UN announces program
to help hunger hot spots

ROME (AP) — A U.N. agency rolled out a $214 million program Tuesday to help 16 needy places hit hard by high prices for food and oil, amid a crisis already making it hard for aid groups to provide enough food for the world's hungry.

The World Food Program said almost 1 billion poor people around the world are struggling to survive amid the higher prices. The agency is trying to reach those in critical need of assistance in Africa, Asia and the Caribbean.

"Food prices are not abating, and the world's most vulnerable have exhausted their coping strategies," said Josette Sheeran, the agency's executive director. "Our action plan is targeted and customized to help the most vulnerable meet their urgent needs."

The plan will provide assistance to groups such as pregnant women, undernourished children and people living in urban areas affected most by the food crisis.

The Rome-based agency also hopes to cut transportation costs and help support farmers in countries where emergency food can be bought locally. But the agency already faces "obstacles" in procuring food, particularly when trying to buy supplies locally, spokeswoman Brenda Barton said.

"At the markets we have been buying food it has become just too expensive," Barton told The Associated Press by telephone. And, she added, "a lot of markets just don't have any food to buy."

For example, prices for some crops in Ethiopia have tripled since last year because of a severe drought that has hit large swaths of the country at the same time as the global price surge, even with the government dipping into its emergency food reserves.

"As a result, we are not able to buy food in Ethiopia anymore," Barton said.

The agency's base budget for 2008 has risen from an original $3.1 billion to nearly twice as much. The base budget is the funding needed to reach 90 million people worldwide during the year, but the agency has collected only half of the required sum.

The price crisis is affecting many humanitarian groups.

"At a local level food prices are increasing and that, of course, impacts on our programs, making them more expensive," said Chris Leather, a food security expert for the international relief group Oxfam. "It means that we have to increase the amount of money we are asking from our donors."

Leather praised WFP's new effort, saying the agency generally does a good job in ensuring that food aid reaches those most in need, despite the impediments of corruption, inefficiency and war.

Barton said that with current supply difficulties, it is hard to say when the aid allocated under the new program will reach its targets, but she said distribution should begin in the coming weeks.

The aid is urgently needed not only to save lives, but to save livelihoods, she said. Hungry farmers sometimes must sell off animals and agricultural equipment to buy food for their families, leaving them unable to produce food in the future, she said.

Some $110 million in the new program will target two Horn of Africa countries where high world prices are worsening an already difficult situation created by drought and political instability, the WFP said in a statement.

Prospects are particularly dire in Somalia, which risks a disaster comparable to the famine there 15 years ago, the agency said. The WFP aims to double the amount of food it delivers in the country to reach 2.4 million people by December.

The WFP also is targeting Ethiopia, where it says more than 10 million people are short of food because of drought.

The remaining $104 million in the program will be directed to 14 countries where food is unaffordable and public discontent is high. These countries include Haiti — which was hit with deadly food riots in April — Afghanistan, Liberia, the Palestinian territories and Mozambique.

In these 14 nations, the agency plans to expand school feeding programs, provide additional care to pregnant women, make direct cash payments to the poor and run food-for-work programs. The WFP aims at helping 11 million people in these countries.

August 13, 2008