Issued by: ACT Indonesia Forum
Jakarta, December 16, 2009
General Situation
In late November, UN OCHA hosted a review of the humanitarian response plan for West Sumatra that included participants from the Indonesian national and local government, UN cluster coordinators, and representatives of the many agencies serving in the area. The outcome of the review was the formation of an "Early Recovery Network" to bridge the gap between the emergency response and the reconstruction phase. The network will also facilitate coordination between clusters and the Indonesian government. An Early Recovery Advisor has been recruited to work in coordination with UN OCHA's Humanitarian Coordinator. A Gender Advisor also arrived on 14 December, and both advisors will support all UN agencies and NGOs, national and international, in their post-earthquake activities.
Humanitarian relief operations will cease as of 31 December 2009. According to the Indonesian State Ministry of National Development Planning (BAPPENAS), the government's strategy for rehabilitation and reconstruction will cover five sectors: housing and settlement infrastructure, public infrastructure, social services, productive economy, and cross-sectoral activities. The Early Recovery phase of this strategy aims to: restore social and psychological well-being; provide temporary shelter and basic services including clean water and sanitation, livelihood, education and food security; and establish the foundation for reconstruction. The Indonesian government states that international assistance is still needed for this early recovery phase.
The government projects that the rehabilitation and reconstruction phase will begin in 2010 and end by December 2011. The budget for that phase will be determined in the February-March 2010 budget deliberations of the legislature in Jakarta.
UNICEF and Save the Children will be handing over coordination of the Education cluster to the provincial-level Ministry of Education in mid-January 2010. Construction of permanent schools will begin in May 2010. In the meantime, the government and NGOs serving the Education cluster are developing standards and guidelines to build back better. 121 temporary classrooms have been set up, serving 14,689 children and 275 teachers.
In terms of nutrition, food is still being distributed to vulnerable groups. During December, fortified biscuits and noodles are being provided to 93,355 under-five children, 36,522 pregnant/lactating mothers and 112,045 students and teachers through 53 primary health centers and 641 schools in 6 districts.
Via the Shelter Cluster, over 160,000 households have received emergency shelter and approximately 80,000 households have received non-food items over the last six weeks. An additional 65,000 households have received either individual household or community shelter toolkits. Since the beginning of December, Shelter Cluster members have shifted from emergency interventions to more substantive shelter support to affected communities. The primary focus is on transitional shelter programs, with 20 agencies having already committed to support the construction of 37,000 transitional shelters. The majority of agencies are implementing a variety of inputs with cash grants and the use of recycled materials salvaged from damaged houses in their programs.