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World Food Programme still has open hands

By Messenger Staff
Monday, May 25
The UN World Food Programme is still actively giving assistance to IDPs, as it has been since immediately after the Russian-Georgian war.

About 90 families were resettled in the villages of Metekhi and Teliani after the war last August in houses newly built by the Georgian Government. The family members are mainly unemployed and live through the assistance of the Government and various donations. One of their major assistance providers is WFP, which has used an ECHO (European Commission's Humanitarian Office) donation to purchase a total of 2,571 tonnes of wheat flour, vegetable oil, sugar, pasta, beans and iodised salt.

The European Commission's Humanitarian Office (ECHO) was among the first donors to respond to the 2008 crisis in Georgia, donating 3 million Euro, thereby providing tens of thousands of internally displaced persons (IDPs) with food and cash assistance.

On May 21 European Commission Ambassador to Georgia H.E. Per Eklund visited settlements where the WFP provides assistance for people displaced after the August war, including Metekhi and Teliani. “I am glad ECHO’s donation is securing essential food for the vulnerable population in the conflict-affected areas as well as helping in the restoration of livelihoods,” Eklund said.

The EC Ambassador, the Governor of Shida Kartli Lado Vardzelashvili and WFP’s Georgia Country Director Lola Castro participated in food distribution to IDPs, who say they are very grateful for this initiative as it means they are not left without attention and have a minimal amount of food to feed their families. The guests also visited Cash-for-Work project sites in the area.

The ECHO donation also allowed the WFP to provide life-saving emergency assistance by airlifting 30 tonnes of high energy biscuits in the first hours of the emergency. ECHO’s timely support to WFP ensured it could give basic food assistance to IDPs living in newly-built houses and collective centres and people who had recently returned to their communities close to South Ossetia, the site of the 2008 conflict. This month WFP launched Cash-for-Work projects in these settlements to rehabilitate irrigation canals and promote agricultural recovery.

Part of ECHO’s donation, 700,000 Euro, was utilised for direct cash transfers to all 29,000 IDPs in order to complement their direct food aid packages and improve their dietary diversity. The direct cash transfer took place from February until April 2009 in collaboration with the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) and the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR).

In July 2009, WFP will launch its new two-year protracted relief and recovery operation in Georgia at a total cost of USD 22 million. The project will promote the re-establishment of the livelihoods and food security of conflict-affected families. WFP plans to distribute a total of 17,139 tonnes of food and over USD 6 million in cash incentives to 130,000 beneficiaries through direct food aid, food-for-work and cash-for-work programmes.