WFP Appeals for 18.7 million dollars to avert food shortfall

The World Food Programme (WFP) said on Tuesday it needed an additional 18.7 million US dollars to avert a food shortfall from now through the first quarter of next year in Liberia as a result of an increasing demand for food aid. The UN agency said the ongoing return of Liberian refugees and the resettlement of internally displaced persons would increase targeted beneficiaries from 650,000 to over 700,000. “We expect to feed about 700,000 persons beginning next year, but this is just an initial projection and the figure could be more than we are now planning,” WFP’s regional director for West Africa, Mustapha Darboe, said in Monrovia on Tuesday during a visit to Liberia. “There is a need for more international attention on Liberia,” he said. “The country has become a forgotten emergency in the last few months because of the situation in Darfur, Sudan. Liberia should be considered as high priority right now.” Over 300,000 Liberian refugees are being repatriated from across the region, while the UN and the Liberian government began the resettlement of 300,000 internally displaced persons early this month. Between January and October 2004, WFP provided over 65,000 mt of food per month to an average of 650,000 beneficiaries, including refugees, IDPs, school children, disarmed former fighters and people affected by HIV/AIDS, WFP said. Should the crisis in neighbouring Cote d’Ivoire worsen, the number of people needing food supplies could increase significantly. Air raids earlier this month by Ivorian government forces against targets in rebel-held areas along with ethnic clashes in western Cote d’Ivoire triggered have caused many Ivorians to seek refuge in eastern Liberia. UNHCR estimated that about 10,000 Ivorians had crossed the border into Liberia by Sunday, according to a news release published on Tuesday by the refugee agency. Darboe said WFP was “very mindful of the situation of the Ivorian refugees coming into Liberia” and that “the problem now is physical access to them by road, which is not easy, to allow us to move food convoys by road”. However, he said WFP had negotiated with the UN Mission in Liberia to provide some of its helicopters to airlift food to the refugees.