Attachments
Highlights
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2023 showed some stabilization of Sri Lanka’s economy with the IMF debt restructuring agreement on 20 March 2023. However, many vulnerable families faced food insecurity and nutrition challenges, loss of livelihoods, and rising protection concerns as they continue to depend on negative coping mechanisms.
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The FAO/WFP Crop and Food Security Assessment Mission in May 2023 revealed that 3.9 million people were moderately food insecure with over 10,000 households facing severe food insecurity. Over 2.9 million children need humanitarian assistance to access lifesaving nutrition, health, education, water & sanitation, protection, and social protection services.
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UNICEF reached over 1.8 million people, including 1.4 children with humanitarian assistance during 2023 including, 508,872 children 6-59 months with multiple micronutrient powders, 952,551 adolescents with mental health and psychosocial support through trained teachers in schools, 120,000 people with access to safe drinking water, 100,747 children with learning recovery programmes and educational materials, and 49,446 pre-school children with mid-day meals. UNICEF’s humanitarian cash transfers reached 113,481 households ensuring nutrition food access to mothers with young children in the most vulnerable districts.
Funding Overview and Partnerships
In June 2022, UNICEF appealed for US$25 million to provide timely life-saving services for women and children affected by the economic crisis in Sri Lanka. Following this, in December 2022, a second Humanitarian Action for Children (HAC) was launched by UNICEF to cover the requirements for 2023. UNICEF expresses its sincere gratitude to donors for the US$3.7 million received in 2023, including from the Government of France, Japan, and the Global Humanitarian Thematic Funds, and US$21.6 million carried forward from 2022, which were utilized for humanitarian responses from January 2023 onwards.
Situation Overview & Humanitarian Needs
Sri Lanka’s economy showed signs of stabilization in 2023 after experiencing the worst economic crisis in 2022. After Sri Lanka secured adequate debt relief assurances from the official creditors on 20 March 2023, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) Board approved US$2.9 billion for 48 months under the Extended Fund Facility programme. The bailout opened up additional funding from the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank for social protection, financial sector development and infrastructure development. Headline inflation substantially declined by August 2023 to 4 per cent, which helped limit the further increase in food insecurity and malnutrition among poor households.
The FAO/WFP Crop and Food Security Assessment Mission (CFSAM) to Sri Lanka in May 2023 reported that 3.9 million people were moderately acutely food insecure while over 10,000 households were severely acutely food insecure. Estate sector communities were found to be suffering from the highest level of acute food insecurity followed by households highly dependent on social protection schemes such as Samurdhi or disability benefits. Despite the apparent economic stability and improved food security in the country, a significantly high percentage of households (62 per cent) were adopting livelihood-based coping strategies (i.e. withdrawing savings, borrowing money, purchasing food on credit) to access food, compared to 48 per cent in May 2022. The report highlighted that 26 per cent of households were employing emergency or crisis-level livelihood coping strategies, which included “selling productive assets (e.g., farming equipment), reducing essential health/education expenses, withdrawing children completely from school, and selling land”.
With the strengthening of El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO), Sri Lanka experienced delayed Southwest monsoon and less rainfall affecting 139,149 people in seven districts with drought and water scarcity. The Government of Sri Lanka distributed drinking water through bowsers to 57,718 people (21,122 families) in the severely affected districts. Drought conditions negatively affected the irrigated agriculture season in the middle of the year, destroying over 45,000 acres of paddy fields in severely affected districts. The drought situation and intermittent rainfall caused an increase in the number of reported cases of dengue throughout Sri Lanka with at least 89,799 people contracting dengue fever during the year (17.4 per cent increase compared to 2022). The Western province reported the highest number of dengue cases (28.8 per cent of the total).
The National Nutrition and Micronutrient Survey 2022 indicated the prevalence of wasting among children 6 -59 months of age is increasing, which was reported to be at 19.8 per cent in 2022, compared to 2021 when the prevalence was 13.2 per cent. The prevalence of severe wasting also increased from 1.7 per cent to 2.5 per cent. Similar worsening of indicators was noted for all undernutrition indicators and across various age groups. For instance, the prevalence of stunting in children 6-59 months increased from 12.7 per cent to 13.7 per cent. Similarly, in children 5-9 years, the prevalence of thinness increased from 20.9 per cent to 25.8 per cent. A high prevalence of Vitamin D deficiency and emerging micronutrient deficiencies, particularly among children between 5-9 and 10-17 years of age, such as vitamin B12 and Zinc were the other nutritional concerns the country faced in 2023. The data from the Nutrition Month assessment undertaken by the Family Health Bureau of the Ministry of Health also confirmed the trend of the worsening malnutrition status of young children. The levels of stunting and underweight in children under five has also worsened between 2022 and 2023 (stunting from 9.2 per cent to 10.3 per cent and underweight from 15.3 per cent to 17.1 per cent). In October 2023, the percentage of children under five years who were underweight was 17.2 per cent, compared to 15.2 per cent in October 2022.
A year into the economic crisis, which began in May 2022, more families have resorted to negative coping mechanisms to prioritize food consumption over expenses for education, health, and protection. Parents faced many challenges in prioritizing income at the household level for education. As a result, partner reports indicated increasing irregular school attendance among children, which could lead to school-drop out eventually, along with increasing mental health issues related to education. The education sector focused on long-term guidance in line with the humanitarian-development nexus, prioritizing remedial programmes and learning recovery to address the long-term learning crisis in line with the ongoing Education Reforms. A study by the Ministry of Education (MoE) revealed that in 2021 and 2022, only 14 per cent and 15 per cent of Grade 3 students achieved minimum essential learning competency in literacy and numeracy respectively, and the pre-existent disparities in learning outcomes are widening due to the adverse impact of the last 3-years of serious disruptions of children’s learning. The data showed that all the positive gains in education achieved pre-COVID-19 time, including access, and learning outcomes, had been reversed. MoE, with UNICEF’s support, commenced to address this learning crisis particularly focusing on foundational learning at primary and preschool levels as a top priority and calling on extended support from the UN and other partners. However, funding for the education sector was limited in both 2022 and 2023, preventing a full humanitarian response.
In addition, anecdotal reports indicate an increasing trend in domestic violence, mental health issues bordering suicides, child abuse, and child labour. However, given the weak capacity of the routine data collection systems, such anecdotal evidence could not be verified. The government probation and childcare services still report an increase in requests to admit children to institutional care. The protection sector focused on addressing these systemic issues and strengthening the government capacity to provide child protection services both in humanitarian and development phases.