UN top food provider to visit Burma

James Morris, Executive Director of the United Nations World Food Program, is scheduled to be in military-ruled Burma, 1-6 August, according to its Bangkok-based regional bureau officials.

This will be the second time a top official from the WFP visits the country whose poor and marginalized people in Arakan State have been receiving assistance from the food agency for the past 11 years, according to UN Daily News.

The first time was by his deputy Ms Sheila Sisulu last September, when she had, in “a rare case of a UN agency in Burma publicly challenging the policies of the regime,” according to a statement soon to be issued by its critics, called on Rangoon to step up reforms. “The policies of the government are impoverishing these people,” she said at a press conference held in Bangkok on her return.

Since 2003, it has also been providing Emergency Food Assistance for ex-poppy farmers in northern Shan State:

For its present project year that began in June, the WFP is doubling its assistance to cover areas in southern Shan State, a total of 19,853 tons of rice and 108 tons of blended food for 347,600 “vulnerable” people.

Since last year, the agency has been laying more stress on what it terms “vulnerability” than its original purpose to help out with ex-poppy farmers, reported a member of the Palaung Youth Network Group, on 7 July. “In Mantong township, it had given 170 tons of rice to 29 poor villages through an NGO and PSLA (Palaung State Liberation Army, a ceasefire group that had surrendered on 29 April),” she said. “There was no denying that these people needed assistance, but most of them were not poppy farmers.”

Taking stock of the program, she concluded that the result was quite limited. “It was only better than nothing,” she said, adding that the recipients were unsure who their benefactor was. “Many thought the rice came from the government.”

The participants charged the WFP was, to all intents and purpose, trying to cushion the adverse consequences of the regime’s mismanagement and thereby helping it to perpetuate its rule.

The critics also asked why some areas were chosen and others, where the suffering is no different from those chosen, were not. “Why is assistance only being given to the region under the PNO (PaO National Organization) ceasefire group and not the SNPLO (Shan State Nationalities Peoples Liberation Organization, the PNO’s rival) ceasefire group in the same area?” asked the statement.

“Also, the Mongla region in Kengtung has also been declared drug-free since 1997. Many of its people have virtually no clothes to wear. Why is it not targeted?” queried a Laho participant.

However, according to the WFP regional bureau, neither Arakan or Shan State are on Mr Morris’s itinerary. Five of his six days will be spent in Rangoon and one in Burma’s dry zone of Magwe.