The United Nations warned on Friday that there are severe food shortages in northern Mozambique as it made a fundraising appeal to maintain the supply of food aid to the troubled area.
One million people in need of food assistance are receiving it from the World Food Programme of the UN as a result of the unrest in the country of southern Africa.
However, the WFP issued a warning that if an extra $51 million is not promptly received, it will be obliged to halt its supplies at the height of the hunger season in February.
The WFP’s country director for Mozambique, Antonella D’Aprile, told reporters in Geneva via video link from Maputo that “the situation is grave and these are people who are suffering.”
“There is a severe lack of funding. If we don’t get money immediately, WFP would have to stop providing life-saving aid to a million people by February.”
In Mozambique, February marks the height of the lean season, during which time food prices increase as farmers await the crop. Additionally, it is cyclone season.
A five-year-old jihadist insurgency with over 4,300 fatalities and one million displaced residents is centered in the province of Cabo Delgado.
However, the jihadists are now making incursions into Cabo Delgado’s previously unexplored south and spreading into the nearby provinces of Nampula and Niassa.
The most food insecure province in Mozambique is Cabo Delgado, where 1.15 million people are suffering from “crisis” or “emergency” levels of hunger, with signs that things could become worse.
These people have experienced multiple displacements and traumas, according to D’Aprile.
“We need resources today to address the core causes of chronic food insecurity as well as to prevent hunger in the short term.”
Due to a lack of money and rising requirements, the WFP has been providing half-rations since April.
