Victims 'on their last legs'
2006-03-29 22:13
Bonn - An estimated 11 million east Africans facing drought-induced famine will not survive without urgent food relief, a spokesman for the UN's Food and Agriculture Organisation said here on Wednesday.
"It is real crisis. The drought began late last year and they are on their last legs," said Henri Josserand, the spokesperson for the organisation's early warning service.
Meteorologists have predicted that the region's short rainy season in May may not see enough of a downpour to break the drought, he added.
"The forecasts are not optimistic. In the best of cases, this will last until the end of May.
"In the worst, it will last another four to five months," he told AFP on the sidelines of the UN's third conference on early warning systems in the western German city of Bonn.
The famine was severest in Somalia, but efforts to reach victims there were complicated by the lawlessness in the country that has had no government since 1991, he added.
"Forty to 50% of those in trouble are in Somalia. We have reliable information coming from there, but getting help in is difficult because we deal with intermediaries like tribal leaders and warlords."
The drought, the seventh to ravage the region since 1975, also threatens people in Djibouti, Ethiopia, Eritrea and Kenya.
- AFP