[dehai-news] (OW) Ethiopia to Admit Higher Numbers of Hungry


New Message Reply About this list Date view Thread view Subject view Author view

From: Biniam Haile \(SWE\) (eritrea.lave@comhem.se)
Date: Tue Aug 12 2008 - 16:15:59 EDT


Ethiopia to Admit Higher Numbers of Hungry
 
Nicholas Benequista, OneWorld US

Fri Aug 8, 2:34 PM ET
 
 
ADDIS ABABA, Aug 8 (OneWorld) - Ethiopian officials have said that the
country will increase its appeal to the international community for a
third time this year, criticizing donors for failing to commit resources
to a hunger crisis precipitated by drought and rising food prices.
 
ADVERTISEMENT
 
"It is the humanitarian community's obligation to see that the
humanitarian needs are fulfilled," said Simon Mechale, who heads the
country's disaster relief agency. "The humanitarian community has not
been able to fully support what was jointly established."
 
Ethiopia is still seeking funding from donors after appealing to them in
June for support to feed 4.6 million hungry people. Ethiopian State
Minister for Agriculture Abera Deresa said the government would increase
that number as early as next week, though he declined to say by how
many.
 
Aid workers familiar with the new appeal say the government may ask for
aid for as many as 8 million and accuse the government here of failing
to admit the severity of the crisis in time. Ethiopia has been eager to
leave behind a legacy of famine after a drought in the mid-1980s left
nearly 1 million to starve, which may explain why the country was
reticent to admit the severity of its latest crisis, they say.
 
Now, even if the expanded appeal matches needs on the ground, aid
workers worry that it may already be too late, especially amid global
shortages of food.
 
"The Ethiopian government is facing the crisis and is ready to admit
figures it wouldn't admit in April and March," one Western donor
official said on condition of anonymity.
 
Donors can take weeks to raise cash and at least four months to provide
commodities from their own farmers. Once cash is available, it can take
as long as eight weeks to procure food internationally and deliver it to
Ethiopia.
 
In June, Ethiopian Minister of Health Tewodros Adhanom announced an
appeal to donors for a total of 380,000 metric tons of emergency food
this year to feed 4.6 million people, more than twice the 2.2 million
thought to have needed aid in April. Tewodros argued then that the
government had been carefully prudent to avoid requesting too much aid.
 
"We always felt that there were more needy people," said David Throp,
who runs Save the Children UK's Ethiopian office. "We welcome any
acknowledgement of additional needs because it allows the international
community to respond, but now it's a question of logistics and
time-lags."
 
Relief efforts are already suffering from shortages after the global
spike in food and gasoline prices essentially cut the purchasing power
of the UN's World Food Program (WFP) in half. Only half the needy are
receiving food aid, and the rations they receive have already been cut
by a third to conserve resources.
 
According to a June report from the WFP, the worldwide prices of staple
foods like wheat and maize have nearly doubled since the beginning of
the decade, making it increasingly difficult for international aid
agencies to buy enough food to support crisis-ridden regions.
 
At the Rome Food Summit in June, governments and international aid
agencies pledged to contribute an additional $6 billion to help poorer
countries cope with hunger amid increasing food prices.
 
Food security experts say the global food crisis has emerged due to a
combination of factors, including climate changes that have altered
rainfall patterns and decreased harvests, increasing demand for corn
ethanol and other grains to fuel cars instead of feeding people, and
skyrocketing demand for meat -- which requires large amounts of grain in
the form of animal feed -- in rapidly developing countries like China
and India.
 
Economic speculators, who buy up grain reserves in anticipation of
selling them at higher prices, have also helped to decrease supplies and
increase global prices, say analysts.
 
"This troubling situation is unlike any the world has faced before,"
says Earth Policy Institute President Lester Brown, who has studied the
convergence of ecological, economic, and humanitarian issues for
decades.
 
"The challenge is not simply to deal with a temporary rise in grain
prices, as in the past, but rather to quickly alter those trends whose
cumulative effects collectively threaten the food security that is a
hallmark of civilization."
 
Brown says that the world's most influential countries must act swiftly
to "stabilize population, restrict the use of grain to produce
automotive fuel, stabilize the climate, stabilize water tables and
aquifers, protect cropland, and conserve soils."
 
"None of these goals can be achieved quickly," he notes, "but progress
toward all is essential to restoring a semblance of food security."
 

 

         ----[This List to be used for Eritrea Related News Only]----


New Message Reply About this list Date view Thread view Subject view Author view

webmaster
© Copyright DEHAI-Eritrea OnLine, 1993-2008
All rights reserved