- Title: [SW News](U.S. Agency for International Development) Officials Outline U.S.
Commitment To Ethiopian Famine Relief
- From:[]
- Date :[24 April 2000 9:21 PM EST ]
Officials Outline U.S. Commitment To
Ethiopian Famine Relief
Story Filed: Monday, April 24, 2000 9:21 PM EST
Washington (U.S. Agency for International Development, April 24, 2000) - The United
States is prepared and determined to maintain emergency food deliveries to the Horn of
Africa, where unusual weather conditions have caused a drought that threatens renewed
famine, especially in southern Ethiopia, top government officials told journalists April
20.
Hugh Parmer, assistant administrator for humanitarian response at the U.S. Agency for
International Development (USAID), told a briefing at the Foreign Press Center that while
"conditions in southern Ethiopia are grim," a full- blown famine has not yet
occurred, thanks, in part, to an emergency commitment by the United States of 505,000
metric tons (MT) of food.
Both he and Gayle Smith, senior director for African affairs at the National Security
Council (NSC), said the U.S. humanitarian relief commitment will remain in force for as
long as it takes in order to forestall a tragedy similar to the famine in Ethiopia that
killed one million people in 1984.
Smith, who before her assignment to the NSC served as senior adviser to the USAID chief
of staff, emphasized that the failure of rains last January and February in the Horn
region has caused a "looming" famine crisis affecting, significantly, Ethiopia
but also, to a great extent, Somalia, Eritrea,
Kenya, and Sudan.
Parmer, who recently made a trip to the region, explained that deliveries of 135,000 MT
of food a month would continue into the fall if necessary. Smith added, however, that
"if the May/June rains are good, that level of assistance might not be needed."
Parmer said the emergency food would be shipped in through Djibouti and the port of
Berbera and that discussions between the United Nations and Eritrea would soon take place
for the use of the port of Assab as a possible delivery point for relief supplies.
"The first U.S. ship will arrive at the port of Djibouti with 86,000 MT of food on
Saturday [April 22]," Parmer said, and "we've also committed at this point just
under $6 million of non-food assistance -- logistics, water purification, and technical
personnel to assist" in the emergency. He said he was also pleased to report that
since his visit to the region, European nations have made a commitment of 400,000 MT of
food supplies to aid in the crisis.
Feeding stations for children have been set up in the southern Ethiopian town of Gode,
using U.S. food that has already made its way to the region. Parmer said the area was
littered with the carcasses of livestock and conditions there were about the worst he had
seen in the region.
On the political level, Parmer said that having met with top-level government officials
in Ethiopia and Eritrea, "I was very positively impressed with both their
governments' commitment to help their own people."
He said: "In Ethiopia's case the government had gone out and bought 100, 000 MT of
food in the market for distribution to the people. I talked at some length with Prime
Minister Meles, and I was very impressed with the commitment that he expressed to seeing
that the type of thing that happened in 1984 does not happen again."
In Eritrea, where he visited five displaced persons' camps, Parmer said he saw some
people who had been displaced more than 20 months ago "who were in remarkably good
condition because of the very effective response of the Eritrean emergency organizations,
with very little international assistance."
So "people are trying to help themselves" in the region, and the United
States is pleased to be part of the international response, the USAID official concluded.
Asked by a journalist what was meant by an approaching or "looming" famine,
Parmer said: "The people dying in southern Ethiopia now are the weakest in society --
the children and the elderly. I would define a famine as the circumstances in which deaths
and starvation occur within a broad spectrum of the population, and that is not occurring
yet."
He added: "We were forewarned, and we in the international humanitarian community
have resources. We have impediments and problems -- there may be deaths, there have been
deaths among children -- but there is not going to be a 1984 type of crisis in which one
million people died."
Smith said: "If you look at the pattern of droughts and famines in this part of
the world, one of the things that happens over the successive years when rainfall becomes
inadequate is that people begin to sell their livestock or tools. The situation now is
that most people still have some reserves. But we want to prevent them from getting to the
point where they sell off those reserves or the seeds they should save for the next year's
harvest. It's when you get to that point that you're in an acute situation."
(The Washington File is a product of the Office of International Information Programs,
U.S. Department of State. Web site: http://usinfo.state.gov)
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