Poor donor response to drought

The UN has received only 2.4 percent of the funds requested from international donors to tackle the effects of drought in the Horn of Africa. Catherine Bertini, Special Envoy for Secretary-General Kofi Annan on Drought in the Greater Horn of Africa, praised the response of the donor community to last year’s food crisis, but said more was needed. Speaking at the International Livestock Research Institute in the Ethiopian capital, Addis Ababa, she asked: “Do we have to continue to scream that the sky is falling in to be well funded?” The appeal for funds was launched in January, aiming to provide clean water, health care, seeds and tools, and to rebuild livestock populations throughout the region. Bertini, who is also Executive Director of the World Food Programme, highlighted problems in the pastoralist areas of Ethiopia, Eritrea, Kenya, Sudan, Somalia and Djibouti. She said these had borne the major burden of regional drought, and some had lost over 50 percent of their livestock. She said up to 70 percent of pastoralist communities in Somalia had been badly affected by the drought. Food insecurity in the region had been exacerbated by the ban on animal exports to the Gulf, imposed in September 2000 when the first outbreaks of Rift Valley fever outside Africa appeared in Saudi Arabia and Yemen. Bertini emphasised that many pastoralists relied on the livestock export market to survive, particularly in times of drought in the Horn. [See also SOMALIA: IRIN Special - The Berbera Lifeline, Part I and Part II].