North Korea has formally told the UN it no longer needs food aid, despite reports of malnutrition in the country, according to the BBC.
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Deputy foreign minister Choe Su-hon said the country now had enough food, due to a good harvest, and accused the US of using aid as a political weapon, the broadcaster said. The move comes as the international community continues to urge North Korea to give up its nuclear ambitions.
Analysts say Pyongyang might be worried that taking more food aid now might be perceived as a sign of weakness.
In recent years, the UN and other international agencies have been feeding up to six million of the poorest and most vulnerable North Koreans.
But according to the BBC’s correspondent in Seoul, Charles Scanlon, these organisations have long struggled for access to one of the world’s most closed societies.
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By GlobalDataEven at the height of a famine in the mid-1990s, which may have killed two million people, they were tightly restricted and refused entry to large parts of the country.
Now the authorities are cracking down altogether, according to the BBC’s correspondent. After meeting UN Secretary General Koki Anna in New York on Thursday, Choe Su-hon told reporters: “We requested him to end humanitarian assistance by the end of this year.”
He said that the North wanted all foreign NGOs out by the end of the year, and added that the UN was to stop delivering food aid and to focus on long-term development instead.
Gerald Bourke, a spokesman for the WFP, said that UN staff were currently discussing with the North Korean government what this meant in practice – adding that he was hopeful that current food-for-work and other community-based projects would class as longer-term development.
“We’re also talking to donors to see how much they still want to help us in this way,” he added.
Bourke said that despite Choe’s assertion of a better harvest in North Korea this year – and his pledge that the government was “prepared to provide the food to all our people” – there was still a considerable need for food aid.
“North Korea has a substantial and chronic food deficit,” Bourke said, adding that malnutrition rates, especially for mothers and young children, were still very high.
Choe also accused other countries, especially the US, of attempting to “politicize humanitarian assistance, linking it to the human rights issue”. He said this constituted interference in the internal affairs of the country. Washington rejected the suggestion it was mixing politics with relief work.
“All US decisions are based on… the need of the country involved, competing needs elsewhere and our ability to ensure that the aid gets to people who need it most,” a State Department statement said.
Another problem which analysts believe may have led to the North’s decision to ask foreign organisations to leave is the extensive surveying these groups are required to do, to ensure their money is being well-spent.
“Part of the problem is with our monitoring people moving around the country,” Bourke conceded. “This is and has been a concern for them.”
In contrast, China and South Korea provide huge food shipments to North Korea without overseeing where it ends up.
The South says it gives such aid as part a strategy to promote political reconciliation.
But diplomats and aid workers say these generous shipments have undermined the multilateral effect, the BBC said.
