Asia Times: Displaced Sri Lankans starve as politicians play


	March 13, 2002	atimes.com

India/Pakistan

Displaced Sri Lankans starve as politicians play
By Renuka Senanayake

PUTTALAM, Sri Lanka - It was unbearable hunger that recently drove hundreds of placard-carrying displaced people to protest outside the main government office in Puttalam, a fishing town 330 kilometers north of the Sri Lankan capital Colombo. "Give us our food, don't let us starve," they pleaded with the government officer.

Their pleas - at least some of them - were heeded the following day when 2,000 of the estimated 20,000 displaced families received five kilograms of rice each. But this rice ration supplied by the government is a fraction of the amount that the internally displaced people, who fled the Tamil Tiger conflict years ago, received from the World Food Program (WFP) until three months ago.

But Puttalam is not the only place where displaced people are facing the risk of starvation. Nearly a million of them across this South Asian island nation could be victims of this food crisis - the result of petty politics, empty government coffers and depleting WFP funds - even as the international spotlight focuses on the prospect of new peace talks in the nearly two-decade-old Tamil insurgency.

"Is this what the new government has to offer us?" one displaced person asked, referring to the government of Prime Minister Ranil Wickmerasinghe, which last month signed a ceasefire with the Tamil Tigers who are fighting for their own homeland.

Signs of the depleting rations emerged about three months ago, when the WFP cut the rations. Shortly after, a government agency, the Commissioner General of Essential Services (CGES), stopped its regular supplies of food relief. Until then, providing relief to displaced groups was a task divided between the CGES and the WFP, with the government agency supplying some 700,000 displaced with dry food rations to the value of Rs1,260 (US$14) for five members in a family. This value was based on the cost of living in 1993. The WFP rations went to 77,000 selected displaced persons deemed vulnerable, and included rice, sugar, lentils, coconut oil and iodized salt. Rations were given to every member of such family, and the amount was based on the calorie needs of an individual.

"In November, WFP stopped giving our people rice, the staple meal. During the next three months they were given nothing at all. They were not told before, so they weren't ready," said a spokesman for the Community Trust Fund (CTF), an organization that works for the welfare of displaced Muslims in Puttalam. These Muslims were displaced in 1990, when the Tamil Tiger rebels fighting for an independent homeland drove them out of their homes in the and north and east of the country. More than 110,000 of these fleeing Muslims headed to Puttalam, where they have been living since on WFP food rations.

For its part, the WFP says it had begun informing the government in November about depleting stocks of rice and asked CGES to step in and help the displaced communities. However, the WFP was not aware of a sudden decision by the newly formed United National Front (UNF) government led by Wickmerasinghe to freeze the funds of the CGES in December. The motivation for that, according to an official, was to cripple this relief institution, which was under the authority of the country's president, who hails from UNF's rival party.

Thus, a large number of displaced people fed by the government were thrown into starvation. The worst hit have been those living in government-run welfare centers in the northern Vavuniya district, and in the areas controlled by the rebels.

Since 1996, hundreds of thousands of Tamils have fled their homes in rebel-held territory to find shelter in government-run welfare centers. Of the total number of internally displaced people, nearly 700,000 live in areas controlled by the military, while the rest live in the northern Tamil Tiger-held region.

The new Refugee Affairs Ministry, however, is backing its decision to slash CGES funds by pointing to the abuse and corruption that plagues this government agency, including allegations that its funds were milked to pay for the election campaign of the last government.

The new government has not done much to handle the crisis effectively. The refugee ministry now provides displaced folk the standard relief package of $14 to five members in a family only. This includes the former WFP recipients too. Yet in practice, the assistance is slow to reach those in need due to new bureaucratic requirements.

Meanwhile, the WFP has appealed for emergency aid for what some officials call the "forgotten victims of strife in Sri Lanka". According to Jeff Taft-Dick, director of WFP's program in Sri Lanka, a three-year commitment to help those displaced by the conflict has to be shelved because donors are falling short of their pledges. "High-profile emergency operations like that in Afghanistan are draining limited resources away from prolonged and lesser known humanitarian problems like the conflict victims in Sri Lanka," he explains.

People living in conflict areas have been long-term victims of malnutrition, states the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF). Poor nutrition has had a heavy toll on the health and development of children, leading to stunting, malnutrition, low weight and delayed brain development, it adds. Mortality of children under five is related to the poor health of mothers among the displaced people, adds UNICEF.

In the past, whenever governments faced financial constraints, the first to get slashed was funding for displaced people. This time, too, with the new government up against a negative growth rate and an empty treasury, they are first in line to bear the brunt of funding cuts.

(Inter Press Service)