Food security situation better than expected - WFP

The food security situation in the interior of Liberia is serious, but less alarming than previously feared, according to the UN World Food Programme (WFP). "From assessments in Bong, Margibi and Bomi counties, it transpires that food security is not alarming as expected," Justin Bagarishya, the head of WFP in Liberia, told IRIN by telephone from Monrovia. Much of the population of these counties, immediately to the north of the capital Monrovia, had until recently been beyond the reach of humanitarian agencies. However, Bagarishya said WFP survey teams had been able to visit many remote villages as well as the more accessible camps for displaced people earlier this year to survey the nutritional status of the people living there and estimate their future needs in terms of food aid. The WFP representative said the food situation was still very serious, particularly in camps for displaced people, and malnutrition rates in children under five were still unacceptably high. The survey conducted in and around Tubmanburg in Bomi county in February, when it was still a stronghold of the Liberians United for Reconciliation and Democracy (LURD) rebel movement, showed that 52 percent of the people there ate only one meal a day. For nearly half of these this single plate of food failed to satisfy their daily consumption needs. The survey classified 37 percent of households in Bomi county as "very vulnerable" because they could neither meet their food needs, nor diversify their sources of income to earn the money needed to buy food. But Bagarishya stressed that it was time to move away from simple food distribution towards projects that channelled food aid into specific activities such as school-feeding programmes and food-for-work projects, which would help to rebuild Liberia's shattered infrastructure. "Instead of general food distributions, which induce displacement, targeted activities involving food for work, food-for-training and therapeutic feeding should be given preeminence," he told IRIN. Bagarishya also stressed that aid agencies urgently needed to give farmers seeds and tools to grow their own food since the rainy season was already starting and it was time to plant. "The agriculture season has already started. If we could have enough seeds and tools then many farmers would return to their farms," he said. "If they are not given the seeds and tools, they will lose one season's planting opportunity and will remain on food assistance for another year." Bagarishya said WFP was currently feeding 353,000 school children in Monrovia and the surrounding countryside and 150,000 internally displaced people in various settlements. It was also supplying food to disarmed combatants at the UN-supervised cantonment sites that began opening last week, he added. Bagarishya said WFP would also supply demobilised fighters with a resettlement package of food as they were sent home after screening and would soon be setting up food and training for work programmes for both ex-combatants and civilians. The WFP survey of Bong and Margibi counties, conducted in January showed that displaced people living in camps there had little inclination to grow their own food. Often they had no access to nearby land and even where they did, many were more focused on going home soon following the end of Liberia's 14-year civil war, it noted. Accute malnutrition in these LURD-dominated districts, was a relatively low 3.3 percent, but the survey noted it was much higher in children of weaning age - 12 to 23 months - where it reached 8.5 percent. A peace agreement was signed in August, but the UN peacekeeping force in Liberia only began to deploy its troops outside Monrovia at the end of December. The disarmament of the country's estimated 40,000 to 50,000 former combatants, only began in earnest in mid-April. Many of those displaced by the conflict are therefore still wary of going back to their villages until the security situation is fully stabilised. Both WFP surveys highlighted the correlation between food insecurity and people's inability to cultivate land.