The Horn

www.eastafricaforum.net http://www.allheadlinenews.com/articles/7011977026 AHN, US-based new bureau
Ethiopian Jews Rally, Urge Israel To Allow 8,700 More To Migrate From Ethiopia
August 18, 2008

Linda Young
Jerusalem, Israel (AHN) - About 1,000 people rallied outside the Israeli Prime Minister's office on Sunday calling for the government to allow 8,700 Ethiopian Jews into the country.

Long-lost Ethiopian cousins descended from Jews forced to convert to Christianity centuries ago are getting a cooler reception by Israeli Jews now.

About 8,700 more are now seeking to exercise their right as Falash Mura descendent's of Ethiopian Jews to move to Israel under its law of the right of return for any Jew in need. Many of them are the relatives of people who already have migrated to Israel.

However, these Ethiopians are largely poor and uneducated, moving from a rural society where many had never seen a flush toilet or a television into a highly industrialized society.

Another problem has been the difficulty of many Ethiopians in proving they are descended from Jews, which they didn't need to do 30 years ago when Israel recognized everyone in Ethiopia as Jewish and began airlifting people from there to Israel.

But recently, in order to migrate, Israel requires migrants to prove they are Falsah Mura, descendent's of Jews forced to convert to Christianity in the 19th Century to avoid discrimination.

About 40,000 Falsah Murah have been allowed to migrate recently joining 80,000 Ethiopian Jews already in Israel. But the Israeli government has blocked further migrants.

That move prompted hundreds of Ethiopian immigrants to rally Sunday, many of them are trying to get relatives into Israel that they had to leave behind when they migrated.

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http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/africa/article4553673.ece

TimesOnline, UK

August 18, 2008

Food price rises push 14m to the brink of starvation

(Original article has a link to a video)Rapidly rising global food costs have contributed to the worst hunger crisis in East Africa for eight years, with at least 14 million people at risk of malnutrition, aid agencies said yesterday.

In Ethiopia, the worst-affected country in the region, the Government said that 4.6 million people faced starvation, but aid agencies claimed that the true figure was closer to 10 million.

Drought has worsened food shortages, and Oxfam said that the number of acute malnutrition cases had reached its highest level since the droughts of 2000, when mortality rates peaked at more than six people per 10,000 per day. The official definition of a famine is more than four deaths per 10,000 per day.

Ethiopian farmers said that the crisis was caused by the absence of the Belg rains, which were due in February and March. “It’s really hard. People are eating whatever they can find,” said Gemeda Worena, 38, the tribal head of Fendi Ajersai, a village in southern Ethiopia where six children died in one week this month. “We hadn’t had rain for the last eight months. We had to buy water to save our lives, but now we have nothing.”


Mr Worena said that the price of maize had risen fourfold in the past year, a severe blow for villagers with what little money they had saved.

Surprisingly, when The Times visited the region, the fields were alive with maize and most afternoons a warm rain fell. “Here the problem is acute,” said Jean de Cambry, the emergency co-ordinator for Médecins Sans Frontières in southern Ethiopia. “It is very surprising and very strange, because everything is so green. But food stocks at household level are empty or close to empty.”

The United Nations World Food Programme is providing emergency food assistance to 3.2 million people in Ethiopia and 900,000 people in northern Kenya, where poor rains and political violence have disrupted food production.

The programme is also feeding 707,000 people in the Karamoja region of northeastern Uganda, where erratic rainfall has prevented 90 per cent of the population from planting for the current growing season, and aims to give help to 115,000 people in Djibouti, just under a quarter of the tiny country’s population.

The UN says that 2.6 million people in Somalia are in need of food assistance as a result of drought, conflict, hyperinflation, and high food and fuel prices. The World Food Programme believes that the figure will rise to 3.5 million in December.

Chris Leather, a food security expert for Oxfam, said: “We haven’t seen such high rates of acute malnutrition, of above 20 per cent, in as many places as we’re seeing right now, since 2000.” He said that 3 per cent of those found to have acute malnutrition had a high risk of dying if there was no intervention.

In Fendi Ajersai, the haunting wails of women paying their respects to the dead have become more frequent in recent months. When The Times visited this month villagers were mourning the latest victim of the famine, Tariky Gamedo, a football-loving, 13-year-old boy.

“He was my brother,” cried Basha Dekeo, 25, as her father tried to hold her flailing arms, “He is gone.”

Mr Worena said: “We have lost six kids this week.”

Despite the recent rainfalls and the apparent lushness of the countryside, the future does not look much better. Next month the harvest takes place, but many expect it to be smaller than is needed. Planting has been done largely by hand because so much livestock died before the rains arrived. The animals that survived are so skinny that when they can work the pace is pitifully slow.

Accurate numbers of how many people have died of hunger are impossible to find, with the Ethiopian Government seemingly determined to cover up the true extent of the problem.

Access to areas affected by famine is strictly controlled, with journalists needing permits. At one feeding centre, government officials refused The Times permission to photograph or film it.

At a feeding centre run by Médecins Sans Frontières in the town of Senbeta Shalla, the severity of the problem was clear to see. More than a thousand people queued for food and medical aid, and many had stick-thin limbs and swollen bellies, their desperation clear to see.

“The rains failed, everybody lost their crops,” Gamtou Defso, 70, a farmer, said. “We are just eating anything we find on the ground. I am hungry and I feel really sick . . . We don’t have any food to eat.”

Mieke Staanssens, the field co-ordinator for Médecins Sans Frontières, said: “They don’t even have the energy to cry.”

The hunger crisis

8 out of 10 workers in Ethiopia are involved in agricultural activities

15 droughts in Ethiopia since 1965

50% of Ethiopia’s total goods and services are made up of agriculture

1 million people starved to death in the 1984-85 famine

Source: The International Food Policy Research Institute, The Red Cross,countrystudies.us

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http://africa.reuters.com/country/ET/news/usnBAN843233.html

Gebrselassie regrets opting out of marathon
Mon 18 Aug 2008
Vivi Lin

BEIJING (Reuters) - Marathon world record-holder Haile Gebrselassie regrets pulling out of the 42-km race at the Olympics over fears that Beijing's air pollution would damage his health.

"I'm surprised. What do you expect from me? I was here in February, I didn't see no blue sky," the Ethiopian runner told Reuters on Monday in China's capital, where the sun was shining in a slightly hazy sky.


"Since I came here everything is perfect. They should tell us," he added with a laugh.

Asked if he was now sorry not to be running in next Sunday's marathon, he chuckled again and said: "Don't push me. Yes."

Gebrselassie, a 35-year-old who suffers from asthma, announced in March that he would not participate in the marathon and called on China to deal with Beijing's pollution problem, saying it would be a hazard to athletes.

International Olympic Committee chief Jacques Rogge said last year that endurance events such as the marathon or long-distance cycling races could be rescheduled if efforts to clear Beijing's polluted skies were unsuccessful.

As it turned out, the opening days of the Games were marred by smoggy skies but the weather has cleared for the second week.

"It's really good for everybody, good for all ... to keep such clean air, that's fantastic," Gebrselassie said.

Gebrselassie ran in the men's 10,000m in Beijing on Sunday, an event in which he has twice won an Olympic gold medal. He finished in sixth place, behind fellow Ethiopians Kenenisa Bekele and Sileshi Sihine, who took gold and silver respectively.

"Getting sixth in 10,000, it was not bad," he said.

"The only problem I had yesterday ... was just the last 250 metres, the last 300 metres. I have no more sprint. My training is mostly for a marathon."

He said he may return to the 10,000 metres and is also keen to run in the marathon at London's 2012 Olympics.

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