its operation in Jordan this year.

UNICEF estimates that the number of Syrian refugees in Jordan will reach 1.2 million by the end of the year, and Ms. Mercado added that with the influx of new arrivals, needs are rapidly surpassing funding resources.

Without additional funds, UNICEF will not be able to open a third school it had been planning inside the camp, as it will not have the necessary resources to acquire textbooks and furniture, or cover the teachers’ salaries and the running costs of the school.

“This means the ministry of education will turn away Syrian refugee students seeking entry into Jordanian schools because we cannot provide support to any more than 30,000 Syrian school children already in Jordanian schools with UNICEF support,” Ms. Mercado said.

Lack of funding will also stop UNICEF’s provision of water, sanitation, immunization and nutrition support to two new camps slated to open in coming weeks.

Meanwhile, the Director of Operations for the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), John Ging, will begin a one-week visit to Syria and its neighbouring countries tomorrow to review the humanitarian response to the rapidly escalating crisis, which has now displaced more than 1.25 million Syrians.

Mr. Ging will be in Syria until Monday, and will then go to Lebanon, followed by Jordan and Turkey.

More than 70,000 people, mostly civilians, have been killed and more than three million displaced since the uprising against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad began in March 2011. UNICEF estimates that out of the four million people in need, 50 per cent are children.

“The people of Mali have suffered appallingly. Now is the time for us to help,” John Ging, Director of Operations for the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), told correspondents in New York.

The latest humanitarian appeal for Mali seeks $373 million, including $153 million for the most urgent interventions in the next six months. However, only $17 million has been received so far, Mr. Ging said.

He stressed that security and humanitarian access had improved, which should erase doubts that aid would be effective at this point, including the necessary development aid that could restore people’s ability to support themselves.

“We are there, faced very directly with the immediate needs, with the urgency,” he said, adding, “Not only is the need there, but also the very real opportunity to turn things around.”

Northern Mali was occupied by radical Islamists after fighting broke out in January 2012 between Government forces and Tuareg rebels. The conflict prompted the Malian Government to request assistance from France to stop the military advance of extremist groups.

Mr. Ging said that since the conflict began in January 2012, more than 430,000 people have been displaced – more than 260,000 internally and more than 170,000 having fled as refugees to neighbouring countries.

In addition to disrupting the lives of those who fled, this has left health clinics short of doctors, schools without teachers and electricity plants without engineers, he said.

During his four-day visit, during which he visited the historic city of Timbuktu and the central town of Mopti in the north, Mr. Ging said community representatives emphasized to him that they did not want to become dependent on international aid but were seeking basic support.

“These are dignified people who are not asking for much,” said Mr. Ging, specifying that, in the North, people wanted security, schooling for their children, health services, reopened markets and to be able to sow their crops on time.

Conveying his impression that much of the population was traumatized by events of the past year, as well as reports of rape and brutalities against children, he said that education seemed to be a huge priority for most people.

“This is the issue that energized and caused the most animation in everybody we met,” he said, pointing out that 700,000 children were affected by the crisis and that 200,000 had not had any schooling in the past year.

Describing his visits to two hospitals, he confirmed shortages of supplies and services. He also said that restoration of livelihoods was a priority as Mali suffered from the long-term food and nutritional crisis that was afflicting much of the Sahel region of Africa, with 585,000 people in need of immediate food assistance and a million more at risk.

He said that most people were preoccupied with restoring their ability to feed themselves and that development assistance was critical for that purpose. “Their preoccupation must become our preoccupation,” he stressed.

Also yesterday, the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) appealed for $45 million in urgent funding to address the basic needs of women and children affected by the crisis, for the next three months, underlining the vulnerability of those two parts of the population.

“There have been instances of recruitment of children by armed groups, threats from unexploded ordnance, gender-based violence and a heavy impact on the education provision for this generation of children,” the agency said in a press release.

“Without funding, UNICEF will be unable to continue its support to life-saving interventions for internally displaced persons (IDPs) and host families and communities, as well as refugees,” it said.

