More on the Famine in Africa..
The forgotten famine](The forgotten famine | Society | The Guardian) Guardian
While the western humanitarian focus is on Iraq, millions are starving in Africa in what is becoming a permanent continent-wide crisis
John Vidal Wednesday April 30, 2003
Whatever happened to the food crisis in Africa that western charities, the UN and governments warned last year could engulf 25 million people? Did it never happen? Did the charities and governments get their forecasts wrong? Did the rains come and the food suddenly grow? Did the world stump up enough cash and food? Can we stop our standing orders to Oxfam, Concern and other charities?
The answer to all these questions is no. There may not be any pictures of dying children on television, but this slow-burn humanitarian crisis is now at a critical point and in many countries, such as Ethiopia, the situation is worse than forecast. Last week, James Morris, the World Food Programme’s director, warned the UN security council that 40 million people needed emergency food aid - far more than expected. This week Ethiopia has revised its estimates and appealed for a further $205m of food.
The positive side of this crisis is that more than $800m of emergency food aid has already been pledged by governments and hundreds of thousands of tonnes of (mainly American) food aid is now reaching more than a dozen sub-Saharan countries. However, at least $1bn of aid is needed to help people through the next few months and quite probably to the end of the year. With the international humanitarian focus now firmly on Iraq, it is quite possible that governments will be reluctant to donate so willingly to Africa. After the World Food Programme launched its Iraq appeal, $270m of food was pledged in just five days.
Welcome though the aid already promised for Africa is, the reality is that millions of people are, in effect, being slowly starved. The international response has not been complete and thousands of communities are getting enough food only to stop them migrating and so worsening the problem of food distribution. Even with distribution in full swing, malnutrition rates in many areas are abnormally high or actually increasing.
The World Food Programme and donor governments say that food has been pledged to June, implying that the problems lie in the future. But this hides the fact that the west has not offered enough to feed everyone and that the situation is already perilous in many countries. Inadequate donor response means that governments have often not been able to distribute full food rations. Many people have received only half of what they have been promised.
Because there is not enough to go round, this means that millions of people who should be getting food are getting nothing, and are surviving only because they are borrowing or because others are sharing food with them. To add to the problems, the very scale of the relief effort threatens to overwhelm local administrations, which often do not have the resources to move food quickly from ports to storehouses and then to villages. Food can often end up sitting in warehouses.
Government appeals to donors request a minimum of 15kg of grain rations per person per month, along with supplementary food for nutritional balance. By any standards, this is barely enough to live on, but many countries are having to give people only 12.5kg of grain - below the UN’s minimum human requirements. Those most affected by low rations are children, who are being subjected to nutritional deficiencies at the key time in their lives for growth. Nutritional levels are already very low; statistics show that more than 60% of children in some countries are suffering from stunting due to inadequate nutrition. Insufficient rations exacerbate this already critical situation.
International standards also recommend a variety of foods to ensure minimum nutritional balance. These include pulses, such as beans or lentils, and edible oil, to ensure that minimum dietary requirements of 18% protein and 12% fats are met. These foods are in extremely short supply, particularly in Ethiopia, where only a small portion of the needy are receiving any supplements whatsoever. Inadequate nutrition not only affects children’s growth, it limits their ability to attend school and makes them even more vulnerable to illness.
What troubles such non-government groups as Concern, Save the Children, Oxfam, Action Aid, Cafod and Christian Aid is that the west, having seemingly avoided the unacceptable spectacle of thousands of dying children by stepping in when requested, is now reinforcing the underlying poverty by not feeding people adequately . This is a hidden, continent-wide hunger, quite unlike the intense, relatively short-lived and very visible famines that have been ingrained in the western imagination since Ethiopia in 1984. There are some crops in the fields and food in the markets, yet far more people are in need than before. The situation is complicated by difficult weather and, especially, by health issues such as Aids.
A new face of African famine is emerging. It is confined to a sizeable rump of the new “superpoor” - growing numbers of destitute people who may never recover economically and will be permanently in need of assistance. The numbers differ from country to country, but the situation is most serious in Ethiopia, where up to 6 million people have no means of support and where surveys show that the problem is rapidly worsening. Research by Save the Children suggests that at least 2 million more people are now at real risk of falling into complete dependence.
The west still responds to food crises in Africa as if they only happen once every decade, are caused by occasional bad weather and can be alleviated by immense, but temporary, humanitarian efforts. It is only now beginning to sink in that they may be permanent fixtures caused by ever deepening poverty, a generation of inadequate development and semi-permanent climate change. The jury is still out, but if this proves to be the case, then the whole relationship between the west and the world’s poorest people will have to be renegotiated.
… Today Africa is facing another humanitarian catastrophe.