WEST AFRICA: Don't forget West Africa, WFP warns

[ This report does not necessarily reflect the views of the United Nations]

DAKAR, 23 Nov 2004 (IRIN) - Diplomats and aid workers in West Africa worry that the renewal of conflict in Cote d'Ivoire could divert attention away from other urgent humanitarian needs in the region. But the UN World Food Programme (WFP) warned on Tuesday that Sudan may emerge as an even bigger magnet for aid money that could leave the whole of West Africa neglected and under-resourced.

“If peace is signed in Sudan, many international resources will be drawn there, not to mention to other areas of continuing world conflict,” Jean-Jacques Graisse, senior deputy executive director of the World Food Programme (WFP), said at a press conference.

“We must convince donor nations that our West Africa projects are vital and that they deserve funds,” he said. “We will continue to campaign in favour of West Africa.”

With peace potentially just around the corner in Sudan, the WFP expects to spend around a third of its US$2 billion budget on feeding 5.4 million war-affected people in the country next year.

Peace talks in Kenya have produced an agreement in principle to end more than 20 years of civil war in southern Sudan, where WFP plans to feed 3.1 million people in 2005. These are internally displaced people, returning refugees and villagers who never left their homes, but whose ability to feed themselves has been undermined by decades of fighting.

There are also hopes of a negotiated end to nearly two years of conflict in Sudan's western Darfur region, where WFP estimates that 2.3 million people will require food aid next year if a peace deal is signed.

In Liberia on the other hand, which is just emerging from a 14-year civil war, the needs are just as great, but donor interest in catering for them has waned since a peace agreement was signed in August 2003.

WFP says it is still US$20 million short of the money needed to feed up to to 700,000 people in the West African country between now and March 2005.

Its target beneficiaries in Liberia included internally displaced people and refugees, who are starting to go home, and nearly 100,000 former combatants who signed up for disarmament.

“The road to stability in this volatile region is long and difficult," Graisse said. "The international community’s commitment to much-needed humanitarian support during the process is indispensable.”

He forecast that 1.4 million people would need food handouts in conflict-prone West Africa next year, including 942,000 in Liberia - nearly a third of the country's three million population.

Graisse said the WFP aimed to feed a further 312,000 people in neighbouring Guinea, which many diplomats fear could be the next country in the sub-region to succumb to internal conflict.

He also highlighted the need to continue food aid to 206,000 people in Sierra Leone, where WFP is aiding the resettlement of people displaced by a 1991-2001 civil war.

The renewed outbreak of violence in Cote d’Ivoire earlier this month, is meanwhile putting a new strain on aid resources, as frightened civilians flee the country, mainly into Liberia, Burkina Faso, Mali or Guinea.

Up to 20,000 people who fled into Liberia currently are already receiving aid, but UN officials have estimated privately that a worst-case scenario could see up to 750,000 returning migrants heading for Burkina Faso or Mali should the smouldering conflict in Cote d’Ivoire escalate once more into full-scale war.

To bolster the return to peace by helping communities work on longer-term social and economic projects, the WFP will launch a two-year US$ 155-million project covering all three countries that includes school feeding for children and aid for ex-combatants.

“West Africa,” Graisse said, “with a fragile but promising peace in Liberia and extraordinary progress in Sierra Leone, has come too far now to slip off the international agenda.”

[ENDS]