Famine ራብ: December 2015

Thursday, December 24, 2015

Uk sending new £30m aid package to help ethiopia drought crisis | Daily Mail Online

PUBLISHED: 16:54 GMT, 23 December 2015 | UPDATED: 16:54 GMT, 23 December 2015

A £30 million emergency aid package is being sent to Ethiopia as the country faces a drought on a similar scale to the 1980s natural disaster that killed more than a million people.

Some 18 million Ethiopians are suffering as the country is hit by food shortages as well as increased risk of disease, and an international appeal has been launched to raise £923 million.

Around £15 million of British funding will go to the United Nations World Food Programme to help nearly two million people, and £14 million will be spent on providing emergency water and healthcare along with protection for vulnerable girls and women.

Nick Hurd warned the drought is on a similar scale to the 1984 disaster

A further £1 million will be used to send humanitarian experts to help deal with the crisis. The package is being allocated from the Department for International Development's Ethiopia budget.

International development minister Nick Hurd warned the drought is on a similar scale to the 1984 disaster that shocked the world as millions died or were left destitute and prompted the creation of Live Aid to raise funds. The new crisis is expected to be less severe because more systems and money are in place to deal with the impact.

Mr Hurd said : "A relentless drought is pushing millions to the brink in Ethiopia. The scale of the drought is similar to the one that killed so many in 1984.

"This time the Ethiopian government is in a much stronger position to help their people. However, they need the help of the international community.

"New funding from Britain will ensure families get the emergency food that they so desperately need in order to survive.

"Working alongside the government of Ethiopia, the UN and others, we are also helping to prevent child malnutrition, treat disease outbreaks and keep children in schools during this emergency.

"But the scale of the current crisis means much more needs to be done. With millions in serious need of help, Ethiopia is facing a major humanitarian crisis and urgently needs the world to step up and provide lifesaving relief.

"A stable, more prosperous Africa is firmly in Britain's national interest and it is right that we do all that we can to prevent the crisis spiralling out of control."

The latest funding takes the total announced in the UK to deal with the crisis to £113 million since July.

Friday, December 18, 2015

Ethiopia hit by the worst drought in decades - nrc.no

Breast feeding children in settlement for people displaced by the drought in Asabuli village in Sitti Zone, north-eastern Ethiopia. Photo: NRC/Patrik Ekløf.

Patrik Ekløf (18.12.2015)

“The longer it takes for the humanitarian assistance to reach the people in need, the larger the impact of the drought will have in the worst affected areas of Ethiopia and the region”, says Deputy Secretary General Geir Olav Lisle. He has just returned from a visit to the Sitti Zone in the north-eastern part of the Somali region of Ethiopia.

Key issues:

10.2 million people in need of humanitarian food assistance

435,000 children severely acute malnourished

1.4 billion USD humanitarian appeal for 2016 launched

Deputy Secretary General Geir Olav Lisle and Country Director Ahmednur Abdi in settlement for people displaced by the drought in Asabuli village in Sitti Zone, north-eastern Ethiopia. Photo: NRC/Patrik Ekløf
The visit to one of the worst drought affected areas of Ethiopia has taken us to Asbuli, four hours by car on poor gravel roads and sand tracks from the city of Dire Dawa in the north eastern part of the Somali region.

In a good year the large open plains along the road should be covered in grass, providing grazing for large herds of goats, sheep and cattle, the key livelihood for the pastoralists in this area. But this is not a good year. The plains are extremely dry and look more like a moon landscape. Every other kilometre we pass dead animals and empty dwellings.

People have been forced to abandon these areas. Women and children have taken the families’ few belongings and walked to the nearest villages. The men have started long walks to other areas of Ethiopia, Djibouti or Somalia in the hope of finding better grazing conditions there for their remaining livestock.

Dead cattle near settlement for people displaced by the drought in Asabuli village in Sitti Zone, north-eastern Ethiopia. Photo: NRC/Patrik Ekløf
Asbuli is a small village with a newly built government clinic and a few clusters of permanent houses built with mudbricks. On the outskirts of the village, near the clinic, more than 1,700 people have settled. They have been displaced by the drought and live in make-shift shelters.

