United Nations agencies are on the ground assisting with the immediate humanitarian needs of those affected by a deadly cyclone that struck Myanmar over the weekend leaving at least 10,000 people dead and at least 3,000 missing.

 

The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said the number of people in need of assistance is expected to be "sizeable."

 

The most urgent needs, according to the UN Country Team in Myanmar, include shelter, water purification tablets, cooking sets, mosquito nets, emergency health kits and food.

 

The United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) has began distributing disaster relief supplies, equipment and prepared foods including 800 metric tons of food stocks available in WFP warehouses in Yangon.

 

"WFP food assistance has now begun to reach persons who are without shelter or food resources in and around Yangon," said Chris Kaye, WFP Country Director.  Kaye said additional truckloads of WFP food are being dispatched to Labutta Township, an area hardest hit by the cyclone in the Ayeryarwaddy Delta region.  

 

WFP's emergency operation is valued at $500,000 and is funding immediate airlifts of food aid and the initial emergency response staff deployments in Myanmar.

 

The UN Children's Fund (UNICEF) has dispatched five assessment teams to three of the affected areas and is positioning relief supplies. The agency says it will work with partners and the government to provide access to clean water, safe sanitation and improved hygiene, and will seek to protect children and help them return to school as soon as possible.

 

[Above Photo: In a photo released by China's Xinhua News Agency, parents take their child to a hospital in Yangon.]

 

Jennifer Pagonis, spokesperson for the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), told journalists in Geneva that the agency's office in Myanmar purchased $50,000 worth of urgently needed basic supplies in Yangon for distribution, including emergency tarpaulins, plastic sheeting and canned food. The UN refugee agency is emptying its emergency shelter material stockpiles in neighboring Thailand of plastic sheeting and tents for some 10,000 people for urgent dispatch to Yangon.

 

The Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator John Holmes announced that the agency is prepared to provide a grant from the Central Emergency Response Fund (CERF).

 

"The government of Myanmar has indicated that they are open to international assistance. We appreciate the government's announcement that it is making available approximately $5 million from its own resources for emergency relief, and I am ready to allocate a significant amount from the CERF as the most urgent needs become clear,"  Holmes said.

 

Meanwhile, a UN Disaster Assessment and Coordination (UNDAC) team is being dispatched to Myanmar and is expected to begin work shortly.

Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said he is "alarmed" by the news coming out of Myanmar's Foreign Ministry that casualties have risen to more than 10,000.

 

Speaking to reporters in New York, he added that lack of communications has made it difficult to ascertain the extent of the casualties and damage, but stressed that the UN is prepared to extend necessary assistance and to mobilize international aid in support of the government.

 

Cyclone Nargis, which made landfall in the Irrawaddy delta region on Friday, left thousands of people dead in its wake and hundreds of thousands without shelter. With winds of over 190 kilometres per hour, the storm, which hit Yangon later that same night, tore down trees and power lines and causing widespread flooding.

 

Myanmar authorities have declared five regions - Yangon, Ayeyarwwady, Bago, Mon and Kayin - disaster areas. The population of the declared disaster areas is estimated at 24 million, with an estimated 6 million in Yangon. More than 3,000 people are reportedly missing in Ayeyarwady Division alone.

In an op-ed published on Monday, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon spoke of his own childhood in South Korea as he reflected on the crisis of global food prices.

"Visiting a primary school under construction in Ouagadougou, I told the children how I grew up: no walls, just bare dirt to sit on. I told them how I knew hunger as a boy-barely enough to eat, my own grandparents and other elderly people scavenging for food and infants barely getting enough to grow. I remember these images, traveling in Africa, and think about that continent's wealth of resources, and the strength and courage of its people, so visible to me in the cities I visited. If my country could emerge from trauma to become an economic power, I know that Africa can as well," he said in the op-ed that was published by U.S. media outlets including the Washington Times and Philadelphia Inquirer.

 

Below is the op-ed in its entirety:

 

Glimmers of Hope

By Ban Ki-moon

 

There was, last week, a glimmer of hope in the world food crisis. Expecting a bumper harvest, Ukraine relaxed restrictions on exports. Overnight, global wheat prices fell by 10 percent.

 

By contrast, traders in Bangkok quote rice prices around $1000 a ton, up from $460 two months ago. The expectation is that they will rise still higher.

