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A Yemeni child, who is suspected of being infected with cholera, receives treatment at a hospital in the capital Sanaa, on August 12, 2017.MOHAMMED HUWAIS/AFP / Getty Images

The federal government has pledged more than $21-million in humanitarian assistance to help respond to an unprecedented famine in Yemen and parts of Africa, matching donations made by Canadians to registered charities earlier this year.

The government pledged to match all famine-related donations made to registered Canadians charities from March 17 to June 30 in an effort to respond to the "unprecedented" humanitarian crises in Yemen, South Sudan, Somalia and Nigeria. With the final tally in this week, International Development Minister Marie-Claude Bibeau said the government will match the $21.3-million Canadians donated during the fundraising period.

"We have to remember it was during the same period as the floods in Quebec and other regions [across Canada] and so Canadians have been very, very generous," Ms. Bibeau said. "We have to find different ways to keep the light on these crises and make sure that Canadians are concerned, that Canadians are engaged, that we do care for the poorest and most vulnerable around the world."

Canadian aid groups will oversee the disbursement of the donations they raised. The government's funding will be allocated to experienced Canadian NGOs to provide life-saving humanitarian assistance to people affected by drought, conflict and cholera outbreaks in the four countries, as well as other countries dealing with the regional impact of the situation: Cameroon, Niger, Ethiopia and Uganda.

The money comes in addition to the nearly $120-million Ottawa pledged in March for the famine. The funding was provided in response to a $6.3-billion (U.S.) international appeal made by the United Nations to tackle hunger emergencies facing more than 20 million people in Nigeria, South Sudan, Somalia and Yemen this year. Of that amount, $4.9-billion is needed immediately for life-saving assistance in the areas of food security, health, nutrition, water, sanitation and hygiene. As of June, only $1.9-billion – or 38 per cent – of the immediate funding needs had been met.

Canadian aid groups said the public's response to the call for donations was generous, especially given the fact that the famine is what they consider a "slow-onset emergency," as opposed to sudden natural disaster.

"Slow-onset emergencies, particularly food, nutrition and drought-related emergencies, are very difficult to fundraise for because they don't have powerful visuals necessarily. You don't have massive cities collapsed or whole villages wiped out by a tsunami or a massive storm surge," said Jessie Thomson, CARE Canada's senior humanitarian director.

Aid groups said the Liberal government's famine-relief fund helped raise awareness of the crisis by encouraging Canadians to donate to eligible charities. Oxfam Canada executive director Julie Delahanty said it was a good example of how a government matching fund can work.

"We would have never seen those numbers for this kind of emergency … if we didn't have that matching fund," Ms. Delahanty said.

Canada has been under particular pressure to boost its humanitarian support for Yemen, where a record-level cholera outbreak has swept across the war-ravaged country. According to the World Health Organization, the total number of suspected cholera cases in Yemen hit the half-a-million mark on Sunday, with nearly 2,000 people dead since the outbreak began to rapidly spread at the end of April.

Of the $21.3-million (Canadian) the government committed Thursday, $7.7-million will go to NGOs working in Yemen. That is on top of the more than $34-million Canada has already pledged this year to address the needs of conflict-affected people in Yemen, including those impacted by the cholera outbreak. Ms. Bibeau said the government plans to allocate more humanitarian assistance money this year and that Yemen is on the list of potential recipients.

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