WORLD FOOD PROGRAMME BRINGS AID TO BURUNDI CIVILIANS DISPLACED IN CLASHES BETWEEN REBEL GROUPS

WORLD FOOD PROGRAMME BRINGS AID TO BURUNDI CIVILIANS

DISPLACED IN CLASHES BETWEEN REBEL GROUPS

NEW YORK, 2 October (OCHA) -- Following two weeks of fighting between two rival rebel groups that has led to the displacement of an estimated 50,000 civilians in the east and north west of the Burundian capital, Bujumbura, food from the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) has reached about 18,000 displaced persons in Mpanda commune.  In August, the WFP had already assisted 20,800 displaced people in the same commune and distributed food aid to about 41,000 internally displaced people at Mubimbi commune.

Over the next month, the WFP and its implementing partner CARE are targeting more than 150,000 vulnerable farming households with food aid.  Some 750,000 people will benefit from the project, which is part of a coordinated programme with the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO).  The FAO is providing more than 210,000 farming households in Burundi with seeds and hoes and the WFP is providing food rations to ensure the farmers have enough food and do not eat their seeds.

A decade of civil war, compounded by recurrent drought and subsequent crop failure, has taken its toll on Burundi's social and economic infrastructure.  Late rains during the first season of 2003 resulted in a higher number of food-insecure households.  The delay of rains for the second season will jeopardize the next harvest, the main one.  Widespread food insecurity and chronic malnutrition have become the norm in areas of insecurity.  Some 60 per cent of Burundians continue to live well below the poverty line.

Almost one in six Burundians continues to live away from their homes.  Some 388,000 people live in 226 camps inside their own country, constituting the largest internally displaced population in the Great Lakes region.  There are an estimated 639,000 Burundian refugees in neighbouring countries, plus a further 200,000 living in Tanzania since 1972.  Every month 385,000 people receive food aid.  More than 13 per cent of all Burundians depend on external assistance to survive.  Monthly, over 24,000 people are treated for malnutrition in 233 therapeutic and supplementary feeding centres around the country.  Their number would probably be much higher if all the needy had access to centres.

More than 71 per cent of the people living in camps inside Burundi have no access to the minimum daily requirement of drinking water.  The United Nations Human Development Index for Burundi has dropped to the third lowest ranked country in the world (171/173), reflecting deteriorating indicators:  vaccination coverage (83 per cent in 1993 to 54 per cent in 2001); primary school attendance (70 per cent in 1993 to 48 per cent in 2002) and an under-five mortality rate of 190/1,000 deaths per live births.  The hostilities have claimed the lives of an estimated 300,000 people, primarily civilians, since the outbreak of the conflict in 1993.

United Nations humanitarian agencies have appealed for $71 million to fund their programmes this year.  To date they have received only 28 per cent of those funds.

For further information, please contact: in New York, Stephanie Bunker, tel.: 917 367 5126; in Geneva, Elizabeth Byrs, tel.: 41 22 917 2653.

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