Regional Office for Southern Africa (ROSA)

Fast Facts

The Regional Office for Southern Africa (ROSA) covers countries ranging from low to middle income. The region has some of the world’s highest prevalence rates of HIV/AIDS. Cholera is now endemic, and malaria may be appearing in areas where it is not typically found. Most disasters are driven by adverse weather conditions and floods continue to displace more than 150,000 people per season. Zimbabwe remains the most complicated crisis in the region due to the continuous fragile state of its economy and public services, and due to its ongoing political instability. Sudden shocks in southern Africa strike increasingly impoverished communities with already high levels of vulnerability.

 
In 2012, OCHA will work to deepen the quality of preparedness planning across southern Africa. It will support more governments to implement minimum preparedness actions, in particular ensuring that preparedness and contingency planning are based on an improved, evidence-based analysis of risk, and that more national contingency plans are tested in simulations. OCHA will see that its contributions to regional- and national-level preparedness and response are sustained by supporting Southern African Development Community (SADC) and its Member States to develop their own emergency preparedness and rapid-response capacities. OCHA will also ensure that all future humanitarian capacities and programmes in southern Africa are informed by a deeper understanding of risk. It will do this by working with southern African academic institutions to analyse the medium- to long-term impact of emerging regional and global trends on vulnerability.
 

Website:

http://ochaonline.un.org/rosea

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