SOMALIA: 2,400 mt of food delivered to ease shortages

NAIROBI, 12 August 2004 (IRIN) - The United Nations food agency has delivered 2,400 mt of food aid to Somalia in a bid to ease a shortage of relief supplies in the country that had been caused by unavailability of grain in the regional market, officials said. World Food Programme's (WFP) deputy country director for Somalia, Leo von der Velden, told IRIN on Thursday that the agency was only able to distribute 1,200 mt of food in Somalia in July instead of the required 5,800 mt, because of the shortages. "It is clear that malnutrition levels have risen in the most affected areas of Sool, Sanaag and Puntland as a result of the break in the food pipeline," said Von der Velden. Drought has led to severe food shortages in Kenya where WFP would have readily purchased grain to feed the hungry in Somalia. It was also found earlier this year that some maize stocks belonging to farmers and traders in Eastern Province of Kenya were contaminated, and therefore unfit for human consumption. Grain arriving in northern and southern Somalia this month was donated by the United States, according to Von der Velden. WFP was also buying maize from Uganda for distribution in Somalia, he added. He said WFP would this month be able to distribute 50 percent of requirements in Somalia, and raise the amount to about 75 percent of the total needed in September, as more food arrived in the country. Food shortages in some Somali areas, he added, had been caused by lack of access due to insecurity, giving the example of Sool and Sanaag, a region claimed by both the self-declared autonomous administrations of Puntland and Somaliland. Aid agencies working in Somalia had last month expressed concern over worsening humanitarian crisis in the Horn of Africa country, saying that drought was spreading from the northern region to the central areas and that up to a million people needed help. "Preliminary estimates are that upto a million vulnerable Somalis in both agricultural and pastoral areas will require some form of humanitarian assistance to avert high malnutrition, potential death, and collapsed livelihoods that will have long term effects," the Somalia Aid Coordination Body (SACB), comprising donors, UN agencies and International NGOs had said in statement on 29 July. The crisis had been triggered by the cumulative result of successive poor rains and civil conflict in some areas, it added in a statement. Preliminary findings from the Somalia Food Security Analysis Unit (FSAU), and the USAID-funded famine alert network, FEWS Net, showed that the cyclical drought affecting the northern regions of Sool and Sanaag over the past four years, was spreading to the central regions of Mudug and Galgaduud, the SACB said. Strategic crop growing areas of Middle and Lower Shebelle, Bakool, Gedo and Middle and Lower Juba regions had also been devastated by low and erratic rainfall. FSAU estimated that the resultant poor harvests would lead to a cereal deficit of at least 70,000 mt. WFP recently appealed for more than US $14 million to expand its current programme of helping drought-affected regions in the country for the remainder of 2004/05. Some $ 8.6 million of the amount sought had so far been received, according to Von der Velden.