crise alimentaire en Afrique de l'Est

At the request of the French government, currently chairing the G20, the Food and agriculture Organization of the UN (FAO) held today an emergency meeting to mobilize international support

A group of global artists, activists and business leaders have signed a joint letter urging world leaders to step up their response to the famine in the Horn of Africa. They call on them to act “without reservation, prevarication or equivocation” when they meet at an emergency summit in Rome today.

The UN announcement of famine in Somalia is both a wake-up call to the scale of this disaster, and a wake-up call to the solutions needed to limit death-from-hunger now and in the future.

Several rich governments are guilty of wilful neglect as the aid effort to avert catastrophe in East Africa limps along due to an $800 million shortfall.

While the international community has stepped up to help those impacted by mega-emergencies, such as the earthquake in Haiti or the floods in Pakistan, unfortunately, “slow-onset” humanitarian crises, such as the worsening drought in the Horn in Africa, have not received the same attention.