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More people face hunger in the Horn of Africa
09.09.2011 09:07 "Agro Perspectiva" (Kyiv) —
The number of people in need of humanitarian assistance in the Horn of Africa has gone up by nearly one million according to the UN Office for the coordination of humanitarian affairs (OCHA).
The 13.3 million, people who need help include over 840,000 refugees.
In the mean time humanitarian agencies continue to scale up their operations.
The UN Refugee agency UNHCR is scaling up its presence in Somalia’s border regions and in Mogadishu as the security situation improves.
Marixie Mercado from UNICEF says the agency is accelerating support to education in the region to reach more children through school feeding programmes.
«In crisis such as the one in the horn of Africa right now, education and schools constitute an important part of the emergency response. From a nutrition stand point, schools in drought affected areas are often one of the few means of making sure that children get their daily nutritional intake, they offer an effective tool for delivering life saving information and skills on nutrition, hygiene protection they offer access to safe water and sanitation and in addition to making sure children keep learning they provide structure stability and a sense of normalcy and hope for their future,» says Mercado.
UNICEF estimates that over 1.8 million children between 5 and 17 years old in south and central Somalia are out of school because of displacement or insecurity.
The UN World Food Programme says it has assisted over 7.4 million people throughout the Horn of Africa since July and plans to increase the number to nearly 10 million in the coming weeks.
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