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From: Berhane Habtemariam (Berhane.Habtemariam@gmx.de)
Date: Mon Jul 04 2011 - 18:28:37 EDT
Special Report -Starvation returns to the Horn of Africa
Drought and war threaten millions with famine, as the refugee camps overflow
By David Randall, Simon Murphy and Daud Yussuf in Kenya
Sunday, 3 July 2011
In the Horn of Africa, unseen as yet by the world's television cameras, a
pitiful trek of the hungry is taking place. Tens of thousands of children
are walking for weeks across a desiccated landscape to reach refugee camps
that are now overflowing. They are being driven there by one of the worst
droughts in the region for 60 years which, combined with the war in Somalia
and soaring food prices, is threatening a famine that could affect between
eight and 10 million people.
The malnourished children, some of whom become separated from their parents
on the way, are now arriving at the camps in northern Kenya at a rate of
1,200 every day. At the largest, built for 90,000, there are now nearly
370,000. Many have covered hundreds of miles on feet that are bare and
bleeding. Some reach their goal barely able to stand. Most are exhausted,
and dehydrated. All are hungry.
Aid agency after agency has told The Independent on Sunday in the past few
days of the terrible plight of these families from Somalia and Ethiopia.
Save the Children (SCF), like many charities so worried it has launched an
emergency response to the crisis, said: "Some families have walked for over
a month through sand and searing heat in search of food, water and shelter.
Many discarded the few possessions they had along the way." The charity's
Kenya programme director, Catherine Fitzgibbon, said: "Children have made
long journeys in terrifying conditions, often losing their families along
the way and arriving at the camps in desperate need of security, healthcare
and a normal life."
Neil Thorns, Cafod's director of advocacy, who led an emergency conference
on food shortages in Nairobi last week, said: "There's no rain, no crops and
the livestock are dying. There is nothing on the horizon that will make any
of that better, and it's almost certain it will get much, much worse. People
are migrating in their tens of thousands, but there is nowhere better for
them to go. Governments need to wake up to the urgency of the situation and
take the action that is needed immediately."
Cafod said that one aid worker, Nelly Shonko, drove the 100-odd miles
between Marsabit in northern Kenya and Moyale on the border with Ethiopia,
"seeing hundreds of rural people moving the other way, carrying all their
possessions in search of food for their livestock. She knew that the land
they were walking towards was no better than where they'd come from."
Journeys of more than 300 miles are typical: SCF spoke to one woman, called
Fatuma, who had walked from her home in Somalia for a month and a half with
her four children aged between three and 10 to reach a Kenyan camp. She
said: "The weather was very harsh. It was so hot, and there was very little
shelter. I left my husband in Somalia. I do not know if I will see him
again. The war in Somalia is very bad for families. The drought as well is
just too much. We cannot cope. We had 15 goats. But they died one by one
because of the drought. We had a well in my village, but it dried up. Then
the one in the next village dried up."
Adan Kabelo, head of Oxfam's work in Somalia, said in a blog: "The situation
here is truly shocking, and, as the local elders warned me, we are facing a
terrible human catastrophe unless the world acts quickly."
This is a situation that has been brewing – and deteriorating – for a long
time. Across much of Somalia and Ethiopia, the last two rains have failed –
something which, says SCF's Andrew Wander, used to occur every 10 to 12
years, but now happens almost every other year. The UN's World Food
Programme (WFP) says: "In June, the famine early-warning systems network
said it had compared rainfall data for Kenya and Ethiopia and concluded that
2010-11 was the driest or second driest year since 1950-51 in 11 of 15
analysed pastoral zones. This does not, however, mean that this is yet the
worst drought in the Horn of Africa. The 2007-09 drought, for instance,
peaked in September 2009 with 22 million people in need of humanitarian
assistance."
Nevertheless, many of the people in the region are pastoralists, and in some
places about 70 per cent of livestock have died. Even in a place like Dobley
in Somalia, where there has been a little recent rain, the situation is
desperate. Oxfam reports that animal carcasses litter the road to the
borehole and "there are hundreds of people and about 15,000 emaciated cows,
camels, sheep, and goats crowded around trying to get water to stay alive".
Oxfam is frantically trying to keep this borehole flowing. If its engineers
fail, the outlook is not good. The next water point is 80km away.
Audrée Montpetit, senior humanitarian programme quality adviser at Care
International, has recently visited the drought-affected region of Borena in
Ethiopia. She said: "People are eating less, cutting trees to make charcoal
and sell. Since there's no pasture, men are cutting trees to get leaves for
their animals. Women, who are responsible for getting water, are having to
travel six to 10 hours every day to get it. We've seen an increase in acute
malnutrition but there's obviously a lot of water-borne disease too; that's
been increasing. People accept that the worst is yet to come."