In this tense atmosphere, misperceptions have arisen that humanitarian agencies are limiting aid to one side in the conflict rather than following the humanitarian principles of impartiality, independence and neutrality. Humanitarian agencies say this has caused problems in interacting with people who have been affected by the crisis and has increased the risk to their workers. Some agencies have been forced to suspend their operations because of threats and intimidation.

On the outskirts of the main town of Sittwe, temporary camps for 70,000 displaced people have been erected. This is now the Muslim sector and its inhabitants are not permitted to come into town. Elsewhere in the town, a smaller number of the mostly Buddhist population have been forced from their homes by the unrest are also living in temporary shelters. In other parts of the State, many more people are living in camps. Conditions are still poor, despite aid provided by the Government, private donors, the UN and local and international NGOs.

To combat the misperceptions and improve access to everyone in need of aid, OCHA commissioned a study on behalf of the Humanitarian Country Team to look at how international aid organizations can improve their engagement with affected communities in Rakhine.

“Up until now the general approach has been to keep a low profile,” said Barbara Manzi, head of OCHA’s office in Myanmar. “This approach has worked for now but we need to change this dynamic and improve the perception of our work.”

The study found that while overall perceptions are improving as the community sees humanitarian assistance going to both communities, the UN and NGOs have not generally tried to address the misconceptions directly, through either speaking to the communities or to local media. As a result, there is a poor understanding of what humanitarian agencies are doing.

“We conducted a survey of the general community and asked them what they wanted to know about the current work of UN and NGO activities,” said Jamie Munn, a consultant with the study. “Their questions were really simple. They wanted to know exactly how we were assisting people and what our future plans were – all easy questions to answer.”

The humanitarian community is now looking at how it can incorporate the study’s recommendations into its programming. This includes contacting local media organizations and engaging with a broader group of stakeholders in the community.

One international NGO which has prioritized these strategies and has held regular information briefings with its neighbours says that a sense of trust is being established. The organization reports that it has not encountered staff intimidation or other obstacles to its work, indicating that the strategy has paid off.

The study also found that most people said they receive information from family and friends or from the media, including radio and newspapers. While social media platforms like Facebook have been blamed for fueling rumours and tensions, they do not appear to be a source of information for the majority of the community.

“One easy way for organizations to address some of the misperceptions is to support their local staff to become ambassadors and provide them with the right information to answer questions that their family and friends are asking them, such as whether aid organizations are providing aid to both communities,” said Emily Rogers, another consultant on the survey.

The study also recommends that there should be much stronger communications with people across Rakhine State, including people in camps that the humanitarian agencies are serving. People were generally not aware of the criteria for receiving aid or how often they were likely to receive it, and they knew very little about the humanitarian agencies involved in relief work.

“If we engage with communities now, both in the towns, villages and in the camps, we will be able to address some of the misconceptions that currently exist,” said Ms. Rogers. “More importantly, open communication channels will prevent new grievances flaring up as humanitarian operations continue in Rakhine.”

“The situation is getting worse every day and the widespread violence is having a devastating impact on the lives of ordinary Syrian women, men and children,” warned the humanitarian chief.

UN agencies and humanitarian partners have started stepping up assistance across the conflict lines. The World Food Programme began scaling up its food distribution to reach 1.75 million people this month, about half of them in opposition-controlled or contested areas. Working with more local partners, it aims to reach about 2.5 million people by April. UNICEF and the World Health Organization with their partners have vaccinated more than a million children against polio and measles, many in areas held by opposition groups. UNHCR distributed blankets, mattresses and household goods to over 400,000 people last year. About 40,000 children in conflict areas now have access to education and psycho-social support to cope with the crisis.

The Syrian Government recently authorized three additional international NGOs – Merlin, Mercy Corps and the Norwegian Refugee Council – to work in Syria but this brings the total to just eleven, said Ms. Amos. “We are crossing conflict lines, negotiating with armed groups on the ground, to reach more people in need but we are not reaching enough of those who require our help. Limited access in the north is a major problem that we can only solve using alternative methods of aid delivery.”

