Guatemala City - Guatemalan President Alvaro Colom called for international aid in the face of a food crisis that has already claimed the lives of 17 people in the Central American country. Colom decreed a state of emergency to gain "access to resources of international cooperation that are generously offered for these kinds of situations," he said late Tuesday in a televised address.
The crisis was caused by drought in seven of the country's 22 provinces, particularly in Guatemala's Corredor Seco - Dry Corridor - where poverty was already rife.
Colom noted that 24,000 families are already suffering from hunger, while 400,000 others are at risk. He said his government would not "get lost in a debate on technical terms as to whether or not the country is facing famine."
The United Nations' World Food Programme (WFP) has already begun distributing food in Guatemala.
Colom, a social-democrat, blamed the crisis on "a long history of inequality" which has led the country to live with "high and shameful levels of poverty, extreme poverty and malnutrition."
"We have food, what we don't have are the financial resources to allow the people affected to buy the available foodstuffs," he noted.
The situation was made worse by "an irregular rainy season, derived from climate change and from the effects of the international economic crisis," Colom added.
Earlier this month, Olivier De Schutter, the United Nations' special rapporteur on the right to food, already described the situation in Guatemala as alarming.
Following a tour of the affected areas, De Schutter noted that 63 per cent of the children in the areas affected by drought were suffering from malnutrition. At the time, however, the Guatemalan government denied reports of a famine.
