Annan appeals for urgent food aid

UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan has appealed for urgent food aid to support more than 10 million vulnerable people in Southern Africa. In a letter sent to at least 27 heads of states this week, Annan asked for 700,000 mt to 800,000 mt of food "to avert a catastrophe in a few months' time". "The lean season in southern Africa traditionally starts in December and runs through to March, but many people have already exhausted their food stocks and are surviving on wild fruits", he said in the letter, stressing that the region had been battling food shortages for the past three years, and has not had the chance to recover because of endemic poverty and the impact of HIV/AIDS. Last month two UN agencies and the Southern African Development Community issued an urgent appeal for US $266 million in food aid to assist vulnerable people. Reports by the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and the World Food Programme (WFP) show that serious food shortages will persist in Lesotho, Malawi, Mozambique, Swaziland and Zambia until the next harvest in May 2006. The Secretary-General noted that the late arrival of seeds and fertiliser, combined with "several extremely dry months", had seriously affected agricultural production in these five countries. Annan added that Malawi was facing its worst harvest since 1992, and on Thursday the FAO also appealed for urgent donor assistance to prevent the crisis from intensifying. "The impacts of the failed harvest won't be felt fully until the lean season sets in between October and April," said Tesfai Ghermazien, FAO's emergency coordinator in Malawi, noting that more than 4.2 million people, or over 34 percent of the population, were already unable to meet their food requirements. "We need urgent assistance from the donor community to prevent a further escalation of the crisis, and to avert widespread hunger and malnutrition, especially among children under the age of five," he stressed. "The challenge is to provide immediate relief supplies to the affected populations and to design long-term recovery strategies to avert similar situations in the future. The promotion of drought-tolerant crops and crop diversification, for example, will help mitigate the impacts of droughts," Ghermazien observed. Production of maize, Malawi's most important staple crop, is estimated at nearly 1.3 million mt this year, the lowest in a decade and around 26 percent less than last year's relatively poor harvest. "Tragic experience has taught us that we cannot wait until the last minute to help", said Annan, apparently alluding to the UN Emergency Coordinator's warning of the situation that began unfolding in Niger nine months ago. Fortunately, he added, South Africa had a sizeable grain surplus - the only country in the region without a food deficit - "and it may be possible to procure supplies there if donors move quickly".