Horn of Africa crisis!

The crisis consuming millions of people in the Horn of Africa could not have come at a worse time: Wealthy countries including the UK are struggling to stave off another global recession; many Arabian countries are desperately trying to shake off the cloak of tyranny and forge the beginning of their own democracy, and closer to home our own daily news is mainly focused on the on going scandals emanating from Rupert Murdoch’s media empire.

Who then will care about an unfolding disaster that will see some of the poorest people on our planet die of starvation?

Three countries are principally affected largely by an unprecedented drought but also by ongoing civil wars: Ethopia, Kenya and Somolia. The numbers and scale involved are truly shocking. Agencies on the ground state as many as 12 million people are directly affected.

Marixie Mercado, a Unicef spokesman, stated: "We have over two million children who are malnourished. Half a million of these children are in a life-threatening condition at this stage – a 50 per cent increase over 2009 figures. Child malnutrition rates in some camps are at least 45 per cent, three times the emergency threshold’.

At Dadaab camp in eastern Kenya, as now become the largest refugee centre in the world. Nearly half a million people are crammed into a facility designed for 90,000. Around 1,400 more desperate people, most of them children, turn up every day. At Ethiopia's camps, each day brings 1,700 new arrivals. The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and Ethiopia have set up a cluster of camps at Dolo Ado to accommodate the influx of refugees. The cluster of crowded camps scattered around the town now shelters almost 100,000 people, and the UN is frantically building more centres for another 120,000.

We want our communities to play our role. So we are asking you to give to the DEC appeal.

Give as much as you can. If its pound that’s okay. But please give. Its our moral duty not to ignore the pleas of our African brothers and sisters during their hour of need.

Simon Woolley