Food situation critical, support needed, UN officials warn

Despite an improved response from donors in recent weeks, the food situation in Eritrea remains critical, with average malnutrition rates of between 15 and 20 percent among children under five, the UN said on Tuesday. "Up to 70 percent are suffering either due to the fall-out from war or drought, this can only constitute a major disaster," said Carolyn McAskie, the UN's Deputy Emergency Relief Coordinator, at the mid-year review of the Inter-Agency Consolidated Appeal for Eritrea. Despite the fact that malnutrition rates in Eritrea are between two and three times higher than in many countries in Southern Africa, the response to its government's appeal for food aid – originally made in August 2002 – has been considered slow. The relatively few donor missions to Eritrea, the small number of media representatives there, and competing food crises in other countries – including neighbouring Ethiopia, made famous during its 1984 famine – have all been blamed for the low level of donor response, which was "far from sufficient", McAskie said. "There is a feeling in the UN capitals, New York, Rome and Geneva, and also many donor capitals that we haven’t done enough to carry the story of what’s really happening in Eritrea to the world," she said. "Part of the syndrome is that people who might be at risk don’t make good photo opportunities." "The very simple fact that people are dying because of a simple drought is not in fashion anymore," Christian Balslev-Olesen, Head of the UN Children's Fund (UNICEF) in Eritrea, told IRIN. "You don’t see people here dying in front of the cameras like in other countries." "The international community has done too little too late towards the situation in Eritrea, in comparison with other countries," he added. The consolidated appeal, launched at the beginning of the year, has only received 49 percent – US $49 million - of money desperately needed for food aid in Eritrea. "If we do not respond it will become chronic. Children will grow up into adults with impairments. If we don’t respond we will not have time to catch up," Stanley Chitekwe, Emergency Nutritionist with UNICEF, told IRIN. Since March, the Eritrean government has been distributing some food rations - often only cereals - to about 60 percent of the two million people who need them. But 600,000 people remain unaided and therefore vulnerable to famine. Stocks of food are also running out, with only enough to last for another month, and pledged food aid has yet to arrive. Since Eritrea’s borders with Sudan, Ethiopia and Yemen have all been closed, all imported food has to be brought in by ship through a complicated, long and expensive process. Supplies can take up to four months to reach Eritrea from Europe, and between four and six months from the US. "The food is not even in the country, let alone in the mouths and stomachs of those who need it," commented Musa Bungudu, Head of OCHA Eritrea. Nevertheless, McAskie emphasised that progress had been made. "I don’t think we’re too late, there is time to address the critical needs over the next few months," she said. Since the present drought comes on the heels of one in 2000, and given extremely scarce government resources, support from the international community was "absolutely mandatory", McAskie said. She added that it was essential "to work hard at a new partnership" between the Eritrean authorities, the UN and NGOs. "We need their support," she said, "if I am going to be the kind of advocate that I need to be on behalf of the suffering people of Eritrea."