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	Horn of Africa Emergency: Continuing crisis threatens hard-won gains by Unicef, UNOCHA & agencies   11 April 2012   Horn of Africa Emergency: Continuing crisis threatens hard-won gains. (Unicef)   UNICEF reports outlook for the Horn of Africa increasingly worrisome. More than 10 million people need emergency assistance.   The humanitarian response in the Horn of Africa in 2011 reversed the spread of famine and saved tens of thousands of children"s lives, but the outlook is increasingly worrisome, threatening the tentative gains achieved to date, according to a new UNICEF report.   °Millions of children require sustained assistance in the critical months ahead. Otherwise we can easily see a reversal of the hard-won achievements," said Elhadj As Sy, UNICEF Regional Director for Eastern and Southern Africa.   "The prospects for a sustained recovery are increasingly precarious. The most recent weather outlook puts the lives of hundreds of thousands of children at risk," said Mr. As Sy.   According to the latest projections, the March-May seasonal rains will remain below average in most parts of the region.   More than 10 million people across the Horn of Africa need emergency assistance. Nearly a third of Somalia"s population some 2.51 million people are still in acute humanitarian crisis, including more than 323,000 acutely malnourished children.   Thanks to the support from donors and other partners, UNICEF contributed to the downgrading of Somalia"s originally six famine zones to the lower emergency level; and high recovery rates from acute malnutrition and low mortality rates among children in Ethiopia.   UNICEF urgently requires $413.8 million for its relief and recovery operations in the Horn of Africa. to treat acute malnutrition, map of water facilities in high risk areas, provide basic education programmes, as well as other activities to reduce the risk that this turn into yet another disaster.   "The coming months demand continued and sustained support to ensure that the multiple needs of vulnerable children are met and that another catastrophe can be averted," said As Sy. "Together we can make a fundamental difference for millions of children in the Horn of Africa."   Apr 2012   Poor rain forecast in Somalia threatens recovery. (ReliefWeb)   Situation still dire as malnutrition and death rates remain high.   Forecasts for insufficient rains in Somalia threaten to reverse gains made since last year"s famine, and prolong the dire food crisis which continues to cripple the country, siad a coalition of 17 aid agencies. With the March-May rains forecast to be poor, the number of people in need of food aid is likely to increase. The agencies are calling on the international community to continue to prioritize aid for Somalia at a time when the UN appeal for 2012 remains vastly underfunded.   According to FEWSNET (the Famine Early Warning Systems Network), the rains in the Eastern Horn of Africa are expected to begin late, be poorly distributed, and total just 60-85 percent of average. This is a significant deterioration, and would have significant impacts on crop production, pastures, and the replenishment of water resources. In the worst©case scenario of 60 percent of average rainfall, this would result in a major failure of the Eastern Horn"s main growing season, similar to last year. That season"s failure contributed to the 2011 food crisis.   Somalis continue to experience the after-effects of last year"s drought, the worst in decades. Many people have lost their local support mechanisms and resilience due to the drought crisis. According to UNOCHA, malnutrition and death rates still remain unacceptably high, particularly in Southern Somalia.   To keep Somalia on the road to recovery, the international community must continue to fund large scale humanitarian aid for survival needs and support recovery of livelihoods and access to basic services to build people"s resilience and protect investments in development made in Somalia over the last few years. Committing more funding for humanitarian projects in Somalia now can help avert a disaster on the scale seen last year; however, insufficient support puts many more lives at risk and can exponentially increase the cost of aid as a crisis worsens.   Last year the world did not listen to early warnings of the approaching crisis, and the response to the disaster was too late, leading to tens of thousands of deaths that could have been prevented. The international community needs to build on gains made since then by allocating funding now to prevent the situation from turning into another full scale disaster. Visit the related web page
	UN agencies warn of dramatic crisis in Sahel by AP, UN News Service   April 10, 2012 (Associated Press)   Northern Africa"s Sahel region risks being plunged into a dramatic humanitarian crisis unless aid for those affected by drought, conflict and poverty is scaled up soon, three senior United Nations officials warned Tuesday.   U.N High Commissioner for Refugees, Antonio Guterres, said the situation in the 3,400-mile (5500-kilometer) zone that stretches from the Atlantic to the Red Sea is suffering from lack of attention because of the conflict in Syria.   "We badly need to put this crisis on the map because its humanitarian dimension is becoming extremely, extremely dramatic," he told reporters in Geneva.   The region, which includes countries such as Mali, Chad and Niger has been hit hard by three droughts in less than 10 years. A U.N. appeal in December for $724 million to fund aid operations in the Sahel has elicited only half that amount so far, Guterres said.   UNICEF Executive Director Anthony Lake said at least 1 million -- and possibly up to 1.5 million -- children in the region face acute, severe malnutrition, putting them at risk of death from starvation or disease. Of these, about 330,000 children are in Niger, some 208,000 are in northern Nigeria, 178,000 are in Mali and 127,000 are in Chad. The figures, which also cover Burkina Faso, Mauritania, northern Senegal and northern Cameroon, don"t even include Sudan or South Sudan, where simmering conflicts are also stoking a humanitarian crisis.   Unless donor countries provide more funds, "the result will be many children will die and many families will suffer," he said.   Chan said previous droughts in 2005 and 2010 meant many of the 15 million people affected by the crisis in the impoverished region have already sold off their reserves to survive, and aid needs to arrive by July at the latest. "We are down to the last grain," she said.   