$300,000 - Sum reportedly spent on Robert Mugabe's birthday party last
year
68 - percentage of Zimbabweans living on $1 a day.
$3bn
- the amount the Chinese reportedly want to loan Zimbabwe
in return for a share of its platinum
5 - the percentage margin by which Morgan Tsvangirai won the first
round of 2008 presidential elections
50 - the percentage of malnourished children under five in Zimbabwe
1 - the amount in US dollars allegedly being requested from
schoolchildren to pay for Mr Mugabe's birthday celebrations
$106m - the amount reportedly missing from the national coffers from
the government's sale of Zimbabwean diamonds last year
6am - the time Mr Mugabe's birthday party finished last year
45 - the age of Mr Mugabe's wife, Grace
Two children who have fled from the famine in Somalia look out from their tent in the Dagahaley refugee camp in Kenya. Photograph: Oli Scarff/Getty Images
The vast majority of people in insurgent-controlled areas of Somalia may starve to death unless aid reaches them in the next few weeks, said Mohamed Ibrahim, Somalia's deputy prime minister.
Ibrahim's blunt warning came at an emergency summit in Rome organised by France, the current president of the G20, and the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) as the world community seeks to mobilise help to relieve Somalia's first famine in 18 years.
Somalia's deputy prime minister said the fundamental cause of the famine was the fragility of the state and enduring conflict that has hindered the provision of basic services. He also blamed insurgents who have blocked lifesaving aid.
"The plight of the Somali people is desperate," said Ibrahim. "We have witnessed suffering in the heart of the capital."
Access to affected regions has emerged as a key problem in the current crisis. Last week, the UN declared a famine in two regions of Somalia southern Bakool and Lower Shabelle. Somali Islamist rebels, who control these areas, last week denied lifting a ban on certain aid groups in drought-affected areas and rejected the UN's claim that there is a famine in the region.
Earlier this month, the rebel group al-Shabaab, which controls much of southern Somalia, had said earlier this month that it would allow all humanitarian groups access to assist with the drought response. But al-Shabaab spokesman Sheikh Ali Mohamud Rage told a local radio station on Friday that the ban on specific aid agencies, which was imposed in 2009 and 2010, still stands.
At the time, the rebels accused various humanitarian groups, including the UN's World Food Programme (WFP), which is expected to lead the current drought response, of damaging the local economy, being anti-Muslim, and of spying for the government.
An estimated 11.6 million people need humanitarian assistance in Somalia, Ethiopia, Kenya and Djibouti, according to the UN.
As G20 leaders met in Rome, Save the Children warned that the number of malnourished children in 14 of its feeding centres in camps in Puntland, northern Somalia, has doubled from 3,500 to 6,000 in just two weeks.
The number of acutely malnourished children – and those who will die without emergency assistance – has also doubled, rising from 300 children to 600 in the last two weeks at the charity's clinics in Puntland.
Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) said its feeding centres were operating beyond their original capacity and, compared to last year, they were receiving up to seven times more patients in certain locations each week. MSF said "spontaneous camps" are emerging in various locations, such as in the Lower Juba Valley.
Save the Children said if world leaders at the emergency meeting fail to plug a $1bn (£613m) funding gap for the east Africa aid effort, more than a million children could die in Somalia alone.
Save the Children pointed out that, despite organising the meeting, the French government has donated just £1.6m to the aid effort, lagging far behind the UK government's recent £52m donation. Italy – the host of today's summit and Europe's fourth largest economy – has contributed only £550,000. Norway told the FAO meeting that it was ready to contribute more money to the relief effort, while the EU has increased its funding to euros 100m. It hopes to increase this further to euros 160m.
Funding commitments
In a pointed intervention, Jeffrey Sachs, special adviser to the UN on the millennium development goals, said the world needed to turn to the Gulf states if it was serious about raising money quickly.
"We have to look to the Gulf states," he said. "It is the only place where the money really is. This is a room of governments without money."
In a later press conference, Kanayo Nwanze, the head of the International Fund for Agricultural Development, a UN special agency, chastised the lack of political leadership in Africa in supporting agriculture.
"If Africa does not get its house in order and expects the world to help us out, we are dreaming," said Nwanze. "Thank goodness Tanzania, Kenya and Ghana are moving ahead with agriculture."
He criticised African governments for not keeping their 2003 promise to earmark 10% of their budgets for agriculture.
"Less than 10 countries have fulfilled that pledge," he said.
The World Bank promised to provide more than $500m to help drought victims. The money would be spent on projects in Ethiopia, Kenya, Djibouti and Somalia, including the worst-stricken areas in that country "where circumstances permit", the bank said.
"The recurring nature of drought and growing risk it poses to social and economic gains in this region calls not only for immediate relief from the current situation, but also for building longterm drought resilience," said Obiageli Ezekwesili, World Bank vice-president for Africa.
