UN food aid group warns of famine in Ethiopia

Up to 14 million people may need food aid in Ethiopia alone by next March, the deputy executive director of the UN World Food Programme warned in Dublin yesterday.

Mr Jean-Jacques Graisse said the Ethiopian famine was likely to be the biggest single problem facing the organisation when Ireland takes its seat on WFP's executive board early in the new year.

Mr Graisse was in Dublin to brief the Departments of Foreign Affairs and Agriculture in advance of Ireland's accession to the board. He said he was also here to thank them for the State's dramatically increased contribution to the WFP in recent years which - at around $10 million - leaves Ireland the 9th largest per capita donor for 2002, ahead of Japan, Germany, France and the UK.

In a separate development yesterday, the aid agency Trócaire announced an allocation of €275,000 in aid for Ethiopia, and warned that without major support the crisis could become "a disaster as severe as the worst famines that have ravaged Ethiopia in the past". Trócaire's director Mr Justin Kilcullen called for international aid to be urgently expanded. "We all remember the horrendous images of famine from Ethiopia in 1984. Over a million people died of hunger. This is a story which should not be repeated."

Mr Graisse said the WFP was dealing with "major emergencies" in many parts of Africa, including Zimbabwe, where six million people required food aid because of a combination of drought, and the crisis created by land reform. He also warned that the HIV/AIDS pandemic added "a whole new dimension" to food shortages. People fighting the infection needed more food, with higher protein and calorie intake, he said.