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Home | UNICEF in Action | Highlights | Information Resources | Donations, Greeting Cards & Gifts | Press Centre | Voices of Youth | About UNICEFEthiopia in contextEven in the best of times, Ethiopia struggles against poverty, preventable diseases, and child mortality. With a population of 60 million and per capita income of about $110, it is one of the five poorest countries in the world. The country's under-five mortality rate of 173 per thousand ranks it 18th in the world - some 1,300 children under five die every day. Overall life expectancy averages 43 years (5th lowest in the world), and stunting among children due to poor nutrition is 66 per cent (highest in the world). Under normal circumstances less than 20 per cent of Ethiopia's population has access to safe drinking water. (Only Afghanistan, Micronesia, and neighboring Eritrea are worse off.) Access is lowest in rural areas, where more than 80 per cent of the population resides. Because such a high percentage of the population is rural and depends on pasture or farmland for subsistence, variations in the weather have powerful consequences. Drought conditions have developed every few years since the early 1970s, the worst episode occurring in 1984-85, when an estimated 800,000 people perished. In the 1990s significant droughts occurred in 1991, 1994 and 1997. UNICEF has operated in Ethiopia since 1952, and the agency's water and sanitation programmes were introduced, in part, as a response to the 1973 drought here. Today UNICEF provides some $3 million a year to support water and sanitation projects throughout Ethiopia. The largest part of this sum consists of supplies and cash grants to the government in support of specific, agreed-upon projects. Since the drought of 1984-85, UNICEF has invested some $50 million in water schemes in the country, including the equipment, spare parts and technical support needed for constructing hundreds of new wells, reservoirs, and pumping and filtration systems. Return to 'Ethiopia: The hardest hit' Update | Drought
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