People fleeing fighting in Muttur

“The conflict there had deepened while all eyes were on Lebanon. Today, 37.5 million dollars was needed to meet the needs of 220,000 newly displaced people in Sri Lanka,” said UN Emergency Relief Coordinator Jan Egeland said on Thursday.

Egeland was speaking in New York to announce a forthcoming conference on Lebanon.

Action plan

His comments came as the Inter-Agency Standing Committee (IASC) country team in Sri Lanka launched an action plan on Thursday to facilitate urgent relief work in the north and east of the country.

There is an urgent need for restoring and safeguarding humanitarian operational space to ensure effective access to allow the delivery of services Jan Egeland

IASC is an inter-agency forum for coordination, policy development and decision-making involving the key UN and non-UN humanitarian partners.

“There is an urgent need for restoring and safeguarding of humanitarian operational space to ensure effective access to allow the delivery of services and the monitoring of assistance programmes,” said Rashid Khalikov, Acting Director of the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) in Geneva at the launch.

Relief work

The organisation said relief work to be carried out under the Common Humanitarian Action Plan (CHAP) is scheduled for the period September-December 2006 says IASC.

“Recurrent conflict has resulted in the breakdown of family structures and social safety nets. Coping and resilience mechanisms have been stretched to their limits, exposing individuals to extreme vulnerability” an IASC statement said on Wednesday.

The organisation said at the end of August 2006, the number of people displaced in the north and east of Sri Lanka has risen to 217,457, with an additional 9,203 people having seeking refuge in India.

Meanwhile, Egeland said it was unacceptable that the government had not provided any explanation regarding the execution of 17 humanitarian workers on 5 August, and humanitarian assistance could not continue, unless the people responsible for those actions were held accountable.