WFP urges donors not to forget the survivors of past conflicts

The UN World Food Programme (WFP) urged international donors on Thursday not to forget 1.5 million survivors of recent conflicts in West Africa who are still heavily dependent on food aid. WFP said in a statement that it needed US$155 million this year to feed nearly a million people in Liberia and over 500,000 people in neighbouring Guinea and Sierra Leone. But WFP's spokesman for West Africa, Ramin Rafirasme told IRIN that donors had so far pledged only 10 percent of this money and the organisation was already having to cut back food handouts because of a shortfall in cash. He noted that WFP had been handing out reduced rations in Liberia since June last year because it only received 70 percent of the funding needed in 2004 to help feed the country's vast population of displaced people, returning refugees, school children and former combatants. Rafirasme warned that disruption of food aid to Liberia could endanger peace and stability in the country, which only emerged from 14 years of civil war in 2003. "You still have lots of ex-combatants there and they can quickly pick up a gun if they get hungry," he said. The WFP has been worried for months that donor attention is being diverted away from the smouldering problems of West Africa by dramatic new emergencies elsewhere in the world. First it was the humanitarian crisis in Sudan's Darfur province, where over 1.8 million people have been uprooted from their homes by conflict. Now it is the Indian Ocean tsumani, which killed about 158,000 people and made millions homeless. Mustapha Darboe, the WFP's regional director for West Africa, said that although Sierra Leone's civil war had ended four years ago and Liberia had slipped out of the world headlines, there was still a heavy load of work to be done to repair the damage caused by a decade of fighting. "At the height of the conflict we saved lives with emergency rations. Now we are working, along with other humanitarian agencies, to restore communities and secure peace," he said. "The needs are different, but it is just as urgent because we are talking about the difference between stability and chaos in a region that cannot afford more turmoil." Darboe particularly underlined the need to continue helping Liberia, where the WFP aims to provide food aid to 942,000 people this year - nearly a third of the country's three million population. Pointing out that over 800,000 Liberians were displaced from their homes by the civil war, he said: "The sad fact is that many of these families are returning to homes and farms which have been destroyed. With the end of war comes the beginning of a long and difficult recovery. Humanitarian support should be there." Although Guinea has so far avoided the civil wars which have engulfed four of its neighbours in recent years, its economy is fragile and diplomats fear the country could become a future flashpoint. WFP aims to feed 310,000 people in Guinea in 2005, including refugees from Liberia, destitute Guinean migrants who fled home to escape the civil war in Cote d'Ivoire, and other vulnerable population groups. It also plans to feed 206,000 in Sierra Leone, particularly former refugees and internally displaced people who have only recently returned to their villages to start growing their own food. "Unfortunately for this region, stability tends to mean fewer headlines," Darboe said. "We urge the international community not to ignore the still considerable needs here." WFP's other big operations in West Africa are in Cote d'Ivoire, where rebels control the north of the country and UN peacekeepers are tyring to prevent a two-year-old civil war from erupting into fresh hostilities, and Mauritania, whose crops and pastures were devastated by drought and an invasion of locusts last year. The organisation aims to reach 696,000 people in Cote d'Ivoire in 2005, mostly children through school feeding programmes. It also plans to assist 400,000 hungry farmers and their families in southern Mauritania.