Kinshasa – A 13-truck United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) convoy has recently arrived in Dungu, north-eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, after crossing close to 1,000 kilometres from Uganda through Southern Sudan bringing much needed food assistance to more than 160,000 displaced people.
The opening of the South Sudan corridor to Haut Uele (North East) via Uganda for WFP food convoys is a significant boost to humanitarian deliveries to the remote north-eastern regions of DRC.
More than 140 metric tons of cereals and pulses transported by the WFP convoy will be used in general distributions for the internally displaced in Orientale province.
"The WFP office in DRC is extremely grateful to the government of South Sudan for allowing safe passage for WFP humanitarian assistance," said Abdou Dieng, WFP's DRC Country Director.
Delivering food assistance in DRC is one of the most complex humanitarian operations in the world, due to the size of the country and the poor road infrastructure.
Major access problems since May forced WFP to use airlifts and airdrops from Uganda to deliver food to Dungu, in addition to truck deliveries from within the country. A total of 2,000 tons of food supplies have been delivered by air since May.
The opening of the South Sudan road corridor will allow WFP to deliver food at a lower cost for donors and faster in order to answer to urgent needs for people displaced by attacks from the Lords Resistance Army (LRA).
Donors to WFP emergency operation in haut Uele include : USA (US$10.8 million), UN CERF/Pooled Fund (US$7.8 million), Australia (US$2.4 million), Belgium (US$1.1 million), France (US$ 1 million), South Africa (US$134,000), Sweden (US$ 34,000).
WFP is the world's largest humanitarian agency fighting hunger worldwide. In 2009, WFP aims to feed 108 million people in 74 countries.
WFP now provides RSS feeds to help journalists keep up with the latest press releases, videos and photos as they are published on WFP.org. For more details see: http://www.wfp.org/english/?n=999.
WFP now has a dedicated ISDN line in Italy for quality two-way interviews with WFP officials.
For more information please contact (email address: firstname.lastname@wfp.org):
Stéphanie Savariaud, WFP/Kinshasa, cell. +243 99 863 0945
Marcus Prior, WFP/Nairobi, Tel. + 254 20 762 2336, Cell. + 254 733 528 912
Natasha Scripture, WFP/Rome, Office: +39 06 6513 3146, Mob.+39 340 466 3480
Caroline Hurford, WFP/London, Tel. +44-20-72409001, Mob. +44-7968-008474
Emilia Casella, WFP/Geneva, Tel. +41-22-9178564, Mob. +41-792857304
Jennifer Parmelee, WFP/Washington, Tel. +1-202-6530010 ext. 1149, Mob.. +1-202-4223383
Bettina Luescher, WFP/New York, Tel. +1-212-9635196, Mob.+1-646-8241112, luescher@un.org
