October 08, 2011 12:42 AM By Alexandra Taylor
GENEVA: The head of the U.N.’s refugee agency called Friday for aid workers to be given access to all parts of Somalia, where conflict and drought have left millions facing starvation.
“The situation that draws the most attention [among] member states is Somalia,” said U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees Antonio Guterres after a meeting of the agency’s executive committee.
He described the drought in Somalia as the world’s worst ongoing humanitarian catastrophe and expressed his “deep gratitude” to those countries that have kept their borders open to allow the influx of refugees. “There is no humanitarian solution to this problem, it is political,” Guterres said.
Somalia is the worst hit of several east African countries affected by the regions’ worst drought in decades.
The UNHCR is assisting some 800,000 Somali refugees in neighboring countries but it is unable to provide relief to an estimated 3.7 million people in need of urgent help inside Somalia.
The capital Mogadishu is officially under the control of forces supporting the Western-backed transitional government but security has yet to be restored to a level that allows a large-scale humanitarian response.
A suicide bomber from the Al-Qaeda-affiliated Al-Shabaab blew up a truck at a government compound Tuesday, killing at least 82 people in Somalia’s deadliest attack since the country plunged into chaos two decades ago.
Many other regions affected by drought are still under the control of Al-Shabaab and an effective aid effort there has remained impossible since famine started spreading in July.
Read more: http://www.dailystar.com.lb/News/Middle-East/2011/Oct-08/150776-unhcr-wants-humanitarian-access-to-all-somali-regions.ashx#ixzz1aDT5Ea57
(The Daily Star :: Lebanon News :: http://www.dailystar.com.lb)
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