Haiti on the brink of famine warns German NGO
Friday, May 7, 2004
STUTTGART, Germany (AFP): Haiti is on the
brink of a famine with farmers reduced to eating reserves of seed they should
be planting, a German aid agency warned Thursday.
"It's feared the food situation in rural regions will get worse still," the
Protestant Church-linked agency Diakonische Katastrophenhilfe said, citing its
Latin America chief Michael Jordan after a visit to Haiti.
He said farmers were eating seed because they had no other food, but it was
putting the main sowing season in danger which would then reduce any harvest.
"We're worried about a famine," he said.
According to the organisation, more than half of Haiti's 8.5 million people
were already dependent on food aid even before former president Jean-Bertrand
Aristide resigned earlier this year and went into exile following a surge in
political violence. Jordan said that even
now, international aid was only getting to the towns but not the countryside,
where people were left to fend for themselves.
State structures had broken down and armed bands sowed havoc, he added.
As well as food, medicines were also critically lacking and water supplies
were only partially functioning.
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