UN staff gather in UN House premises to observe one minute silence

KATHMANDU- UN staff in Nepal observed one minute’s silence on the first anniversary of the Nepal earthquake today in the UN House at 11:56 AM.
Two major earthquakes struck Western and Central Regions of Nepal on 25 April and 12 May (7.8 and 7.3 magnitude, respectively). Millions of people are affected in a total of 39 districts, out of 75 districts countrywide.
In a press statement, Craig Sanders, UN Resident Coordinator a.i. said that the UN mission in Nepal commended the people of Nepal who responded selflessly in the aftermath of the earthquake.
“They are to be applauded for their resilience and bravery, and deserve to be recognized for their actions, which saved countless lives,” said Sanders.
During the relief and recovery period, the United Nations, Government, NGOs and civil society rallied to reach 3.7 million people in the 14 severely affected districts
The massive quakes and aftershocks have severely injured and killed thousands of people, flattened homes, downed power and destroyed infrastructure, including roads to access affected populations.
The impact on food security and agricultural livelihoods is extremely high. Agriculture is the main source of livelihood for around two-thirds of Nepalese, including many subsistence farmers. Affected families have lost livestock, standing crops, food stocks and agricultural inputs, while facing market disruptions and constrained movement of emergency assistance.
After the earthquake, in a close collaboration with the Government of Nepal, FAO started an immediate relief operation to support vulnerable farmers affected by the earthquake by providing them with the key inputs to revive the heavily-impacted agricultural sector. These activities included distribution of vegetable and grain seed, grain storage bags and animal feed to protect the livestock health. Beside the immediate relief, longer-term recovery and rehabilitation work, ongoing since October 2015, aims at providing capacity development trainings for farmers, rehabilitating small-scale community managed irrigation schemes and protecting livestock by rehabilitating animal shelters.
FAO’s interaction with the earthquake-affected communities noted the common challenge of the destruction of the irrigation channels heavily-impacted the grain and vegetable production. The widespread infrastructure damage, combined with the late and scarce monsoon rains for rice paddy plantation and, continuing landslides, limited the farmers ability to successfully harvest. Therefore, FAO has identified 24 small-scale community managed irrigation schemes, that will be rehabilitated and it is expected that once repaired, these schemes will be able to irrigate about 350 hectares of land.