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Because of a shortage of foreign aid, school children more than five years of age and elderly people in North Korea have not been receiving food rations, a ranking U.N. officer said here. "The situation is so bad that we have to limit the aid to infants and pregnant women," said Ingrid Kolb-Hindarmanto, a German nutrition project officer at UNICEF's Pyongyang office. Speaking in an interview with The Korea Herald on Sunday, she also said about 70,000 North Korean children may die of severe malnutrition within a couple of months if there is no additional aid from the international community. She stressed that the food situation in the impoverished communist country was further aggravated after Pyongyang revealed a fresh nuclear arms program last October and the recent U.S.-led war on Iraq further diverted attention from the problem. The North's nuclear threat has prompted many foreign donors to cut off or reduce their aid to the country and the Iraqi war has refocused international assistance on the war-ravaged country, said Kolb-Hindarmanto. "The problem of starving and malnourished North Korean people has been so prolonged that the international community doesn't consider it an emergency anymore. Nevertheless, it is a chronic emergency, which must be addressed without further delay," she said. "Unless proper actions are taken immediately, the whole generation may perish. If they ever survive, it will be a generation with underdeveloped IQs," she said. ""It will not just be a burden for North Korea but for the whole world," she added. The UNICEF official, 51, came to South Korea Saturday to appeal for the nation to provide humanitarian support for the hunger-stricken North Koreans. She is to return to Pyongyang today via Vladivostok. The nutrition
officer said she urged the South Korean government to take immediate
action to save many North Korean children from the malnutrition crisis
that is currently sweeping across the reclusive country. "I believe that only South Korea's assumption of a leading role in helping the starving North Korean people will galvanize other countries to subsequently extend aid to them," she said. She also dismissed some concerns that the North might have diverted the international aid for military purposes. "The assistance provided to the North is not being squandered, but is used for securing the subsistence of the collapsing citizens, who are near death," she said. She also added
that as a leading international aid agency, UNICEF has enough means to
monitor the process of food distribution provided by the international
community. Copyright
© 2002 Global Action on Aging |
