(telegraph.co.uk) — Britain will give at least £15 million in aid to fight starvation in Ethiopia as the situation in the drought-stricken country worsens, International Development Secretary Douglas Alexander has said.
A team of Department for International Development officials are due to arrive in Ethiopia on Tuesday to assess the situation and the Ethiopian government is expected to launch an emergency appeal this week.
Mothers and their malnourished children wait to receive food aid and treatment in Bolossa Sore, Ethiopia
Aid groups say the crisis in Ethiopia was the worst since 1984, when a famine captured the world’s attention and killed around one million people. The current drought, in a country where more than 80 per cent of its 79 million people live off the land, has been compounded by global food price rises.
Monday night’s announcement of a £10 million contribution – in addition to a £5 million pledge last month – came as John Holmes, the United Nation’s top humanitarian official, said despite international aid, Ethiopia was again facing hunger on a mass scale.
“The World Food Programme feeds some 8 million people already, together with the other (aid agencies) in Ethiopia,” he said. “But we may need to increase that, because of drought.”
Unicef, the United Nations Children’s Fund, warned at least 126,000 children were in need of urgent care to prevent severe malnutrition and said £25 million was needed just to meet emergency needs.
“We’re overwhelmed,” said Margaret Aguirre, a spokeswoman for the International Medical Corps, a California-based aid agency. “There’s not enough food and everyone’s starving and that’s all there is to it. Older children are starting to show the signs of malnutrition when normally they might be able to withstand shocks to the system.
“What’s particularly concerning is that the moderately malnourished are soaring. It’s increasing so much that it means those children are going to slide into severe malnutrition.”
The famine comes as Ethiopian troops fight a bloody battle Somalia, backing the government against Islamic insurgents. Somalia on Monday signed a deal with the opposition alliance, calling for an end to the violence and the withdrawal of Ethiopian forces.
The opposition sees the Ethiopian troops as an occupying force and it international rights groups and aid agencies estimate that at least 6,000 civilians have been killed in fighting over the past year.
EDITOR’S NOTE: Britain’s government is partly responsible for the political and economic crises in Ethiopia by supporting the Woyanne tribal junta to stay in power. What Ethiopia needs is not frifari (crumbs). The best thing Britain can do for Ethiopia is to stop arming and financing the brutal dictatorship.