UN rights council calls on Kyrgyzstan to investigate crisis
An Uzbek boy among the debris
The UN Human Rights Council, on Friday called on the Kyrgyzstan government to conduct a full and transparent probe into violence that broke out last week in the south of the country, after rumour that Kyrgyzstan’s interim president says that actual death toll from ethnic clashes may be closer to 2,000 while the official claimed death toll is 223.
An estimated one million people have been affected by the violent conflict in Kyrgyzstan and need food and other aid supplies, U.N. officials said on Friday. The one million people include some 400,000 people left homeless after fleeing ethnic clashes in Osh,second largest city in Kyrgyzstan, another 300,000 are displaced in between Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan border.
“For the moment, we estimate that we will probably need to respond to the needs of more than one million people, displaced people, refugees and people in host families who have been affected by the conflict,” said Christiane Berthiaume, spokeswoman for the U.N. Children’s Fund (UNICEF).
A U.N. emergency funding, to be issued later in the day in New York, is expected to seek more than $65 million to assist 1.1 million people in Kyrgyzstan for six months, according to U.N. sources. A separate appeal for Uzbekistan is planned soon. The U.N.’s World Food Programme (WFP) said it was already distributing a total of 150 tonnes of food in Kyrgyzstan and hoped to fly in 80 tonnes of high-energy biscuits.
There are acute shortages of basic necessities in southern Kyrgyzstan, according to the neutral humanitarian agency. “The most urgent needs are food, water, shelter and medicines,” said ICRC spokesman Christian Cardon. “The people are usually taking refuge in mosques, farms, villages and also administrative buildings that were emptied during the violence.”