It was the women and children of Ethiopia, their gaunt, malnourished faces stretched thin around hunger-haunted and imploring eyes, who brought the stark specter of Third World famine into America's living rooms in the early 1980s. Now, following three years of drought and poverty, those faces are back.
"Nursing mothers, the elderly and the very young in the drought areas are already very vulnerable," said Francis Stephanos, the East Africa director of Lutheran World Relief. "Help now is much better than help later."
Ethiopia is one of the poorest and least developed countries in the world. In particular, those dependent on the nation's agriculture-based economy are put at risk during the frequent periods of drought. Other countries in the Horn of Africa, including Eritrea, Tanzania and Burundi, are also affected. The United Nations estimates that altogether as many as 16 million people are at risk of famine.
Relief experts say as many as 800,000 people in Ethiopia are already threatened with starvation and, if the crisis escalates into a full-blown famine, as many as 8 million of the country's 60 million people could be affected. The UN World Food Program has estimated that 8 million people are in immediate need of food aid. Relief agencies are pouring millions into the country in an effort to keep the crisis from turning into a disaster.
Lutheran World Relief is joining with Roman Catholic and Orthodox relief agencies in a $32 million program to secure, transport and distribute some 89,000 metric tons of food. "Catholic Relief Services is acting to halt this emergency before it becomes a tragedy," said Ken Hackett, CRS executive director.
Nigel Marsh, regional spokesman for the evangelical relief agency World Vision International, said the situation in some parts of Ethiopia, especially along the border area with Somalia, is dire. "Signs of an emerging disaster, such as children on the brink of death, are evident in many areas."
Ethiopian government officials contend that the disaster-in-waiting can be averted if donor nations step up food supplies to the pipeline that the UN, relief agencies and the Ethiopian government have put in place. "Pledges and promises made in the last few days give us a realistic chance of averting disaster," Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi said April 13. "I do not believe there will be famine in this country."
But even as pledges are made and relief groups scramble to raise the funds to buy the food and other supplies necessary to avert the tragedy, Ethiopia's longstanding feud with Eritrea bids to upset the aid effort--or at least make it much more complicated. "Current food distribution efforts have been hampered by the war between Ethiopia and Eritrea, as the most convenient distribution route passes through war zones," according to Catholic Relief Services.
UN special envoy Catherine Bertini said that land-locked Ethiopia's refusal to allow the use of Eritrean ports for unloading relief supplies could further hamper the relief effort. Bertini has asked the Ethiopian government to permit the use of the Eritrean port of Assab for the transmission of 800,000 tons of food aid--a request the government has refused to grant. Ethiopia and Eritrea have been at war since 1998, and the Ethiopian government is currently spending an estimated $1 million a day on the military effort--money some Western diplomats say could be put to better use.