WFP cautions on reports of food shortages in the north

The UN World Food Programme (WFP) has cautioned against "alarmist" reports about people dying of hunger in camps for the displaced in northern Uganda's troubled Lira District, saying there was no evidence so far that anyone there had starved to death. The warning was in response to claims by local religious leaders that 48 people had died of hunger in Barapwo camp, 7 km south of Lira, and dozens of others in Erute camp, near the centre of Lira Municipality. "I've been in Lira for weeks and I think we can safely say no one is dying of starvation in Lira. If they are dying, they're keeping pretty quiet about it," Jakob Mikolson, the WFP Programme Coordinator for Northern Uganda, told IRIN on Friday. "I was in Erute and I saw no evidence of people starving then. This report sounds alarmist," he added. However, Father Sebhat Ayele, a Catholic missionary in Lira, told IRIN: "I saw it with my own eyes. Some of the people were so horribly undernourished, I was shocked." Food distribution to Erute and Barapwo is handled by WFP through local relief agencies, but Sebhat claimed the amounts of food given this year were woefully inadequate. "People have been living on what they brought with them and money from what they sold. That has now dried up," he said. "I thought the programme gave them enough food. But there were only two distributions this year - 3.5 kg of beans and 7.5 kg of maize. They [WFP] are supposed to provide 50 percent of nutritional needs, but this isn't even a quarter," he added. "There must be some terrible mistake. I can only think there was an underestimation." Mikolson said hunger was not a likely cause of deaths. "A bigger problem is poor sanitation and sickness, which is a result of the congestion. This is why the WFP wants to wind down its operations in Erute and Lira town. We are moving out to rural areas where provision of basic facilities becomes easier because people are not crowded together," he said. Northern Uganda has suffered the consequences of an 18-year old war between the government and rebels of the Lord's Resistance Army. At least 1.4 million people have been displaced by the insurgency. Meanwhile the WFP Deputy Executive Director, Sheila Sisulu, is expected to visit Uganda from 13-18 March. She will meet government officials, representatives from WFP donor countries, UN agencies and NGOs and visit various projects support in Kampala, Gulu, and Moroto, WFP said in a statement.