Fears of 'Death on an Epic Scale' in Somalia Crisis

UN News Centre - July 21, 2011

The United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) said today it will start airlifts within days to get vital supplies into Somalia, which is bearing the brunt of the humanitarian crisis in the Horn of Africa, and is preparing to open up a number of new land and air routes to bring urgent relief to millions in need.

The announcement comes a day after the UN declared a famine in two regions of southern Somalia owing to the worst drought in decades, and appealed for urgent resources to provide assistance. It is the first time since 1991-92 that the UN has declared famine in a part of Somalia.

“There is a life and death situation here in Somalia,” WFP Executive Director Josette Sheeran said while on a visit to the Somali capital, Mogadishu.

“At one of our feeding sites in Mogadishu, where we are supplying food for hot meals, I met a woman who had lost children as they trekked out of the famine area in search of food,” she added.

Nearly half of the Somali population – 3.7 million people – are now estimated to be in crisis, with an estimated 2.8 million of them in the south.

The agency is currently reaching 1.5 million people in Somalia, and is scaling up to reach an additional 2.2 million people in the previously inaccessible south of the country.

WFP welcomed the recent statement by the insurgent group Al-Shabaab, which controls areas of southern Somalia, that humanitarian aid will now be allowed into those parts of the country.

“We are testing the ground to see how we can best get life-saving supplies in as quickly as possible to those at the epicentre of the famine in the south,” said Ms. Sheeran. “People in the south of Somalia are too ill and weak to go in search of food, so we must bring it to them.”

The agency is getting ready to open up new land and air routes into the core of the famine zone – southern Bakool and Lower Shabelle – to establish the necessary operating conditions, including those that will secure the safety of humanitarian personnel.

“The situation in Somalia is critical,” stressed the WFP chief.

Also visiting Mogadishu today was the UN Under-Secretary-General for Political Affairs, B. Lynn Pascoe, who was joined by the Secretary-General’s Special Representative for Somalia, Augustine Mahiga.

The visit, intended to show solidarity with the people of Somalia amid the suffering caused by the drought, included meetings with the Somali leadership on a variety of political issues such as the end of the transitional period.

“This is a terrible famine, children are literally dying on the road, there is widespread malnutrition, we are all deeply affected and this will be a huge focus of attention in the months to come,” Mr. Pascoe said at a news conference in Nairobi, Kenya, after his return from Somalia.

“During my trip to Mogadishu the Somali leadership made it very clear that this will be a top priority,” he stated. “They emphasized that help is needed in Mogadishu itself because of the huge number of refugees but are extremely concerned about the situation across the country.”

Ongoing conflict and the recent drought have forced more than 160,000 Somalis to seek help in neighbouring countries so far this year, according to the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). Many of them arrive in Djibouti, Ethiopia and Kenya in a very bad state – exhausted, emaciated and severely malnourished.

“They are coming with almost nothing; just the few clothes they have on their back and a few jerry cans,” says UNHCR’s Paul Spiegel, who was recently in Ethiopia’s Dollo Ado area, near the Somalia border, to meet the new arrivals.

Dr. Spiegel, who heads UNHCR’s Public Health and HIV section, said that on average, between 1,500 and 2,000 new people were arriving daily, some after having walked for over one month.

“I have been to many emergencies before – in fact I am just back from a two-month emergency mission in Côte d'Ivoire – but I have not seen such magnitude of death and malnutrition for many, many years,” he stated in an interview published on the agency’s website.

UNHCR has stepped up its efforts in the area to reduce the waiting time for registering new arrivals, to ensure that people both at the reception and transit centres receive hot meals, and provide special care to children under five who are malnourished as well as pregnant and lactating women.

Meanwhile, UN High Commissioner for Refugees António Guterres was in Geneva, where he joined Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs Valerie Amos and the Special Adviser on Africa, Cheick Sidi Diarra, for a special event on the Horn of Africa crisis held by the UN Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC).

Mr. Guterres commended the “open door and open heart” policy of neighbouring countries that had opened their borders for Somalis fleeing their homeland, adding that the international community should mobilize support to both help these countries and to avoid similar crises in the future.

http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=39106&Cr=somali&Cr1=

by Isaiah Esipisu - ipsnews.net

NAIROBI, Jul 21, 2011 (IPS) - The world had an opportunity to save thousands of lives that are being lost in parts of Somalia due to the famine, if only the donor community had paid attention to the early warning systems that predicted it eight months ago.

