Hunger, Disease Kill Hundreds Daily in 5 African Lands, U.N. Says

The United Nations said Wednesday that between 500 and 1,000 people are dying of hunger and disease every day in the Horn of Africa.

The U.N. Department of Humanitarian Affairs said that most victims in the five Horn states--Djibouti, Ethiopia, Kenya, Somalia and Sudan--are women and children, many driven from their homes by fighting.

“Past underdevelopment and the prolonged effect of man-made and natural disasters on the weakened economies of the region have led to unprecedented numbers of people becoming totally destitute,” a U.N.-sponsored report said.

Agency deputy chief Charles Lamuniere told a news conference that the lives of 23 million people are at risk because of lack of food and medicine across the five states.

He said the department is appealing for $541 million to cover relief operations between now and the end of the year.

The report was issued by the Special Emergency Program for the Horn of Africa, set last August after the collapse of the long-ruling Marxist administration in Ethiopia and an authoritarian regime in Somalia.

The program aims to coordinate relief efforts on the Horn mounted by U.N. agencies, governments and non-governmental organizations as well as the Swiss-run International Committee of the Red Cross.

In January, U.N. Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali launched an appeal for $621 million to fund humanitarian assistance under the program until July, a target the report said had not yet been met.

The report said that drought in Ethiopia has forced almost a million extra people over the past year into the capital, Addis Ababa.

“The growth in the numbers of urban destitute, many of them living in indescribable misery, has become increasingly alarming,” it declared.

In Sudan, it said, “an already grim situation at the beginning of the year has further deteriorated,” partly because of an escalation of civil conflict in the south and the demolition of vast squatter areas in Khartoum, the capital.

In Somalia, according to the report, a fragile cease-fire between warring factions in Mogadishu, the capital, made it possible to resume dispatch of food and other aid, but its delivery remains exceedingly dangerous.

“Malnutrition rates throughout the country have become alarming,” it added.

Kenya, the report said, is facing an emergency sparked by an unending flood of refugees from neighboring countries, drought in its own northern region and domestic civil disturbance and political uncertainty.