Demobilisation needs international assistance - UNITA

As more evidence emerges of a humanitarian crisis in some of Angola's quartering areas, a senior UNITA official told IRIN that the government should work with the international community to provide urgent relief assistance. "We don't believe the size of the operation is within the capability of the government," said UNITA member of parliament Jaka Jamba. "The government has provided some resources from the [defence budget] but it is not enough." He said the demobilisation process did not only include 50-55,000 UNITA soldiers, but also 300-350,000 family members, many of whom were already malnourished and sick. Jamba said the demobilisation programme was put together without the participation of the international community and before the government had the resources to cope. He stressed that the process was not in danger of collapsing, but needed to be better managed. "We are getting reports of some people dying. We think that it is a question of challenges that have to be managed," he stressed. A report by the medical relief agency Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) on Thursday said they had uncovered another pocket of hunger at a demobilisation centre in southern Angola, in which "thousands of people are now close to death from starvation". An MSF team in Galangue, in Huila province, counted 31 freshly dug graves in two weeks and estimated the daily death rate to be five per 10,000 people. "The leading cause of mortality is acute malnutrition," MSF said. A rapid nutritional survey, conducted among 538 children under five, indicated that more than one-fourth of children screened were suffering from severe malnutrition. Four children died on the day that the MSF team was conducting its survey, and 188 people required urgent care.