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Added on the 27/07/2022 22:45:00 - Copyright : France 24 EN
Severe drought has placed millions of people at risk of famine in the horn of Africa. Euronews speaks to Karl Schembri from the Norwegian Refugee Council.
Twenty million people are at risk of starvation this year as delayed rains worsen an already brutal drought in Kenya, Somalia and Ethiopia, the UN warns. A months-long drought has left the Horn of Africa on the verge of a humanitarian catastrophe, destroying crops and livestock and forcing huge numbers of people to leave their homes in search of food and water.
"What we're planning to spend, hoping to spend, which for 2023, is 51.5 billion dollars," says UN Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs, Martin Griffiths, at a UN press conference in Geneva, Switzerland. The United Nations' annual Global Humanitarian Overview estimates that 339 million people worldwide will need some form of emergency assistance next year.
Swathes of land across the Horn of Africa are being ravaged by a drought that has put 20 million people at risk of starvation. A donor conference in April raised almost $1.4 billion for the region, which the UN says is facing its worst drought in 40 years. In the afflicted areas, people eke out a living mainly from herding and subsistence farming. They are experiencing their fourth consecutive poor rainy season since the end of 2020 -- a situation exacerbated by a locust invasion that wiped out crops between 2019 and 2021.
The driest conditions in decades have left an estimated 13 million people across Ethiopia, Kenya and Somalia facing severe hunger. Experts warn of a below-average rainfall forecast that threatens to worsen and aggravate dire conditions in the coming month.
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