Friday, August 19, 2011
A combination of drought and civil war, primarily in Somalia, has produced a hunger crisis unparalleled in recent memory. Refugees by the thousands are still streaming into camps over the Kenyan border in particular, where aid agencies are struggling to keep up with the desperate need in camps swollen to several times the populations they were planned for. The United Nations estimates that 10 million people are at risk and 3.7 million are immediate crisis.
The $100-a-seat Ottawa event, in a room that can fit 300, is to feature food and entertainment sponsored by African embassies; the federal government promises to match the money raised, as it’s doing with all private donations to the cause.
Announcing the fundraiser alongside the mayor were Nicolas Moyer, the executive director of a coalition of Canadian aid agencies working together called the Humanitarian Coalition and Ismail Mohamed, a Somali-born social worker and an organizer of a youth soccer program.
“At least 10 million people are now affected in the region, particularly in Somalia, southern Ethiopia and northern Kenya,” Moyer said. Seventy per cent of the hungry refugees seeking help are children, he said.
Mohamed was born in Mogadishu. He fled civil war and famine in Somalia with his parents in the early 1990s, passing through a Kenyan refugee camp before a sister in Ottawa sponsored the rest of the family’s passage here. “It took us a year to get to the camp,” he said. “We just went from place to place to place, running away from the fighting.”
Ottawa has been a large centre of Somali settlement in Canada, with about 15,000 residents of Somali origin. Mohamed said he still has uncles and extended family in Somalia (“anybody who’s here has people there,” he said) and the scale of the crisis vastly outmatches the diaspora’s ability to help on its own. The United Nations has called for international contributions of $300 million U.S. just for the immediate crisis. The Canadian government has promised $72 million in short- and longer-term aid.
Watson said he’ll be challenging other mayors to hold similar events, including at a conference of Ontario mayors in London this Sunday.
“The scale and the scope of this crisis, hopefully as it becomes clear to Canadians, they’ll contribute,” Watson said.
For tickets to the event, which is being given advertising support by the Citizen, call 613-580-2424, extension 21526, or e-mail Watson staffer Brook Simpson at brook.simpson.ottawa.ca.
Source: Ottawa Citizen