Ethiopia faces unprecedented food crisis

THE United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) has appealed for generous new contributions to help feed Ethiopia, which is threatened by a severe food shortage.
WFP executive director James T. Morris said additional food aid was needed urgently, warning that there was no time to lose as available food aid supplies would start running out during the peak of the drought crisis.
Morris said that between April and June, more than 11 million people would face the most acute and stark hunger of the year. More relief food ships must be sent from overseas to arrive in time, especially ahead of the rainy season in June, when remote areas would be cut off from assistance.
“The crisis barometer is inching out of the danger zone, but the needs are so colossal, so urgent and so desperate we must do everything humanly possible to avoid a sudden slip downwards,” said Morris.
He added: “Even a brief interruption of food supplies could spell death for the most vulnerable.”
Speaking at the end of a five-day mission to Ethiopia recently, Morris said that Ethiopians were among more than 38 million people in Africa facing a calamity of enormous proportions this year, against which some 700,000 ($230 million).
tons had been pledged.
WFP intends to cover about 40 per cent of the country’s food aid needs, and still requires 350,000 tons of food aid, including urgent supplies of fortified blended food for the malnourished and weak.
During Morris’ trip to Ethiopia, the first since his April 2002 appointment as WFP executive director, he spoke with drought-affected communities in Arsi, 150km south of the capital, Addis Ababa. Normally a surplus food-producing area, now many villages have turned into nothing more than bleak dust bowls.
“The villagers told me stories of sheer desperation, how they had lost their entire crop, their animals and their seeds. They are clinging onto the hope that more help will come before it’s too late,” said Morris.
He saw a three-year-old child who looked just half her age—skinny legs and a distended stomach visible as she curled up on her mother’s lap. Many schools are closing due to high student dropout rates because children are kept at home to help earn money for the family.
Morris also visited projects in the area to see impressive efforts by villagers to conserve water, to reforest and to rehabilitate valuable land, which has been eroded into gullies.
WFP impact studies of these projects, which received food-for-work incentives, indicate that those people involved are far more resilient to shocks such as the current drought and thus require less food aid.
WFP is seeking to help millions of people in the most vulnerable areas of Ethiopia with small-scale projects of this type, in addition to providing school feeding for primary students, and food aid support for victims of HIV/Aids.
However, the number of people to be assisted has been slashed by half this year due to a global trend of declining resources to WFP for non-emergency assistance.
“If we are to help break this chronic cycle of emergencies, we simply must make major investments to help people withstand climatic shocks,” said Morris.
Comparatively, it takes so little money today to stimulate greatly improved lives for people tomorrow, he added.
During his visit, Morris discussed emergency and development issues with Prime Minister Meles Zenawi and met various government officials, key donor representatives and heads of relief agencies and the UN country team.