Drought means children in Somalia are in near-famine conditions

From Somalia's worst drought in a decade is pushing growing numbers of children into near-famine conditions and deepening the humanitarian crisis caused by political violence, the United Nations warned Tuesday.

Some 3.2 million Somalis are among an estimated 19 million people in the Horn of Africa in urgent need of life-saving food assistance, top U.N. aid officials said.

Drought and high local food prices have also left 12 million people in Ethiopia and another 3.5 million in Kenya short of food supplies, they said.

"We're now facing a drought in Somalia that is worse than people have seen for at least a decade," Mark Bowden, U.N. humanitarian coordinator for the country facing its fourth straight year of drought, told a news briefing in Geneva.

"Roughly 45 percent of the (Somali) population is suffering from moderate malnutrition."

In parts of central and southern Somalia, 24 percent of children under five suffer from acute malnutrition, he told the briefing.

Bowden, speaking later to Reuters, said that rate amounted to some children living in "near-famine conditions."

He said that while Somalis were not currently dying of starvation, as seen there in the early 1990s, their cattle were dying from a lack of water. "We've got more people across the board suffering and a loss of livelihoods," he said.

http://www.reuters.com/article/environmentNews/idUSTRE54B6GF20090512?fee...