For the fourth year in a row, East Africa is in the grip of a devastating drought, which is killing crops, livestock and children, and displacing hundreds of thousands of people.

But in the face of one of the world’s worst ongoing humanitarian tragedies, the international community has been slow to respond. A UN-led emergency appeal for $576-million in relief aid for Eastern Africa remains only 28% funded. Fighting in Somalia has also made it difficult to distribute aid to hundreds of thousands of displaced people in south-central Somalia.

UNICEF recently estimated that 70,000 of the 250,000 Somali children under the age of five who are living in crude refugee camps in south-central Somalia are at risk of death. One in 10 Kenyans is in need of food assistance, according to the World Food Program. In Ethiopia, 10 million people are threatened by hunger and malnutrition, and 4.6 million require urgent food assistance. –Peter Goodspeed reporting in the National Post