Johannesburg, South Africa. April 12 2000
Aid agencies increase food pleas for Ethiopia, with a futher 1,2m people expected to be at risk of starvation if the June harvest fails.
By DAVID GOUGH in Nairobi
The United Nations World Food Programme director Catherine Bertini arrived in Ethiopia yesterday to assess the food crisis there amid claims that even more food aid than previously requested will be needed to avert starvation.
The Ethiopian government has already appealed for 800 000 tonnes of food aid to feed some 8m people threatened by starvation, but unless some rain falls soon more than a million tonnes will be needed, according to aid organisations.
The Save the Children Fund said yesterday that a further 1,2m people would be at risk if, as is expected, the June harvest fails.
The World Food Programme's (WFP) regional representative in Ethiopia, Judith Lewis, said the WFP had already revised its estimates of the number of people at risk five times in the past year.
"I've never seen a country plagued by so many problems," said Lewis. "At the end of 1998 the food situation in Ethiopia looked good, but since then we have seen one disaster after another."
Bertini will assess one of the worst hit areas of the country today when she visits the south-eastern town of Gode.
Tens of thousands of people are said to be at risk there, but according to Lewis there are signs of improvement.
"Food is getting to the right places and people suffering from malnutrition are responding well to our feeding programmes" she said.
The greatest problem facing the aid agencies is the logistics of getting food to the hungry.
Infrastructure in many parts of the country is woefully inadequate, and acts of banditry in the worst affected region, near Ethiopia's border with Somalia, are common enough to prevent the WFP basing any of its international staff there.
The drivers of the food convoys have to be carefully chosen to ensure that they belong to the same clan that dominates any region they have to pass through.
Several drivers have been killed in the last few months because the clans controlling the areas they travel through did not accept them.
However, the biggest obstacle to the relief effort is the border war that Ethiopia has been fighting for the last two years against its northern neighbour, Eritrea.
Ethiopia is landlocked and until the war broke out relied on the Eritrean ports of Assab and Massawa for trade.
Since then it has had to rely on the port of Djibouti, which UN logistics experts say cannot cope.
Eritrea offered Ethiopia the use of its ports last week but Ethiopia rejected the offer, calling it a "gimmick".