Famine call to UN Council

THE United Nations Human Rights Council should accept responsibility, on behalf of the world forum, for the famine spreading through eastern Africa, and should call for member countries’ cooperation to overcome the desperate food crisis there, experts said.

One of the 18 independent experts on the advisory committee to the council, Chilean academic Jose Antonio Bengoa, suggested asking for an urgent special session, to draw the attention of the international community to the gravity of the crisis in the Horn of Africa.

Bengoa described to IPS the famine conditions in five countries in the region: Djibouti, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Kenya and Somalia, which require immediate action by the council, the UN’s top human rights body.

However, the World Food Programme (WFP) “is utterly bankrupt,” Bengoa said. Left in the lurch by defaulting donors.

Jean Ziegler of Switzerland, another expert on the advisory committee, said Bengoa’s idea for the council to issue a declaration about the famine “is a useful proposal, because the UN and non-governmental organisations are helpless in the face of this appalling catastrophe.”

As conflict and famine prevail in Somalia, Irishman Colonel Michael Beary is Mission Commander for EUTM Somalia, the EU Mission to train Somali Security Forces in Uganda.

They are being trained to combat Islamist militants in Somalia.