UN seeks US$415m for Zim crisis

Announcing the Consolidated Appeal Process (CAP) for 2011, the UNs

Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said

Zimbabwes humanitarian situation remained precarious despite two

years of modest economic recovery.

It said unresolved problems in the agriculture sector would mean

millions of Zimbabweans would continue to face hunger next year. Food

assistance would chew up the largest chunk of the appeal, accounting

for nearly US159 million or 38 percent of the total amount sought.

An estimated 1.7 million Zimbabweans are expected to face severe food

insecurity in the peak hunger period between January and March 2011

when farmers start harvesting crops from the 2010/11 season.

But due to problems besetting the agricultural sector, there is no

guarantee that the new season would produce enough food to meet the

countrys requirements through the 2011/12 consumption year that runs

between next April and March 2012.

Ongoing farm seizures by President Robert Mugabes supporters have

frustrated the remaining large-scale white growers.

A unity government formed by Mugabe and Prime Minister Morgan

Tsvangirai in February 2009 has watched helplessly as members of the

security forces and hardliner activists of Mugabes Zanu (PF) party

intensified in recent weeks a drive to seize all land still in white

hands.

The coalition government is yet to act to fulfil a promise to restore

law and order in the key agricultural sector, while more farms

including some owned by foreigners and protected under bilateral

investment protection agreements between Zimbabwe and other nations

have been seized over the past 21 months.

And to make matters worse, according to the white-dominated Commercial

Farmers Union, police and judicial officers who are supposed to

enforce the rule of law were also among the beneficiaries of the

free-for-all land grab.