Bizcommunity.com Monday, February 06, 2012
The International Committee of the Red
Cross (ICRC) regrets the decision of the Office for Supervising the
Affairs of Foreign Agencies of the Harakat Al-Shabaab Al Mujahideen to
terminate the agreement under which the ICRC was allowed to deliver
emergency food aid in Al-Shabaab administered areas of Somalia.
"Under
the agreement, we provided more than 1.2 million people living in
central and southern Somalia with one-month food rations between June
and December 2011," said Daniel Duvillard, the ICRC's head of operations
for East Africa. "The food distributions helped address severe
malnutrition among the population."
Despite adverse conditions
faced by the ICRC during this emergency operation, the organisation
succeeded in distributing more than 17 000 tonnes of rice, beans and oil
directly to the neediest people in more than 1 600 different places. As
a result of heat, moisture and exposure to heavy rain, 6% of the food
intended for distribution was found to have deteriorated.
"Those
beans were either withdrawn by the ICRC or destroyed by the Al-Shabaab
authorities," said Duvillard. "No food suspected to be unfit for human
consumption was distributed to aid recipients in Somalia."
In
the current circumstances, the ICRC remains unable to retrieve a food
consignment intended for distribution to 240 000 people in the Middle
Shabelle and Galgaduud regions that has been blocked by the Al-Shabaab
authorities in Jowhar. This situation led the ICRC to suspend its food
distributions in mid-January.