The United Nations (UN) on Friday warned Northern Mozambique is facing extreme food shortages and appealed for more funding to keep the food aid flowing to the region, reported The News24.
About one million affected people in Mozambique are currently receiving food assistance from UN’s World Food Programme (WFP).
On Friday, the WFP warned that it will have to suspend its aid at the peak of the hunger season in February unless it urgently receives an additional $51 million.
“The situation is dire and these are people who are suffering,” Antonella D’Aprile, the WFP’s country director in Mozambique, told reporters in Geneva via video conferencing.
D’Aprile said that the UN food body is facing a very serious funding shortage. She said the WFP would be forced to suspend life-saving assistance to one million people by February if it do not receive funds now.
Notably, February is the peak of the lean season in Mozambique. It is also the cyclone season.
Mozambique’s Cabo Delgado province is the epicentre of a five-year-old jihadist insurgency which killed more than 4,300 people, and displaced round a million people. The situation in Cabo Delgado province, with nearly 1.15 million people in what is considered “crisis” or “emergency” levels of hunger, continues to worsen due to armed violence in recent months.
“These people are displaced and traumatised multiple times,” said D’Aprile.
She said the UN body need urgent funding to stave off not only hunger in the short-term but also to address the root causes of chronic food insecurity.
The WFP has already been providing half-rations since April due to limited funding and increasing needs.
Mozambique is one of the countries which is most vulnerable to climate change. In March 2019, Cyclone Idai, struck Mozambique, Malawi and Zimbabwe, followed in April by Cyclone Kenneth. More than 250,000 people were displaced and 650 people killed in the cyclone.
