TUNISIA -LIBYA BORDER / SHEERAN

WFP Executive Director Josette Sheeran called for humanitarian access to Libya on Tuesday as she traveled to the Tunisia border to meet local authorities, aid organisations, and people who have fled the ongoing disturbances in Libya. WFP

• Categories: News & Features / News Stories / Unifeed
• Video Length: 00:02:24
• Production Date: 2 March 2011
• Asset Language: Original
• Corporate Name: WORLD FOOD PROGRAMME - WFP
• Subject Topical: NUTRITION; HUMANITARIAN ASSISTANCE
• Geographic Subject: LIBYA
• MAMS Id: U110302f

Description

STORY: TUNISIA - LIBYA BORDER / SHEREEN
TRT: 2.24
SOURCE: WFP
RESTRICTIONS: NONE
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH / ARABIC / NATS

DATELINE: 1 MARCH 2011, RAS JDIR, TUNISIA

Shotlist

1.Various shots, Tunisians throwing water and food across border into Libya to thousands of people trying to escape conflict
2. Various shots, people with bags
3. SOUNDBITE (English) Kosha Allum, Construction Site Supervisor: (Hundreds of Bangledesh guest workers have been stranded in border area seeking assistance to return home)
"Tunisia everybody helps for us eat food, no problem with that one, water, medicine."
4.Various shots, families at a camp set up for refugees from Libya near border
5.SOUNDBITE (Arabic) Mongi Fatre, Egyptian guest worker, (trying to get home)
"Tripoli has become a battle ground. We were robbed in Benghazi and Zawia. We spent last night sleeping in the open air on the border. There are thugs everywhere. There is no safety. No security"
6.Various shots, Josette Sheeran, WFP Executive Dir. Visiting Libyan border crossing
6.SOUNDBITE (English) Josette Sheeran, Executive Director, World Food Program (WFP):
"The situation in Libya is very unstable and dangerous and we don't expect that this pressure will alleviate immediately. We are planning for 3 month emergency operation. We can reassess then but we already have food supplies coming into to support. We are going to buy it locally for the Red Crescant, with the Red Crescant and the revolutionary committees here that have been running the operations. But also we're shipping in food to Benghazi, wheat flour. We are being in 380 metric tons of wheat here to back up the operations here."

28 FEBRUARY 2011, RAS JDIR, TUNISIA

7. Various shots, distribution of WFP high energy biscuits

Storyline

World Food Programme (WFP) Executive Director Josette Sheeran called for humanitarian access to Libya on Tuesday as she traveled to the Tunisia border to meet local authorities, aid organisations, and people who have fled the ongoing disturbances in Libya.

WFP has launched a three-month emergency appeal for $38.7m to assist people fleeing violence in Libya, she noted, referring to an operation that will provide food assistance for 2.7 million people in Egypt, Tunisia and Libya itself if there is safe humanitarian access.

More than 85,000 people have crossed into Tunisia in the past week, and many of the arrivals say they have had limited access to food during the journey from their homes and workplaces in Libya. Local communities and organisations such as the Tunisian Red Crescent are providing the people who arrive with food and other supplies.

Sheeran's visit to the border crossing point came after a WFP-chartered plane landed in the Tunisian city of Djerba carrying 80 tons of High Energy Biscuits for the tens of thousands of migrant workers arriving in Tunisia from Libya. The first truckload of the biscuits reached the border area on Tuesday.

"The situation in Libya is very unstable and dangerous and we don't expect that this pressure will alleviate immediately. We are planning for three month emergency operation. We can reassess then but we already have food supplies coming into to support.," Sheeran said.