UNICEF Executive Director calls for immediate relief response

Executive Director of the UN’s Children’s Fund (UNICEF), Carol Bellamy, on Friday called for more to be done to tackle long term food insecurity in drought-stricken Ethiopia. She said it was vital that the shift is made away from dealing with recurrent food emergencies to a longer-term strategy that tackles the causes. Bellamy said that only by tackling the root causes could the country be able to combat weather related disasters. Bellamy spoke on the eve of the Ethiopian government’s relief appeal, which will spell out the exact the scale of the emerging crisis in the country. Bellamy said that the international community should intervene now to prevent a real disaster, adding that fewer resources are used if emergencies are nipped in the bud. Speaking at a press conference in the Ethiopian capital Addis Ababa she added that it was vital that the government’s efforts to tackle the drought are supported by the international community. "These efforts are critical to respond this time not only to the immediate emergency but on a more long term sustained basis so that the impact of these weather related crisis will not be as deep and devastating as they have been in the past," Bellamy said. She said the government’s appeal would call for some US $76 million in non-food items like water and health goods and 1.5 million metric tons of food aid for 2003. She also added that already seven million people had been hit by the drought and at worst some 14 million could be hit by early next year. Bellamy, who took over the helm of UNICEF in 1995, is visiting Ethiopia as part of a five-nation tour of Africa and Europe which started in Senegal on 17th November. She said that the scale of the drought in Ethiopia had been compared to the 1984 famine which claimed an estimated one million lives adding it was vital not to let the emergency get out of hand. "Even if it has the possibility of being that bad, because I hear from some people that potentially it could, I would just say that by intervening now the opportunity exists to not let it get as out of hand as the eighties."