POVERTY: EGYPT: Fuel shortage threatens bread supplies

CAIRO, 2 April 2012 (IRIN)

 Photo: Amr Emam/IRIN
Customers buy subsidized bread at a Cairo bakery

It has been three months since a fuel shortage hit Egypt, and people’s patience is wearing thin amid fears the crisis could disrupt the production of subsidized bread.
“I move from one petrol station to another every day to find the fuel necessary for the work of the bakery,” Omar Muselhi, a bakery owner from Giza, told IRIN. “I cannot do this for long. If things get worse, I will close down.”
Most of Egypt’s subsidized bakeries need diesel to operate, and some have had to close, for example in the Nile Delta governorate of Monofiya (Arabic).
Outside Muselhi’s bakery, men, women and children form two long lines, and wait their turn.
“I buy 20 loaves of this bread for one pound, whereas the same number sells for four pounds at unsubsidized bakeries,” said Ayman Farahat, standing in line outside the bakery. “This shows how important these bakeries are for people like me.”
Observers say there is a 35 percent shortfall in fuel supplies. The government blames hoarding for the crisis. Thousands of cars queue outside petrol stations from early morning, while long queues form outside gas cylinder centres.
“We are doing our best to solve the problem, but what is happening is abnormal,” Petroleum Minister Abdallah Ghorab said on 24 March. “Some people take the subsidized fuel and sell it on the black market.”
The Petroleum Ministry has increased daily diesel supplies from 36,000 tons to 38,000 tons; petrol supplies from 16,000 to 18,000 tons; and gas cylinders from one million to 1.3 million.
But despite the move, there are numerous reports (Arabic) of fighting over fuel, reflecting citizens’ exasperation, and the need for further government intervention

Ambulance services are also at risk.
“The drivers go to petrol stations from early morning,” Naeem Rizk, the operations manager at Cairo’s main ambulance point, told IRIN. “Sometimes they spend the whole day waiting, but when their turn comes, they are told the fuel is over.”
When a policeman recently called Rizk to ask for help after he was wounded in a fight against armed men on the outskirts of Cairo, Rizk could not find an ambulance with enough fuel to take the policeman to hospital. The policeman’s colleagues had to call the Interior Ministry to borrow some.
Mohamed Abdullah, a 30-year-old ambulance driver, says his job has become even more stressful. “There are always long queues at petrol stations…This prevents me from reaching patients in time. The patients’ relatives always yell at me.”

Rethinking subsidies
Some economists believe the current crisis may force the government to rethink its fuel subsidies’ policy. Egypt spent the equivalent of US$83.3 billion subsidizing fuel over the past five years, according to the Petroleum Ministry.
“Around 60 percent of these subsidies go to people who do not deserve them,” said Rashad Abdo, a leading economist from Cairo University. “This makes it necessary for the government to rethink these subsidies.”
The government is currently reconsidering its support to major industrial institutions, which account for almost 70 percent of fuel subventions.
“If we can reduce petroleum subsidies by 10 percent, we can channel this money for the building of houses, hospitals, or schools,” said Petroleum Minister Ghorab. “We need to deliver subsidies to those who deserve them,” he was quoted as saying by al Masry Al Youm newspaper (Arabic) on 11 March.
Another government plan envisages the issuing of vouchers to poorer citizens to enable them to buy cooking gas for the equivalent of 83 US cents instead of US$5 for everyone else.
http://www.irinnews.org/Report/95222/EGYPT-Fuel-shortage-threatens-bread-supplies

MALNUTRITION: EGYPT: Fears of rising malnutrition amid increasing poverty

CAIRO, 9 March 2012 (IRIN)

 Photo: Martina Fuchs/IRIN
Experts say malnutrition in Egypt is not related to a shortage of food, but rather to a lack of access to proper foods, leading to a deficiency in essential micronutrients

