Food aid still insufficient, says FEWS

Mauritania's government and its development partners are still unable to marshal sufficient aid for numerous households facing famine conditions. An appeal launched in September has not produced a major response, the USAID Famine Early Warning System Network (FEWS) said in its January update. "Food aid from the Food Security Commission (CSA) and World Food Program (WFP), though much appreciated, won't be enough for managing the food crisis confronting farm families in Aftout, the Senegal River Valley and the central plateau area of Hodh El Chargui and Hodh El Gharbi wilaya (regions). Most agricultural households in these areas have long exhausted their grain reserves," FEWS said. Affected households, it added, had not recovered from the January 2002 storms that killed the sheeps and goats that households rely on as the cornerstone for their traditional coping and survival strategies. Spiraling market prices also limited household access to staple foods while wild foods were so scarce that remittances from migrating family members are the only support keeping local residents alive. "Famine conditions, which had previously been confined to the Aftout area, have spread to the Senegal River Valley and the central plateau area of Hodh El Chargui and Hodh El Gharbi, affecting sedentary herders as well as farmers. With harvest prospects for bottomland and walo (flood-recession) crops mediocre at best, grain imports from Mali still extremely limited and virtually no grain imports from Senegal, the country's only hope is domestic and international assistance," FEWS said. Net grain production, which has been down several years in a row, could meet only 25 percent of the country's annual needs for the period from November 2002 to October 2003. "The joint assessment in June by the government's Food Security Commission, World Food Program/Mauritania and FEWS NET/Mauritania found 1 million (of 2.7 million) Mauritanians experiencing various degrees of food insecurity," the network said. It added: "Countless farmers in the southeastern and eastern reaches of the country and growing numbers of sedentary herders previously categorized as extremely food-insecure since September now face a full-fledged famine...In general, the nationwide food situation is deteriorating." The full report is available at: www.fews.net/