At Los Angeles Times, "Somalia famine spreads to 3 new regions, U.N. says":
Reporting from Johannesburg, South AfricaI'm researching relief agencies, by the way. I'll make a contribution, but so much gets wasted on overhead and corruption I'm wary. More on that later.
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With hunger in the Horn of Africa dramatically worsening, the United Nations on Wednesday added three more regions of Somalia to the list of areas it says are stricken by famine.
More than 12 million people are facing starvation, with children particularly vulnerable. The U.N. last month declared that two regions of Somalia were suffering from famine, and it said Wednesday that the famine was likely to spread across most of Somalia in coming months, as well as parts of Kenya, Uganda and Ethiopia.
Somalia is struggling with its worst drought in 60 years, and 3.7 million Somalis are in crisis, mainly in the south — creating Africa's most serious hunger crisis in two decades. Refugee camps in the capital, Mogadishu, are now affected as well, U.N. agencies said.
Shocking images of those suffering have resulted in an increase in aid in the last two weeks, after donors' earlier sluggish response, but violence in the south of the country has limited humanitarian agencies' access.
The U.N. is seeking to raise $1 billion to address the crisis.
2 comments:
Unfortunately, one cannot forget politics in this instance:
http://www.dw-world.de/dw/article/0,,14797038,00.html
The UN is fairly useless. I would like to see a real UN military mmission in the area to take control here. Of course I oppose the use of American ground troops. Make it completely a Pan African force with real teeth to do the job.
There is a good possibility that some private aid will fall into the hands of criminal gangs or Mohammedan insurgents, but still an effort is commendable.
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