Fleeing drought in the Horn of Africa

A new kind of refugee has arrived: Those forced from their home regions not by war or persecution, but by the climate. A Kenyan camp is bursting with the displaced, some of whom share their stories. By EDMUND SANDERS, October 27, 2009 DADAAB, Kenya: For centuries, Adam Abdi Ibrahim’s ancestors herded cattle and goats in […]

Ethiopia demands urgent food aid for 6.2 million people

By Staff Writers, Addis Ababa (AFP) Oct 22, 2009 Twenty-five years after Ethiopia’s famine killed a million people and spurred a massive global aid effort, the government appealed Thursday for help for more than six million facing starvation. State Minister for Agriculture Mitiku Kassa said the drought-stricken country needed 159,000 tonnes of food aid worth […]

Uganda: UN official visits country's ground zero of climate change and humanitarian woes

Visiting a semi-arid region of Uganda where the economic and environmental effects of climate change have been added to humanitarian needs and chronic under-development, the top United Nations emergency relief official today saw first-hand an area of potential conflict over increasingly shrinking resources. “They are living on the edge, daily facing the biggest challenges we […]

Four-year drought pushes 23 million Africans to brink of starvation

By Tristan McConnell in Mwingi “The last time I had a good harvest was 2003 — there has been nothing at all for the last three years,” said Mutindi Maithya, 36, a widow who lives with her six children on a four- acre plot of sun-baked land. Sitting beneath a thorny acacia tree, she picks […]

Lester Brown: the rising tide of environmental refugees

By Lester R. Brown, October 22, 2009  Our early twenty-first century civilization is being squeezed between advancing deserts and rising seas. Measured by the biologically productive land area that can support human habitation, the earth is shrinking. Mounting population densities, once generated solely by population growth, are now also fueled by the relentless advance of […]

Ethiopia: 6.2 million people face starvation from drought

By Argaw Ashine, 22 October 2009 Addis Ababa — Ethiopian Government has appealed for an emergency food aid for 6.2 million people suffering from malnutrition and hunger due to drought. The Minister for Agriculture and Rural Development, Mr Mitiku Kassa, today presented the government’s humanitarian requirement to donor Community in Addis Ababa. According to Mr […]

Kenya food security at lowest ebb in 20 years

By John Gachiri, 14 October 2009 More Kenyans are in need of emergency food today than they were 20 years ago and the situation may get worse, the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) says in a new report. The report, Global Hunger Index (GHI), that measures levels of malnutrition and hunger was released on […]

Kenya drought: blood instead of rain

By Boris BachorzSat, 17 Oct 2009 12:07 The camel, its legs attached with branches, brays desperately, blood spurting from the cut artery; nomads in Turkana in Kenya’s extreme north have been reduced to sacrificing their animals to survive a bruising drought. “I brought this dromedary to have it killed and make a little money after […]

Even the camels are dying

By Jeffrey Gettleman GALKAIYO, Somalia — Ahmed Mahamoud Hassan has probably one of the worst jobs on the planet: drought chairman of the  Galmudug region of Somalia, one of the hottest, driest, poorest patches of one of the world’s most utterly failed states. His job is to feed people in a place where there is […]

Oxfam: drought threatens 6.2 million Ethiopians

ADDIS ABABA (Reuters) – As many as 6.2 million Ethiopians need emergency humanitarian assistance due to severe drought, an official from the Oxfam charity said on Monday. The Ethiopian government puts the number in need at 5.3 million. Pastoralist communities in the country’s southern Borena area have been particularly hard hit by the lack of […]

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