‘£100m will help save those who are starving’
Minister Andrew Mitchell’s pledge
BRITAIN today pledges £100million for relief to prevent another famine in Ethiopia – and urges the international community to act now to save lives.
More than 15 million people are in critical need of food assistance, health services, water and sanitation in the war and droughtravaged East African country.
Andrew Mitchell, Minister for Development and Africa, is set to announce the UK’s funding at a pledging event in Geneva.
And he will call on other nations to help “shift the dial” on the unfolding crisis.
He told the Daily Express: “This is Britain using its international development clout, skill and money to help desperate people, particularly little children who are starving to death. I don’t think anyone can argue with that.”
Mr Mitchell witnessed the crisis first-hand during a recent trip to Tigray, Ethiopia’s northernmost regional state.
While staying in the city of Mekele, he visited a health clinic where mothers flocked to seek help for their emaciated children.
The minister said: “I talked to some families who had left their land. The men weren’t there but the mothers and children were.
“They had fled, not because of the fighting but because of climate change. They had sold all of their flocks, lost a harvest and sold all their goods.”
On malnutrition wards, the most perilously sick were being treated with therapeutic milk and readyto-use food.
Conflict
Mr Mitchell described the sight of terrified mothers watching over their skeletal children as “the saddest thing you will ever see in the humanitarian world”.
When asked what stood out most from his trip, the minister retrieved a small coloured band from a drawer in his office. Holding up the red, orange and green strip issued by the charity Medecins Sans Frontieres, he said: “Wherever I go, I see this. It’s a simple but totally terrifying thing.”
The band is a common sight at health centres in East Africa. It is wrapped around a child’s upper arm to indicate whether the youngster is healthy, slightly or severely malnourished.
In the red, the loop seems impossibly small.
Tigray has endured two years of deadly civil war that forced millions from their homes.
The conflict was compounded by several failed rainy seasons, escalating the humanitarian crisis.
Mr Mitchell said the “savage war” had “atomised the normal methods of delivering relief and humanitarian supplies”.
He added: “Inevitably, it has degraded the structures – whether they’re humanitarian workers or local non-governmental organisations. Social unrest and conflict are exacerbated and made worse by the effects of climate change.”
Countries such as the UK have a “moral responsibility” to help those worst affected by climate change in nations that contribute the least to the environmental crisis, Mr Mitchell said. He added: “It is the poorest people in the world who suffer first and hardest.”
The UK doubled its humanitarian funding to Ethiopia last year from £42million to £80million in light of the increased needs.
This year it will again scale up provision to £100million. Some £30million will be used to treat acute malnutrition, while the rest will target health, water and sanitation, plus emergency cash and social protection initiatives.
This will include aid for primary healthcare services such as access to ambulance care, support for women during pregnancy and when giving birth and vaccinations.
Mr Mitchell, who was last week given the honorific title of Deputy Foreign Secretary, is set to attend the UN Office for the Co-ordination of Humanitarian Affairs’ Ethiopia pledging conference in Geneva today. He will urge other countries to step up and help “head off famine conditions before it gets worse”. Likening the situation to a football in flight and on course to hit a window, he added: “If we do nothing, it will smash the plate glass window. But we have the power to deflect it.”
UK cash will go directly to organisations best placed to combat the crisis. Mr Mitchell acknowledges there is some debate among the public about the amount the UK should spend on aid and international development, with some arguing the money is better spent at home.
But he said: “People in Britain will remember 40 years ago what happened in Ethiopia and how Bob Geldof galvanised the world and tweaked people’s consciences, and a tremendous relief [programme] was mounted.
“Most people believe that this is a very, very good use of our money – to stop little children starving to death.
“And to rescue them from severe acute malnutrition.
“Most people in Britain will put up their hands for that.”