Community | August 07, 2011 | 19 comments

Famine relief progress slow in race to save millions

source: http://abcnews.go.com/International/somalia-famine-relief-progress-slow-race-save-millions/s...

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JanforGore
While the world's attention this week has been focused on the global economic impact of the U.S. debt ceiling deal, credit downgrade and subsequent market woes, the drought crisis in the Horn of Africa continues to deteriorate.

Children are dying at an alarming rate.

The United States estimates that as many as 29,000 Somali children died just in the last 90 days.

Three more areas in Southern Somalia have been added to the famine zone and the UN warns that without urgent intervention all of Southern Somalia will be engulfed in famine, resulting in the likelihood of tens of thousands of Somalis literally starving to death.

There have also been hopeful developments.

The retreat of the Al Qaeda-backed group Al Shabab from Mogadishu means that aid groups will have an easier time reaching the more than 500,000 people living either near or inside the capital city suffering from famine.

It's also significant progress for the current weak central government being backed by African Union troops.

For four years the fiercest battles for the soul of the country have taken place in Mogadishu.

"We have been dreaming of this day for more than three years," Somalia's Prime Minister Prime Minister Dr. Abdiweli Mohamed Ali said in a statement."This is a big day, and a tremendous step forward, towards a more stable Somalia. By their actions in the past hours the extremists have shown that they never had a place in a peaceful Somalia...And the people do not want them here," he said.

Virtually no one believes the retreat will be permanent, a point punctuated by an Al Shabab spokesperson who called the pull-out a "tactical" decision and told reporters the group will continue to fight the government and AU troops using guerilla warfare.

"We shall fight the enemy wherever they are," Ali Mohamed Rage, reportedly told a local radio station. He also emphasized the militant group will be tightening its control in Southern Somalia, where Shabab rules unabated.

But even within the Islamist insurgency there remains a long-standing conflict within the leadership made up of mostly foreign Al Qaeda fighters, who want Shabab to play a bigger role in waging global jihad and Somali clan leaders who want to keep the movement Somalia-focused, defeating the current government and AU forces and impose strict sharia law.

The confusion over whether the militants will allow foreign aid agenciesto operate in areas they control has highlighted the rift, with some local clan leaders insisting that they won't let their people starve.

Some humanitarian organizations like UNICEF are already operating in Shabab-controlled areas, and more aid agencies are working on getting access to the most needy.

More at the link.
  1. groups:
    Community,   Green,   Sustainable Agriculture,   Earth Care,   4 more
  2. tags:
    Environment,  War,  Climate Change,  Children,  7 more
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19 comments // Famine relief progress slow in race to save millions

  • alexsmith01
  • dvdwholesale6
  • alexsmith01
  • hurleyburly
  • cmc101
  • JanforGore
  • cmc101
  • JanforGore
    • +2
      JanforGore  

    • Of course, just as with the drought in the mid and South US the words that need to be connected in the media are not. There is a malevolent undertone to all of this in my view. Governments of the world already know that biodistress is and will affect the poorest in developing nations yet they sit silently by while the effects of it continue to destroy our agriculture, our oceans and the lives of hundreds of thousands of people.

      http://www.pnas.org/content/105/32/11081.short

      "Since 1980, the number of undernourished people in eastern and southern Africa has more than doubled. Rural development stalled and rural poverty expanded during the 1990s. Population growth remains very high, and declining per-capita agricultural capacity retards progress toward Millennium Development goals. Analyses of in situ station data and satellite observations of precipitation have identified another problematic trend: main growing-season rainfall receipts have diminished by ≈15% in food-insecure countries clustered along the western rim of the Indian Ocean. Occurring during the main growing seasons in poor countries dependent on rain-fed agriculture, these declines are societally dangerous. Will they persist or intensify? Tracing moisture deficits upstream to an anthropogenically warming Indian Ocean leads us to conclude that further rainfall declines are likely. We present analyses suggesting that warming in the central Indian Ocean disrupts onshore moisture transports, reducing continental rainfall. Thus, late 20th-century anthropogenic Indian Ocean warming has probably already produced societally dangerous climate change by creating drought and social disruption in some of the world's most fragile food economies. We quantify the potential impacts of the observed precipitation and agricultural capacity trends by modeling “millions of undernourished people” as a function of rainfall, population, cultivated area, seed, and fertilizer use. Persistence of current tendencies may result in a 50% increase in undernourished people by 2030. On the other hand, modest increases in per-capita agricultural productivity could more than offset the observed precipitation declines. Investing in agricultural development can help mitigate climate change while decreasing rural poverty and vulnerability."

    • 10 months ago
  • cmc101
  • bailey78
  • JanforGore
  • cmc101
  • JanforGore
    • +1
      JanforGore  
    • cmc101:

      What do you think the World Food Programme is sending there? Food aid isn't real nutritious food aid anymore. They feed them GMOS. That is why I support Doctors Without Borders and Plumpynut and sending REAL food. We have enough of it here that we waste daily. That is also why I support bringing permaculture to these areas and after this famine working to give the people who survive seeds, education and a way to have hope and make a real living and as a way to adapt to climate change. However, it would appear that African nations on the whole aren't allowed to have true food sovereignty and self sufficiency because we can't have them giving rich western nations any competition now can we?

    • 10 months ago
  • bailey78
  • bailey78
  • cmc101
    • 0
      cmc101  
    • bailey78:

      sorry that my neighbor a couple houses away don't share our same desires to help
      but i know a few folks that would give the shirt off their backs to help just across town

    • 10 months ago
  • Gravity_Man
    • 0
      Gravity_Man  
    • bailey78:

      My wallet has had a famine since 1975 bro => the year I started driving a truck [to give my family a better life!]. My energy insights could save your bacon but an {UGH} truck driver couldn't possibly cut a record worth listening to eh? hahaha

      They say "Oh, if only somebody was an engineer!" when someone is, apparently crying in the wilderness the son comes. It is indeed unseemly to be thirsting in the shadow of an upside down waterfall machine but, them's the breaks dude.

      LET THE SUFFERING CONTINUE, THE THIRST & THE FAMINES, AND THE CHILDREN DYING AT AN UNPRECEDENTED RATE IN THE MIDST OF PLENTY THE DESERT FILLED WITH SUNSHINE... AND A PLACE WHERE STEAM CAN BE EASILY PRODUCED BY SOLAR COOKERS... sshhh. Someone might hear the victrola.

      Don't want an Energy Prophet yet? Well, take a long hard look at the rainfall where I live. There is no thirst here, no want, no famine, no babies rotting in their mother's arms, but it is everywhere else. IMAGINE THAT! It gets much hotter north of here, which means we're CLOSER TO THE EQUATOR. THE LAWS OF PHYSICS ARE IGNORED HERE.

      CRY OUT TO JEHOVAH GOD THE ALMIGHTY. HIS SON COMES. HIS SON IS ALREADY HERE, INVISIBLE TO HUMAN EYES, WAITING FOR ALL HIS OPPOSER'S DUCKS TO LINE UP WHERE HE WANTS THEM.

    • 10 months ago
  • JanforGore
  • JanforGore
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