Behovet for nødhjælp stiger i takt med, at det bliver vanskeligere for hjælpeorganisationerne at komme frem. Regeringen har blokeret vejene til Abyan og nødhjælpsarbejdere frygter for deres liv.
SANA’A, 12 June 2012 (IRIN) – In the sweltering port city of Aden, about 300km south of Yemen’s capital Sana’a, two dozen international NGOs are struggling to meet mounting (stigende) humanitarian demands caused by a war raging in neighbouring Abyan Governorate where government troops have for a month fought to crush a local Al Qaeda ally, Ansar Al Shariah.
“We are managing to deliver aid by partnering with local NGOs, talking to tribes and doing a lot of mitigation work so that our security situation is the least exposed possible,” Tareq Talahma, humanitarian affairs officer with the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) in Aden, told IRIN.
Teddy Leposky, a spokesman for the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR), was stationed in Aden during the 2011 popular uprisings in Yemen which culminated in the negotiated transfer of power from longtime leader Ali Abdullah Saleh to his deputy Abd Rabu Mansour Hadi. But Leposky, like many others, was relocated to Sana’a in late May for security reasons.
Over the past three months in Yemen, three foreign nationals have been kidnapped, one shot dead and two others wounded by gunfire from local criminal groups, according to aid workers.
“The UN were not targeted or considered a target last year,” Leposky told IRIN, “but now we’re starting to have a concern that we can be targeted or will be.”
Eric Marclay of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) said the 21 May attack led him “to revise a number of security rules for operations and also for international staff to minimize their exposure.
According to him, nowhere in Yemen this humanitarian-security conundrum is more apparent than in Aden. In a 6 June appeal, he said, “Our staff were [in Abyan] a few days ago to assess the situation and found serious, urgent needs that, if not met, could lead to the displacement of over 100,000 people,” in addition to the thousands who had already fled to safer places.
But the government has blockaded all roads leading into Abyan while the military campaign unfolds. “If we were immediately allowed to bring relief supplies in to Abyan, we could prevent population movements towards Aden,” Marclay said.
Læs videre på: http://www.irinnews.org/Report/95623/Analysis-Aid-work-conundrum-in-unpredictable-Yemen
