Ban calls on countries to fund life-saving support for millions in Horn of Africa by United Nations Agencies 5:13pm 6th Jul, 2011   29 July 2011    UN calls for a further US$1.4 billion to assist Horn of Africa. (UNDP)    The United Nations today appealed for a further $1.4 billion dollars to provide life-saving assistance to more than 12 million people across the Horn of Africa.    In a new regional overview, the UN warned that the famine in two regions of Somalia could spread throughout the rest of the south within 1-2 months, if the humanitarian response did not increase in line with rising needs.    Thousands of Somalis continue to flee across the border to Ethiopia and Kenya every day, driven out by the worst drought in sixty years, soaring food prices and continued fighting. Aid agencies have been denied access to the most affected areas.    Women and children are forced to walk weeks under gruelling conditions to reach safety, and are arriving in refugee camps in appalling health, overwhelming the already stretched capacity to respond.    Drought conditions in Kenya’s northern and north-eastern districts have deteriorated further after the poor performance of the March-June long rains. The food crisis is expected to peak in August and September.    In Ethiopia, prolonged La Niña conditions have affected two consecutive rainy seasons, resulting in rapidly deteriorating food security in the drought-affected lowlands of southern and south-eastern Ethiopia, as well as in parts of the central highlands.    And in Djibouti, the drought has forced growing numbers of pastoralists and people in rural areas to migrate to urban areas, where food insecurity is rising due to high levels of unemployment and rising food prices.    The emergency is expected to persist for at least three to four months, and the number of people needing humanitarian assistance could increase by as much as 25 per cent.    “More than twelve million people - in Kenya, Ethiopia, Somalia and Djibouti - are in dire need of help, and the situation is getting worse,” said Emergency Relief Coordinator Valerie Amos. “If we are to avoid this crisis becoming an even bigger catastrophe, we must act now.”    20 July 2011    UN declares famine in two regions of southern Somalia.    The United Nations today declared a famine in two regions of southern Somalia owing to the worst drought in decades, and appealed for urgent resources to assist millions of people in desperate need of help.    “Every day of delay in assistance is literally a matter of life or death for children and their families in the famine-affected areas,” said Mark Bowden, the UN Humanitarian Coordinator for Somalia.    It is the first time since 1991-92 that the UN has declared famine in a part of Somalia.    Famine is declared when acute malnutrition rates among children exceed 30 per cent, and people are not able to access food and other basic necessities, according to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA).    Mr. Bowden warned that malnutrition rates in Somalia are currently the highest in the world, with peaks of 50 per cent in certain areas of the country’s south.    In the two regions of southern Bakool and Lower Shabelle, acute malnutrition rates are above 30 per cent, with deaths among children under the age of five exceeding six per 10,000 per day in some areas. In the last few months, tens of thousands of Somalis have died as a result of causes related to malnutrition, the majority of them children.    Consecutive droughts have affected the country in the last few years while the ongoing conflict has made it extremely difficult for agencies to operate and access communities in the south. Nearly half of the Somali population – 3.7 million people – are now estimated to be in crisis, with an estimated 2.8 million of them in the south.    Speaking to reporters in New York, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon stressed that humanitarian agencies need urgent funding to save lives, adding that roughly $300 million is needed in the next two months to provide an adequate response to famine-affected areas.    “We need donor support to address current needs and prevent a further deterioration of the crisis,” he said. “If funding is not made available for humanitarian interventions now, the famine is likely to continue and spread.”    Mr. Bowden said that, without immediate action, the famine will spread to all eight regions of southern Somalia within two months, due to poor harvests and infectious disease outbreaks.    “We still do not have all the resources for food, clean water, shelter and health services to save the lives of hundreds of thousands of Somalis in desperate need,” he added.    “We call on all parties, from the donor community to the local authorities in Somalia, to lift restrictions on humanitarian grounds,” OCHA said. “The humanitarian community is doing its best to address the food crisis, but much more could be done if the current restrictions to the delivery of aid are lifted and unrestricted cross-border passage of relief aid is granted.”    Despite challenges, humanitarian agencies have scaled up efforts in recent weeks. To expedite the delivery of supplies into the worst-affected areas, the UN has started airlifting urgently needed medical, nutrition and water supplies.    The Executive Director of the UN World Food Programme (WFP), said the agency plans to mobilize supplementary food products for children in response to the broader Horn of Africa drought crisis.    Jacques Diouf, the Director-General of the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), said “Hundreds of people are dying every day and if we do not act now many more will perish,” said Mr. Diouf. “We must avert a human tragedy of vast proportions.    “As much as food assistance is needed now, we also have to scale up investments in sustainable immediate and medium-term interventions that help farmers and their families to protect their assets and continue to produce food,” he added.    