Insecurity stalls aid to northern Angola

Insecurity in northern Angola has severely disrupted an humanitarian aid initiative by UNHCR, Kris Janowski a spokesman for the refugee agency said on Tuesday.

Speaking at a media briefing at the Palais des Nations in Geneva, Janowski said: “The UNHCR relief operation in northern Angola, which began just weeks ago, has virtually come to a standstill because of a deteriorating security situation. The UNHCR emergency team deployed in the main town of Angola’s northern Uige province on 19 June is now confined to within a 2 km radius of Uige, following attacks on two nearby villages, allegedly by UNITA rebels.”

He added: “The attacks on 20 June on the villages of Mateus and Kikaya, about 10 km from Uige, have made several pockets of displaced people unreachable for emergency assistance, raising the spectre of further displacement in a province which already has more than 150,000 people uprooted by civil war.”

Janowski said that UNHCR’s warehouse in Luanda was filled with “various relief supplies”, but that overland transportation was “difficult at best with vehicles facing the risks of hijackings and looting”.

“Air transport, the only feasible means of getting aid items to the northern provinces, has been blocked since last Monday by the temporary closure of the airport in Uige for maintenance. UNHCR is currently relying on WFP cargo planes, which land in Negage, 43 km away, to transport non-food items to the region. But onward distribution to Uige and surrounding areas is unsafe”, Janwoski said.

UNHCR sent an emergency team to Angola last month after a UNHCR assessment mission found that displaced people were living in “appalling and life-threatening conditions” in Angola’s northwestern provinces. The mission said there were an estimated 2.6 million people believed to be displaced in Angola and that an estimated 1.9 million urgently needed humanitarian aid.