wfn.org | CWS Gets USAID Grant for Afghanistan Hunger Assessment

[Carol Fouke <carolf@ncccusa.org>]

National Council of the Churches of Christ in the U.S.A.
Contact: NCC News, 212-870-2227; news@ncccusa.org; www.ncccusa.org
NCC 10/5/01 FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

CWS EMERGENCY RESPONSE GETS USAID GRANT
TO CONDUCT AFGHANISTAN HUNGER ASSESSMENT

October 5, 2001, NEW YORK CITY - Church World Service Emergency Response has
received a grant from the United States Agency for International Development
(USAID) to conduct an emergency assessment to determine how humanitarian
assistance can be sent into Afghanistan.
The CWS Emergency Response Team of three Americans and one Afghan national
was expected to leave Washington on October 5.   They will spend at least
five weeks in countries that border Afghanistan, including Pakistan and
possibly Turkmenistan or Uzbekistan, said team leader Jack Huxtable, an
international disaster relief consultant with CWS Emergency Response.
There are no plans to travel within Afghanistan, he said, because of travel
restrictions and international tensions following the Sept. 11 World Trade
Center attacks.
The CWS assessment is part of a larger effort by USAID to "assure the Afghan
people that we are going to continue and intensify our efforts to help them
through the winter," Huxtable said. The CWS assessment is expected to result
in ways to improve the delivery of food assistance to Afghanistan. As many
as 1.5 million Afghans could seek assistance in Pakistan and neighboring
countries in the coming months, the United Nations reported.
President Bush outlined the hunger assistance plan in a briefing at the
State Department Oct. 4.  His administration has committed $320 in
humanitarian aid to Afghanistan, which includes $25 million in emergency
assistance. U.S. humanitarian assistance to Afghanistan came to $174 million
in the last fiscal year.
CWS Emergency Response Program Director Rick Augsburger attended the State
Department briefing.  "The assessment is an incredibly challenging task, but
one which could greatly improve the planning and immediate and long-term
provision of food aid assistance to people in Afghanistan," Augsburger said.
"We're going to roll up our sleeves and be a little creative," Huxtable
said, but added that "food is on its way" to assist Afghans and that one
goal is to stem the flow of internally displaced persons (IDPs) and refugees
within Afghanistan to neighboring countries, particularly Pakistan.
Continuing U.S. intervention has been helping to address what already had
been described as the most severe humanitarian crisis in the world, said
USAID Administrator Andrew Natsios.
Noting that famines are made more severe because the price of food jumps in
a short period of time, Natsios told the Washington Post that a goal of US
assistance would be to reduce and stabilize food prices. He told the Post
the most effective way to do that is through a "market intervention"
strategy, such as supplying commodities to Afghan traders who buy food in
neighboring countries to sell in Afghanistan.
Church World Service is also responding to the situation for new arrivals in
Pakistan with a large shelter assistance program by providing shelter kits
to 15,000 families (comprising some 105,000 persons) who are new arrivals in
the border cities of Quetta and Peshawar, Pakistan, and internally displaced
persons arriving at settlements in central and northern Afghanistan.
The shelter kits, estimated to cost $90 each, include a family tent, one
ground sheet, one plastic sheet and four blankets. Total cost for direct
assistance, transport and storage and support costs: $1.552 million.
Church World Service is the ecumenical relief and development ministry of 36
Protestant, Orthodox, and Anglican denominations who are members of the
National Council of the Churches of Christ in the USA.
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