Secretary General,
President of the General Assembly,
Distinguished delegates,
Firstly, may I begin by associating Ireland with the points made by my colleague, Commissioner Kristalina Georgieva.
Ireland has worked for many years in the Horn of Africa to assist in building sustainable livelihoods and to improve the ability of communities to cope with crises such as the ongoing drought.
Combating hunger is central to our development assistance programme and our foreign policy and we intend to dedicate 20 percent of the Irish Aid budget to this issue by 2012.
We are acutely aware that the global approach to the Horn of Africa must look beyond the trauma of the present and towards a vision of sustainable long-term food security.
Hunger will not stop when the drought ends.
Conflict and high food prices will continue to hinder our efforts and will impose more poverty and hardship on the vulnerable.
Unless we tackle the problem with sustainable long-term solutions these same people will be pushed over the edge again next year and again the following year. We need to break this cycle of food shortages, once and for all.
Before this crisis hit, Ireland had already helped many communities to feed themselves even in times of drought. We have progressively scaled up our support for initiatives focussed on boosting the productivity of poor smallholders and women farmers. We are helping poor farmers to bolster their yields by providing them with improved seeds and fertilisers, helping them to diversify their crops, improve soil fertility, and increase livestock production.
Without programmes of this nature, the numbers currently in desperate need of food assistance in the Horn could be much higher.
Likewise, the support provided by Ireland and others for the Productive Safety Nets Programme in Ethiopia is instrumental in protecting the lives of more than seven million people annually. The programme has helped to save many hundreds of thousands of people from the worst effects of this crisis.
Ireland will continue to prioritise resilience, sustainable livelihoods and agricultural productivity in the Horn of Africa as part of the effort to promote a long term solution to this crisis.
In addition we will continue and intensify our humanitarian relief work to address the immediate needs of the affected population.
To date in 2011 Ireland has provided humanitarian assistance totalling €10 million to UN agencies, the Red Cross movement and NGOs working in the Horn of Africa.
We will provide a further €10 million in humanitarian assistance in 2011 and 2012. This will include direct funding, as well as the provision of emergency supplies and qualified personnel where appropriate.
These funds will be in addition to and will complement our ongoing country programmes in the region and our support for NGOs, in an effort to combat not only the effects of this crisis, but also its causes.
Thank you.