Now is not the time for donor fatigue - Age
Matt Wade
July 9, 2011In a year already marked by natural disasters and humanitarian emergencies, another tragedy is unfolding in the Horn of Africa.
Failed crops and high global food prices have triggered severe food shortages across Somalia, Ethiopia, Kenya, Uganda and Djibouti. The UN warns that more than 10 million people are threatened by the worst drought to hit the region in six decades.
As village wells dry up and livestock perish, tens of thousands are leaving their homes in search of food and water. More than 360,000 people have taken shelter at Dadaab, the world's biggest refugee camp near the Kenya-Somalia border, and there are fears that could soon swell to 500,000.
Aid officials have not yet declared a famine but they warn the crisis threatens to turn into a catastrophe.
Images of malnourished children and parched African landscapes now being broadcast from the region are reminiscent of the great Ethiopian famine of 1984 which shocked the world and transformed the international aid sector. It also spawned a new style of celebrity activism. The 1984 Band Aid single Do they know its Christmas and the Live Aid concerts in July 1985 raised about $150 million.
But the fund-raising power of African crises has waned since the mid-1980s. World Vision Australia has been running an appeal for the Horn of Africa since January but the response has been disappointing.
Less than 40 per cent of the fund-raising target has been met.
''Back in 1984 the shocking pictures really grabbed people's attention, but it doesn't mobilise people in the same way any more,'' one aid worker said.
The Horn of Africa drought adds to the formidable list of natural disasters over the past 12 months. Exactly a year ago, Pakistan was in the grip of overwhelming floods that affected more than 20 million people. Veteran aid workers told me it was the most destructive natural disaster they had ever seen.
Floods and cyclones ravaged northern Australia in January, Christchurch was devastated by an earthquake in February and Japan was hit by an earthquake and tsunami that morphed into a nuclear crisis in March.
The Horn of Africa is not the only part of the world plagued by acute food shortages at the moment. Last week UNICEF officials said more than 6 million people were going hungry in North Korea and almost 90,000 children there are malnourished.
If it seems to you that the frequency of humanitarian emergencies is increasing, you're right. Figures published this week in a review of Australia's aid program show the number of natural disasters worldwide has risen from 60 in 1975 to 321 in 2009.
The European Union says that while the number of natural disasters over the past 35 years has risen five-fold, the damage caused by them has increased by between seven and eight times. The World Bank also says natural disasters are increasing in number and impact.
Research by aid agency Oxfam found the number of people affected each year by natural disasters has increased, on average, from about 75 million in 1980 to almost 250 million in 2007. There are predictions that the impacts of climate change could lift that number to 375 million by 2015. Australia's neighbourhood, the Asia-Pacific, is the world's most natural disaster-prone region, with 40 per cent of registered disasters between 2000 and 2008.
Developing countries are also disproportionately affected - they account for about 95 per cent of all people killed by natural disasters.
The crop failure caused by a lack of rain is not the only cause of the Horn of Africa crisis. In addition to the prolonged drought, soaring world food prices have exacerbated the suffering. There are reports that food prices in some parts of Kenya are up to 80 per cent higher than the five-year average, while in Ethiopia, the consumer price index jumped about 41 per cent. The price of maize has jumped almost 60 per cent over the past year in Mandera, a town in northern Kenya, the UN's Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs says. In Jijiga, Ethiopia, the cost of maize has doubled, while in Baidoa, Somalia, sorghum costs three times more than in May last year.
These price increases have pushed millions of families over the edge. About 45 per cent of displaced Somalis arriving in refugee camps in Kenya and Ethiopia are acutely malnourished, a proportion that the UN says exceeds ''all emergency thresholds''. Death rates are also at emergency levels and growing.
''Children are already dying,'' said World Vision aid worker Tristan Clements who was in Somalia recently. ''This is always the case in an acute food crisis, because they are the most vulnerable and they are dying in growing numbers.''
The benchmark global food price index published by the UN's Food and Agriculture Organisation hit a record high this year, driven by steep increases in the price of wheat, corn, sugar, dairy and oils. A mix of factors is simultaneously boosting demand and constraining supply and many experts say a structural shift in the global food market now threatens to keep food prices high.
A landmark independent review of Australia's aid program, released on Wednesday, emphasised the growing frequency and destructiveness of natural disasters. It recommended a substantial increase in the resources Australia's allocates to respond to humanitarian emergencies.
''This is an area of growing importance, which is globally under-funded and where Australia performs well,'' it said.
The demand for international humanitarian assistance is set to grown significantly as the effects of climate change make extreme weather events more common.
Images of human suffering caused by natural disasters might have lost some of their shock value since the Ethiopian famine of 1984. But we're likely to see more of them, not less.
Hamish McDonald is on leave.
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