Ethiopia today appealed for emergency food aid for 6.2 million people, 25 years after the world took notice of the country"s infamous famine during which over 1 million people died, dpa reported. The rains in Ethiopia and the greater region have been poor in recent years, leading the United Nations and charities to warn that over 20 million people are facing hunger in East and the Horn of Africa. Ethiopia"s State Minister for Agriculture and Rural Development, Mitiku Kassa, called for almost 160,000 tonnes of food, media reports said. The call came as international charity Oxfam released a report marking the 25th anniversary of the famine by calling for a change in approach toward preemptive Disaster Risk Management, which would help reduce the new for emergency aid. In the report, Band Aids and Beyond, Oxfam said while emergency aid saved lives, communities should be helped to prepare for drought by, for example, collecting water during the rainy season. "We need to approach disasters in a different way, that is more dignified and more sustainable than imported food aid," Birhan Woldu, one of the survivors of the 1984 famine, said in the report. "Let us grow our own food and help manage our own systems so we are not hit so hard when the next drought or flood comes." Oxfam said that in 2007, the latest year that figures are available for, only 0.14 per cent of all overseas aid globally went to disaster risk management.