Nasser Ali Hossan Morsy, who worked as a porter in central-northern Egypt, knew he needed another source of income when he suffered lower back problems last year so he decided to take a loan and buy a motorcycle.
The motorcycle, he reasoned, would help him provide for his wife and five children. Once operational, it could also help him pay back the 3,500 Egyptian pound loan (US$580). But things took a turn for the worse when the motorcycle was stolen, and shortly after, major protests erupted throughout Egypt in February 2010, leading to the ousting of then President Hosni Mubarak.
Since then Morsy has been scrambling to make ends meet in his home town of Maghagha, some 175km south of Cairo. Between his debt and back problems, earning enough to feed his wife and children, aged two months to 16 years, has been a real challenge. “I don’t find enough food because there’s no more work,” he said.
He is not alone. “Poverty is a common result of the 25 January revolution,” said Nabil Gamil Mohamed, professor of paediatrics at Minya University and regional head of political party the Muslim Brotherhood. Increasing poverty, he added, has had two effects: new cases of malnutrition have emerged, and families already dealing with malnutrition are facing more pressure to feed properly.
In Maghagha’s Qulyan neighbourhood, where Morsy lives, many people now feed only on `ful’ (cooked and mashed fava beans) and sesame-sprinkled ta’meyya (deep-fried fava bean patty) sandwiches. Their daily diet does not include fruit, vegetables or dairy products, and last time most had meat was last November, during Eid al-Adha, he said. It had been donated by the local al-Gama’ayat al-Shara’aya, the social arm of the Muslim Brotherhood.
According to Awad Abdul Hafiz, head of the charity al-Gama’ayat al-Shara’aya responsible for Qulyan, about 30 new needy families registered with his organization last year. It is a small number, mainly because Maghagha did not witness the same level of violence that rocked the Egyptian capital and the Nile delta.
Currently, his organization provides about 650 Maghagha families with a meal every two weeks, and a minimum monthly food allowance of 20 Egyptian pounds ($3) per child. This supplements an average monthly family income of 200-300 Egyptian pounds ($33-50).
Al-Gama’ayat al-Shara’aya’s money comes from roughly 1,000 donors, but the economic turmoil in which Egypt finds itself has had an impact on this as well. “There’s been a slight decrease in donations since the revolution,” says Abdul Hafiz.

Low incomes
According to figures released by the World Food Programme (WFP) in November, the monthly income of about 77 percent of vulnerable households in Egypt did not cover their monthly needs.
Another WFP report released in December but based on 2009 government data showed that governorates in Upper Egypt were already at great risk from food insecurity, which was linked to their precarious economic situation.
According to Alia Hafiz, a nutrition programme officer at WFP’s office in Cairo, an assessment is currently under way to examine the consequences of last year’s events on food security and vulnerability. However, she added, anecdotal evidence suggests that poverty is on the rise in Upper Egypt, and that malnutrition is following an upward trend in the region.
“Malnutrition is an issue that is not improving, and it is not stable. It may be on the rise because of the unstable situation,” she said.
Experts say malnutrition in Egypt is not related to a shortage of food, but rather to a lack of access to proper foods, leading to a deficiency in essential micronutrients. Indicators from the 2009 data showed that 30 percent of Upper Egyptians suffered from caloric deprivation, and 49 percent had poor dietary diversity.
Almost a third of Upper Egyptians suffer from iron, zinc, or vitamin A deficiency. Iron deficiency leads to loss of attention and low productivity, which impinges on education and work. “Anaemia mainly affects children, because their bodies have higher demands,” said Hafiz.
A lack of vitamin A may lead to night blindness, also known as nyctalopia, while zinc deficiency may cause severe diarrhoea and pneumonia. These two health problems are common among children in the governorate of Minya, according to Mohamed of Minya University.
“This is a vicious circle, because diarrhoea and pneumonia weaken the immune system, and a weak immune system leads to more diarrhoea and pneumonia,” he added.

http://www.irinnews.org/Report/95040/EGYPT-Fears-of-rising-malnutrition-amid-increasing-poverty

MALNUTRITION: EGYPT: Desertification threat to local food production

CAIRO, 11 July 2011 (IRIN)

