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7
January 2005
Switzerland
offers UNHCR helicopters for relief operation
GENEVA,
7 Jan. (UNHCR) – In a humanitarian gesture on Friday, the
Swiss government offered the U.N. refugee agency three Super Puma
military helicopters for a period of three months to help deliver
relief and shelter materials in the tsunami-devastated Indonesian
province of Aceh. The helicopters will be available early next week,
significantly boosting UNHCR's logistical capacity to operate in
remote areas of the western Aceh coast. The Swiss will pay the operating
costs for the three-month period.
"Logistics are a major constraint in this emergency relief
operation, and these helicopters will be essential in really helping
us move materials and staff into the remote parts of Aceh's west
coast where assistance is desperately needed," said UNHCR's
Asia Pacific Bureau director, Janet Lim, who is overseeing the operation.
The U.N. refugee agency requested Swiss assistance on Thursday.
"This is a very generous offer from a country with a strong
humanitarian tradition which is now working alongside the neutral,
humanitarian U.N. refugee agency to meet the immediate shelter needs
of a traumatised population caught up in this disaster," Lim
added.
In the field in Indonesia, Assistant High Commissioner Kamel Morjane,
who is in charge of UNHCR's global field operations, visited the
area of Banda Aceh destroyed by the Dec. 26 tsunami, and was horrified
by what he saw.
"He said every destroyed house is testimony to a shattered
life, and our task now to help them rebuild their lives," UNHCR
spokesman Ron Redmond told reporters in Geneva.
Morjane met with UNHCR's seven-person international emergency team
to discuss the immediate tasks for the coming days and weeks. The
team is scheduled to reach 16 international staff over the weekend.
On Friday. the emergency team visited hospitals and the spontaneous
settlements that have sprung up around the town to start assessing
shelter and health conditions. A UNHCR community services officer
is also visiting displaced people in many of the spontaneous tented
settlements.
On Thursday, the UNHCR team leader joined an assessment mission
by helicopter to the island of Simeulue off the western coast of
Aceh. The mission – which included the deputy governor and
the health minister of Aceh province – was told by local authorities
that relatively few islanders had been killed or injured because
they fled to higher ground as soon as they felt the earthquake that
triggered the tsunami.
Elsewhere in UNHCR's unprecedented response to a natural disaster,
the agency plans to airlift relief supplies into Sri Lanka over
the weekend to begin replenishing all of the stocks the agency distributed
in a round-the-clock operation that began on the day the tsunami
struck.
"Before the tsunami, UNHCR was caring for 390,000 conflict-displaced
and returning refugees in Sri Lanka, so we already had pretty sizeable
stockpiles on the ground," Redmond said. "Now, with an
additional half a million displaced by the tsunami, those stockpiles
are pretty much depleted and we're scrambling to get more in and
to strengthen our existing distribution network."
On Saturday evening (8 January), a charter flight from Frankfurt
carrying five portable warehouses and 10,000 plastic sheets from
UNHCR's central warehouse in Copenhagen is scheduled to land in
Colombo. A further 20,000 cooking sets are expected to be brought
in next week from New Delhi.
Hours after the tsunami struck on 26 December, UNHCR started distributing
relief supplies for 20,000 families (100,000 people), including
plastic sheeting, cooking sets, rope and clothing from one of the
few existing stockpiles of relief supplies in Sri Lanka.
In addition to Indonesia and Sri Lanka, UNHCR is assisting tsunami
survivors in Somalia in the Horn of Africa. Although the agency'
s mandate is to protect and assist refugees fleeing persecution
and war, UNHCR has stepped in at the request of U.N. Secretary-General
Kofi Annan to help victims of the natural disaster, using 50 years
of expertise in responding to refugee emergencies.
"While the world's attention has understandably been riveted
on the Indian Ocean disaster, UNHCR is also reminding donors of
the enormous needs still faced by millions of refugees and others
of concern around the world," Redmond said.
On a related issue, UNHCR is urging governments to suspend, for
three months, forced returns of rejected asylum seekers and others
to areas devastated by the tsunami: Sri Lanka, Indonesia's Aceh
province, the Maldives, and coastal areas of India.
UNHCR also reiterates that no one should be forced to return to
coastal areas of Somalia, underlining its longstanding position
that no Somali should be forced to return to southern Somalia or
to any place other than his area of origin. In addition, UNHCR has
urged states to be cautious about forcing Somalis to return to north-west
and north-east Somalia (Somaliland and Puntland) because of those
poor regions' limited ability to absorb returnees.
ENDS
UN
refugee agency media contacts in the tsunami-stricken region include:
SRI
LANKA
UNHCR Colombo
+94 11 268 3968
Ms. Auravasi Patel: + 94.11.777.377.112
Press Officer Mr. Lyndon Jeffel: +94.11.777.260.825
Press Officer Ms. Vivian Tan: Sat phone: +8821.651.128.524
INDONESIA
UNHCR Jakarta / Aceh
Anita Restu / Robert Ashe / Stephane Jaquemet +62.21.391.2888 /
+62.21.391.2929
Fernando Del Mundo, mobile: +41.79.249.3461 or Mans Nyberg, mobile:
+46.76.888.2561
EAST
/ HORN OF AFRICA
UNHCR (Nairobi/regional) - Kitty McKinsey +254.20.422.2750 or +254.
722.592.963 or Emmanuel Nyabera +254.20.423.2120 or +254.733.995.975.
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