WFP suspends operations in parts of the country

The United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) has suspended emergency humanitarian assistance to needy people in most of Sierra Leone as a result of the insecurity in parts of the country, the WFP announced on Monday.

WFP said in a press release that it had been forced to halt the delivery and distribution of food to more than 43,000 internally displaced persons (IDPs), orphans, and hospital patients in Freetown.

The UN agency has also suspended food deliveries to 26,000 school children and some 40,000 people in Kambia, Lunsar, Makeni and Magburaka in the north and postponed the distribution of food to farmers in the districts of Bombali (north), Tonkolili (centre) and Kailahun (east). The food was destined to feed 110,000 people during the rainy season, known as the “hunger season”, which is just about to start in Sierra Leone.

“We had to curtail some of our most vital operations in those areas due to the high security risk our staff are facing there,” the WFP regional manager for West Africa’s coastal countries, Paul Arès, said. “As a precaution, we have also redeployed most of our staff to Conakry, in neighbouring Guinea.”

Since last week Revolutionary United Front (RUF) rebels have been detaining hundreds of UN Mission in Sierra Leone (UNAMSIL) peacekeepers, mostly in the north and east of the country. On Monday, the insecurity spread to Freetown where RUF members reportedly shot and killed four people as demonstrators converged on rebel leader Foday Sankoh’s residence to protest against the latest threats to Sierra Leone’s peace process.

WFP said it was still operating in relatively stable areas. It is providing food to 13,500 IDPs in the southern town of Bo, where it completed food deliveries to 21 schools for some 8000 pupils last week. In Kenema, in the east, the agency is delivering food to some 20,000 school children.

WFP said it provided emergency food aid for 1.2 million Sierra Leoneans in the last 10 months.