Last Saturday (16 Feb), a UN inter-agency mission delivered the first batch of critical, life-saving relief supplies including food, clothes, mattresses and blankets to about 6,000 internally displaced people in Syria’s north-western province of Idleb, where nearly 50,000 people are said to be living in makeshift shelters exposed to harsh winter conditions.

“The joint relief convoy, including eight UN agencies, shows that outreach is possible from inside Syria,” said Regional Humanitarian Coordinator for Syria Radhouane Nouicer. “It encourages us to continue to increase our efforts to reach more people in need across the country.” More inter-agency missions and aid convoys are expected to arrive in the area shortly to assist some 25,000 people.

Heavy rains last month led to massive flooding in the southern part of the country, killing 105 people and displacing some 150,000. Hundreds of houses were destroyed and crops and infrastructure severely damaged.

In a news release, the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said the Government and its partners have already allocated $10 million to cope with the emergency. However, given the scale of the disaster, more resources are required for those who lost everything in the floods.

The funds, $5.13 million in total, will be distributed from the UN Central Emergency Response Fund (CERF), which is managed by OCHA, to various UN agencies to provide basic needs and services such as shelter, food, medical aid, water, sanitation and hygiene, and logistical protection to those in need.

“While much has been done, much more is needed. These CERF funds will go a long way in ensuring that assistance is provided to those who need it most,” said the UN Resident Coordinator in Mozambique, Jennifer Topping.

The World Food Programme (WFP) will receive $2.3 million, and more than $1 million will be allocated to the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) and the International Organization for Migration (IOM), respectively. A further $820,000 will be given to a joint UNICEF/UN Population Fund (UNFPA)/World Health Organization (WHO) project.

The CERF allocation will form part of the larger recovery proposal, which seeks $30.6 million from the international community to help those affected by the floods for the next six months. Approximately $5 million in pledges have already been received and OCHA is calling on donors to support these efforts to ensure a quick early recovery and increased community resilience.

Launched in 2006, CERF enables the fast delivery of life-saving assistance to people affected by natural disasters and other crises worldwide. It is funded by voluntary contributions from Member States, non-governmental organizations, regional governments, the private sector and individual donors. Donors have so far pledged more than $383 million for 2013, bringing the total amount contributed to CERF since March 2006 to more than $3.2 billion.

“The situation in Syria, as we all know, continues to deteriorate and that means that there are greater needs… more people in need but also that the needs are more acute as the coping mechanisms continue to collapse,” John Ging, the Director of Operations for the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), told a news conference in New York.

“The biggest humanitarian effort in Syria is the effort of the population to support their brothers and sisters at this incredibly difficult time,” he added. “Families are hosting so many people and they themselves are also affected by the situation.”

Mr. Ging, who recently led an inter-agency humanitarian mission to Syria and Lebanon, cited a funding shortfall that is affecting the ability of the UN and its partners to deliver vital assistance, including food, water and medical supplies.

His comments come ahead of the humanitarian pledging conference that Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon will chair in Kuwait on Wednesday. The conference seeks to raise $1.5 billion to assist civilians affected by the ongoing conflict over the next six months, including those inside the country as well as those taking refuge beyond its borders.

In addition to those uprooted by the conflict, at least 60,000 people, mostly civilians, have been killed in Syria since the uprising against President Bashar al-Assad began in early 2011.

The particularly harsh winter has compounded the suffering of people in need, especially IDPs living in shelters lacking adequate insulation with no winter clothes and no blankets. Lack of fuel and electricity has been a major challenge for those affected as well as for those trying to deliver vital humanitarian aid, according to OCHA.

Despite immense security challenges and limited access, UN agencies and humanitarian partners have scaled up aid and are reaching people in all governorates across the country. The World Food Programme (WFP) is currently reaching about 1.5 million people a month with vital food assistance.

The UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) and the World Health Organization (WHO) have helped vaccinate millions of children against measles and polio, while the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and partners continue to support hundreds of thousands of refugees in neighbouring countries.

WFP Executive Director Ertharin Cousin returned to region on Sunday to visit the Za’atari refugee camp amid concerns of an influx of Syrian refugees crossing the border to Jordan. This is the second time that she has visited the refugee camps in Jordan in less than three months.

