HORN OF AFRICA: Agencies appeal for US $425.7 million in drought relief

Photo: OCHA

Jan Egeland, the UN Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator

NAIROBI, 7 April 2006 (IRIN) - Humanitarian agencies on Friday appealed for some US $425.7 million to help more than eight million people in the Horn of Africa who are in need of emergency relief because their livelihoods have been shattered by a prolonged drought currently ravaging the region. Some $326.7 million of the total 2006 consolidated appeal, which was launched by United Nations Under Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs Jan Egeland, is a revised appeal for Somalia. Relief agencies raised the funding requirements in early February because of additional food needs as more people became vulnerable from the worsening drought. Humanitarian agencies originally had asked for $174 million in December 2005. Currently, a total of 2.1 million people in Somalia are faced with a livelihood crisis, up from an estimated one million in 2005. About $99 million is earmarked for regional programmes and country-specific projects in nine sectors - including water and sanitation, health, education, agriculture and food security - in Djibouti, Eritrea and Kenya. "The border areas of southern Ethiopia, northern and northeastern Kenya, and southern Somalia - areas linked by ethnic affiliations, livelihood structures, and fluid population and livestock movements - are the worst-hit areas in terms of both severity and scale," the appeal document said. In addition to addressing the immediate humanitarian needs of the affected people, the funds would also be used to strengthen their capacity to cope with the effects of drought. "We need to make people more resilient to survive the extreme weather," Egeland told a news conference ahead of the launch. “We need massive resources.” In launching the appeal, aid agencies said the food crisis in the region had been exacerbated by loss of livelihood for predominately pastoral and agro-pastoral communities in the affected countries. They emphasised that the problem required an urgent multisectoral response that takes into account water, sanitation, health and nutrition. At the same time, it should incorporate measures to improve the livestock and agriculture sectors. Strengthening education among the affected communities and bolstering food security to save lives in the immediate term would also build resilience to future livelihood shocks, they added. Pastoralists in Kenya and Somalia have lost large numbers of livestock to the drought, leaving most of them entirely dependent on food aid. According to Oxfam International, more than 70 percent of cattle in Somalia have died, and the recovery process could take 15 years. Competition for scarce resources in the dry rangelands had led to rising intercommunal tension, humanitarian agencies said. Outside the Consolidated Appeals Process (CAP), Ethiopia has asked for $166 million in emergency food and non-food assistance, while the Kenyan government in collaboration with UN agencies launched an emergency appeal for $222 million in food aid in February. Full CAP Appeal Document Volume 1
Full CAP Appeal Document Volume 2