Good news from the front lines of hunger

Ertharin Cousin, Executive Director of the World Food Programme

 The past year – my first as Executive Director of the World Food Programme – has vanished in a blur.  The unfolding crisis in Syria and neighbouring countries has kept all of us in the humanitarian community busy, but for me, it is the continuing crisis in the Sahel region of West Africa that has provided a constant backbeat to my first twelve months in this job.

I chose Niger as the first country I visited as Executive Director in April last year.  At the time, the country was at the epicentre of a drought that had affected the whole Sahel region, pushing millions into the protective arms of the humanitarian community.   Hunger gnawed at the very soul of people caught in the unforgiving lean season that precedes the arrival of crops from the new harvest.

Twelve months later, when I visited Burkina Faso and Mali, millions were still facing the prospect of the next hunger season.  But this time they were better equipped to cope, even though the simmering conflict in Mali had complicated matters by forcing hundreds of thousands to flee their homes. 

In 2012, humanitarian agencies and national governments worked together to avert a potential catastrophe.  In 2013 we are helping those same communities continue on the road to recovery as they adapt to shifts in weather patterns that have made droughts more frequent and more severe.

This is all good news.  Lives have been saved and money has been invested in building resilience, ensuring the people of the Sahel are better equipped to cope with future droughts.  But does good news get the attention it deserves?

Blink and you would have missed any news coverage of the successful early intervention that prevented disaster in the Sahel in 2012. This year, the Sahel has barely registered on the news media radar.  I may have missed it, but I don’t recall seeing any coverage of the healthy babies I saw in Mopti, Mali when I visited a few weeks ago.

Good humanitarian stories, it seems, are not worthy subject matter for newspaper headlines or top billing on television news channels, even when the lives of millions are at stake and tax-payers’ money is being used efficiently to provide vital assistance.

It’s not so long ago that a television report featuring harrowing images of a starving child would open the floodgates of support, compelling governments and the public to respond, donating the cash that humanitarian agencies need to stop more children going hungry.  It is a formula that has worked again and again since the first televised famine in Ethiopia in 1984, and it has been difficult for humanitarian organisations to resist.

At some point or other, we have all been complicit in identifying a “poster child” to tug on the heartstrings of the public and encourage them to reach for their wallets.  But while this may have worked in the past, it is becoming increasingly obvious that people have seen and read enough about food shortages and famine to acquire a more questioning approach to the causes of hunger and the potential solutions.

Today, potential supporters are more likely to ask why after so much work has been done, are children still starving?  And what has been achieved after all the millions of dollars have been spent, when so many people are still vulnerable to hunger?  As humanitarian agencies we must answer these questions  ourselves, but we also depend on media organisations to help us deliver the message explaining the rationale behind our response as well as to highlight success when it is deserved.

Of course we don’t work for each other, but media organisations and humanitarian agencies do depend heavily on each other’s goodwill.  We support each other as we strive to fulfil our different missions, finding ourselves accidental partners at the scene of every disaster.

The Sahel in 2012 was no Biafra, nor was it Ethiopia in 1984, or Somalia in 2011.  But human suffering – that image of a severely malnourished child - should not be the measure of whether a story merits news coverage.  Our role in the humanitarian sector must be to inspire journalists to move beyond reporting that is driven primarily by images that exemplify our collective failure.  If it takes television footage of a starving child to move a donor into action then we are acting too late.

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Africa in control of its fortune

By Winnie Byanyima, Executive Director of Oxfam International

Several African countries are amongst today’s fastest growing economies in the world, boosted in many instances by new discoveries of oil, natural gas and strategic mineral reserves. Extreme poverty on the continent is in decline, and progress towards meeting the Millennium Development Goals has accelerated. A number of very poor African countries, including Malawi, Sierra Leone, and Ethiopia have made recent and substantial improvements in their levels of income equality.

 

Yet Africa’s impressive growth is not shared by millions of its people. Sub-Saharan Africa is home to a third of the world's poorest people, and six of the top 10 most unequal countries in the world. Where income inequality is high, the benefits of economic growth are inaccessible to poor people. Poverty and exclusion are bad for social stability, preventing productive investment and undermining growth itself.

 

The continent’s potential is also being undermined by illicit capital hemorrhaging out of African countries – often in the form of tax evasion and trade mispricing by multinational oil, gas and mining companies, and in collusion with corrupt elected officials. In 2010, Africa’s oil, gas and mineral exports amounted to $333 billion in 2010. But estimates of illicit financial outflows from Africa are estimated as up to $200 billion annually, dwarfing the development aid it receives.

 

Together, income inequalities and illicit capital flows are cheating Africa of its wealth and potential for the investments in education, agriculture and healthcare needed to support productive citizens.

This month in Cape Town, African business and government leaders met at the World Economic Forum on Africa. My message to them was: For Africa to meet its real potential, you must stand behind the millions being left behind by economic growth. Otherwise, social and economic progress on the continent will be undermined.

