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| Photo: UN staff distribute food to displaced families at the Seng Mai Pa camp near Mai Ja Yang on March 28, 2012. (Credit WPN) |
On Friday a UN aid convoy reached the Kachin Independence Organization (KIO) controlled town of Mai Ja Yang, the first such UN aid convoy to reach the area since early July of last year. The aid convoy arrived some four months after the government's chief negotiator Aung Min announced that UN convoys would again be allowed to deliver supplies to IDP camps located along the China-Burma border in KIO territory.
The UN convoy included a supply of rations for an estimated 5,000 people. Enough food for a small fraction of the estimated 60,000 internally displaced people thought to be sheltering in KIO controlled territory. The UN hopes it will be allowed to make regular aid convoys to the area but this remains to be seen.
Mai Ja Yang is the KIO's second largest town, the last time a UN convoy reached camps located in and around the KIO's defacto capital Laiza was December 2011. A convoy from the International Committee for the Red Cross (ICRC), visited Laiza in February. It is also uncertain when the UN or the ICRC will be allowed to visit the Laiza camps once again.
Aid workers on the ground in Kachin state are concerned that the rainy season which just started will bring water borne illnesses including diarrhea which will disproportionately impact the young and the elderly. Many of the shelters that the IDP are living in are made of bamboo and thin tarps and are not suitable for heavy rains.
The United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) whose staff were involved in the UN convoy recently admitted that it had only raised 18% of the $80 million dollars needed this year to support people displaced by the conflicts in Kachin and Arakan (Rakhine) states. The admission came in a UN in-house news article published last week.
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