Situation in East Africa

International Development Questions

21-Oct-2009

Mr. Michael Moore (Berwickshire, Roxburgh and Selkirk) (LD): The situation in east Africa, particularly in Ethiopia, is dire. We welcome the additional support that the Government have offered to the Governments there but, as the hon. Member for Loughborough (Mr. Reed) highlighted, it is 25 years since the famine that killed a million people. Is it not a scandal that the World Food Programme has barely half the funding that it needs to feed the 100 million people it estimates are starving, and is it not time to stop relying on emergency appeals and get proper funding in place for that programme?

Mr. Thomas: As I alluded to in my answer to my hon. Friend the Member for Loughborough (Mr. Reed) and other Members, we accept that a series of steps need to be taken. We have to continue to provide emergency assistance to organisations such as the World Food Programme, and indeed we continue to campaign internationally for more humanitarian assistance to be provided. At the same time, we need to put in place a series of further long-term steps to help to increase agricultural production in countries in east Africa and elsewhere so that they can better tackle their own needs, thereby preventing the need for emergency assistance. We have said that we will increase our agricultural research budget, but we also continue to put pressure on other donors, some in Europe and some outside Europe, to do more to increase humanitarian assistance and to put in place long-term development programmes to help countries away from the type of problems that we are discussing.

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