Aid agencies in Shashamina have been inundated with people suffering from malnutrition.

BBC’s Wendy Urquhart reports. Click here to watch.

Government faulted as Ethiopian kids go hungry

By Shashank Bengali, McClatchy Newspapers

SHASHEMENE, Ethiopia — Nine-month-old Alfiya Galeto weighed just 10 lbs. when she arrived at the makeshift clinic here, her eyes dull and her arms as thin as drinking straws. There was no food in their village, her mother said, and for weeks she had been fed nothing but breast milk.

In the week after this clinic was opened by the medical charity Doctors Without Borders, nearly 300 children like Alfiya were admitted for severe malnutrition. In the poor farming villages around Shashemene, in drought-ravaged southern Ethiopia, aid workers believe that hundreds and perhaps thousands more children are starving.

A serious drought and the worldwide surge in food prices are fueling one of Ethiopia’s gravest hunger crises in years, with 6 million children younger than five urgently needing food, according to the United Nations Children’s Fund, or UNICEF. Relief workers say scores of children already have died.

But international humanitarian groups say the Ethiopian government Woyanne regime has been slow to respond. Prime Minister Dictator Meles Zenawi’s government hasn’t publicly declared an emergency and, the agencies say, has downplayed their estimates of the severity of the situation.

Arid, overpopulated and chronically hungry, Ethiopia receives more food aid than all but a handful of countries worldwide — most of it from the United States, which has provided $300 million in emergency assistance to relief agencies in the past year. U.S. officials defend Ethiopia, a key regional ally, arguing that the government was caught off-guard by the extent of the drought and by how quickly malnutrition rates rose in recent months.

But there were warning signs.

A U.S. humanitarian assessment mission warned in January that humanitarian conditions “could significantly deteriorate” in the impoverished southeastern Somali region. By February — as rainfall remained scant, maize and other staple crops failed and inflation soared — international aid workers reported that malnourished children were showing up at hospitals in southern Ethiopia.

In an address to parliament on March 18, Meles said reports of drought-related deaths were “false.” It wasn’t until late May that a delegation of Ethiopian emergency relief officials toured Shashemene and other parts of the drought-ravaged south. According to humanitarian officials who were briefed on the visit, the Ethiopians were “shocked” by the conditions and pledged to respond.

“It is absolutely critical at this stage that the government of Ethiopia recognizes the depth of its problem, and works to ensure that its children survive this crisis,” said one senior international aid official who, like several interviewed for this story, requested anonymity for fear of angering Ethiopian officials.

The head of another international relief group said: “Is it a lack of information or is it denial? The government needs to recognize this is an emergency, to convene donors and to facilitate the arrival of assistance in the country.”

Ethiopian Woyanne officials weren’t available for comment. But the inability to feed itself is at odds with the image that the government wants to project: that of a country on the rise, with annual economic growth of around 10 percent, fresh off a massive coming-out celebration last year to mark the year 2000 on the Ethiopian calendar.

At the Doctors Without Borders clinic in Shashemene, 150 miles south of Addis Ababa, 277 children were admitted in the first eight days. Hundreds more are in outpatient care in far-flung clinics in the countryside. In Seraro, a remote town about two hours from here, aid workers reported that 55 had died by mid-May.

The children in Shashemene are faring slightly better. Four have died, but the vast majority are slowly putting on weight thanks to a steady diet of fortified milk and Plumpy’nut — a protein-enriched, peanut butter-like paste often used in famine relief.

On a recent afternoon, a group of mothers smiled as 12-month-old Hirwot, who had been admitted a week earlier with persistent diarrhea, weighed in at 3 pounds heavier and was transferred out of the ward reserved for the most serious cases.

Alfiya, the 9-month-old, looked in awful shape when her mother brought her in from their village 50 miles away. Her limp body was swallowed by a pale green sweater and flies buzzed about her head, which was scabbed with sores.

But Veronique DeClerck, a Belgian midwife who inspected the child, pronounced that she would survive.

“Now that she’s here, she gets treatment and she’ll make it,” DeClerck said. “But the problem is when they go home, and there’s still no food.”

Relief agencies say they badly need more Plumpy’nut, vitamin-enriched milk, antibiotics and other treatments.

Some agencies complain that the government continues to impose heavy import duties on emergency supplements like Plumpy’nut, which is taxed at about 50 percent.