 

Such is the volatility of today's markets. We do not know how far food prices might go, nor how far they could eventually fall. But one thing is certain: we have gone from an era of plentitude to one of scarcity. Experts agree that food prices are not likely to return to the levels the world has grown accustomed to any time soon.

 

Consumers are grumbling even in the wealthy nations of Europe and the United States. But imagine the situation of those living on less than $1 a day-the "bottom billion," poorest of the world's poor. Most live in Africa, and many might typically spend two-thirds of their income on food.

 

In Liberia last week, I heard how people have stopped purchasing imported rice by the bag. Instead, they increasingly buy it by the cup-because that's all they can afford. It is worth remembering that Liberia's descent into chaos began, in 1979, with food riots.

 

In Cote d'Ivoire, political leaders told me how they worry that the crisis could undermine efforts to build real democracy-at a time, after a decade's effort, when they are so close to success.

 

In Burkina Faso, the president told me how desperately the nation needs help. Half his people live on $1 a day or less, the vast majority of them small farmers. The foreign minister spoke especially forcefully. The crisis in food, he said, is a greater threat by far than terrorism. "It makes people doubt their dignity as men," he said. And he added: "The issues of hunger and survival and how to live have become burning issues for the international community."

 

It might be tempting to let the markets work their magic. If prices go up, the thinking goes, supply will too. But we live in the real world, not the world of economic theory. In Kenya's Rift Valley, the bread basket of East Africa, farmers are planting only a third of what they did last year. Why, when you would think higher prices would prompt them to plant more? Because they cannot afford fertilizer, which is also sky-rocketing in price.

 

We see the same in Mali, Laos and Ethiopia. This is a prescription for disaster.

 

Earlier this week, in Bern, I brought together the chief executives of the UN agencies and leading multilateral aid and development organizations. There, we agreed on an urgent plan of action.

 

The first imperative is to feed the hungry. The World Food Program helps 73 million people. But to do so it requires an additional $755 million merely to cover its rising costs. Some $475 million of has been pledged. But promises don't fill stomachs, and the agency has only $18 million cash in hand.

 

We can not afford to stay locked in crisis. To ensure food for tomorrow, we must act today to give small farmers the support they need to better their next harvest. That is why the Food and Agriculture Organization has called for $1.7 billion to support an emergency initiative to provide low income countries with seeds, fertilizer and other agricultural inputs required to boost production. The International Fund for Agricultural Development will make $200 million available to poor farmers in the most affected countries. The World Bank is considering the establishment of a global crisis-response facility for this purpose.

 

To coordinate this work, I will set up and chair a United Nations Task Force on the Global Food Crisis. I will leave no stone unturned to focus political will at the July meeting of the G8 nations in Japan and the high-level FAO conference on food security in Rome in early June.

 

We can deal with this crisis. We have the resources. We know what to do. We should consider this not only as a problem but as an opportunity.

 

It is a huge chance to address the root problems of many of the world's poorest people, 70 percent of whom live as small farmers. If we help them-if we offer aid and the right mix of sound local and international policies-the solution will come.

 

Traveling though West Africa, I found good reason for optimism. In Burkina Faso, I saw a government working to import drought resistant seeds and better manage scarce water supplies, helped by nations like Brazil.

 

In Cote d'Ivoire, we saw a women's cooperative running a chicken farm set up with UN funds. The project generated income-and food-for villagers in ways that can easily be replicated. Elsewhere, I saw yet another women's group slowly expanding their local agricultural production, with UN help. Soon they will replace WFP rice with their own home-grown produce, sufficient to cover the needs of their school feeding program.

 

These are home-grown, grass-roots solutions for grass-roots problems-precisely the kind of solutions that Africa needs.

 

Visiting a primary school under construction in Ouagadougou, I told the children how I grew up: no walls, just bare dirt to sit on. I told them how I knew hunger as a boy-barely enough to eat, my own grandparents and other elderly people scavenging for food and infants barely getting enough to grow. 

 

I remember these images, traveling in Africa, and think about that continent's wealth of resources, and the strength and courage of its people, so visible to me in the cities I visited. If my country could emerge from trauma to become an economic power, I know that Africa can as well.

 

The only thing required is that we help. We can begin by taking the hard steps to deal decisively with the crisis in food.

UN SNAPSHOT

Groundbreaking Ceremony