“We are significantly increasing the number of meals we provide to people as they cross, but the scale of human suffering is growing, and neighbouring countries like Jordan are exhausting their resources to deal with the crisis,” said Ms. Cousin.

More than 30,000 Syrians have arrived at Za’atari camp since the beginning of the year, and thousands more cross the border every night. WFP provides ready-to-eat food to Syrians arriving at the camp and, once they have settled in, supplies them with food rations to cook in communal kitchens. The camp is a temporary home to around 65,000 people.

Ahead of Wednesday’s pledging conference, the head of the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) is urging donors not to ignore the plight of some 525,000 Palestine refugees in Syria.

“While all civilians in Syria are bearing the brunt of the violence, the present situation of Palestinians in Syria is exceptional,” said Commissioner General Filippo Grandi.

Most of the Palestinian refugees in Syria now rely on UNRWA as their sole means of support, the agency pointed out in a news release. Several UNRWA schools in the country are currently acting as a last place of refuge for 9,000 people, while tens of thousands languish under harsh conditions in neighbouring countries. Some 20,000 people have fled to the over-crowded refugee camps of Lebanon.

The agency added that many Palestinians in Syria have been killed, including five UNRWA staff members.

A UN mission undertaken from 18 to 22 January found that cereal, fruit and vegetable production has been halved in some areas, which have also seen massive destruction of irrigation and other infrastructure, according to the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO).

“The mission was struck by the plight of the Syrian people whose capacity to cope is dramatically eroded by 22 months of crisis,” said Dominique Burgeon, Director of FAO’s Emergency and Rehabilitation Division, who joined with representatives of six other UN agencies in the mission led by the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA).

“Destruction of infrastructure in all sectors is massive and it is clear that the longer the conflict will last, the longer it will take to rehabilitate it,” he added.

Affected areas in the capital, Damascus, as well as in the governorates of Homs and Dera’a were visited by the mission, which was coordinated with both the Government and the opposition.

The mission found that vegetable, fruit and olive production declined significantly in both Homs and Dera’a governorates, including a 60 per cent drop in vegetable production in Homs and a 40 per cent drop in olive oil production in Dera’a.

The production of poultry, a traditional source of cheap animal protein, has also been severely hit with major farms destroyed in Homs, Hama and Idlib.

In addition, movement of livestock to grazing areas has not been possible and their survival is compromised by the lack of animal feed and veterinary drugs, the importation of which is hampered by sanctions.

Of the 10 million Syrians who live in rural areas – about 46 per cent of the population – 80 per cent derive their livelihoods from agriculture, according to FAO, and the sector is critical for the survival of millions during the crisis.

“It is clear from discussions with NGOs [non-governmental organizations] and technical officers of the Ministry of Agriculture and Agrarian Reform, that security conditions permitting, agriculture has a huge role to play in helping people to stay on their land and generate income to cope with their most urgent needs,” Mr. Burgeon said.

“They however need urgent agricultural support in terms of seeds, fertilizers, animal feed, veterinary drugs, poultry and rehabilitation of irrigation infrastructure,” he said.

Meanwhile, UN Emergency Relief Coordinator Valerie Amos, who last week sounded the alarm over catastrophic humanitarian conditions in Syria at the UN Security Council, brought her plea for an urgent ramp-up of aid to Davos, Switzerland, where the World Economic Forum has convened.

Relaying the results of the multi-agency mission, she said that agency representatives were shocked at what they saw. “They were very clear that the effect of nearly two years of conflict has had a terrible impact on people, especially on children.

“I repeat: four million people need help, two million are internally displaced and 400,000 out of 500,000 Palestinian refugees have been affected,” she said.

She said that despite the dangerous environment that humanitarian partners faced, they were making a difference. “But it is not enough, especially as we cannot keep pace with the rising number of people in acute need,” she stressed.

“We need more people, we need more partners and we need to be able to deliver more quickly,” she added, noting that the humanitarian community had also requested $1.5 billion to help displaced people and their host communities in Syria and neighbouring countries for the next six months.

