Africa: Proximity to Europe Fuels Drug Market

By George Okore

NAIROBI---A severe hunger is looming across the Horn of Africa and threatening the lives of millions who are struggling to survive in the face of rising food prices and conflict.

Nearly 10 million people many of them women and children urgently require humanitarian assistance across Somalia, Ethiopia, Djibouti, Kenya and parts of Uganda. They are facing severe food shortages due to prolonged drought and resources for the relief effort in the region are dwindling at a time when assistance needs to be stepped up.

The World Food Programme (WFP)   Executive Director Josette Sheeran says they aim feed more than 6 million of the most vulnerable, but resources are thin and at the very moment that we should be ramping up operations, we have been scaling back some programmes in Ethiopia and Somalia.

She said delivery of emergency food assistance is a vital part of the Horn of Africa Action Plan the humanitarian community developed last year to strengthen the resilience of communities affected by the drought emergency and to protect assets such as farming tools and livestock.

The number of hungry people in the Greater Horn of Africa has risen as drought, rising food and fuel prices and conflict take their toll. The drought began with the failure of the October to December short rains last year in eastern parts of the Horn of Africa, pushing an additional 1.4 million people into hunger.

Food prices have started rising in areas that rely on the short rains for most food production, with maize now costing between 25 and 120 per cent more in some remote parts of the region. Cereal prices over the next six months are expected to increase by 40 to 50 per cent, she said. Rising international food and fuel prices have compounded the pressure on the poorest, many of whom are yet to recover from the 2007-2009 droughts in the region.

“It is essential that we move quickly to break the destructive cycle of drought and hunger that forces farmers to sell their means of production as part of their survival strategy”,

Ms. Sheeran said.

The conflict in Somalia also continues to force civilians from their homes, with an estimated 10,000 people arriving each week at crowded refugee camps in Kenya. The number of malnourished children receiving supplementary or therapeutic feeding in the camps has tripled this year, an indication of the seriousness of the problem and the need for swift international action.

Those in need of assistance include 3.2 million people in Ethiopia, 3.5 million in Kenya, 2.5 million in Somalia, an estimated 600,000 residents of north-eastern Uganda and some 120,000 people in Djibouti, according to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs OCHA).