Providing vital supplies in flood-hit Cambodia

I’ve been in Cambodia for 3 weeks now.  As a member of ActionAid’s rapid response roster, I’ve travelled here from Bangladesh, where I work on issues of food rights and sustainable livelihoods, to support my colleagues in responding to the massive floods sweeping parts of the country.

Cambodia is experiencing its worst seasonal flooding for over a decade, with 17 out of 24 provinces affected.  Over 247 people have been killed and a further 1.5 million affected.

“I could not eat that morning when flood water entered to our homestead. My mother did not cook that morning as she was busy trying to save our belongings from the flood waters,” explained 9 year old Amsaoum, an ActionAid sponsored child who I met on a visit to Kampong Thom province.

Water came inside our home. My feet were suddenly wet and the water rose continuously up to my knees. It flooded the basement of our house, so we left and came to live on the road...

"I was hungry for three days. I ate stale rice for the last 3 days with salt and some onion. My stomach was very painful when I went to bed,” continued Amsaoum.

Shortly after arriving I travelled to another of the areas bearing the brunt of the disaster - Banteay Meanchey Province in the northwest.  Working with our local partner Cambodian Human Resource Development, we had planned to distribute vital supplies to people who had lost everything – their homes, belongings, even family members and friends.   But if my experience of disasters has taught me anything, it’s that in an emergency response, things rarely go smoothly. 

Following meetings with the local provincial government (Provincial Committee for Disaster Management or PCDM), as well as the Rural Development Department of the local commune administration, we worked with staff from our partner organization as well as volunteers to set up an area for families affected by the floods to collect much-needed food packages. 

We prepared separate spaces for people with disabilities, pregnant and lactating women, and the elderly, to enable them to more easily collect the packages.  But the poor road infrastructure, exacerbated by the floods, meant that it was impossible for the vehicles to bring the food supplies to the distribution point.  We made an urgent decision to relocate the distribution near the side of the main road, an area where the vehicles were able to access.  With the support of the PCDM, who helped manage the traffic by the roadside, 662 families were able to collect their food packages. 

Back in Phnom Penh, I’m supporting colleagues to develop our plans around our response to the flood disaster, both in the immediate term and over the next few months.  At ActionAid, we recognize that disasters aren’t a single event that impact people’s lives for a week or two, but a devastating occurrence that takes months – sometimes years – to recover from.  

The people affected by this disaster – many of who rely on rice farming - were living in poverty even before the floods came.  With vast swathes of their cropland now destroyed – and rice prices already rising as a result - it’s difficult to see how they will be able to survive without support over the coming months.  That’s why ActionAid is committed to supporting people in the long term – making sure they can rebuild their lives and helping reduce the impact of future disasters.