DPR of Korea must cooperate with aid agencies for relief to continue, UN official says

A senior United Nations official warned today that the operating environment for aid agencies in the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) must improve markedly for the international community to continue providing the substantial assistance needed to help overcome the country's severe humanitarian crisis.

"We are doing our utmost to mobilize resources to help relieve the suffering of millions of vulnerable people in the DPRK, but we need more help from the authorities there if the donor fatigue now undermining our programmes is to be reversed," said Kenzo Oshima, the UN's Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator.

Mr. Oshima welcomed the progress over the years, noting that relief workers have gained access to more counties and that the UN World Food Programme (WFP) - the leading aid agency in the country - now has some 50 international staff members operating out of its main office in Pyongyang and five sub-offices around the country.

"But donors are frustrated and want to see further tangible confidence-building measures," Mr. Oshima said in Beijing after completing a four-day mission to the DPRK, where he reviewed the humanitarian situation and met with government officials.

WFP has been grappling with an unprecedented resource shortfall for an emergency operation designed to feed 6.4 million North Koreans this year. In May it was forced to suspend distributions to more than 1 million beneficiaries, including elderly people and school children.

"It's an extremely difficult and painful call when you have to choose between feeding hungry children in orphanages and hungry elderly people in destitute cities," said John Powell, WFP's Regional Director for Asia, who accompanied Mr. Oshima to the DPRK.

Recent pledges of food aid will allow a resumption of the distributions to some of those affected by the cutbacks, Mr. Powell said, but he added that WFP needed further contributions of nearly 130,000 tons of commodities to be able to feed all hungry people for the remainder of the year.