“People started to arrive here six months ago because of the drought. In the past two years, the rains have failed us in this area. Most of the people in this temporary settlement come from places nearby or up two to days’ walking distance. As the drought has worsened, the number of people arriving daily has increased”, says Moses Omar who represents the local government authorities in the village.

The majority of those who live in the settlement are women and children. Food has been provided, although erratically. Right now, there is no food available in the settlement, according to Moses Omar.

Moses Omar, resprentative for the local authorities in the settlement for people displaced by the drought in Asabuli village in Sitti Zone, north-eastern Ethiopia. Photo: NRC/Patrik Ekløf.

“Water is a big problem. The nearest source is a riverbed four kilometres away”, says Moses Omar. But this water source does not provide enough water for both the permanent residents in the village and the displaced persons. Digging new wells will only be a temporary solution because the ground water levels are falling as a result of the drought. Drilling deep boreholes that can access underground water reservoirs may be the only solution. In fact, we are told that the authorities have drilled for water in the area and have constructed a water access point, but it is not yet in operation.

The high number of displaced children in the settlement has put tremendous pressure on the local school in the village. Before there were 1,070 pupils, now another 684 have been added to the existing classes.

“This is not good for the learning conditions. There are now too many children in each class”, says Moses Omar.

A 90-year old man in the settlement for people displaced by the drought in Asabuli village in Sitti Zone, north-eastern Ethiopia. “In all my life I have never experienced a worse drought”, the man says. Photo: NRC/Patrik Ekløf.

Moses Omar explains that there are six similar settlements in the nearby areas for people who have been displaced by the drought. In the whole of the Sitti Zone more than 125,000 people have been displaced, and are now living in one of the 27 settlements in the Zone. According to the latest figures from a recent government-led multi-agency assessment, more than 500,000 people in Sitti are affected by the drought, including those who have been displaced.

“It is crucial that the drought affected communities in Ethiopia are provided with timely assistance. Lives are at risk and livelihoods are being destroyed in these communities. Gains that have been made through development efforts in these communities over several years are at risk if we are not able to quickly provide humanitarian assistance to mitigate the worst impacts of the drought”, says NRC’s Deputy Secretary General Geir Olav Lisle.

NRC has launched a response in the settlement for people displaced by the drought in Asabuli village in Sitti Zone, north-eastern Ethiopia. Photo: NRC/Patrik Ekløf.

On 11 December the government of Ethiopia launched the 2016 Humanitarian Requirements Document (HRD) in the capital Addis Abeba. The document paints a grim picture of the humanitarian crisis in the country. Failed rains caused by the El Niño weather phenomenon have led to severe shortages of food and water, and livelihoods are being destroyed because livestock are dying. The number of people requiring emergency food assistance have gone up from 4.5 million in August 2015 to more than 10 million in December. This includes 435,000 children suffering from severe acute malnutrition and who needs urgent nutritional support to survive. Prediction are that more than 15 million people may need emergency food assistance by end of March 2016.

In the HRD appeal the Ethiopian government and humanitarian partners ask for 1.4 billion USD to respond to the growing humanitarian need in Ethiopia in 2016. According to the UN it is key that pledges are made without delay because the lead time for procurement of food, which constitutes 1.1 billion of the total appeal, is normally three months. It practice this means that in order to continue to feed the population in need, UN will have to use part of Ethiopia’s grain reserves to keep the current operation going. And as soon as funds have been pledged these reserves will have to be restocked. The Ethiopian government has also used 200 million USD of its own funds to respond to the current emergency.

“For many, the current situation brings back memories from the drought in the 1980s where thousands of people died. The difference now is that the Ethiopian government is fully involved in the response and has built up better systems for preparedness. But with this scale of needs, it is important that Norway and rest of the international community responds to the appeal from the Ethiopian government and humanitarian partners. The risk is that the displacement situation in the Horn of Africa region and the drought in Ethiopia is overshadowed by the Syria crisis, and other emergencies”, says NRC’s Country Director in Ethiopia, Ahmednur Abdi.


