Ethiopia hunger crisis ‘preventable’

A crisis in Ethiopia can be prevented, if the international community quickly hand over the emergency aid the it says it needs to feed 6.2 million people, a top British diplomat said last night (Thursday). Poor rains this year have left many village communities in the East African country struggling to feed themselves. The Ethiopian government has called for nearly 160,000 tonnes of emergency food aid. The government made its appeal on the 25th anniversary of the 1984 famine that killed more than 1 million people.

More than 23 million people in seven east African nations are suffering from years of drought, say aid agencies, and Ethiopia is the worst affected. "This is serious but not yet catastrophic and that is why we need to act now," said UK politician, Paddy Ashdown. "That means we need to fund aid for those 6.2 million people quickly and we can prevent this situation getting to much worse proportions," Mr Ashdown, president of Britain's branch of the UN children's agency UNICEF told Reuters news agency.

Last week the media compared the unfolding situation in Ethiopia with the 1984 disaster, that spurred Sir Bob Geldof’s famine relief efforts organising the Live Aid pop concert and releasing the record "Do They Know It's Christmas?” In total more than £150 million was raised in what was the largest international aid appeal until the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami. Aid agencies say that a scheme that gives 7 million Ethiopians food in exchange for work should prevent deaths on the scale of 1984. But just giving food aid makes Ethiopia rely on richer countries and doesn’t help it to feed itself in the long-term, many humanitarian organistations agree. Spending money instead on improving education and stopping the population growing so quickly could better equip Africans to cope with drought in the long-run, Mr Ashdown said speaking from the Capital Addis Ababa. "Crisis-chasing is not how we should be solving these problems," he said.

Ethiopia’s Prime Minister Meles Zenawi, who will represent Africa at December's Copenhagen climate change talks, blames European carbon emissions for the 1984 famine and has demanded compensation for the continent. And Mr Ashdown said the rich world should strike a fair deal with Africa at the Copenhagen talks. "We cannot ask countries that are not yet developed to halt their development in order to pay for problems that we have in large measure created," he said. "There has to be a deal and that deal has to be a fair one."