UNITED NATIONS (AP) — The U.N. humanitarian office said Monday that food shortages in Ethiopia have reached alarming levels following widespread drought in the country.
Relief organizations are grappling with a “considerable shortage of supplies,” with the U.N. World Food Program in need of $136 million for its operation in the Horn of Africa nation, U.N. spokeswoman Michele Montas said.
The U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs reports “that the food security situation in Ethiopia has deteriorated to alarming levels in the wake of drought conditions throughout much of the country.”
Last week, U.N. humanitarian chief John Holmes visited Ethiopia and said the southeast, scene of a long rebellion, is the most worrying of all the regions affected by severe food shortages. He urged aid agencies to help ensure that Ethiopia’s devastating food crisis does not become a famine.
The U.N. says more than four million Ethiopians need emergency assistance and a further eight million need immediate food relief.
Severe floods hit Ethiopia last year, destroying most of the food crops. This year, drought has worsened the situation.
Montas said Monday that flooding in Gambela in southwestern Ethiopia has reportedly displaced nearly 35,000. The World Health Organization has provided emergency drugs and supplies for 10,000 people there, she said.
2 thoughts on “UN humanitarian office said Ethiopian food shortage alarming”
“As with many people this time of year, I have been particularly interested in the meteorological phenomenon called the hurricane.
Scientists are working diligently to understand the cause of these massive and often deadly weather events. Although there are competing theories and no absolutely definitively conclusions, there is a very credible theory of hurricane formation that has caught my attention.
Using focused collected regarding Hurricane Isabel in September 2003, NASA and NOAA Meteorologists believe many Atlantic hurricanes may have the same — and really surprising — origin.
According to the theory, large Atlantic hurricanes may actually have their humble beginnings over the highlands of the East African nation of Ethiopia. Hot winds blowing off the Arabian Peninsula across the Red Sea collide with the high mountains of Ethiopia, creating atmospheric turbulence in the airflow.
Imagine, if you will, a large rock outcropping rising just above the surface of a fast-moving stream of water. As the water passes around and over the rock, it creates eddies of turbulence in the flow of the stream that can sometimes continue quite a distance beyond the rock itself.
In the case of these Ethiopian mountains, minor meteorological maelstroms they create continue to bubble and flow westward across the African continent. Often fueled in much the same way a New Mexican Monsoonal flow would be this time of year, these turbulent storms can sustain them until the turbulent air reaches the Atlantic Ocean off the west coast of Africa.
If the oceanic and atmospheric conditions are just right (as they generally are this time of the year) these turbulent storms can act as seeds planted in fertile soil that can quickly develop into the raging storms we know in North America as the Atlantic Hurricane.
At times, our actions in life can resemble this meteorological theory. If our actions create turbulence in a person’s life or faith, we may not think anything of it at the time. In most cases, as in the dozens of storms that come off the Ethiopian highlands and never become hurricanes, our actions may have little ultimate consequence.
Yet, if we cause trouble in a person’s life today, and down the line the resulting turmoil hits an environment which only feeds the turbulence, the result can be frighteningly devastating. An otherwise minor storm in life becomes a deadly hurricane that feeds on its destructive energy and leaves devastation its path.
This is why it is so vital for Christians to be prayerfully aware of how our actions and behaviors affect the lives of others. It would be easy to presume a hurricane in New Orleans has nothing to attribute to mountains half a world away, but there is convincing evidence to the contrary. What we do today will affect the lives of others — even the ones we love the most!
While nobody is clairvoyant and could possibly predict how our actions may mushroom into future catastrophe, prayerful relationship with God and faithful attention to God’s word is perhaps the best way of discerning the winds of life to see how best to help the world rather than unwittingly sew the seeds of future destruction.”
Dave Rogers is pastor of First Christian Church (Disciples of Christ).
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The reason why I posted this is to convince ourselves first and to let the world know that the Ethiopian poverty/basic needs problem is not caused by draught as the western media intentionally and intensively falsely described. There is a 5-6 month tropical rain a year (between half May- half September in a daily basses) in the highlands of Ethiopia. If we know how to use this rain fresh water, not only Ethiopia but also many countries can benefit from it (Using dam and tube to transport it). Conserving water on open field in the highlands is also very suitable as the temperature is not affected by hot weather and the water cannot be evaporated. More than 1/3 of the Nile water in Sudan and Egypt(Aswan dam) disappears through evaporation.
When Nature lightning on the highlands of Ethiopia, the rest of Africa (starting from the western bordering of Ethiopia) are getting rain. Atlantic ocean, Caribbeans, America and the rest also are getting rain, storm, Hurricane and other forms this way. Yet, the vast rainfall remains in Ethiopia. Google and you will learn more about.
So, the Ethiopian poverty/food problem is not our blessed country fault. But her children’s fault. Lack of Peace, unity, good administration, love and respect one another, love and patriotism to our beloved common home- Ethiopia, Vision, concentration, determination and hard work on the right direction are among the causes to the situation. Stop blaming our God gifted country associating her with draught which is totally false. Comparing to the European, Middle east, Americans, Africa and other regions weather, our country weather is like a paradise on earth. We are on the top of Africa. We are the roof of Africa. If you don’t know the difference by being there, you will not get it. Our country weather and landscape is a God given that we don’t know how to use it and instead we are destroying it to hurt ourselves this way9With hunger, aid…). Stop blaming each other. Be unite and work hard the right thing in the right way.
Let’s have an open debate, with more honest and reliable data, on the root causes of the food crisis, and persistent hunger and chronic malnutrition in Ethiopia:
EXTERNAL factors (which we can do little about), such as drought, rising energy and food prices, materialism, regional (Horn of Africa and Middle East) instability, ineffective food aid and foreign assistance, etc.
INTERNAL factors (which we can do a lot about), such as environmental degradation, population pressure, poverty, inaccess to preventive health and nutrition services, poor economic and social planning, lack of effective disaster prevention and preparedness, political instability, ethnic conflict, and .
Since it’s a complicated issue, and the UN and other international agencies make the situation worse by not documenting real data on where, who, and how hunger is getting worse (or better). We need much better (reliable, representative, objective) data, action-research and policy-program evaluation by our own Ethiopian universities on changes in maternal and young children malnutrition and excess mortality, by kifle-ager, food economy zone, rural-urban, education and socio-economic status.