By Anny Castro |
Tegucigalpa (BLAZETRENDS).- Honduras is facing a “very strong” humanitarian crisis with 3.2 million people in need, so the country needs more funding and solidarity to respond, said the resident coordinator of the United Nations in Tegucigalpa, Alice Shackelford.
“The needs are many, the international community and aid workers must understand that the humanitarian crisis in Honduras is a truly very strong reality, which needs support, accompaniment,” Shackelford said in an interview with BLAZETRENDS in Tegucigalpa.
Around 3.2 million people are currently in need in Honduras, 45% of them children and young people, which represents a worsening compared to the 2.8 million people registered by the Country Humanitarian Team last year. past.
The UN coordinator believes that action must be taken “quickly” to prevent the situation from becoming more complex and gave as an example that at least 3,000 malnourished children require “immediate and rapid intervention”, otherwise they have “a high possibility of die in the next 12 months.
Don’t forget Honduras
In addition, he made a “very strong and forceful” appeal to the aid workers to “not forget” Honduras and asked to accompany the work of the Honduran president, Xiomara Castro, to improve the conditions of the population.
Hondurans are “highly susceptible” to the impacts of migration, internal displacement, the climate crisis, and food insecurity because the country “does not have any capacity to build resilience,” which is why its inhabitants continue mired in the poverty and exclusion, he emphasized.
He also stressed that the humanitarian crisis in the Central American country “is going to get more complicated, it is going to expand and increase more, especially in the face of another phenomenon such as the drought (caused by) El Niño, but also the same hurricane season.”
Nearly 3 million people, corresponding to 30% of the population, are in a situation of food insecurity in Honduras, where high numbers of chronic and acute malnutrition are also reported, he emphasized.
According to Shackelford, Honduras is a country with “multiple levels of crises” and needs to respond to poor people affected by food insecurity and malnutrition and human mobility.
More funds to respond
The Humanitarian Response Plan provided by the UN office for Honduras requested 280 million dollars by 2023, of which only 10% (28 million) has been obtained so far, mainly for the area of food insecurity, water and sanitation and health.
“We still naturally need to secure resources for other areas of the humanitarian response as well, such as the issue of shelters, the issue of protection, something extremely important in a country where the protection crisis is truly central to the humanitarian response,” he explained.
The lack of resources “hinders” humanitarian intervention in Honduras, where the response plan addresses “critical problems” related to the health of the population, malnutrition and food insecurity, human mobility and protection risks, and the mechanisms of coping of the affected people.
The plan seeks to protect and save the lives of people affected or at risk of being affected by the impact of food insecurity, violence, human mobility, the effects of climate change and disasters through humanitarian assistance with protection approaches, age, gender and diversity, according to the UN.
In addition, support and strengthen sustainable solutions that promote “timely, coordinated, and localized access” to the rights, self-sufficiency, and resilience of affected or at-risk Honduran people.