Countries in the Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) region are highly vulnerable to a range of natural hazards, including droughts, earthquakes, forest fires, floods, hurricanes, and volcanic eruptions. Between FY 2006 and FY 2015, USAID provided nearly $777 million to assist disaster-affected populations in the LAC region, including nearly $509 million from USAID’s Office of U.S. Foreign Disaster Assistance (USAID/OFDA) and approximately $268 million from USAID’s Office of Food for Peace (USAID/FFP). USAID also frequently deployed humanitarian teams throughout the LAC region, including five Disaster Assistance Response Teams (DARTs) to Chile, Guatemala, and Haiti.
USAID/OFDA prioritizes hurricane preparedness and capacity-building activities in LAC to enable rapid humanitarian responses, particularly for storms and floods during hurricane season. If required, USAID/OFDA can rapidly deploy stockpiled emergency relief supplies from its warehouse in Miami, Florida. USAID/OFDA also has agreements with air charter services for transportation of personnel and relief supplies to disaster-affected areas. In addition, USAID/OFDA maintains a network of disaster risk management specialists and on-call local surge capacity consultants throughout the region who are immediately available to monitor and assess the impact of disasters and provide technical assistance to national governments.
USAID/FFP emergency programs aim to reduce food insecurity and malnutrition among drought- and conflict-affected populations. USAID/FFP provides emergency food assistance through general distributions, targeted supplementary feeding, and programs that incorporate food and/or cash for work, food for training, food and/or cash for assets, and related activities.