UN agencies have asked for $1.6 billion to pay for essential programmes in the Horn of Africa, but have only received half that amount. Kenya, Somalia, Ethiopia and Djibouti are all facing a crisis that is being called the worst in 50 years, leaving an estimated 12 million people in need of humanitarian assistance.    Valerie Amos, Under Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and head of OCHA, just returned from a trip to the region, where she visited a health centre in Ethiopia.    “The thing that I was most affected by was the women who had walked for five hours that day to get to that health centre. They had brought the children that were strong enough to accompany them. My big worry is the children they have left at home who are extremely vulnerable.    “So it’s serious – the gravity of this cannot be underestimated,” she said. “This crisis is not going to end anytime soon so we have to recognize that the numbers will increase and we will have to scale up our efforts considerably.”    She added that while people need food and nutritional help, those affected by the crisis need clean water, sanitation, health care, livelihoods support, protection and shelter.    “More funding is urgently needed,” stated Ms. Amos, who is also the UN Emergency Relief Coordinator.    Executive Director of the World Food Programme, Josette Sheeran, said her agency is urgently scaling up scaling up the delivery of highly fortified, supplementary food products, especially targeting the first 1,000 days of life.    “Protecting the brains and bodies of young children, and pregnant and lactating women through special nutritional food is our top priority”.    Ms. Sheeran stressed the need for continued support for long-term initiatives that will help communities in the Horn of Africa to break out of the vicious cycle of drought and disaster.    In Geneva, two UN human rights experts appealed to the global community to take “concerted and urgent” measures to assist the millions who are suffering in the region, warning of large-scale starvation if international intervention is not forthcoming.    Shamsul Bari, the Independent Expert on the situation of human rights in Somalia, noted that drastically increasing food prices and continuing conflict and insecurity have caused a huge displacement of the population, with thousands of Somalis fleeing to Ethiopia, Kenya, and Djibouti every day.    Mr. Bari expressed concerns over the slow response of the humanitarian community to the situation.    For his part, the UN Special Rapporteur on the right to food, Olivier De Schutter, said the international community should be prepared for more such droughts.    “This crisis looks like a natural calamity, but it is in part manufactured,” Mr. De Schutter said, adding that climate change will result in such events being more frequent. He called for, among other measures, emergency food reserves in strategic positions, and better preparedness for drought, for which Governments must be held to account.    “With a rate of child malnutrition above 30 per cent in many regions of these countries, the failure of the international community to act would result in major violations of the right to food,” Mr. De Schutter said. “International law imposes on States in a position to help that they do so immediately, where lives are at stake.”    July 2011    Somalia: "I watched four of my children die of hunger" (IRIN)    With 100 heads of cattle, Halima Omar"s family were considered fairly well off in their community in Da"ara village in Somalia"s Lower Shebelle region. However, after three years of consecutive drought, the herd has been reduced to nothing and the family has been displaced.    Omar, 30, has buried four of her children, who died of hunger, and is now one of thousands of drought-displaced people migrating to urban centres in search of help in southern Somalia.    Omar"s home is a makeshift shelter in a camp for internally displaced persons (IDPs), with more than 3,000 families (18,000 people) near Kurtunwarey district, 140km south of the capital, Mogadishu. A community leader in the camp told IRIN that trucks were picking up emaciated families by the roadsides and dropping them off at the nearest urban centres.    Omar survives on the good will of the local community. She spoke to IRIN on 4 July: "We were very comfortable when we had our animals. We were one of the better-off families in Da"ara. But this changed when we lost our last cow five months ago. They died one by one. We could not even sell them.    "The cows were all we had. My husband went looking for food every day in the bush but there was not much to hunt. It was like the whole country was dying. Some days, he will come with enough from the bush to eat for one meal; other days we will go hungry. We went hungry more days than we ate. My children started dying slowly.    "I lost four of my six children to hunger. We felt helpless. There is nothing in the world worse than watching your own child die in front of your eyes because you cannot feed him. We finally left the village two weeks ago to try to save the last two.    Now we are in this camp in Kurtunwarey with many other families like us. I am breastfeeding both of my children because I have nothing else. There is nothing left in my breasts but I have to give them something.    "Many children in this camp are so weak they can no longer control their bodily functions. The community here has been good but there too many of us and they are not much better off anyway.    "I keep wondering how long we will survive like this. I am worried about my last two children; I pray to God for help to come before it is too late for many of us.    "Every day we are burying someone here; you wake up in the morning and find that somebody’s child has passed away or you are woken up by the wail of a mother who just lost a child.    "I am losing hope; I don"t know whether or not the situation will ever get better. Every day, I keep wondering whether we will eat today or not. I will do anything to keep my children alive but don’t know what to do. There is nothing here, no job, no food.    "Maybe this is our fate or maybe a miracle will happen and we will all be saved from this nightmare." Visit the related web page
	Next (more recent) news item
	Next (older) news item