Tag Archives: undernourished

North Korea tells United Nations to cut international aid staff: letter

FILE PHOTO: North Korean Foreign Minister Ri Yong Ho attends a meeting with China's President Xi Jinping at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, China December 7, 2018. Fred Dufour/Pool via REUTERS/File Photo

By Michelle Nichols

UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) – North Korea has told the United Nations to cut the number of international staff it deploys in the country because the world body’s programs have failed “due to the politicization of U.N. assistance by hostile forces,” according to a letter seen by Reuters on Wednesday.

The United Nations estimates 10.3 million people – almost half the country’s population – are in need and some 41 percent of North Koreans are undernourished, while Pyongyang said in February it was facing a food shortfall this year and had to halve rations, blaming drought, floods and sanctions.

“U.N. supported programs failed to bring the results as desired due to the politicization of U.N. assistance by hostile forces,” Kim Chang Min, secretary-general for North Korea’s National Coordinating Committee for the United Nations, wrote to the top U.N. official posted in the country.

In the Aug. 21 letter, Kim said the number of international staff should be cut by the end of the year.

North Korea wants the number of international staff with the U.N. Development Programme to be cut to one or two from six, the World Health Organization to four from six and the U.N. Children’s Fund (UNICEF) to cut its 13 staff by one or two.

Kim said the number of international staff with the World Food Programme should be reduced “according to the amount of food aid to be provided” once the agency and North Korean agree how to implement a plan for 2019 to 2021.

There was also no need for a humanitarian aid coordination officer, Kim wrote, adding that U.N. aid officials could instead “visit as and when required.”

The United Nations did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

“Historically there’s been a critical lack of international expertise and oversight and capacity to monitor the use of the assistance that is provided,” said a U.N. diplomat, speaking on condition of anonymity.

“We’re deeply surprised by this turn of events in part because this is when the needs have grown and the U.N. has been trying to mobilize support to scale up assistance in country,” the diplomat said.

The move comes amid stalled talks between the United States and North Korea aimed at dismantling Pyongyang’s nuclear and missile programs. The U.N. Security Council has unanimously ratcheted up sanctions on North Korea since 2006 in a bid to choke funding for those programs.

“The North Korean government’s decisions are only hurting the North Korean people,” said a second U.N. diplomat, speaking on condition of anonymity.

“This is coming at a time where both Russia and China are pushing a false narrative that sanctions are causing the humanitarian problems in North Korea and the only way to solve that is to give North Korea sanctions relief,” the diplomat said.

Russia’s U.N. ambassador, Vassily Nebenzia, told reporters on Tuesday that unilateral sanctions imposed on North Korea by other countries and some strict interpretations of U.N. sanctions were hindering humanitarian work.

“The population of North Korea should not suffer under those sanctions that have been imposed illegitimately,” he said.

(Reporting by Michelle Nichols; Editing by Peter Cooney)

North Korean food supply still precarious as donors stay away, U.N. says

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un smiles as children eat during his visit to the Pyongyang Orphanage on International Children's Day in this undated photo released by North Korea's Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) in Pyongyang

GENEVA (Reuters) – The supply of food remains precarious in North Korea, where one in five children is stunted by malnutrition, the United Nation’s food agency said on Tuesday.

More than 10 million North Koreans, nearly 40 percent of the population, are undernourished and need humanitarian aid, the World Food Programme (WFP) said.

WFP, which provides fortified cereals and enriched biscuits to 650,000 women and children each month, may have to cut its nutrition and health programs again because it lacks funding, WFP spokesman Herve Verhoosel said.

WFP and the U.N. Children’s Fund (UNICEF) are among only a few aid agencies with access to North Korea, which suffered a famine in the mid-1990s that killed up to 3 million people.

“Despite some improvements this year, humanitarian needs across DPRK remain high with chronic food insecurity and malnutrition widespread,” Verhoosel told a Geneva news briefing.

He was referring to the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, the official name for North Korea.

Some donors and companies, including shipping companies, have been reluctant to fund or to get involved in aid programs for North Korea, although humanitarian work is excluded from sanctions imposed by the U.N. Security Council on North Korea for its nuclear and missile program, he said.

“We cannot wait for political or diplomatic progress to support a civilian population and to basically work on a humanitarian agenda,” he said.

The United States, the WFP’s largest donor overall, is not among current donors to its program in North Korea, which include France, Switzerland, Sweden, Canada, and the Russian Federation, he said.

The WFP, which appealed this year for $52 million for North Korea, needs $15.2 million to fund its programs over the next five months and avoid further cuts to its food assistance, he said.

Critical funding shortfalls meant this year the agency was forced to leave 190,000 children in kindergartens without nutritional support, he said.

(Reporting by Stephanie Nebehay, editing by Larry King)

Food security in Middle East, North Africa deteriorating, says U.N. agency

A Syrian woman and her children wait for food aid in front of an humanitarian aid distrubition center in Syrian border town of Jarablus, Syria, December 13, 2017.

CAIRO (Reuters) – Food security in the Middle East and North Africa is quickly deteriorating because of conflict in several countries in the region, the United Nations said on Thursday.

In those hardest hit by crises — Syria, Yemen, Iraq, Libya and Sudan — an average of more than a quarter of the population was undernourished, the U.N.’s Food and Agriculture Organization said in its annual report on food security.

A quarter of Yemen’s people are on the brink of famine, several years into a proxy war between the Iran-aligned Houthis and the Saudi-backed government of President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi that has caused one of the worst humanitarian catastrophes in recent times.

The report focused on changes to food security and nutrition across the region since 2000.

It said that undernourishment in countries not directly affected by conflict, such as most Gulf Arab states and most North African countries including Egypt, had slowly improved in the last decade. But it had worsened in conflict-hit countries.

“The costs of conflict can be seen in the measurements of food insecurity and malnutrition,” the FAO’s assistant director-general Abdessalam Ould Ahmed said.

“Decisive steps towards peace and stability (need to be) taken.”

Several countries in the region erupted into conflict following uprisings in 2011 that overthrew leaders in Tunisia, Egypt and Libya.

Syria’s civil war, which also began with popular demonstrations, has killed hundreds of thousands of people and made more than 11 million homeless.

(Reporting by John Davison; Editing by Angus MacSwan)