Food Shortage Threatens Horn Of Africa

The humble farmers in one remote, dusty mountain village have managed to get by up until now despite two years of little rainfall. But if relief food does not arrive soon, residents of Giset could go from being hungry to starving.

As Earth Day 2000 approaches, the U.N. World Food Program says they are representative of millions threatened by food shortages in the Horn of Africa who are in danger of being forgotten.

While attention has been focused on Ethiopia, where 7.7 million are threatened with starvation, the WFP estimates that 8 million more are in danger in nine other countries in eastern Africa.

Catherine Bertini, U.N. special envoy to the Horn of Africa, on Sunday visited Giset, 90 miles northwest of the Eritrean capital, Asmara. She expressed disappointment with the lack of response to a WFP appeal this month for $7.9 million to feed 212,000 Eritreans.

"This is exactly the kind of situation we are talking about in much of the region," said Bertini, who is also the head of the WFP. She is on a weeklong tour of Ethiopia, Djibouti, Eritrea and Kenya. "These people have been able to cope until now but their own resources have almost gone."

Squatting in front of her small thatched hut, Fatima Adam said men had already left Giset in search of work after their harvests had failed and their livestock died or was sold to buy food.

"There was no rain last year," she said. "There is nothing. I am waiting for (food) distribution. My husband cannot work because he is sick."

Her family's eight cattle died last year. Their 10 goats were sold or died. Last year, they borrowed cattle and planted sorghum. The rain failed to come, and the crops never germinated. It is a common tale in Giset, a village of fewer than 1,000 people.

The only assistance the villagers receive is 33 pounds of grain each month from a government aid agency. Adam said that even if rain does come, it will not help because the family has no oxen to plow their tiny plot carved out of the rocky, sun-baked earth of tiny Eritrea.

Grain prices also have shot up 30 percent as the shortage takes affect on trade, said Kofi Owusu, the WFP's emergency coordinator in Eritrea.

And conflicts are affecting relief operations in many of the countries WFP says are facing serious food shortages, including Ethiopia, Eritrea, Somalia, Sudan and Burundi.

The WFP estimates that 850,000 people or one-quarter of Eritrea's population of 3.5 million need assistance as a result of being displaced by the country's 23-month border war with former ruler Ethiopia, according to Worku Tesfamichael, the government's relief commissioner.

"The war will not help Ethiopian and Eritrean people who are in need of food and development," she said. "War is only destruction; there is nothing to gain."