CERF ensures the continuation of humanitarian assistance in Burundi
1 March 2007: The past year witnessed important milestones in the country’s progress towards the consolidation of peace and economic recovery. These include the signing of a ceasefire agreement by the last remaining rebel faction, the National Liberation Forces (FNL), on 7 September 2006, and the launch of long-term development planning frameworks such as the Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper (PRSP). At the same time, the consequences of the decade-long conflict in Burundi and the government’s weak delivery capacity warrant continued humanitarian attention.
More than 13 years of political conflict and civil war, the cumulative impact of extremely low living standards and a continuous deterioration of social and economic conditions characterise the situation in Burundi. A long-standing, protracted humanitarian crisis that today combines with an overall context of structural poverty puts the majority of Burundians in a situation of daily fragility and vulnerability.
Important humanitarian challenges remain, including the need to mitigate the negative side-effects of the expected return of approximately 100,000 internally displaced persons (IDPs) and 350,000 refugees in view of the already scarce resources, in particular land.
![Subsistence farmers who rely on regular rains for their crops have been hard hit by Burundi's unpredicatable weather in recent years. [Photo: WFP/Savariaud]](/Portals/11/Images_country/BUR_WFP_child.jpg) |
| Subsistence farmers who rely on regular rains for their crops have been hard hit by Burundi's unpredicatable weather in recent years. [Photo: WFP/Savariaud] |
Urgent assistance is needed to address the acute food shortage that has been compounded by a drought in 2006, spread of disease on the county’s staple crop, manioc, and unusually heavy rains in 2007 which have substantially damaged crops that were due for harvest in June. As a result, food aid and wide spread seed distribution are urgently needed. While chronic poverty and physical insecurity have taken their toll on people’s livelihoods, climate change and crop diseases have further eroded households’ capacity to resist to shocks. Despite the relative stabilisation of the country, structural poverty, plant diseases, extreme pressure on land and adverse ecological conditions have prevented any improvement of food security conditions for the huge majority of Burundians.
With the CERF grant, FAO will provide emergency agricultural assistance, including the rehabilitation of traditional production and trade mechanisms for seeds and high-yield plants to the most vulnerable and disaster affected populations. A total of 340,000 people are expected to benefit from the CERF grant.
WFP will provide food aid to an estimated 1.2 million vulnerable beneficiaries in 2007, including malnourished women and children, refugees, vulnerable farming families, school children, HIV/AIDS infected and other chronically ill individuals as well as demobilised soldiers. WFP food aid will assist food-insecure households to invest in rural livelihoods, nutrition and education.
UNICEF will, through a multi-sector project,address the critical gap in meeting the needs of increasing numbers of Burundians without any offical status in Tanzania that are being expelled.
Burundi received a total of US$ 4 million from the first and second allocation under the underfunded grants window in 2006 . The CERF grant allowed WHO, UNICEF, FAO and UNHCR to continue urgent humanitarian assistance in the areas of health and nutrition, emergency rehabilitation of marshland, and shelter activities.
[Click here for CERF in Burundi 2006]
One third of all funds from the Central Emergency Response Fund is earmarked for use in underfunded emergencies, in order to help redress imbalances in global aid distribution, as a result of which millions of people in so-called neglected or forgotten crises remain in need.
[Last Update: 22 March 2007]
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