A funding conference for humanitarian aid for Syria is planned for 30 January in Kuwait, to be hosted by Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and the Emir of that country, she noted.

“We hope that the conference will yield the resources we need,” she said.

According to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), more than 30,000 people fled their homes over the weekend, coinciding with the declaration of a state of emergency by the Government and the beginning of a French air operation in support of the Malian army, bringing the number of internally displaced persons (IDPs) to over 200,000.

“The degradation of the sanitation, shelter, health and food security conditions which has been observed over the last nine months in the North is likely to be aggravated as the number of IDPs increases,” OCHA spokesperson Jens Laerke told reporters in Geneva.

Northern Mali was occupied by radical Islamists after fighting broke out in January 2012 between Government forces and Tuareg rebels, after which the country underwent a military coup d’état, in March.

The renewed fighting comes at a time when OCHA estimates that 4.2 million Malians will need humanitarian assistance this year. These include some 2 million food insecure people and hundreds of thousands of malnourished children.

The Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) stressed that it is becoming increasingly difficult to access areas in the North as fighting continues. In Bamako, the capital, many families are struggling to make ends meet as the security situation deteriorates.

“Many families live in small rooms in bad conditions with no electricity or direct access to water. They generally lack space to accommodate all family members. The needs for money, food and shelter are huge,” said UNHCR spokesperson Adrian Edwards, adding that the agency is in the process of working with partners on income-generating activities to ameliorate the situation.

UNCHR is also assisting Malians who have left their country for neighbouring Niger, Burkina Faso and Mauritania by providing clean water, sanitation and hygiene structures, healthcare and education.

“Refugees are telling us they fled the ongoing military intervention, the absence of subsistence opportunities and basic services, and the imposition of Sharia Law,” Mr. Edwards said. He added that UNHCR remains short of funds for the Mali crisis with only $77.4 million received of the $123 million sought to help refugees and IDPs in 2012. For 2013, the agency anticipates needs at a further $195.6 million.

Meanwhile, the World Food Programme (WFP) warned that chronic problems of food insecurity and malnutrition in the country will only be worsened by the conflict. The agency has so far managed to move emergency food to 270,000 conflict-affected people in the North, including 70,000 IDPs. However, it states that persistent insecurity is severely limiting its work.

WFP spokesperson Elisabeth Byrs added that the agency would continue to monitor the situation and work closely with its partners to reach more than 400,000 crisis-affected people in the cities of Timbuktu, Gao and Kidal, which have been some of the most affected areas.

As the number of displaced people increased, there is also a growing concern for children as they are at high risk of being separated from their families and are more vulnerable to many forms of abuse, including military recruitment and sexual violence, noted the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF).

“A major concern is of children being used in the fighting,” said UNICEF spokesperson Marixie Mercado. “Children were often used in the first wave of fighting, which significantly raised the risk of injury and death.”

In addition to humanitarian concerns, there is also a need to protect the country’s cultural sites, which have previously been attacked during the fighting. The Director-General of the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), Irina Bokova, today launched an appeal to all military forces in Mali “to make every effort to protect the cultural heritage of the country, which has already been severely damaged.”

In anticipation of military operations, Ms. Bokova mobilized the agency’s Emergency Fund to protect the four sites in Mali that are inscribed on UNESCO’s World Heritage List. Efforts include developing preventive measures and the training of armed forces on the prevention of illicit trafficking.

UNESCO has already provided the topographic features relative to the location of sites to the concerned military staff, as well as information for soldiers to prevent damage to cultural heritage. The information has been shared with police and aid workers.

“Mali’s cultural heritage is a jewel whose protection is important for the whole of humanity. This is our common heritage, nothing can justify damaging it. It carries the identity and values of a people,” Ms. Bokova said.

“The destruction of World Heritage sites in Mali in 2012, especially the mausoleums in Timbuktu, sparked a wave of indignation across the world, helping to raise awareness of the critical situation facing the Malian people. The current military intervention must protect people and secure the cultural heritage of Mali,” she added.