Off the wire
• U.S. FBI, Apple face off before Congress over encrypted iPhone  • 1st LD Writethru: U.S. dollar falls despite upbeat data  • Oscars witnesses lowest audience since 2008  • Chicago wheat, corn, soybeans lower amid ongoing competition  • Feature: A cyclist's journey from U.S. to China to promote ecological civilization  • Venezuela's Trujillanos seek to defeat Bolivia's The Strongest in Copa Libertadores  • Smoking kills more than 32 people per day in Portugal: report  • Urgent: U.S. stocks surge on strong data  • ECB foreign exchange rates of Euro to other currencies  • Angola assumes rotating UN Security Council presidency for March  
You are here: 　 Home

Conflict, displacement continue to affect people's access to food in CAR: UN agencies

Xinhua, March 2, 2016 Adjust font size:

The World Food Programme (WFP) and the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) said that three years of conflict and ongoing displacements in the Central African Republic (CAR) continue to disrupt agriculture and severely constrain people's access to food, a UN spokesman told reporters here Tuesday.

"The country's overall crop production in 2015 remained 54 percent below the pre-crisis average," Farhan Haq, the deputy UN spokesman, said at a daily news briefing here. "Half of the population faces hunger, according to the two agencies."

WFP and FAO are working together to provide seeds and food during the planting period, he said. "This is the time when people need the maximum help possible as it is also the lean season, when people struggle to have enough food to eat before the next harvest."

Cereal harvests continued to decline last year, with production 70 percent lower than the pre-crisis average. Overall crop production in 2015 amounted to 838,671 tonnes, around one million tonnes less than the average before the crisis.

"The latest numbers are cause for concern not only because people skip meals and cut portions, but also because they opt for less nutritious foods that provide far less of the proteins and vitamins they need," FAO Country Representative Jean-Alexandre Scaglia said in a press release.

"Some 75 percent of people in CAR depend on agriculture, and with the planting season starting in less than two months, boosting agriculture now is crucial to revitalizing the economy and to stability in the country," he said.

"The situation is dire. Half of the population faces hunger," said Bienvenu Djossa, the WFP country director in CAR. "It is crucial that we continue helping the most vulnerable, who need emergency food assistance to survive. WFP and FAO are also working together to provide seeds to plant and food to eat during the planting period."

The CAR government has begun a strategic effort to revive the agricultural sector and facilitate the reintegration of vulnerable people by helping youth and family farms improve their capacity to produce.

In 2016, FAO and WFP, with the help of partners, will support these efforts through longer-term programmes that aim to save and strengthen livelihoods and build resilience. As part of the joint seeds protection programme, FAO aims to provide seeds and tools to 95,000 farming families while WFP plans to provide them with food rations.

FAO is appealing for 86 million U.S. dollars to support 1.55 million people with inputs to produce crops and keep their livestock healthy, and strengthen the government's efforts to boost food security.

WFP requires 89 million dollars to respond to the urgent needs of 1.4 million people until the end of July in CAR, and in neighbouring countries hosting CAR refugees. To date, about half of the required funding has been secured. Enditem