Rains End Famine in Somalia, but Millions Remain at Risk

03 February 2012

A mother and child at a camp in Mogadishu. Many Somalis remain at risk because of hunger and conflict.

This is IN THE NEWS in VOA Special English.

This week, the United Nations declared an official end to the famine in southern Somalia. Recent rains, an improved harvest and a major humanitarian aid effort during the past six months helped reduce the threat of starvation.

But the new head of the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization says millions of people are still at risk. Director-General Jose Graziano da Silva says conditions could again worsen unless the aid continues during the next one hundred days.

JOSE GRAZIANO DA SILVA: "If we do not keep in support, especially those three months that we have in drought season until came the rain season in April, those people will not survive. We will have famine back."

Mr. da Silva traveled this week to southern Somalia. On Friday he told reporters in Kenya that no more areas of Somalia are under famine conditions. But in his words, "good news does not mean that the crisis is over."

JOSE GRAZIANO DA SILVA: “We still have a huge problem in the region particularly in Somalia and also in the other countries that you know are facing similar situation like the Sahel region in particular the South Sudan.''

United Nations officials now list the situation in Somalia as a "humanitarian emergency" instead of a famine. "Famine" means two adults or four children per ten thousand people die of hunger each day and a third of children are severely malnourished.