Opening the meeting, the FAO's director general, Jacques Diouf, said there was a need for greater co-ordination in response to the drought and famine in east Africa to "save our brothers and sisters of dying of thirst and hunger".
He said the world was faced with a similar crisis in the region in 2000, which prompted the then secretary general of the UN, Kofi Annan, to appoint an inter-agency taskforce to investigate what could be done to make the region more food secure.
The resulting report, The elimination of food insecurity in the Horn of Africa: A strategy for concerted government and UN agency action, recommended each of the seven countries in the area draft food security programmes, the implementation of regional food security programmes, expanding markets and trade opportunities, and improving in-country health and nutrition.
The report said large-scale infrastructure was needed alongside investment in small-scale projects, particularly in rural roads, livestock markets and basic services, "ensuring that these developments are community-driven".
Diouf drew parallels with the recommendations made in the report by the taskforce, which he led, and the situation now. He pointed out that irrigation was an important component in addressing the crisis. Just 1% of land in the effected region was irrigated in 2000, he said.
Little appears to have been done to increase this figure. An estimated 2% of land in eastern and southern Africa is believed to now have an irrigation system in place; only about 7% of land in the whole of Africa is irrigated, compared with more than 30% of land in Asia.
Diouf said the 2000 crisis was averted and international attention drifted to other issues. "Must history always repeat itself?" he asked. "And in the first few years of the 21st century, must the international community go through the agonising spectacle of seeing children and livestock dying, as in ancient Egyptian times?
"My hope is that the international community and the G20 in the next few years will marshal enormous resources so in the future such tragic events are nothing more than a bad memory ... that fields will be irrigated and roads will be built so the region will no longer weigh on our collective conscience."
The executive director of the World Food Programme, Josette Sheeran, said the current crisis stemmed from a "triple storm" of drought, soaring food prices and conflict.
Before that, they are given 21 days of emergency food, and can then apply only
for a further 15 days of supplies from the UN's World Food Programme,
leaving them short by about five weeks.
Staff with Medecins Sans Frontieres have reported growing numbers of cases
where children's health gets worse after they reach Kenya's
Dadaab refugee camp.
"The nutritional status of refugees is deteriorating even after arrival
at the camps due to bureaucratic delays in registration," said Unni
Karunakara, MSF's international president.
Somalis
arriving to Dadaab are not eligible for full food packages until Kenya's
government officially recognises them as refugees, which is taking "eight
to 10 weeks", Mr Karunakara said.
"This is a critical point in which health status can deteriorate. These
are unacceptable delays," Mr Karunakara said.
The gap in rations means that children's condition can worsen - sometimes
fatally - even though they are now close to the world's largest emergency
humanitarian operation.
Haredo Mohamed's five-month-old child died this week because of "poor
living conditions", she said, and a 51-day wait for official food
rations.
She and her family had been forced to "become beggars" and share
food with neighbours.
"We came here because of suffering at home in Somalia, and we thought we
would find shelter and food," she said, sitting in a red shawl outside
her rag-and-stick shelter in Dadaab.
"But there was no-one her to receive us. It took three weeks to get
ration cards but then we were not on the list. Our child got much worse
during this time."
The crisis is a measure of the chaos in the world's largest refugee camp,
which was built to house 90,000 people but where there are now more than
390,000, with an average 1,300 a day still streaming over the border.
"We need to do better than pushing them out to live in the bush,"
said Prasant Naik, head of Save The Children in Kenya.
"When they are outside the main camp they struggle to find clinics,
feeding centres and schools. It's having a huge impact on children.
After the trauma of walking for weeks with very little food, they need to
settle and get some routine back into their lives." Families were
sharing what little food they had with neighbours who have nothing, meaning
that carefully calculated rations were being spread too thin to help
children back to health.
Kenya's government insists that it vets all refugees because it has grave
concerns over security and fears that al-Qaeda-linked militants from Somalia
are trying to infiltrate the camp.
But its immigration officials have few facilities in Dadaab. All details
including finger-prints have to be driven more than 12 hours back to
Nairobi, the capital, for security checks before people are officially
recognised as refugees.
"People are arriving in very bad shape, and everybody there in Dadaab is
overwhelmed," said Alfred Mutua, Kenya's government spokesman.
He insisted, however, that "everyone is getting food", and
reiterated calls for feeding centres to be established in Somalia, "so
we do not receive people here in Kenya already at the end of their lives".
Across the Horn of Africa, Oxfam warned that the hunger crisis was "spiralling
out of control" and that the number of people in need could soon jump
25 percent to more than 15 million.
Separately, Valerie Amos, the UN's aid chief, said that there were now real
concerns that famine conditions could spread from two regions of Somalia to
almost the whole of the country's south.
