The UN food agency urged donors yesterday to separate politics from humanitarian aid as it appealed for US$60 million to help North Korea avert its worst food crisis since the 1990s.
The World Food Programme (WFP) said it needed the funds urgently for an emergency program to feed 6.3 million vulnerable North Koreans.
The WFP needs a total of US$503 million to fund the 15-month operation — but requires US$60 million immediately to run the program until the end of the year, the agency’s Asia director, Tony Banbury, told reporters in Beijing.
“We need the checks flowing to the banks today,” Banbury said. “We sure hope that donors, as many have in the past, will look at this operation from a purely humanitarian point of view.”
Political issues surfaced again last week when North Korea said it had stopped disabling its nuclear reactor and threatened to restore its plutonium-producing facility.
South Korea has said it will not tie the food issue to the North’s nuclear disarmament, but a Seoul official said last week that South Korean public opinion is a consideration in deciding whether to accept the WFP’s request for contributions.
Unification Ministry spokesman Kim Ho-nyeon said yesterday that Seoul was still considering the appeal and will make a decision based on its assessment of the North’s food situation while monitoring “various situations.” He did not elaborate.
Over the past year, there has been a “significant deterioration” in food security in North Korea, particularly among children, the elderly, and pregnant or nursing women, Banbury said.
Meanwhile, a newly formed rights group said yesterday that it would launch a campaign to help thousands of North Korean children forced into begging or prostitution in northeast China.
The Seoul-based North Korean Human Rights Campaign Organizing Committee said it was concerned about orphan refugees and about “stateless” children born to North Korean refugee women and Chinese men.
Surveys by non-governmental organizations show the number of orphans who have fled food shortages and other hardships and crossed into China is now about 2,000, the committee said.
More than 10,000 “stateless” children have been born in China over the past decade, the committee said.
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