Ethiopian Troubles Mount

NAIROBI - Aug 24/04 - IRIN -- Ethiopia's south-central Oromiya region is threatened with rising malnutrition levels, hunger, disease and water shortages as a result of inadequate and erratic rainfall, the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), said.

OCHA, in a report issued on Monday, warned that a crisis would be inevitable unless more seeds were made available to farmers, saying that its recent field mission to the region had predicted a poor harvest of the main food crops - maize and sorghum.

It said that little amounts of seeds had been provided to farmers too late, and that serious shortages of water would follow if the dry spell persisted.

In mid-August, the Ethiopian government disaster prevention commission warned that the number of people in need of food aid had risen to more than 7.6 million as a result of crop failure and lack of pasture following poor long rains earlier this year.

More than 6.6 million people in the Horn of Africa country were already dependent on food aid following a prolonged drought that hit the region in 2002 and 2003. The needy would now require nearly 500,000 metric tons (MT) of assorted foodstuffs between August and December, the commission said.

It said the areas hardest hit by the crop failures included the Southern Nations, Nationalities and Peoples Region, North and South Wollo zones in the Amhara Region and East and West Haraghe zones in the Oromiya region, according to the report.

Earlier, OCHA had also warned that a potential humanitarian crisis was looming in the Somali region of Ethiopia where the long rains had failed and up to 1.3 million people in 14 districts were likely to need emergency aid until the end of the year.

To strengthen capacity and respond to the humanitarian needs in the region, OCHA has established a new office in the regional capital, Jijiga to support Ethiopian authorities, UN agencies and NGOs. The Somali National Regional State government also announced it was reassigning 600 employees to 51 districts.

Copyright (c) 2004 UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs