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Famine threat to Somalia

Xan Rice

SOMALIA COULD relive the devastating famine that claimed 300,000 lives in the early 1990s unless emergency relief arrives soon, a senior United Nations official warned on Tuesday.

Christian Balslev-Olesen, the U.N.'s acting humanitarian coordinator for Somalia, said the worst drought in more than a decade had left 2.1 million people in urgent need of aid. Assistance was being severely hampered by a lack of funds and "the most difficult operating environment for any emergency situation globally."

"Children are not dying in front of television cameras yet, but experience tells us that this is not far away," he said. "I don't think people realise how close we are to seeing this happen." Mr. Balslev-Olesen was speaking in Nairobi after the launch of a $327-million emergency appeal to donors.

The drought affecting Somalia is being felt across much of east Africa and the Horn — including Kenya, Ethiopia, and Djibouti — where 11.5 million people now require food aid.

But aid workers say Somalia faces the gravest risk of disaster if the rains that normally fall from April to June fail as predicted.

So far, cattle have been the major casualty of the drought. But the U.N. says many Somalis' coping mechanisms are exhausted after three years of failed harvests. About 300,000 people, mainly in the south of the country, have abandoned their homes in search of food and water in recent months.

Last week the U.N.'s food security analysis unit in Somalia warned that it was bracing itself for "a major humanitarian catastrophe, including the death of potentially thousands of people and widespread displacement." — © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2004

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