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Peru + 2 more

Peru Assistance Overview, May 2022

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CONTEXT

• The adverse socioeconomic effects of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic continue to strain Peru’s health care and social service systems and exacerbate existing health, protection, and water, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH) needs across the country, particularly among low-income Peruvians, as well as migrants and refugees.
COVID-19 restrictions have limited household purchasing power, which in conjunction with reduced livelihood opportunities, have exacerbated food insecurity and nutrition concerns among vulnerable households.

• The political and economic crisis in Venezuela continues to generate outward migration to neighboring countries across Latin America and the Caribbean, including Peru. Of the more than 6 million Venezuelans who have fled the country, approximately 1.3 million resided in Peru—primarily in the Callao and Lima regions—as of April 2022, according to the Regional Interagency Coordination Platform for Refugees and Migrants from Venezuela. Nearly 810,000 Venezuelans in Peru, roughly 62 percent of all migrants and refugees in the country, are in need of additional food, health, livelihoods, and shelter assistance to meet their basic needs, the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) reports.

• Peru’s location along the Pacific Ring of Fire—a nearly 25,000-mile geographic belt in the Pacific Ocean where tectonic movement results in increased seismic activity—renders the country extremely vulnerable to natural disasters, particularly earthquakes and volcanic eruptions. In November 2021, a magnitude 7.5 earthquake struck Peru’s northern Amazonas Region, adversely affecting an estimated 2,800 people across 35 provinces, damaging or destroying buildings and infrastructure, and leaving more than 600 people without adequate shelter, according to the UN. Additionally, in March 2022, heavy rainfall triggered landslides in Peru’s La Libertad and Arequipa regions, affecting more than 1,000 people and damaging or destroying an estimated 400 houses, according to the Government of Peru (GoP) National Civil Defense Institute