Nearly 4 million North Koreans will be deprived of UN food rations by February if foreign donors do not provide more aid to the communist state, the head of the UN World Food Program said yesterday.
The comments by WFP Executive Director James Morris followed an emergency appeal last week for US$171 million worth of rations to feed 6.5 million North Koreans, mostly women and children, plagued by years of hunger compounded by shock price reforms.
With the timing of a second round of six-way negotiations to curtail North Korea's nuclear arms program still uncertain, Chinese and US officials met in Beijing on Friday to discuss the way forward.
The WFP says it needs the US$171 million to offset a drop in contributions, which this year has already forced the WFP to cut off rations to several million North Koreans fed by the agency since the mid-1990s.
"We are about 60 percent resourced for this year," Morris told a news conference in Beijing. "And that means in January we'll probably stop feeding about 3 million people."
He said a gift from Russia would help sustain the food pipeline for about a month, but, without additional support, the number of North Koreans affected would rise to "something in the neighborhood of 3.8 million people" from February.
North Korea has suffered food shortages since at least 1995, when it first appealed for aid after floods compounded years of economic mismanagement and the loss of its main patron, the Soviet Union.
Since last year, donor fatigue has been exacerbated by North Korea's political isolation over its attempts to build nuclear weapons, and by US suspicions that food aid is diverted away from the needy to the country's military and political elite.
Food aid to North Korea from the US, which averaged 155,000 tonnes of food a year, dropped to 40,000 tonnes this year, Morris said.
A fire caused by a burst gas pipe yesterday spread to several homes and sent a fireball soaring into the sky outside Malaysia’s largest city, injuring more than 100 people. The towering inferno near a gas station in Putra Heights outside Kuala Lumpur was visible for kilometers and lasted for several hours. It happened during a public holiday as Muslims, who are the majority in Malaysia, celebrate the second day of Eid al-Fitr. National oil company Petronas said the fire started at one of its gas pipelines at 8:10am and the affected pipeline was later isolated. Disaster management officials said shutting the
DITCH TACTICS: Kenyan officers were on their way to rescue Haitian police stuck in a ditch suspected to have been deliberately dug by Haitian gang members A Kenyan policeman deployed in Haiti has gone missing after violent gangs attacked a group of officers on a rescue mission, a UN-backed multinational security mission said in a statement yesterday. The Kenyan officers on Tuesday were on their way to rescue Haitian police stuck in a ditch “suspected to have been deliberately dug by gangs,” the statement said, adding that “specialized teams have been deployed” to search for the missing officer. Local media outlets in Haiti reported that the officer had been killed and videos of a lifeless man clothed in Kenyan uniform were shared on social media. Gang violence has left
US Vice President J.D. Vance on Friday accused Denmark of not having done enough to protect Greenland, when he visited the strategically placed and resource-rich Danish territory coveted by US President Donald Trump. Vance made his comment during a trip to the Pituffik Space Base in northwestern Greenland, a visit viewed by Copenhagen and Nuuk as a provocation. “Our message to Denmark is very simple: You have not done a good job by the people of Greenland,” Vance told a news conference. “You have under-invested in the people of Greenland, and you have under-invested in the security architecture of this
Japan unveiled a plan on Thursday to evacuate around 120,000 residents and tourists from its southern islets near Taiwan within six days in the event of an “emergency”. The plan was put together as “the security situation surrounding our nation grows severe” and with an “emergency” in mind, the government’s crisis management office said. Exactly what that emergency might be was left unspecified in the plan but it envisages the evacuation of around 120,000 people in five Japanese islets close to Taiwan. China claims Taiwan as part of its territory and has stepped up military pressure in recent years, including
RSS