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HORN OF AFRICA: Church says famine warning signs were ignored
By Eva-Maria Kolman and John Pontifex
Refugees in the Horn of Africa wait in line for food
The international community ignored the warning signs and has reacted too late as East Africa falls victim to a massive famine.
This is the conclusion of Salesians of Don Bosco, who are organising aid relief amid worsening reports of famine centring on Somalia and spreading to Ethiopia and Kenya.
Warnings of a humanitarian disaster came in December 2010 but at the time “nobody was listening,” Mattia Grandi, one of the local Salesian project coordinators, told Aid to the Church in Need.
The United Nations declared a famine in parts of Somalia in July and now estimates that 750,000 people are threatened with death in the Horn of Africa.
Earlier this month, the UN declared that 12 million people across the region need food aid.
Meantime, Mr Grandi and senior clergy have thanked Aid to the Church in Need for making one-off payments providing emergency humanitarian assistance in the Horn of Africa.
The charity gave £43,500 towards an emergency aid relief programme for at least 60,000 Somali refugees flooding in to Ethiopia.
Focusing on refugees arriving in eastern Ethiopia’s Somali region, the charity's help will go towards building wells, distributing water and providing emergency food and other urgent supplies.
Also provided are blankets, hygiene products, latrines and plastic sheeting and other materials needed for shelter.
Meanwhile, earlier this month, Aid to the Church in Need’s UK office paid out £26,000 to provide emergency help, including water aid and sanitation, in Kenya.
Senior staff from the charity described the grants as “exceptional”, stressing the pastoral “charism” of Aid to the Church in Need’s work – supporting the Church and spreading the Gospel.
The aid comes amid reports that the drought is the worst in the region in 60 years, causing a severe food crisis across Somalia, Ethiopia and Kenya.
Senior UN staff have claimed that the rate of child malnutrition in parts of Somalia is nearly 60 percent – “a record rate of acute malnutrition” and almost double the rate at which a famine is declared.
According to Mattia Grandi, aid is most urgently needed in the Dolo Odo transit camp, where people who have fled from Somalia are forced to wait several days before being registered.
Until they are registered, they have no official refugee status which means they are excluded from UN supply programmes.
The transit camp was built to house 5,000 people but now holds 15,000.
Most of these are women, children and the elderly because the majority of men in Somalia have been kidnapped or killed by the Al-Shabaab militias.
The four refugee camps where the people are accommodated after their registration are also overcrowded, but the supply system works better there than in the transit camp.
Mr Grandi estimated that up to 2,000 people were fleeing across the border from Somalia into Ethiopia every day seeking aid.
Many of these had had their passage from Somalia blocked by the Islamist militias and were forced to turn back.
To reach another place where they could cross the border further north, they had journeyed on foot for a month.
Their most pressing need is for medical assistance, Mr Grandi reported.
Mr Grandi stressed that Ethiopians were suffering the effects of the drought as well as Somalis.