 

The European Union last month agreed a deal on a law that will make oil, gas, mining and logging firms companies declare payments to governments in the countries where they operate. This bolsters similar, recent legislation in the United States under the Dodd-Frank financial reform law, and is excellent news. Transparency is a great disinfectant. It will put pressure on governments to account for how they spend money they receive from fees and royalties.

 

Some African states are making some of the right moves to manage resource wealth responsibly. In Ghana, the Petroleum Revenue Management Act has compelled quarterly disclosures of payments and production figures while in Liberia the voluntary Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI) has been turned into a binding statutory requirement.

 

But Africa can’t do it alone. The private sector is the engine of Africa’s economy, and if working responsibly, holds the key to fair and sustainable economic development. Companies’ policies and practices must respect the rights of the people in the countries where they operate. Communities affected by extractive projects must be informed and consulted, and given the opportunity to approve or reject proposed operations.

 

For their part, Africa’s development partners can deliver aid which will promote good governance, and support civil society to keep their leaders accountable.

 

We are witnessing a scramble for Africa’s natural resource reminiscent of the period of the industrial revolution in Europe. It is urgent and imperative that policies are in place in each country to protect the rights and interests of African people, most especially those living in poverty. To sustain high growth rates, priority must be placed on forging inclusive policies that ensure that growth is both equitable and sustainable. Much more of the proceeds of the African resource boom need to go directly into education, health and nutrition and improving the productive capacities of the poorest citizens. If not, efforts to boost economic growth in a sustainable way will be undercut.

 

It is time for a new, fair deal for poor people in Africa, one that gets Africa’s resources working for all its people.

For more go to http://www.oxfam.org/fr
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Sahel: Millions need long-term support

By the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA)



The UN’s senior humanitarian representative in the Sahel region of West Africa has called on the international community to maintain its commitment to millions of people who face another year threatened by malnutrition, displacement, conflict and high food prices.



 

Speaking at a press briefing in Geneva, Regional Humanitarian Coordinator for the Sahel and Assistant Secretary-General Robert Piper said that the region remained in crisis, even though the response to last year’s food crisis was “fast and substantial”.

“A lot of things went right in 2012 despite the scale of the challenges,” he said. “The temptation going into 2013 was to breathe a sigh of relief and take the foot off the humanitarian accelerator.

 “(But) we can’t take a year off just yet. The Sahel is still in crisis as a region.”

Over 10 million need food

A range of factors have left an estimated 10.3 million people in need of food assistance across the region. Many communities are still reeling from last year’s food crisis, which came less than two years after the previous one. Cereal prices remain high, exacerbated by floods in northern Nigeria (an area that produces 50 per cent of the Sahel’s cereals) as well as insecurity in Nigeria and Mali.

This insecurity and flooding have meant that pastoralists in Chad and Niger are cut off from Nigerian livestock markets, making it difficult for them to sell their cattle at the prices they need to make a living. Finally, continued Piper, many people need assistance because of the very deep nature of their vulnerability.

“We need to recognize that one reasonable agricultural season will not reverse the levels of acute vulnerability in the region,” he said. “Vulnerable households affected by cycles of ever-frequent crises don’t need much of a push to go under the emergency line.”

Funding thwarts efforts to tackle root causes of vulnerability

For 2013, UN agencies and their humanitarian partners have appealed for US$1.7 billion to help them support communities in the nine countries that make up the Sahel. To date, $473 million – about 28 per cent of what is needed – has been received.

“2013 is not the year to reduce our commitments to the Sahel,” said Piper. He noted that the type of funding received was limiting the ability of agencies to respond effectively to the crisis.

Forty-three per cent of the funding that has been received has been directed towards short-term food aid. While this has ensured that 1.2 million people across the region received food assistance in the first two months of 2013, it also meant that aid agencies were constrained in their ability to address the root causes of vulnerability.

“The resources that are being received are slanted to particular sectors,” Piper said. “They do not allow us to tackle the root causes of vulnerability in the Sahel.”

For example, agricultural projects that are designed to help communities build resilience against disasters and break the cycle of aid dependence have received only five per cent of the financial support they need. Only 108,000 of the estimated 5.9 million farmers in need received seeds ahead of the May 2013 planting season, meaning that many millions may face a third year of crisis in 2014.

“Last year’s response to the food crisis was extraordinarily good,” said Piper. “(But) we need to learn from this success. Our record for 2013 looks less promising but it’s not too late.”

The need for greater investment in addressing the root causes of vulnerability will be a major focus of the Fourth Session of the Global Platform for Disaster Risk Reduction that is being held in Geneva this week. This event will see governments, the UN and the wider humanitarian and development communities continue to explore the global framework for reducing disaster risk. It comes on the heels of a new report from the UN Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNISDR) that warned that direct losses from disasters have been underestimated by at least 50 per cent, and have cost the global economy in the range of $2.5 trillion since the start of this century alone.

