Emergency aid no solution to Africa’s drought – UN adviser

The emergency response to the Horn of Africa’s drought that has now left some 10 million people facing starvation will not solve the recurrent humanitarian crisis, a senior UN adviser warned.

The UN secretary general’s special adviser on Millennium Development Goals Jeffrey Sachs said rushing relief aid to the affected population was not addressing the underlying causes of the drought.

“We’ve been warning, almost day in and day out, of the growing calamity of the dry lands of Africa, and most of this has fallen on deaf ears in Europe and the US among people who should know better,” Mr Sachs told reporters in Nairobi.

“Now there is a scramble to do something.”

Mr Sachs said the Horn of Africa’s cyclical drought, now occurring more frequently, was due to the effects of climate change and extreme poverty that has stunted development.

He called on donors and the affected countries to boost development in the arid areas across the region, inhabited mainly by pastoralists and often neglected by governments.

“We can never address these problems through emergency response. We have to solve these problems through prevention,” remarked Mr Sachs. “Prevention means development, especially sustainable development.

“If we go on to responding to droughts and crises like this, there will be no end and there will be no solution, and the relief will always be too little too late.”

“I hope a crisis like this will open the eyes to whatever we haven’t been doing,” he said.

Western governments have pledged funds to help the victims of the drought, described as the region’s worst in decades.

Britain and Germany at the weekend promised millions of dollars in aid as relief groups warned that the plight of the affected population could worsen in the coming months.

Meanwhile, the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation will hold an emergency meeting in Rome to help Somalia cope with a severe drought, French Foreign Minister Alain Juppe.

“France has asked and obtained a meeting in Rome, under the chairmanship of (outgoing) FAO director-general Jacques Diouf, to launch a special aid programme for Somalia,” Mr Juppe said.

“We have also asked for the EU to mobilise all of its means,” Mr Juppe said, adding that Paris was working on bilateral aid. France announced on Friday that it had asked for an emergency meeting before the end of July as a devastating drought took hold in the Horn of Africa.

“The succession of bad agricultural seasons and particularly unfavourable weather conditions have dramatic consequences for millions of people in the region,” the French government said in a letter to Mr Diouf.

In a visit to Johannesburg, British Prime Minister David Cameron said the drougth was “the most catastrophic” in a generation.

The FAO, the World Food Programme and the international charity Oxfam launched an appeal 10 days ago for urgent and durable international aid, warning that 12 million people lacked food in the region and were in a critical state.

Aid agencies scrambled to rush emergency food supplies to millions in east Africa facing what British Prime Minister David Cameron labelled “the most catastrophic” drought in a generation.

In the overcrowded and tough conditions of Badbado camp in Somalia’s war-torn capital Moga­dishu, people say they are in dire need of food for survival. Stories of how aid groups are providing more supplies in neighbouring countries are common among those seeking shelter in Mogadishu.