It took an F-word for the international community to respond to the drought and famine in the Horn
04 Dec 2011 Leave a Comment
in Aid, Doing Good Tags: Africa, Drought and Famine, Humanitarian aid
We all know, unlike Tsunamis and earthquakes, drought is a slow-onset disaster, and famine slower still. You never know when the first two are coming, but in the case of drought and famine you can see it unfold for months and even years before they finally take their toll.
This is precisely what happened in the Horn of Africa earlier this year. Since about September-October 2010, humanitarian agencies working in Somalia and neighbouring countries were warning of a severe drought and food security crisis which would lead to malnutrition, starvation and misery for millions in the region. But until the dramatic footage of dying children started coming out of Somalia and Kenya, courtesy of CNN in early July, international community paid little attention to the repeated warnings sounded by the humanitarian agencies, including the United Nations.
Only after 20th July when the United Nations declared famine in Somalia, by when tens of thousands had been dead already and an equal number faced starvation, did the international community wake up. And when it did wake up, money started to pour in generously.
Why is it that help does not arrive until you see the picture of people who can not be helped anymore – when they are already dying or are dead?
Only six years ago, it took thousands of children to die in Niger (July 2005) before the international community delved into its 
pockets. I remember at the time the then Under-Secretary-General of the United Nations responsible for humanitarian issues, Jan Egeland, telling the press that over a period of ten days more money had been received than over the previous ten months when his teams on the ground and various NGOs were sounding out red alerts about starvation deaths. It took graphic images of dying children for help to finally arrive.
It was the same during the 2011 famine and drought in the Horn. Since the summer of 2010, countries in the Horn of Africa have been under the effects of a La Niña weather pattern, causing severe drought along the equatorial belt due to consecutive failures of the October-November 2010 and March-April 2011 rainy seasons. Once again, humanitarian agencies of all hues raised alarm bells since about October last year. Funding was desperately needed to prevent a famine that would cause deaths to hundreds of thousands. Yet funding to the appeals attracted much less attention even compared to previous years until the pictures emerged, almost like a reality TV show, of children dying in scores. And once the reality show began, funding poured in generously. In four months after the pictures emerged, almost 75% (nearly $1.8 billion) of the appeals have been funded, something of a record in slow-onset disasters.
Except that if this had come in over the past one year instead of over the last four months, thousands of lives could have been saved.
We know that droughts cannot be prevented but famines can. As Amartya Sen pointed out through his seminal work over three decades ago, famines are rarely caused by nature, but more by failure of institutions and policies of those who have a duty to care.
‘So who failed in their duty to care’ is an obvious question.
First, of course the governments in respective countries. Most parts of Somalia have had no functioning government for nearly twenty years now – and that’s where famine was at its worst. In other countries, while governments are functioning, as is usually the case, their policies do not adequately reflect the needs of the poor and vulnerable.
Second, the policies of some of the western governments, notably the US and the UK in particular, are to partly blame for the thousands that have died this year. In the past two years, the United States and Britain have brought about stringent laws which not only outlaw al Shabaab – a terrorist group which control most parts of Somalia severely affected by drought – but also state that aid groups could be prosecuted if their aid unintentionally falls into militants’ hands. Even in a normal year at least a million and a half Somalis survived on the hand-outs received from aid agencies. But in the past two years since the US legislated that any aid reaching the al-Shabaab, even if unintended, would amount to supporting terrorism, humanitarian aid to some of the most vulnerable communities have been cut by more than half.
Finally, the humanitarian agencies themselves failed partly in their mandate. Humanitarian imperative requires that humanitarian agencies do their utmost to ensure that they get access to the communities who need their care. Except for a few individual agencies (like the International Committee of the Red Cross) who negotiated access to the communities, there was very little of collective negotiation or advocacy to engage with either the al Shabaab or the US/UK governments who virtually commanded the humanitarian agencies not to work in al Shabaab areas.
That the western governments (including the US) later – after the pictures of dying children started grabbing headlines – relaxed their stringent regulations to allow humanitarian agencies in al Shabaab areas is another story.
