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UN Food Agency Says North Koreans Eating Grass - UN Finance - Global Policy Forum
UN Food Agency Says North
Koreans Eating GrassBBC
June 20, 2002Starving North Korean school children skipping classes to collect grass and other wild food are among more than a million people the World Food Programme (WFP) has had to stop helping because of a shortage of donations from other countries, WFP spokesman Gerald Bourke said Thursday 20 June .
Facing an unprecedented shortfall of donations, in May the WFP was forced to scratch more than one million people from its assistance programme, which seeks to help feed 6.4 million of the country's most vulnerable - children, pregnant and nursing women, and the elderly.
"They are going up into the mountains collecting edible grasses; they're on the beaches collecting seaweed," said Bourke, describing desperate measures employed by North Koreans no longer receiving WFP assistance. While North Korean teachers are reporting reduced attendance rates as their students scour the countryside for wild foods, some teachers are also not coming to school for the same reason, said Burke, who recently returned from a one-week inspection tour of North Korea.
A US pledge of 100,000 tons of wheat, rice and dairy products made early this month will help, but more is needed, he said.
Japan, which provided 500,000 tons last year as one of North Korea's largest donors, has not provided any aid so far this year, he added.
While good weather indicates that North Korea's harvest this year will be better than last year's poor outturn of about 150,000 tons, more donations will be needed if the one million or so no longer receiving assistance are to be given food aid again, he said.
The suspension of food aid has left many reliant on the country's public rationing system, which provides citizens with only 350 grams of food every day - about half a survival ration, said Bourke.
The WFP warned earlier this year that it now faces the prospect of running out of food aid for the first time since 1995, when the international community began to ship food to the Stalinist-style nation amid a drought that killed untold numbers.
While Bourke said emergencies in other countries such as Afghanistan may have diverted international attention away from North Korea, WFP's biggest aid recipient, the country's authoritarian government admits many of its people are still starving.
Official figures indicate that 45 per cent of children under five years of age are malnourished, while about 480,000 pregnant and nursing women have poor nutrition.
A nationwide nutrition survey by North Korean and UN officials due to begin in September is essential to assess past food assistance and target new aid plans, said Bourke.
The last such survey conducted in 1998 showed that 16 per cent of all North Korea's children were malnourished, a figure indicating widespread famine.
This year the UN wants to expand the area covered by the survey to counties Pyongyang presently does not allow it to enter, accounting for about a sixth of the country.
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