Global General

UN appeals for $71 million aid for Kyrgyzstan: Ban

(Xinhua)
Updated: 2010-06-19 04:03

UNITED NATIONS -- UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said Friday that the world body is appealing for 71 million US dollars of emergency aid for conflict-stricken Kyrgyzstan.

"At this very moment, OCHA is launching a 71 million dollar flash appeal for Kyrgyzstan," Ban told reporters at UN Headquarters, referring to the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA).

John Holes, the head of OCHA, is meeting with donor member states on this issue, he said.

Kyrgyz violence may affect up to 1 million people: UN agencies

Humanitarian agencies need to be prepared to assist as many as 1 million people affected by the violence in Kyrgyzstan, the World Health Organization (WHO) and other UN agencies said on Friday.

"We are working with a planning figure of 1 million people that have been directly or indirectly affected by this event," said Giuseppe Annunziata, the WHO's coordinator for emergency response and operations, at a news briefing.

Annunziata said those people include refugees who have fled to neighboring Uzbekistan as well as displaced persons within the border of Kyrgyzstan.

Speaking at the same briefing, UNICEF spokeswoman Christiane Berthiaume said the 1 million figure was an estimated one, which meant to help aid agencies make preparations.

Besides refugees and displaced persons, the figure also includes families providing shelter to displaced persons and others who have been affected in one way or another by the ethnic conflict in the country.

So far around 100,000 refugees have fled to neighboring Uzbekistan, and about 300,000 displaced people are still seeking aid within Kyrgyzstan, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) confimed.