Africa-Press – Mozambique. The United Nations’ World Food Programme (WFP) on Monday announced that due to limited resources it was only able to provide half rations to 925,000 people living in northern Mozambique – equivalent to only 39 per cent of the calories required.
In response to this situation, WFP is now implementing a vulnerability-based exercise for internally displaced people and host communities to better target food assistance.
People require food aid in the northern province of Cabo Delgado as a result of violence by islamist terrorism, and WFP laments that “after two decades of peace and stability, the intensification of violence in Cabo Delgado Province threatens socio-economic progress”.
Parts of Cabo Delgado have been under attack from terrorists since October 2017, forcing people from their homes and destroying livelihoods. The United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) estimates that 745,000 people have been displaced whilst many people in the host communities also lack food.
The shortage in funding is also affecting WFP’s ability to provide nutrition, in the form of Super Cereal Plus, to children under the age of five. It is currently feeding just under four thousand children in Cabo Delgado through a blanket supplementary feeding programme to prevent moderate acute malnutrition among displaced children between the ages of six and 59 months. It points out that it would expand this programme to other districts in northern Mozambique if it had the funds.
Currently, WFP needs 183 million US dollars to meet its funding requirements for Mozambique until the end of March 2022.
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