SEOUL: The United Nation food body yesterday said it had approved $200m of food aid for North Korea, targeting the country’s most vulnerable people who remain dependent on external assistance.
The World Food Programme (WFP) executive board has this week approved a new two-year operation for North Korea starting on July 1, World Food Programme (WFP) spokesman Marcus Prior said.
“It will target about 2.4 million people - almost all children, and pregnant and nursing women - with about 207,000 metric tons of food assistance at a cost of $200m,” he said.
The World Food Programme (WFP) will continue to focus on the nutritional needs of young children and their mothers through food which will be manufactured in the North using ingredients imported by the food body, he said.
“World Food Programme (WFP) remains very concerned about the long-term intellectual and physical development of young children in particular who are malnourished due to a diet lacking in key proteins, fats and micronutrients,” added Prior.
In March, United Nation resident coordinator in North Korea Desiree Jongsma said timely imports from the World Food Programme (WFP) had contributed to avoiding a crisis this year but two thirds of the nation’s 24 million population were still chronically food insecure.
Nearly 28 percent of children under five in the North suffer from chronic malnutrition and four percent are acutely malnourished, according to a United Nation national nutrition survey last year.
International food aid, especially that from South Korea and the United States, has been drastically cut over the past several years amid tensions over the communist state’s nuclear and missile programmes.
The US last provided food aid to North Korea from late 2008 to March 2009.
AFP
