Eight United Nations personnel, who recently completed their 15-day mandatory quarantine in Tonga, are now providing direct support to the country's ongoing recovery efforts from the volcanic and tsunami event that occurred in January.

The personnel include three from UNICEF, one from UN Women, one from UNFPA, one from UNDP, one from the International Organization of Migration (IOM), and one from the World Health Organization (WHO), who arrived on a Fiji Airways flight earlier this month.

Support is being provided for WASH (sanitation) activities, COVID-19 and tsunami response, gender-based violence support, health and nutrition, early recovery, social services, and cash transfers to affected households.

UN Resident Coordinator to Fiji, Solomon Islands, Tonga, Tuvalu and Vanuatu, Sanaka Samarasinha, said while the UN had provided immediate relief to Tonga, support for medium and long-term recovery, was also crucial

“We have continued to deploy technical specialists to Tongan Government ministries and departments, and a multitude of colleagues in Fiji and around the globe.”

“A total of 19 UN entities – led by our humanitarian entities such as UNICEF, World Food Program, and UNOCHA – are assisting Tonga’s relief and recovery efforts and will continue to do so.”

Around US$10 million for relief efforts in Tonga has been mobilized by the Pacific Humanitarian Team with the support of its partners and the Pacific COVID-19 Joint Incident Management Team led by WHO has assisted Tonga’s COVID preparedness work for the past two years.

This support has scaled up to mitigate the community transmission occurring in Tonga.