By KUNA,
Geneva : UN Special Rapporteur for the Right to Food Jean Ziegler warned Monday that in places like Darfur and Gaza, as well as in others, if food assistance is stopped people will start dying from famine in a week or two. Ziegler added, in a new briefing today summing up his mandate, that in Gaza where 1.8 million people live, the territory is suffering from a blockade which is contrary to the Geneva conventions and violating the right to food of the Palestinian people. He said that Gaza is today the biggest prison on earth and that the blockade is murderous and has to stop. Ziegler noted that the food crisis and price increase worldwide will affect 6.5 million people when the World Food Program (WFP) will eventually stop its food assistance to school children.
He added that because of the price rise in food commodities, the WFP and the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees (UNRWA) have lost 40 percent of their purchasing power because of the escalating food prices. Ziegler stressed that if communities like with the 2.8 million internally displaced in Darfur, and the 1.5 million refugees in Chad and the Central African Republic (CAR) do not receive their food aid in one or two weeks people will start dying. He added that the same applies to Palestinian refugees in Gaza.
UNRWA stopped its food supply to Palestinian refugees, some one million people, last Thursday, due to fuel shortages. Ziegler is calling for a moratorium on the production of bio-fuels and expressed hope that the UN General Assembly and Human Rights Council would endorse his call.