ETHIOPIA: Three million in need of emergency food aid - WFP

ADDIS ABABA, 25 Aug 2005 (IRIN) - More than three million Ethiopians face food shortages this year unless they receive emergency food aid, the UN World Food Programme (WFP) said on Wednesday.

"Ethiopia has had five major droughts in just two decades, causing untold deaths, suffering and hardship," Mohamed Diab, head of WFP in the capital, Addis Ababa, said.

His comments came on the eve of a four-day visit to Ethiopia by former Finnish president, Martti Ahtisaari, now the Special Envoy for the UN Secretary-General for the Humanitarian Crisis in the Horn of Africa.

WFP cautioned against allowing the ongoing food crisis in the West African state of Niger to overshadow hunger in Ethiopia.

The agency said a new report based on a countrywide and government-led mid-year assessment mission had confirmed that up to 3.3 million Ethiopians would need emergency food aid in the second half of 2005, while another 2.5 million needed to be closely monitored.

Twenty years after famine killed an estimated one million people in Ethiopia, WFP said hunger still loomed large in a country where population growth remains among the highest in the world. The agency, through donations, covers around 70 percent of food aid to Ethiopia.

The budget for WFP's relief-and-recovery operation in Ethiopia over a three-year period - from January 2005 to December 2007 - is US $763 million.

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