No funding for emergency food aid

WFP has so far received no donor funding for an emergency food aid project targeting 350,000 war-affected people in the DRC, a WFP regional spokesperson told IRIN on Wednesday. "There is a 100 percent funding shortfall", which is preventing WFP from implementing the project approved in mid-June, she said. "This is very serious because the general nutritional situation is thought to be precarious," the spokesperson added. The US $29 million project would provide six months of relief food to some 200,000 displaced persons and another 150,000 vulnerable people in Kinshasa, Lubumbashi, Goma, Bukavu, Uvira, Kisangani, Mbuji-Mayi and Mbandaka. Of this amount, an estimated 52,500 severely-malnourished women and children would receive supplementary nutritional assistance. A WFP project document received by IRIN said the relatively high cost of the operation, which would distribute over 37,000 mt of food commodities, was due partly to the high transport costs associated with the poor state of road and communications infrastructure in the country.