22 July 2009: The United Nations Emergency Relief Coordinator, John Holmes, has allocated some $9 million to boost emergency programmes in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK).
The CERF funds will be apportioned by the United Nations Resident Coordinator to priority life-saving programmes for people in DPRK. The CERF funds allocated for DPRK are part of some $55 million in allocations made by the UN’s Emergency Relief Coordinator through a process to support underfunded programmes in emergency situations around the world.
This is the second time this year time humanitarian organizations in DPRK have received funding from CERF, which was established in 2006 to help agencies respond rapidly to new or deteriorating humanitarian situations. In the first underfunded round for 2009, humanitarian programmes in DPRK received some $10 million for programmes to provide for the food, health and nutritional needs of people affected by food shortages in the DPRK. DPRK has now received a total of $33.5 million from CERF, the eleventh-most of the nearly seventy countries to have benefited from the Fund. Since its establishment, more than 100 Member States and private sector donors have contributed $1.5 billion dollars to CERF.
7 April 2009: Despite gradual improvements, as compared to mid and late 1990s, the DPRK continues to suffer intricate humanitarian problems ranging from widespread food shortages to declining health system, lack of access to safe drinking water to deficit of basic agricultural inputs. All factors combined aggravate the situation for the DPRK population, especially vulnerable groups.
In 2008 the food security situation in the DPRK deteriorated drastically due to a combination of high food and fuel prices, low bilateral food and fertilizer donations and the floods of 2007 on top of a weak industrial base, structural agricultural constraints, dilapidated infrastructure and high urban population.