María José Torres Macho (UN Resident Coordinator in Colombia) on the humanitarian situation in the country - Press Conference

And is supporting the government led response as requested. And with that, I'm pleased to turn to my guest, Maria Jose Torres Macho, who is the UN resident coordinator in Colombia. She's joining us from Bogota to speak about the humanitarian situation in the country following the earthquake yesterday. Mr. Macho, welcome. The floor is yours.

Thank you very much. Thank you for having us this morning. Um, this is indeed a tragic, uh, way of starting a week and a new government. Actually, we had an earthquake of a magnitude 7.4. The epicenter was in the, in the Pacific area in Choco. and it is affecting already 14 of Colombia's 32 departments, so we are talking about the western area of country. And we have so far an updated account of fatalities from the statement of the Secretary General, we have now 182 fatalities, 2,500 people injured and 195 people reported missing. We had this morning a conversation in the humanitarian country team with the Foreign Affairs Minister and Tom Fletcher, our emergency relief coordinator, and what was expressed is that the impact of this earthquake is bigger than they were expecting. Just to give you a bit of context, in '99 Colombia experienced a huge earthquake in Armenia, in the coffee region, and it was 6.1, this time has been 7.4. So everything that I'm reporting right now is going to be evolving as we speak and we are constantly updating. There have been already two SITREPs produced. We are updating this morning another SITREP. In terms of coordination, I have to say I have been many years working in humanitarian responses, it's the first time that I see a foreign affairs minister and Tom Fletcher, helping the humanitarian country team to come together. It was a great manifestation of solidarity and response in a coordinated fashion. Since yesterday, I received also the call of the Foreign Affairs, Mr. Omar Boula, and OCHA has been representing the UN team and the humanitarian community in the emergency response cell. So the assessment is, it is very much ongoing. And I have to say the main areas affected is shelter, health, food security protection. And there are already humanitarian partners in the field responding. For instance, we have a big presence articulated in two regions, the Chocor region, as well as the Valle del Cauca in Cali. People are already responding. The main operation right now is search and rescue, but we have already prepositioned emergency kits to respond to all these initiatives. Also, we have an imaginary remote sensing methodology to assess structural damage and socioeconomic impact that was already used in the case of Venezuela. And this is producing the first results in terms of economic damage and structural damage. Everybody is really in a very important effort to be coordinated both here in headquarters as well as headquarters meeting in Bogota, as well as in the regions, we are also dispatching staff who is based in Bogota to support the efforts at the local level. And in terms of resources, we are doing four different things. One is to realign existing resources. We are implementing an important humanitarian operation right now. We know more about what is the impact in the capital cities, but less in the rural remote areas. They're also affected by, um, by the situation of conflict in, in Colombia, so we are very much following up on that. And, um, um, Tom Fletcher announced the possibility of mobile license serve, we have been. invited by the national authorities to complement the national response. Therefore, there is a declaration of catastrophe and response in a coordinated way. And we are also operating a new link in the regional humanitarian fund of OCHA in case there are donations by the private sector, which is already happening. I mean, we have been approached by many actors of the private sector who really want to provide support through our mechanism. Thank you very much for now.

Now turns to questions. Namo.

Thank you so much for this briefing. I have two questions. I know it was felt widely around the country, but did it have any impact in Bogota? I know Bogota is a little farther away from the west. And secondly, do we, what are the authorities, local authorities telling you Are we going to see a lot more people die in the coming days? And that we don't know, are a lot of people missing? Can you please shed more light on that? Thank you.

Absolutely. Thank you. I mean, in Bogota, we felt it. Everybody felt it. But it was nothing in terms of structural damages and people's affectation. So I think that's the good news. It was really widely sensed. I think the affectation is in the regions, as I mentioned, particularly in Choco, Cali and Pereira that are the most affected areas as well as Buenaventura. Thank you for the question about the local authorities. I think this is one of the strengths of our humanitarian country team. We have a presence right now that is constantly in touch with the local authorities, both the alcaldias, so the mayors, and the governors because we absolutely want to make sure that any response is complementary and we are not duplicating efforts. So there is this ability of the UN team and the humanitarian partners to work together. It's important to note that in Colombia, in addition to the humanitarian team, we also have a verification mission of the United Nations that has presence in these very areas and we are extremely well coordinated with the SRSG and his team. And this afternoon I'm going to participate with the local colleagues in a meeting to make sure that everything that the UN has is put at the service of this emergency response.

