UAE launches Dh500m mission of mercy to Somalia

The UAE charity’s Dh100m will go towards food, medicine, medical supplies, serums for vaccination and prevention of epidemics, clothing, and cash for health, education and housing, including the rebuilding of wells. It will also provide half a million bottles of water and water tanks.

The mission comes after Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed met Mohamed Abdullahi Mohamed, president of Somalia, in Abu Dhabi on Monday.

The campaign will be monitored by Sheikh Hamdan bin Zayed, Abu Dhabi Ruler’s Representative in the Western Region and President of the Red Crescent Authority.

The UN on Tuesday told of the growing risk of mass starvations among people living in conflict and drought-hit areas of the Horn of Africa, Yemen and Nigeria.

It said an “avoidable humanitarian crisis is fast becoming an inevitability”.

The UN faced a severe funding shortfall to help people affected by famine, spokesman Adrian Edwards said.

UNHCR’s operations in famine-hit Nigeria, South Sudan, Somalia and Yemen are funded at between 3 and 11 per cent, he said.

More than 20 million people across the four countries are in areas hit by drought and are experiencing famine or are at high risk of it.

Mr Edwards said the growing food insecurity was pushing more and more people to leave their homes across the region, with food needs the main factor for displacement in Yemen and South Sudan.

“In Sudan, for example, where our initial estimate was for 60,000 arrivals from South Sudan this year, we are in the process of revising the expected total upwards to 180,000,” he said.

Mr Edwards said the lack of funding meant less food distributed to those who need it most – the more than four million refugees in the region, most of whom are children.

“With no money to buy food, rations are being cut,” he said.

In Djibouti rations have been cut by 12 per cent, in Ethiopia, Tanzania and Rwanda by between 20 and 50 per cent, and in Uganda by up to 75 per cent, Mr Edwards said.

This could have dramatic consequences, he warned, because “many refugees are without full access to livelihoods and agriculture or food production, and their ability to take matters into their own hands and help themselves is limited”.

The National