How can we prevent famine before we face it staring at us?
Any lessons from the past 40 years of Global Climate Change and Disasterous famines?
Imagine incompetent Lords of Poverty fighting over how to measure, estimate the impact of famine, instead of preventing it in the first place.
Such a shame, that the Lords of Poverty are fighting over figures when people are dying like flies/
What a shame! Why not just feed the people and prevent famine!
Voice of America
No Food in Drought-Hit Ethiopian Regions, UN Official
Says
By Peter Heinlein
Addis Ababa
22 June 2008
The United Nations is sounding another alarm about
severe food shortages in Ethiopia, where tens of
thousands of children are facing starvation.
VOA's Peter Heinlein in Addis Ababa reports
The U.N. children's agency UNICEF is appealing for
nearly $50 million in emergency aid for the
hardest-hit areas, where food stocks are depleted and
the next harvest is months away.
A senior U.N. children's agency official visiting
drought-ravaged areas of southern Ethiopia during the
past week found families with no food, not
enough money to buy any, and no hope of replenishing
supplies until at least late September.
UNICEF Deputy Director Hilde Johnson says everywhere
she went, government officials and aid workers gave
the same assessment.
"A clear message was conveyed to us from all of them:
There is no food," said Hilde Johnson. "The assistance
needs to be taken to scale, and it has
to happen urgently.
There was absolutely no inconsistency. That was the message from everyone."
The UNICEF official says during her four-day visit,
she had positive meetings with Prime Minister Meles
Zenawi and other senior leaders, some of
whom have accused aid agencies of exaggerating the
food shortages for fund-raising purposes.
UNICEF's Johnson says in her talks, all government
officials agreed the food shortages are serious and
getting worse. She told reporters the ministers
expressed hope the crisis would ease later this year
if conditions improve. But she says there are many
'ifs'.
"The government do think they will be able to curb in
the sense the situation later, meaning August,
September, If the rains come in accordance
with normal, If there is an adequate vegetable
harvesting, If other complementary measures are
kicking in, plus If the supplies they are buying
externally to come into the market, plus aid
bilaterally they are negotiating comes in," said
Johnson.
"So there is a clear "if", and that is
no secret."
U.N. humanitarian agencies say it is impossible to
know how widespread the food shortages are in a
country where record-keeping is poor.
"It is very very difficult for us to say how many
children are dying," she said. "From our visit in the
hot spot areas of Kambala, we were told by
health extension officers that children were dying in
the villages now, and that for quite many it was too
late. There is no doubt there is a risk of
children dying in numbers in the hot spots."
Ethiopian officials have repeatedly emphasized that
this drought is not a famine, such as the one in the
mid 1980s that killed an estimated one million people.
Ethiopia's disaster preparedness agency this month
more than doubled its estimate of the number of people
needing food assistance from 2.2 million to
4.6 million.
Disaster preparedness agency chief Simon Mechale is
predicting worse conditions in July. He recently
appealed to donor nations for $325 million
worth of emergency food aid to make up an expected
shortfall of 390,000 metric tons until the next
harvest comes in.
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