5 Capacity of the Humanitarian Community to Respond 5.1 Overview The ability of the United Nations Country Team to respond to the scale of humanitarian needs resulting from Operation Restore Order is currently very limited. With 700,000 people already directly affected, it has had an overall impact on the lives of an estimated 2.4 million people representing 18 percent of the population. At the time of the mission, the humanitarian community was providing assistance to just a small fraction of the population directly affected by the evictions. Resources had mostly been diverted from ongoing humanitarian programmes without any assured replenishment and few additional resource commitments. Given the Government’s earlier wish not to have a Consolidated Appeals Process (CAP) for 2005, the humanitarian community is suffering from weak resource mobilization and a lack of an overall framework, let alone an agreement with the Government, for a coordinated response. The Government has several times stopped assistance being provided to people near demolition sites, and nearly two months into the crisis, the United Nations has been unable to survey humanitarian needs in coordination with the authorities. Some NGOs and UN agencies are concerned their office premises could be earmarked for demolition. And some donors have concerns that aid channeled though Government might indirectly support policies to which they are opposed. These constraints have now been compounded by the burgeoning impact of the Operation Restore Order, a prevailing political climate of mistrust and fear, and the lack of information on, and access to the affected population. 5.2 Current Levels of Humanitarian Response Many churches are providing life-saving, temporary assistance including shelter to evicted families. However, they do not have the capacity to take care of all their needs, including health care. Nevertheless, their strong links to the communities have been invaluable in reaching people with assistance in the first phase of the response. UNICEF is providing assistance mainly in water and sanitation, child protection and temporary shelter. By 9 July, it had delivered close to one million liters of drinking water by truck to Caledonia Farm and started deliveries in Bulawayo. Similarly, it delivered 120 mobile toilets and soap in Caledonia Farm, Bulawayo and Mutare. In addition, it provided plastic sheeting, blankets, mattresses and cooking pots to affected persons at various locations, and provided transport for other kinds of assistance from the World Health Organization, the Red Cross and Christian Care. To cover these additional expenses UNICEF had reprogrammed some USD 300,000 and raised an additional USD 1 million mostly from national committees in Europe. Early in the crisis, the authorities advised WFP that it should not provide direct food assistance to victims of Operation Restore Order. WFP is therefore providing food assistance to evicted households through IOM and other partners. Through the UN interim response plan, WFP and its partners are targeting 27,000 households for food assistance over three months at an estimated cost of USD 1,100,000. Priority interventions include: the provision of food packs to particularly vulnerable households; distribution of cooked meals at transit camps; interventions to prevent 51