UN officials warn of “silent emergency”

UN officials have warned of a move towards a “silent humanitarian emergency” in Eritrea unless the level of international aid is sustained. Christian Balslev-Oleson, country representative of the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF), pointed out that malnutrition among women and children in the traditional breadbasket regions of Gash Barka and Anseba was rising rapidly. Some 47 percent of women of reproductive age are malnourished in Gash Barka while in Anseba the figure reaches an alarming 52.5 percent. “The figures are dramatic,” Balslev-Oleson told IRIN. Eritrea has been reeling from a devastating drought which has progressively worsened over the last four years. Balslev-Oleson noted that the cumulative effect of drought, coupled with war and poverty, meant these regions could not now produce enough food. “Other regions are used to drought, but these people are more vulnerable in drought situations,” he stressed. “They are used to having food, and their coping mechanisms are different.” “The international community will have to be more focused on this new pattern,” he pointed out. “People shouldn’t think things are normal just because the last rains were reasonable. Eritreans are still recovering from last year.” Stanley Chitekwe, a nutrition officer with UNICEF, added that malnutrition among women has generational implications. Children begin suffering when they are still in the womb. Mothers end up giving birth to stillborn children or low birth weight babies. And the risk of maternal mortality increases. “Kids are starting off with a disadvantage, leading to impaired early childhood development and then problems in adulthood,” he noted. UNICEF says the nutritional status of women is often used as an indicator for household food insecurity, and the current levels show that this is still a huge problem. According to Balslev-Oleson, there are now better instruments in place to tackle the crisis as long as the assistance does not dry up. The government has elaborated long-term strategies for national food security and poverty reduction, and it has reduced child mortality by one third despite the mitigating factors of war and poverty. These signs are very encouraging, he says. He believes there could be an upturn in the situation in a couple of years’ time, if the interventions are timely and the most vulnerable people are targeted. “We have to ensure the situation does not run out of control,” he said. “For this we need funding now, and not mid-next year.” Humanitarian sources told IRIN that donor pledges were now arriving after a slow start earlier in the year, but part of the problem was that the sluggish response had contributed to the current situation in Eritrea. Musa Bungudu, the UN’s deputy humanitarian coordinator in Eritrea, also warned that the crisis was likely to continue into next year. “We are very grateful to the donors,” he told IRIN. “The momentum now has to be maintained or improved to avoid the situation worsening in 2004.”