Thanks, Farhan. This is Ephraim Kosaifi with Arab News Daily. You spoke of resources. What kind of resources do you have at hand right now? What are people in need of mostly those who are affected by the earthquake and what is it that you would need in terms of funding and additional resources?

Thank you for the question. I think it's great. So the first thing that we need is to evaluate how much exactly we need to respond. As I mentioned, needs are evolving. I'm connecting to the previous question we have. 182 fatalities, people injured 2,570 and 195 people missing. But we don't know exactly what is the impact in the rural remote areas. So we are actually, there is a big effort by the humanitarian team to complement the initial assessment by the national authorities, so there might be much more to report and to respond to. In terms of the priorities, temporary shelter, many people lost their homes, including some people working for the UN, uh, food security. and protection we are very much discussing the situation of children and women that are particularly in areas that are extremely vulnerable and this is the areas that have been most affected so this is what exactly we are going to focus first and focus first means realigning existing resources so we have already a lot of capacities existing locally for instance the whole medical response is being coordinated with the Ministry of Health this is something ongoing and very important. This morning we had the Spanish cooperation and the US attending our humanitarian country team. Both are very attentively supporting the UN team. And in terms of mobilizing CERF, I think we are going to have data in terms of how much, much further organized by the end of the week as the situation is evolving, as I was mentioning.

One more quick one please. What about the situation of women there now, especially pregnant women, let's say, we know this is a part of the population that gets most affected when some disaster of this magnitude happens. Are there any services tailored to them? Is UNFPA there on the ground? Are there any other local agencies that take care of vulnerable population like that? Thanks.

Excellent question. Thank you for that. Actually, this is one of the lessons learned from Venezuela that was presented this morning. The importance of taking into account the issue of pregnant women and small children. Indeed, UNFPA and UN Women are both members and very active and present in the areas So we are very quickly coordinating with other partners, including WHO, that is also deploying and supporting staff on the ground to take into account this very issue. And also partners from the international community were discussing this morning the possibility of activating mobile units to be able not just to attend pregnant women and small children in their local in the capital cities but also go to the most remote areas. UNICEF, by the way, is also a big partner of this country team and also taking into account this issue. Thank you for the question.

Thanks. Howard.

Yes, Howard LaFranki with the Christian Science Monitor. Thank you so much for doing this. A couple of questions. One, when you put an emphasis on realigning resources, and I'm interested in specifically what that means for UN resources. And also, you've referred a couple of times to the tragic earthquake in Venezuela. And very early on, there were reports out of Venezuela with, you know, local people saying they felt like no one was coming around, they were on their own. And I'm just wondering if this is sort of resonating And if your very quick response here in some ways is a response to that experience of some people in the case of Venezuela?

Well, thank you for the question on realigning resources. Colombia has a humanitarian response plan that has been supported by different donors through the regional humanitarian fund, including the US, but also Echo, Spain, Germany and Switzerland. So we have those resources. And for instance, this morning, the colleagues were speaking about kits, emergency kits that have to do with wars, shelter, some kits that are related to protection. And therefore, what we are doing is choosing those that are already in storage to bring it very quickly to the areas. We have the capacity of warehouses that are operated by WFP, but at the service of the entire humanitarian community. And this is what I'm talking about when I'm speaking about realignment. Not everything we are going to be able to do within existing resources. This is the reason why upon the request of the national authorities, formal request, the ERC has authorized the possibility of mobilizing CERF that may go into areas that are very critical such as protection, such as education in emergency, SDV, protection of, as the colleague was asking, women in general that are maybe out of job and heading a family but also are pregnant. So this is the type of things that we are talking and I cannot I can confirm that we are receiving lessons learned from Venezuela, but I think the quick reaction of this team in Colombia in particular has to do with two factors. First, that the state of Colombia having even in the middle of this disaster, having a new government, all the institutions have worked and our ability to be working with them has not been affected by the change of government. On the contrary, we were called upon immediately to be part of the response. So, and the second thing is that we have a presence in the ground, therefore our ability to be there, present with the people, I think has increased exponentially. The area that we are less present is the eje cafetero, like the coffee area Pereira, and we are sending immediately a colleague to support coordination there.

Okay. Okay. I think that is it for questions as far as I can see. So I'd like once more to thank our guest, Maria Jose Torres Macho, the resident coordinator in Colombia. Thanks very much for your extremely quick and timely briefing to us and good luck in the days ahead.

Thank you. Thank you very much. We will continue to update. Thank you for having us.

Thanks. Have a good day.

You too. Bye-bye.

And I have a few further details on Colombia for you.