 Photo: Amr Emam/IRIN
Water shortages sparked off protests in Minya Governorate last year, as farmers demanded water for their crops. (file photo)

 Only about 3 percent of Egypt’s land area is cultivated but desertification, and construction work fuelled by economic activity and a rapidly growing population, are eating into this resource, posing a significant threat to domestic food production, according to experts.
“Desertification is the real danger everybody should pay attention to,” Abdel Rahman Attia, a professor of agriculture at Cairo University, told IRIN. “This problem is manifesting itself in a huge food gap [which] will widen even more in the future as we lose more agricultural land to desertification.”
Egypt loses an estimated 11,736 hectares of agricultural land every year, making the nation’s 3.1 million hectares of agricultural land prone "to total destruction in the foreseeable future", he said.
The country imports more than 60 percent of its food, and about 768,903 hectares of agricultural land in the north Delta region has been lost to rising ground water, poor drainage practices and encroaching sand dunes over the decades, he added.
Rising sea levels also pose a threat to agricultural land, causing intrusion of seawater into groundwater, and reducing agricultural productivity.
Thousands of acres of agricultural land have also been lost to construction. According to the Ministry of Agriculture, 165,000 cases of building on agricultural land were recorded between February and June 2011.
“This is disastrous,” said Salah Youssef, head of agricultural services at the ministry.
Ismail Abdel Galil, the former chairman of Egypt’s Desert Research Centre, said studies showed that just over a hectare of fertile land in the Nile Valley is lost every hour because of construction on agricultural land.
In a paper he warned that this trend would continue as long as there was a “business as usual” attitude.

UN convention
Egypt signed the UN Convention to Combat Desertification in 1994, subsequently banning the use of top soil as a raw material for red bricks, taking measures to restrict urban development on arable land, and regulating irrigation systems.
But despite this, the combination of dwindling farmland and a rapidly increasing population - expected to reach 123 million in 2029, from 85 million at present - will make it harder for Egypt to meet its food needs, Attia said.
Increasing desertification has also affected water availability. Egypt’s 55.5 billion cubic metre share of Nile water is already insufficient to satisfy the country’s growing needs, according to Egyptian officials.
For example, to irrigate all its 3.1 million hectares of agricultural land, Egypt needs 10-15 billion cubic metres more Nile water, said Maghawri Shehata, a leading water expert.
“Water has already stopped reaching some fields in the northern and middle parts of the Nile Delta. This makes our country lose even more land to desertification.”
Agriculture is responsible for 85 percent of water consumption in Egypt, according to the country’s state of the environment report. Egypt’s water problems are expected to get worse as upstream countries like Ethiopia and Uganda, which also have rapidly growing populations, push for a greater share of the water to satisfy their own needs.
In 2010, six upstream Nile countries met in Uganda and signed a new water-sharing agreement. Egypt and Sudan did not sign, and have called instead for fresh talks involving all riparian states.

Climate change
Environmentalists warn that climate change will further complicate the situation.
“It is difficult to assess the full destruction [that] climate changes cause to agriculture in this country,” said Emad Farid, a leading environmentalist. “Increased temperatures and the severity of heat and cold waves cause rainfall fluctuations. These fluctuations lead to desertification at the end of the day…
“Some action must be taken to compensate for the loss of agricultural space by reclaiming the desert hinterland of villages in the Delta and the other areas. We should not stand passively by and watch our agricultural land destroyed acre by acre.”
http://www.irinnews.org/report.aspx?reportID=93193

POVERTY: EGYPT: Sewage-fed vegetable plots pose health risk

23 June 2011 (IRIN)

 Photo: Sarah Kamshoshy/IRIN
Because of water scarcity, many farmers in Egypt are now siphoning untreated sewage onto their farms to keep their crops growing (file photo)SHARQIA,

