UN urges N. Korea to keep taking aid for children
Fri 23 Sep 2005
By Irwin Arieff
UNITED NATIONS, Sept 23 (Reuters) - The United Nations appealed to North Korea on Friday to think of its children and reverse its decision to stop accepting food aid at the end of this year.
"My heart goes out to the children, really, of North Korea," U.N. Emergency Relief Coordinator Jan Egeland said.
While the reclusive communist nation had made important gains in feeding its people over the past decade, 7 percent of its 22.5 million people were still starving and 37 percent remained chronically malnourished, he said.
"Our concern is they will not be able to have enough food," he said. "We are very concerned because we think this is too soon and too abrupt."
Egeland spoke to reporters a day after North Korean Deputy Foreign Minister Choe Su Hon told news agency reporters he had asked U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan to end all humanitarian aid -- a term that typically includes food, medical supplies and other relief -- by the end of 2005.
Choe said he was doing so because his country's food production had improved and the United States was politicizing the issue by linking aid to human rights, an allegation Washington strongly denied.
Choe said however that Pyongyang would continue to welcome international development assistance, which is typically aimed at building infrastructure and facilities to help a country help itself.
In Washington, State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said the United States was talking to other countries giving food aid to North Korea about the appropriate response to Pyongyang's decision.
"The U.S. has had a long history of being very generous to the North Korean people in helping them meet their humanitarian needs," he said.
The State Department has strongly rejected North Korea's claims that Washington was politicizing food aid to the communist nation, saying it was against U.S. policy to link food aid with human rights issues.
Egeland said U.N. agencies and private relief groups would try to persuade the authorities to keep alive some food programs -- such as meals for schoolchildren -- by reclassifying them as development programs.
NORTH KOREA'S GOOD HARVEST WON'T BE ENOUGH
The biggest humanitarian aid program in the country is the World Food Program, which aims to feed 6.5 million of North Korea's most at-risk people, including all children under 5 and all children in primary school.
The WFP, whose single biggest donor is the United States, has provided food aid to North Korea since 1995. The program has said it needs 500,000 tonnes of food this year to meet needs, but has received just 270,000 tonnes from donors so far.
North Korea was expected to have a good harvest this year, and direct donations from other governments, including South Korea and China, have been increasing, but Egeland said a U.N. assessment had concluded this would not be enough.
He said he had offered to travel to Pyongyang for discussions with the government, but there was no word yet on whether this would be accepted.
According to U.N. statistics, 40 percent of North Korea's children suffer from stunted growth, 20 percent are underweight for their age and 8 percent are wasted, meaning their weight is too low for their height.
The average boy of 7 is 7 inches shorter and 20 pounds (9 kgs) lighter than the average 7-year-old in South Korea, the world body said.
Among other aid programs in North Korea, the U.N. Children's Fund and the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies are the country's most important sources for medicines, while the World Health Organization provides all malaria drugs and other preventive treatments as well as vitamin A and deworming medicine for schoolchildren.
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