WFP begins airlift to 24,000 in Katanga Province

Thousands of weary war victims in the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo will soon get some relief from hunger, following the UN World Food Programme's (WFP) announcement on Tuesday that it had resumed an emergency airlift operation for people cut off by fighting.

The agency said it would transport 1,100 mt of food to at least 24,000 people in the northern part of Katanga Province - its third life-saving airlift in eastern DRC in the last 12 months. "Tens of thousands of people continue to come out of their hiding places in the woods, attracted by food distributions provided in nutritional centres," Felix Bamezon, WFP's representative for the DRC, said. Most of them, he added, were women and children whose nutritional status was precarious.

When the civil war in the DRC started in 1998, it had spilled into the mineral-rich province of Katanga, and hundreds of thousands of people fled their homes and sought refuge in the bush. The deployment of forces of the UN peacekeeping mission in the DRC (known as MONUC), in line with the Lusaka peace accord signed in July 1999, then encouraged thousands to emerge from their rural hiding places and seek aid in urban centres, WFP said.

The airlift will deliver US $950,000 worth of urgently needed maize meal, pulses, corn soya blend, vegetable oil, sugar and salt to feeding centre in the villages of Nyunzu, Manono, Kabalo, Kongolo, Mulongo, Mpiana, Muyumba and Kiambi. WFP and NGOs will also airlift much-needed seeds and agricultural implements to enable families in Katanga with access to their fields to cultivate.

A WFP-chartered Buffalo aircraft based in Kalemie, the main hub of the agency's air operations in eastern DRC, would be flying five rotations per day, seven days a week, for the next six weeks, WFP said. This would, it added, provide sufficient food to last until September. The operation, it said, was being implemented with funding from the Office for Foreign Disaster Assistance - a US body, which has also funded the two previous airlift operations - as well as from Norway and Switzerland.

During its airlifts in June and October 2001, WFP delivered 900 mt of emergency food aid. "This food led to a dramatic decrease in the number of malnourished people reporting to northern Katanga's feeding centres," the agency reported.

Despite the success of the earlier airlifts, and the one under way, WFP said it was "deeply concerned" about hundreds of thousands of people still living without food in isolated villages. "As front-line fighting in the area continues, the villagers' fields are regularly plundered by various armed forces operating in the area," it said.

"Many more are said to continue hiding in the bush, also because they are ashamed of walking out essentially naked, as their clothes have virtually worn away. As a result, they continue to suffer from malnutrition and other afflictions in their isolation," it added.

The northern part of Katanga had once been rich agriculturally. Now it was desolate and affected by chronic food shortages, WFP said. Daily fighting had partitioned the province and severed traditional commercial circuits, thus preventing producers and consumers from accessing their traditional markets.

WFP has launched a reconstruction project to allow for easier flow of commodities and people in the province. "The project, which will take about 10 months to complete, and for which WFP needs $1.4 million, consists of reconstructing the Niemba rail bridge linking Nyunzu and Kalemie, thus greatly facilitating food deliveries," the agency said.

WFP, which describes itself as the UN's front-line agency in the fight against global hunger, said it was feeding 1.4 million people in DRC. So far, it had received 66 percent of the $116 million it appealed for to cover its operation in the country. The US, The Netherlands, EC, Japan, Germany, Canada, Switzerland, Belgium, Norway, Ireland, Australia and Luxembourg had already contributed to its food aid operation the country, it said.

WFP added that given the latest political developments in DRC and a growing need for food assistance through the food-for-work project, it was about to open a 10th office in the country, this time in Kisangani, Orientale Province, in the northeast.