Hunger is far from being History

On Tuesday Niger marked its 50 years of independence from France - but there is little or no reason to celebrate. Instead of fireworks, monuments, public holidays or parties, half of Niger's 13.5 million people are facing famine.

Niger has the dubious distinction of being known as the poorest country on the planet. Right now it is on the cusp of a famine. In the aidocratic world of humanitarian action people can get quiet hysterical about terminology: is Niger 'food insecure', is it suffering from food shortages, drought or famine. It is categorically facing famine and it is estimated that 1.5 million children are currently at real risk of death from starvation.

Why is it that despite all the awareness, despite the grand political ambition to rid the planet of hunger, despite billions being pumped into food aid and hunger alleviation programs - why is it that more than 35 years after the momentous World Food Summit (Rome, 1974) when Kissinger famously proclaimed a veritable war on famine and promised “that within a decade no child will go to bed hungry” - why is it hunger is a daily reality for a cool billion people? The fact is we have collectively failed to tackle hunger. We are - to our eternal shame - worse of now than we were in 1974.

I want to post a video here of Saray Amadaou, a mother of ten children, who struggles to keep the wolves of starvation from her door by feeding her family from grains scraped from the dry earth. The Disasters Emergency Committee in the UK posted the video on their Facebook page and it sparked some interesting debate. "Why", one lady asked, "Why do you have 10 children and if the Red Cross helps you, will you see this as the opportunity to have more children?". Others offered their opinion explaining that large families were actually coping mechanisms because of hunger and high infant mortality. Nevertheless, the fatigue, the frustration, the futility with seemingly never-ending food crisis is palpable (and understandable).



What do you think? Should the Red Cross Red Crescent and other aid organizations practice 'laissez faire' knowing that millions would die a horrible death or do we continue to provide 'emergency rations' keeping people barely alive as we seek out the magic 'sustainable solutions' formula and battle against a host of external factors such as currency fluctuations, bio fuels, epidemics, desertification, trade, conflict or weather and climate related disasters?

And, hunger, despite what we might think, is not solely an African problem. The situation is arguably worse in Asia. In Pakistan, hunger is now a direct consequence of the horrific floods that have decimated the region. Wheat prices have doubled this year and are set to rise another 30% before the year is out - food riots are again surfacing in North Africa and the Americas.

Global hunger is a reality.  Making hunger history is still a lofty ideal. Why are we so far from making hunger history?

/PC

Praying for Rain

The Ethiopian government and its humanitarian partners in the country say nearly 5 million people require emergency food-aid this year, outside the governments own safety net programme. An additional 1.2 million mothers and children under five there will require supplementary feeding. We are now working with the Ethiopian Red Cross Society to finalize plans for the major food-aid operation it hopes to start next month in Oromiya and Somali regions.

Praying for Rain - the story of Ute-Muda Garero

Ute-Muda Garero has 12 children by his two wives, Makayi-Jiro and Abayo-Sorsa. Six boys and six girls. Tidy numbers.

“Are you a Muslim,” asks a visiting Ethiopian expert in animal husbandry.

“No, and not a Christian either. I believe in one god,” says Garero, 38, smiling with the deliberately ironic reference to monotheism.

“Do you pray?” says the expert, intrigued by Garero’s equanimity.

“Yes, and I pray for rain.”

It is would be burdensome enough raising 12 children in Dhuko – one of the Ethiopian Red Cross Society’s three critically drought-affected “peasant associations” hereabouts. The name is a Marxist legacy, meaning just a settled community in a woreda (district).

But adding to his worries is the knowledge that his herd of cattle have deteriorated to the exact mid-point of the official yardstick of animal health : between two and three on a four-point scale (another tidy number), four meaning near death.

Garero is the one of the few herdsmen who have stayed in Dhuko to sit out the dry season, fearful of getting mixed up in the tribal conflict over water and pasture he says bedevils the part of nearby Borena zone where hundreds of other men from the PA have temporarily migrated, seeking better grazing.

Only the women and children and a handful of community leaders and elders are left.



Ute-Muda Garero knows all about cattle-rustling. He’s one of the few pastoralist herdsmen who have stayed behind in Dhuko village, Oromiya, to sit out the dry season, fearful of getting mixed up in a conflict over water and pasture he says bedevils an area where hundreds of other men from the village have temporarily migrated, seeking better grazing. But his animals are suffering for it. They have already deteriorated to the exact mid-point of the official yardstick of animal health: between two and three on a four-point scale, four meaning near death.

“I pray for rain”

“My cattle will be ‘threes’ even if the rains start on time,” he explains, referring to the main seasonal rains due next month. “If the rains fail, they’ll die for sure.”

“What would you do then?”

“There’s not much we can do. We’ll have to depend on relatives. And aid.”

From a lack of resources, the Ethiopian government was recently forced to put Dhuko on half-time in its “safety net” of food-aid and cash handouts, which nevertheless includes some 6 million people across Ethiopia.

The ERCS is hoping to help fill the gap with food-aid distributions now being planned in Addis Ababa and locally.

For two years there has been no proper seasonal rain here – just the occasional torrential downpour that damages homes and crops and ploughs up the barely-passable 60-kilometre track to the nearest town, Hare Kello.

A little way short of Dhuko, an elderly Norwegian missionary and local legend, Jorunn Hamre, 77, apologizes for the small size of her congregation at the Mekane Yesus church, depleted by the same curse that has drastically thinned Dhuko’s population: drought.

“Things are really difficult here,” she says. “Food-aid is very necessary.”

It’s in Dhuko and countless thousands of settlements like it that the disaster in the Horn of Africa is hidden: difficult to see, even standing in the middle of it. But it’s there.

Children who look half their age from malnutrition; unnecessarily high infant-mortality statistics; “resource wars” fought between different tribes who might otherwise live in peace; the gradual erosion of an ancient lifestyle – pastoralism; in some places, like the centre of Ethiopia’s vast Somali region, the potential death of hope.

For the moment, the gods – be they one or many – seem to be against the pastoralists of Dhuko.

this story first appeared on ifrc.org and was written by Alex Wynter reporting from the Goro Dola, Oromiya region, Ethiopia.

/PC