 

 

The need for greater investment in addressing the root causes of vulnerability will be a major focus of the Fourth Session of the Global Platform for Disaster Risk Reduction that is being held in Geneva this week. This event will see governments, the UN and the wider humanitarian and development communities continue to explore the global framework for reducing disaster risk. It comes on the heels of a new report from the UN Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNISDR) that warned that direct losses from disasters have been underestimated by at least 50 per cent, and have cost the global economy in the range of $2.5 trillion since the start of this century alone.

For more go to http://www.unocha.org/rowca/
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Defusing the Sahel time bomb – ECHO Director General visits the Sahel

 

At the beginning of the 2013 lean season in the Sahel, when people´s resources and food reserves start running low, ECHO´s Director General, Claus Sørensen, visited the region. Here is what he found on the ground.

 

 

 

For more go to http://ec.europa.eu/echo/
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Rapport malnutrition 2013

Par l'Unicef

Un nouveau rapport de l'Unicef révèle le lourd tribut que payent les enfants du monde à la malnutrition. Un enfant de moins de 5 ans sur quatre souffre d'un retard de croissance, ce qui a des conséquences lourdes sur la santé, mais aussi sur tout le développement des pays concernés. Des solutions simples et efficaces, mises en oeuvre par l'Unicef, ses partenaires et les Etats, existent. Et participent ainsi à la lutte contre la pauvreté.

Pour plus visitez www.unicef.org

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Mali in crisis. The power of music

By Oxfam

Music is the heart of Mali - the country is known throughout the world for its talented musicians. In this short film, Malian musicians tell how conflict has devastated the North of the country and how people are working across the divides for peace and development.

This film was produced by Oxfam in collaboration with the Sahel Calling project.

For more go to http://www.oxfam.org/fr and http://www.sahelcalling.com/
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Mohammed: Great cost to go to secondary school 

By Mohammed, a teenage boy living in Mentao refugee camp, Burkina Faso / Through Plan

 

Displaced by the Mali conflict, Mohammed’s family has borrowed all the money they can to send him to school, while they stay in Mentao refugee camp, Burkina Faso.

21 March 2013: I am extremely excited today, like every Friday afternoon. I am going back home to spend the weekend with my family. This is my life now here in Mentao.

Since we arrived in this part of Burkina Faso, fleeing the troubles in Timbuktu, I have been somehow parted from my parents. That was the only solution for me to stay in school. In the Mentao camp, where we live, there are no secondary schools - only primary schools run by Plan. The closest secondary school is in Djibo, about 50 kilometres from the camp.

At the beginning of the school year, we discussed it with my dad. He said I had to go to Djibo to study but that means I would have to become “more independent” and learn to be “on my own”.

Learning to survive

This is so new for me. With dad and other parents of the camps, we found a house to rent in Djibo. There are 6 of us in this small 3 bed house. The rent is paid by our parents and there is a woman from the camp who is coming once or twice a week to cook for us.

When we started living on our own, I just thought, ‘this is great, this is what I have always wanted to have - my own place’. Over the past months, I have learnt that there are strings attached to this gift.

The simple things I was not bothered to think about are now all mine. From turning the light off while leaving the house, to making sure doors are locked, taking care of bills and liaising between the landlord and my parents.

Education cost

My dad said it is a learning curve and that it is how I learn to become adult. Perhaps he is right. I don’t care that much because I strangely discovered a new passion for my studies here in Mentao.

I have always been quite good in school. But now I have a strong reason to be studious. My dad has paid over 140 000 FCFA (US$254) to get me and my brother into the private school I am attending. There was no place left in the overcrowded government-owned Lycée provincial in Djibo.

My parents sold a lot of our belongings and borrowed money from friends and relatives to make it happen. I feel there is an extra pressure on me to perform. I have been reading my lessons and doing my homework every day without failing.

So proud

I was so proud when I brought my first term results and I had so many good marks. I think my dad was relieved too. I heard my dad talk about next year and his worries about his ability to keep us in school, because of the high fees. I am worried too.

Many of my friends in Mentao camp don’t go to school anymore. They have dropped-out because there is no secondary school in the camp and their parents cannot afford the fees of the private schools in Djibo, plus the rent.

They spend all their days doing nothing in the camp. That is really sad. I know I am lucky. I often share my school experiences with them and I can see they envy me somehow. We all hope things will get better and all of us will be able to attend school.

Plan support

Like many secondary school teenagers in Mentao, my brother Abdul and I have applied for a bursary with Plan. We are praying we will receive the money to help our parents, who are clearly struggling to make ends meet.

My friend Muhammed, is hoping this bursary will help him go back to school - he hates staying at home all day long doing nothing.

The other day we were discussing about this school thing during our weekend stay in Mentao. A friend said he overheard his parents talking about a Plan project to build a new school building in the government owned Lycée provincial in Djibo, so that there are spaces for all of us.

Things are looking great thanks to all these projects going on. I now envy my friends who are enjoying a gap year in Mentao camp and will certainly be back to school when the new school year starts in October next year.

For more go to http://plan-international.org/
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