Addis Ababa, 12 May 2015 (WIC) – The United Nations Humanitarian Coordinator for Somalia said the “multi-faceted” challenge presented by Somalia is different to that posed in other countries, highlighting challenges facing the humanitarian community working in Somalia.
“We are dealing with a country putting things together again,” said Philippe Lazzarini. “We have a post-conflict situation but we also have a conflict existing. We have military operations but we also have different stages of recovery and development.”
That meant that aid delivery remained incredibly dangerous, and Mr. Lazzerini had described to UN Member States the challenges of delivering humanitarian assistance, as highlighted by the attack three weeks earlier in northern Somalia on UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) workers, where four lost their lives and five were wounded.
“I think it’s an understatement to say that Somalia remains one of the largest and most complex emergencies in the world,” he said, pointing to figures, such as the fact that three million people need humanitarian assistance or livelihood support, among whom 740,000 are unable to meet food needs, as well as 200,000 children who are severely malnourished.
He stressed the vulnerability of the one million internally displaced persons (IDPs) in the country, whose vulnerability made them “pariahs among pariahs” as they continued to live in appalling conditions.
Mr. Lazzerini underlined Somalia’s susceptibility to natural disasters and food insecurity and said it was still too early to say whether the harvest would be sufficient or not.