Security assurances a must for UN agency to continue food aid in Somalia

In the wake of the killings of two of its staff members earlier this month, the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) is calling on local authorities and armed groups in South and Central Somalia to provide concrete security commitments to allow the agency to continue providing life-saving assistance to millions in need in the strife-torn nation.

“We want community leaders to step forward and offer us clear assurances that WFP workers will be able to carry out their humanitarian work in safety,” said WFP Deputy Chief Operating Officer Ramiro Lopes da Silva.

“We will continue distributing food in those areas where we receive concrete security commitments, but we will not work in areas where security commitments are absent,” he added.

Violence continues in Somalia, which has not had a functioning central government since 1991, despite the signing in June of a UN-facilitated peace accord, known as the Djibouti Agreement, by the Transitional Federal Government (TFG) and the Alliance for the Re-liberation of Somalia (ARS).

An estimated of 3.2 million people in Somalia – 43 per cent of the population – are in need of humanitarian assistance as a result of the combined effects of conflict and drought.

Mohamud Omar Moallim, a 49-year old WFP food monitor, was killed during a distribution to displaced people about 10 kilometres northwest of the capital, Mogadishu, on 8 January. Just two days earlier, 44-year-old Ibrahim Hussein Duale was shot while monitoring school feeding in a WFP-supported school in Yubsan village in southern Somalia.

While WFP had voiced its outrage at the killings, it opted not to suspend food distributions in South and Central Somalia as this would only increase the suffering of those in need.

“With the murder of two of our staff within three days, we initially considered suspending WFP food distributions until security improves,” noted Mr. Lopes da Silva. “But such a step would hurt the very people we seek to help – especially women and children suffering the most from this merciless conflict.

He added that WFP is in the process of delivering some 57,000 metric tons of food in South and Central Somalia – enough to feed 2.5 million people for 1 to 2 months. As it does so, the agency is demanding concrete commitments from community leaders and local parties that WFP staff will be protected in order to keep operating in the coming months.

According to the international non-governmental organization Amnesty International, over 40 civil society activists and humanitarian workers were attacked and killed in Somalia last year.