The United Nations food agency launched a program to feed 2.1 million of the poorest Indonesians, including hundreds of thousands of people displaced by sectarian and separatist violence.
The operation by the World Food Programme (WFP) will cost 65 million dollars and run until the end of 2003, the organisation said Monday.
It is aimed at 2.1 million Indonesians who face the highest risk of hunger and malnutrition because of the rising costs of food and other commodities, the WFP said in a statement.
The relief operation will enable the 1.5 million urban poor to buy subsidized rice at a fraction of the normal price. WFP will also give rice to 300,000 internally displaced people throughout the vast archipelago as well as blended food, a vital nutritional supplement, to children under two years of age and their mothers.
"The operation is designed to solve at least one problem for these people – getting just enough to eat – so they can grapple more effectively with serious setbacks of poverty, unemployment and poor health," said WFP country director Mohamed Saleheen in the statement.
"We know, for example, that in the four major cities where we work, half of the children under five years of age are stunted and 30 percent are underweight. This is the result of acute and widespread malnutrition and we need to short-circuit it now so that it is not passed on to the next generation," Saleheen said.
He said unskilled urban labourers in Indonesia earned half what they did before the regional crisis, which struck in mid-1997 and crippled the economy. In addition, Saleheen said, many in WFP's target group have no access to government social safety nets because they are illegal settlers.
"We are working with what are called the 'ultra poor,' a designation which means that they spend over 75 percent of their income on food but consume less than 75 percent of the minimum daily calorie requirement," added Saleheen.
He warned that assistance to the refugees had taken on a new urgency. A recent WFP study showed the number of poor people among the internally displaced Indonesians is about three times higher than the overall average of 19 percent at district level.
"The IDP [internally displaced people] wave has risen in just the last three years," said Saleheen. "That means that we still have an opportunity to fix these problems before they harden into a second generation."
Indonesia was beset by sectarian, separatist and communal unrest following the end of the 32-year autocratic rule of president Suharto in May 1998. An estimated 1.3 million people are internal refugees.