San José, Costa Rica - The United
Nations World Food Program (WFP) said today that 8.6 million people in
Central America live in the rural areas of a "drought corridor"
- where they have been exposed to reoccurring natural disasters and face
periodic food shortages.
"These recurring droughts - and
other natural disasters - leave poor families with no crops to feed themselves,"
said Zoraida Mesa, Regional Director of the UN World Food Program. "After
years of natural disasters in Central America, many of these families have
nothing left to sell, nothing left to cultivate, and nothing left to eat.
Many are going hungry."
The survey, entitled "Results from Standardized Food and Livelihood Assessment for Central America", was conducted in El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua and Guatemala in March 2002.
The survey was carried out by WFP in collaboration with national governments, UN partners and donors and included 122 rural communities located in the drought corridor, representing 18,002 families.
The drought corridor is found in parts of Nicaragua, Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador. More than 2.6 million people live in the drought corridor in Nicaragua; 2.5 million in Guatemala; 2.2 million in Honduras; and 1.3 million in El Salvador. The drought corridor receives considerably less rain during the planting and growing season.
Mesa noted that not all 8.6 million residents living in the drought corridor are affected by a natural disaster every year, but certain pockets have been traumatized year after year. While droughts affect the largest number of people, more localised "shocks" such as the mudslides in Guatemala last month or the 2000 earthquake in El Salvador affect the same vulnerable areas.
The survey found that:
- Throughout the drought corridor, households face a period of severe food insecurity during the first planting and harvest season (May through August), as well as during the second harvest season (September to November). Consumption quantities are drastically reduced. In some areas of the drought corridor, households must rely on collecting wild forest foods.
- Drought is locally recurring, affecting Central America and closely related to global climatic variations, including El Nino.
- In the drought corridor, malnutrition is aggravated by a lack of water, health and sanitation services. Almost 70% of the communities in the drought corridor lack a health center, and 20% have no public or private well.
- 70% of the families who live in the drought corridor do not own the land on which live and grow crops. They pay landlords using cash or crops.
- In the drought corridor, more than 84% of the adults did not finish grammar school and 37% are illiterate. More than 46% of all communities surveyed do not have a teacher and 84% have no nurse or doctor.
- Within the drought corridor there are areas that are partially used for coffee, which represents a double threat to seasonal labors due to recent widespread unemployment in the coffee sector.
Due to the recurring nature of droughts in this zone, over the past 10 years residents have lost their ability to cope with new disasters, according to the survey. Families have sold off small farm animals, pulled children from school, and reduced the quantity of their diet.
Drought corridor hard on children
The survey also found that children under five are particularly hard hit by living in the drought corridor.
Chronic malnutrition affects 23% of the population in El Salvador, 33% in Nicaragua, 38% in Honduras and 48% in Guatemala.
This year, WFP had to make an emergency intervention in Guatemala to assist 7,000 children who were acutely malnourished and near death. The hunger was sparked by the combination of two years of drought and rural unemployment.
WFP currently assists more than 1.5 million people in the four Central American countries.
Flooding and other natural disasters a problem, too
In addition to the droughts, flooding is a serious problem along the Caribbean coast of Honduras and Nicaragua, earthquakes devastated parts of El Salvador, and Hurricane Mitch in 1998 ravaged Honduras, Nicaragua, El Salvador and Guatemala.
"Food insecurity triggered by such natural disasters had placed both rural and urban populations in Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras and Nicaragua in a crisis situation," noted the WFP survey. "Depending on the type and magnitude of events, almost nine million people have been affected over the past five years."
WFP is the United Nations' front-line agency in the fight against global hunger. In 2001, WFP fed more than 77 million people in 82 countries including most of the world's refugees and internally displaced people.
WFP Global School Feeding Campaign -- As the largest provider of nutritious meals to poor school children, WFP has launched a global campaign aimed at ensuring the world's 300 million undernourished children are educated.
For more information please contact:
Jordan Dey, WFP Latin America Spokesman,
Tel. +571-346-0611 (Colombia)
jordan.dey@wfp.org