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    July 27, 2011

Emergency Food Aid Headed to Horn of Africa

   VOA News
   Internally displaced Somali women queue to receive food-aid rations at
   a distribution center, in an IDP camp in the Somali capital Mogadishu,
   July 26, 2011
   Photo: AFP
   Internally displaced Somali women queue to receive food-aid rations at
   a distribution center, in an IDP camp in the Somali capital Mogadishu,
   July 26, 2011

   The U.N. World Food Program is set to begin its emergency airlift of
   food to the drought-stricken Horn of Africa on Wednesday.
   WFP director Josette Sheeran says the first flights on early Wednesday
   will head to Somalia's capital, Mogadishu. Additional planes are
   expected to carry food to eastern Ethiopia and northern Kenya, near the
   Somali border. Sheeran said the U.N. agency is calling in resources and
   personnel from other parts of the world to respond to the crisis.
   On Wednesday the U.N. plans to hold a donor's conference in the Kenyan
   capital Nairobi, with the goal of raising up to $1.6 billion to combat
   the famine over the next 12 months.
   U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon spoke Tuesday with leaders from four
   Gulf states, urging them to pledge more aid to combat the
   "deteriorating humanitarian crisis." Sheeran said that Saudi King
   Abdullah recently pledged an additional $50 million in food aid.
   U.N. and U.S. officials have said more than 11 million people are in
   need of emergency aid to survive.
   In Somalia alone, Sheeran said about one-third of the population is
   facing starvation - and she said people tell of having to leave dying
   family members behind as they continue their long journeys in search of
   help.
   Access to southern Somalia - where the U.N. formally declared a famine
   last week - has been hampered by the militant Islamist group al-Shabab.
   The group controls large sections of the region and has denied that a
   famine is taking place, dismissing international assistance as
   political interference.
   On Tuesday, the U.N. refugee agency said 100,000 Somalis have arrived
   at Mogadishu-area camps in the past two months, and continue to come at
   a rate of 1,000 per day. It says hundreds of thousands of others have
   fled to camps in neighboring Kenya and Ethiopia.

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