Attachments
Highlights
• Since the earthquakes and tsunami struck Lombok and Central Sulawesi in August and September 2018, over 1 million children and their families have been reached with critical humanitarian assistance.
• The Government ended its response phase in April 2019 and UNICEF is now supporting the Government’s efforts in transitioning from response to recovery and longer-term development.
• Housing, land and property remain central issues for disaster-affected families and children in Central Sulawesi and in Lombok, particuarly as families seek to transition from temporary to permanent housing.
• In August UNICEF finalized the implementation of two cash transfer projects aiming to assist benefiting households with access to basic goods and services. In total, cash assistance benefited 6,144 households consisting of 25,457 people out of which 13,738 were children.
• In addition to the response in Lombok and Central Sulawesi, UNICEF has supported the Government of Indonesia’s efforts to respond to a circulating vaccine-derived polio outbreak (cVDPV1). Across two rounds, a total of 1,019,551 (80%) and 1,153,264 (96%) of the estimated 1,262,880 children under 15 years old were immunized with bivalent oral polio vaccine (bOPV) in the provinces of Papua and West Papua.
Situation Overview & Humanitarian Needs
Housing, land and property are the central issues for disasteraffected families and children in Central Sulawesi and in Lombok and will remain the ongoing challenge during recovery. In both areas, female and child-headed households are particularly vulnerable as they are less likely 1 to be recognised as eligible for assistance.
Government-led social assistance in Central Sulawesi has focused on construction of permanent housing (hunian tetap or ‘Huntap’) for disaster-affected communities. Meanwhile, a primary strategy of West Nust Tengara government has been to disburse cash assistance based on relative damage to household shelter. 3,000 families in Palu and Sigi regencies of Central Sulawesi have been assigned permanent housing to date, while 58,000 people are still in need of shelter. In addition, 5,850 families residing in high-risk, disaster-prone ‘red zones’ have been identified for relocation.
Collective permanent housing presents a variety of issues in their assignment and service access, especially in terms of protection.
Household shelter in Lombok sustained approximately twice the total damage compared to Central Sulawesi, and provincial government claims that over 100,000 people are still in need of shelter assistance. Disaster-affected households in Nusa Tenggara Barat (NTB) face challenges with land rights and their associated entitlements due to high numbers of absent spouses, informal marriages and informal tenure.
In February 2019, the Government of Indonesia declared an outbreak of circulating vaccine derived polio virus (cVDPV1) based on a single case and 2 positive contacts from the remote Yahukimo district of Papua Province. This is one of the most remote parts of Indonesia, with many communities only accessible by air. Given the strong push towards global polio eradication, the outbreak is considered a public health emergency of international concern.
The intial phase of the response plan has involved at least 2 rounds of immunization with bivalent polio immunization in the adjoining provinces of Papua and West Papua province, targeting close to 1.3 million children under the age of 15 years.