Aid agencies are warning that Ethiopian authorities are under-estimating the scale of the country’s drought.
Official estimates of the number of people facing hunger and hardship stand at 4.6m but agencies warn the real figure could be more than 8m.
There is also confusion over the amount of money needed to meet the crisis, with the Oxfam agency estimating it at about $500m.
However, the United Nations reports that $772m has already been pledged.
Proud people
Ethiopia is in the grip of severe food shortages after rains failed across a large swathe of the east and south of the country.
But attempts to deal with the crisis have been hindered by disputes over the number of people affected.
In April the first government appeal spoke of more than 2m in need of food aid. By June that figure had risen to well over 4m.
Aid agencies now say the official estimate has reached 6.4m – but has not yet been released.
But, say the agencies, even this underestimates the scale of the problem.
Ethiopians are a proud people, who hate the image of their country forever extending a begging bowl. And they are suspicious of the motives of the aid community.
In an interview with Time magazine in August, Prime Minister Meles Zenawi said there were pockets of severe malnutrition but that the situation was manageable.
He questioned the way some agencies operated, saying they tended to use “hyperbole” to get the aid they needed.
“That can convey the message that the situation is hopeless when in fact it is not,” said the prime minister.
Yet if the 8m figure is correct, and if this is added to the approximately 7m who are chronically short of food, then as many as 20% of all Ethiopians could need food aid this year.
Oxfam has just released a fresh appeal. It says the aid required is $260m short of its target.
But figures produced by the United Nations office for the co-ordination of humanitarian affairs show that $772m has already been pledged, the vast majority from the US, which has nearly trebled its aid to Ethiopia this year.
The current crisis in Ethiopia is being lost in a swirling mist of competing figures.
MOGADISHU (Xinhua) – Talks aimed at pacifying the Somali capital Mogadishu is under way between leaders of Al-Shabaab Islamist movement, an insurgent group, and elders of the revered Hawiye clan, local media reports said Sunday.
The talks between the two sides comes after the elders this week managed to persuade the Al-Shabaab group to rescind their threat to shoot down planes using the airport in Mogadishu which they said is being used for military purposes.
“We are talking brotherly for the sake of our people and the leaders of the Al-Shabaab will take our advice as they listened tous before,” Ahmed Diriye, spokesman for the Council of Hawiye clanelders, told reporters in Mogadishu.
Diriye, who last week said he received death threats from members of the group, was hopeful that a deal could be reached regarding the security of the capital particularly in the few residential areas remaining in the city.
Spokesman for Al-Shabaab, Sheik Muqtar Robow Abu Masur, distanced his group from the death threats against the Hawiye elder, saying Diriye is “the grandfather of all resistant fighters” and can never be threatened.
Bridgye Ba-Houko, spokesman for AU peacekeeping force in Somalia, told Xinhua that he welcomes the efforts by clan leaders to bring peace to the city.
The Al-Shabaab group, listed by the U.S. as one of the foreign terror organizations, has been accused of operating from populated areas in their attacks against African Union peacekeepers and Ethiopian Woyanne troops backing Somali government forces, who in turn respond with heavier artillery shells that causes many of the civilian causalities.
Nearly a hundred and fifty civilians have been killed and more than three hundred others wounded as a result of heavy shelling between AU forces guarding the airport and the Al-Shabaab which attacked the airport with mortar shells every time a plane landed since Sept. 16.
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Republican vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin abused her power as Alaska’s governor and violated state ethics law by trying to get her ex-brother-in-law fired from the state police, a state investigator’s report concluded Friday.
“Gov. Palin knowingly permitted a situation to continue where impermissible pressure was placed on several subordinates in order to advance a personal agenda,” the report states.
Public Safety Commissioner Walt Monegan’s refusal to fire State Trooper Mike Wooten from the state police force was “likely a contributing factor” to Monegan’s July dismissal, but Palin had the authority as governor to fire him, the report by former Anchorage prosecutor Stephen Branchflower states.
However, it states that her efforts to get Wooten fired broke a state ethics law that bars public officials from pursuing personal interest through official action.
Monegan has said he was fired in July after refusing pressure to sack Wooten, who had gone through an acrimonious divorce and custody battle with Palin’s sister.
Palin and her husband, Todd, have consistently denied wrongdoing, describing Wooten as a “rogue trooper” who had threatened their family — allegations Branchflower discounted.
“I conclude that such claims of fear were not bona fide and were offered to provide cover for the Palins’ real motivation: to get Trooper Wooten fired for personal family reasons,” Branchflower wrote.
The Branchflower report states Todd Palin used his wife’s office and its resources to press for Wooten’s removal, and the governor “failed to act” to stop it. But because Todd Palin is not a state employee, the report makes no finding regarding his conduct.
The bipartisan Legislative Council, which commissioned the investigation after Monegan was fired, unanimously adopted the 263-page public report after a marathon executive session Friday. About 1,000 more pages of documents compiled during the inquiry will remain confidential, the council’s chairman, state Sen. Kim Elton, said.
A spokeswoman for the McCain-Palin campaign responded by calling the investigation “a partisan-led inquiry” run by supporters of Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Barack Obama, but hailing its finding that Monegan’s firing broke no law.
“Gov. Palin was cleared of the allegation of an improper firing, which is what this investigation was approved to look into,” campaign spokeswoman Meg Stapleton said.
She said the Legislature exceeded its mandate in finding an ethics violation. “Lacking evidence to support the original Monegan allegation, the Legislative Council seriously overreached, making a tortured argument to find fault without basis in law or fact,” she said.
Rep. John Coghill, a Republican who criticized the handling of the investigation, said it was “well-done professionally.”
But he said some of the conclusions were judgment calls by Branchflower, and recommended readers should view them with a “jaundiced eye.”
Palin originally agreed to cooperate with the Legislative Council inquiry, and disclosed in August that her advisers had contacted Department of Public Safety officials nearly two dozen times regarding her ex-brother-in-law.
But once she became Sen. John McCain’s running mate, her advisers began painting the investigation as a weapon of Democratic partisans.
Ahead of Friday’s hearing, Palin supporters wearing clown costumes and carrying balloons denounced the probe as a “kangaroo court” and a “three-ring circus” led by supporters of Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama.
The state senator managing the probe, Sen. Hollis French, fueled those complaints with a September 2 interview in which he warned the inquiry could yield an “October Surprise” for the GOP. But Palin’s lawyers already had begun pushing for the state Personnel Board to launch its own investigation, calling it the proper legal venue for the matter.
“HORN OF AFRICA AT A CRITICAL STAGE,” proclaims the very prominent headline on the homepage of United Nations World Food Program. The urgency is not without reason, as a statement released by Oxfam today underscores.
Facing a “perfect storm” of drought and rising food prices, the number of people in Ethiopia in need of emergency assistance has jumped from 4.6 million to 6.4 million in less than four months. This would be bad enough, but there are 7.2 million additional Ethiopians who receive only some small support from their government Woyanne.
From Oxfam’s statement: “Today’s figures, terrible as they are, show only half the picture. Over 13.5 million Ethiopians are in need of aid in order to survive. The number of those suffering severe hunger and destitution has spiraled. More can and must be done now to save lives and avert disaster,” said Oxfam’s country director, Waleed Rauf.
Namely, donor countries can step in and provide the $260 million needed for aid efforts in the country. WFP has only received a third of the funds it needs to deliver food, and, without further support, it will likely have to scale back operations to even more dangerous levels.
