UN agency launches school feeding programme in Sri Lanka’s war-torn north

In an effort to help Sri Lanka recover from two decades of war, the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) has launched a school feeding programme for 33,000 children in former battle zones, and plans to expand it to 170,000 children next year, the agency announced today.

"The war robbed children of education," WFP Country Director Jeff Taft-Dick said. "But a school feeding programme can help restore the lost years. And in this difficult post-war period in Sri Lanka, the programme gives people a ray of hope for a better future."

The programme, which targets children most affected by the displacement, poverty and food deficits of the 20-year war between the government and Tamil separatists on the Indian Ocean Island, provides a nutritious mid-morning meal of rice and lentil porridge or corn-soya cakes, supplemented with vegetables.

The food, distributed with the start of the new school term, both motivates their daily attendance and enhances their ability to learn, WFP said in a news release.

A WFP survey conducted this year shows that between 20 percent and 25 percent of school-age children in the north and east, scene of most of the fighting and much of it under the control of the Tigers of Tamil Eelam separatists, suffer from acute malnutrition.

"Our efforts are designed to bring the conflict areas back to a habitable state, and to help those who were most affected by the war like these children in the former conflict zones," Mr. Taft-Dick said.

"Education is one of the greatest investments that can be made in a country's future, because the greatest resource a country has is its own children. A child with education today is the self-supporting and participatory citizen of tomorrow," he added.