UN urges end to crisis cycle in Horn of Africa
The United Nations food agency called on Thursday for long-term aid for farmers in the Horn of Africa to "break the cycle" of hunger, saying constant crises in the drought-hit region should shame the world.
As Turkey's prime minister prepared to fly to war-ravaged Somalia, where the food crisis has hit famine levels, the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) said efforts to tackle the situation were being hampered by lack of donor funds.
"It is unacceptable for more than 12 million people to be at risk of starvation today," Jacques Diouf, head of the Rome-based FAO, said at the start of a conference on the drought crisis.
"The required funding is lacking. If governments and their donor partners do not invest now, the appalling famine we are now struggling to redress will return to shame the international community yet again."
Diouf called for immediate food aid to help the worst affected but also emphasised the need for longer-term assistance to livestock farmers and crop producers to strengthen their defences against climate change.
The United Nations says it has received pledges for just over half of the $2.4 billion (1.7 billion euros) required for relief efforts.
The African Union is holding a donor conference in Ethiopia next week.
Equatorial Guinea on Thursday said it was donating two million euros but the African response in general has been been criticised as "very slow" by the South African aid group Gift of the Givers Foundation.
The United Nations has officially declared famine in parts of Somalia for the first time this century, including in Mogadishu and four southern regions controlled by Islamist militias who have blocked access for some aid groups.
Following a trip to Somalia this month, Cristina Amaral, FAO's head of emergency operations, said the most urgent tasks were to prepare farmers for the October rainy season and to widen humanitarian access in southern Somalia.
"There is a lot still to be done but above all we want to alert people to the fact that we have to prepare for the next farming season," she told AFP.
"The only way that households can survive are through their livestock and their fields... so we have to help them to stay on their lands," she said.
Tens of thousands have died and hundreds of thousands have fled in a crisis that has also hit Djibouti, Ethiopia, Kenya, South Sudan, Sudan and Uganda.
Kenyan Agriculture Minister Sally Kosgei complained at the meeting in Rome that long-term programmes to help farmers against drought were in place in Kenya but "do not seem to be taken seriously" by the international community.
Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan meanwhile was due to leave for the Somali capital Mogadishu later on Thursday, a day after an emergency meeting in Istanbul of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) on the crisis.
OIC members pledged $350 million for relief efforts at the talks.
"As drought deepens and the crisis worsens, time -- especially for the very young and vulnerable -- is not on our side," Sheila Sisulu, deputy director of the UN's World Food Programme (WFP), said at the Rome talks.
She also vowed "zero tolerance" against any diversion of the tons of food aid being sent to Somalia and neighbouring countries, following reports of theft from convoys that WFP says represent only a fraction of total supplies.
"We must seize this opportunity to break the cycle of food insecurity," she said.
Aid agency Oxfam meanwhile said it had begun airlifting 47 tons of water supply and hygiene materials to Mogadishu and warned about a rise outbreaks of cholera among women and children in overcrowded camps in and around the city.
Relief efforts have been ramped up in the capital following a surprise withdrawal by Al-Qaeda-inspired rebels from the city earlier this month.
British International Development Secretary Andrew Mitchell visited Mogadishu on Wednesday and warned that without urgent action the crisis could become as bad as Somalia's 1991-92 emergency, when more than 200,000 people lost their lives
