The World Food Programme (WFP) made a renewed plea to the over-stretched aid community this week for funds to feed up to 14-million people facing starvation in the Horn of Africa.
It was the agency’s fourth appeal this month setting the plight of the drought-ravaged Horn against that of Southern Africa.
”The humanitarian system faces the prospect of being completely overwhelmed,” WFP executive director James Morris, said.
”At least 10-million people will need food aid just in Ethiopia. But if this month’s rains stop early, up to 14-million people there will require urgent assistance.
”These figures are large and dramatic and the international community should take notice. Unless we come to grips with this problem very soon we face the real possibility of witnessing a devastating wave of human suffering and death as early as next year.”
Unlike Southern Africa’s food shortages, which have been partly attributed to government mismanagement and corruption, East Africa’s shortfalls are a direct consequence of drought, Morris said.
Before the partial failure of the current rains, Ethiopia was already struggling to recover from several years of drought and the 1999 famine. Now emergency grain stores are running low and malnutrition rates rising.
In Eritrea, three consecutive seasons of poor rainfall have left much of the farmland barren and depleted seed stocks.
”The total number of people affected by this drought in Eritrea is estimated at more than two million, or about 60% of the entire population,” Morris said.
The WFP wants 800 000 tonnes of food aid for the two countries in the next year. The latest UN aid assessment raises the worldwide numbers threatened with starvation to more than 40-million.
”It is clear that business as usual is insufficient to address the rising humanitarian crises we confront,” said Morris.
”The combined needs of more than 40-million people cannot be shrugged off. ”Nor can the needs of 300-million hungry children, who either go to school and don’t get a meal, or don’t go to school at all.”
Morris urged donor states to rethink their responses to appeals.
”WFP is caught between the rising needs of millions of hungry people and government budgets that are already stretched.
”While modern society is not prepared to tolerate the face of mass hunger, agencies like WFP — as well as hundreds of highly effective NGOs — are finding it increasingly difficult to find the resources to respond adequately to the growing number of emergencies.” — (c) Guardian Newspapers 2002