English.news.cn 2012-01-30 23:09:02
by Ronald Ssekandi
ADDIS ABABA, Jan. 30 (Xinhua) -- Africa can learn from the Asian country's experience in handling humanitarian disasters, a senior UN official said on Monday.
Valerie Amos, UN Under-Secretary General for Humanitarian Affairs told Xinhua in an interview on the sidelines of the ongoing 18th African Union summit in the Ethiopian capital Addis Ababa that China can play a critical role in helping African countries contain the humanitarian catastrophes that they face.
She said the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) is increasingly working with China as a partner in terms of humanitarian action.
"We can learn the lessons from China itself in the way it has responded to some of its domestic disasters," she said.
Chinaplayed a critical role last year by providing the much needed aid to millions of people who were facing a severe drought in the Horn of Africa.
Last year, the Asian country announced that it would give the region emergency grain aid and financial support - worth about 70 million U.S. dollars- including a 16 million dollar donation to the World Food Program to support famine-relief operations in Somalia.
This was the largest amount of grain assistance in Chinese foreign aid since New China was founded in 1949, according to China's Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi who was speaking at a mini- summit held in New York last year to raise awareness of the crisis.
During the crisis an estimated 13 million people in Somalia, Kenya, Ethiopia and Djibouti were facing severe food shortage.
Amos said that she was very concerned about the food security situation in the region.
"We are particularly working to ensure that our efforts that happened last year in Somalia which took three of the areas that were in famineout of famine continue throughout 2012," she said.
The situation in South Sudan is another matter of concern to OCHA.The country recently faced ethnic clashes that left many people dead and other homeless. Amos said that the situation in Sudan's South Kordofan and Blue Nile is a matter of concern.
South Kordofan is one of three areas hit by conflict since South Sudan became independent from Sudan in July last year. Abyei and Blue Nile along with South Kordofan lie along the loosely demarcated border between Sudan and South Sudan.
Statistics by the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent show that more than 11 million people in Niger, Chad, Mali, Mauritania, Burkina Faso and some parts of Senegal face severe food shortages.
She said that whereas it is difficult to say whether the humanitarian situation in Africa is improving or worsening there is need to build there silence of the communities in countries where drought is certain.
"When I visited Ethiopia, some pastoralists said they used to face severe drought every ten years but now it is every two years. It makes it much harder for those communities to really recuperate to enable them face the next crisis with any degree of resilience, " she said.
"We do have to put more money into preparedness to make sure that we are helping countries, helping communities to prepare better so that they themselves can respond more effectively and are not necessarily dependent on the international community," she said.
