Angola
Angolan peace unveiled a "too big" humanitarian crisis

afrol News, 11 July - The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) has declared Angola the worst humanitarian crisis in the world. One reason was that the international community was not getting enough food to people throughout Angola, who have suffered from 27 years of civil war and displacement. 

- In the coming weeks the international community must do a better job of getting urgently needed food assistance to vulnerable people in remote locations in this war-shattered country, the US-based organisation Refugees International said in a statement yesterday.

This provided the international community with the opportunity to reach an estimated 800,000 civilians and 250,000 UNITA family members for the first time. Non governmental organisations (NGOs) have found extremely high mortality rates of over five deaths per 10,000 per day in children under the age of five (2.5 times the so-called "emergency threshold") in some of the country's newly accessible areas where people have been deprived of humanitarian assistance as a result of Angola's 27-year civil war. 

After a one-month assessment mission to Angola, Refugees International (RI) had concluded that "the existing humanitarian operation is overwhelmed by the sheer magnitude of the crisis." Visits to newly accessible areas, old and new camps of displaced people, feeding centres, transit centres, and quartering areas, where UNITA soldiers are undergoing demobilisation, revealed that not enough food was present in the provinces and reaching locations with urgent needs fast enough, the group said. 

- In addition, resettlement assistance to as many as one million people returning to their homes in the next year will be required, the group added. "But the immediate response should focus on getting food to vulnerable people in dire need." 

In Huambo and Bie, RI visited "old caseload" internally displaced, "whose rations were completely cut following two harvests, after which the World Food Program (WFP) and ICRC believe the displaced should be self-sufficient." RI had however found that as many as eighty percent of old and new caseload of displaced in supplementary feeding centres were from the camps. 

- This may indicate that despite nutritional assessments and assessments of available coping mechanisms, current rations are not properly addressing the nutritional needs of internally displaced people, the group said. As one nutritionist had stated, "If the system was working, there would be no need for therapeutic and supplementary feeding centres." 

Those who were physically unable or cannot find work were facing "a serious threat to their survival." Displaced people most affected by the cuts were vulnerable individuals such as children under five, the elderly, the handicapped, pregnant and lactating mothers, and orphans. Displaced people like Natalia, a 70-year-old woman in Huambo, had resorted to manual labour in exchange for a few potatoes. "I don't think about the future," she had told the observer, "I just try to think of the present day and how I will survive." 

Although WFP's policy was to continue blanket distributions to all vulnerable people, a WFP representative in the provinces had acknowledged to RI that the lack of sufficient food had resulted in assistance being available to vulnerable people already suffering from malnutrition. In order to qualify for supplementary feeding, some degree of malnutrition must already be evident. WFP, forced by lack of supply to remove vulnerable individuals from the food roster, was therefore unable to implement preventative measures to help ensure the survival of thousands of vulnerable people.

- Organisations responsible for determining the number of food aid beneficiaries and ration size rely heavily on "safety nets" such as therapeutic and supplementary feeding centres and community kitchens to assist vulnerable populations, the groups say. "But these centres themselves lack resources." 

In Huambo Province, community kitchens serving the elderly, orphans and other vulnerable people had been closed as a result of lack of food. Some supplementary feeding centres were also lacking sufficient food supplies and were operating with limited rations to address the ever-increasing number of displaced people from newly accessible areas.

The most serious immediate problem was however "the delay in getting food to areas in urgent need." According to one humanitarian agency quoted by the group, "We are all taking too long." Severe malnutrition in some areas was reported at reaching 30 percent, "making immediate life-saving action necessary." 

Chittembo camp in Bie province had been accessible via decent roads and intact bridges since the April ceasefire. Yet RI was among the first groups of NGOs to go to Chittembo in late June; "malnutrition was evident in every home visited," the group says. Angolan government officials, responsible for displaced populations, estimated five deaths per day from only this small population of 2,600. OCHA estimates 5.5 deaths per 10,000 children per day in Chittembo. Three months have passed since Chittembo became accessible, meaning that at least 150 people had died during this period, RI says. Chittembo was one of many examples of areas the international community and WFP have been unable to reach in time.

The group recognised that Angola was "not an easy place to work." Logistical obstacles included mined roads and airstrips, a lack of infrastructure such as roads and bridges, and the fact that some areas were accessible only by air. Yet even if these challenges were overcome, "NGOs are still dependent on a security assessment from the UN in order to get the green light to reach people in need. With a limited number of security officers able to conduct these assessments, delays frequently occur."

The sudden accessibility of new locations totalling over 800,000 people had presented the international community with "an opportunity they had not expected and admit they were not prepared for. There is an urgent need for more food, funds, and human resources to allow for immediate action to address the needs of thousands of people in danger of dying from a lack of food and access to healthcare." 

As one woman from a quartering area had stated, "If Savimbi had not died, we would have all starved to death. We had only a short time left to live." With the war now over, the international community had "the opportunity and the obligation to act fast and save lives," the group concluded. 

Sources: Based on RI and afrol archives

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