A significant increase in donor support was needed to help displaced people return to their homes and productive lives - a critical component in consolidating peace, Kenzo Oshima, UN Under Secretary General for Humanitarian Affairs said.

At least 500 people are reported to have died of hunger and disease since April in demobilisation camps set up for former rebels and their families.

The European Union has released Euro 30 million (US $29.6 million) to provide urgent support for Angola's peace process. The funds fall within a Euro 125 million (US $ 123.6 million) plan for humanitarian and rehabilitation projects in the country.

With the demobilizing of UNITA this week, reuniting war-shattered families becomes another gigantic task. According to local press on Tuesday, Angola is organizing to reunite families, seeing that more than four-million Angolans, roughly one-third the population, are refugees or displaced, after 27 years of brutal civil war.

There's two-way traffic around Kuito at the moment. On the road leading south from the central Angolan town, a long column of people, bundles on their heads and hoes over their shoulders, are heading away from the town. They are internally displaced persons (IDPs) who, prompted by the end of the war, have abandoned the IDP camp to return to their villages.

"This is my motherland," said Pedro Mtondo, 27. "When I went to Zambia I went because of the war and now that I see my country is okay I want to come back - so I can do something so they can have a better life here." Between 8,000 and 10,000 former refugees are believed to have returned to Angola since the signing of a ceasefire between the Angolan government and the UNITA rebels on 4 April.

The United Nations and the Angolan government are not providing sufficient protection for hundreds of thousands of people displaced during Angola's civil war, Human Rights Watch has said in a briefing paper. Internally displaced people (IDPs) in Angola continue to face serious security threats, including harassment by government forces, restrictions on free movement, and possible forced return to areas where they would be at risk of political persecution and human rights abuses, Human Rights Watch said. Hundreds of thousands continue to live in poor conditions in government-run camps without access to basic food or medical care.

With the number of people requiring emergency food aid in post-war Angola rising dramatically, WFP has made a fresh appeal for assistance to international donors. The Agency estimates that it will need US$ 241 million to feed up to 1.5 million people over the next 18 months - over a half-a-million more than the number of current beneficiaries.

A nutritional survey done by Epicentre among 15,000 people in Chiteta in Northern Huambo province of Angola between 10 and 14 June confirms a serious nutritional crisis. One in six children are malnourished, and malnutrition is the main cause of death in the region.

Angola's finance minister on Wednesday denied a humanitarian group's charges that $1 billion had gone missing from the African nation's budget last year. London-based Global Witness, an international humanitarian pressure group, has estimated more than $1 billion or between a third and a half of all state income was unaccounted for in last year's budget.

Angola launched a drive last weekend to vaccinate three million children under-five against polio - with the support of the country's girl and boy scout movement. The signing of Angola's ceasefire in April has, for the first time in years, opened up areas throughout the country that were previously inaccessible for polio National Immunisation Day (NIDs) campaigns, the UN children's agency UNICEF said in a report.

"The situation remains grim, dramatic. It's sad to say, but people are dying, and over the coming months, I'm certain that quite a number of people will perish," says United Nations Humanitarian Co-ordinator for Angola, Erick de Mul.

Angola took advantage of last Thursday's World Refugee Day to express its commitment to gradually solve the dramatic situation facing thousands of its citizens, particularly children and women living in refugee camps.

A senior UN official on Tuesday urged donors to give generously to a US $142 million "bridging" appeal for Angola over the next six months. Commenting after his recent visit to Angola, Ross Mountain, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) Assistant Emergency Relief Coordinator, said: "Of particular concern were the 800,000 people only recently within reach of humanitarian aid, following the 4 April signing of a ceasefire between government forces and UNITA rebels."

The United Nations Children's Fund has launched an appeal for additional funding to help Angola's children, as the true scale of the country's humanitarian tragedy unfolds.

Emerging from three decades of civil war, Angola is up against an HIV/AIDS crisis largely exacerbated by the conflict, health experts and aids agencies point out. "The pandemic is spreading fast, and in some cases threatens whole communities in all regions of Angola," says Haturo Silva, emergency and humanitarian director of the World Health Organisation (WHO).

Angola's peace process has spurred preparations for the eventual return of 470,000 Angolan refugees sheltering in neighbouring countries. The UN refugee agency's (UNHCR) Assistant High Commissioner Kamel Morjane, toured Angola and Zambia last week to assess the conditions for the repatriation of people forced from their homes by close to three decades of civil war.

The United States will assist Angola's national reconciliation process, but the oil-rich African country must do more to reform its economy and fight corruption, a senior US official says. "As Angola faces the simultaneous transitions from war to peace and from a war-constrained polity to a more open political system, it will have to address pressing economic and social issues," Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs Walter Kansteiner told a congressional panel.

Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) has slammed the response of international aid agencies to the crisis in Angola, where the organisation says thousands of people are dying of hunger.

Some 80,000 former fighters of the National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (UNITA) have been disarmed and assembled at demobilization camps, a UNITA spokesman said Monday.