Analysis: Chechnya Food Crisis Looms

By Edith Honan
UPI
November 6, 2006

With another bitterly cold winter on the way and tuberculosis rates on the rise, nearly 250,000 people in Chechnya face a cutoff of U.N. food aid.

Donor countries say the U.N. World Food Program has been too slow to update its approach. The agency says a highly vulnerable population now risks going hungry. There is evidence Russia shares the blame.

WFP officials told United Press International the agency can finance its efforts through the end of November. But with the European Commission Humanitarian Organization, the program's principal donor, threatening to scale back aid, U.N. officials are warning they may be forced to shut down the program for the second winter in a row.

Last year, at the height of the coldest winter recorded in Russia in 25 years, no food aid was distributed from November to March.

Doctors working in the region have said malnutrition, persistent stress, unemployment and growing poverty combined to cause a tuberculosis outbreak in Chechnya. WFP is already assisting some 650 victims of the illness, though Mia Turner, a WFP spokeswoman based in Cairo, told UPI the stigma attached to tuberculosis could mean many cases have gone unreported.

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