"The situation would not have been this bad if there was emergency response for prevention, despite the conflicts in the country," said Anna Ridout, Oxfam’s spokesperson.

The United Nations declared a famine in south Somalia on Jul. 20, following the two-year drought in the country, and the high child mortality rate due to the lack of food in the region.

According to the U.N., the southern part of the country hosts 310,000 acutely malnourished children at the moment. At the same time, nearly half of the population in Somalia is threatened with the famine. In some regions, at least six out of 10,000 children under the age of five die daily.

The death rate is three times higher than what the U.N. Children’s Fund defines in a famine, which is two people per 10,000 per day.

According to Oxfam, the U.N. announcement, which is the first one in the region this century, should be a wake-up call to the rest of the world.

"There has been a catastrophic breakdown of the world's collective responsibility to act. 3,500 people a day are fleeing Somalia and arriving in parts of Ethiopia and Kenya that are suffering one of the driest years in six decades. Food, water and emergency aid are desperately needed. By the time the U.N. calls it a famine it is already a signal of large scale loss of life," Oxfam said.

The organisation said that emergency aid was vital now to avoid people dying in massive numbers.

"Whenever there is an indicator of such a disaster, we must not only sit and wait for the emergency response. We can conveniently invest the funds by putting irrigation systems in place, vaccinating people, especially children, against anticipated diseases, and creating proper infrastructure to be used in case there is need for food supply," said Ridout.

Speaking from the Dadaab refugee camp in Kenya, Ridout said that refugees arrive daily and in huge numbers from Somalia. Nearly all the children are malnourished and women are weak and wasted after trekking for days in search of water, food and a chance to live.

"They tell of horrible experiences of children who died along the way, and even adults who drop along the way because they cannot make it to refugee camps, mostly in Kenya or Ethiopia," she said.

The most affected areas in south Somalia include the Lower Shabelle, Middle and Lower Juba, Bay, Bakool, Benadir, Gedo and Hiraan.

The effects of the drought were made worse by the Al Shabaab militia group, which had blocked donor agencies from operating within its territories in 2009 – now the famine zones.

"We are praying that the October rains expected in the East African region do not fail. Or else, we are likely to have a crisis in the area due to the looming drought," said Ridout.

However, despite the drought in northern parts of Kenya, Somali refugees keep arriving at various refugee camps on a daily basis. In June alone, 68,000 Somalis arrived in Kenya and 54,000 in Ethiopia searching for food and livelihood. At the moment, U.N. records indicate that 1,700 and 1,300 Somalis are arriving daily in Ethiopia and Kenya respectively.

According to Mark Bowden, the U.N. Humanitarian Coordinator for Somalia, 300 million dollars is required to scale up the emergency response for the 3.7 million people in need in the next two months.

One of the biggest setbacks for food aid distribution has been Al Shabaab. However, the extremist group recently lifted its ban on international aid agencies.

"We have security advisors on the ground. But most important, humanitarian organisations in the country are already working closely with local community-based organisations to access people in need," said Bowden.

"We are also involved in dialogue (not negotiation) with all community-based organisations, including groups like Al Shabaab, to ensure that there is cooperation for the aid to reach those who need it," he added.

However, despite the challenges, humanitarian agencies have already put in place response mechanisms. In an effort to reach more children with life-saving interventions, the U.N. and its partners have scaled up emergency nutrition, water and sanitation, and immunisation efforts to combat malnutrition and reduce disease.

"We have already started airlifting urgently-needed medical, nutrition and water supplies into the worst-affected areas," said Bowden.

Compared to previous famines, the current situation in Somalia compares or exceeds those reported during recent years in Niger (2005), Ethiopia (2001), Sudan (1998) and Somalia (1992). However, this is the most severe food security crisis in Africa since the 1991/92 Somalia famine, according to the U.N. Between January and June this year, 300,000 people in Mogadishu were given food assistance by humanitarian agencies on a monthly basis. Approximately 100,000 malnourished children were treated through some 418 nutrition centres in south Somalia from January to May 2011.

The U.N. further reports that 93,000 people received shelter, especially in Mogadishu, where the majority of those displaced by the drought fled to from other parts of the country.

The current crisis in Somalia is expected to have an increasingly devastating effect on other countries in the region. However, generally, the Horn of Africa has 11.5 million people in crisis, including the 3.7 million in Somalia.

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