Peru's Remote Areas Getting Less Aid
UNITED NATIONS, Aug 22 (OneWorld) - Despite intense relief efforts from around the world, thousands of people in Peru who survived last week's deadly earthquake are still living without food, shelter, and life-saving medicines.
"It's difficult to reach there," an official from the UN relief agency OCHA told OneWorld about the situation in the Huancavelica area, which is adjacent to the worst-affected Ica province. In Huancavelica and other far-flung areas to the south of the capital Lima, many are still waiting for relief supplies. The UN, according to her, is actively assessing the situation and making all-out efforts to help the quake victims. Last Wednesday the devastating earthquake, which registered 8.0 on the Richter scale, left over 600 people dead and more than 10,000 wounded, according to the UN. At least 16,000 homes were completely destroyed.
Aside from the UN, a number of international relief organizations are also stepping up their efforts to provide humanitarian aid to the remote regions of Peru. Last week Oxfam International said it was ready to start distributing relief supplies, including shelter, clean water, and sanitation services, to some 2,000 families in the remotest areas. On Tuesday Lutheran World Relief, a faith-based humanitarian group based in Maryland, said it was ready to send $30,000 dollars of donations to Peru for emergency response for those who lost their homes in Hunacavelica. "The urban areas are being better attended, but the outskirts have received very little attention so far," said Oxfam's Sergio Alvarez in a statement from Peru. According to Alvarez, many roads in mountain areas are broken, which makes the relief operations extremely difficult. In the most-affected areas, many people are living in the open in cold weather, with no access to food and clean drinking water. Alvarez said some are using small streams to drink water, but are becoming increasingly vulnerable to a variety of waterborne diseases.
"We have received an urgent call from one of our partners that works with indigenous women and families," said Yifat Susskind of MADRE, a New York-based worldwide network of women's rights organizations. "They say whole families are sleeping on the streets and have no food or water. Roads are still blocked and there is no electricity or phone service in many areas," she told OneWorld. Reports from Peru's rural areas in the south also suggest that the marginalized communities in Peru are extremely angry at the government for failing to take their needs into account. "The Afro-Peruvians are accusing the government of excluding them from the process," said Clive Baldwin of the London-based Minority Rights Group International (MRGI). ASONEDH, an organization in Peru that works closely MRGI, said the Afro-Peruvians are most affected by the lack of relief supplies due to deep discrimination and prejudice that has been prevalent in Peruvian society for a long time. "The government has not thought about us, although we are the most in need," said ASONDEH activist Jorge Ramirez Reyner in a statement from Peru. "We are not even considered within national indices on poverty." UN experts agree that, in most cases, it's the poorest areas that consistently suffer the most during and after a natural disaster, whether flooding or earthquake or hurricanes. In Peru, nearly 50 percent of the population lives below the poverty line, but it's the indigenous and other minorities that happen to be the poorest among the poor. While criticizing the government's role in ignoring minorities during the distribution of relief goods, Reyner also blasted the Peruvian media for its biases against blacks and the indigenous communities. "Blacks were portrayed as looters and thieves," he said, "but they are the ones who have lost everything." When asked about such complaints, the OCHA official told OneWorld: "In disaster situations, the UN works closely with the governments." ....................................................................................
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