East African ‘drought is the worst in 60 years’
*MKILETEWA HAPA NA FLORA LYIMO DESIGNER*
Published On Wed Jul 6 2011" JAMANI TUJIUNGE PAMOJA" WE CAN HELP THEM!
Abdi Ibrahim lies on his bed suffering from malnourishment,
in Lagbogal, 56 kilometres from Wajir town,
Wednesday, July 6, 2011. The worst drought in the
Horn of Africa has sparked a severe food crisis
and high malnutrition rates,
with parts of Kenya and Somalia
experiencing pre-famine conditions,
the United Nations has said.
More than 10 million people are now affected in drought-stricken
areas of Djibouti, Ethiopia, Kenya, Somalia and Uganda ,
and the situation is deteriorating.
Sayyid Azim/AP
By Olivia Ward Foreign Affairs Reporter pichani (chini)
Emaciated camels forage near dried-up wells. Cattle collapse and die on the dusty plains. Tens of thousands of people walk for days in the search of food but some find only violent death.
If hunger were a malevolent demon it could choose no more vulnerable prey than Somalis, driven from their homes by a vicious civil war — and now forced into harm’s way by a drought that has swept across Somalia, Kenya and Ethiopia.
“This drought is the worst in 60 years,” said Stephen Gwynne-Vaughan, CARE’s country director for Kenya. “Even if people could plant now they wouldn’t get anything back. The forecasts say it’s not going to rain until October.”
On Wednesday, a coalition of five major Canadian aid organizations sounded the alarm on a food crisis that threatens the lives of 10 million people throughout East Africa, many of them children. Seasons of failed rains have wiped out crops, livestock, food supplies and savings, while spiking food prices stop all but the wealthiest from obtaining enough to eat.
The agencies are calling for emergency funds to deliver clean water, food, medical and shelter materials to support families who are now destitute.
The spectre of mass starvation has prompted even Somalia’s ruthless Islamist militia Al Shabab to invite aid agencies it once barred to return.
“We have now decided to welcome all Muslim and non-Muslim aid agencies to assist the drought-stricken Somalis in our areas,” Shabab spokesman Sheikh Ali Mohamud Rage told reporters Tuesday.
Hunger has driven thousands of people from Shabab-controlled south and central Somalia into government-controlled Mogadishu, where shelling and fighting between armed groups kills numerous civilians.
To head off the exodus, Shabab said it would “open kitchens” for thirsty and starving people. But many trek instead to the border of Kenya, to the vast and overcrowded Dadaab refugee camps, which form a virtual city of about 400,000.
Other challenges await them there.
“With many refugee-hosting communities living under worse conditions than refugees in camps,” said the UN refugee agency, “competition for resources between the two groups has at times led to conflict and violence.”
Recently, police were called to remove market stalls set up by camp residents, to make room for distribution sites that could give out emergency aid to newcomers. Refugees who had used the stalls to eke out a meagre living pelted the police with stones. Two refugees were shot.
The UN estimates that about 1,400 people a day are arriving at Dadaab, and that more malnourished Somali children have died there in the first quarter of this year than during 2010.
In Ethiopia too, drought has devastated the hopes of millions.
“The official emergency (aid) caseload is three million,” said David Throp, country director for Plan International in Ethiopia. “We expect it to go up. The numbers are very serious.”
The problem is not simply lack of rain, Throp said, but erratic rainfall. “Millions depending on subsistence farming are planning and expecting rain at a certain time of year. If it comes earlier or later, it can be disastrous for their crops.”
When crops fail, few can afford to buy food. “In Ethiopia food inflation is about 40 per cent,” he added. “Even those with some other kind of income find their purchasing power is shrinking.”
Ethiopia is still better off than Somalia, an anarchic failed state. Although its burgeoning 80 million population and shrinking agricultural land keep many in poverty, the government has boosted social programs to reduce child mortality and raise health and education standards.
As a measure of concern, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton told officials Wednesday that Washington would cooperate with regional governments to head off a humanitarian disaster in Somalia, in spite of its opposition to Shabab.
All aid donors should “test whether they really are ready to let starving people get humanitarian aid,” a senior American official told reporters.
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