11 million at mercy of East African drought

UNITED Nations chief Ban Ki-moon has warned donor nations that more than 11 million people in the Horn of Africa are confronting the worst drought in decades.
He urged the international community to immediately support the $US1.6 billion ($A1.52 billion) appeal by UN agencies to pay for life-saving programs in the region, saying only half that amount has been received so far.
''The human cost of this crisis is catastrophic,'' he said. ''We cannot afford to wait.''

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The Dadaab refugee camp in north-eastern Kenya.

Mr Ban said he had held an emergency meeting on Tuesday with the heads of UN agencies to discuss the worsening drought in East Africa that, along with fighting in Somalia, has created a humanitarian crisis.
''We admit we must do everything we can to prevent this crisis deepening,'' he said.
The United Nations Children's Fund, UNICEF, said 65,000 children in Kenya alone were at acute risk of dying - a threefold increase since 2009. In Somalia, one in six children is dying before the fifth birthday.
Children are suffering the worst effects of malnutrition and exhaustion on the long foot journeys through the sunbaked region in search of food.
UN Emergency Relief Co-ordinator Valerie Amos said that about half the children arriving in refugee camps from southern Somalia were malnourished, and child deaths had been reported inside Somalia and among new arrivals at the camps.
''While people need food and nutritional help, this is not enough,'' Baroness Amos said. ''Those affected need clean water, sanitation, health care, livelihoods support, protection and shelter. More funding is urgently needed.''
The worst regional drought in 60 years had affected millions of people in northern Kenya, Ethiopia, Somalia, Eritrea and South Sudan, the UN said.
Thousands of Somalis were arriving at the Dadaab camp in neighbouring Kenya each week, it said. The camp, already the world's largest, has swollen to hold almost 400,000 in recent months. Others are fleeing to nearby Ethiopia.
World Food Program director Josette Sheeran warned that the crisis might become a permanent problem because climate change was affecting weather patterns in the region.
''Communities that used to have the relative luxury of several years of regular rainfall to recover from the occasional year of drought are now learning to live in an almost constant state of food insecurity due to a lack of water,'' she said.
AP


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