UN warns on N Korean food shortfall

03/28/2007

By Anna Fifield in Seoul
Financial Times
Published: March 28 2007


Humanitarian donations to North Korea, where one-third of children are chronically malnourished, should not be linked to political developments in the nuclear crisis, the United Nations’ World Food Programme said on Wednesday.

North Korea has received only a quarter of the supplies it needs to fill its annual 1m tonne food shortfall, mainly as a result of its nuclear test last year that has deterred most governments from dealing with Pyongyang.

As it tries to avoid another humanitarian crisis in North Korea, which has little arable land and has historically run a food deficit, the WFP is now urging potential donors not to link aid to politics.

“I hope donations will start up again because there is a real, genuine need in North Korea,” Tony Banbury, the WFP’s Asia director, said after a six-day visit to the North.

“This should be entirely separate from the political discussion. This political situation has been dragging on and on for years but the people of North Korea can’t wait for political issues to be resolved. They need their food issues resolved now,” Mr Banbury told the FT on Wednesday.

Outside donors gave 1.2m tonnes of food in 2005, more than filling the 1m tonne shortfall, but donnations dropped sharply to 312,000 tonnes last year.

“In 2005 the food gap was completely filled but last year it was not filled and that has led to a serious deterioration in the food situation,” Mr Banbury said. “The question is whether 2007 is going to be a repeat of 2005, or whether it is going to be a repeat of 2006 and millions of North Koreans are going to go hungry.”

Although food shortages have been alleviated since the mid-1990s famine that led to the starvation of as many as 2m North Koreans, the country remains in a precarious situation and between one-third and half of its people still face a daily struggle to find enough to eat.

With this year’s budget only 18 per cent funded, the WFP is now feeding only 3 per cent of the population, as opposed to the 33 per cent it fed in 2005. It is distributing food in 29 counties but it has permission from the North Korean authorities to operate in 50.

This has been exacerbated by the South Korean government’s decision in 2005 to give food aid directly to the North Korean authorities, rather than through the WFP, a decision that aid agencies link to Pyongyang’s eviction of international humanitarian agencies who insist on conducting inspections to check that the food reaches the hungriest mouths.

However, after last year’s missile tests, Seoul suspended rice and fertiliser shipments to the North as punishment, leading to a 75 per cent food shortfall. The South Korean government has just resumed food aid this month but many aid agencies have been dismayed by Seoul’s actions and the impact it has had on the humanitarian network in the North.

Many international aid workers privately call this a “disgrace” and say that it has led to hungry North Koreans being treated like “ping pong balls” in a political game.

Neither the US, Japan or Britain donated to the WFP in the 2006 year. The largest donor was Russia with $5m, followed by Switzerland with $2.5m and Australia with $1.2m. Cuba chipped in with $1.7m worth of sugar.