From: Yemane Natnael (yemane_natnael@yahoo.com)
Date: Sat Jul 26 2008 - 14:35:46 EDT
Famine, soaring food prices threaten millions in east Africa
NAIROBI (AFP) — More than 14 million people across east Africa are
facing a humanitarian disaster because of a "lethal mix" of soaring
food prices, drought and conflict, aid agencies say.
"The
situation in the region is of extreme concern," Peter Smerdon,
spokesman for the World Food Programme in Nairobi, told AFP Friday.
"Rising
food prices on top of drought this year means that more and more people
than in previous years are falling over the edge into destitution," he
said.
His comments echo warnings from the UN children's agency and the British-based development charity Oxfam.
"A
lethal mix of drought, expanding conflict, rising food and energy
prices, disease and high poverty is pushing children and their families
in the Greater Horn of Africa to the brink of disaster," UNICEF said
earlier this month.
Oxfam said Thursday a "toxic cocktail" of crises was putting millions at risk.Aid agencies estimate that a total of 14.6 million people are facing disaster if donors do not urgently release funds.
Smerdon
said UN agencies, non-governmental organisations, governments and
donors "need to react now to provide sufficient food and other
assistance to bring the situation under control, or else there will be
widespread suffering and increased deaths".
At least 2.6 million
Somalis -- out of a total population of between nine and 10 million --
are facing acute food shortages, but this figure could rise to 3.5
million by the end of the year, the UN says.
"An estimated
180,000 children are believed to be acutely malnourished" in the Horn
of Africa nation, an increase of 11 percent in the past six months,
according to the Food Security Analysis Unit, run by the UN's food
agency.
In certain areas the rains have failed for the fourth season running, it noted in a report published Friday.
The
situation is made worse by the pull-out of aid agencies from Somalia,
where civil war has raged since 1991 and where aid workers have
increasingly been targeted in the violence.
The World Food
Programme has launched an urgent appeal for 254 million euros (400
million dollars) to feed people threatened with starvation in Somalia,
as well as Ethiopia, Djibouti, Kenya and Uganda, until the end of the
year.
In Ethiopia, where a rebellion is raging in the southeast
Ogaden region, a serious drought has left about 4.6 million people in
need of urgent food aid, the UN says. It has raised fears of a repeat
of the devastating famines of the 1980s that killed almost one million
people.
In Kenya, which is recovering from a bloody political
crisis that left hundreds of thousands of people displaced, 1.2 million
people are facing starvation.
The UN says 707,000 people in
Uganda's rural region of Karamoja are in dire need of food, and a
further 80,000 people face severe food shortages in Djibouti, which has
been hit by numerous droughts in recent years.
In Eritrea,
drought and rising food prices are also likely to have serious
humanitarian consequences, but details are scant because the Asmara
government has ordered at least nine NGOs to leave the country since
the beginning of 2006.
http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5iCSd2znuNxl9YRz-WO7Y24bSUXcA
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