WFP to increase frontline food assistance

WFP announced on Friday that it was re-starting food distributions to thousands of hungry people in DRC’s north western Equateur province. In a statement, the agency said it would be able to reach tens of thousands more who had been isolated by war for years. The move comes after a WFP river barge carrying 527 tons of food arrived in Mbandaka last month - the first relief shipment to reach the city’s shores in eight months due to funding constraints and insecurity on the Congo River that had prevented fresh deliveries. Although WFP made three deliveries to Mbandaka in the past year despite the crippling obstacles, supplies dried up four months ago and the agency was forced to suspend food distributions until now. The new shipment marks the agency’s effort to expand assistance to thousands of displaced and hungry people who have been living on the frontline of the civil war in Equateur province for the past three years, the statement said. In conjunction with the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (UNOCHA) and the FAO, WFP launched emergency operations in the province one year ago “in this highly volatile region”. The new food distributions were to coincide with the launch of several humanitarian needs assessment missions being carried out by WFP emergency response team (ERT), which was recently deployed to Equateur and other areas in the DRC. “The findings are revealing a critical situation in the rural areas and cities that sit directly on the front line,” the agency said, adding that thousands of people had fled into the forest and were now slowly returning to towns where UN observers have been deployed. “We estimate that thousands remain hiding in the forests but if the situation stabilises we can expect more and more to come back who will need food assistance,” WFP Mbandaka emergency officer Jean Yves Lequime said. “The main problem is that they are returning to cities, towns and rural areas where everything has been looted and destroyed such as fields, roads and hospitals. There is nothing.”