KENYA/SOMALIA: Rains increase food production in south Somalia but almost half the population still in need UN food security envoy says

Record ID: 361359

  • Title: KENYA/SOMALIA: Rains increase food production in south Somalia but almost half the population still in need UN food security envoy says
  • Date: 17th February 2010
  • Summary: NAIROBI, KENYA (RECENT) (REUTERS) GRAINNE MOLONEY, FOOD SECURITY AND NUTRITION ANALYSIS UNIT (FSNAU) ACTING CHIEF TECHNICAL ADVISOR TALKING TO JOURNALIST MOLONEY'S HANDS (SOUNDBITE) (English) GRAINNE MOLONEY, FOOD SECURITY AND NUTRITION ANALYSIS UNIT (FSNAU) ACTING CHIEF TECHNICAL ADVISOR, SAYING: "About six months ago when we did the same assessment, the previous sea
  • Embargoed: 4th March 2010 12:00
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  • Topics: Sports
  • Reuters ID: LVA1JZVBECQFG5CIQ2OH2DX7OHKD
  • Story Text: The number of Somalis needing aid has fallen by more than half a million because of increased food production, mostly in the south of the Horn of Africa state, a U.N.'s Food Security and Nutrition Analysis Unit (FSNAU) survey showed recently.
    Grainne Moloney, acting chief technical advisor of the U.N.'s FSNAU, told Reuters her organisation had found that In August last year 3.56 million people, about half the population, needed humanitarian aid, but that the number of people in need had now been reduced to 3.2 million because of a good harvest after rainfall.
    "The reduction of about nine percent in crisis is predominantly due to increase in production in the southern areas, there has been normal to above normal rains in the key production areas so we are seeing very good harvest - about 120 percent of the post-war average and over 200 percent of last year's harvest at the same time," she said.
    The FSNAU survey showed maize and sorghum production had boomed in southern Somalia which is mostly under the control of the hardline al Shabaab insurgent group.
    Fighting has killed 21,000 Somalis since the start of 2007 and driven 1.5 million from their homes.
    The FSNAU stressed that a considerable number of the population still need urgent aid.
    "The levels of need are absolutely huge. We have 42 percent of the population who need assistance, some of those need life-saving assistance, so they need to have emergency supplies for food security, for nutrition, for health and for water and sanitation. Then we also have the people in the population who have lost their livelihoods, for example, in the central region, their livestock herds have decimated due to the ongoing drought," Moloney said.
    The FSNAU was set up by the U.N.'s Food and Agriculture Organisation to provide aid agencies with reliable data from the lawless country.
    Lawlessness in Somalia has complicated aid delivery and it is only recently that the disruptions led the U.N's World Food Programme to suspend its operations in the south of Somalia early this year.
    Moloney said there was a need form relief operations to be coordinated. "The challenge is to get all these interventions done in parallel and at scale. It is very difficult for humanitarian agencies to meet the needs because of the shrinking humanitarian space; so all efforts to allow these agencies to continue providing lifesaving and livelihood support in South and Central Somalia are crucial so that the needs of the population are met," she daid.
    Somalia has had no central government for 18 years and efforts to install one have been undermined by an insurgency led by al Shabaab.
    Fighting has killed 19,000 Somalis since the start of 2007 and driven another 1.5 million from their homes, triggering one of the world's worst humanitarian emergencies.
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