Last Friday, the Ethiopian Prime Minister, Meles Zenawi, made a scathing attack on the international community for its failure to respond to appeals for food aid to stave off famine in his country.

Western governments have in turn blamed Ethiopia for pursuing a pointless war with its northern neighbour, Eritrea, at a time when the country is in such dire straits.

Both arguments are irrelevant when eight million people are staring death in the face. The number at risk can be doubled when six other countries in the Horn of Africa are taken into account.

Drought is the primary cause for the current food crisis. Underlying factors include the cumulative effects of poor and unreliable rainfall and other shocks which have eroded assets and coping strategies in the last three years.

There are two rainy seasons in Ethiopia, the Belg and Meher, both crucial to food production. Before the Belg rain period, which falls in March and April, it was estimated that 850,000 tonnes of food would be needed for this year alone. With their failure, the requirement is now closer to a million tonnes.

A United Nations inter-agency appeal was made for dollars 190 million to finance the purchase of this food; about half that amount has been received. The US has sent a ship with 84,000 tonnes of grain but that will not arrive at Djibouti until April 19th. It is also reported that in some pastoral areas up to 90 per cent of cattle and 65 per cent of goats are dying from lack of food and water. This further contributes to the disintegration of the food infrastructure of the country.

In addition to the problem of acquiring enough money and food to solve the obvious problem of famine, there are huge problems of logistics associated with its distribution. Ethiopia is landlocked since Eritrea received its independence in the early 1990s.

While vast areas of the north, central and south-eastern parts of Ethiopia have been devastated by the drought, some food is believed to be available in the south-west. The government has put out a tender for 100,000 tonnes of grain but private contractors with state farms have only come up with 9,000 tonnes. The suspicion is that merchants are withholding stocks to get a higher price as the crisis worsens. It is also possible that some stocks could be bought in northern Sudan but Ethiopians are not well disposed to this because of complex political disputes which bedevil the Horn of Africa.

Both the current disaster and a famine which killed 800,000 people in 1984 were caused by failure of the rains, but this time more people are at risk because of population growth. As the population has increased, the land has been divided into even smaller parcels. The soil has become more overworked, leading to weaker yields. The result is that many millions of people, particularly in the central highlands and the Ogaden region, are literally destitute and in a state of permanent food insecurity.

Their coping capacity is so diminished that they cannot now deal with even minor shocks.

So to what extent is the Ethiopian government culpable? It is true it is engaged in a pointless war with Eritrea over 150 square miles of land along the border in an area known as the Badme Triangle. It is true it is difficult to deal with and very bureaucratic. One example is its attitude to NGOs. Concern has worked in Ethiopia for the best part of 20 years and we had, at one time, significant assets in that country.

We had more than 20 trucks but were made to dispose of most of them to the private sector. The theory was that, in the event of an emergency, the capacity would exist in the private sector to deal with it without the help of outsiders. This is fine in theory but not in practice.

The trucks are not available now that they are needed and we have to try to get permission from the government to build up our capacity to respond to the impending famine. All other NGOs and UN agencies were treated the same way.

To give it its due, the government did try to make the country less vulnerable to climatic disasters. It put in place a sophisticated early-warning system to predict rainfall and crop production so that appeals for food aid could be made in good time. As a direct result of the 1984 famine, the government normally holds 350,000 tonnes of food in reserve to enable it to respond rapidly to any shortage. That reserve is now almost exhausted.

The government appealed for additional food aid as long ago as November but the response was poor. This was partly because institutional donors were dealing with so many other crises but to an extent it was also a negative reaction to the war and a fear that aid would be diverted to the military.

The EU failed to meet its commitment last year, providing little more than half the food it promised. It is now more than a year behind on its pledges. This year it pledged only 50,000 tonnes (compared with 480,000 pledged by the US). It is hoped that some positive utterances by the EU Development Commissioner, Poul Nielson, this week indicated that the EU has received its wake-up call.

Recriminations at this time serve no purpose. The war is a factor but the massive humanitarian catastrophe about to unfold owes its cause mainly to drought and poverty. Eight million people are at serious risk and all the stops have to be pulled out to help them. I believe the following needs to be done:

The international community must immediately provide the million tonnes of food needed and get it on the high seas;

There must be an immediate armistice to allow humanitarian aid to flow into Ethiopia through the Eritrean ports.

If necessary, an airlift should be considered to bridge the gap until food can arrive by sea;

Every effort must be made to source food from northern Sudan and from those parts of Ethiopia where there may be some surplus. The Ethiopian government must not obstruct this;

The UN agencies and the NGOs must be given the freedom to operate, albeit in consultation with the government, and be allowed to take in whatever human and material resources they need. Extensive use should be made of NGO capacity for distribution to guarantee that aid is not diverted for military use.

Concern has allocated (pounds) 500,000 to pre-position high protein supplementary food, shelter materials, blankets and medical supplies. Our job is to get the food in and make serious preparations for healthcare and water provision. We will also seek ways of combining with other agencies to maximise our impact. This crisis will test the humanitarian aid community to the limit.

The journalist and author Michael Ignatieff wrote a book called The Warriors' Honour a couple of years ago. It deals with the humanitarian consequences of war and famine. The first chapter opens with these words about the 1984 Ethiopian Famine:

The British nurse was picking her way through the mass of women and children squatting in the dust at the entrance to the field hospital of the refugee camp at Koren in Ethiopia. She was selecting which children could still be helped, she was choosing who would live and who would die. A television crew trailed behind her, moving its way among the starving. A reporter approached her with a mike and asked her how she felt about what she was doing. It was not a question she felt capable of answering. The look she gave the camera came from very far away.

We are in a race against time to prevent this tragedy being repeated.