And the famine looms at a time when food prices have been increasing sharply
for some time – and still are. Since last May, the price of maize has more
than doubled in parts of Ethiopia, and that of red sorghum has risen in
Somalia by 240 per cent. Even in Kenya, white maize now costs 58 per cent
more than it did a year ago. And then there is the conflict in Somalia,
which drives people to the camps and which, in much of southern and central
parts of the country, severely limits humanitarian access.
Aid workers are beginning to wonder for how much longer the camps can
contain the need. Dadaab, in Kenya, originally built to accommodate 90,000,
now has 367,855 refugees, making it the world's largest refugee camp. There
were plans for an extension, but the Kenyan government scotched that, and
thousands now squat hopefully outside the perimeter.
And yet still people come. The numbers arriving at Dadaab's three camps are
swelling at an alarming rate – 5,621 arrived in the last week of June
compared with 1,866 in the first week of the month. According to the UN,
more than half of the camps' refugees are children, and 153,525 of those are
under the age of 11. There are also 12,328 people over the age of 60 in the
camps, while 95 per cent of the total population are from Somalia, with the
rest mainly from Ethiopia.
The overcrowding produces problems beyond comfort, food rations and
sanitation. On Thursday, two people were killed and dozens injured when a
riot broke out. The UN refugee agency said the "serious disturbance"
occurred when authorities tried to demolish illegal buildings at a food
distribution point.
Camps elsewhere are also reaching bursting point. Getinet Ameha, a WFP aid
worker, visited two camps last week in Dolo Ado on the Somalia, Kenyan and
Ethiopian border. Last week the government opened a third camp, Kobe, to
deal with the 1,200 new arrivals each day. He said: "The majority of people
in the camps are women and children, and it's very difficult because the
camps were only built to hold 20,000 in each one and there's now almost
40,000 people living in each." Here, some 45 per cent of the new arrivals
are malnourished – the threshold for declaring an emergency is 15 per cent.
He added: "A lot of people are coming, 1,400 new people each day, but the
WFP is providing food. There are problems with health. The people are having
to live very close to each other. In one tent I witnessed a family of 12
together."
Aid agencies are doing all they can, but the "perfect storm" of drought, war
and costly food is difficult to overcome when resources are so limited. SCF
says it has less than half the money it needs for a proper response. And a
statement from the WFP last week said bleakly: "The humanitarian response in
Somalia and Ethiopia in particular is hampered by large funding shortfalls.
New contributions are urgently needed or suffering will grow."
It continued: "In Somalia, having started cutting ration sizes from
February, WFP in May had only enough food left to feed 63 per cent of the
almost one million people that WFP had planned to be feeding in May ...
Because of a lack of funding, WFP in Ethiopia reduced food rations in
certain areas of the country from March onwards."
The international food security scale of one to five rates a few parts of
Ethiopia, Somalia and Kenya as category two, "Stressed". Many areas are at
three and four, "Crisis" and "Emergency", but none, as yet, is a five,
"Catastrophe/Famine". Unless there is a rapid change in the weather, the war
or the food supply, that day may not be long postponed.
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Britain pledges £38m to help Ethiopia's starving
By Tom Lowe
Monday, 4 July 2011
Britain has pledged to provide food for 1.3 million starving people in
Ethiopia, as the country suffers its worst drought in a decade.
With an estimated 3.2 million Ethiopians in need of emergency aid, the
International Development Secretary, Andrew Mitchell, pledged £38m towards
tackling the problem. Some 329,000 malnourished children and pregnant and
breastfeeding mothers will also receive treatment.
"Through no fault of its own, the Horn of Africa is experiencing a severe
drought caused by the failed rains," Mr Mitchell said. "Britain is acting
quickly and decisively in Ethiopia to stop this crisis becoming a
catastrophe. We will provide vital food to help 1.3 million people through
the next three months.
"For the response to be effective, we need the most up-to-date, accurate
information on the level of need in Ethiopia. The country has made great
strides in many areas over the past 30 years and this emergency relief will
help to ensure that these gains are not eroded."
Hundreds of thousands of Ethiopia's hungry face starvation in the next three
months, the driest period of the year in the country, and the UN has called
for international aid across the Horn of Africa, where some areas are
suffering the worst drought since the 1950s.
Britain's aid is only a fraction of the amount needed to tackle the problem,
but the pledge was welcomed by charities and aid workers.
"The money cannot come soon enough," said Oxfam's humanitarian director,
Jane Cocking. "There are already critical and life-threatening food
shortages in Ethiopia and across the Horn of Africa region.
"Two successive poor rains have left millions of people struggling to get
food as hundreds of thousands of livestock have died and crops have failed.
Other donors now need to follow suit and increase funding before it is too
late."
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