The European Parliament,

whereas a severe famine is afflicting the Horn of Africa and parts of Southern Africa, threatening the lives of tens of millions of people,

welcoming the efforts already made by the European Community to provide relief, but emphasising that these efforts still remain gravely insufficient given the scale of the problem,

whereas the Commission has acknowledged that Africa is suffering an unprecedented drought which is the worst this century, that 60 million people are threatened with starvation and that an estimated 6.5 million tonnes of cereals are needed,

stressing that civil wars in Sudan, Ethiopia, Somalia and Mozambique and the lack of food security policies of the governments concerned are major causes of the famine and insisting that all the parties to these conflicts have an obligation to their own people to stop fighting,

aware that violence adds enormously to the difficulties of distributing aid and concerned at the growing number of attacks on humanitarian organizations,

whereas the population explosion in Africa is further aggravating the problem of famine,

recalling the desperate plight of the millions of refugees in many African countries,

having regard to the constant appeals being made by the UN Secretary-General, humanitarian organizations and NGOs for emergency aid to Africa, in order to save hundreds of thousands of human lives,

recalling its previous resolutions on this subject,

Believes that the huge scale of the approaching famine in Africa constitutes a challenge to the conscience of the governments and peoples of all Member States;

Calls on the European Community and its Member States to consider using immediately, so as to save lives already in peril, EDF funds that have not been used to fund normal development activities because of the continued disruption and civil strife in several countries;

Insists, not only on the need for more money and more supplies, but on the need to ensure the distribution of aid by providing armed protection for food and medical convoys and for relief workers;

Stresses the need to act particularly quickly to help the two million Somalis, among whom, according to Médecins sans Frontières, over three quarters of the children are already suffering from severe malnutrition;

Stresses the need to ensure as soon as possible that the thousands of Somali refugees who are fleeing to the Yemen are allowed to land and urges the EC and its Member States to continue to provide assistance to the Yemeni Government to this end;

Stresses the need to bring help rapidly to the one million Kenyans and the nearly half a million refugees in Kenya who are afflicted by the severe drought, especially in the North East, the East, the Rift Valley and the coastal Provinces of that country;

Stresses the need for European Political Cooperation to put pressure on the leaders of RENAMO, whose violence has inflicted so much suffering on the people of Mozambique since 1975 and is making famine relief so difficult there;

Instructs its President to forward this resolution to the Commission, the Council, European Political Cooperation, the Secretary-General of FAO, the Secretary-General of the WFP, the Secretary-General of the OAU and the Co-Presidents of the ACP/EEC Joint Assembly.