NORTH KOREA/CHINA: World Food Programme warns it would have to halt distribution of rations in North Korea by January unless more funds were received

The World Food Programme (WFP) said on Monday (October 16, 2006) it would have to stop delivering food to North Korea by January unless more funds were received. The United Nations agency wants to feed 1.9 million people in North Korea but is feeding fewer than 1 million due to lack of funds and food donations. It has received only 10 percent of the $102 million it sought for a two-year programme which began last June. The WFP drastically scaled back its programme earlier this year to a target of 75,000 tonnes of food aid annually, from 500,000 tonnes. That came after a compromise with North Korea after the government said it no longer wanted handouts, and disagreements over the conditions for supplying aid. Humanitarian groups are sounding alarm bells over the potential impact of UN sanctions on North Korea, saying that as winter sets in, tough action may hurt the downtrodden people more than the communist regime. "The single biggest threat we face right now is losing the gains we have made over the last ten years. 37 percent of children under the age of six are unnourished. A third of all mothers that are anaemic are unnourished. This is very much a success story, even though the numbers are remaining extremely high. We have managed to bring down the malnutrition rates through providing food aid over the last ten years. Now if we are to lose those gains, those numbers are going to look even more alarming," the WFP regional public officer, Michael Huggins said. The WFP fears that as North Korea heads toward another of northeast Asia's long and bitter winters, economic sanctions could contribute to a new humanitarian crisis in a nation barely able to feed its own people. "We are at a very critical junction right now. The World Food Programme is trying to feed two million people in the country. We have only reached a million. We only have ten percent of the funds we need. Winter is approaching. It is going to be a tough winter by all that accounts. It is the time of the year when fruit and vegetables is not available to the poorest people. They have become more relied on food aid. If that food aid is not there, then they are going to face very real hardships. And the World Food Programme has no food enough pipeline as of January. It is only going to get worse if international assistance is not forthcoming," he said. The UN Security Council unanimously agreed Saturday(October 16) to impose sanctions on North Korea less than a week after Pyongyang defied the world by saying it had tested an atomic bomb. Although most of the resolution focuses on weapons programs and military hardware, it also targets luxury goods and permits the inspection of cargo to and from North Korea to prevent any illegal trafficking. It further imposes a freeze on funds and economic assets linked directly or indirectly to anyone involved in the weapons programs. Pyongyang's Stalinist regime has been unable to feed its 23 million people on its own for more than a decade and has been dependent on international aid since the mid-1990s when more than one million starved to death in a famine. Though conditions have improved in recent years, summer floods, coupled with a series of missile tests in July that triggered a drop in outside donations, have left North Korea once again in a precarious position. China was by far the biggest aid donor to North Korea last year, supplying 50 percent of the total, according to the WFP, while South Korea was second, contributing 36 percent of the total. Beijing keeps its donations secret and carries them out directly rather than through the WFP. Last year North Korea said it wanted to halt food aid from international humanitarian groups such as the WFP, which insist on monitoring food distribution, unlike China and South Korea, which deliver the food without conditions.

ITN Source | October 16, 2006

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