Aide humanitaire

The international humanitarian response system will fail to cope with the expected rise in the number of people exposed to crises unless there are more resources closer to where disasters happen and there is more investment in preventing and reducing the risk of disasters, warns Oxfam.

In 2010, vast humanitarian crises from Haiti to Pakistan almost overwhelmed the international system’s ability to respond.

A coalition of 38 aid agencies today (6 September 2011) called on donors not to squander the opportunity to make a difference in the lives of the people of South Sudan, the world’s newest nation. The call came as new violence in Jonglei state increased emergency needs.

International agency Oxfam is airlifting 47 tonnes of vital water supply and hygiene materials to Somalia’s capital Mogadishu, as the aid community scales up its effort to bring relief to the drought-stricken country.

A year has passed since the first news reports alerted the world to unnaturally heavy monsoon rains in Pakistan’s north-western province of Kyber Pakhtunkhwa (KPK), a region already ravaged

On the day Ivory Coast President Alassane Ouattara is officially inaugurated in front of heads of state from around the world, more than 300,000 people remain displaced from their homes within the country and in neighboring Liberia, and they are in dire need of assistance.

Many people are returning to their homes in flood-hit Sri Lanka but the humanitarian challenge has only just begun. Oxfam will be scaling up its response to the disaster in the next few days to reach 120,000 people in the Eastern and North Central Provinces.

As the scale of the flood increases in the country, Oxfam continues to expand its rapid response in Eastern Sri Lanka, currently providing hygiene kits, tarpaulins, cooked food and bottled water to approximately 17,000 people in Batticaloa, Trincomalee and Ampara districts in the East.

In a report released today, Oxfam called on the Haitian authorities, with support from the international community, to move forward on plans to start rebuilding the shattered country and enable close to one million people still living in tents and under tarpaulins to resettle or return home.

In years of responding to disasters, the destruction and logistical challenges caused by Haiti’s earthquake which struck on 12 January 2010, were among the worst Oxfam has ever encountered.