The UN on Thursday appealed for immediate financial aid to help the Horn of Africa, stressing that more than 18 million people are affected by drought and that the situation is likely to worsen in the coming weeks.
“We are out of time. We urgently need money to save lives,” UN Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs Martin Griffiths told a news conference in Geneva. , after a two-day visit to Kenya.
From southern Ethiopia to northern Kenya via Somalia, the Horn of Africa is facing a drought that is alarming humanitarian organizations, with nearly 20 million people at risk of hunger.
In these regions where the population lives mainly from livestock and agriculture, the last three rainy seasons have been marked by low rainfall, in addition to an invasion of locusts which ravaged crops between 2019 and 2021.
“No one needs help more urgently,” Mr Griffiths said. “More than 18 million people in Ethiopia, Somalia and Kenya are affected by drought. Most of them wake up hungry and don’t know if they are going to eat that day or not,” he said. he says.
“It is likely to get worse in the coming weeks,” he added, with prospects for the next rainy season, from October to December, “as dire as the last four.”
A month after the theoretical start of the rainy season, “the number of people who are hungry due to drought could skyrocket from the current estimate of 14 million to 20 million in 2022”, said in April the World Food Program (WFP).
Nearly 40% of Somalia’s population, or six million people, face extreme levels of food insecurity and some areas are likely already experiencing famine, according to the UN’s humanitarian coordination agency Ocha.
In Ethiopia, 6.5 million people face “severe food insecurity”, as do 3.5 million people in Kenya, according to the agency.
Across the region, a million people have had to leave their homes due to lack of water and pasture, and at least 3 million head of cattle have perished, adds Ocha.
In Kenya, Somalia and Ethiopia, around 5.7 million children suffer from acute malnutrition, according to the UN.
Source: Seychelles News Agency