UNICEF
chief Carol Bellamy has welcomed the weekend peace agreement
between Ethiopia and Eritrea and urged the two countries'
leaders to refocus their attention on relief efforts.
"With
a ceasefire agreed and peace at hand the two governments should
focus on the humanitarian crisis," Bellamy told AFP.
She was
speaking late on Sunday in the small of town of Rabdure in
southern Somalia's Bakol region.
The peace
accord, signed Sunday in Algiers, officially halted the two-year
war that has killed tens of thousands of people and displaced
more than a million.
Bellamy
said 250,000 Eritreans are affected by drought and about a
million people have been displaced by the war.
"The
larger Ethiopia is however experiencing the biggest humanitarian
crisis in the region currently," said Bellamy, who has visited
Ethiopia, Eritrea, Djibouti and Somalia during her tour of
the Horn of Africa.
She was
visiting drought-hit areas in Kenya on Monday before leaving
the region Tuesday.
At a food
distribution centre in Rabdure, Bellamy saw severely malnourished
children and mothers who had travelled for days to reach the
centre to receive food and water rations.
"I walked
seven days and two nights from Ethiopia's Dollow district
to save my eight-month-old twin boys," said Habiba Aliyow
Mohamed, a 36-year-old mother, who was carrying the twins,
told AFP.
"Please
tell these people to give me more food," she pleaded with
journalists. She said she had left three other children with
their grandmother.
"The land
is green here, but the prolonged drought and violence is affecting
the mothers and children in Rabdure and other parts of Somalia,"
she added.
Bellamy
said that while her visit may not automatically open the floodgates
of aid, it had allowed her to collect first-hand information
and she was now in a position "to speak about the humanitarian
crises in the region with confidence".
She also
visited UNICEF-funded water, education and immunisation projects
in the town of Baidoa.
Bellamy's
trip follows a UN appeal last week for almost 378 million
dollars (394 million euros) in aid to the region.
The head
of the UN's World Food Programme, Catherine Bertini, said
297.5 million dollars was needed to feed 10 million people
in Ethiopia, 2.20 million in Kenya, 750,000 in
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