“The hand of the Lord feeds us,” the psalmist proclaims this Sunday. The United Nations is urging “massive” action to feed millions in the drought-stricken Horn of Africa region. An estimated 3.7 million people in Somalia--about a third of the population--are on the brink of starvation. Millions more in Djibouti, Ethiopia, Kenya, and Uganda have been struck by the worst drought in the region in 60 years.

The U.N.’s World Food Program (WFP) began an airlift of food aid on Tuesday into the Somali capital, Mogadishu, as well as into eastern Ethiopia and northern Kenya on the border with Somalia. Josette Sheeran, executive director of WFP, said that a deadly combination of natural disaster and regional conflict had created this emergency, resulting in soaring levels of malnutrition.

This Sunday’s gospel relates how with limited food supplies Jesus miraculously fed the multitudes. It will take a worldwide effort of near miraculous proportions to avert a famine that would be “the scandal of this century,” warned French Agriculture Minister Bruno Le Maire Monday. Apart from massive food deliveries, he called for action to bring down high food prices on international markets.

Counterterrorist concerns have also complicated and slowed the response. In recent years the United States has cut humanitarian aid to Somalia on the grounds that that al-Shabaab, the militant Islamist group that controls much of the south, will divert assistance to its own profit.

Al-Shabaab denies that Somalia is suffering from a famine and continues to prohibit UNICEF and WFP from operating in the country. Despite earlier promises of access, it now declares that only the Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies may remain. As a result, said Somali Foreign Minister Mohamed Ibrahim, "More than 3.5 million Somalis, the vast majority of them in the insurgent-held areas, may starve to death."

Sources: Articles by Sabina Castelfranco for Voice of America News
and Stewart M. Patrick for the Council on Foreign Relations