Philipines food aid restarts as number of homeless swells

Food aid deliveries to the Philippine island of Mindanao have restarted as it was revealed the number people there made homeless by the war has gone up to more than 430,000. The United Nations World Food Program (WFP) has lifted the travel ban imposed on its staff in Mindanao after three bombings blamed on Islamist radicals killed eight people in the region last week. The international aid agency said yesterday (Tuesday) that it had restarted food handouts in Maguindanao and Sultan Kudarat.

It comes as the number of homeless people there has swelled massively, according to figures from the Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD). This is a huge rise on the previous numbers from June this year. However, DSWD Secretary Esperanza Cabral stressed the scale of the problem was not yet enough to make it a humanitarian crisis. "There is still no humanitarian crisis, but there is certainly a requirement for humanitarian assistance, which we have been able for the most part to provide," she told journalists in the islands’ capital Manila. Numbers had risen after heavy clashes between government forces and the separatist Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) worsened in June, culminating in last week’s bomb attacks. But Ms Cabal said she expected people will start to return home in a few days time.

Most of those forced from their homes by fighting staying in some 150 government evacuation centres, such as schools, or with family or friends, in the three conflict-affected provinces of Maguindanao, Lanao del Sur and North Cotabato. The nearly year-long conflict was also beginning to strain the government's finances, Ms Cabral said, noting that it had already spent more than US$10 million in humanitarian assistance since fighting began in August, while international aid agencies have spent nearly as much. "That's a lot of money that could have been spent on development projects, if we did not have to spend it this way," she said, according to the United Nations news service. Ms Cabral's comments came as the World Food Programme (WFP) said that it was resuming food distributions to Mindanao following the bombings. "With travel restrictions being lifted, WFP was able to begin distributions to just under 17,000 families in the municipalities of Datu Odin Sinsuat, Sultan Kudarat, Sultan Mastura, South Kabuntalan and North Kabuntalan in the province of Maguindanao, as well as in the city of Cotabato," WFP country director Stephen Anderson said. But aid work on the islands of Basilan and Jolo, where the Al-Qaida-linked Abu Sayyaf operates is still blocked.

By Hayley Jarvis for SOS Children