Development & Aid, Headlines, Latin America & the Caribbean

NICARAGUA: Nearly a Third of Population Malnourished

By José Eduardo Mora*

SAN JOSE, Aug 25 2003 (IPS) - Food insecurity is not letting up in Nicaragua, where around a third of the population cannot meet the basic nutritional requirement of at least 2,200 calories a day, according to the World Food Programme.

A new study by this United Nations agency states that out of a population of 5.4 million, more than 1.6 million people are in this situation, with 680,201 enduring “very high food insecurity”, and 947,463 facing “high” insecurity.

Food insecurity exists when people have limited or uncertain access to nutritionally adequate and safe food supplies.

Unemployment, overcrowding, natural disasters and difficulties in food access are the leading reasons why Nicaraguans are going hungry.

Of those affected, 68 percent live in rural areas, where the most vulnerable are children, due to high levels of chronic malnourishment, affecting 38.9 percent of those under age five in the northern department of Matagalpa, according to WFP.

Chronic malnutrition is most evident when a child’s growth is stunted, in other words, the child is smaller than normal for his or her age group.

Nationwide, 20 percent of children under five suffer chronic malnutrition and two percent suffer acute malnutrition, Gary Stahl, director of UNICEF (United Nations Children’s Fund) in Nicaragua, told IPS.

“Although there has been an improvement in relation to the figures from 1998, malnutrition remains very high, and in this sense Nicaragua is seventh among the 22 countries hardest hit by hunger worldwide,” said Stahl.

He stressed the importance of monitoring the food security indicators in each region of Nicaragua, and cited the example of Matagalpa, where the percentage of chronic malnutrition is nearly double the national average, and acute malnutrition is almost 50 percent higher.

The situation of children in Nicaragua, and in Matagalpa in particular is “extremely worrisome,” said Stahl.

For this reason programmes are being developed to substantially improve how the problem is handled, in conjunction with the government of Enrique Bolaños and institutions like the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), he added.

“We are working with 10,924 children with malnutrition, chronic and acute, in four municipalities and in 228 communities,” where there are efforts underway for nutritional fortification, through methods like adding iodine to salt, iron to flour and vitamins to sugar, Stahl explained.

Encouraging mothers to breast feed their newborns is another line of work the agency is taking in Matagalpa, located 130 km north of Managua. Stahl noted that this highly beneficial practice of infant nutrition has increased from 11 percent among newborns in 1993 to 40 percent today.

Matagalpa is a leading coffee-growing region, enduring serious troubles over the past three years as a result of low coffee prices on the international market. The coffee crisis has pushed up unemployment and left hundreds of thousands hungry.

Earlier this month the second “march of the hungry” took place. Some 5,000 families participated, demanding that the government provide land and temporary work, according to Isaac Jaen, coordinator of the National Union of Associated Producers.

He told IPS that after a week of negotiations, the executive branch agreed to distribute 3,409 hectares to 2,500 peasant farmers, who will then pay for the land over a period of 30 years.

The government also agreed to hand over 10 rural properties to 2,000 farmers who will have to pay just 40 percent of the value of those lands over a 20-year period, said Jaen.

To deal with the food and hunger crisis in Matagalpa the authorities are focussing on school lunch programmes and announced temporary jobs for 4,000 rural workers.

“We are satisfied with the agreements reached with the government. Now we expect compliance with the points we negotiated,” said Jaen. Last year, 16 people in Matagalpa died of hunger – seven were children.

The non-governmental Human Rights Centre of Nicaragua has asked the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, an independent entity of the Organisation of American States, for emergency protection and precautionary action to benefit 57 children suffering chronic malnutrition.

Armando Serrati, who works with FAO in Nicaragua, said the agency is carrying out programmes for crop diversification, soil management, access to water and farmer training in Matagalpa and in the western departments of León and Carazo.

“We are also working in the region hit by the drought, in the country’s northwest,” he said.

In 2002, 8.6 million people in Central America endured food insecurity due to a drought that thrashed southern Guatemala, northwest Nicaragua and the south of Honduras and El Salvador, attributed to the climate phenomenon known as El Niño.

“We are confident that within a couple months the government will present its national development strategy, which is aimed at combating poverty in Nicaragua,” said Serrati.

More than 45 percent of Nicaraguans live in poverty, and in rural areas the portion reaches 68 percent, says Arodys Robles, coordinator of the “State of the Region” report on Central America released last month in Costa Rica.

“In Nicaragua, as in the rest of Central America, poverty is concentrated in rural areas. The strongest example of this is Matagalpa, where it is compounded by the structural problem of the coffee crisis,” Robles told IPS.

Nicaragua’s high poverty rate is seen as a driving force behind emigration to neighbouring Costa Rica. Census figures show there were 330,000 Nicaraguans living there in 2000.

* This report is part of a special IPS series on hunger in Latin America.