Source: United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF)

Date: 30 Apr 2009

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Executive Summary

Cyclone Nargis lashed south-west Myanmar (Map) non-stop for 20 hours with unprecedented ferocity resulting a loss of more than 140,000 lives and damages to the property and infrastructure worth billions of dollars1. Hundreds of thousands of families whose livelihoods were based on farming, fishing and small trade were pushed to the brink of economic disaster. Myanmar is used to annual floods and cyclones but the government and the humanitarian community were not prepared for such scale of disaster. The government launched limited relief efforts immediately but it took some three weeks and a visit by the UN Secretary General to ease the entry visa and internal ravel restrictions on the international humanitarian community to mount the required relief efforts.

UNICEF was able to conduct initial assessment in some of the affected townships by mobilising its local staff within 24 hours after the cyclone. UNICEF was able to distribute limited amounts of pre-positioned supplies to the affected communities immediately but nowhere near what was required. With the easing of travel restrictions UNICEF was able to scale up its relief efforts immediately. As per Inter Agency Standing Committee commitment UNICEF took lead in education, nutrition, WASH2 and child protection clusters. UNICEF implemented a large scale relief & recovery operation and learned many lessons for future use should such disaster strike again.

UNICEF Headquarter mobilised technical support through standby agreement with various partners to assist UNICEF Myanmar in logistic operation, WASH and child protection. Additional technical staff were recruited locally and internationally to assist the relief operation. Immediate priorities for UNICEF were to prevent disease outbreaks, ensure availability of safe drinking water, establishing temporary learning spaces for hundreds of thousands of children, creating child friendly spaces for traumatised children and family tracing and reintegration of separated children.

Strong winds and heavy rainfall left more than 4,000, schools destroyed or badly damaged, as were more than 600 health facilities. One of the priorities for UNICEF is to reinstate education infrastructure and health care networks. UNICEF joined the OCHA flash appeal and appealed for US$ 90 million. Many donors and UNICEF national committees contributed generously to UNICEF’s relief and recovery efforts which enabled UNIECF to establish more than two thousand temporary learning spaces, distribute family kits, establish child friendly spaces, operate water treatment plants, provide sanitation facilities, establish therapeutic feeding centres and many more interventions. The relief operation has been replaced by recovery process but the programme is facing severe financial constraints. In order to reinstate the damaged education, health and water infrastructures a substantial amount of resources would be required. Other major recovery needs include reviving of agricultural and non-agricultural livelihood to regenerate local economy. Without this support many children and their families will continue to remain vulnerable.

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