Continued humanitarian assistance needed in North Korea, says top UN official

BEIJING - The operating environment for aid agencies in the Democratic People's Republic of Korea must improve markedly if the international community is to continue to provide the substantial assistance required to help overcome the country's severe humanitarian crisis, a senior United Nations official warned today.
"We are doing our utmost to mobilise resources to help relieve the suffering of millions of vulnerable people in the DPRK, but we need more help from the authorities there if the donor fatigue now undermining our programmes is to be reversed", said Kenzo Oshima, the UN's Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator.

"There has been progress over the years and we welcome that. We have gained access to more counties. The World Food Programme, the leading aid agency in the country, now has some 50 international staff members - compared to three in 1995 - operating out of its main office in Pyongyang and five sub-offices around the country".

"But donors are frustrated and want to see further tangible confidence-building measures", Oshima said following a four-day mission to the DPRK to review the humanitarian situation and meet government officials.

"A key humanitarian principle is access to assess needs and provide assistance where it is needed. This principle is compromised in the DPRK, where the UN does not have access to 43 out of 206 counties." Aid agencies seeking to monitor the effectiveness of their programmes in meeting identified needs also face obstacles, Oshima noted.

WFP is grappling with an unprecedented resourcing shortfall for an emergency operation designed to feed 6.4 million North Koreans this year. In May it was obliged to suspend distributions to more than one million beneficiaries, including elderly people and school children.

"Its an extremely difficult and painful call when you have to choose between feeding hungry children in orphanages and hungry elderly people in destitute cities", said John Powell, WFP's Regional Director for Asia, who accompanied Oshima to the DPRK.

Recent pledges of food aid will allow distributions to some of those affected by the cutbacks to resume shortly, Powell said, but added that WFP needs further contributions of nearly 130,000 metric tons of commodities to be able to feed all hungry people on its books for the remainder of the year.

He welcomed the DPRK's authorities' "unequivocal commitment" to a nutritional survey due to be conducted soon by UNICEF, WFP and the government. "A credible, scientific survey will enable us determine the impact food aid has had in recent years and better target future assistance. Its crucial to improving the quality of the programming of all aid organisations in the country."

The last such survey, carried out in 1998, revealed high rates of wasting (16 per cent) and stunting (62 per cent) among children under seven years.

Oshima disclosed that during his visit the DPRK government had agreed to allow satellite communications for UN agencies, and coordinate with them on the emergency medical evacuation of international personnel by air.

Relief assistance needs to give way to a development process as soon as possible, he said. "There will be no significant improvement in the humanitarian situation unless there is a sustainable improvement in the DPRK economy. To this end, it is necessary to create an enabling environment for rehabilitation and development programming."

UN agencies, non-governmental organizations and the Red Cross movement appealed last November for US$258 million to help meet pressing humanitarian needs this year in the DPRK - notably food, healthcare and safe drinking water - and support agricultural rehabilitation. Some 40 per cent of the required funding has still to be raised.