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Six African governments and also the United Nations recently agreed on a road map to tackle the root causes of rising hunger across the drought-plagued Horn of Africa, warning that the next major crisis could force more than 20 million people into needing emergency assistance.

The road map was the result of months of planning capped by two days of talks in Nairobi that ended few days ago in between government representatives of Djibouti, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Kenya, Somalia and Uganda, regional bodies, donors, international financial institutions, analysis organizations, the private sector, non-governmental organisations as well as the United Nations.

“The hard work starts now,” said Kjell Magne Bondevik, UN Special Humanitarian Envoy to the Horn of Africa. “We have identified what works best and where. The biggest challenge is to scale up successes to extinguish hunger inside the Horn rather than just fighting fires each and every time 1 breaks out.”

“The Horn is hit by some of the world’s most severe food crises and they are coming faster and far more furious because of climate change, environmental degradation, political and armed conflicts plus a host of other variables,” he said. “We all now need to show the commitment to end this cycle of despair and disaster, which if not stopped could subsequent see over 20 million folks in want of assistance.”

“None of this will perform, however, unless the best responses are escalated across the region,” he said. “If we want to change the Horn so it supports people rather of increasingly generating them victims, I appeal to you all to back this campaign on behalf of those brave survivors of one of many harshest environments in the globe. Otherwise this failure will only haunt us all.”

Far more than 70 million people – 45 percent with the total population – inside the Horn live in abject poverty and face food shortages. Inside the past six years, 4 key droughts hit the region.

The result of government-led consultations using the support of the UN Food and Agriculture Organization and Globe Food Programme is a road map to scale-up prioritized interventions in the six countries. National talks since January produced a list of 170 productive projects, an armoury of interventions that can be extended and expanded inside the battle against hunger.

“In the Horn of Africa to end this scourge, we have to protect and rebuild the livelihoods with the food insecure and enhance their long-term resilience to shocks such as droughts. This is what we hope to do in this comprehensive partnership,” stated FAO Assistant Director-General Tesfai Tecle.

“Breaking the cycle of hunger in the Horn of Africa requires joint efforts by all stakeholders – governments with the region, UN agencies, NGOs and donors,” said Paul Gulleik Larsen, Director of the Office of the WFP Executive Director. “The challenge of meeting Millennium Development Goal 1 of cutting hunger in half is large, however it is doable. The fact that six countries have joined this consultation shows an encouraging level of political commitment.”

Six sets of priorities for partnerships for food security within the Horn of Africa had been identified:

– Broad alliances to support millions of pastoralists and agro-pastoralists
– The environmental challenge; combating land degradation and desertification
– The role of ladies as a primary force for rural transformation;
– Livelihoods diversification and income-generating activities for the food insecure;
– Risk management and crisis response;
– Institutional strengthening and community-focused capacity building.

The 170 best projects drawn from the six countries consist of amongst many others growing trees, rehabilitating land, veterinary services for drought-stricken pastoralists; agricultural advisory services for farmers; bee-keeping; dairy development; fisheries; micro-enterprises; eco-tourism; digging water wells and irrigation systems, and establishing vegetable gardens.

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