Our Conflicts and Emergencies blog (EN)

When it comes to humanitarian crises, Oxfam specializes in the appropriate acronym of “WASH”. In 2011, hundreds of Oxfam staff delivered water and sanitation and other relief to millions of people afflicted by drought, floods or earthquakes.

The spectre of hunger is again stalking the people of the western Sahel, at the southern edge of the Sahara Desert. Thanks to the early-warning systems funded by Canada and other donors, we now know that a major food crisis is brewing. We know in time to head it off.

This week Oxfam, together with Save the Children, launched a new report called A Dangerous Delay, which found that the international community responded too late to the current Horn of Africa food crisis. Thousands of lives were lost as a result. The report calls for much earlier action to prevent such crises from happening, rather than waiting until people start dying to respond.

Last year countries in the Horn of Africa were hit by a major drought. Approximately 13 million people have been affected by the impacts of the drought, conflict, high food prices and chronic poverty. Peoples’ lives in Somalia, Kenya, Ethiopia and Djibouti have been turned upside down and many thousands are struggling to recover, pushed into desperate poverty which it will take decades to recover from. No one knows exactly how many people died but an estimate by the UK’s Department for International Development estimated the figure could be as high as 100,000 people.

Over the last few months campaigners in the UK have been contacting their Members of Parliament (MPs) asking them to show support for the Charter to End Extreme Hunger. A petition signed by 15,000 people will be handed over to the UK Prime Minister David Cameron today (Wednesday, 18 January) calling on him to endorse the Charter. This week campaigners have been tweeting their MPs asking them to raise a question to Prime Minister David Cameron in Parliament this Wednesday.