UN: Four million Syrians could starve as aid delivery lags
A volunteer shares out food to the people in the Bab al-Salam refugee camp for displaced Syrians near the border with Turkey on 2 July 2013. (Photo: AFP – JM Lopez)
Four million Syrians, a fifth of the population, are unable to produce or buy enough food to survive, the United Nations said on Friday.
The statement comes as donations to Syrian civilians has been lagging far behind the levels of financial assistance initially pledged by member states and called for by the UN.
The UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and the World Food Program (WFP) said Syria’s domestic wheat production over the next 12 months is likely to be severely compromised and that it will need to import 1.5 million tons of wheat for the 2013 to 2014 season.
“There is a limited window of opportunity to ensure crisis-affected families do not lose vital sources of food and income,” the two agencies said.
After two years of a civil war that has killed more than 90,000 people, food shortages have escalated due to massive population displacement Food Program, disruption of agricultural production, unemployment, economic sanctions and high food and fuel prices.
FAO has launched an appeal for $41.7 million to assist 768,000 people and has so far only received $3.3 million.
The WFP and the FAO said the funding must be secured by August to provide farmers with fertilizers and seeds to plant in October. Otherwise, the report said, many farmers will be unable to harvest wheat until mid-2015.
Syria’s livestock sector has also been seriously depleted by the conflict, with poultry production down by more than 50 percent compared with 2011 and significant declines in numbers of sheep and cattle, the report found.
The agencies said domestic wheat output was seen at about 2.4 million tons in 2012 and 2013, some 40 percent less than the average annual harvest of more than 4 million tons before the conflict.
WFP said last month that Syrian families were increasingly resorting to begging for food to cope with shortages and high prices.
The average monthly price of wheat flour has more than doubled between May 2011 and May 2013 in several areas, and there are serious bread shortages across the country.
Food production has been hampered by high costs, damage to machinery and storage facilities and by the fact that many farmers have fled their land for fear of violence, the report found.
The FAO and the WFP also warned of a serious risk that livestock diseases could be transmitted to neighboring countries and said farmers needed vaccines to prevent this from happening.
A Syrian state buyer earlier this week issued a tender to buy 200,000 tons of flour on the international market and planned to pay with funds from bank accounts frozen by trade sanctions.
Food is excluded from US and European trade sanctions imposed on President Bashar al-Assad’s government.
More than a million Syrians have fled the war-torn country, and about 4.25 million Syrians have been internally displaced, according to the Internal Displacement Monitoring Center.
(Reuters, Al-Akhbar)
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