UNICEF faces $43-million shortfall in fighting drought in Horn of Africa

The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) still needs nearly $43 million to respond to the urgent needs of millions of children and women in the drought-hit Horn of Africa, where seasonal rain has not ended the emergency and has even compounded the already fragile situation in many places, according to the agency’s latest donor update.

Some 200,000 of about 1 million children affected by the drought are estimated to suffer from acute malnutrition, outbreaks of diarrhoea and water-borne diseases across the region, and torrential rains have caused flash floods in several areas, leading to displacement, and loss of homes and livelihoods, especially in Ethiopia and Kenya.

The impact of the drought has been most severe in pastoral areas of the five countries, particularly in Kenya and Somalia where nutrition assessments indicate malnutrition levels far beyond emergency thresholds, but also in Ethiopia, Eritrea and Djibouti.

Pastoralist children usually enjoy a diet rich in protein, but when livestock waste away during a drought, stop producing milk and then collapse and die, the deprivation of their normal diet comes as a shock to their metabolism, UNICEF noted. Within a couple of months, the children become severely undernourished.

Many pastoralist families who have lost most of their livestock over the past few months, have migrated in search of water, food, jobs and support from family members in urban areas. In recent years these pastoral populations have become increasingly vulnerable due to political and economic marginalization and other factors that have reduced their ability to cope with the effects of cyclical droughts.

In some areas, the onset of the long rainy season has replenished open water sources and regenerated some pasture, but for many affected pastoral communities this has brought little relief as major numbers of their livestock had already died, UNICEF said.

The new water has also brought its own problems to the already weakened population, and has caused an increase in the number of water-borne diseases. Pastoralist and agro-pastoralist communities within each of the countries tend to be among the least served by basic services, the agency noted.

Their mobile nature also means that the infrastructure for delivering services does not effectively cover them. There is a growing consensus among aid agencies and governments that a better response would be to adapt services to the nomadic lives of the pastoralists, instead of forcing them to adopt a sedentary way of life for which they are ill equipped.

Before the next drought strikes, existing infrastructure needs to be strengthened through the introduction of mobile services that are suited to the pastoral lifestyle, UNICEF said. In the meantime, the agency’s efforts in the five countries have included constructing water systems, trucking in of water, immunizations and nutritional aid, and providing educational assistance.