United Nations Radio

OCHA, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs and other organizations have launched a revised Flash Appeal for humanitarian assistance for Kyrgyzstan where violence in June erupted, affecting 400,000 people. Gerry Adams asked Gordon Denoon, Senior Humanitarian Affairs Officer with OCHA, about the first appeal, which was only 30 percent funded:

crying woman from Kyrgyzstan

The initial Flash Appeal was produced about 10 days after the emergency. At that point access was a big issue. As is common with these flash appeals, we needed to revise the flash appeal based on humanitarian needs. So now that access has improved, people have been able to get into Osh and Jalalabad to the south and undertake major assessments to see what are the needs on the ground. So the flash appeal has been revived from $73 million up to $946.4 million.

So this is a new flash appeal? Or is it a continuation of the old flash appeal ?

It's a continuation of the older flash appeal but updated now that we have more information from the ground.

What were you able to find out with the increased access?

The primary needs that we are seeing at the moment are around protection and the need to provide the communities in the south with a safe and secure environment. And that is important because that will have an effect on all the other programming. We need to guarantee protection to allow the distribution of food, to allow distribution of non-food items and to allow for shelter to be reconstructed. Now with winter approaching, shelter is one of the key areas. The winters in this part of the world can be very severe and temperatures of minus 20 degrees Celsius are not unheard of. So it's really critical that we get people inside of winterized shelter as soon as possible.

How do you propose to guarantee access?

This is one of the key issues in terms of protection. So we are talking with govts, the UN agencies, ngos and working together and sharing information and ensuring that we can be present to provide assistance. But let's hope that our very presence may enhance the protection of the local population. Having a large number of international humanitarians in the area would hopefully enhance protection and reduce the likelihood of further violence.

What is the situation on the ground now? Being that you're there.

I'm up in the North of the country, in the capital, where the situation is very normal, and walking around the streets you wouldn't think that anything had happened here. Down in the South the situation is much more fragile, and we're receiving continued reports of harassment and sporadic violence still occurring in the South. But the situation has stabalized, but it's still very fragile, and very fluid and could change at a moment's notice.

So many people were displaced in the initial violence. What are they doing right now?

This has been a very interesting and I would say unusual emergency where we saw this massive outflow of refugees who returned to the country and that all happened within the space of ten days, which I mean is extremely unusual. What tended to happen is people actually left the country or tended to stay with relatives of friends or other host families who had the space and were able to support them. Now we're seeing many more people returning home, although something like 2.5 thousand homes were damaged or completely destroyed. So part of the flash appeal is appealing for the funding necessary to start rebuilding shelters for these people, and we're also looking to provide support to the host families who have borne the task of hosting families.

Narrator: Gordon Denoon, Senior Humanitarian Affairs Officer with OCHA in Kyrgyzstan.

Duration: 3'56"