DFID
Malnourished children in Somalia
The famine continues in East Africa. A few stories of note:
TIME: 29,000 Somali children already dead
Guardian: Why weren’t aid agencies able to get food there in time?
UN calls for long-term aid for farmers to prevent famines in future
NPR: Somali-Canadian rapper sees famine up close and personal
The online international news organization GlobalPost has published this useful interactive map of the food crisis in the Horn of Africa. It is based on data from the UN’s World Food Programme (which I suppose justifies the somewhat invasive WFP request-to-donate button on the map).
Go to link above. Below is just a screen grab.
Global Post
Derek Sciba/World Concern photo
12 million people at risk of starvation
News on the 12 million people facing starvation in the Horn of Africa drought today is focusing on the Turkish prime minister’s visit to Mogadishu, Somalia, the first visit to the war-torn capital in nearly two decades.
According to a report in Al Jazeera, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s visit “follows Wednesday’s meeting in Istanbul by members of the Organisation of Islamic Co-operation (OIC), who pledged to donate $350 million to assist the drought- and famine-stricken Somalis.”
Meanwhile, humanitarian agencies continue to rush aid to the region.
Here is an update from Derek Sciba, in Kenya near the Somalia border. Derek is marketing director of World Concern, a Seattle-based, non-profit humanitarian organization providing community development and disaster response:
Erin Gray/Mercy Corps photo
Eighteen-year-old Saadia Farah and her one-year-old daughter Amina
Last week I wrote about IREX, an international, nonprofit agency working in the famine-struck Horn of Africa on long-term projects like education, media and community building. Today I’m focusing on another group that is hard at work providing immediate aid to the region – Mercy Corps.
Tom Paulson recently posted a couple of reports on the work Mercy Corps Communications Director Joy Portella, and others, have been doing in getting out the news on issues in Africa and how they are, basically filling in for news organizations that have dropped the ball on international coverage. But today’s post is not about Mercy Corps’ communications role. It’s about Mercy Corps’ ongoing direct effort to head off starvation for more than 1 million people.
Yesterday, Seattle-based Portella and a colleague, Erin Gray, a communications officer for Mercy Corps’ European headquarters in Edinburgh, Scotland, gave me a rundown of the aid agency’s work in the areas facing famine.
Joy Portella/Mercy Corps photo
A traditional herder stands on the withered landscape outside the drought-stricken town of Hadado, Kenya
Oxfam, Wikimedia Commons photo
Oxfam workers distribute aid in a Kenyan camp near the Somalia border.
Since the ongoing famine across the Horn of Africa has made Somalia, once more, a top news story, I thought, over the next few days, it would be good to take a look at some of the organizations working there.
There are dozens of aid and development type agencies working in Somalia and the region, of course, so this will be just a glimpse of what has been done there and of what work continues even when the region isn’t in the headlines.
At the bottom of this post, I am again running a list of some of the many organizations that are working to help the 12-million plus people currently facing famine across the region.
Today’s post looks at IREX, an international, nonprofit agency that “enables local individuals and institutions to build key elements of a vibrant society: quality education, independent media, and strong communities.”
It was formed in 1968 as the International Research & Exchanges Board by some of the top U.S. universities to administer exchanges with the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. IREX now works, or partners with other agencies, in over 100 countries.
The following text and video is taken from the IREX website, and is just one example of its efforts in Somalia:
By Oxfam East Africa, Wikimedia Creative Commons photo
Women and children refugees of the famine waiting to enter Dadaab camp in Kenya.
Today, relief agencies are saying there are some 12 million people in the Horn of Africa in danger of starving as a result of drought, exacerbated by conflict in Somalia.
As the famine crisis continues to worsen, it’s hard to know where to begin with its story. The U.S. today announced $17 million in new U.S. aid for the region, over 1,000 Somali refugees per day continue to arrive at Kenya camps, piracy is hampering delivery of relief supplies to Somalia and U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon talked with rock star Bono about the need for increased aid efforts.
Another interesting, and revealing, story angle comes from the Inter Press Service News Agency, pointing much of the blame for the famine at the United Nations for not putting more effort into long-term development programs across the region.
Gustavo Capdevila, writing for IPS, described a bleak situation:
(See ways to donate at end of this story.)
The Atlantic “Wire” has published this graphic analysis below of the media’s coverage of the famine in the Horn of Africa as compared to coverage of the shootings-bombing in Norway, the News of the World phone hacking scandal and the debt ceiling debate in Congress.
Compared to these stories anyway, the media hasn’t been paying much attention — even though 500,000 children are on the brink of starvation and thousands have already died.
Atlantic
As the story notes, this has the net effect of making it hard for aid organizations to raise money for the relief effort. Does such media neglect also fuel the political push to cut foreign aid in Congress?
As the United Nations and the international community ramps up to airlift food and supplies into East Africa, mostly for starving Somali refugees, two perspectives on this crisis seemed especially interesting to me.
In Foreign Policy, Charles Kenny contends that, in this day and age, allowing a famine to occur is basically a crime against humanity:
For all its horror, starvation is also one of the simpler forms of mortality to prevent — it just takes food. Drought, poor roads, poverty — all are contributing factors to the risk of famine, but sustenance in the hands of the hungry is a pretty foolproof solution.
As a result, famine deaths in the modern world are almost always the result of deliberate acts on the part of governing authorities. That is why widespread starvation is a crime against humanity and the leaders who abet it should be tried at the International Criminal Court (ICC).
That might sound a little melodramatic, but read his argument. Compelling stuff.
On a different line of thought, David Dickson, editor of the Science and Development Network, contends that the UN, Western powers and aid organizations could have been well-prepared for this crisis — if they had paid any attention to the scientific evidence reported by weather and drought prediction experts.
Dickson writes:
Earlier this week, the UN declared the drought in southern Somalia had become so bad that it could be officially declared a famine — the first time the word had been applied to this region in almost 20 years.
The news came as little surprise to agencies that had been monitoring the lack of rainfall over the past year, which is partly linked to the La Niña event in the Pacific Ocean. They had predicted that a widescale shortage of food was highly likely to occur.
