EU gives €620,000 for emergency food security

The European Commission (EC) said on Thursday it had allocated €620,000 (US $783,447) to fund emergency food security measures for up to 35,000 vulnerable households in the Gash Barka and Debub regions of Eritrea. The aid would be provided through the Commission’s Humanitarian Aid department, ECHO, and channelled through the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation. It would cover the distribution of seeds, tools and animal feed. Successive droughts in Eritrea had disrupted traditional seed-saving practices, and households had been forced to use their limited seed stocks in order to survive, the EC said in a statement. Adverse climatic conditions, it added, had also resulted in a growing and acute fodder deficit far above the "normal" chronic situation at a time when the demand on oxen for ploughing was highest, and when the mainly female-headed households were in dire need of extra support. On 3 May, a senior Eritrean government official said that about one million people in the Horn of Africa country would go hungry unless the donor community provided support. "We are reaching less than 60 percent of the needy population," Teclemichael Woldegeorgis, deputy commissioner at the Eritrean Relief and Refugee Commission, told reporters in the capital, Asmara. "We are appealing to the donor community to continue their assistance," he added. "Now the hunger season starts, and that is the time when the majority of food is required." An estimated 2.3 million Eritreans, roughly two thirds of the population, depend on varying levels of food aid. SEE RELATED REPORT AT: [http://www.irinnews.org/S_report.asp?ReportID=47189]