"East Africa's humanitarian crisis is at the tipping point," said
Elise Ford, Oxfam's spokesman in Nairobi.
"Hundreds of thousands will face starvation unless donors step forward,
maintain the generosity we have seen in recent weeks and help prevent a
catastrophe."
:: The United States said on Tuesday it would ease sanctions related to
Somalia’s Al-Qaeda-linked Al-Shabaab in hopes of boosting assistance in a
worsening famine in the lawless country, officials said Tuesday.
Officials said they would maintain sanctions against the militia, which
controls drought-hit parts of southern Somalia, but that the United States
will not prosecute any aid group that makes "good-faith efforts to deliver
food."
Severely malnourished Somalis at a makeshift emergency centre in southern Mogadishu, where thousands of people have gathered to flee severe drought. Photograph: Abdurashid Abdulle/AFP/Getty Images
The UN is expected on Wednesday to declare that parts of southern Somalia are now in famine amid the worst drought to hit east Africa in 60 years.
Mark Bowden, humanitarian co-ordinator for Somalia, is expected to make the announcement in Nairobi, based on data from the food security and nutrition analysis unit, part of the Food and Agriculture Organisation.
The drought in east Africa has left an estimated 11 million people at risk, but Somalia has been the worst hit country as it is already wracked by decades of conflict. There has not been an official famine since 1984-85, when about 1 million people in Ethiopia and Sudan died. A famine is measured by rates of hunger, malnutrition and deaths, but the key to it is that it must be widespread.
Technically, a famine is a crude mortality rate of more than two people per 10,000 per day; acute malnutrition reaching more than 30%; water consumption becoming less than four litres a day; and intake of kilocalories of 1,500 a day compared with the recommended 2,100 a day.
The UN refugee agency, the UNHCR, said it was seeking further security guarantees from armed rebels in Somalia in order to deliver greater amounts of assistance and prevent more hungry people from becoming refugees, Reuters reports. Al Shabaab, Islamist insurgents affiliated to al-Qaida, control pockets of the capital Mogadishu and parts of southern and central Somalia.
The group last week said it would allow foreign aid agencies into territories it controlled, reversing a ban imposed two years ago on the grounds that they were anti-Muslim.
Hundreds of thousands of people have fled Somalia due to the drought and conflict, and refugees are dying of causes related to malnutrition either during the journey or very shortly after arrival at aid camps. On Sunday, the UNHCR began emergency airlift flights in Nairobi to help hundreds of thousands of Somalis who have taken refuge in neighbouring countries.
A giant cargo jet chartered by UNHCR landed in Nairobi with 100 tonnes of tents for the Dadaab refugee camp complex near the Kenya-Somalia border.
The airlift will support efforts to help more than 430,000 Somali refugees in Kenya and Ethiopia, including 164,000 who have arrived in the two countries since the beginning of the year.
Three thousand continue to arrive daily, fleeing continuing insecurity, drought and hunger in Somalia.
UN agencies have asked for $1.6bn to pay for essential programmes in east Africa, but have only received half that amount. Kenya, Somalia, Ethiopia and Djibouti are all facing a crisis that is being called the worst in 50 years.
One in 10 children in parts of Somalia is at risk of starving to death, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) said last week. The independent aid agency, one of very few with access to Somalia's worst-hit areas, said that even in the Bay and Lower Shabelle regions, Somalia's traditional breadbaskets, nearly 11% of children under five had severe acute malnutrition.
An appeal by the Disasters Emergency Committee, an umbrella group of UK charities, has raised £20m since it launched its east Africa appeal.
Mr Mubarak, whose trial starts on Wednesday, is under arrest in a hospital in
the Red Sea resort town of Sharm el-Sheikh, where he is receiving treatment
for a heart condition.
He received the court summons on Monday, state media reported, but it is not
yet clear whether his doctors, who say the 83-year-old is weak, will sign
off on transferring him to court.
Interior Minister Mansur Essawy told the independent Al-Masry Al-Yom newspaper
that "we will transport (Mubarak) in a military plane to his trial
location."
Mr Essawy added: "We do not want to see tension among the people in the
street because of Mubarak's absence."
AFP was unable immediately to confirm the report.
By transferring the ex-president, who was forced to resign in February after a
nationwide revolt, the interior ministry would be carrying out the state
prosecutor's request to ensure that Mubarak attends the opening of his trial.
But previous requests to transfer Mubarak to a Cairo prison or military
hospital were not followed through.
Although the health minister has said he would assist in the transfer of Mr
Mubarak, who he said was fit to attend the hearing, the former president can
still avoid attending the trial if his health suddenly deteriorates.
He is to go on trial with his two sons, his former interior minister and six
police commanders. A businessman friend who escaped to Spain will be tried
in absentia.
