Kenya: UN agency stocks run low as drought leaves millions more in need of aid

With drought devastating parts of Kenya, the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) is warning of a humanitarian disaster in the country without new donations to help millions of people who will need outside assistance to survive.

If WFP does not obtain fresh contributions, Kenya will run out of food aid within weeks for 2.5 million people in the drought-stricken north and east, the Rome-based agency said today.

“Since our last appeal in December, we have received very little against the growing needs,” said WFP Executive Director James Morris. “We don't have enough for the 1.2 million people we are currently feeding, let alone the expected increase to 2.5 million or more in February.”

Kenya Country Director, Tesema Negash, said WFP is moving whatever food is available to the north and the east. “But our stocks are very low and insufficient for February distributions. Without new donations, we will only be able to feed a fraction of these 1.2 million people just when we should be more than doubling that number.”

The agency has been appealing for funds for months, aware that contributions would be needed to save lives in drought-hit Kenya.

“We are in the midst of an emergency,” Mr. Negash said. “If we receive no new donations now, it is extremely likely that Kenya will be hit by a humanitarian disaster in the months to come.”

WFP requires some 350,000 metric tons of food valued at $238 million to feed the anticipated 2.5 million people in Kenya this year, but is already short $43 million to feed just 1.2 million now.

The Kenya drought is part of the latest crisis sweeping across the Horn of Africa with 1.4 million people needing emergency food aid from WFP in southern Somalia, 1.5 million people in and 60,000 in Djibouti.

This crisis was caused by the failure of the October-December short rains in the north and very erratic and patchy rains in eastern Kenya, WFP said. But the impact is compounded because people have lost their ability to cope after five years of drought in much of Kenya since 1999 – with a break only in 2003.

The UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) today estimated that drought in the Horn of Africa and parts of the East of the country was affecting 1.2 million children under the age of five who are especially vulnerable to the threats posed by malnutrition and disease.

“This drought ominously compounds an already dismal humanitarian situation,” said UNICEF Regional Director for Eastern and Southern Africa Per Engebak. “Many factors have chipped away at the people’s survival capacities and this drought is further contributing to the erosion of those capacities.”

In a press statement, UNICEF said that in Kenya between 40,000 and 60,000 children and women in the affected districts are malnourished, while as many as 3 out of 10 children in the drought-affected areas of Somalia are likely to be malnourished.

Similar problems are affecting certain regions of Ethiopia. UNICEF warned that the combination of high malnutrition rates or wasting with generally low measles immunization rates may lead to a major measles outbreak in these countries.

To prevent this, and support other projects that benefit those families in greatest need, the agency is urgently appealing for $14.7 million to cover operations for the next three months.