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afrol News, 28 April - The UN's World Food Programme (WFP) yesterday launched a multi-million dollar appeal to provide emergency relief food to hundreds of thousands of Eritreans whose lives have been devastated by three successive years of drought and consequent crop failure. The agency is asking for US$ 33 million to fund over 90,000 tons of food - enough to feed 738,000 drought victims from May 2001 to February 2002. "This is triple the number of drought affected people WFP fed in the year 2000," said Patrick Buckley, Country Director for WFP Eritrea. - Eritrea and its people are facing a desperate scenario in the year ahead, he said. "Year after year of failed rains, exacerbated by the country’s recent war, have left a quarter of the population with little or no food reserves." Eritrea’s arid and semi-arid regions have suffered extreme drought conditions for the past three years with serious consequences for the local population. Crops have consistently failed and livestock has died due to lack of pasture. This loss of assets has left families with little or no income to buy the food they need. There are two main harvest seasons in Eritrea namely November and December in the eastern lowlands and February and March in the highlands and western lowlands. Total grain production last year was a meagre 85,000 tons compared to 320,000 tons in 1999. Early predictions indicate the winter rains will not be enough to break the drought cycle and the first harvest of 2001 will remain extremely low. The most severely affected people live in the regions of Anseba, Northern Red Sea, Southern Red Sea and Maekel. Last year’s border conflict with Ethiopia also took its toll on food production, forcing tens of thousands of farmers to abandon their farms in the rich grain producing areas of Gash Barka and Debub which are the bread-baskets of the country - producing over 70 percent of the national food requirements. The combined effects of drought and war on Eritrea’s agricultural production has pushed the price of increasingly scarce basic foodstuffs beyond the means of most families. - Over the next few months our first priority is to ensure that families continue to have enough to eat, added Buckley. "We’ve also got to think of the future, moving away from emergency assistance to more sustainable livelihoods. But getting back to normal life will not only take months but perhaps years in terms of families being able to support and feed themselves." As well as providing aid to drought-affected Eritreans, WFP continues its efforts to feed 750,000 people displaced by the 1998-2000 on-off Ethiopia/Eritrea border war. The operation which started in November 1999 through to April 2001, costs US$ 101 million of which US$ 70.8 million has been funded so far. Many of these displaced people were farmers who missed the main mid-year cropping season. It is estimated that they will require emergency food aid until the next main harvest in November/December 2001. This presumes that they will be able to return to their home areas in time for this year’s cropping season, however, continued peace will be necessary for this to happen. From January to December 2000, 94,000 metric tons of WFP food reached drought and war-affected Eritreans in Gash Barka, Debub, Northern Red Sea and Anseba regions. This appeal is part of the United Nations Horn of Africa Appeal for 2001, for which US$ 353 million was requested to assist 13 million people affected by drought in the region Sources: Based on WFP
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