Britons give generously to disaster appeals. The DEC fund, opened less than a month ago to bring help to tens of thousands of starving people in Somalia and Kenya, has passed £40m and is climbing steadily. It is cash that is desperately needed: last week the UN declared that two more areas in Somalia had passed the bleak hurdle that qualifies them as famine zones. Money saves lives. But giving that is triggered by a single catastrophic event distorts the process and can undermine efforts to develop food sustainability. Much better to think harder about avoiding the crisis in the first place.
Oxfam calls the Horn of Africa famine a catastrophic breakdown in the world’s collective responsibility to act. It is not only that some countries (France, Italy; but notably not Brazil) have been slow to stump up for the UN’s $2.5bn appeal, which is still at least $500m light. Unlike the Haitian earthquake, or the Pakistan floods, this is a disaster that has been unfolding before the public gaze for nearly a year. The soaring price of food staples like red sorghum tells the story even without the surveys of the Food Security and Nutrition Analysis Unit. Their critics say the weakness of these indicators is that they describe what is happening without providing a detailed prediction of what will come next. That makes it hard for the agencies to go out on a limb and demand support for the early intervention that would not only save lives, but help avert the total destitution that brings the next crisis so much closer.
Media coverage is decisive in shaping perceptions. This leads not only to a generous response to countries like Japan, after the earthquake and tsunami, which did not need outside support, but makes it difficult to raise money to pre-empt disaster. All the same, by the end of last year the UN was calling for extra support. But media indifference was only one of a series of hazards to be overcome. Somalia is a desperate place to work, a paradigm of how political instability is the unpalatable, intractable heart of the crisis. The World Food Programme has had 14 aid workers murdered in two years and the US has issued contradictory warnings about aid being hijacked by the notorious al-Shabab militants. Even where there is peace, the pastoralists are politically and geographically marginalised. Bringing in food aid can exacerbate the problem. The local economy depends on trade, and if food aid undercuts local prices it risks doing as much harm as good.
It is easy to say this must be the last time. Only the most buoyant optimist would suppose that it will be. But with each tragedy we learn more about how it should have been avoided. We must listen harder, act sooner. And focus on the politics.
Source: guardian.co.uk/