BURUNDI: UN Airlifts Food For Thousands Of Malnourished Children

By Moyiga Nduru Reprint | | Print |

Moyiga Nduru

NAIROBI, Mar 25 1998 (IPS) - The United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) this week started an airlift of life-saving food for 37,000 malnourished children in nutritional centres throughout Burundi.

In the first of 20 flights from Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, a WFP- chartered Boeing 707 delivered 34 tonnes of powdered milk to Bujumbura airport on Wednesday.

Over the next 10 days, WFP says it will deliver to Burundi a total of 600 tonnes of sugar, powdered milk, oil and pulses which will be used in 111 therapeutic, and supplementary and hospital feeding centres throughout the country.

A WFP statement, faxed to IPS on Wednesday, said this was the first large-scale airlift of food to the Central African country since 1994. The airlift is funded by the European Union (EU) relief arm “ECHO” at a cost of 500,00 U.S. Dollars.

Recent WFP missions to provinces such as Bururi in the southwest of the country have confirmed that more food is urgently needed to help an increasing number of malnourished children being admitted to supplementary and therapeutic feeding programmes.

“Malnutrition in this country is on the rise,” said Jean Luc Siblot, WFP’s Country Director for Burundi. “Some 300,000 people are facing major food shortages, and the first to be affected are children.”

Continuing insecurity, with its subsequent population displacement and lack of access to land, combined with a poor harvest, low food imports and high food prices, have all contributed to the current fragile nutritional state of thousands of displaced and vulnerable people.

WFP says it has resorted to a major airlift of food after heavy rains and flooding, blamed on the El Nino weather phenomenon, destroyed the regularly-used roads and rail networks from Tanzania. Food stocks in Tanzania are ample, but the agency says it cannot move the food. WFP says it is developing alternative overland routes, but these are still not fully operational.

Since the beginning of the year, only 1,500 tonnes per month have been delivered to WFP in Burundi each month against the required 5,000 tonnes needed monthly for some 300,000 people.

As a result, WFP says it has given priority to nutritional feeding programmes for 37,000 children in centres run by non- governmental organisations. Also of critical importance is the continued support of 14,000 orphans, street children and the handicappped.

“Our stocks of food aid in Burundi have hit rock bottom,” said Siblot. “We are only receiving a fraction of what we need.”

Throughout the countries of the Great Lakes Region, WFP says it has been facing severe problems in delivering sufficient supplies of food aid when floods washed away critical road and rail lines late last year, and again in 1998.

The WFP airlift has been approved by the Regional Sanctions Coordinating Committee as shipments of humanitarian supplies into Burundi require clearance from it. Sanctions against Burundi were imposed a week after Major Pierre Buyoya, a Tutsi who was president from 1987 to 1993, seized power in a bloodless putsch on July 25, 1996, deposing, a Hutu, Sylvestre Ntibantunganya.

The sanctions were imposed by regional leaders of Tanzania, Uganda, Kenya, Rwanda, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Cameroon, Zambia and Ethiopia to force Buyoya to return Burundi to civilian rule.

Burundi has been in turmoil since October 1993, when renegade soldiers killed Melchior Ndadaye, the country’s first Hutu president in an aborted coup three months after he was elected.

Ndadaye had been perceived by Tutsi hardliners in the army as threatening their traditional grip on power. His death triggered mass killings in which more than 80,000 died within weeks in fighting between the majority Hutus and Tutsis.

Since then, more than 200,000 people have been killed in Burundi, according to aid agencies operating in the Central African country. The killings have been blamed on the Tutsi-led army, as well as armed Hutu groups infiltrating from refugee camps in the DRC and Tanzania.

In a bid to ease the crisis, a coalition of international human rights last week called upon US President Bill Clinton to impose arms sanctions against the conflicting sides in Burundi and Rwanda.

The US-based Central Africa Action Network, a broad alliance of humanitarian and religious organisations, said the embargo would be a meaningful strike against genocide in a region that has experienced far too much bloodshed.

Up to one million Tutsis and moderate Hutus were slaughtered by hardline Hutu militias in Rwanda in 1994.

For many groups in the Central Africa Action Network, the arms boycott gives a chance for the US to correct, partially, its failure in the region.

Human Rights Watch, which is part of the network, said the proposed sanctions are an excellent chance for Clinton to show the United States is committed to preventing a recurrence of the tragedy.

Clinton visited Rwanda on Wednesday to talk with Rwandese leaders and genocide victims. Rwanda is part of his African itinerary along with Ghana, Uganda, South Africa, Botswana and Senegal.