By Olivia Ward
Foreign Affairs Reporter
From outer space a large swath of East Africa looks like a dusty diamond. From the ground the dust is real, and it’s combined with arid scrub, sand and dried up rivulets.
“The first thing that struck me was how stark the landscape was,” says Anne-Marie Connor, Africa program manager for World Vision Canada. “There’s no greenery, livestock is dying, and people have to go farther to search for water.”
Drought has bitten deeply into one of the African continent’s most troubled regions.
On Wednesday the UN’s expert on human rights in Somalia, Shamsul Bari, said that he feared a “natural and human disaster” as thousands of people are driven from parched pastoral land toward dangerous conflict areas, or into makeshift camps in Puntland.
He said that the international response to the crisis was “slow,” and urged countries to help meet needs for clean drinking water, food and health care.
“Puntland is hosting about 125,000 displaced people from outside the region,” said Connor, in a phone interview from the autonomous Somali province. “Some have fled fighting in the south, others are here because of the drought.”
World Vision, funded by the Canadian International Development Agency, is helping to provide sanitation for swelling numbers of arrivals, who lack the most basic amenities of latrines and running water. It is one of a number of aid groups working in the region.
“There are no washing facilities,” Connor said. “People have to pay for water, and the rates are getting higher. When they can pay, it’s for drinking and cooking, and there’s nothing left over.”
The UN estimates that 32 per cent of Somalia’s 2.4 million people are in an acute humanitarian emergency, as seasonal rains have fallen short for an eighth season, and fighting flares between a UN-backed government in Mogadishu and Islamist rebels who control most of southern and central Somalia.
According to NASA’s Earth Observatory, the drought is so severe because of a La Nina weather pattern that sends intense westerly winds over the Indian Ocean and pulls moisture away from East Africa toward Indonesia and Australia. Somalia, eastern Kenya and Ethiopia have been hardest hit.
Neither the climate nor the unrest is expected to improve in the short term for the displaced people of Somalia, Connor said.
“Climate change is front and centre, and the concern is that the drought will be likely to recur. The hope is that through aid and basic livelihood support people will be able to cope.”
Malnutrition in children under five has escalated, she said, as food prices have risen by up to 300 per cent. The charity is working with the community to develop new agricultural practices that can support the pastoral people, including ways of protecting their animals from disease and hunger.
Source: The Star
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