Agencies appeal for funds to help drought-affected people

Two United Nations agencies have appealed for millions of dollars for relief operations designed to alleviate the suffering of an estimated 2.3 million Kenyans facing food shortages because of a prolonged drought. The World Food Programme (WFP) launched an emergency appeal for US $82 million, while the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FA0) said it was seeking $3.6 million to fund drought relief projects to help affected farmers and livestock keepers during the next six months. The appeals, announced on Thursday, followed a call by President Mwai Kibaki on 14 July for emergency assistance for people in the Coast, Eastern, Northeastern and Rift Valley provinces. "You only have to visit these parts of Kenya to see with your own eyes how in many cases the maize crop has wilted under the sun after the failure of the long rains in May this year – it is now essentially useless," Tesema Negash, WFP Kenya country director said. This year’s long rains were poor in much of eastern and southern Kenya and in some northern areas. A dry spell from late April to May came at a critical stage in the crop development. Scattered showers in early June were too late for a significant recovery, resulting in near-total crop failures in many parts of Coast and Eastern provinces. If the short rains are poor later in the year, an additional one million people will require food assistance in 2005, bringing the total needing food assistance in Kenya in 2005 to 3.3 million, WFP said. "It is imperative that prompt action be taken by the humanitarian community to help preserve and restore essential livelihood assets and activities to avoid the threat of even more severe food shortages and widespread hunger in the near future," an appeal prepared by the FAO-chaired technical group on agriculture and livestock, said. Approximately 70 percent of Kenya is arid or semi-arid, and livelihood options and coping mechanisms are limited in these areas. "Emergency assistance to these vulnerable populations must focus on the agriculture sector, including both crop and livestock based livelihood systems," FAO said. It said in areas with a higher agricultural potential, high levels of poverty and high incidence of HIV/AIDS have left the poorer segments of the population vulnerable to shocks that affect their production and livelihood systems. "With the short-season rains just ahead, affected vulnerable households simply do not have the capacity to assure their future well-being without urgent interventions aimed at preserving and rebuilding degraded livelihood systems and coping capacities," said FAO. WFP plans to feed 1.8 million affected people and over half a million vulnerable children. Under the emergency operation, its school feeding programme is to be expanded from the one million primary and pre-primary children who already receive lunches, to include another 544,000 children in arid and semi-arid areas. "We are facing a crisis on a massive scale which will spiral out of control at great human cost of we do not act now," Negash said. "For many Kenyans, two poor seasons in a row will spell disaster if they do not receive assistance on time," he added. On 28 July, the UN Children's Fund appealed for more than $8.6 million to fund emergency operations in 26 Kenyan districts affected by drought.