WFP WARNS OF POTENTIAL FOOD CRISIS IN CHECHNYA

ROME, 14 May (WFP) -- The United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) today urgently appealed for support to avert a potential food crisis in the northern Caucasus region of the Russian Federation, particularly Chechnya, after a severe shortfall in donations forced the agency to scale back drastically on food aid distributions despite severely deteriorating conditions there.

The WFP, which launched a $24 million emergency operation for people of the war-torn republic in January, is facing a 78 per cent shortfall in contributions, according to WFP Senior Emergency Coordinator Bhim Udas.  Consequently, in March, the food aid agency was able to feed only 33,000 people –- mostly Chechen women and children who fled to the neighbouring Republic of Ingushetia -– compared to 215,000 in February.

“The lack of donor response is extremely worrying because people in Chechnya have so little access to food," Udas said.  “For about 75,000 people in the capital Grozny, or nearly 70 per cent of the city’s population, WFP is the only source of food aid.  Without us to help them, they will have a very difficult time trying to survive.”

“Normally at this time of year,” Udas continued, “those who had left Chechnya because of the conflict would be returning to plant their land and rebuild their houses.  But rumours of further violence, along with the lack of food and the administration’s inability to rehabilitate bombed-out buildings, are discouraging the displaced Chechens from going home.

“In fact, what we have been seeing for over a year is that more people are leaving Chechnya than returning.  Over the winter, more than 6,000 Chechens came to Ingushetia to get food assistance.  This kind of flux has made the whole region heavily dependent on humanitarian aid,” Udas said.

Udas warned that without new donations, preferably in cash, WFP could be forced into suspending food distributions in the northern Caucasus after the month of June.  “We really do not want to have to do that,” said Udas.

Under the one-year emergency operation, WFP had planned to give monthly food rations of wheat flour, vegetable oil, salt and sugar to 175,000 people in war-torn Chechnya and 160,000 Chechens displaced in Ingushetia.  But because of limited donor support, the vegetable oil was dropped and food distributions in Chechnya were cancelled in January and March and drastically scaled back in

Ingushetia in March and April.  Since the operation began, WFP has assisted fewer than half of the people intended.

The humanitarian crisis in this remote, mountainous region of southern Russia, where hostilities broke out anew in September 1999, has been characterized as one of the worst in the world.  Normal life in Chechnya has all but evaporated as the remaining civilians struggle just to stay alive in the shelled and battered towns and cities.

Preliminary results from a household survey in Grozny conducted in early May indicate that 40 per cent of families live in conditions of extreme poverty: that means they do not have a single source of income and the buildings they inhabit are badly damaged by the war.

These findings follow a WFP report on Grozny last September revealing that people were not getting the minimum basic food requirements.  The WFP assessment team also found that residents of Grozny were reduced to surviving “through destructive, illegal and dangerous coping mechanisms” such as the looting of scrap metal from abandoned factories.

WFP is the United Nations’ front-line agency in the fight against global

hunger.  In 1999, WFP fed 83 million people in 83 countries including most of the world’s refugees and internally displaced people. 

 For more information please contact:

 Bhim Udas, Senior Emergency Manager/WFP Moscow. Tel: +70959564968

E-mail bhim.udas@wfp.org.   Trevor Rowe, Chief Spokesperson/WFP Rome

Tel: +39-06-6513-2602 Email: trevor.rowe@wfp.org.   Heather Hill, Public Information Officer/WFP Rome Tel: +39-06-6513-2253 Email: heather.hill@wfp.org

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