Khadra Suleiman, at Ali Hussein IDP camp, Somaliland. Ali Hussein camp is one of several large camps for Internally Displaced People (IDPs) on the edge of Burao town. Some people have come from Mogadishu and South Central Somalia to escape the conflict, others have come because of drought.. Mother-of-five Khadra Suleiman is struggling to cope with the rising cost of living in the camp – particularly the cost of food: .(continue reading Oxfam report 7/13/2011)
UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon this morning called an emergency session of the heads of UN agencies to lay out a ground plan to address the need for urgent assistance to the people in the region.
""We must do everything we can to prevent this crisis deepening," he said. "The human cost of this crisis is catastrophic. We cannot afford to wait."
The 30-mile-long Dadaab Refugee Camp is ground zero in the relief effort for victims of the East African famine, now being called the "worst humanitarian disaster in the World." With a population of over 400,000, the three Dadaab camps – Ifo, Hagadera and Dagahaley – are now home to the third largest population center in Kenya, after Nairobi and Mombasa.
The famine's epicenter lies in the nomadic region along the shared borders of Kenya, Ethiopia and Somalia. The lives of 11 million people are threatened by this crisis, attributed to the combined impact of the worst drought in 60 years and the high cost of food resulting from global food insecurity. link
Somalia, already devastated by ongoing violence and displacements from two decades of civil war, is the worst impacted country, with close to 2000 Somalis arriving daily in Southeast Ethiopia and 1400 seeking assistance in Kenya. (source)
“Looking around, we mainly see women and children,” said UNICEF Regional Director for Eastern and Southern Africa Elhadj As Sy, who has just visited Dadaab. “They are again the ones that are hardest hit by this triple shock of drought – which is related to climate change – [plus] soaring food prices and the armed conflict in Somalia.”
In an interview with Al Jazeera, Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) says existing camps have reached capacity and that the makeshift settlements of thousands of huts made from tree branches, covered by UN-supplied plastic sheets, are "catastrophes waiting to happen."
"The children are presenting with skin complications where their skin is peeling off mainly due to deficiency in micro-nutrients," Dr Milhia Abdul Kader said. "They are coming in a very bad shape. (Source: All Africa from Al Jazeera)
“The most impressive thing, for me, is that the poorest mothers in the worst cases of deprivation still love their children and want the best for them,” said Mr. As Sy. “They want them to be well fed, well-educated and to grow up with a future. To listen to all their stories, with smiles on their faces and hope for the future, is a true source of inspiration for all of us.”. Source: Relief Web
Climate Change & East Africa Drought
As they awaite the 2014 IPCC 4th report, climate scientists are not yet willing to officially attribute the two year drought to climate change, with many pointing to existing climate models which predict more precipitation for East African countries. Standing by the tenant that a single event can not be attributed to climate change, most attribute this extreme record-setting drought to an extremely strong La Niña event.
The current La Niña event, which began in 2010, is one of the strongest since the 1970s, says Jan de Leeuw, ILRI operating project leader. Like El Niño, he says,La Niña occurs in cycles “we don’t understand ... We are in a period now of more frequent La Niña events, but such a situation was there from 1950 till 1976 also.”
NASA defines the current situation as follows: “The pool of warm water in the east intensifies rains in Australia, the Philippines, and Indonesia. Domino-style, this pattern also increases the intensity of westerly winds over the Indian Ocean, pulling moisture away from East Africa toward Indonesia and Australia. The result? Drought over most of East Africa and floods and lush vegetation in Australia and other parts of Southeast Asia.”
Timeline:
Earning Warning Systems:
Scientists stress the need to develop early warning systems and innovative methods to assist those living in areas impacted by extreme weather events. EASTERN AFRICA: Too soon to blame climate change for droughtfrom IRIN Africa
Interactive Event 7/14
International Food Policy Research Institute: 2nd Annual Malthus Lecture: Feeding the World Sustainably: Reflections, Issues, and Suggestions Online participants may submit questions to s.hill-lee@cgiar.org OR via Twitter by using either @IFPRI or #askIFPRI
Ensuring global food security is a major challenge, but it is not beyond the ken of human ingenuity and determination. Through sustainable and equitable systems of production and consumption, we must meet the needs of the world’s current 6.7 billion inhabitants, as well as the additional 2 to 3 billion expected in coming decades, while recognizing the challenges posed by changing diets and continued production on stressed environmental systems. We must accomplish this using roughly the same amount of land and water as we use today. (read more)
Interactive Chat:
The Guardian: 7/13 Your questions answered: online chat from Dadaab refugee camp
Famine Defined
In an interactive report yesterday, Explainer: The east Africa food crisis, The Guardian details the characteristics of a famine, outlines the situation in the Horn of Africa, and predicates the need for early warning systems to alert locals as well as regional and international aide organizations on deteriorating conditions.
