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[email protected] Ethiopia Coordinating Office Assistance to Drought Affected - AFET-22 Appeal Target: US$ 27,030,875 Balance Requested from ACT Network: US$ 26,995,619 Geneva, 21 November 2002 Dear Colleagues, According to the report released in September 2002 by the Ethiopia Federal Disaster Preparedness and Prevention Commission (DPPC), over 6.8 million people in Ethiopia are facing severe food shortages during the current period, with the numbers expected to rise to about 10 million people in the early part of 2003. The Ethiopian Prime Minister, Meles Zenawi was quoted earlier this month as saying that the country faces a famine worse than that of 1984 which killed nearly one million people and sparked off huge international relief efforts. He was further quoted “if the 1984 famine was a nightmare, then this will be too ghastly to contemplate”. Whether this statement could be considered accurate or not, the truth of the matter is that Ethiopia is once more faced with a very severe food crisis which calls for the international community to intervene with massive food aid. As a country highly dependent on rain fed agriculture, this years’ partial or total failure of the belg (short rains) in many areas aggravated the problem of food insecurity. The meher rains (longer rains) also came late and were erratic affecting the long cycle crops and the availability of pasture and water supplies in many pastoral areas.