WFP warns of food shortages

The UN's World Food Programme (WFP) in Eritrea has warned that it only has enough food aid stocks to last until the end of September.

Only those considered most vulnerable due to the recent war and drought will receive food aid over the next four months. Supplementary feeding programmes across the country are to be stopped due to the food shortage.

The shortage has been created by a poor response to the UN’s 2002 Consolidated Inter-Agency Appeal (CAP) for Eritrea, a WFP spokesman said. Seven months after the appeal was launched, only 2.71 percent of WFP’s food aid requirements have been met. He described the situation as “extremely serious”.

“Food stocks are dangerously low,” he warned. “We have very little left, and we have no pledges of more supplies. We have made individual appeals to all our major donors.”

The situation has been exacerbated by predictions of a dwindling supply of food for Eritrea’s commercial market. According to USAID's Famine Early Warning System Network, (FEWS), the country may struggle to meet consumer demand for basic foodstuffs by the end of this year.

Even in a good year, Eritrea barely manages to grow 50 percent of its own food. Lower than average rainfall so far this year, combined with a lack of manpower to cultivate agricultural land, have led to predictions of a poor harvest. Some 200,000 soldiers, called up at the start of the border war four years ago, have not yet been demobilised, although the first phase is due to begin soon.

A scarcity of foreign exchange has made it more difficult for the government to make up the shortfall by importing grain from overseas. The price of some basic foodstuffs has already increased. Wheat flour, used for making bread, is between 15 and 30 percent more expensive now than 12 months ago, according to the ministry of agriculture. The price of imported foods has also gone up.

Ibrahim Said, Relief and Logistics Director at the Eritrean Relief and Refugee Commission, (ERREC), told IRIN the situation was worrying. He said the supply of relief food remained one of the primary humanitarian concerns confronting the government.

There are currently around 700,000 emergency food aid beneficiaries being supplied by WFP in Eritrea, mostly internally displaced people (IDPs) and returnees from Sudan.

The poor response to the 2002 CAP is partly caused by the end of the recent border war with Ethiopia. The country is now considered to be in a recovery phase, rather than facing an immediate emergency. Only 17.2 percent of the United Nations’ CAP appeal for all its programmes in Eritrea, launched last November, has so far been met.

The threatened famine in Southern Africa, which is affecting 12.8 million people, has made it even more difficult to raise donor interest in the Horn of Africa. Leaders from many African states are expected to make urgent appeals for increased food aid at the World Food Summit in Rome this week.