US donates US $1 million to help feed refugees

The US government has given the UN's World Food Programme (WFP) US $1 million to feed refugees in Zambia, but this might not be enough to replenish depleted food stocks. "The money is enough to cover food needs until the end of December," Richard Ragan, WFP Country Director for Zambia told IRIN on Thursday. "After that we have about six weeks' worth of carry-over stocks, but we are going to have to cut rations in half when the next feeding cycle starts in January." Ragan said WFP was feeding about 125,000 refugees. Zambia hosts more than 270,000 refugees, mostly from Angola and the Democratic Republic of Congo. Meanwhile, Ragan told IRIN that WFP had purchased about 11,000 mt of food to help alleviate shortages among the general population in Zambia. Last month WFP appealed for US $18 million to buy 42,000 mt of food to distribute during the lean months of December to March 2002. On Thursday 13 December, Germany was the first to respond to WFP's appeal by contributing US $2 million. "We will probably not be able to do our first distribution until early January," Ragan said. "The resources to move food in the region are quite scarce at the moment. We are competing with relief efforts in Zimbabwe, Malawi and also in Lesotho. We are also competing with commercial efforts to move food to these countries." WFP warned in November that relief food needed to be mobilised quickly to stave off a rise in malnutrition. According to WFP, the chronic malnutrition rate in Zambia for children under five years old is already at 60 percent. Food shortages in Zambia have been brought about through a combination of floods and drought. For the first few months of this year, heavy rains fell in the northwestern and western parts of Zambia. Rivers flooded and major dams filled beyond capacity. Simultaneously, in the southern part of the country, a one-month dry spell followed a period of late rainfall, also causing widespread crop loss.