[Shadow_Group] Fw: Mugabe Bans Charity

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rense.com

Mugabe Bans Charity 
Feeding 90,000 Children
By Peta Thornycroft in Harare 
The Telegraph - UK 
12-2-4
 
Ninety thousand hungry Zimbabwean children have lost the only daily meal
they could count on because President Robert Mugabe's regime has forced
an aid agency to leave the country. 
  
Switzerland's Medair was feeding primary school children in two of
Zimbabwe's poorest districts but the authorities refused to renew work
permits for international staff. 
  
The regime stopped Medair from distributing any food four months ago and
refused to register it as an approved non-governmental organisation. "We
found ourselves prevented from distributing and so the food has sat
deteriorating in the warehouses since August," said Mark Screeton, a
Medair spokesman at its Geneva headquarters. 
  
"It's been so frustrating - not being free to work - and now we leave,
knowing the increasing food insecurity that faces those primary school
children and their families." 
  
Medair began working in Zimbabwe two years ago and gave a meal of
enriched porridge to children in 150 schools. 
  
The United Nations World Food Programme, which has fed millions of
Zimbabweans since 2001, described Medair as one of its best distribution
partners. "They were efficient and reliable," said a UN spokesman. "What
more could we want?" 
  
The government in Zimbabwe regards foreign aid agencies with deep
suspicion and is quietly disrupting their work. Yesterday a senior WFP
official, who declined to be named, said: "There is no implementing
partner available to replace Medair and we are nervous that the few which
may come forward to help will also be forced to leave Zimbabwe before the
next harvest." 
  
Last month the Famine Early Warning System Network predicted that more
than two million rural households would need food supplies by this month.

  
© Copyright of Telegraph Group Limited 2004. 
  
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2004/12/02/<http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2004/12/02/>
wzimb02.xml&sSheet=/news/2004/12/02/ixworld.html

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