Attachments
Highlights
• Following a new joint Government/Humanitarian Country Team assessment of the IDP situation in Manica province, UNICEF will be supporting a WASH and Nutrition response for 3,600 IDPs consisting of WASH non-food items (NFIs) and a nutritional screening to identify and treat acutely malnourished children. In August, UNICEF provided school tents and learners kits in several IDP sites.
• In 2016, UNICEF and the Ministry of Health trained mobile brigades and have screened more than 140,853 children for severe acute malnutrition (SAM) and treated more than 8,312 children with SAM.
• Cumulatively, UNICEF has reached over 23,900 people with safe water through water trucking and point-of-use water treatment in Magude district, while the WASH cluster has reached 291,000 people with safe water.
• In November, UNICEF provided medicine, medical devices and equipment to support the Government’s response to the victims of the explosion of the fuel tanker in Tete, which affected 149 people and killed 90 people.
• In December, UNICEF responded to the Government’s appeal to the cholera outbreak in Maputo city, with communication material and tents for the establishment of a cholera treatment centre.
Situation Overview & Humanitarian Needs
The El Niño drought continues to affect 1.5 million people in Mozambique and it is expected that this number will be in need of food assistance until March 2017 and could possibly increase up to 2.3 million. According to IOM’s displacement tracking matrix (DTM), of the nine assessed IDP camps (8 in Manica and 1 in Sofala), a total of 15,128 people are currently displaced due on-going military conflict and drought consequences. Specifically, about 90% of the IDPs interviewed have identified security and conflict as the main reason preventing them from returning to their place of origin. The number of IDPs is expected to increase due to floods, cyclones and as military confrontations continue. The National Contingency Plan predicts under its Scenario I about 714,000 people to be affected by strong winds, floods, and cyclones among which, 190,000 will be displaced and in need of temporary accommodation centers.
From October to December 2016, the amount of rainfall has been consistent with the forecasts of the National Meteorological Institute for Mozambique, which predicted normal to above normal rainfall for the period in the south and central provinces (Figure 1), and normal to above normal for the period January to March 2017 in Tete, Manica, Sofala and Zambezia (Figure 2). The northern parts of Nampula and Gaza expect below normal rainfall between January and March 2017. Although in general the forecast for the agriculture season is good, we expect there will be pockets of populations that remain food insecure and facing nutrition crisis due to a combination of factors including unavailability of seed during the planting seasons, poor agriculture harvest due to excess rainfall and localized floods, and inability of population, particularly in conflict zones, to access their land due to insecurity amid on-going military confrontations and damage to crops as a result of intense cyclone activity.