UN Warns of Famine Threat in Somalia
The U.N. humanitarian chief appealed Wednesday for urgently needed funding to prevent wide-scale hunger in the Horn of Africa after another failed rainy season.
Mark Lowcock said he would release $45 million from the U.N.’s emergency fund to help avert a humanitarian crisis in Somalia, Ethiopia and Kenya, but that about $700 million more is needed this year to prevent another famine like Somalia saw in 2011, when a quarter of a million people died.
Of the allocated funds, $30 million is for Somalia, $10 million for Ethiopia and $5 million is for Kenya.
“I’m particularly worried about Somalia, where by the end of the year, we think there could be 5.4 million people in dire straits, 2.2 million of whom could be in a really acute situation,” Lowcock told a small group of reporters. “I don’t think the world wants to tolerate another famine in Somalia.”
