Peter Goodspeed, National Post
Tuesday, August 25, 2009
The United Nations is warning more than one million Kenyans face the immediate possibility of famine as a result of the country's worst drought in a decade.
Crops that were due to be harvested in September have shrivelled and cattle are dying by the thousands. The Kenya Red Cross estimates up to 10 million people could face hunger and starvation within six months as a result of a poor harvest, crop failures and rising commodity prices.
"Red lights are flashing across the country," said Burkard Oberle, the World Food Program's (WFP) country director in Kenya. "People are already going hungry, malnutrition is preying on more and more young children, cattle are dying. We face a huge challenge."
The WFP is seeking to raise US$230-million in emergency funds to feed 1.2 million famine victims, in addition to the 2.6 million Kenyans it already feeds. The most vulnerable are the poor in urban slums, pastoralists and farmers in the remote arid and semi-arid lands that account for almost 80% of the landscape, says a Kenya Red Cross report.
It is the country's worst drought in years, but comes after three or four consecutive failed rainy seasons in many areas. Food production has dropped to only about 80% of what it was in 2007 and the price of corn, a staple food, has more than doubled. Supplies have shrunk by nearly 28%.
"The current food security situation remains highly precarious," warns the UN's Famine Early Warning System Network, which predicts the situation could rapidly worsen in Kenya's southeast and coastal lowlands.
According to the Kenya Red Cross, the persistent drought "has put lives and livestock at risk" as pastoralists and subsistence farmers are being driven from the land.
"In the pastoral areas, average walking distance to water has doubled and exerted undue pressure on existing boreholes that serve both humans and livestock," it says.
Some pastoralist communities are taking their livestock more than 40 kilometres away to obtain water, while others are butchering their herds to cut their losses and moving to urban slums. The crisis is aggravated by the lingering after-effects of post-election violence in 2007-08, which displaced tens of thousands of people.
Raila Odinga, the Kenyan Prime Minister, has warned of a possible "catastrophe" if seasonal rains do not come in October and November, saying a prolonged drought could contribute to inter-clan violence.
For now, the drought is being blamed for prolonged electrical blackouts in Kenya's crowded cities, since there is not enough water in some rivers to drive hydroelectric power plants. The drought is just the latest emergency plunging East Africa into crisis.
Yesterday, the UN's Food Security and Nutrition Analysis Unit warned half the Somali population is in need of humanitarian aid as a result of the country's rapidly deteriorating security situation.
Without an effective government since 1991, Somalia is convulsed by a power struggle between Islamist rebels and a UN-backed transitional government. Fighting has intensified in recent months in many of the same areas that are already reporting problems with food distribution.
Somalia has 1.4 million internally displaced people and hundreds of thousands have fled to neighbouring Kenya.
According to the UN, one in five Somali children is acutely malnourished. "Somalia faces its worse humanitarian crisis in 18 years amid an escalating civil war," the Food Security and Nutrition Analysis report says.
National Post
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