More than 1.5 million children in the countries of the Horn of Africa are at risk of death from the effects of the worst drought in the last 40 years in the region, the United Nations Children’s Fund (Unicef) warned on Wednesday. .
“After five bad or failed rainy seasons in the last three years in the Horn of Africa, many families have lost their livestock, their crops and their entire livelihood, putting the lives of more than 1.5 million children at risk. cause of severe acute malnutrition. “, highlights a statement from the UN agency released in Nairobi.
According to Unicef, “even after recent rains, the parched soil cannot absorb all the water, causing flooding and further devastation.”
Quoted in the note, the executive director of UNICEF, Catherine Russell, who met on Tuesday, in eastern Kenya, with families and refugees, stressed that despite the fact that it has finally started to rain “the road to recovery is long”. .
“Children continue to go hungry, are at risk of cholera, need to attend school and many have no prospect of returning home. It will take time and commitment from the international community for these communities to start to recover”, stressed Catherine Russell, after a visit to Garissa, an area affected by drought, and the Dadaab refugee camp.
“Families have lost most of their livestock and new crops will take months to grow. Now they are facing flooding,” he added.
Unicef recalls that the drought in the Horn of Africa was aggravated by years of conflict and insecurity, the socioeconomic impacts of the Covid-19 pandemic and the increase in food and fuel prices, partly due to the war in Ukraine.
“In Kenya, Ethiopia and Somalia, more than 2.5 million people have been displaced by drought. As families are pushed to the brink, children starve, miss school, are forced to to do child labor or marry at an early age and fall ill, mainly due to cholera. With cycles of drought followed by floods, the next devastating crisis may occur before children and their families have had a chance to recover,” he stresses. the notice.
To finance this year’s humanitarian aid projects in the region, Unicef is requesting 759 million dollars (686 million euros) to “provide vital support” to 16.6 million people -including 12.2 million children. – in Ethiopia, Kenya and Somalia.
Of that amount, 137.5 million dollars (124.4 million euros) are needed for Kenya and another 690 million dollars (624 million euros) to support communities in areas affected by climate change in 2023 and 2024.
Source: TSF
