AID GROUP WARNS OF HUMANITARIAN CATASTROPHE IN WEST AND CENTRAL AFRICA

Last week the international aid group, Oxfam, launched a £23m ($36m) emergency appeal in response to the ongoing humanitarian crisis in the Sahel region of East and Central Africa. The funds are expected to assist the 1 million or so people who are at risk of severe acute malnutrition in accessing food, cash, water, livestock support, and sanitation and hygiene information. Oxfam also warn that a further 13 million people in Chad, Burkina Faso, Mali, Mauritania, Niger and Senegal face a real risk of being embroiled in the crisis if urgent action is not taken.

The crisis has resulted from unexpected weather patterns in the region which has led to erratic rains and in turn failed harvests. Global news outlets have filed unpleasant reports of people digging the grounds for ants and grains at a time of year when vegetation is usually at knee-high level.

The statistics especially highlight the difficulties which the inhabitants of the region face in the immediate future. Oxfam reports that the malnutrition rates across the 6 countries in the Sahel are between 10-15%, with some areas beyond the emergency threshold. Grain harvest is also said to be down by 1.4m tonnes across the Sahel region. In addition the Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO) state that agricultural production in the region is down 25% from 2010.

The most affected of the countries is Mauritania, with a 52% drop in crop production from last year, while Chad’s food production is down by 50% and Niger’s by 27%. Alarmingly food prices are said to be 25%-50% higher than the average for the last 5 years and real possibility exists that this could rise even further.

In urging the world to act promptly in response to the worsening situation, Mamadou Biteye, Oxfam’s Director for West Africa stated: “millions of people are on the threshold of a major crisis. All signs point to a drought becoming catastrophic if nothing is done soon. The world cannot allow this to happen. A concerted aid effort is needed to stop tens of thousands dying due to international complacency.”

The hunger crisis and the situation in the Sahel have been further compounded by clashes between Tuareg rebels and Malian government forces which has led to about 170,000 people fleeing their homes. Added to this are political conflicts and tension within the region, high food prices and entrenched poverty. One recalls the Oxfam and Save Children commissioned report published earlier in the year, which was also examined in some depth by 1worldinternational, criticised the international community’s response to last year’s famine in the horn of Africa. It is hoped that lessons have been learnt from the past and that the international community will act in tandem on this occasion to curtail preventable deaths.

Please visit www.oxfam.org.uk/westafrica to support Oxfam’s disaster relief efforts in the Sahel region of Africa.

JOINT AGENCY BRIEFING PAPER CALLS FOR CHANGE IN THE INTERNATIONAL COMMUNITY’S RESPONSE TO HUMANITARIAN CRISES

On 18th January, Oxfam and Save the Children released their co-authored report, A Dangerous Delay, which concluded that thousands of needless deaths occurred and millions of extra pounds were spent because the international community failed to take decisive action on early warnings of a hunger crisis in East Africa. It also concluded that humanitarian agencies and national governments were too slow to scale up their response to the crisis as many donors wanted proof or evidence of a humanitarian catastrophe before acting to prevent one.

The report highlighted for example that although early warning systems were forecast about the likelihood of an emergency occurring as early as August 2010, full-scale response was not launched until July 2011 when malnutrition rates in parts of the region had risen substantially and which in turn resulted in increased media attention. Both organisations have called for pre-emptive action in advocating that funding for food emergencies should be sought and released as soon as the crisis signs are clear, rather than the current system which funds large-scale emergency work only when hunger levels have caused unnecessary loss of life and costs in response have increased substantially. The report's recommendations are also backed by other NGOs.

More than 13 million people were affected by the hunger crises in the Horn of Africa. The countries most affected by the crises include Ethiopia, Kenya, Djibouti and Somalia where indications of a crisis was apparent from August 2010 and warnings were sounded out in early 2011 regarding the increasingly concerning humanitarian crises. However donors, agencies and governments failed to respond until after rains had failed for a second successive year, by which time the report states, many had lost their livelihoods, particularly women and children, and millions were in the throes of extreme hardship. The report asserts that the scale of suffering, and financial cost could have been reduced if early warning systems had triggered an earlier more substantial response. As a result of the delayed response to the East African hunger crisis, an estimated 50,000 – 100,000 people were reported to have died. A combined approach of the international community, especially one which seeks to manage the risks and not the crisis, one aimed at reducing the risks and one which is designed to respond to early warning signals will surely have averted the unnecessary loss of life and suffering of the inhabitants of the Horn of Africa.

Unfortunately it is impossible to rule out a recurrence of drought, famine and hunger crises in the Horn of Africa. However one hopes that the international community’s response in the future will be based on lessons learnt from the staggered approach in dealing with previous crises, hence the need for national governments, NGOs, and multi agencies alike to consider in some depth the recommendations of A Dangerous Delay. Amongst others, the report recommends that national governments need to be able to fulfil its responsibilities to people caught up in crises and to demonstrate their leadership.

To this end, African leaders, whose ability to deliver good governance is largely questioned, need to work closely and hand in hand with international organisations and NGOs in order to ensure that the needs of the most vulnerable, usually women and children, are attended to before the situation reaches crises point. In addition, swift responses to early warning signals is stressed coupled with the recommendation that the international aid community needs to undertake preventative humanitarian work on the basis of forecasts. The report also states that donors need to provide more agile and flexible funding which will support a change of focus from reactionary response to humanitarian crises to the more effective pre-emptive action. With a new food crises looming in the horizon, namely in the Sahel region of Africa, it is hoped that the lessons and recommendations of A Dangerous Delay will be implemented by all those concerned to prevent suffering of the scale witnessed in the Horn of Africa.