Crisis-hit Ethiopia urgently needs $1B in aid: UN

The UN has appealed for pledges to address the "critical" humanitarian situation in Ethiopia, where more than 21 million people need aid and a dire food crisis is deepening.

A donor conference at the United Nations' European headquarters on Tuesday aims to raise significant pledges towards the $1 billion urgently needed to cover aid for just the next three months.

"We need to mobilise," Ramiz Alakbarov, the UN humanitarian coordinator in Ethiopia, said ahead of the conference. "The people of Ethiopia need our solidarity and our support."

Ethiopians are facing rumbling internal conflicts amid economic and climate shocks and an increasingly dire food and malnutrition crisis.

Less than 5% of plan funded

The UN has said $3.24 billion is needed this year alone, including to assist some four million internally displaced people. But so far, that plan is less than five percent funded.

"The gap remains very wide... We have really to act before it is too late," Shiferaw Teklemariam, commissioner of the Ethiopian Disaster Risk Management Commission, told reporters in Geneva.

The Ethiopian government has committed $250 million for food support over coming months, the commissioner added.

The UN said an initial $1 billion was needed for the urgent aid response through the end of June.

It is also needed to prepare for the lean season, from July to September, when around 11 million people are projected to be critically food insecure.

'Very fragile'

"The humanitarian situation in Ethiopia is critical — but there is a window to act right now to break the downward spiral," UN humanitarian agency, OCHA, said.

The event, co-hosted by the governments of Ethiopia and Britain, comes a day after a similar pledging conference for Sudan, held in Paris, raised $2.1 billion.

Many countries announce donations

Britain's Deputy Foreign Minister Andrew Mitchell said the situation was "extremely worrying".

He spoke of "increasingly worrying famine conditions", but stressed "the international community working very closely with the government of Ethiopia was in a position to head it off".

Britain, he said, would pitch in $125 million (£100 million) in additional funding, bringing its total for the year to $246 million (£198 million), "our biggest programme anywhere in the world".

During Tuesday's event, the United States — Ethiopia's largest humanitarian aid donor — said it would provide $154 million in additional assistance, bringing its aid support to the country this fiscal year to $243 million.