Worsening year by year: drought hits Syria badly

Posted on March 11, 2010
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With the support of the EU, the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) has started distributing emergency food assistance to almost 200,000 people in the rural northeast of Syria, where the drought of 2009 has severely affected small-scale farmers and herding families. Global Arab Network has received EU Delegation press release which said that the donations from the European Commission Humanitarian Aid Department (ECHO) as well as other organizations and countries, will support WFP to provide families with a two-month food ration that includes rice, bulgur, oil, wheat flour, chickpeas and salt. The UN food agency has so far received US$8.2 million out of the required US$22 million needed to provide food assistance to up to 300,000 people.

In addition, the WFP will start distributing supplementary feeding rations to children under five, and to pregnant and nursing mothers in Al-Shadadi district of Al-Hasakeh, one of the worst-affected areas with the highest rate of migration and school closures. Drought in eastern and northeastern Syria has driven some 300,000 families to urban settlements such as Aleppo, Damascus and Deir ez Zour in search of work in one of the largest internal displacements in the Middle East in recent years, according to IRIN (a project of the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs) .

The country’s agriculture sector, which until recently employed 40 percent of Syria’s workforce and accounted for 25 percent of gross domestic product, has been hit badly, but farmers themselves are worst affected, say aid officials. In some villages, up to 50 percent of the population has left for nearby cities.

More: http://www.english.globalarabnetwork.com/201003095120/Syria-Politics/worsening-year-by-year-drought-hits-syria-badly.html