famine

famineis facing its worst food security crisis in the last 20 years," said Mark Bowden, the U.N.'s top official in charge of humanitarian aid in Somalia. "This desperate situation requires urgent action to save lives … it's likely that conditions will deteriorate further in six months."The crisis is the worst since 1991-92, when hundreds of thousands of Somalis starved to death, Bowden said. That famine prompted intervention by an international peacekeeping force, but it eventually pulled out after two American Black Hawk helicopters were shot down in 1993.

Since then, Western nations have mainly sought to contain the threat of terrorism from Somalia -- an anarchic nation where the weak government battles Islamic militants on land and pirates hijack ships for millions of dollars at sea.

Oxfam said $1 billion is needed for famine relief. On Wednesday, the U.S. announced an additional $28 million in emergency funding on top of the $431 million in assistance already given this year.

Most importantly, those new U.S. funds won't be placed under restrictions implemented in 2009 that are designed to keep food and money from being stolen by Islamic militants.

Aid groups have called for the restrictions to be lifted entirely and say the rules have severely limited their operations. U.S. humanitarian contributions in Somalia fell from $237 million in 2008 to $29 million last year.

"We've seen a very large shortfall over the past few years given the political restrictions attached to humanitarian funding," said Tanja Schumer of the Somalia NGO Consortium, which represents 78 aid agencies working on Somalia. "To get American money we have to vouch for all our contractors and all our local partners and that is tricky."

famine