URGENT APPEAL

Dear Supporter,

I wrote to you recently about the major food crisis that is threatening millions of lives across Africa. Thank you if you have already given. If you haven’t, I hope you will now, given the extreme urgency of the situation.

Famine has already been declared in parts of South Sudan, and now Somalia is also on the brink, with at least 110 people dying from hunger in just one region over the last few days.

Arriving in Kenya this week, the UN Secretary-General António Guterres has called on the international community to act before the end of March to avoid a full-blown catastrophe.

UNHCR is on the ground in all affected countries, providing urgent life-saving support:

• We are supplying emergency nutrition — fortified milk, micronutrient powders and ready-to-use therapeutic paste like Plumpy’nut™ — for the safe treatment of acute malnutrition in children.

• We are working to maintain basic food rations in refugee camps and displacement sites.

• We are supporting therapeutic feeding programmes and stabilisation centres, helping nursing mothers and babies recover.

This emergency requires a major and immediate response from all of us. Having seen famine first-hand, I know the difference we can make. Even a severely malnourished child has a 98% chance of recovery if they receive urgent nutritional support in time.

Please give as generously as you can — and as soon as possible – to help rush assistance to the field and save people from starvation.

Yours sincerely,

Naomi Steer
National Director
Australia for UNHCR