Sri Lanka: IOM races to provide shelter, sanitation, as displaced flood into Vavuniya

With a flood of over 110,000 internally displaced people (IDPs) in the past ten days into Vavuniya, the government-controlled district adjoining the LTTE conflict zone, IOM is racing to provide shelter and sanitation for nearly 40,000 new arrivals.

The IOM Vavuniya team, which now numbers over 130, including 30 staff and 100 locally recruited labourers, has already built 2,500 emergency shelters but is now turning to tents as the fastest way to shelter the IDPs from the extreme heat. IOM Sri Lanka has 400 tents in stock and is flying in a further 4,000 to Colombo from Dubai and China on 29 April.

"Many of the new arrivals have been displaced repeatedly by the conflict. Some are injured, they have had very little medical care, almost no food and water and have had to walk for days. They need help now and we have to move fast," says IOM Sri Lanka Chief of Mission Mohammed Abdiker. Read more ...

First UNHCR emergency airlift flight for Sri Lanka arrives in Colombo

A UNHCR emergency airlift carrying humanitarian aid for tens of thousands of people displaced by fighting in north-eastern Sri Lanka began Monday morning with the arrival in Colombo of a plane carrying 2,850 family-sized tents from the refugee agency's central stockpiles in Dubai.
The giant Boeing 747 cargo plane, the first of two scheduled flights to deliver more than 200 tonnes of UNHCR tents, landed in Colombo at 10:45 a.m. local time. The family tents will be used in the north of the country to help shelter thousands of people uprooted in recent fighting between government forces and Tamil rebels. Read more ...

UNHCR stepping up Sri Lankan operations to meet growing needs

GENEVA – The UN refugee agency is preparing to ramp up its already sizeable humanitarian operations in Sri Lanka to address the needs of tens of thousands of people displaced by the recent fighting in the north-east of the country.

Plans include an emergency airlift of 5,000 family tents and other aid items from UNHCR's regional stockpile in Dubai to the Sri Lankan capital, Colombo. The airlift could begin as early as this weekend. A UNHCR emergency team is also being dispatched, the second to be sent to the country in two months.

The agency is also increasing its budget for Sri Lankan operations that cater to the internally displaced by some 35 percent, to $16.6 million, to provide shelter, protection and other aid for civilians fleeing the conflict zone. The additional funds will be sought from government and private donors. More ...

UN appeals for funds to relieve Sri Lanka civilian plight

COLOMBO, 23 April 2009: The UN today issued an urgent appeal for funds to meet the critical needs of an exodus of thousands of people who are fleeing fighting.

Speaking from Colombo after returning from camps in the town of Vavuniya where around 80,000 exhausted civilians who escaped the combat zone are being held, the UN’s Humanitarian Coordinator in Sri Lanka said that teams are scrambling to feed, clothe, shelter, and provide water to “crowds of weary and hungry people.” More ...

150,000 liberated and still more to come

By early afternoon today (April 22) 3630 more civilians who had been held hostage by the LTTE in the No Fire Zone entered the cleared areas in government territory, bringing the number of civilians who have escaped to freedom since April 20, to 83,300. More ...