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UN humanitarian arm warns of severe needs in eastern Mali

29 May 2013 00:23 (UTC +04:00)

Baku-APA. The UN Office for the Coordination for Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said Tuesday that there are severe humanitarian needs in Gao, eastern Mali, where the amount of drinking water available to people has declined by 60 percent over the past weeks, APA reports quoting local media.

"Some neighborhoods in Gao do not have water at all due to dysfunctional pumps and lack of electricity," deputy UN spokesman Eduardo del Buey said at a daily news briefing here. "Outside of the city, the Niger River is the only source of water and there are concerns about cholera outbreaks."

"Between 8 and 22 May, 22 cases of cholera were reported in Ansongo district, southeast of Gao, including two deaths," del Buey said. "Although no new cases have been reported in the past five days, the risk of cholera remains high. Humanitarian organizations are carrying out prevention and treatment programs."

Gao was among the areas affected by the fighting that broke out last year in northern Mali between government forces and Tuareg rebels, after which radical Islamists seized control of the area.

The crisis uprooted hundreds of thousands of civilians and led to a dire humanitarian crisis.

A recent inter-agency mission to Gao led by UN Humanitarian Coordinator for Mali Aurelien Agbnonci, found that rehabilitating the water supply and increasing food assistance are imperative to urgently assist the population of some 70,000 people in the city.

OCHA has deployed two staff to Gao and is in the process of opening an office. In total, there are more than 100 humanitarian organizations in Mali. The 410-million-U.S. dollar humanitarian appeal for Mali is 29 percent funded as of Tuesday.

Giving an update on schools in the north, Marixie Mercado of the UN Children's Fund (UNICEF) told reporters that 42 percent of schools in Gao, Kidal and Timbuktu are now functional, with 100, 000 students being taught by 23,000 teachers.

This is mostly in the urban areas since there is still a high level of insecurity in the rural areas, and across the region the lack of infrastructure and logistical resources is still a major constraint.

Mercado added that there is still a major chronic malnutrition crisis across the country, particularly in the south where 90 percent of the population live.

UNICEF expected that in 2013, some 210,000 children will require life-saving treatment for malnutrition and 450,000 children will also suffer from a less severe, but still debilitating, form of malnutrition.

Meanwhile, the UN High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) said on Tuesday that with the first round of presidential elections in Mali due on July 28, consultations were under way between the interim Malian government and refugee-hosting countries on including refugee populations in the voting.

These consultations were expected to be followed by bilateral agreements that would form the basis of the electoral process in each of the main refugee-hosting countries.

According to the agency, some 174,000 Malians have found refuge in neighboring countries since the conflict began in January 2012. Burkina Faso hosts 50,000 refugees, Mauritania 74,000 and Niger 50, 000. There are also smaller groups of Malian refugees in Algeria.