Children abandoned on east Africa's "roads of death"

[Mosby]

ROME (Reuters) - Desperate Somali mothers are abandoning their dying children by the roadside as they travel to overwhelmed emergency food centers in drought-hit eastern Africa, U.N. aid officials said Monday.

Josette Sheeran, executive director of the United Nations World Food Program, told a conference in Rome that a combination of natural disaster and regional conflict was affecting more than 12 million people.

"We are seeing all the points able to distribute food completely overwhelmed," she said, adding that a camp in Dadaab in Kenya that was built for 90,000 people now housed 400,000.

"We want to make sure the supplies are there along the road because some of them are becoming roads of death where mothers are having to abandon their children who are too weak to make it or who have died along the way," she said.

http://news.yahoo.com/famine-children-dying-east-africa-roads-death-153240698.html

[xchrom]

1. Recommend

[pinboy3niner]

2. K&R

[msongs]

3. our resources are tied up generating profits for halliburton and their friends nt

[juajen]

4. This is just heartbreaking. The rich and greedy have a lot to answer for. NT

[aquart]

5. Somalia is what the Republicans are trying to make us become.

A nation of every man for himself with no viable central authority, completely unable to cope with disaster.

[Mosby]

6. Pretty much. (nt)

[AndyTiedye]

7. k/r

[L0oniX]

8. Sorry ...can't help ...We're using most of our money to kill people in other countries.

[Johnyawl]

10. the world can't help, without starting another war..

..the islamists and the war lords are blocking any UN assistance from reaching the people of Somalia. It's exactly the same shit that drove us out in 1993.

[pitohui]

15. we can't reach all of somalia but "east africa" is a large place

if we can't get $ to somalia, or large portions of somalia, we can still at least get money to kenya and other parts of east africa that are accessible to the west

we can't do everything but it doesn't mean we should do nothing

this is a large famine and east africa is not a small place

[slipslidingaway]

9. knr :((( nt

[Forkboy]

11. K&R

[liberalla]

12. K&R

:cry:

[Liberal_in_LA]

13. k&r The world has resources enough to help these people.

[pitohui]

14. very upsetting and i wish there was a way to block yahoo "comments"

i can't believe how many racist haters out there who have nothing better to do all day but post on yahoo not to donate to starving people in africa because a pirate might get it

you know, africa is a fucking big place, i should not try to help africa at all, really? because a pirate offshore somalia might get it?

i should just skim articles on yahoo really quickly to avoid seeing their racist hater comments! it's just too disgusting to know that there are that many people in the world who are filled with hate

[pitohui]

16. btw if someone knows how to do this please PM me or somehow inform me

i suppose it's good for my health since i have low blood pressure but i would prefer NOT to see the hateful comments posted on yahoo and if someone knows how to selectively block them PLEASE tell me how

[Mosby]

17. The yahoo comments upset me as well

I usually don't read them.

[Mosby]

18. shamless kick (nt)

[riderinthestorm]

19. I both hate these threads and love them. The suffering is so painful to see from afar

and I feel so helpless. I hate that our government is locked into doing the most despicable, stupid shit while this kind of horror is happening. The Red Cross and Red Crescent are providing a lot of aid in Somalia. Please consider making a donation if you read this thread which is why I love seeing that someone is paying attention to these kinds of disasters. Threads like this make being a DU member so worthwhile.

Anyway, consider a donation. At least you will have done something pro-active instead of just reading about it. K and a horrified R. Thanks for the OP. Way too important to drop.

[Mosby]

20. Australia urges world to work on Somalia famine relief

(Reuters) - Australia urged the international community Sunday to rally behind the U.N. relief effort in the famine-struck Horn of Africa or risk hundreds of thousands of people starving to death.

Governments worldwide and the United Nations have faced criticism for their slow response to the severe drought, the worst in the region for decades, affecting some 11 million people across Somalia, Ethiopia, Kenya and Djibouti.

The U.N. World Food Program (WFP) has said it cannot reach more than 2 million Somalis facing starvation in areas controlled by Islamist militants, who imposed a food aid ban in 2010 and have regularly threatened relief groups.

"There is no uniformity in the security situation on the ground. We need to cut the U.N. some slack," Australia's Foreign Minister Kevin Rudd told a media conference in the Kenyan capital, Nairobi.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/07/24/us-somalia-famine-idUSTRE76M12F20110724



Donate:
http://www.unicefusa.org/?gclid=CMPPpPj_naoCFQ5EgwodWHCs6w
http://www.actionagainsthunger.org/

[sabrina 1]

21. Imagine if the US was at war in so many countries, how much

we could do to help people, and how much good will that would generate. Instead of killing people and creating terrorists, we could be helping to keep people alive.

What a horror story this is. Those poor people :cry: