Georgieva wants access to famine-stricken Somalia

Speaking at the Rome meeting, UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) Director-General Jacques Diouf said: "The combined forces of drought, inflation and conflict have created a catastrophic situation that urgently requires massive international support. If we want to avoid future famine and food insecurity crises in the region, countries and the international community urgently need to bolster the agricultural sector and accelerate investments in rural development."

French Agriculture Minister Bruno Le Maire said: "This crisis highlights the need for urgent implementation of the action plan on food price volatility and agriculture adopted by G20 agriculture ministers on 23 June in Paris, notably regarding international policy coordination, agricultural production and productivity and targeted emergency humanitarian food reserves."

The president of the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) Kanayo F. Nwanze, said: "Building resilience of farming and herding communities in the Horn of Africa and the world over requires a long-term commitment. But time — as we can see from the devastating situation in the Horn of Africa — is running out. Increased investment in sustainable agriculture needs to happen now, so that when the next drought comes, wherever in the world, there will be less suffering, less desperation. Even if the rains fail, we cannot."

Oxfam Chief Executive Barbara Stocking said: "Lives in East Africa hang in balance, now, today. World leaders have no excuses for not generously responding. There can be no problem more pressing, more acute, more urgent than millions of people staring at the spectre of starvation in this part of Africa. This should not be happening."

"It is a colossal outrage that the warnings went unheeded, that the lessons of previous famines have been ignored. Yes, we need to save lives today but we also need to ensure that people have a future. Above all we need to build a global food system that allows everyone enough to eat," Stocking added.

The European Parliament's Greens/EFA group issued a statement calling on the EU to urgently mobilise emergency humanitarian aid for the region.

Green development spokesperson Ska Keller said: "The situation in Somalia and the surrounding region has deteriorated dramatically in the past few days and the EU cannot continue to sit on its hands and remain an idle observer. Current EU humanitarian aid for the refugee camps in Kenya and to the wider region is a drop in the ocean. The EU urgently needs to deliver an emergency relief response of sufficient scale to respond to the crisis, while member states must also step up their aid."

Green security spokesperson Reinhard Bütikofer blasted what he called the continued absence of a coherent EU strategy for the Horn of Africa and the lack of coordination between the military effort and the humanitarian action.

"In stark contrast to the total lack of funding for EU humanitarian aid, there remains significant financial support for military action. The EU's two military programs for Somalia - ATALANTA and EUTM - amount to around €1.5 billion per year," the MEP said.

"Furthermore, with these military measures the EU must side with the fully incompetent and corrupt transitional government, which means that EU humanitarian aid providers, in particular those with access to the famine-stricken provinces of Bakool and Lower Shabelle, are left denied. Those regions are controlled by the Islamist militia Al Shabab-Miliz, which is in open conflict with the transitional government," he stated.