Military

DATE=4/3/2003

TYPE=CORRESPONDENT REPORT

TITLE=SOUTHERN AFRICA AID (L-O)

NUMBER=2-301713

BYLINE=CHALLISS McDONOUGH

DATELINE=JOHANNESBURG

CONTENT=

VOICED AT:

INTRO: The head of the U-N Children's Fund says she fears the lingering effects of war in Iraq will make it harder to raise money for other humanitarian crises around the world, such as the southern Africa food crisis. Correspondent Challiss McDonough reports from Johannesburg.

TEXT: The head of the U-N Children's Fund, UNICEF, has joined with the leaders of other agencies in an appeal for one-point-two-billion-dollars to pay for humanitarian intervention in Iraq after the war.

But UNICEF director Carol Bellamy says she is also worried that international donors will divert aid money to Iraq, leading to shortfalls in other parts of the world that also desperately need assistance.

/// BELLAMY ACT ///

I am concerned that because the world's attention - I understand why - but because the world's attention is so focused on Iraq, that from Afghanistan to southern Africa, funding for these real ongoing crises could be put in jeopardy.

/// END ACT ///

Ms. Bellamy is in Johannesburg for a meeting with officials from several U-N agencies to discuss the results of a new nutrition survey of the six southern African countries affected by the food shortage during the past year.

The results, which are still preliminary, show that there has been no overall increase in malnutrition among children in Lesotho, Malawi, Mozambique, Swaziland, Zambia, and Zimbabwe.

But the survey also indicates something that surprised some U-N experts. The nutritional status of children in some of the most vulnerable, hardest-hit communities stayed the same or even improved. Those tended to be the areas where U-N agencies focused their aid efforts.

But in some better-off communities, which were not thought to be as severely affected by the food shortage, the children's nutritional status got worse, and malnutrition increased.

Ms. Bellamy says the survey will help guide future interventions by U-N agencies, including UNICEF and the World Food Program, by helping them figure out what strategies worked.

/// BELLAMY 2nd ACT ///

There was success. Sometimes you can claim success. There actually was success in this humanitarian crisis of reducing the most severe impact. But something that we did not recognize was that by focusing on the most severe areas, some of the less severe areas were deteriorating. So it is a lesson for the future.

/// END ACT ///

At the peak of the food shortage, the U-N said, more than 14-million people were in danger of starving in southern Africa. That figure is steadily falling as crop yields increase in parts of the region. But it is not clear how long it will take before the crisis is really over.

/// REST OPT /// U-N officials say two-years of erratic rains hurt harvests, but the weather is not the only reason for the crisis. They are increasingly pointing the finger at the H-I-V-AIDS epidemic, which has killed or sickened the most productive members of society and weakened families' abilities to cope.

In some of the affected countries, a third of the people between the ages of 15 and 49 are infected with H-I-V. Millions of children in southern Africa have lost one or both parents to AIDS.

Ms. Bellamy says the deadly combination of AIDS and food shortages is having particularly devastating consequences for women and girls, who are hardest hit by both crises and also bear most of the burden of caring for orphaned and ill relatives. (SIGNED)

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