UN to provide relief aid for up to 100,000 Kenyans
The UN refugee agency will provide relief aid to up to 100,000 Kenyans displaced by post-election turmoil that has killed hundreds in the East African country, the agency announced on Saturday.
By Agencies |
GENEVA: The UN refugee agency will provide relief aid to up to 100,000 Kenyans displaced by post-election turmoil that has killed hundreds in the East African country, the agency announced on Saturday.
"We are providing immediate aid for up to 100,000 people as part of the overall UN response," Deputy High Commissioner L. Craig Johnstone said in a statement.
"We have supplies for 50,000 people in our Nairobi warehouse and will bring in additional items from UNHCR's regional emergency stockpiles in Dubai or in Tanzania."
The UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) said it will work with government aid officials, the Kenyan Red Cross and other humanitarian agencies in organising distribution of the relief supplies.
The operation is focused on displaced people in the Rift Valley and in areas around Nairobi, the statement said.
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An estimated 250,000 Kenyans may have been displaced in recent days, the United Nations said Friday, adding that 100,000 people were in need of immediate assistance in the western Rift Valley region. Violence in the wake of December 27 elections has killed more than 350 people to date. Kenyan President Mwai Kibaki called for a national unity government Saturday to defuse the violence, but the opposition stood by its demands for him to resign. Opposition challenger Raila Odinga claims Kibaki rigged his way to being re-elected.
The UNHCR said one of its teams in Uganda had also monitored the situation along that country's border with Kenya on Saturday. They reported that some 2,000 Kenyans had crossed into Uganda in the Tororo region, but the situation had stabilised and was under control, the agency said.
Nairobi is also the UNHCR's major administrative and operational centre for the region. According to the agency, more than 270,000 refugees from the East and Horn of Africa are currently staying in Kenya, most of them in UNHCR-run camps in the remote north of the country housing primarily Somalis and Sudanese.
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Kenya also provides a key lifeline for the flow of aid supplies to the camps, as well as to UNHCR-assisted refugee populations in Southern Sudan, Uganda, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Rwanda, it said.Download
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