Some areas still totally reliant on aid agencies

In many parts of Angola the benefits of two years of peace are not evident and some communities are still entirely reliant on aid agencies for basic social services, said the UN's Acting Resident Humanitarian Coordinator, Mario Ferrari. Speaking at the quarterly meeting of the Humanitarian Coordination Group, which includes the government, UN agencies and donors, Ferrari noted that while there had been some "remarkable" advancements in service delivery and the protection of rights, "those benefits have yet to be felt in the more remote places". Some of these advances have taken place in critical sectors. "In the education sector, official government figures now indicate that one million more children are in school, compared to one year ago. In the public health sector, five million more children have been vaccinated against polio in the past two months, bringing Angola closer to polio-free status and towards its goal of reducing child mortality rates," Ferrari observed. In terms of access to populations in remote areas, he said: "Dozens of bridges and nearly 1,000 km of roads have been reconstructed and rehabilitated, allowing thousands to return to their homes, reach markets to trade their goods, and people and products to circulate more freely, breathing life into the rebuilding of the economy." Although more than a million Angolans still require food aid, Ferrari said that "almost half a million more hectares of land was cultivated", adding that "this is what families are able to achieve when they settle in one place and re-establish themselves". The voluntary repatriation of Angolan refugees had re-started. "Convoys are ongoing and the airlift operation has picked up the pace of returns. By the end of the year, the IDP [internally displaced persons] return process will be officially complete - that nearly 4 million people returned to their areas of origin, two and half years after the end of the conflict, is a truly remarkable achievement," Ferrari said. More than US $103 million from the international community had gone to support this effort in the 2004 Consolidated Transitional Appeal for Angola, which, three-quarters of the way through the year, is just under 60 percent funded. "The objective of the 2004 Appeal is to support the stabilisation of communities in transition ... transition from conflict to peace; from vulnerability to stability; from assistance to self-sufficiency," he noted. The 2004 Appeal would be the last one for Angola. Angola's shift from a complex humanitarian emergency would need "continuous coordination" and "our challenge as humanitarian partners is to bridge the gap between the emergency and development ... the priorities [being] the continued stabilisation of the population and, ultimately, the complete transfer of coordination functions to the government," Ferrari explained. During the transition period, a key priority of the United Nations had been capacitating the government, with the aim of narrowing the disparity between life in Luanda and life in the rural areas. "It is our challenge - as humanitarian partners who are shifting to development partners - to integrate all the elements into this transition ... all of the actors and all the populace. So whether you are living in the city centres or a rural 'aldeia', the benefits of Angola's transition extend out to all its citizens," Ferrari concluded.