Global Security Studies Practicum

06 December 2011 London (Reuters) — The crisis in the Horn of Africa which has left more than 13 million people at risk of starvation is said to continue into the spring, and possibly the summer. The crisis, triggered by the worst drought in decades, has affected Somalia, Ethiopia, Kenya, and Djibouti. Kristalina Georgieva, European Humanitarian Aid Commissioner, said the Sahel region faces very dramatic hunger next year and feared some countries there are ignoring the problem. Georgieva said she was extremely concerned about the famine’s long-term repercussions on the region because of the vast numbers of Somalis who had fled to refugee camps in Kenya, Ethiopia and Yemen. Instability in Somalia meant they were unlikely to return home once the crisis was over. The commissioner said there were probably 400,000 to 500,000 Somalis in Yemen, the Arab world’s poorest country, plagued by unrest, and that the flow of refugees from poor country to poor country has stability and security impl...

Durin g an annual meeting, the head of the U.N. Refugee Agency (UNHCR) , Antonio Guterres , criticized the international community for reacting too slowly to a deterioration in the Horn of Africa hunger crisis . Aid workers and critics say a string of early warnings about drought and failed rains in the region has been months if not years in the making. More than 13 million people face severe hunger across East Africa. Somalia is at the epicenter of the crisis, with 750,000 people facing imminent starvation. Islamic militant group Al-Shabaab has refused to allow food shipments to many of the famine-hit areas of which it controls. Other suffering countries in the region include Ethiopia, Kenya, Djibouti, and Uganda. Guterres used his speech to highlight what many U.N. officials expect to be the increasingly unpredictable nature, frequency and severity of tomorrow’s humanitarian crisis. He appealed to UNHCR’s executive committee for a better understanding of the need for more funding fl...