Be Loyal or Starve

Swedish development cooperation organization demands: Send food observers to Zimbabwe

Kooperation Utan Gränser

1 October 2007

Now, the international development cooperation organization Kooperation Utan Gränser / Swedish Cooperative Centre (SCC) demands the creation of a food observer force. In the same way as the international community supervises elections in other parts of the world, an independent international control of the food aid is demanded to assume that it reaches those who most need
it.

The Swedish Cooperative Centre presents today the report "Be loyal - or starve!"

The report is, among other things, based on the organization's own interviews among some forty families from rural areas in Zimbabwe. All interviewed persons affirm that they lack enough food to survive until the next crop.

- Farmers whom we have interviewed confirm that the distribution of food is controlled politically, says Anna Tibblin, director of the SCC in Southern Africa.

The Swedish Cooperative Centre/SCC exhorts the Swedish government to promote that the European Union and the World Food Programme (WFP) create a food observer force. The UN:s World Food Programme is today responsible for great part of the food aid to Zimbabwe. The Swedish Cooperative Centre/SCC considers that the surrounding world should urge the regime to accept an increased international control of the aid.

Read the report "Var lojal - eller svält!" (in Swedish) on www.utangranser.se

For further information contact Camilla Lundberg Ney: +46 703 098 884

The Swedish Cooperative Centre (SCC) is an international development cooperation organization that helps people to fight poverty for themselves. The SCC supports development projects in more than 20 countries and has supported long term development projects for several decades in Zimbabwe.