WFP receives additional funding for emergency food aid

The World Food Programme (WFP) in the Central African Republic capital, Bangui, had this month received US $500,000 from its Rome headquarters to buy emergency food aid for people in the north of the country, the agency’s national director, David Bulman, told IRIN on 4 January. The money, he said, would also be used "to provide some food aid for people to install themselves back in their homes". The WFP, would now be able to buy 600 to 700 mt of food, depending on market prices. Purchase and shipment of the consignment would, he said, take about six months. "We have some stocks in the country for another project, and we will borrow on those stocks in order to feed the priority groups and IDPs [internally displaced persons] in the back country," Bulman said. The incoming food stocks would last one or two months, he added, depending on the number of beneficiaries, which had not yet been established. The consignment will comprise maize flour, beans, salt, sugar and corn-soya-blend flour, and be distributed to priority groups in Damara (80 km northeast of Bangui), Sibut (185 km northeast of Bangui), Kaga Bandoro (342 km north of Bangui), Bossangoa (305 km northwest of Bangui) and other areas in the north. The last-named three towns are still under rebel control. Talks are under way between the government and the rebels with a view to obtaining security guarantees for a UN humanitarian assessment mission to tour the areas. Since October 2002, when fighting broke out between the rebel supporters of the former army chief of staff, Francois Bozize, and those of the government of President Ange-Felix Patasse, the WFP has assisted about 20,000 people in Bangui and IDPs in villages up to 100 km along the road from the city leading to the north. Other beneficiaries have been mainly rape victims, the handicapped, hospital patients, and people whose homes were looted. Meanwhile, the UN Food and Agriculture Fund (FAO) says it is very likely that farmers in the north will be unable to cultivate their cotton crop in the coming season. "If they do not gin their cotton, they will have no grain for the next seeding season," Etienne Ngounio-Gabia, the FAO programme officer, said during a UN-NGO humanitarian coordination meeting on 3 January. Cotton is the leading source of revenue for small-scale farmers in the north and the third in importance for the central government, behind timber and diamonds. In his New Year address to the nation on 31 December, Patasse said the rebels had looted new equipment from a textile factory in the north and taken it to Chad.