The United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) warned on Friday of an impending “humanitarian catastrophe” in the Horn of Africa where millions of people in four countries are facing severe food and water shortages and potential famine.
“A humanitarian catastrophe [could] engulf the drought-stricken Horn of Africa unless WFP receives urgent donations to provide emergency food aid for an estimated 5,4-million people,” it said in a statement released in the Kenyan capital.
The 5,4-million live in Kenya, Ethiopia, Somalia and Djibouti. The WFP said they were at imminent risk of starvation and appealed for urgent donations to assist the region’s worst-affected populations which have already been hit by mass livestock deaths.
“While final figures on the number of people in need of urgent assistance are still being established, donors must respond now if we are going to avert a humanitarian catastrophe,” said Holdbrook Arthur, WFP’s regional director for East and Central Africa.
“Childrens health and nutrition are deteriorating because many of them are eating just one meal each day and the livestock that many families depend on for food are dying in large numbers from exhaustion and lack of water and food,” he said.
“Pastoralists living in these arid, remote lands have very few survival strategies left and desperately require our assistance to make it through until the next rains,” Arthur said.
In Kenya, where at least 40 people have died from drought-related malnutrition or associated illness and President Mwai Kibaki has declared the drought a national emergency, more than 2,5-million people are expected to require food aid to survive by the end of next month, it said.
“This represents a dramatic increase from the previous 1,1-million people being assisted by WFP and will require an extra 236 000 tonnes of food valued at $140-million,” the agency said.
In southern Somalia, which is heading for its worst harvest in a decade, an estimated 1,4-million people need assistance and an additional 59 000 tonnes of food worth $46-million are required to stave off famine, it said.
In southeast Ethiopia, the number of people in dire need is estimated at 1,5-million, in addition to about 5,5-million people who have already been receiving WFP assistance, it said, adding that in Djibouti, the number is feared to rise from 47 000 to 60 000 in the coming months.
Similar warnings have been issued by regional governments and relief agencies, including the UN Food and Agricultural Organisation, since mid-December when the effects of the drought began to bite. – AFP