Angola: UN food agency warns that funds are needed to help children, refugees

The United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) warned today that its efforts to assist more than 700,000 Angolans – mostly young children and returning refugees – will come to a halt unless new donations are received by the end of July.

WFP needs at least $12.6 million to distribute 7,700 metric tons of food aid to targeted Angolan beneficiaries for the remainder of this year. Donor support for the agency's relief programme has diminished alarmingly since last year.

“The situation has deteriorated to the extent that we will not be able to distribute food from next month, and will have to close down our operation entirely in September unless new contributions are received very soon,” said Sonsoles Ruedas, who is in charge of the agency’s operation in the country.

More than 900,000 people still do not get enough food, and at least 45 per cent of children under the age of five are chronically malnourished – a condition that can irreversibly impair learning ability, according to a WFP study conducted late last year in rural areas of southern and eastern Angola.

Angola endured nearly 30 years of civil war, causing immense damage to infrastructure and social services. Health-care and educational facilities are still non-existent in many areas. Millions of land mines litter the country.

In a bid to alleviate the suffering of the poorest and in the process support post-war reconstruction, WFP launched a new food aid programme in April. The agency also plans to assist more than 700,000 children in primary schools, pregnant and nursing women, and HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis and pellagra sufferers.

The operation is also designed to support more than 80,000 refugees expected to return home from neighbouring Democratic Republic of Congo and Zambia. “WFP has assumed the responsibility of trying to ensure that the refugees, who are coming back empty-handed after many years of exile, get enough food before their first harvest,” the agency representative said. “But we've had to distribute half-rations to such people since last year.”

WFP currently provides school meals to 220,000 Angolan children, and is planning to increase the caseload by 100,000 by the end of the year – if funding becomes available. The agency is also helping to design a national school-feeding programme to be fully funded and implemented by the Ministry of Education.

The Government of Angola is committed to providing $1.3 million towards school-feeding in 2006. The plan calls for the government to launch its own programme next year in areas where WFP is not already providing school-feeding, and to eventually provide food for all schools in the country.