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Hungry North Koreans pay the price
By Thalif Deen
UNITED
NATIONS - The United Nations is appealing for as much as
80,000 tons of urgent food aid to meet the immediate
needs of about 3 million hungry people in North Korea.
"This is just for the first quarter of the year," said
Charles Vincent of the World Food Program (WFP), the
UN's food agency.
The WFP's current stocks and
anticipated donations amount only to about 35,000 tons
leaving a shortfall of some 45,000 tons. Without some
"fast new contributions", the organization says it will
not be able to resume food distributions to some three
million North Koreans retained on its aid lists from
last year.
The appeal comes at a time when at
least two major donors - the United States and Japan -
have suspended supplies to North Korea amid charges that
both countries are using food as a political weapon.
Washington continues to insist that it is not
using food as a weapon, said Karin Lee, a senior
associate of the Washington-based East Asia Policy
Education Project and a regular contributor to Korean
Quarterly. "But its monitoring requirements have been
raised far above current standards, in a diplomatic
climate that currently precludes fruitful discussions.
This is tantamount to withholding food aid," she added.
"If the United States wants to ensure that the
most vulnerable in North Korea receive food, they must
publicly separate the humanitarian track from other
issues and offer separate unconditional dialogue on how
to restart food aid quickly," Lee argued.
The
United States, which has blamed the WFP for poor
monitoring of food aid to North Korea, has also accused
the North Korean government of diverting food to its 1
million soldiers. The North Koreans have denied the
charge.
Vincent said that the United States, the
largest single contributor to the UN food program, is
considering a WFP request for food aid to North Korea.
The delay may be bureaucratic, he added. Asked whether
Washington was using food as a political weapon, he said
that the WFP would "not get involved" with bilateral
political problems between the countries. But he pointed
out that WFP has "no hard evidence" that food intended
for starving North Koreans has ended up with the armed
forces.
On Monday, the New York Times quoted an
unnamed WFP official as saying, "We have relatively good
confidence that the food is reaching the people who need
it." The spokesman also said that the suspension of food
aid by the United States and Japan - as well as "severe
cutbacks" by South Korea - would mean that the UN agency
might miss its food-distribution goals "by a wide
margin".
"We're very concerned about it. We
understand that there are political considerations. But
this is a population that is suffering, with women and
children the most vulnerable," he told the Times.
North Korea's total requirement for this year is
about 512,000 tons of food aid compared with 611,000
tons last year. Nearly 96 percent of North Korea's needs
were met in 2002, 30 percent of that coming from the
United States. Japan, which was also a key contributor
until 2001, did not send any food aid to North Korea in
2002.
In a report released in October 1999, the
Washington-based General Accounting Office (GAO), a
watchdog body of the US Congress, said the WFP was
unable to track what happens to US food aid to North
Korea. "US policy is that no food aid will be provided
to North Korea if it cannot be adequately monitored,"
the study said.
The GAO also said that 90
percent of North Korean institutions that receive food
aid, including orphanages, schools and hospitals, have
not been visited or monitored by the WFP.
The
shortage of food in North Korea has been sparked by
several famines and natural disasters over the last two
years. As a result, Pyongyang has been forced to seek
aid to meet the urgent needs of about one-third of its
22 million people.
Meanwhile, North Korea's
threat last week to resume its nuclear program in
defiance of a 1994 bilateral agreement with the United
States is also expected to toughen the American stand
against Pyongyang. The United States has hinted of
possible UN economic sanctions against North Korea as
punishment for Pyongyang's decision to revive the
long-dormant program and for pushing out two UN arms
inspectors last week.
According to the Food and
Agriculture Organization, another UN agency, the right
to food as a "basic human right" applies both in
peacetime and during armed conflicts.
"In order
to ensure that the civilian population is not prevented
from having access to food in situations of war,
humanitarian law limits the right of the parties to
international and non-international armed conflicts to
choose methods and means of warfare," it said.
"Therefore a state cannot attack, destroy, remove or
render useless objects indispensable to the survival of
the civilian population, such as foodstuffs, crops,
drinking water installations, or make these objects the
targets of reprisals."
(Inter Press
Service)
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