Unrest straining U.N.’s peacekeepers, food resources

UNITED NATIONS – For four years, U.N. peacekeepers have protected Haiti’s fragile government from attacks by street gangs, drug lords and political agitators. But they were no match for a bowl of rice that has doubled in price during the past year.

Thousands of demonstrators last month rampaged through Haiti’s main cities, protesting the high cost of living in a spree of violence that toppled the prime minister and set the stage for the country’s worst political crisis in more than a year.

“If people are hungry, they have no stake in stability,” said Hedi Annabi, the U.N. special representative in Haiti, in a phone interview from Port au Prince. “They will be ready for anything – for anarchy – because they have nothing to safeguard or to fight for.”

The Haitian experience has been playing out around the world. Food protests and riots have erupted in more than 30 countries, bringing unrest in places as diverse as Bolivia, Myanmar, Cameroon, Egypt, Indonesia, Malaysia, Mauritania, Mexico, Morocco, Pakistan and Senegal. The unrest has strained U.N. peacekeepers and relief workers, who provide security and life-saving assistance where the crisis has hit most severely. Some U.N. relief planners have raised concern about the organization’s capacity to cope with the world’s more than 850 million chronically hungry.

“We are anticipating some significant increase in the numbers of people who are going to be hungry, malnourished, and at risk of getting sick and dying during the next months,” said David Nabarro, the deputy coordinator of a U.N. task force that’s managing the response to the food crisis. “For most poor people, they don’t have the option of protesting: They have to cope with the situation.”

The World Food Program has been forced in recent months to temporarily suspend food-delivery programs in Haiti, Burkina Faso and Mozambique. U.N. efforts to feed the hungry in conflict zones such as Afghanistan and Somalia have been undermined by armed groups intent on stealing the food or preventing U.N. food convoys from feeding the neediest.

In Afghanistan, more than 30 WFP trucks in the past year have been commandeered, robbed or burned, sending food for thousands of people into flames. On May 17, a convoy of 79 commercial trucks loaded with food was attacked on the road from Kandahar to Herat and Nimroz.

“These attacks are preventing food from reaching Afghanistan’s poorest, most vulnerable communities with life-saving food assistance,” said Aleem Siddique, a spokesman for the U.N. mission in Afghanistan.