UN warns lack of funds threatens response to food crisis in Africa’s Sahel region. (UN News Service)   Senior United Nations officials have made impassioned appeals to the international community to make more resources available to assist millions of people affected by the severe food and nutrition crisis in the Sahel region of West Africa, cautioning that global inaction would lead to a humanitarian disaster.   “We are appealing, all of us, for an end to global indifference that we have found so far,” said Anthony Lake, the Executive Director of the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF), at a joint news conference with his counterparts from the office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and the World Health Organization (WHO).   “I know that there is a certain fatigue. I have read comments that ‘here we go again; once more a famine; once more African children are dying; once more there is an appeal for help.’   “By acting vigorously and properly now, we can head off future crises… by building now in this crisis, health systems, community nutrition centres, more water bore holes… we can build capacity for the future,” he said.   Mr. Lake, who had just returned from a visit to Chad, noted that of the estimated 15 million people affected by the drought and conflict-related crisis in the region, about 1.5 million are children who face the prospect of severe acute malnutrition.   “I was in a town called Mao in central Chad a few days ago and visited a nutrition centre and they reported that admission rates at the nutritional centre for children suffering from severe acute malnutrition are already higher than at any point in last year’s lean season.   “This could be very bad and we are now across the region entering the so-called lean season, when families are drawing down the grains that they were able to harvest last year, but these families are in particular peril because in the drought of 2010 they had already sold off livestock, taking their kids out of school… therefore they are in a weakened position for this year’s crisis,” said Mr. Lake.   “To those who are fatigued, we would say that people and children, of course, are not simply statistics. All these are families fighting courageously in circumstances that few of us can imagine,” he said.   He spoke of meeting Fatuma, a young girl in a tent in Chad, who the previous week was among other children who were on the verge of death. “As I spoke to her mother I kept thinking about this not only being a life saved, but this is a whole future that was saved.”   “Let’s not look at them as objects of pity and charity, let’s look at them as people we need to support in their brave struggle for survival,” he said. He stressed that taking action immediately will be more cost-effective than waiting for the situation to deteriorate further.   “In the earthquake in Haiti, and even in the floods of Pakistan, the international community had very little warning. So we had to react as quickly as we could, but almost by definition we were always going to be too late.   “Here we’ve warnings for the last few months. Here we are working to try to stop it from getting worse. Some day there will be no excuse for looking back and saying why did we not do more, more quickly,” said Mr. Lake.   High Commissioner for Refugees António Guterres said the situation in the Sahel was the result of the combined effects of drought, food insecurity, water scarcity, environmental degradation and conflict.“The truth is that there is very little attention to the crisis in the Sahel,” said Mr. Guterres. Margaret Chan, the Director-General of WHO described the food and nutrition situation in the Sahel as a public health crisis.   http://www.wfp.org/stories/sahel-crisis-by-country   10 April 2012   Interview with John Ging, Director of Operations, UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA)   Stretching 4,500 kilometres across Africa, from the Atlantic Ocean to the Red Sea, the Sahel region is home to more than 50 million people. Except along the banks of the major rivers, lakes, and other seasonal water courses, farming in this region is almost entirely reliant on three to four months of summer rainfall.   Now, a combination of factors, including inadequate rainfall that reduced harvests, high food prices and the effects of civil strife in some areas, have created food shortages and disrupted livelihoods for an estimated 15 million people across the region.   The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) has been actively engaged in the Sahel. Its Director of Operations, John Ging, visiting three of the affected countries – Burkina Faso, Niger, and Mauritania – last month, and spoke with the UN News Centre.   UN News Centre: What is your general assessment of the situation in the Sahel?   John Ging: Firstly, the humanitarian situation in all of the countries in the Sahel region is quite appalling, and I would emphasize the plight of children as a good example. Last year 600,000 children under the age of five died – over 200,000 of them died of malnutrition. This should not be happening in this day and age.   We are facing an even bigger crisis this year, with a million children vulnerable to severe acute malnutrition. Over 15 million people in the region are suffering the effects of the food and nutrition crisis. The Climate has changed. It’s much more difficult to sustain the population in the region.   There is also the issue of conflict and political instability. So the situation overall in the Sahel region for millions of human beings there is really appalling in terms of the daily conditions that they are living in at the moment.   UN News Centre: What is the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs doing to help?   John Ging: The solution to this crisis in the Sahel is not a humanitarian response. The humanitarian response is a contribution to the solution. The solution is development. It is building livelihoods. We must save lives of course, in the meantime, but we must also work towards building livelihoods that can be resilient in the context within which people are living. That is what the whole emphasis and focus is now, with the national government plans in the region and also with the international aid and development effort – to bring it all together in a way that actually helps to build a sustainable solution going forward.   The climactic conditions, for example, in the region are not going to change, this is the new reality. Population growth is also a reality that will continue. And the other challenges that are faced in the region – we’ve got to embrace these challenges in finding the solutions.   http://reliefweb.int/disaster/ot-2011-000205-ner   * For more stories on the Sahel region crisis visit link below. Visit the related web page
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