Global Policy Forum

By Anthony Mitchell

Hussein Mohamed is just a year old. His mother does not know it yet, but in a few days, a week at the most, he will probably be dead. His skin stretches tightly over his grotesquely protruding stomach. Every few seconds he blinks, the only indicator that he is still alive. "I don't know how much longer it will be before all of us are dead," his mother, Shamise, 34, says. "We hope that we get some help."

Hussein, whose family live in West Haraghe, about 250 miles east of Addis Ababa, the Ethiopian capital, are victims of the famine that has hit the country. Three of Shamise's other children, she says, have died. Like many lactating mothers, she has been unable to produce milk for her baby because of her poor diet.

The Government predicts that lack of rain and the failed harvests will have catastrophic effects, with some 15 million people in desperate need of food aid within two months.

As Shamise speaks, her son manages to lift his hand to his mother's mouth, as if gesturing for food. At full stretch, he exposes the extent of his fragility. His limbs resemble twigs, and look as though they could snap just as easily. Weakened by hunger, Hussein also has malaria.

The lush, green fields that surround his village belie the tragedy that has taken a stranglehold on the region. Late rains mean that the green crops will never mature. Dozens of animal carcasses litter the fields, the dusty roadsides and nearby villages. Just a few miles away, the drought has turned the fields into dustbowls.

Ethiopia, of course, is a nation used to drought. Each year, according to the United Nations, some five million people in the country need food aid. But the scale of this most recent tragedy, according to UN officials, is unprecedented. West Haraghe is traditionally something of a breadbasket to the country, supplying maize and sorghum, but the main crop, which should be harvested this month, has almost completely failed.

Malnutrition rates in the worst-affected areas are now in excess of 25 per cent. According to World Health Organisation figures, 15 per cent is seen as critical. Aid workers say that the scale of the disaster is far worse than any of the previous famines that have had so devastating an impact on this troubled country in the Horn of Africa, because this time the population is far greater.

Since 1984, when almost a million people died, the population has very nearly doubled to 65 million, almost all eking out a living as subsistence farmers. The per capita income is 70p a day.

Zena Beliya, with a skeletal nine-year-old boy sprawled across her lap, tells how they are now living on boiled weeds and dried cereal known as Kollo. Her son, Ahmed, who was once a normal, healthy boy who used to enjoy playing in the village, is barely aware of his surroundings, or of the flies that settle on his gaunt face. They linger for a few seconds longer than they otherwise would, because he is too weak to make even the slightest of movements necessary to disturb them.

His mother says that the weeds they have had to eat have given them terrible stomach problems. "The children need soft food. My brother's children got worse and worse, but we did not know what was causing their illness," she said. "The weeds are not good for them." Never far away are huge, flesh-eating carrion storks, nicknamed "undertaker birds", which, in the words of a village elder, "go wherever there is death". The Ethiopian Government has started to ship in foreign food aid to the area, but some families have complained that they have received nothing.

Allegations of corruption by local officials, who have been accused of giving food to friends and relatives, are widespread. The villagers also say that a 50kg (110lb) ration, which is expected to feed a family for a month, is being carelessly distributed regardless of the number of people in the family.

Senior UN officials are describing the drought as the "great human catastrophe of the 21st century".

The scale of the problem places a huge burden on relief agencies already reeling from famines in southern Africa and Afghanistan. The United Nations World Food Programme says that it does not have enough food to start the mammoth task of feeding millions of people next year. It estimates that it could need up to two million tons of food aid; so far it has received pledges of just a few thousand tons.

Already food rations in many parts of the country have been slashed to try to meet the demand. British aid agencies, such as Oxfam and Save the Children UK, have criticised the European Union for a lack of response. "What can we do?" asks Shamise, holding up Hussein's tiny frame, barely distinguishable under her shawl.The Ethiopian Government does not have an answer."The single most prominent and demanding need is for food," a government official said. "Unlike recent crises in Ethiopia, this crisis will have an impact on many more Ethiopians."

One million dead

· The last big Ethiopian famine in 1984-85 prompted the Live Aid concert appeal

· It affected 7.9 million people, and one million died

· The Government denied food to those who then were rebels, but now are in government. The population has since doubled

· The present emergency affects seven million people; harvest failure is expected to double that in the new year

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