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afrol News, 7 November - Although aid is ticking in from the entire world to the accounts of humanitarian organisations and UN agencies addressing the food crisis in Southern Africa, not even half of the needed amount has yet been produced. 15 million people in Lesotho, Malawi, Mozambique, Swaziland, Zambia and Zimbabwe are in need of food aid. The United Nations today expressed concern over a funding shortfall, particularly for non-food items, for the humanitarian crisis in southern Africa, saying that relief money was being stretched to the limit. The UN Regional Inter-Agency Coordination Support Office said since it launched a US$ 611 million appeal in July, almost half of the pledges received - 49 percent - had been for the food sector. Of the almost US$ 269 million received, just 8 percent was earmarked for water and sanitation, 15 percent for health and 27 percent for agricultural support. - Funding shortfalls mean that UN agencies are stretching scarce resources and thus facing difficulty responding fully to the needs of the people covered under the appeal, the regional UN office said. In five of the six countries covered under the appeal, people had been affected by increasingly frequent outbreaks of cholera, the UN office said. The UN had provided cholera-control supplies in areas most prone to its outbreak in Swaziland, where 47 percent do not have access to clean water, and in Malawi, where water-borne disease had killed 900 people and affected 32,000 others. The UN office said while it needed US$ 48.3 million for health interventions in Zimbabwe, only US$ 7.1 million had been received. Meanwhile, programmes set up by the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) intended to help people in drought-affected areas had received only 27 percent of the required funding. Funds are however ticking in. The latest good news was received by WFP on Wednesday, when the Canadian government announced it would donate the equivalent of US$ 5 million to the agency's works in Southern Africa. Of the contribution, US$ 3.5 million would provide food assistance and US$ 1.5 million would support a WFP special operation to fortify maize with essential vitamins and minerals. Meanwhile, however, the Zimbabwean political crisis is hampering the full support of potential donor nations. The European Union (EU) - one of the region's major donors - this week accused Zimbabwe's ruling party of using food aid as a political weapon against opposition supporters. According to the Danish Minister of European Affairs, Bertel Haarder, the Zimbabwean government did "use our aid as a tool in the domestic fight against the opposition in order to survive and that is not acceptable." The Danish Minister in an interview with Reuters said the EU was increasingly concerned about this situation. The EU and EU member countries however still contribute with substantial funds for the UN agencies operating in Southern Africa. Large amounts of these funds have also been specially earmarked for Zimbabwe. It is not considered a political option to sanction the Zimbabwean government on this occasion as the sanction's victims only would be the victims of the ongoing humanitarian crisis.
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