	About the El Niño phenomenon A very basic explanation of the El Niño climatic phenomenon is: A weather phenomenon that occurs irregularly in the eastern tropical Pacific every two to seven years. It occurs when the trade winds that usually blow from east to west weaken, sea surface temperatures start rising, setting off a chain of atmospheric impacts. The impact of the current El Niño is already being felt in several of the countries of the Horn of Africa region. It started in March 2015, is steadily strengthening, and is expected to reach maximum intensity in early 2016. However, the effects of El Niño will likely be felt throughout 2016. Over the next 12 months, it will affect the food security of millions of already vulnerable people who are dependent on agriculture and livestock for their livelihood. The effects will be most severe in areas characterised by some of the worst humanitarian and human development indicators in the world. In these areas, many families has already started to adopt a range of negative coping strategies, including skipping meals, selling off assets and pulling children out of school. The number of people who do not have enough to eat in the region could increase by more than 83 percent by early 2016. In November the UN estimates that more than 22 million people may need food assistance in the first months of 2016, up from 12 million at the beginning of 2015. El Niño has already caused drier than average conditions in Ethiopia, Djibouti, Eritrea and eastern parts of South Sudan, but also caused flooding in Kenya and Somalia. UN OCHA reports that severe and moderate acute malnutrition among children has increased significantly in Ethiopia, South Sudan and Somalia, a trend that is likely to persist well into 2016. OCHA concludes that programmes targeting both the moderate and severely malnourished is critical, and need to be scaled up immediately.

Thursday, December 17, 2015

Drought takes terrible toll in Ethiopia

Ethiopia drought 'leaves 10 million without food' - BBC News

Maize stalks are pictured in a field near the town of Boricha, in southern Ethiopia, on August 30, 2008 — Image captionEthiopia has often been hit by drought

Ethiopia's government has increased to 10.1 million the estimated number of people who desperately need food aid because of a drought.

More than half of them are children, Save the Children says.

The drought, blamed on the El Nino weather phenomenon caused by Pacific Ocean warming, was the worst in 50 years, the charity added.

In November, the UN children's charity put the number of Ethiopians threatened by hunger at 8.2 million.

The government has launched a huge national effort, allocating nearly $200m (£130m) to deal with the food crisis, says BBC Africa correspondent Alastair Leithead.

But with 10.1 million people - or a tenth of the population - affected by a failure of both harvests this year in parts of Ethiopia, more international aid would be needed, he adds.

Confirming the figure in a BBC Focus on Africa radio interview, Getachew Reda, a government minister and aide to the prime minister, said: "We are trying to make sure that no-one is affected to such an extent that they lose their lives."

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Media captionThe reasons for Ethiopia's drought

Save the Children said an "emergency response" to deal with the crisis could cost $1.4bn.

"An estimated 400,000 children are now also at risk of developing severe acute malnutrition in 2016, which can lead to stunting, and physical and mental delays in development," it said in a statement.

Several other African states - including Malawi and South Africa - have also been hit by drought.

A famine in Ethiopia in 1984 led to hundreds of thousands of people starving to death.

However, the Ethiopian Embassy in London, in a statement last month, said the country was not at risk of a "famine of any sort, let alone anything remotely like the magnitude of that of 1984".

Ethiopia was also hit by a drought in 2011 and 2008, causing a food crisis.

Tuesday, December 15, 2015

10 million people facing food emergency in Ethiopia as El Nino bites

Date: December 8, 2015

Matt Wade

Senior writer

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A girl walks past the carcasses of goats in drought-stricken Ethiopia, where 10 million people are thought to be at risk. Photo: Seifu Asseged/Save The Children UK

The toll from Ethiopia's worst drought in 50 years is escalating, with officials dramatically increasing their estimate for the number of people facing critical food shortages.

Two months ago the Ethiopian government said about 8.2 million people would be in need of emergency food assistance in 2016, but this week it lifted the estimate to 10.1 million. Aid agency Save the Children estimates about 5.75 million Ethiopian children will be affected by the worsening food crisis.

The El Nino effect - caused by warming sea surface temperatures in the Pacific Ocean - has been blamed for the failure of this year's rains across a large portion of Ethiopia, triggering what the United Nations calls a "slow onset" emergency. El Nino has also caused a drought in Papua New Guinea and unusually warm, dry weather across much of Australia.

