FAO, WFP alarmed at food situation

Two UN agencies this week published a joint warning that over 1.7 million Angolans face malnutrition through a combination of war and an insufficient donor response to the crisis. The Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) and the World Food Programme (WFP) said fighting between government forces and the UNITA rebel had seriously curtailed farming in Angola’s key maize-growing regions. Crops were being looted and too many farmers had fled to the country’s besieged government-held provincial capitals. “The number of people of people in Angola now internally displaced has reached 1.7 million and it is growing,” WFP spokesman, Francis Mwanza, told IRIN on Thursday. “The situation is now getting dramatic and we need a better response from donors.” The joint agency report said Angola required international emergency assistance estimated at 180,000 mt of maize for the 1999/2000 marketing year. Of this 56,000 mt had been pledged by donors leaving a shortfall of 124,000 mt. It said cereal output in Angola was down by 11 percent in 1998/1999 compared to the year before, and said this was despite favourable weather conditions. “This is a direct reflection of the increased insecurity in the country since the resumption of the civil war last December and population displacement,” Mwanza said. The report, based on a joint agency assessment mission to Angola in May, said the cereal import requirement for Angola, because of the crisis was estimated at 505,000 mt, compared to 420,000 mt imported the previous year. The report said: “Food distribution by surface transport is being hampered by the conflict making costly air transport the only alternative. Urgent additional logistical support is needed to accelerate the distribution of humanitarian assistance.” The appeal was published days after a direct appeal by UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan. At the time of the joint agency mission, Francesco Strippoli, the UN humanitarian coordinator and WFP representative in Angola, told IRIN he was concerned that the Kosovo crisis, while every bit as dire, was diverting attention away from Angola.