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FROM THE FIELD

IFRC finalizes Horn food aid plan as famine stalks
27 Jan 2009 12:55:00 GMT
 Source: International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) - Switzerland
By Andrei Engstrand-Neacsu and Titus Mung’ou in Nairobi, and Alex Wynter in Addis Ababa

Website: Website: http://www.ifrc.org

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A pastoralist community in southern Oromiya, Ethiopia - one of many across the Horn of Africa which is losing its cattle to drought. A week ago Uganda became the latest African nation to take emergency measures to try to stave off famine in an arid zone: the impoverished north-eastern Karamoja region. (Alex Wynter/IFRC)
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A pastoralist community in southern Oromiya, Ethiopia - one of many across the Horn of Africa which is losing its cattle to drought. A week ago Uganda became the latest African nation to take emergency measures to try to stave off famine in an arid zone: the impoverished north-eastern Karamoja region. (Alex Wynter/IFRC)

Background

•  Food and hunger

•  E. African hunger

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As the UN food summit gets underway in Madrid, urging more aid for poor people worldwide, the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) is this week redoubling efforts to scale up its emergency food security operation in the Horn of Africa.

The IFRC's new Addis Ababa-based team is working with the Ethiopian Red Cross Society (ERCS) to finalize distribution plans for the operation, which it hopes to start next month.

Until more donor funding becomes available, an initial 150,000 beneficiaries will be helped in targeted areas of southern Oromiya and Somali regions, bordering Kenya where the government now says 10 million people need help because of drought-based food insecurity.

Malnutrition levels

Large areas of Kenya and the Horn of Africa are facing "an exceptional humanitarian crisis" that requires "urgent food assistance and other interventions to combat high malnutrition levels", according to the IFRC's appeal, which was launched in December for Djibouti, Ethiopia, Kenya and Somalia.

"The combination of high world food prices and a crippling drought is endangering as many as 20 million people in both rural and urban communities," says Roger Bracke, IFRC head of operations in Addis Ababa.

"Hunger is just not an option in the modern world," he added, "but if we wait until starving people appear on our TV screens, it'll be too late. Food relief operations take weeks to organize, even though we're procuring locally for our first distributions.

"If the world doesn't respond to this crisis, it has the potential to develop into famine on a scale not seen for many years."

Emergency fund

The IFRC appeal has received only "moderate" support from the donor community so far, according to a new operational update issued over the weekend. But an advance of 10 million Swiss francs was extended from the Federation to support the National Societies of Ethiopia, Djibouti, Kenya and Somalia to respond to the food crisis.

In Kenya, where the food crisis has significantly worsened even since the IFRC multidisciplinary assessment late last year, President Kibaki recently said food shortages in the north of the country constituted a national emergency and appealed for assistance from abroad.

Kibaki said the food crisis was mainly due to drought, but last year's post-election violence - which disrupted the planting season in Rift Valley province, Kenya's main crop-producing area - and high food price inflation were also to blame.

Save children's lives

On Saturday, Vice-President Kalonzo Musyoka said he would talk to the World Food Programme (WFP) about reintroducing Kenya's school-feeding programme in famine-affected areas in a bid to save children's lives.

Musyoka said the government is working on emergency measures and appealed to the Kenyan public to donate in either cash or kind. "You can contribute directly to the hungry or through non-governmental organizations like the Red Cross Red Crescent," he said.

However, the government was in control of the crisis and the vice-president called on people not to panic as "no one" will be allowed die of hunger.

Major drought

Launching its own national fund-raising initiative worth more than 22.5 million US dollars last week, the Kenya Red Cross Society (KRCS) said the country was experiencing "a major drought affecting almost all regions".

Poor rainy seasons over the past two years were aggravated by failed short-rains last month, while most parts of the country are still dealing with the legacy of the post-election violence, according to the KRCS.

The Kenyan appeal was a joint initiative by the KRCS and the country's Media Owners' Association, which said it would give print-space and airtime to the Red Cross Red Crescent to promote it.

Skills and experience

"The number of people in need of aid in the country is increasing rapidly as there is a serious shortage of basic commodities," warned Abbas Gullet, KRCS secretary general. "Our skills and experience are matched by a proven record of efficiency," he added.

Recalling that the KRCS is already distributing relief food to 930,000 beneficiaries -including victims of post-election violence, Gullet said the National Society is now targeting at least 1.6 million others facing starvation across the country.

But in order to act swiftly, he added, Red Cross Red Crescent societies in Kenya and across the Horn of Africa needed "public support, both at home and abroad".

The worst drought

On a recent assessment in Makueni district of lower Eastern province, a KRCS team found one local resident, Grace Mulwa, a 67-year-old widow, who said it was "the worst drought of my entire life".

"I don't think we are going to cope in the coming days if we don't receive relief food," she told the KRCS.

The IFRC has made nearly 286,000 Swiss francs available to help the KRCS begin the first phase of its operation and provide supplementary food to some 500,000 schoolchildren in Eastern province.

Food aid

But the country with the highest absolute number of people in need of emergency food aid remains Ethiopia, where some 12 million are still targeted for assistance either through the government's "productive safety net" (PSNP) or from humanitarian agencies.

Nor is there any clear sign in Ethiopia of significant improvement in the worst-affected areas: the pastoralist lowlands bordering Kenya, which are the focus of the IFRC's early effort, and in the north - especially Afar region.

A January update on food security in the Somali region showed that although the deyr rains helped increase water and pasture, they "did little to reduce overall food insecurity" there, according to OCHA, the UN coordination office.

Long dry season

In the long dry season, which is getting underway now and will last until March, food security in deyr areas is likely to get worse in several administrative zones of Somali region, including Liben, where the Red Cross Red Crescent will start distributions.

Bracke emphasizes: "There is a consensus that the needs in parts of the country, including the Ethiopian Somali region, a focus of our operations, have remained largely unchanged."

With the risk of a dramatic deterioration, he adds, as soon as the normal "hunger season" starts, with its usual peaks in severe malnutrition in any year, "the main challenge to our operation now is inadequate funding.

Humanitarian drama

"The IFRC is appealing to the international donor community to prevent this silent crisis from exploding into a major humanitarian drama that will follow if rains fail again or cereal prices increase - even to more modest levels than we saw 2008."

A week ago Uganda became the latest African nation to take emergency measures to try to stave off famine in an arid zone: the impoverished north-eastern Karamoja region.

Karamoja has suffered from food insecurity for many years as an unpredictable cycle of flood-drought-flood prevents local communities from producing enough crops, while there have also been intercommunal clashes over cattle.

The government and WFP are targeting nearly a million people - about 80 per cent of the Karamoja population - with distributions due to begin next month.

Food shortage

"The food shortage in Karamoja is just as serious as in the Horn of Africa," says Nancy Balfour, the IFRC's Nairobi-based disaster-management coordinator for the region.

"We need to act now if we are to avoid loss of human life. Karamoja consistently has some of the worst child malnutrition rates in all sub-Saharan Africa."

Since last September last year, IFRC emergency funds enabled the Uganda Red Cross Society (URCS) to help some 25,000 of Karamoja's most food-insecure people.

The URCS is now doing a "baseline survey" to try to reverse long-term food insecurity and revive livelihoods for 250,000 people in two of Karamoja's five districts - Nakapiripiriti and Moroto - over two years. But they need an estimated 343,000 Swiss francs to implement the programme successfully.


[ Any views expressed in this article are those of the writer and not of Reuters. ]

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[ Any views expressed in this article are those of the writer and not of Reuters. ]

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