Tens of thousands of Angolans could die of hunger unless the international community quickly sends emergency aid to the country, in ruins after 27 years of civil war, humanitarian workers said.
Since a ceasefire signed on April 4 ended the fighting, UN teams and several humanitarian groups have visited regions previously cut off by the war between the army and the rebel National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (Unita).
What they found was a catastrophic situation, with an estimated 200 000 people already suffering from advanced malnutrition and needing urgent aid if they were to have any chance of survival.
The government says a total of 600 000 people live in these regions, once completely isolated from the rest of the world by nearly three decades of almost endless battles between the army and Unita.
Half-starved Angolans have been trickling out of the bush for the seven weeks since the ceasefire was signed.
And no one knows exactly how many people have joined the already identified 4,1-million internally displaced people who fled fighting before peace returned to the war-ravaged west African country.
All those displaced people have depended entirely on the UN’s World Food Program (WFP) for survival.
Faced with an influx of weak and once-hidden victims of the civil war, WFP estimates that it will need an additional 8 000 tons of food each month, on top of the 13 000 tons it distributes on average each month.
While waiting for donors to provide new financing, WFP has decided to reduce the amount of food provided to groups who still have some degree of self-sufficiency, to be able to provide more food to the most urgent cases.
”We have reduced, even suspended the supply of rations to those who have the ability to survive through their own efforts, which allows us to help those who are suffering,” said Marcelo Spina Hering, WFP representative in Luanda.
Food and medical supplies are also desperately needed in the 35 demobilisation camps for former Unita fighters set up throughout the country since the ceasefire.
Former rebels have poured into the camps, where they are to be disarmed, and their families have settled nearby. After a long delay, President Jose Eduardo dos Santos’ government has finally launched an international appeal for aid for the ex-rebels and their families, for ordinary victims of war, and for rebuilding the nation.
He has also given the green light to the United Nations to deliver food aid as quickly as possible to the nearly 200 000 relatives of ex-rebels living near the disarmament camps.
But the government has not allowed UN teams to visit the camps, where the army and Unita have exclusive control.
Unita officials estimate that 69 000 former fighters have moved to the camps, and thousands more are expected to arrive in the coming weeks.
Without immediate international aid, the United Nations, Unita and aid agencies have warned that a massive famine could fuel a flight from the camps, as the rebels try to eke out a subsistence living in the bush, possibly through crime.
While the magnitude of the food crisis is growing, the United Nations doesn’t have the money needed to offer its help, according to a UN source who said the world body has received only four million of the $52-million needed to save tens of thousands of lives. ? Sapa-AFP