Ethiopian famine anniversary raises food aid issues

Oct 23, 2009, 14:02 GMT

Nairobi/Addis Ababa - Exactly 25 years ago, BBC correspondent Michael Buerk unveiled the full extent of Ethiopia's now infamous drought, calling it a 'Biblical famine' in the 20th century.

A cavalcade of horrors paraded before the cameras in Korem, northern Ethiopia: skeletal children clinging to their equally wasted mothers; corpses of infants wrapped in sackcloth lined up in the dust; hundreds of desperate people tottering across the plain on stick-thin legs, prompted into a shaky sprint by the rumour of a food delivery.

The harrowing pictures prompted an international reaction led by the Band Aid and Live Aid musical movements. Millions of dollars were raised for food aid.

Even with the intervention, over a million people died in the famine, brought on by failed rains and exacerbated by conflict.

Yet some say the world has learned little from the tragedy.

According to international charity Oxfam, donors - particularly the United States - need to move away from what it called 'knee-jerk' emergency food aid, which is often driven by commercial and political interests.

Ethiopia on Thursday again appealed for food aid for 6.2 million people, blaming a drought that has swept East and the Horn of Africa.

According to the United Nations and international aid agencies, 23 million people in Ethiopia, Kenya, Somalia, Uganda, Sudan, Djibouti and Tanzania are facing hunger.

The rains have begun in some places, but aid agencies say it will be months before the benefits of good harvests are felt and that short-term flooding could make things worse.

In its report, Band Aids and Beyond, Oxfam said that such problems could be mitigated by helping communities prepare for drought through common-sense methods such as collecting water during the rainy season.

'Food aid offers temporary relief ... but does not tackle the underlying causes that continue to make people vulnerable to disaster year-after-year,' said Penny Lawrence, International Director for Oxfam.

'Drought does not need to mean hunger and destitution,' she added. 'If communities have irrigation for crops, grain stores, and wells to harvest rains then they can survive despite what the elements throw at them.'

Yet the amount of money the world spends on helping communities prepare for drought is only a fraction of overall aid.

Oxfam said that in 2007, the latest year for which figures are available, only 0.14 per cent of all overseas aid globally went to disaster risk management.

The European Commission's Humanitarian Aid department (ECHO) is spending 10 million euros on drought preparedness in the Horn of Africa this year.

ECHO, which partners with local agencies to help rehabilitate shallow wells and set up rain water catchments, told the German Press Agency dpa that it may expand its programme next year.

But compared to the hundreds of millions of dollars requested by aid agencies over the last few months for emergency food aid, this figure pales into insignificance.

Nicholas Martlew, the report author, said that commercial and political interests lay behind the focus on food aid.

'There have been attempts to de-link aid from narrow commercial interests, but the US farm lobby has blocked progress,' he told dpa. 'There are also political reasons (for food aid): it looks good to have sacks of food sent by the US people arriving in disasters-hit regions.'

Martlew said that US food aid was also far more expensive, costing up to 2 dollars to pack and ship for each dollar of food sent to famine zones.

'We hope the Oxfam report will show food aid is bad value for the US taxpayer,' he said.

The criticism of the US focus on food aid is not new - charities and economists have long said that giving cash allows food to be bought locally and helps boost development.

It is a message the President Barack Obama's administration seems to be taking onboard.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said recently that while the US had been reliant on food aid, it would try to help local farmers produce more.

'We're seeking to close that gap between development and humanitarian assistance by dedicating development resources to engage the poorest in the growth process and to support community development,' she said.

The US this year committed 3.5 billion over three years to help increase global food security. In 2008, Food for Peace - the US's main food aid programme - spent 2.6 billion dollars delivering food produced in the US to 49 countries.

Oxfam believes that with climate change widely accepted to be biting in Africa, prompting longer and more frequent droughts, the shift away from food aid must happen faster.

'Climate change makes the urgency of this approach greater than ever before,' said Lawrence. 'Ethiopians on the frontline of climate change cannot wait another 25 years for common sense to become common practice.'