Too early to tell if current rains will avert food needs - WFP

Rain has been falling in drought-stricken Djibouti for almost two weeks now, but it is too early to tell if the precipitation will eventually be sufficient to overturn the continuing impact of several failed wet seasons, the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) has said. "It has been raining and typically, these rains run from mid-March to mid-May, but it is likely we will need more than these rains to recover," Luc Lampriere WFP spokesperson said in Nairobi, Kenya, on Tuesday. "The drought affected the lives of 150,000 people, of whom 70,000 are in immediate need of food assistance." Most of the affected, he added, were pastoralists living in rural areas and poor people in urban areas who had been affected by rising food prices, for whom WFP needed US $2.3 million to provide food aid until December. On 12 April, the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) announced it would give WFP $1.1 million for its drought emergency operations in Djibouti. This assistance will provide over 2,000 tonnes in food aid to the country - on top of $800,000 in emergency humanitarian assistance contributed since October 2005. "The pastoral drought within the greater Horn of Africa is particularly serious for approximately seven million farmers and herders found in an arid region which connects northeastern Kenya, southern Somalia, southern Ethiopia and parts of Djibouti," USAID said in a statement. "In Djibouti, drought conditions over the past few years have spread malnutrition and a significant number of livestock have died." "We urge other donor governments to act quickly to help alleviate the current suffering and to help prevent [a] human catastrophe in the Horn of Africa," it added. "Both food assistance and non-food assistance (medicines, immunisations, water well rehabilitation and emergency livestock interventions) are urgently required." "This contribution will reduce our shortfall to about $1.2 million," Lampriere added. "It will help us to expand the emergency operation from September to December." In February, Djibouti's president, Ismail Omar Guelleh, said the hardest hit areas were the coastal, the northern and the northwestern regions. "Many people have already lost their livestock and moved to towns," he told IRIN. Guelleh said Djiboutians were being mobilised to contribute something as part of a long-term strategy to address the problem of recurrent drought. Djibouti would also start harvesting water during rainy seasons, building water catchments, irrigating land around water wells in order to produce animal feed, and planting trees. The long-awaited rains that normally fall between October and February failed in the Horn of Africa country. In its January alert, the USAID-funded Famine Early Warning Systems Network said significant food deficits - ranging from 20 to 70 percent of minimum food requirements - existed in all pastoral livelihood zones. In a related development, USAID announced that it would provide $24 million for emergency food assistance to drought-stricken Kenya through WFP, and an additional $2 million to the UN Children's Fund for water and sanitation, and health and nutritional programmes in the region.