Prime Minister launches relief appeal

Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi on Saturday launched an international appeal for help in averting a looming famine threatening millions in the country. He spoke out as his government revealed that more than 11 million Ethiopians would need food aid next year; a further three million were at risk from the prevailing drought unless they received help – in total over 1.5 million mt of food. By January some seven million would need aid, but pledges still fell short of requirements, he said. Meles warned that thousands who would otherwise die could be saved if the rest of the world took the scale of the mounting crisis seriously. This is the first time an Ethiopian prime minister has spoken during the country's annual Disaster Prevention and Preparedness Commission (DPPC) emergency appeal. Each year some four million people in the country – where the average annual income is US $108 – needed food aid to survive - and that number was now increasing, Meles said. He went on to note that Ethiopia needed to start tackling the long-term consequences of food insecurity. "There is a chronic, predictable underlying structural problem that needs to be addressed, not after the emergency has passed, but in conjunction with addressing the emergency. We need to develop strategies to fight poverty, which is at the root of the problem," the prime minister said at the UN Conference Centre in the capital, Addis Ababa. He went on to say that adequate mechanisms to deliver aid were in place to prevent famine, and that what was needed now was food. "What we need are resources," he told several hundred ambassadors, senior United Nations officials and representatives of aid organisations. "We have a good system; let's use it to deliver aid in time." Simon Mechale, the head of the DPPC - the Ethiopian government’s emergency arm - said millions of dollars would be needed to tackle the crisis. He observed that harvests were 25 percent down from previous years, that the country faced acute water shortages, and that livestock had been wiped out as a result. "The challenge ahead is not only to make pledges and commitments but also to deliver them as quickly as possible," he said at the appeal, which is supported by the UN’s Emergency Unit in Ethiopia. The DPPC commissioner also warned that the drought was sparking fears of epidemics in regions hardest hit, such as Afar in the northeast. "The emergency situation is real and very serious. The problem has become a major challenge to the government and people of Ethiopia," he stressed. He went on to say that it was "imperative" that relief should arrive "large, fast and uninterrupted". Simon pointed out that the country's emergency food stocks had reached critically low levels. "The government is seriously concerned that failure to quickly deliver and sustain it would cause the deaths and displacement of victims we have so far successfully prevented," he said. UN Humanitarian Coordinator for Ethiopia, Samuel Nyambi, warned that the magnitude of the crisis should not be underestimated. He told aid organisations that the numbers in need could actually grow before the year was out.