Georgieva: Libya Turmoil to Lead to Wider Humanitarian Disaster

EU Commissioner for humanitarian aid Kristalina Georgieva has warned that a wide-ranging humanitarian crisis is looming as a result of the situation in Libya. Photo by EPA/BGNES

Bulgarian EU Commissioner Kristalina Georgieva, who is in charge of EU's humanitarian policy, has raised alarm over a potential humanitarian disaster resulting from the civic unrest in Libya.

The ongoing conflict in Libya and its impact on oil and food prices could push tens of millions of people around the world close to starvation, Georgieva warned Monday in Brussels, as cited by DPA.

She has pointed out that the turmoil in Arab countries in North Africa, and in Libya in particular, where a popular uprising is in conflict with the 40-year-old dictatorship of Muammar Gaddafi, has led oil prices to shoot up to levels not seen since the beginning of the worldwide financial crash of September 2008, with food prices soaring in their wake.

"With oil shooting up, what we see is, unfortunately, the trend of increasing food prices ... and that can push millions and millions of people into hunger," Kristalina Georgieva told journalists in Brussels at a briefing on the EU's humanitarian response to the conflict in Libya.

The Bulgarian EU Commissioner has pointed out that the number of people facing chronic hunger around the world fell to an estimated 880 million before the financial crash of 2008, but has risen since; she has predicted that following the Libyan crisis, 'the number will be over a billion: how much over, the next days and weeks will tell.

Georgieva also announced that most of the 10 000 EU citizens in Libya have left, but there are still 650 asking to be evacuated. The remaining EU nationals are often in tough areas to reach, making their rescue difficult.

In her words, over 1000 people have been killed in the turmoil in Libya, an aftershock of the revolutions in Tunisia and Egypt in the past couple of months where the respective presidents Ben Ali and Hosni Mubarak were toppled.

Over 100 000 foreign citizens have already fled Libya, according to Georgieva, as cited by the correspondent of the Bulgarian National Radio.

Georgieva believes that for the time being there is no need for NATO to intervene in Libya but did stress that military planes should be sent in Libya to guard no-fly zones there if this can contribute to saving lives because every life is important.

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