eritrea/ethiopia: food crisis persists

With 14.6 million people in need of assistance in Eritrea and Ethiopia by May 2003, and indications that conditions continued to deteriorate in several areas, Carolyn McAskie, the UN's Deputy Emergency Relief Coordinator (DERC), undertook a mission to the region in June. The objectives of the mission were to review the overall humanitarian situation; raise awareness of the situation; and to seek better ways of addressing the underlying structural causes of food-insecurity in the two countries.