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GENEVA / SOMALIA AL-SHABAB

The UN humanitarian agencies have insisted that aid efforts will continue despite the warning from Somalia's al-Shabab Islamists who have denied lifting their 2009 ban on Western aid agencies operating in the country. CH UNTV
U110722c
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00:02:36
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U110722c
Description

STORY: GENEVA / SOMALIA AL-SHABAB
TRT: 2.36
SOURCE: CH UNTV
RESTRICTIONS: NONE
LANGUAGES: ENGLISH / NATS

DATELINE: 22 JULY 2011, GENEVA, SWITZERLAND

1. Wide shot, exterior Palais des Nations, Geneva
2. Cutaway, journalists
3. SOUNDBITE (English) Emilia Casella, Spokesperson, World Food Programme:
“Al-Shabab is not a monolithic organisation and those in control of the various parts of the south are not just one control and command mechanism. I think its important to know we're working where we can work we're making plans to work where it is feasible and we're already as a humanitarian community working in certain areas and will be pushing forward to work where we can work.”
4. Cutaway, journalists
5. SOUNDBITE (English) Emilia Casella, Spokesperson, World Food Programme:
“The World Food Programme is continuing with our plans to access...when we receive access assurances of security and the ability to properly distribute and properly monitor those distributions, we are planning to and ready to go into and respond to this. The situation is extremely dire. We're convinced that it is a life saving mission that we are obligated to undertake and therefore as soon as we receive the assurances that we will have security and the proper conditions of access we will be going back, and in fact we're already making those plans together with our partners.”
6. Cutaway, journalist
7. SOUNDBITE (English) Melissa Fleming, Chief Spokesperson, United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees:
“We are really trying our best to work inside Somalia so that people don’t have to make this devastating life threatening trek into Kenya and Ethiopia. If we could aid and the victims on the spot, prevent them from leaving their villages, we would not be in this terrible situation we are seeing know in neighbouring Kenya and Ethiopia.”
8. Cutaway, journalist
9. SOUNDBITE (English) Melissa Fleming, Chief Spokesperson, United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees:
“Many of the refugees arriving are in very bad shape. You've heard this before, we're saying its close to catastrophic, our nutrition experts are calling it’s a dire nutritional emergency, particularly people coming into Ethiopia, for some reason the malnutrition rate is exceedingly high, perhaps due to a longer trek and other factors.”
10. Med shot, podium

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Storyline

The United Nations (UN) humanitarian agencies have insisted that aid efforts will continue despite the warning from Somalia's al-Shabab Islamists who have denied lifting their 2009 ban on Western aid agencies operating in the country.

The UN on Wednesday announced that parts of Somalia were suffering a famine after the worst drought in 60 years.

The UN World Food Programme (WFP), one of the organisations banned in 2009 says it is planning to airlift food into the capital, Mogadishu, in the coming days to help the thousands of malnourished children who face starvation in the country.

The World Food Programme’s spokesperson Melissa Fleming said “al-Shabab is not a monolithic organisation and those in control of the various parts of the south are not just one control and command mechanism. I think it’s important to know we're working where we can work we're making plans to work where it is feasible.”

On Wednesday, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said $300 million was needed in the next two months to provide an adequate response to the areas affected by famine. "Children and adults are dying at an appalling rate," he said.

Nearly half the Somali population, about 3.7 million people, were in crisis, he added, with most of them in the south. These are mostly areas under al-Shabab control.

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