A worsening food crisis affecting more than 12 million people in the Horn of Africa is unacceptable and should make the world feel ashamed, the head of the UN food agency said yesterday.
“It is unacceptable for more than 12 million people to be at risk of starvation today,” Jacques Diouf, head of the Food and Agriculture Organisation, said at the start of a conference on the drought crisis in Rome.
“The required funding is lacking. If governments and their donor partners do not invest now, the appalling famine we are now struggling to redress will return to shame the international community yet again,” he said.
Mr Diouf called for immediate food aid to help the worst-affected in the region but also for longer-term assistance to livestock farmers and to crop producers to help strengthen their defences against the impact of climate change.
“Although aid is slowly flowing to affected areas and short-term needs are gradually being met, we must start now to help people build a future,” he said.
Meanwhile members of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation promised to donate $350 million as a relief for famine.
“We said we aimed (to collect) 500 million. We are committed 350 million today,” Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu, the Turkish general secretary of the OIC, said in a press meeting as the gathering closed.
The promised amount included $150 million that Turkey has thus far collected in its domestic campaigns for Somalia, Mr Ihsanoglu said.
The UN has declared that $1 billion is needed for Somalia, and the international community only pledged half of it, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan said in his opening remarks.
Representatives from some 40 OIC member countries, out of 57, convened in Istanbul to discuss how to boost aid to Somalia.
All member countries also vowed to contribute to the Somalian fund that was founded under the OIC secretariat, said Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu.
Kazakhistan, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Senegal and the OIC constituted a special group dedicated to follow Somalia and coordinate the aid campaigns, he added.
“We decided to have aid campaigns in all Islamic countries,” Mr Davutoglu said.
The Islamic world would “actively take part” in finding a solution for the domestic tensions in Somalia, he added.