WFP warns of potential food crisis

The World Food Programme (WFP) has expressed concern about signs of a potential food crisis in Sudan, saying that rapidly rising prices of staple foodstuffs indicated that stocks were dwindling. "We are beginning to worry that more people than we had anticipated would be unable to feed themselves," Laura Melo, WFP spokesperson told IRIN on Thursday. WFP, she said, had anticipated that 3.2 million people in Sudan, excluding the strife-torn western region of Darfur, would need food aid, and had appealed for US $302 million to fund operations to help those affected by the shortages in 2005. The agency was in the process of carrying out surveys to ascertain how many more people might be in need, Melo said. However, she added, the response to the existing appeal "had not been very good". Of the $302 million appealed for, only $22 million or eight percent of the requirement had been received so far. Some of the areas worst affected by the emerging crisis included Kordofan, Bahr el-Ghazal, Kassala and the Red Sea State, Melo said. She added that in some of the regions, the price of sorghum, a staple food in much of Sudan, had doubled since last year. Melo attributed the problem to a poor harvest as a result of inadequate rainfall. In some areas, a bumper crop in the previous season led people to believe they had adequate food and many had chosen to plant cash crops. Now, the poor were finding it difficult to cope with the rising food prices, she added. "Our appeal to donors is that they should come forward and provide support," said Melo. On Darfur, Melo said that WFP had so far received 55 percent of the $438 million appealed for last year, but most of the contributions were in the form of cereals, leaving the agency short of other food items, such as vegetable oils, pulses, sugar, salt and corn soya blend. Noting that WFP had estimated that about 2.3 million people in Darfur were in need of food aid, she added: "We need funds to continue providing a balanced diet to the people." Melo warned that West Darfur could become inaccessible at the onset of the rainy season in July or August. WFP, she noted, needed to preposition 23,000 mt of food in the area to ensure that there was no break in food deliveries. "We need resources to start pre-positioning the food," she added. Meanwhile, a rebel group in West Darfur has freed seven Sudanese aid workers after holding them for 24 hours, the UN Advance Mission in Sudan (UNAMIS) reported on Wednesday. The seven, all employed by the Catholic Relief Services, and their vehicles, were held by members of the rebel National Movement for Reform and Development (NMRD) after they distributed food in West Darfur on Monday. They were released on Tuesday with the help of the African Union (AU), but the NMRD still had the vehicles, according to the UNAMIS statement. The latest incident followed the 24-hour detention of four aid workers in North Darfur State at the weekend by members of the rebel Sudan Liberation Army. They were released on Sunday. The conflict in Darfur, which broke out in 2003, pits the Sudanese government and militias allegedly allied to it, against rebels opposed to what they call the marginalisation and discrimination of the region by the government. The violence has claimed the lives of tens of thousands of people and displaced up to 1.9 million others.