Launching an appeal for $426 million to support the urgent needs of people in the drought stricken Horn of Africa the UN's top humanitarian official said that more than 8 million were in mortal danger.
Speaking in the Kenyan capital Nairobi UN Emergency Relief Coordinator, Jan Egeland said that the drought shows no sign of relenting. Djibouti, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Kenya and Somalia have been suffering from water shortages and declining access to food following several years of successive rainfall failures and the rapid erosion of assets. Large numbers of people were dyingdue to preventable diseases and malnutrition related to the drought, Mr. Egeland said.
He went on to warn that Somalia, to which the bulk of the appeal, is targeted, is particularly vulnerable to the unfolding crisis. Intolerable levels of children are dying of malnutrition with "angry and hungry men with Kalashnikovs in search of food" poised to trigger furtherconflict.
“I know we launch many appeals, and there are many areas of the world needing assistance, but I cannot underline too much how important this is,” Kevin Kennedy, the Director of the Complex Emergency Division of the UN Office for the Co-ordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), said recently in New York.
“There are millions of people at risk, and predictions …that if things do not improve rapidly, if assistance is not provided, we could see a much, much worse situation three, four, five months out,” he warned.
Mr. Kennedy said the five or six year drought cycles of the past have become yearly or bi-yearly leaving some 15 million people at risk in addition to the 8 million in immediate danger.
These are people who rely on livestock for their livelihood and their whole way of life,” Mr. Kennedy said. “The rain has stopped falling. The waterholes have dried up. The crops have failed when they can do cropping and the livestock are dying.”
OCHA said the funds being sought will provide a comprehensive response, covering water and sanitation, health and nutrition, livestock and agriculture, livelihood security and education, as well as food aid, in order to save lives immediately and to also build resilience to futuredroughts.
“We have to break the cycle of drought in this region; it will affect and save the lives of literally hundreds of thousands of people over the long-term,” Mr. Kennedy said.
