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senior British official and UNICEF warned yesterday.
“We have seen some derisory offers from rich European countries. The whole international community . . . should now realise the scale of what is happening in the Horn of Africa and put their shoulder to the wheel and do everything they can to help,” British International Development Secretary Andrew Mitchell told reporters.
“It is a terrible thing in our world today that a baby should die from lack of food,” he added.
Around 10 million people are facing starvation in the Horn of Africa which has been hit by one of its worst droughts in decades, according to UN sources.
After touring Kenya’s drought-affected regions, Mitchell and Unicef chief Anthony Lake stressed that fleeing Somali families and local residents were in dire need of assistance.
“This is a very serious crisis . . . not only are the immediate needs great, but this crisis is likely to deepen over the coming six months or so because it is very unlikely that there will be sufficient new harvests,” Lake noted.
“We have to do everything we can now to ameliorate its scope and to save the lives of the people who are affected,” he added.
On Saturday, Britain promised 52 million pounds (59 million euro, 73 million dollars) in emergency aid. Germany also pledged a further five million euros for the crisis.
Mitchell visited Dadaab refugee camps in the east of Kenya, where hundreds of Somalis are fleeing to everyday after days of trekking that have claimed the lives of weak children while families have been robbed and attacked on the way.
The 380 000-strong Dadaab camps are the world’s largest refugee settlement, now hosting more than four times its original capacity. One third of the new arrivals are women and children. “I have never before seen a collection of so many mothers and children completely silent,” said Mitchell.
“I saw the feet of some of the children and mothers covered in cuts and blisters. It was amazing that they could move at all on feet that have been so badly injured,” he added. Lake on Saturday toured Kenya’s Turkana region in the north where he said families had run out of food and some mothers were feeding their children on pounded nuts they first moisten with saliva before giving to the babies.
Malnutrition rates in Turkana have risen to 37 percent, up from 15 percent in 2010, according to the aid organisation Oxfam.
“I saw people living on a meal a day or less,” the Unicef chief said, calling for assistance for drought-stricken people not living in refugee camps.
“This is not simply a refugee crisis,” Lake said.
The Unicef estimates that more than two million children in the Horn of Africa region are malnourished and need urgent help, while some 500 000 of them face imminent, life-threatening conditions. – AFP.