UN declares end to Somalia famine

UN declares end to Somalia famine

2012-02-04 10:48:38 GMT+7 (ICT)

NAIROBI (BNO NEWS) -- The United Nations (UN) on Friday declared an end to the famine in Somalia but warned that, with recurrent droughts in the Horn of Africa, hunger remains a threat, officials said.

According to a new report by the UN's Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), the number of people in need of emergency humanitarian assistance in Somalia has dropped from 4 million to 2.34 million, or 31 percent of the Somali population. The report said 750,000 people had been at risk of death during the height of the crisis.

"Long-awaited rains coupled with substantial agricultural inputs and the humanitarian response deployed in the last six months are the main reasons for this improvement," FAO's new Director-General José Graziano da Silva told a press conference in Nairobi after visiting southern Somalia.

"However, the crisis is not over. It can only be resolved with a combination of rains and continued, coordinated, long-term actions that build up the resilience of local populations and link relief with development," he added.

Graziano pledged that FAO will step up its current efforts in the Horn of Africa. "We can't avoid droughts, but we can put measures in place to try to prevent them from becoming a famine. We have three months until the next rainy season," he added.

The report also warned that an estimated 325,000 acutely malnourished Somali children remain at risk. The current crisis continues to affect the whole Horn of Africa region with 9.5 million people in need of emergency assistance in Somalia, Kenya, Ethiopia and Djibouti, down from 13 million at the height of the crisis.

The UN declared a famine in six out of eight regions of southern and central Somalia in July last year. A state of famine is declared on the basis of at least three criteria - severe lack of access to food for 20 percent of a population; acute malnutrition exceeding 30 percent; and a crude death rate that exceeds two deaths in every 10,000 people per day.

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