Content area
Full text
Good morning, Chairman Coons, Ranking Member Isakson, and members of the Committee. Thank you for holding this hearing on the drought and famine in the Horn of Africa. We share your grave concern about the ongoing humanitarian crisis in the Horn of Africa. The eastern Horn of Africa is currently experiencing one of the worst droughts since the 1950s. More than 12 million people-mainly in Ethiopia, Kenya, and Somalia-are severely affected and in need of humanitarian assistance. In Somalia, drought conditions have exacerbated a complex emergency that has continued since 1991. The information coming out of the Horn of Africa, especially the dire situation of refugees from Somalia, is devastating. In cooperation with our international and regional partners, we will continue to work to address this humanitarian crisis while continuing to support long-term political and food security in the region.
Somalia is at the center of the crisis, but the crisis is affecting the entire Horn of Africa. Ethiopia has issued an appeal indicating 4.5 million Ethiopians need food assistance. In Kenya, the government and a consortium of NGOs have placed 10 districts in the north and east under alert for increased food insecurity and malnutrition. The crisis has hit hardest in Somalia, where failed or poor rains combined with conflict have left 3.7 million people in need of immediate, lifesaving assistance. Two areas of southern Somalia, the Lower Shabelle Region and areas of the Bakool region, are currently facing famine conditions, and the remaining regions of southern Somalia are projected to meet the threshold for famine unless humanitarian assistance is significantly increased.
The number of refugees and internally displaced persons (IDPs) across the region has increased the challenges of drought response. There are approximately 620,000 Somali refugees in the eastern Horn region, according the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), with 200,000 of these fleeing in the past year alone. Reports from inside Somalia indicate the combined arrival rate of 2,000 new refugees per day in Ethiopia and Kenya could rise dramatically as the situation in Somalia grows increasingly desperate. The current flows threaten to overwhelm the existing refugee assistance structure in Kenya and Ethiopia. Moreover, there are reports of over 400,000 IDPs in Mogadishu alone.
A large-scale multi-donor intervention-my colleagues will go...