There has not been an official famine since 1984-85, when around 1 million people in Ethiopia and Sudan died. A famine is measured by rates of hunger, malnutrition and deaths, but the key to it is that it must be widespread, says Oxfam. Manoj Juneja, the new deputy director general of the Food and Agriculture Organisation, describes famine as a situation where there is an absolute exhaustion of, or inacessibility of, food in a given area leading to death. The situation in the Horn of Africa, says Juneja, has not reached that stage, but it is in a state of severe food insecurity that could rapidly deteriorate. "The situation demands immediate and constant attention," he says. In fact, famine as defined by the Food Security and Nutrition Analysis Unit (FSNA) based in Somalia has very precise criteria. The FSNA, started by the World Food Programme and funded by USAid, uses an integrated phase classification (IPC) five-point scale, ranging from "generally food secure" (1) to "catastrophe/famine" (5). Large areas of south east Ethiopia, southern Somalia and north east Kenya are already in phase four, the "emergency" phase. Some of the characteristics of phase five include acute malnutrition reaching more than 30%; deaths from hunger are two or more people per 10,000; water consumption is less than four litres a day; and intake of kilocalories is 1,500 a day compared to the recommended 2,100 a day.
East Africa Famine Facts
• More than 10 million people are in need of humanitarian assistance
• Over 2 million children under the age of five who are suffering from malnutrition; 480,000 are severely malnourished
• Food Price Inflation as reflected in changes in Grain Markets
- Baidoa, Somalia Red Sorghum: + 240%
- Jiiga, Ethiopia: Yellow Maize: + 117%
- Mandera, Kenya: White Maize: + 58%
Resources
• BBC: What you Need to Know
• AlertNet Q&A: How Bad is the Horn of Africa Drought
• PhotoEssay: 7/11 PBS Newshour
• Images/Maps Guardian Interactive Horn of Africa Drought Map
• Why doesn't a drought go away when it rains?
• Democracy Now Video
• Jeremy Scahil: THE CIAs Secret Sites in Somalia
Coming Next: Five Stages of Famine; Early warning systems & FEWS, Food Security Defined and Historical Perspectives
VideoShorts
WFP HungerFeeds Channel: Drought in East Africa How Bad Is the Horn of Africa Drought
Dawude in Dadaab, Kenya. Dawude, who walked all the way, from his home in the Gedo Province of Somalia to the Kenyan border, says conflict and drought has made life "very dangerous". In this short video, he says he came to Kenya to get an education because he wants to become a doctor. "There are people in Somalia with many problems," he says, "so I want to treat them."
Coverage @ KOS
boatsie on 7/11: Famine Threatens 11 Million in Horn of Africa
GlowNZ on Sunday, 7/10: People are Starving
Stranded Wind on Sunday, 7/10: Somalia's Dying Time
DONATE
• The World Food Programme: Fill the Cup: (THE WFP needs $200 million just to meet this year's needs in the Horn of Africa.)
• Care International
UNICEF: Donate to Save Children in Horn of Africa Crisis
Receive treatment for severe acute malnutrition through the provision of Ready- to-Use-Therapeutic Food (RUTF) such as Plumpy’Nut at community level or at therapeutic feeding centers;
• Gain access to clean water through the repair of pumping
stations, digging of boreholes, chlorination of water
sources, and water trucking;
• Receive vaccines against measles, polio and other
deadly diseases; and
• Resume schooling through the provision of temporary learning spaces and School-in-a-Box kits.
If anyone is interested in participating in a fund raising and information raising series @ Kos, send a request to be invited to the Ecojustice Group.
5:01 PM PT: Oxfam: Food crisis in Wajir, Kenya http://www.flickr.com/...
Plus Oxfam's Cash For Work Projects in Ethiopia http://www.oxfamamerica.org/...
plus how Mercy Corps is helping http://www.mercycorps.org/...
5:02 PM PT: follow #drought, #foodcrisis #HornofAfrica on Twitter
5:03 PM PT: Horn of Africa on FB http://www.facebook.com/...
10:27 PM PT: A row has broken out in Kenya's government over the huge influx of Somalis fleeing the region's worst drought in 60 years.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/...