UN chief announces 100-million-dollar allocation to emergency response fund

UNITED NATIONS, Dec. 8 (Xinhua) -- UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres on Friday announced an allocation of 100 million U.S. dollars to the Central Emergency Response Fund (CERF) to meet critical needs in under-funded emergencies in nine countries.

He announced the allocation at an annual high-level pledging conference for CERF.

The 100 million U.S. dollars will be used to handle emergencies in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Uganda, Tanzania, Cameroon, Mali, the Philippines, Eritrea, Haiti and Pakistan.

In all these crises, CERF funds will enable UN agencies and their partners to carry out essential life-saving activities, and contribute to longer-term resilience and stability, said Guterres.

CERF has provided nearly 130 million U.S. dollars to help prevent famine in Nigeria, Somalia, South Sudan and Yemen this year.

Nutrition and health care services funded by CERF are particularly important for the children and pregnant women who suffer most from hunger and malnutrition, he said.

In the past three months, 19 million dollars in CERF funding have gone to Bangladesh to help with the sudden influx of more than 600,000 Rohingya refugees from Myanmar.

And when hurricanes Irma and Maria hit the Caribbean, CERF helped tens of thousands of people get access to shelter, food and clean water, he said.

Since its launch 12 years ago, CERF has been at the forefront of humanitarian response. CERF is without question one of the most important tools of the United Nations to reach people quickly and to save lives, he said.

At the pledging conference, he asked member states to donate to CERF as humanitarian needs have increased over the years.

Since CERF was launched in 2005, humanitarian needs have increased from 5.2 billion U.S. dollars to over 24 billion dollars.

Protracted conflict and the impact of natural disasters, compounded by structural fragility and chronic vulnerability, mean that more people than ever survive on the brink of disaster, he said.

The global humanitarian funding gap stands at 11 billion U.S. dollars as of Nov. 30 this year. Humanitarian response plans are funded at an average of just 60 percent, said the UN chief. Enditem