15m in Africa face 'disaster'

2008-07-23 07:35

Nairobi - Nearly 15 million people in the Horn of Africa region are facing a humanitarian disaster unless donors urgently release funds to deliver supplies, aid agencies warned on Tuesday.

In a region beset by conflict and piracy, prolonged drought and rising inflation have exacerbated human suffering especially among the rural and urban poor, they said.

The World Food Programme said it urgently needed $403m to feed the hungry people in Somalia, Ethiopia, Djibouti, Kenya and Uganda until year-end.

"If we do not get this assistance urgently, there will be disaster in this region," WFP spokesperson Peter Smerdon told AFP.

"What is worrying is the drought and rising food prices. It means that many people are going to be sent into destitution," he said, adding that if the September-October rains fail, the numbers will explode in the region.

Smerdon said one million Somalis might be without cereal in August unless countries offered naval ships to escort relief supplies to the country, which has been wracked by lawlessness for 17 years.

'Emergency levels'

Many WFP-contracted ships have refused to deliver aid to Somalia because of pirate attacks.

The Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (Ocha) said the humanitarian situation had reached "emergency levels" in Somalia and Ethiopia, while a shortfall of rain might worsen the situation in the other countries.

"If the rains fail and we don't have enough funding from donors, we are staring at a crisis in the coming months," said Ocha regional chief Besida Tonwe.

Some 4.6 million Ethiopians need emergency food support, an increase from 2.2 million in the period from January to March 2008 while an additional 5.7 million drought-affected others require extended support - food or cash.

"If we do not get $28m to help feed and threat children in Ethiopia, they will die," warned Per Engebak, the Unicef chief for eastern and southern Africa.

At least 2.6 million Somalis are facing acute shortages, but the figure may increase to 3.5 million by the end of 2008.

Since the beginning of 2008 in Somalia, 19 aid workers have been killed, 13 others have been abducted and 81 incidents where humanitarian food supplies have been looted, according to Care international spokesperson Beatrice Spadacini.

"The greatest problem for us is that we cannot reach the people in need," because of Somalia insecurity, she added.

'Very acute crisis'

The UN Resident and Humanitarian Coordinator for Somalia, Mark Bowden, said donors have only delivered 37% of the aid the agency appealed for Somalia.

"We fear that we are moving into a very acute crisis in Somalia over the next few months. We need far more support externally to be able to do what is probably one of the most difficult relief jobs going in the world at the moment," he told reporters in Nairobi.

Kenya, recovering from months of post-election violence, is experiencing widespread food insecurity with 1.2 million people in need of urgent supplies.

The agencies said 707 000 people in Uganda's rural region of Karamoja are in dire need of food.

Another 80 000 are locked in an acute food crisis in Djibouti while in Eritrea, a combination of drought and the knock-on effect of global food price increases is likely to have humanitarian consequences.

The region has yet to recover from a 2006 drought that threatened 11 million people, whose conditions were later worsened by heavy rains that inundated parched soil, causing floods that have displaced thousands and disrupted aid distribution.

- AFP