Targeting vulnerable people the challenge for WFP

The World Food Programme (WFP) has received three new donor pledges in the past week, which, combined, meet some two-thirds of the US $5 million it has sought to feed 60,000 Afghan refugees in Pakistan. "Until very recently we were concerned about donor pledges but I can now say that we are up to about 65 percent of our needs of the existing emergency operation," said Mike Sackett, regional director of WFP. The pledges from the UK, Germany and the USA in the past few days had enabled the food agency to secure its future pipeline, he added. However, it may be up to four months before the pledges translate into food stocks ready for distribution in warehouses, according to the UN food agency. In the meanwhile, it has borrowed wheat stocks from its Afghan emergency operation and vegetable oil from a governmental development programme to feed 60,000 Afghan refugees in New Shamshatoo and Akora Khattak camps in Pakistan's North West Frontier Province (NWFP). A new refugee screening programme was halted by the Pakistani government on 29 January, leaving an additional 70,000 new Afghan refugees in limbo, "and many in very miserable circumstances", according to Sackett. He said the UN was in discussion with Pakistan on the matter. The Islamabad government's position is that Afghans need to be helped in Afghanistan, and that Pakistan has already done its share in bearing the burden of refugees. However, Sackett is hopeful that it will change its position. "We have already massively expanded food distributions in Afghanistan and we need to assist the caseload which has already come across this side of the border," he told IRIN. "We hope the government will agree to that, in which case we could expect the refugee caseload on this side to increase to about 150,000. We would then go to the donors to get additional resources to increase the caseload from the current 60,000 to 150,000." WFP says it has enough food to feed three million vulnerable people inside Afghanistan until mid-March, when its stocks will be exhausted. "Fortunately the government of Pakistan has agreed to loan us wheat and we are drawing on those loans to keep the pipeline going. In fact, you can say that these loans have helped to avert a catastrophic breakdown in our pipeline," said Mike Sackett. The loans have been secured against pledges which WFP expects will translate into the arrival of food aid in the coming months. A shipment of 46,000 mt of wheat is due in mid-March, sufficient for two months' distribution. In addition, WFP has been advised of a further 75,000 mt of food from the US. Sackett expects the situation in Afghanistan to deteriorate in the run-up to the next harvest in July. "They will be extremely difficult months when we will want to push as much food as possible into the most affected areas. The challenge continues to be targeting that food to the most vulnerable people," he said. Afghanistan needs approximately 4.1 million mt of cereals to feed its population of 22 million per year. 1999 was "a bad year", with a deficit of 1.1 million mt, while last year was "horrendous" and saw a deficit of 2.3 million mt, which meant more than half the country's cereal requirements had to be imported, Sackett told IRIN. "The big question is: 'What will be the deficit this year?' It's too early to put a sensible figure on it but we hope it will be much closer to the '99 figure than the awful situation in 2000... "Taking into account the loans we are making, we can keep our food distributions going until probably July, which is harvest time, so that should cover the worst months. But it's a very hand-to-mouth existence, which makes planning difficult," he added. One of the WFP's main targets in Afghanistan has been to increase the amount of food it is able to distribute, and it has quadrupled the size of its programme to respond to increased needs due to drought. In 1999, the agency distributed an average of 6,000 mt of food per month. It increased that last year to a peak of 28,000 mt in November, and the target until the harvest in July 2001 is to put a minimum of 24,000 mt per month into Afghanistan. WFP plans to conduct a joint crop and food supply assessment with the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) at the end of May, just before the harvest. At that point the agencies hope to estimate the cereal production and the deficit, and to use that as the basis for preparing the food component of the humanitarian response for the next 12 months. Meanwhile, the UN intends to continue its efforts to increase domestic food production in Afghanistan. That includes WFP food-for-work scheme to rehabilitate irrigation systems, as well as food-for-seed programmes to increase the availability of improved seed for farmers. According to Mike Sackett, "Afghanistan is a country which traditionally could feed itself and, with rehabilitation and peace, it could feed itself again."