Originally published August 6 2005
UN pledges to feed Africa
by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, NaturalNews Editor
The U.N has pledged enough funding to feed more than 1.3 million people in Africa.
The United Nations has more than doubled the number of people it plans to feed in Niger as dwindling food supplies in villages push more people close to the brink of starvation.
The U.N. World Food Programme (WFP) now aims to provide emergency rations to 2.5 million people compared with the 1.2 million it said it aimed to help last week, reflecting a major increase in the scale of its response.
Relief workers treating children dying from hunger after drought and locusts wiped out last year's harvest say the United Nations, the government and other agencies should have started such large-scale emergency food aid much earlier.
U.N. officials said early in July they would start the current type of emergency food distribution only as a last resort, fearing that acting prematurely could upset local food markets and encourage a damaging dependency on aid.
Two WFP airlifts of emergency food supplies this weekend were due to deliver enough high-energy biscuits to feed 100,000 people while they wait for full rations to arrive.
"We still more than ever consider that vulnerable populations are confronting a very, very high risk," he said.
U.N. officials say funding shortfalls and problems procuring food in West Africa, where drought also hit Mali, Mauritania and other areas last year, hindered their ability to respond earlier.
The number of aid agencies working in Niger has increased sharply this month, particularly since media images of starving children gained global prominence, with several aiming to start handing out food in the next few days.
In Tahoua, a town about 500 km (300 miles) northeast of the capital, laborers began unloading trucks of sorghum on Sunday for distribution to villagers on Monday, though heavy overnight rain on mud roads could hinder deliveries.
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