COTE D'IVOIRE: Capacity gaps worry agencies
ABIDJAN, 17 February 2010 (IRIN) - The political impasse in Côte d’Ivoire is raising concerns among aid agencies about their readiness to respond to a possible humanitarian fallout, after identifying worrying capacity gaps.
The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (UNOCHA) is coordinating UN agencies and NGO partners to plan humanitarian readiness in response to a possible relapse into violent conflict. Its head, Julie Bélanger, told IRIN most sectors would require significant scale-up in the event of mass population displacements.
Some sectors, including protection, have no response scenario in place at all, while others such as food security do not have enough funding to maintain existing programmes, according to World Food Programme (WFP) head in Côte d’Ivoire, Alain Cordeil.
Capacity in all sectors - protection, food security, logistics, telecoms and camp management - would need to be scaled up were a humanitarian crisis to evolve, said the UN.
The political impasse came to a head when President Laurent Gbagbo decided to dissolve government and the electoral commission on 12 February. Voter registration was suspended on 11 February.
A wave of protests – some of them violent – had broken out across the country following accusations by Gbagbo that electoral commission head Robert Mambe had added 429,999 names to the voter register, who the president claimed were not native Ivoirians.
Scaling up and down
Emergency preparedness scenarios are based on estimates of 20 million people being affected, and 400,000 displaced, mostly in the west of the country.
But while assessing the cost and necessary human resources, several humanitarian agencies, including OCHA, are simultaneously scaling back their programmes as part of a transition strategy.
OCHA is pulling out of the Man and Zou in the west as part of its transition plan. Man experienced violent protests last week in which the town's tribunal buildings were attacked.
WFP is cutting its food security responses in the north and west because of funding shortfalls, Cordeil said. Chronic malnutrition is at 45 percent in the north and 40 percent in the west, according to preliminary government figures. Funding for NGOs intervening in nutrition, among them Merlin, is not guaranteed over the long term.
With depleted stocks in Côte d’Ivoire, WFP would have to use stocks in Ghana and Liberia were a crisis to develop, Cordeil said, though he pointed out these would be insufficient to cover a big crisis. Transporting the cereals would take at least two weeks, he said.
Overall, Bélanger said: "Little [humanitarian] capacity exists, which is why the plans need to give details of exactly what would be needed and how much it would cost."
The cost of helping about 400,000 displaced Ivoirians is as yet unknown, she said.
Meanwhile, government readiness to respond to a crisis is unclear, say observers. The government’s inter-ministerial disaster response plan, Plan ORSEC, is clear on paper but less so in practice, an aid worker told IRIN, and it is not evident whether the Civil Protection Department or the Ministry of Environment would lead it.
Preventing crisis
As agencies assess their readiness, the UN Operation in Côte d’Ivoire (UNOCI) is on alert to respond to outbreaks of violence, the Secretary-General’s spokesman, Martin Nesirky, told reporters this week in New York.
The Special Representative to the UN Secretary-General in Côte d’Ivoire, Young-Jin Choi, is meeting political party leaders this week to help resolve the situation; Côte d’Ivoire’s political crisis was a top priority at a one-day summit of Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) leaders in Abuja, Nigeria, on 16 February.
Next step
Funding for early recovery activities – also known as the transition from humanitarian to development assistance – has been hard to raise for Côte d’Ivoire. “Transition is not funded by either the humanitarian or the development donors,” said Bélanger, “which is why it’s hard to cover the needs right now.”
A UN transition fund created 2009 has just only received US$600,000 from the Swiss government so far, as opposed to a requested $5 million, which Bélanger says would allow for flexibility and targeting, and allow [agencies] to have a wider impact.”
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Theme(s): (IRIN) Aid Policy, (IRIN) Conflict, (IRIN) Early Warning, (IRIN) Food Security, (IRIN) Governance, (IRIN) Health & Nutrition
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Copyright © IRIN 2010
This material comes to you via IRIN, the humanitarian news and analysis service of the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. The opinions expressed do not necessarily reflect those of the United Nations or its Member States.
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