By Gustavo Capdevila
GENEVA, Aug 27 2002 (IPS)

The climate of insecurity prevailing in Colombia is preventing the distribution of food aid to the population that needs it most, reported the United Nations food agency Tuesday.

The World Food Programme (WFP) says that illegal armed groups have delayed, detained and even looted its transport trucks more than 40 times along Colombian roadways since the beginning of the year.

The UN agency issued an appeal to all of Colombia’s warring parties to respect the international humanitarian law established by the Geneva Conventions with reference to the protection of civilians from violence and the free circulation of humanitarian aid.

The WFP, established in 1963 as the UN agency in charge of fighting world hunger, last year fed 77 million people in 82 countries, including the vast majority of the world’s refugees and the internally displaced.

In Colombia, WFP attends to some 130,000 people who have been forced from their homes as a result of the civil war, says Christiane Berthiaume, spokeswoman for the agency in Geneva.

The clashes between government forces, leftist insurgents and right-wing paramilitaries have been ongoing in this South American nation for approximately four decades.

Just in the past few years, it is estimated that the number of internally displaced persons has reached two million, nearly five percent of the Colombian population.

WFP provides assistance to those who have been forcibly displaced, considered the most vulnerable in Colombia, and particularly to undernourished children, pregnant women and nursing mothers.

The trucks used for the agency’s humanitarian activities have run into threatening situations in recent months as they have travelled the country’s main highways and even on city streets.

The food shipments have been threatened at illegal checkpoints set up by armed groups, delayed by roadblocks on access roads to cities and villages that have lasted days, and stolen by bandits.

The checkpoints and blockades considerably delay the food deliveries for hours or even days. The lootings are less frequent, said Berthiaume, but also represent a common danger.

Under such conditions, the convoys’ movement on Colombian roads can only occur safely during daylight hours, between 6 a.m. and 6 p.m. local time.

The WFP convoys repeat their routes along highways and through cities, in some cases on a monthly basis, to distribute food aid for school nutritional programmes, and in other cases every 15 days, to supply other projects, such as one aimed at providing meals for displaced adults who are looking for work.

Of Colombia’s 11 departments, the least safe for WFP convoys has been Antioquia, in the northwest. The most difficulties they have confronted have been in the smaller, isolated villages.

But Berthiaume says the real dangers lie on the main highways, such as the one connecting Medellín with Quibdó and Bogotá, in the central-west region, and the road between Cartagena and Sincelejo in the north.

WFP has been working in Colombia since 1969, and provides assistance to people living in the cities and towns listed among the country’s most dangerous, such as Yondo, San Rafael, San Luis and Concorna, in Antioquia department.

Food aid is also distributed in El Salado, Morales, San Jacinto and San Pablo, towns in the northern department of Bolívar, in Tierra Alta and Monte Líbano, in Córdoba department, also found in the north, and in Río Sucio, Quibdó, Murindo, Carmen del Darién and Carmen del Atrato, in the western department of Chocó.

Other high-risk areas supplied by WFP, all in the north, are Banco, Fundación and Ciénaga (Magdalena department), Convención (Santander), Ovejas (Sucre), and Becerril, Pelaya and San Diego (César).

An armed blockade last week, which lasted through Friday, prevented a convoy from delivering food aid for 700 displaced persons in Yondo, San Pablo, Cantagallo and Puerto Vilchez.

WFP is preparing this week to send 264 tons of food to more than 53,000 people — displaced from their homes by civil war violence — who are now living in various parts of the country.

Excerpt: