UN: 14 million rely on food aid

2008-07-22 19:57

Elizabeth A Kennedy

Nairobi - More than 14 million people across the Horn of Africa are relying on food aid and other assistance to survive a devastating drought and rising food prices, aid officials said on Tuesday.

The crisis is especially dire in Ethiopia and Somalia, two of the poorest countries in the world. Many families are surviving on one meal a day, while others are forced to choose between feeding their children and sending them to school.

"This had led to more than belt-tightening," said Mark Bowden, the UN aid chief for Somalia. "People are reducing their food intake ... We have only months before we go into a major crisis."

Bowden estimates that 3.5 million people - half of Somalia's population -will need assistance by the end of 2008. The UN has issued an aid appeal for some $637m for Somalia, but only about a third has been fulfilled, he said.

The worldwide food crisis is threatening to push the number of hungry people in the world toward one billion. An UN summit of 181 countries pledged to reduce trade barriers and boost agricultural production to combat rising food prices.

But in the Horn of Africa, food production is hampered by drought. That means the region including Ethiopia, Eritrea, Somalia, Kenya, Djibouti has been hit with a double blow. In Ethiopia, more than 80% of people live off the land.

Ease the crisis

Peter Smerdon, Nairobi-based spokesperson for World Food Programme, said the September-October rains could help ease the crisis in the Horn of Africa, but there are fears the rain will not come.

"If those rains fail the number in need in those regions may well explode," he said.

Dahir Abdi Salah, a 38-year-old father of three who lives outside the Somali capital, said one year ago his family ate well - a pancake for breakfast, spaghetti for lunch and beans for dinner.

Now, he says, the children, ages 2, 5 and 6, eat one meal a day.

"They eat porridge once a day," he said. "Sometimes we get cereals from the aid agencies."

The food problem in the Horn is spreading further west, as well. Exacerbating the global rise in food prices, which has sparked protests and riots in several West African nations, is an annual decline in food reserves across the high desert-like region called the Sahel, just below the Sahara Desert.

The so-called "lean season" that begins around June is marked by near-empty grain stores, with the next harvest not due until around September. Locust invasions and poor rains in recent years have only worsened the condition, which leads to deadly malnutrition among young children.

- AP