ANGOLA: AID AGENCY ROW OVER RELIEF EFFORTS

ANGOLA: AID AGENCY ROW OVER RELIEF EFFORTS

Compiled for Pambazuka News from MSF statements and IRIN news reports

Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) has slammed the response of international aid agencies to the crisis in Angola, where the organisation says thousands of people are dying of hunger.
At a press conference in Luanda, MSF International Council President Dr Morten Rostrup said: “Every day we move into additional areas of the country and find appalling malnutrition and mortality rates. We have been sharing our information with the United Nations, the Angolan government, and other aid organizations since early April, but the response has been shamefully slow and shockingly insufficient.”
The Angolan government and the United Nations, particularly the World Food Program (WFP) and the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), had been unacceptably slow to respond to the urgent humanitarian needs of at least half a million Angolans, according to MSF.
Thousands of Angolans have died, and hundreds of thousands more face starvation from a “catastrophic” man-made nutritional crisis unless the Angolan government and the United Nations drastically increased their efforts to meet the needs of the civilian population of the country, said Rostrup.
Since an April 4 ceasefire agreement, MSF says it has gained access to populations cut off from humanitarian assistance for over three years, finding levels of severe malnutrition and mortality far exceeding emergency thresholds and confirming pockets of famine.
Rostrup said UN agencies had yet to implement general food distribution, while the Angolan authorities continued to pursue a policy of “chronic criminal neglect” of their own people.
He said: “I am appalled to witness the outright disregard for such a desperate situation. The world is knowingly allowing Angolans to die of starvation, their number already totalling in the thousands.”
MSF accused the United Nations of failing to step up relief efforts in response to the crisis and the OCHA of allowing political wrangling over the demobilization of Unita solders to take precedence over the Angolan population.
Meanwhile, The WFP had been astoundingly slow to increase its operations, and had yet to implement desperately needed, wide-scale food distribution programs for many of the newly accessible populations.
The OCHA responded to the MSF statement, with UN Humanitarian Coordinator in Angola, Erick de Mul, described it as “disappointing and misleading”.
De Mul said in a statement: "The MSF statement is wrong on many points and the accusation of indifference by the UN to the humanitarian crisis in Angola is blatantly incorrect."
De Mul pointed out that "MSF has failed to share information with partners, they do not sufficiently coordinate their assessments with partners".
He alleged that MSF "have discharged some children from feeding centres without making sufficient arrangements for the future of the children and their families and they do not engage in regular discussions about the food pipeline".
While MSF was "quick to criticise" they should instead "do more to coordinate with partners at both the provincial and national level".
The WFP, while not responding directly to the MSF statement, pointed out that it had been supplying NGO's with food to distribute in quartering areas and had this week begun distributing food in quartering areas itself.
WFP spokesman in Angola, Marcelo Spina, also pointed out that the therapeutic feeding centres run by MSF were being supplied with food by WFP.
Spina was at pains to stress that "we are not responding to MSF, [we are] merely stating what we are doing in Angola".
He said: "We have been feeding over the months and years, now an average of one million people every month. In light of this new situation, the ceasefire, the number is increasing very much. Last month we were feeding 900,000 people, this month one million, from next month until December the number [will be] 1.5 million people. – ENDS