UN food agency to feed 840,000 for another five months

The UN World Food Programme (WFP) has decided to extend its emergency food-aid programme in Eritrea to mitigate the effects of drought, an official told IRIN on Friday. "We decided to extend for five months and to enlarge the existing emergency operation," Jean-Pierre Cebron, WFP's country director for Eritrea, said. "There is no break, it is seamless. It is the same operation that is extended." Cebron said the five-month extension of WFP’s emergency activities was intended to provide food aid to around 840,000 people, at an estimated additional cost of US $25 million. The aid will also be linked to programmes on adult literacy, education, malnutrition and HIV/AIDS, he added. According to the UN agency, an estimated 2.3 million Eritreans - roughly two-thirds of the population - will need food aid in 2005. Pastures in Eritrea are at their driest since 1998. WFP is also planning a two-year operation to start in September, which would cover all the agency's activities in the country, Cebron revealed. "It will be a unique operation for WFP," he said. "It is the missing link between pure emergency and development." The small Red Sea state has some of the worst malnutrition rates in Africa, according to WFP statistics. In four out of six of its administrative regions, there is an acute malnutrition rate of up to 20 percent among infants. Across the country, 50 percent of children under five, and 42 percent of pregnant and nursing mothers, are underweight. Cebron said traditional coping mechanisms were being increasingly stretched by the lack of adequate rainfall. "The spring Azmera rains [usually March to May] have begun to fall, but once again they are erratic, light and localised," he said. "Herders are migrating earlier and [over] longer distances with their animals in search of grazing lands, and many Eritreans must queue for hours at fewer and fewer water points." Recurrent drought has led to failed harvests, loss of livestock and food insecurity throughout all parts of the country, according to a report released by the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs earlier in April. Cebron said WFP has had to cut rations in recent months - to 600,000 beneficiaries - as food stocks dwindled. "It is a recurring problem," he said. "It is just because of the budget cycle of the governments who donate [money] to the WFP or UN. To transform a budget into a large delivery of food is a very complex process that takes time. It has to go through tenders and shipping contracts and so on. There is no way you can cut this process. It is a physical impossibility."