Drought puts 40,000 children at imminent risk of dying of hunger in the Horn of Africa by AFP 11:05am 3rd May, 2006   May 15, 2006.    Drought puts 40,000 children at risk in Horn of Africa: UN    Months of scorching drought have left 40,000 children in the Horn of Africa at imminent risk of dying of hunger, the United Nations warned today as it launched an urgent appeal for more aid.    Torrential rains last month only made the situation worse, killing many of the cattle which had survived the previous six months of drought and bringing malaria and other disease, the UN children''s agency UNICEF said.    "Around 40,000 children are so malnourished that they face the prospect of death in the months ahead," UNICEF''s deputy executive director Rima Saleh said in a report released in Geneva.    "This drought has killed up to half the animal population of pastoralists in the Horn of Africa. Rain doesn''t bring that back. A pastoralist without a herd is like a farmer without seeds."    UNICEF said that around half the 16 million nomadic populations scattered across outlying regions of Ethiopia, Kenya and Somalia, including 1.6 million children under five, were in need of emergency aid.    But donor nations have only provided a third of the $US80 million appeal launched by UNICEF, which called Monday for more cash to support its efforts.    The United Nations as a whole has asked donors to give $US426 million in aid to east Africa, including Djibouti and Eritrea, this year.    Ms Salah, who recently visited East Africa to assess the crisis, stressed that the rains had not improved the food supply of the hunger-stricken locals.    "What I saw was not the end of an emergency. People are in desperate need of help," she said.    Far from a blessing, the downpours over the past few months have proved a curse for locals, flooding the parched soil, forcing families from homes, cutting off roads and vital humanitarian access and spreading deadly diseases borne by mosquitos which thrive in stagnant waters.    The worst effect of the rains, aid officials have warned in the past, is that news of an end to the drought will dry up emergency relief contributions at a time when many livestock-dependent pastoralists scrounge to regenerate their herds.    The UN Children''s Fund recalled that a previous drought in 2000 killed nearly 100,000 people in the same region.    The agency said its appeal for $US54 million would pay for food, medicines, water and treating the special needs of children, many of whom were living alone after losing their parents during the drought.    UNICEF said it and other UN relief agencies were also adapting the way they deliver their aid in order to better meet the needs of nomads regularly facing food shortages. One such way has been to establish mobile feeding programs for children, it said.    May 1, 2006    Funding shortfalls Plague East Africa Drought Relief: UN.    Wajid, Somalia (AFP) - Funding shortfalls for emergency relief for millions facing acute shortages in drought-hit east Africa are threatening to exacerbate already dire conditions, a senior UN envoy warned.    Only 20 percent of an emergency 426-million-dollar (348-million-euro) appeal for 15 million drought-affected people in the region has yet been met, the envoy said as a British charity warned the entire relief operation was at risk.    "It is a silent tsunami," Kjell Magne Bondevik, the UN Special Humanitarian Envoy for the Horn of Africa, said in southern Somalia, one of the worst-affected areas, where more than two million face starvation.    "That is why the public awareness is not so high -- the drought has had a gradual, terrible impact where the tsunami (that hit southeast Asia in December 2004) was sudden and dramatic," he told reporters after touring relief operations here.    Along with Somalia, Kenya, Djibouti, Eritrea and Ethiopia have been badly hit by the drought. Burundi and Tanzania are also affected and of the total 15 million people in need, about eight million require emergency assistance.    "In general, we are still in a very critical situation," Bondevik said, lamenting that recent rains, which have caused flooding in parts of east Africa, were "too little, too late" to halt the crisis.    "But with proper funding, it is still possible to avoid a catastrophe," Bondevik said, adding that poor donor response to the aid appeal was of deep concern.    "I am a bit worried ... Maybe the donor community is feeling a bit tired. They say "oh, the Horn of Africa again", he said.    While the United Nations has funds to cover at least some of the shortfall, Bondevik warned that it weas money that would have to be diverted from medium- to long-term recovery projects.    Meanwhile, the British charity Oxfam International warned that the lack of funding was disrupting recovery efforts and throwing millions of lives into danger.    "Emergency relief is needed now and more of it," it said in a statement released in Nairobi. "Donors are right to make this the first priority, but there needs to be a plan to help rebuild lives as well as save them.    "We risk getting into a pernicious cycle where money for long-term recovery is being diverted to fund emergency relief," it said. "If long-term projects are raided every time we face a crisis, the region will never progress.    "Instead of robbing Peter to pay Paul, additional funds should be made available now to support both strands," it said.
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