School-feeding programme to be expanded

The United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) plans to expand its school-feeding project in Somalia once a government has been re-established and security restored in all areas to facilitate the revival of the Horn of Africa country's poor education system, a senior WFP official said. "What we definitely will do is to greatly expand our school feeding project," Robert Hauser, WFP's country director for Somalia told IRIN on Wednesday. "The education sector at the moment is the highest priority of the UN system and of most of the donor community also." He said a pilot school-feeding programme run by WFP in 23 schools in the self-declared republic of Somaliland in northwestern Somalia, had led to a 50 percent increase in enrollment rates, with 35 percent more girls now going to school. The Somaliland school-feeding project would be extended to 37 other schools by May next year. Hauser said educational, vocational, job and wealth creation will be some of the key elements in the efforts to rebuild Somalia. Delegates attending the Somali reconciliation conference in the Kenyan capital, Nairobi, formed a transitional federal parliament in August. The 275 members of the assembly are due to elect the country's new president in Nairobi on Sunday. The president will, in turn, appoint a prime minister, who will be required to form a government. The ousting of the regime of then Somali president Muhammad Siyad Barre in January 1991 sparked more than a decade of turmoil and lawlessness in Somalia. Turning to the drought that has ravaged the northern and central regions of Somalia, Hauser said that an estimated 700,000 livestock herders in those areas had moved from their villages and settled along the roads where they engaged in petty trade, while others had moved to the coast and to bigger towns, where they could find water and other social services. According to Hauser, the pastoralists had lost most of their livestock and had been forced to look for alternative means of livelihood. Drought and the effects of overgrazing had turned the region into a desert. "That drought was an exceptional event," said Hauser. "They had four years without rain, it is not just a cyclical drought as always happens," he added, saying that the drought had started in the Sanaag and Sool regions and spread further south to Mudug and Galgudud. He said that WFP was providing food to an estimated 310,000 of the 700,000 of those displaced by the drought and working with the UN Children's Fund (UNICEF) and Save the Children to identify the most vulnerable members of the communities, mainly mothers and children. "Fortunately, so far, in the context of this big drought, there has been no starvation," said Hauser. "There is a constant danger, but we could cut it just in time." Drought conditions were also prevailing in Gedo and Lower Juba where WFP has not been active during the past two years because of security. He said WFP now planned to assess the humanitarian situation in the two regions. Hauser said WFP-Somalia had received sufficient food stocks from donors to last until the middle of March. "We have had some very good donor responses - at some point we issued an appeal for 20,000 mt," said Hauser. "We have received those 20,000 mt. We have enough food now and we expect more to come to take us into the beginning of 2005."