A farmer in his barren field in Sewena, Bale Zone, Ethiopia. Photo: Kyle DeGraw/Save The Children UK

The Ethiopian government had allocated over $US200 million ($273.7 million) of its own resources to emergency relief so far this year but in the latest humanitarian assessment, published this week, it calls on the international community "to stand with the people of Ethiopia at their time of need". It says the emergency response will cost another $US1.4 billion.

John Graham, Save the Children's country director in Ethiopia, said previous droughts in the Horn of Africa region had shown how the early provision of support can save lives and money.

"We simply cannot sit back and wait until the situation has reached crisis point this time," he said.

Two-year-old Seid eats high nutrient peanut paste provided by Save the Children's Health Extension Worker. Photo: Kyle DeGraw/Save the Children UK

The Famine Early Warning System Network (FEWS NET), which is backed by the US government, has already classified parts of eastern Ethiopia in a food security "emergency", one notch below famine. It says Ethiopia has the "largest acutely food insecure population in the world" and that a significant number of people are already "unable to access adequate food for survival and face an increased risk of malnutrition and mortality".

It is three decades since a drought-induced famine in Ethiopia shocked the world and created a new brand of celebrity activism with Band Aid in 1984 and the Live Aid concerts in 1985. The Ethiopian economy has grown significantly in recent years but is still exposed to drought because of its heavy dependency on rain-fed agriculture.

Ethiopia's population has grown by more than 40 per cent in the past decade, to almost 100 million.

Wednesday, December 9, 2015

United Nations News Centre - Ethiopia: UN urges support to mitigate most devastating drought in 30 years

Nine-year-ole Zahara Ali cooks breakfast in a rural village in the Dubti Woreda, Afar Region, Ethiopia. Photo: UNICEF Ethiopia/2015/Tanya Bindra

8 December 2015 – The United Nations today stepped up its efforts to mitigate the effects of the worst drought to strike Ethiopia in 30 years, with an appeal from the heads of four UN humanitarian bodies for massive international funding now to pre-empt the high risk of death and large scale suffering later.

“We know this is coming. We know how to prevent it. We simply have to act, now,” theywrote in an opinion article for the Huffington Post.

“So far, donors have provided an additional $200 million in aid, but there are early indications that the amount needed to make sure lives are not lost could be around $1 billion. Ethiopia needs that money now, if we are to avert a second tragedy in 30 years,” they added, referring to the catastrophic drought that killed hundreds of thousands from 1983 to 1985.

The four senior officials – UN Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator (OCHA) Stephen O'Brien, UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) Antonio Guterres, UN World Food Programme (WFP) Executive Director Ertharin Cousin, and UN Children's Fund (UNICEF) Executive Director Anthony Lake – stressed that Ethiopia is far different from 30 years ago and its Government is now leading the way with decisive action.

“With the leadership of the Government and the support of the international community, Ethiopians can survive this crisis without witnessing a repeat of the devastating famine that claimed hundreds of thousands of lives 30 years ago,” they wrote, noting that back-to-back droughts exacerbated by the strongest El Niño phenomenon on record have pit 10 million people in need of Government support.

By early next year, projections indicate that 400,000 children could suffer from Severe Acute Malnutrition, a potentially fatal condition that requires immediate treatment, with some having massive loss of body fat and muscle that makes them look almost elderly, and others becoming puffy with their hair.

“Both sets of symptoms mean there is a high risk of death,” the four warned. “The key to stopping this crisis in its tracks is early warning followed by decisive action.”

They noted that the Government's safety net programme, the largest in Africa, will assist eight million of the poorest Ethiopians to access food.

“The Government has raised the alarm and international aid agencies have tried to mobilize funds and action. But with multiple crises around the world and record numbers of people displaced by conflict, they have had limited success. There are many claims on donor funds and by global standards, Ethiopia does not look urgent,” they wrote.

“By the time it looks urgent, it will already be too late. We must not repeat the mistake of 30 years ago, when the world ignored the unfolding crisis for far too long and only heeded the alarm when the situation was beyond control. This time, we need urgent, rapid action to scale up our support to the Ethiopian Government and people.

“And the good news is that we have every chance of success. By investing now, we can safeguard three decades of development and billions of dollars of assistance that have helped Ethiopia to become one of the most successful economies on the African continent.”