Of $50 million needed for life-saving food and medical care, UNICEF says donor countries have chipped in only $6 million.

“We are far from knowing the magnitude of the situation,” said Francois Calas, country coordinator for the Belgian arm of Doctors Without Borders. “We can expect the coming months to be very difficult as well.”

Election observers have been arrested across Ethiopia on the eve of Sunday’s poll, opposition members say.

They told a gathering in the capital, Addis Ababa, that more than 100 monitors remained in police custody. One candidate is also being held.

The Ethiopian Human Rights Council also rejected assessments that the election was largely peaceful so far.

The poll is widely seen as a test of the Ethiopian government’s willingness to bring democracy to the country.

The election is the third under Prime Minister Meles Zenawi and his ruling Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF) party.

Rural problem

The campaign has been marked by unprecedented openness, with rallies by both the government and opposition attracting hundred-of-thousands of supporters and both sides being given wide access to the media.

But human rights groups and opposition parties say there has still been widespread intimidation.

“Even on the eve of the voting, our party observers are being arrested and denied access,” Beyene Petros, vice-chairman of United Ethiopian Democratic Forces (UEDF), told the BBC.

Mr Petros said that in Konteb, in the Hadiya zone, 230km (143 miles) south of Addis Ababa, 38 observers and one election candidate had been detained.

“We are extremely distressed, having worked very hard… The reports we are receiving are only the tip of the iceberg,” Mr Petros said at a later press conference.

Observers blocked

Opposition leaders have rejected former US President Jimmy Carter’s positive assessment of the nature of campaigning.

Andargatchew Tesfaye, head of the Ethiopian Human Rights Council, said about 300 international observers were not enough to make a proper assessment.

Mr Tesfaye said he was unsure how many of the group’s 1,644 observers would be in place when polls open on Sunday.

He said that a legal challenge to the group’s right to post observers, launched by the National Electoral Board, was a deliberate delay tactic designed to prevent independent observers from reaching rural areas in time.

Speaking to the Associated Press news agency, government spokesman Zemedkun Tekle said criticism from the Ethiopian Human Rights Council was entirely expected.

“The government has repeatedly made it clear this organisation is not neutral and has already decided its verdict on the elections before it is held,” Mr Zemedkun said.

ADDIS ABABA (IRIN) – Fifty-two European Union (EU) long-term election observers flew into Ethiopia on Friday, officials said, to act as the “eyes and ears” of the mission – one month ahead of the national elections.

Rafael Lopez Pintor, deputy chief observer, told reporters in the capital, Addis Ababa, the observers were the core element of the EU mission to assess Ethiopia’s third ever democratic ballot.

“The long term observers are an extremely important ingredient in a mission,” he said. “The long term observers provide first hand information on how the campaign is being run around the country. They are our eyes and ears on the ground.

“They are all highly experienced electoral observers, they are all very well trained,” he added.

Pintor said it was critical that election observers were in the country ahead of polling, to observe and assess the entire election process.

“We want to have a view of the entire process, before, during and after the election,” he said. “They will be here about 15 or 20 days after the election. Before the election is as important or more important in some respects, than the voting day and this is the reason why they come in one month before.”

The observers are to be deployed to eight of Ethiopia’s nine regions (national elections in Somali region have been delayed until August), attend political rallies and meet parties who will be contesting the elections.

They would also be sent to potential trouble spots like Gambella in western Ethiopia where there have been serious clashes among ethnic groups in recent years.

“In principle we hope to have a similar presence in all regions but then as the election gets nearer we will have to decide where if necessary to have a more intense presence,” Pintor added.

The EU would also deploy 100 short-term observers who are expected to fly in on May 10th – five days before the elections are held.

The first contingent of the EU team arrived in March to prepare the groundwork for the observers. Opposition groups have argued that the EU deployment is too little, an argument dismissed by the observer mission.

Chief observer Ana Gomes told a press conference on arrival: “We are determined to ensure a very professional, impartial and independent job in observing the elections, so all Ethiopians can believe this will be a genuine election,” she said.

The general elections would be the third democratic ballot in Ethiopia’s history. Ethiopia has a two-house parliament: the 112-seat upper House of the Federation and the 547-seat lower House of People’s Representatives. More than 25 million of Ethiopia’s 71 million people have registered to vote.