From: Biniam Tekle (biniamt@dehai.org)
Date: Fri Sep 19 2008 - 11:43:33 EDT
*Ethiopia downplaying effect of food crisis: UN*
*September 19, 2008*
**
*JIJIGA, Ethiopia: Ethiopia has been accused of deliberately underestimating
the scale of the deadly drought facing millions of its people, some of whom
are being deprived of emergency food aid by the country's military.*
The humanitarian crisis, caused by three years of failed rains, affects more
than 4.6 million people, and the official number could jump to as high as
6.7million this week, *The Times* newspaper reported yesterday.
The UN says the real number at risk is more than 8 million, an estimate
disputed by Addis Ababa, which is insisting on publishing a much lower
figure.
"The figure has risen very substantially, maybe even doubled," said John
Holmes, the UN's emergency relief co-ordinator, who visited Ethiopia this
month, in comments reported by *The Times*.
"Any government doesn't want to be perceived as always in the position of
receiving aid."
The accusation came as the UN released figures yesterday showing the global
numbers suffering from acute hunger rose from 850 million to 925 million by
the start of this year, with much of the increase due to rising prices.
The number of people suffering from malnutrition, before the worst effects
of global price rises, "rose just in 2007 by 75 million", UN Food and
Agriculture Organisation head Jacques Diouf told an Italian parliament
committee.
The FAO prices index showed global food price rises of 12 per cent in 2006,
24 per cent last year and 50 per cent so far this year.
The Ethiopia crisis is at its most worrying in the vast deserts of the
Ogaden region, where the UN's World Food Program says in a confidential
alert to donors it is receiving "increasing reports of hunger-related
mortality", the paper reported.
About 2 million people are at risk until the main rains fall next northern
spring -- if they come. The Ogaden is Ethiopia's biggest and most remote
state.
Nomadic tribes there are resorting to eating dead leaves and cactus fruit to
survive the worst drought since the famines of 1984-85, when an estimated 1
million Ethiopians died.
Ethnic Somali herdsmen say their children have died after eating poisonous
buds from trees, for lack of anything else to eat. Others say they depend on
camel milk and meat because their cattle, sheep and goats have perished in
their thousands.
"I am ill and hungry," The Times reported one man as saying. "Because of the
drought, we have nothing to eat. The only people who receive food are the
military."
Britain's Channel 4 news says the army has withheld food in the Ogaden as
part of a "scorched earth" policy against separatist rebels of the Ogaden
National Liberation Front.
Herdsmen in remote villages said many of their animals had been killed by
Ethiopian soldiers, who also deprived them of water.
"We walk for eight hours to collect water," said one villager. "Then the
military take the water from us."
*Agencies*
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