From drought to deluge, OCHA’s pooled funds help people through climate-related disasters

Afghanistan, Ethiopia, Kenya, Madagascar, Myanmar, Somalia and Syria |2023 and 2024 | CBPF and CERF

Afghanistan, Ethiopia, Kenya, Madagascar, Myanmar, Somalia and Syria. As climate-related disasters multiply, OCHA’s Pooled Funds are providing quick and flexible funding through local and international organizations – to help people get through the worst.

The Central Emergency Response Fund and the Country-based Pooled Funds offer critical funding for response to climate-related disasters like floods, droughts and disease – quickly and flexibly, around the world.

For example, CERF funding helped people weather the dzud in Mongolia, helping them keep their animals healthy through the lean times.

In Afghanistan, the Afghanistan Humanitarian Fund supported a programme to rehabilitate a water network whose destruction, combined with climate-change driven drought, was driving a community closer to conflict.

After devastating cyclones in Madagascar, CERF funding meant critical health clinics could be rehabilitated and re-opened.

In the midst of the Horn of Africa’s devastating drought, the Pooled Funds provided life-saving help in Ethiopia, Kenya, and Somalia. CERF and CBPF funding have helped deliver safe water, cash, and livestock health care to hundreds of vulnerable households.

“Before the cash distribution, we could barely afford food. But now I can comfortably say my children are getting two solid meals a day,” said Darmi, whose animal herd had been devastated by years of drought in Kenya.

Each year, communities across Myanmar’s Rakhine State brace themselves for the near-daily deluges that sweep across the region during the annual monsoon season. 

“The rains arrived, and I was worried the situation would become unmanageable. A lot of people need help to fix their roofs,” says Amraan, a community volunteer at a displacement camp.

With CERF and other funding, UNHCR worked closely with partner organizations to ensure tarpaulins were distributed, damaged shelters repaired – and then communal facilities were repaired after the seasonal floods.

In Syria, the Syria Cross-Border Humanitarian Fund provided water trucking to Al-Hamra camp, which suffered a terrible heat wave last summer.

“We are dying from the heat; we experience extreme fatigue because of it,” said Rasmiya Al-Muhammad, who lives there. “We put the sheets in the water tank and shake them to cool them. We cover ourselves and the children in the sheets just to cool down.”

More information on CERF allocations in Afghanistan, Ethiopia, Kenya, Madagascar, Myanmar, and Somalia.

Published November 2024, mentions allocations and projects from 2023-2024