Famine in Horn of Africa Highlights Pettiness of Problems in U.S.

Generation Locked in Starvation Across Four African Countries

By K.C. Dermody | Yahoo! Contributor Network – Wed, Jul 27, 2011tweet4ShareEmailPrint

COMMENTARY | The Horn of Africa covers about 772,000 square miles across four African countries -- Ethiopia, Somalia, Eritrea and Djibouti -- and includes a population of approximately 100 million people.

The Horn of Africa is currently suffering the worst drought in over 60 years, leading to a calamitous famine that has killed tens of thousands of people. The drought has caused a catastrophic loss to both livestock and crops, and food prices have nearly tripled since last year.

The effect that the famine has on the children in this region of the world is devastating. Starvation may lead to an entire generation that will be physically and mentally stunted. An entire generation. Can you imagine what would happen in the United States if there were this many people who could possibly not be able to care for themselves?

Josette Sheeran, executive director of the United Nations World Food Programme, said, according to Bloomberg, "We face the prospect of a generation of children whose brains and bodies will be damaged if we cannot reach them with lifesaving nutritional support."

The WFP stated that the famine in the Horn of Africa region is the most critical food emergency in the world. In Somalia, families are attempting to travel in an effort to find food; the roads they travel on are being called the "roads of death."

As Somali mothers travel to the deluged emergency food centers, they are forced to leave their weak and dying children along the road.

Sheeran told Reuters, "I believe it is the children's famine, because the ones who are the weakest are the children and those are the ones we're seeing are the least likely to make it."

In light of this disastrous famine, the United Nations is appealing to governments around the world to donate more money. Hundreds of billions of dollars are desperately needed.

Mother Teresa is noted for saying, "We sometimes feel that what we do is just a drop in the ocean, but the ocean would be less because of that missing drop." How true that saying is. If every individual became a part of the effort to help their fellow man, even if it is on the other side of the world, an entire generation of children could potentially be saved.

As our politicians continue to fight such petty arguments in the White House and our conservative citizens rant about how people need to just help themselves, crying "it's not my responsibility," children are dying.

President Obama stated in a public address in June 2008: "This is the moment when we must come together to save this planet. Let us resolve that we will not leave our children a world where the oceans rise and famine spreads and terrible storms devastate our lands."

Wise words indeed.