International and Ethiopian Red Cross launch drought relief effort

The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) and the Ethiopian Red Cross Society (ERCS) have warned that ethnic conflict is exacerbating the effects of drought in the country. In a joint statement sent to IRIN on Thursday, they said that the ability to cope with the severe conditions arising from the drought had been weakened because of tribal violence in eastern Ethiopia. "As part of an initial survey, the ICRC, together with the ERCS, gathered information on the consequences of the drought and the depletion of alternative food resources used by the population to cope with this problem, which is also exacerbated by violence and clashes between different ethnic groups," the two organisations said. They had launched a massive relief effort to provide 100,000 people in some of the worst-affected areas hit by the drought with emergency food assistance. They were mainly targeting pastoralists living in villages in Afar Regional State and in the Shinile Zone of the Somali Regional State, the statement said. Clans in the Afar and Somali regions – the Afars and the Issas - had a long history of fierce clashes, which became even more violent during droughts, when they fought for diminishing water supplies. "With over 40 distribution points, the most vulnerable people living in the area will receive wheat, high protein food and vegetable oil in order to face the consequences of a prolonged dry season, which heavily affected the livestock, the primary economic resource of the nomadic population," the ICRC and ERCS said. They noted that although the Ethiopian government had said that about six million people needed food aid until the end of the year, it had gone on to warn that that figure could rise to as high as 14 million by early 2003. The ICRC and ERCS said that by distributing aid they hoped to reduce the pressure exerted by the drought to the degree of compelling families to sell their assets, thereby curtailing their ability to cope in future years. "At the same time, it should help avoiding the consequent decline of the health conditions of the population," they observed.