Urgent need to support “recovery”

The UN Regional Humanitarian Coordinator for the Drought in the Horn of Africa, Bronek Szynalski, said that although a major famine had been successfully avoided last year, it was now vital to aid recovery. “We have not yet succeeded in putting people on the road to recovery... if we do not provide support now we may be faced with the same crisis in a few months,” Szynalski told IRIN. The UN has appealed for US $353 million for drought-affected people in the Horn of Africa. He said the Horn of Africa was an area particularly vulnerable to drought and conflict and it would be a major task over the next six to 12 months to help build up the livelihoods destroyed last year. It was also the responsibility of regional governments to focus on developing areas where there was a “chronic poverty syndrome”. Szynalski said the drought had hit pastoralist communities particularly hard, who were now trying to cope with the devastating effects of the regional ban on livestock exports to the Arab States. (Saudi Arabia and Yemen banned all livestock imports from the Horn of Africa last October following the first outbreak of Rift Valley Fever outside Africa.) Pastoralist areas in the Horn hit by drought have been unable to sell herds of livestock held for export. “There is little point encouraging recovery if you can’t sell your animals... the market within the Horn is not sufficient”, the Coordinator said. He said humanitarian organisations and donors were finding it “difficult to know how to resolve the issue” but that it had to be tackled as a matter of priority. Szynalski said there was also great concern over the widening drought in Sudan. “It is a crisis that the international community should be aware of and the Sudan government would be wise to give more attention to,” he told IRIN. Bronek Szynalski was appointed the UN Regional Humanitarian Coordinator for the Drought in the Horn of Africa on 20 January this year. He is based in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, but, unlike his predecessor, will not be coordinating the international humanitarian response in Ethiopia. He said the scope of the regional coordinators position had changed to concentrate on “regional perspectives”.