Monday, July 25, 2011

Meeting of the UN for Africa

The United Nations has convened Monday, July 25 in Rome, an emergency meeting to stop the famine in the Horn of Africa where 12 million people are affected by drought, under pressure from NGOs calling on leaders world to keep their promises. According to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, tens of thousands of people have died in recent weeks, victims of drought, the worst for sixty years, affecting the entire region: Somalia , where the UN has formally declared the famine in two southern regions, Ethiopia, Kenya, Djibouti, Sudan and Uganda.


The Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon called for an urgent meeting of $ 1.6 billion just to Somalia, where "children and adults die each days at a terrifying rate. " "Delays can cause even more deaths," he warned while UN agencies have received only half the amount needed for assistance programs.

Just before the opening session, about thirty persons, including singer Bob Geldof, who mobilized the world against hunger in the 1990s with his Band Aid, required that member countries of FAO "announce the amount of their help and find the money without delay, straightforward and unequivocal.

" "We know what to do. We know it's affordable and essential. We only lacked the political will "denounce the signatories, including the Ivorian singer Tiken Jah Fakoly, the actor and British director Stephen Fry, the actress Kristin Scott Thomas. One non-governmental organization, founded by the singer Bono fight poverty, has in turn launched a petition on the Net to call world leaders to keep their promises.

The petition was signed by over 37,000 people. Participants must also address the crucial issue of soaring food prices and consider long-term solutions, such as assistance to farmers or the introduction of plants more drought resistant. He also discussed the distribution of food aid in areas of Somalia controlled by Islamic insurgents Shebab that prohibit access, while Sunday the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) was able to distribute nearly 400 tons of food.

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