East Africa is on the brink of a 'monumental catastrophe' because the global community has failed to provide the funds needed to help starving people, according to Christian Aid.
Around 20 million people are at risk of starving to death and figure could rise further still, Christian Aid has said.
Last week the World Food Programme warned that emergency food aid for 7.8 million Ethiopians would run out by the end of June – a claim the government denies. Meanwhile Ethiopia's seasonal rains have failed once again, putting yet more strain on national and international relief efforts.
Christian Aid's Head of Humanitarian Programmes for Africa, Maurice Onyango, said: 'The recent disappointing rains in Ethiopia, and also in Kenya, have shattered any faint hopes for water sources to fill up, pastures to regenerate and harvests to be viable. It has left communities even more reliant on outside aid, stretching humanitarian agencies and local authorities to their limits.
'Christian Aid is reaching tens of thousands of people with life-saving assistance, but this is just the tip of the iceberg. If we are to avert an unprecedented famine in the region, then much more help is sorely needed. What is, today, a major crisis will tomorrow become a monumental catastrophe unless the international community find more funds to respond.'
Christian Aid is helping nearly 50,000 people in some of the worst affected parts of South Sudan, Ethiopia and Kenya. Onyango recently travelled to drought-hit regions in Kenya and Ethiopia to support this work.
He said: 'The scale and intensity of this crisis is like nothing I've ever seen in my 17 years as a humanitarian worker. Successive droughts and, in some cases, conflict, has stripped people of their ability to cope.
'Every day children, women and men starve to death, from lack of food and lack of water. In Kenya and Ethiopia, livestock are dying in their thousands, leaving pastoralist families with no animals, no food, no assets and no option but to hope and pray for help to come.'
He said: 'If the world wants to avert future catastrophes of this scale, we need to invest in helping communities become more resilient to disasters.'
Christian Aid launched a fundraising appeal for theEast Africa crisis in February 2017.
