Children starving, warns UN

ecially in larger cities.
“Children are dying and if we don’t ratchet up our response many more children will become malnourished, and many of those who are already malnourished will die,” said Gerry Dyer, the head of UNICEF’s regional office in Johannesburg.
The survey, which studied 50,000 children, was the largest of its kind in Zimbabwe. UNICEF declined to give any precise figures for the number of children who have died or who are severely malnourished.
Zimbabwe’s agricultural production once helped feed all of southern Africa. But food production has been wrecked by erratic rains and the state’s often violent seizure of most white-owned commercial farms. Vast tracts of farmland either lie fallow or have been carved into subsistence plots.
The region has faced a food crisis in the past year but while the situation in most neighboring countries is stabilizing, in Zimbabwe, the crisis remains acute.
Opposition groups and human rights activists say that the government of embattled President Robert Mugabe is using food as a political weapon in a country where over a quarter of the people are at risk of starvation.