Sunday, September 6, 2015

El Nino causing famine in Ethiopia

El Nino is causing drought in Ethiopia were 4.5 million could be in need of food aid, says the United Nations’ World Food Programme.

Hardest-hit areas are Ethiopia's eastern Afar and southern Somali regions.

A government spokesman said they were prepared for hunger and have stockpiles ready.
In August, the Ethiopian government said that it had allocated $35 million US to deal with the crisis, but the United Nations says it needs $230m by the end of the year to attend to the crisis.

"The absence of rains means that the crops don’t grow, the grass doesn’t grow and people can’t feed their animals," new agency El Jazeera quotes David Del Conte, UNOCHA'S chief in Ethiopia, said.

Experts say it could be a major problem for the country's economy, as agriculture generates about half of the country's income.

Approximately 44 percent of children under five years old are severely chronically malnourished, or stunted, and nearly 28 percent are underweight, according to the CIA World Factbook.

UNICEF says that about 264,515 children will require treatment for acute severe malnutrition in 2015 while 111,076 children were treated for severe acute malnutrition between January and May 2015.

A week earlier, the United Nations said it will not have enough food for refugees in Syria.
Meanwhile, the Harper government has held its food aid budgets steady, not even allowing an increase to offset inflation. And it has cut off health care for refugee applicants and has been relying on churches and other charities to fund refugees that the Canadian government used to sponsor on its own.
Harper's answer has been to bomb the countryside which, according to a report from the Pentagon, resulted in death for 27 innocent civilians.