According to the Zambia Vulnerability Assessment (ZVAC, 2019) conducted by the Disaster Management and Mitigation Unit (DMMU) under the office of the Vice President, at least 2,330,182 persons are facing a severe drought during the present lean season (October 2019 and March 2020).

Although the Government of the Republic of Zambia (GRZ) has not declared drought as an emergency, ACT Zambia forum is lobbying the office of the Vice President through the DMMU to release the latest findings from a recent assessment conducted and to declare the drought in Zambia as an emergency.

The number of people facing food insecurity and poor access to safe water is increasing for both humans and livestock.

A national member from Zambia ACT forum, The United Church of Zambia (UCZ) will implement food and WASH initiatives to support drought-affected people with food and WASH needs from Rapid Response Funds.

Zambia_Drought Emergency (RRF)

The government of Zimbabwe in August declared the drought situation in Zimbabwe a national disaster and appealed for international humanitarian assistance.

The drought is due to poor 2019 harvests caused by the El Nino phenomenon.

An estimated 31 per cent of Zimbabwe’s rural population (2,878,957 persons) require urgent action to protect and save livelihoods, reduce food consumption gaps, and minimize acute malnutrition.

Affected communities also need assistance with market linkages as the markets are depressed and there is a need for an intervention that ensures that communities can purchase food from the market.

Two national ACT Zimbabwe Forum members Methodist Development Relief Agency (MEDRA) and Lutheran Development Services (LDS) are preparing to respond through the Rapid Response Fund in the sectors of food and safe water provision.

Zimbabwe_Emergency Drought Response (RRF)

In early August, a forest fire started in the department of Santa Cruz in Bolivia, which has increased the sources of accelerated burning.  According to the most recent OCHA report (1 Oct. 2019) on the fires, Wildfires continued to rage through South America including Bolivia, experiencing a spate of fires due to lower humidity, strong winds and longstanding agricultural practices of clearing farm land with fire. Authorities in Santa Cruz, Bolivia, report that fires have consumed at least 3.3 million hectares.  On 17 August, the Santa Cruz departmental government issued a decree to mobilize human, technical and logistical resources to address the forest fire.

The Government of Bolivia has requested assistance in fighting the fires, which is the current priority for the State, In this area, many of the low-land indigenous populations maintain autonomous and communally owned indigenous lands (known as Native Community Lands. Reactivation of hot spots in some municipalities, particularly those in rural areas, has hindered the ability to control and curb the extension of the fires. In this context, the population faces challenges to engage in their habitual daily actions, cope with the emergency and protect their homes, crops, livestock while aiming to prevent the advance of the fire.

The Evangelical Methodist Church in Bolivia (IEMB), will be responsible for the execution and general implementation of the RRF, in close coordination with the local authorities and leadership respectively.

RRFs_Fires_Bolivia_12_2019

An unprecedented number of fires have raged throughout Brazil in 2019, intensifying in August. There have been more than 80,000 fires so far this year, the most ever recorded by the country’s National Institute for Space Research (INPE). It’s a nearly 80 percent jump compared to the number of fires the country experienced over the same time period in 2018. More than half of those fires are taking place in the Amazon. Environmentalists have been raising the alarm about deforestation since 2018. Most of the worst affected regions are in the north of the country. Roraima, Acre, Rondônia and Amazonas all saw a large percentage increase in fires when compared with the average across the last four years. In the Brazilian Amazon there is a population of approximately 430,000 indigenous people, distributed in 419 Indigenous Lands, occupying an area of 115,342,101 hectares, 22.9% of the total area’s surface, including people in voluntary isolation, who are now at great risk due to the uncontrolled fires.

CESE an ACT Alliance local member from Brazil in coordination with NGOs and local partners will provide food security, basic  equipment for firefighting and will provide accompaniment to indigenous leadership to carry out advocacy actions

RFFs_Fires_Brazilian_Amazon

A protracted protection crisis continues in the Occupied Palestinian Territory (OPT), which remains largely attributable to Israel’s ongoing occupation (UN OCHA 2019). For the first time, the ACT Appeal for the OPT was developed from a lens that understands the differences between Gaza and the West Bank in terms of humanitarian impact and scale of needs, but with a strong recognition of the shared and broader needs of the Palestinian people. The ACT Palestine Forum was organized using the same analysis, and Forum coordination is proactively managed between Jerusalem and Gaza despite access and mobility issues. This Appeal is an expression of the Forum’s desire to make direct operational links between the two areas and strengthen its existing platform for coordination, learning, and resourcing across the two areas.

PSE191 Appeal – Humanitarian Response to the Protracted Crisis in the OPT