The World Food Program (WFP) has recommenced food aid to Somali Regional State’s most affected areaswhich have been cut-off from humanitarian assistance for closeto a year due to security risks.
Paul Anthem, head of communications, donor relations and reports with WFP, said in abrief email response to The Reporterthat the security risks along the route known as the ‘Moyale corridor’ remained off-limits for the entirety of 2018 which meantthat WFP had only been able to dispatch a very small quantity of food to the Dawa Zone of the Somali Regional state duringthe year.
According to WFP’s supply chain officers, the primevictims of these disruptions were the hundreds of thousands of food-insecure people to whom food assistance and other forms of humanitarian support are critical.
Currently, the government of Ethiopia doing better job to regulate the security situation along the corridor, helped humanitarian efforts to restart andfor the delivery of some 1,000 metric tons of food to some 198,600 internally displaced persons and drought-affected communities in the Dawa Zone, MoyaleWoreda.
According to the statement WFP sent to The Reporter, since January 15, the food aid that is composed of cereals, pulses and oil, along with the nutritious supplements of corn soya blend plus-plus (CSB++) and peanut-based ready to use supplementary food: Plumpy’Sup have been provided to the beneficiaries.
The UN office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) indicated that,“Some three million citizens have been impacted by inter-communal conflicts in Ethiopia. These conflicts across the country continued to lead to high level of displacement, limit livelihood opportunities, and restrict humanitarian access,” OCHA noted. Areas of Somali, Oromia, South, and BenshangulGumuz Regional states endured impacts of scourging conflicts in past few years.
In DawaZone, conflict had prevented humanitarian actors from delivering much needed assistance to some 350,000 IDPs. Humanitarian actors have not been able to fully access IDPs in BenshangulGumuzeeither, since their displacement in October 2018.
Throughout the country, 2018 harvest stocks are positively contributing to household food access. However, over parts of eastern Oromia, southern Tigray, eastern Amhara, and the northern part of the Sothern regionreduced agricultural production have led to an early exhaustion of stock.
