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UN appeals for 19.5 mln USD to feed hungry Somalis |
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21:05, July 17, 2007 |
The UN World Food Program (WFP) is seeking 19.5 million U.S. dollars or 26,500 metric tons of food by the end of 2007 to feed one million people in Somalia.
In a statement issued in Nairobi on Tuesday, the UN food agency also appealed for urgent contributions to avoid breaks in its supply line of food assistance to Somalia because of forecasts of crop failure.
WFP Country Director for Somalia Peter Goossens warned that without new contributions, the UN agency will be short of 8,500 tons by October and the accumulated deficit will grow to 70,000 tons worth 53 million dollars by May 2008.
"We are calling for immediate contributions because the needs of the weakest Somalis, mainly women and children, are growing for reasons entirely beyond their control and it can take up to three or four months to get food assistance into Somalia," Goossens said.
The growing need for food assistance follows a warning in June by the UN Food and Agriculture Organization''s Food Security Analysis Unit Somalia of a crop failure or below average production in July to August in much of southern and central Somalia because of poor rainfall.
"The people of Somalia have been hit by drought and floods last year and now insecurity and new displacements. They need humanitarian assistance to survive," Goossens said.
The first impact of the forecast crop failure or poor harvest should become evident by October and WFP said it revised its projections and estimates that it may need 50 percent more food assistance from October until May 2008 than what was planned for all of 2007.
So far this year, more than 924,000 people have received WFP food in Somalia, most of them in southern and central parts of the country.
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