Tag: World Food Program

Will North Korea Ever Be Food Self-Sufficient?

As North Korea enters its sixth straight year of serious food shortages, it is becoming apparent that the isolated Communist country is going to require substantial food aid for many years to come.

The irony is that the policies that led to North Korea’s food disasters were designed by North Korea’s leaders to make the country independent of the rest of the world. Pushing an extremely xenophobic ideology, beginning in the mid-1970s North Korea’s leaders sought to limit all contact, including economic, between that country and the rest of the world.

The upshot of North Korea’s totalitarian policies, however, have required not only increasing contacts but about eight million North Koreans who are totally dependent on the World Food Program to provide the food for their survival.

WFP executive director Catherine Bertini recently returned from North Korea and told the BBC that even if that country experiences several years of excellent weather and good harvests, it will still require extensive food aid for the foreseeable future. According to Bertini,

…for the foreseeable future — at least for the next few years — even with improved harvests, even with good weather, there will be a need for food aid.

One point where Bertini was clearly incorrect, however, was in her assertion to the BBC that it was “no crime” for North Korea not to be self-sufficient. In fact, when a totalitarian government abuses human rights to such a degree that it results in the outright starvation of millions of people (as many as two million people have starved to death in North Korea), that most certainly is a crime.

Source:

N Korea faces desperate future. The BBC, August 21, 2001.

More on the Central American Drought

New York Times writer David Gonzalez wrote a very good article the other day about the ongoing drought-related problems in Central America.

According to Gonzalez, officials in the various countries affected by the drought estimate large crop losses, with about 700,000 farmers losing at least half of their crops. The U.S. Agency for International Development is sending food aid equivalent to a month’s food supply for 365,000 people. The World Food Program already sent an aid shipment which was quickly consumed.

The main thrust of Gonzalez’s article, however, is that political considerations combined with a very poor response by Central American governments have exacerbated the effects of the drought. Gonzalez writes,

The governments of the region have said little. While Honduras has declared an emergency, other countries have tried to minimize the severity of the problem. The mixed and delayed responses, as well as a continued dependence on emergency food aid, point to a persistent inability of the region’s leaders to prepare for disasters and to provide water, financing and social services for the many peasants who live on the edge.

The aid workers Gonzalez interviewed for his story agree, that the governments in the region have largely ignored the infrastructure and other needs of poor rural farmers in favor of political expediency.

That will have to change, of course, or Central America will continue to see natural disasters inflamed into large scale humanitarian crises.

Source:

Drought creates food crisis in Central America. David Gonzaelz, The New York Times, August 28, 2001.

Afghanistan and World Food Program At Odds

Until recently the World Food Program was feeding 300,000 people in Afghanistan with subsidized bread. Then the Taliban stepped in and demanded that the WFP stop using women to collect information about the needs of other women in Kabul. The WFP refused, and had to stop selling the cheap bread after it was unable to purchase any more flour.

The WFP and the Taliban have been negotiating to try to find some way around the impasse, but neither side seems willing to budget. In a statement released by the Taliban, the ruling party said, “The dignity of Afghan women is more precious than anything else.”

Apparently that includes the more than five million Afghans who have almost no access to food at the moment and are likely to face starvation without a heightened aid effort; an aid effort which the Taliban is so far doing its best to sabotage.

Source:

Kabul facing bread shortages. The BBC, June 16, 2001.