North Korea aid shortage leaves women and children malnourished

Women and children in North Korea are facing desperate food shortages, a UN food official said. Food aid to the country has dried up after it carried out its nuclear tests in May even though the need is as serious as ever, a United Nations official just back from the country said yesterday. In some parts of the country, some women weigh just 7.1 stones (45 kg/99 lb) when they give birth, according to a recent UN medical survey.

The World Food Programme's (WFP) director for North Korea, Torben Due, told a news conference in Beijing that the agency had not been able to reach millions of North Koreans because of a shortfall in funding. He said the WFP had no new donations for North Korea since the capital, Pyongyang ran its second nuclear test. "It's a very sensitive area. I understand to a certain extent why donors are questioning," he said, according to Reuters news agency. "But my angle is as a humanitarian. Being a humanitarian organisation you should look at the needs of the people. WFP does not engage in the political part of it." Flooding over the past few years and the South's decision to suspend fertiliser aid in response to Pyongyang failing to live up to the terms of a nuclear disarmament deal have also pushed down domestic production.

One of the world's most secretive societies and one of the few countries still under communist rule, North Korea has relied on food to feed millions of its people since hundreds of thousands died in a famine in the 1990s. Aid agencies have estimated that up to two million people have died since the mid-1990s because of food shortages caused by natural disasters and economic mismanagement. An appeal for more than $500 million in food aid has been just 15 per cent met, meaning a planned relief operation to reach 6.2 million people has been scaled back to target 2 million.

Speaking at the Beijing conference yesterday, Mr Due said the state's struggling economy and international seclusion, was taking a heavy human toll particularly with mothers and children stunted by starvation. "We are now in the middle of the lean season in North Korea, where food supplies are low and it's a very difficult situation for many people in the country," he said. "But more importantly it should be noted that we have a situation where a very large part of the population has been undernourished for 15 or 20 years." "The children that survive these conditions will be born with compromised immune systems ... and that will contribute to their stunting," Due said. "It's a problem which goes from one generation to the next."

By Hayley Jarvis for SOS Children