WFP appeals for $31m to feed 400,000 victims of locusts and drought

The UN World Food Programme appealed on Monday for nearly US $31 million to help feed 400,000 victims of drought and locust damage in southern Mauritania for the next three years. WFP said in a statement that the south of the mainly desert country was home to about one quarter of Mauritania's 2.9 million population and families living there had virtually no access to non-agricultural income. The area has been devastated by recurrent drought since 2001 and last year the situation was made even worst by an invasion of locusts which caused heavy damage to crops and grazing. "Entire harvests where people have invested their money, time and toil for so long are simply gone," said Sory Ouane, the WFP representative in Mauritania. "We must act now." WFP said it had originally planned to feed 254,000 people in the the areas of southern Mauritania worst affected by drought, but this figure had been raised by more than half to 400,000 in the light of heavy locust damage. A large proportion of these supplies would be distributed through food-for-work projects, it added. The Director of Agriculture of the Mauritanian government, Hmalla Moma, said in November that 900,000 people would probably need food aid in 2005 after Mauritania suffered the brunt of the worst locust invasion to West Africa for 15 years. He forecast a grain deficit of nearly 190,000 tonnes to feed Mauritania's human population and urged donors to provide a further 135,000 tonnes of animal feed to sustain the country's 17 million livestock population of camels, cows, goats and sheep. On Monday, WFP estimated Mauritania's food deficit for 2005 at 187,000 tonnes. Asked why the organisation was only planning to give food aid to 400,000 people when the government claimed that more than twice that number were in need, WFP spokesman Ramin Rafirasme told IRIN; "We are in the business of feeding the most vulnerable ones, not whoever is hungry."