The impoverished country — which is under international sanctions over its nuclear weapons and ballistic missile programs — has long struggled to feed itself, suffering chronic food shortages.<\/p>\n
The World Food Program (WFP) has by far the largest international aid operation in the country and provides specialized foods to around a million pregnant women, nursing mothers and children every month, according to its website.<\/p>\n
Sanctions have long complicated aid efforts but the WFP said the North\u2019s self-imposed coronavirus isolation was posing new problems for relief work.<\/p>\n
North Korea closed its borders in January last year — the first country in the world to do so — to protect itself against the virus which first broke out in neighboring China.<\/p>\n
\u201cFood imports, international staff deployments and physical monitoring access remain curtailed for a prolonged period,\u201d the WFP said in a report outlining its plans.
\n\u201cWFP will opportunistically use windows in which food imports are allowed to replenish and optimize in-country stocks,\u201d it added.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere is a significant residual risk that, should food imports not be possible, operations will cease in 2021.\u201d<\/p>\n
Pyongyang has long insisted it has not seen any cases of COVID-19 — which has killed more than two million people worldwide — with its leader Kim Jong Un reiterating the claim at a huge military parade in October.<\/p>\n
Experts suggest that is unlikely, given the virus first emerged in neighboring China, its main provider of trade and aid.<\/p>\n
More than 40 percent of North Korea\u2019s 25 million people are considered food insecure, according to UN estimates.<\/p>\n
Published: 23 February ,2021: 01:33 PM GST
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Strict coronavirus restrictions imposed by North Korea could force the World Food Program to suspend operations in the country, where chronic malnutrition is rife, a report on the UN organization\u2019s website said Tuesday. The impoverished country — which is under international sanctions over its nuclear weapons and ballistic missile programs — has long struggled to …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2728,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2727","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-30"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/euroarab-int.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2727","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/euroarab-int.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/euroarab-int.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/euroarab-int.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/euroarab-int.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2727"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/euroarab-int.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2727\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2729,"href":"https:\/\/euroarab-int.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2727\/revisions\/2729"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/euroarab-int.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/2728"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/euroarab-int.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2727"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/euroarab-int.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2727"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/euroarab-int.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2727"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}