Sri Lankan floods could leave 400,000 children without enough food

Karen McVeigh in the Guardian (UK): Up to 400,000 children in Sri Lanka are facing a food crisis caused by devastating floods, a children's charity warned as it launched a £1m appeal to help those in the worst-hit areas today.

As the floodwaters begin to recede, many of the 350,000 displaced people driven into temporary refugee camps are returning home only to find that their homes, schools, crops and livelihoods have been wiped out by the rains.

In the worst-affected part of the country, the Eastern Province, the damage to agricultural land could leave up to 1 million people, including 400,000 children, without enough food, Save the Children said. Sri Lanka's agricultural ministry reported that 21% of the country's rice crop had been destroyed.

The warning came as the UN launched an urgent $51m (£31m) appeal for victims of the floods – the worst in recent history – which have killed dozens and destroyed thousands of homes and vital clean water sources.

More than 1 million people in the country are affected, with over half estimated to be facing food shortages and the threat of waterborne disease. It is an enormous setback for an area that was only just beginning to recover from the decades-long war and the 2004 tsunami which killed 400,000 people and left 2.5 million homeless….

People tackling the floods of Cyclone Nisha, November 2008, in Vanni, Sri Lanka. (I could not find photos of the 2011 flooding), Shot by trokilinochchi, Wikimedia Commons via Flickr, under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license