PRESS BRIEFING BY UNITED NATIONS HUMANITARIAN COORDINATOR IN DEMOCRATIC PEOPLE'S REPUBLIC OF KOREA

Press Briefing

PRESS BRIEFING BY UNITED NATIONS HUMANITARIAN COORDINATOR IN DEMOCRATIC PEOPLE'S REPUBLIC OF KOREA

At a briefing at Headquarters today, the United Nations Humanitarian Coordinator in the Democratic People's Republic of Korea and Country Director for the World Food Programme (WFP), Douglas Coutts, told correspondents that his organization was about to launch its largest relief operation ever, at a cost of about $378 million, to provide food and medical assistance to the people of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea.

Mr. Coutts said the total population the WFP would assist would increase from the current number of 4.7 million to 7.5 million for 1998. Children would be a major focus of the operation because they were considered to be at major risk as a result of food shortages.

He informed corespondents that WFP had launched another humanitarian appeal for 1998 in London on Tuesday, 7 January, for those relief operations. As a result, the Programme would be expanding its humanitarian assistance to the population by extending its operations and increasing its staffing. Those operations would be part of the larger United Nations consolidated humanitarian appeal.

The WFP would be expanding the supply of food rations to all children in the country, in the age group six months to six years, he said. A school feeding programme would be re-introduced to children up to age 12 and would include the targeted programme that existed for children six months to six years during the past year. The rations would ensure that all children received the quality and quantity of food needed to sustain their health.

In addition, the Programme would continue to assist hospitals and clinics and work with non-governmental organizations involved in the medical field, which were providing technical training and support throughout the countryside. Food would be supplied to institutions for the medically and physically handicapped as well as to pregnant and lactating women throughout the country. The food rations would include a high-energy biscuit and a corn soya blend, using imported ingredients, which would be produced in a number of food factories that were now idle in the country.

The Humanitarian Coordinator stressed, however, that food aid was not the answer in the Democratic People's Republic of Korea. Although it was important to increase the targeted focus of the food programme, "food alone is not going to make the difference in saving vast segments of the population who are seriously suffering from the food shortage". There must be improved coordination of the health sector aspects of the programme as well. There were many situations in which food was supplied but medicines were not available to treat children with medical problems or, conversely, food was not available to feed children in medical institutions.

Humanitarian Coordinator Briefing - 2 - 8 January 1998

Mr. Coutts said the humanitarian operation was a collaborative team effort with the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF), World Health Organization (WHO) and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) as well as a small number of international non-governmental organizations such as Medicins sans frontieres and the International Federation of the Red Cross. He went on to say that the Government was still "having a hard time understanding that the overall needs of the country goes beyond the immediate food problem". Apart from the general crisis in the food sector, many vulnerable groups did not have access to safe water, proper sanitation or good prenatal care for mothers. All those aspects of the health sector had to be addressed in conjunction with the food programme. Furthermore, the country was experiencing a very severe winter -- a situation which was worsened by a general lack of heating throughout the country, and particulary in the institutions the WFP was working with. "In many situations it is much colder inside (buildings) than outside." He noted that in winter nutritional needs were much higher. A positive development was the approval of a $29 million loan for agricultural rehabilitation from the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) that had been approved last month by that body's Executive Board, Mr. Coutts said. It was the first time that an international lending organization had made a loan to the Democratic People's Republic of Korea. The programme, which would be managed overall by the UNDP, showed that many key donors around the world were willing to look at the rehabilitation and, hopefully, development needs of the country. To develop the humanitarian programme, the number of the WFP's international staff would be expanded from 20 to 48 in the next few months. In addition to the three offices established in Chongjin, Sinuiju and Hamhung, two new offices would be opened -- in the far north of the country, on the Chinese border in an area that was previously inaccessible to WFP staff in Wonsan and in Hyesan. Asked why a new type of biscuit was being developed for the programme, Mr. Coutts said that type of food had never been used in that country before for child-feeding purposes. Noting that the ingredients were being imported, he said the high cost of ingredients such as soya could be greatly reduced by importing the ingredients and blending them and preparing them in the country. The idea was to build on local capacity. There was a lot of excess capacity in the food processing industry in the Democratic People's Republic of Korea which could be utilized. A correspondent asked if there would continue to be a decline in availability of medicines in the country in 1998. In response, Mr. Coutts again stressed the need for coordination between the health and food programmes. There had been some improvement in the availability of food and medicines. However, some medicines had been shipped directly to the Government from various non-governmental organizations without Korean language instructions as to how they were to be used. That was an example of the need for improved coordination.

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