 Faced with a shortage of water for irrigation, Ahmed Osman, a farmer in his late thirties, opted to divert local sewage water to irrigate his two-hectare vegetable plot in the heart of Egypt’s Nile Delta governorate of Sharkia.
“Without water, any water, our plants will die, and we will go begging,” he said. “There can be no agriculture without water.”
He is not alone. Other farmers in his village, Kafr Saqr, are doing the same.
“Villagers around this country have to use untreated sewage to irrigate their land because Nile water is becoming so scarce; the nation’s sewage treatment plants do not function properly, and irrigation canals are not dug everywhere,” said Maghawri Shehata, a leading water expert and former president of Monofiya University. “Egypt needs to take action to stop this or it will be in for major catastrophes in the future.”
Given its rapidly rising population, Egypt is fast becoming water poor, and this is taking its toll on agriculture. As a result more and more farmers are now using pumps to siphon thousands of cubic metres of untreated sewage onto their farms to keep the crops growing.
The sewage-dependent vegetables and fruits end up in markets as far away as Cairo and as near as Kafr Saqr. Health experts say the practice is dangerous.

Health risks
“Untreated sewage is full of harmful matter,” said Mahmud Amr, a toxicology expert. “Using it in irrigating vegetables and fruits could result in serious health hazards.”
A 2009 study of the waterways and canals in the Nile Delta, conducted by the State Ministry for Environmental Affairs, found concentrations of harmful materials in these waterways and canals exceeded permissible limits.
“Organic matter concentration (biochemical oxygen demand) exceeded the permissible limit (6mg/l) at all canals,” said the report, which was included in Egypt’s 2009 State of the Environment Report.
The study found that average ammonia concentrations at most monitoring points in Delta canals exceeded permissible limits. It also found an E. coli bacterial count exceeding safe limits (1,000 cells per 100 ml) as prescribed by the World Health Organization.
According to medical experts, there could be a link between the rise in the number of kidney failure, liver cancer and respiratory disease cases in Egypt and the use of unclean water for irrigating vegetable and fruit farms.
In 2009, a report presented to the Egyptian parliament warned against irrigating plants with untreated sewage.
Sewage can be adapted for agricultural use if properly treated, said Khalid Al Qadi, an environmental expert and professor at Helwan University . “The problem is that sewage treatment in this regard is very costly.”
Osman, meanwhile, dismisses talk of the danger of using untreated sewage: “Some people like to talk only. What else can people like me do while clean water is a dream?”

Sharing the Nile
The River Nile is the world’s longest river and serves nine African countries.
Over the years, Egypt’s allotted share of 55.5 billion cubic metres has proven insufficient to meet the needs of a growing population now numbering about 85 million - three times more than it was when Egypt and Sudan signed an agreement on sharing the Nile’s water in 1959. Currently, agriculture is responsible for 70 percent of water consumption in the country.
“There is a clear water deficit of between 10 and 15 billion cubic metres here,” said water expert Shehata. “This shortage is expected to grow even more in line with population growth.”
A symptom of water’s political significance was seen with the July 2010 protest by 600 people from the southern governorate of Minya, who came to the Irrigation Ministry in Cairo to display their anger at the lack of it.
The problem is likely to get worse because upstream Nile Basin countries like Ethiopia and Uganda, which also have rapidly growing populations are pushing for a greater share of the water to satisfy their own needs.
In 2010, six upstream countries met in Uganda and signed a new water-sharing agreement. Egypt and Sudan did not sign, and called instead for fresh talks involving all riparian states. In the last few months, the new Egyptian government has sent emissaries to various Nile Basin countries to pursue the issue.

http://www.irinnews.org/report.aspx?reportID=93045

POVERTY: Egypt: IMF says welcomes Egypt draft budget, talks ongoing

Jun 2, 2011
CAIRO (Reuters) - The IMF welcomed on Thursday the Egyptian government's draft 2011/12 budget, which will increase spending to create jobs and help the poor, and said talks on possible IMF financing support for Egypt were continuing.
Egypt's cabinet approved on Wednesday a budget for the 2011/12 financial year that increases spending by a quarter as the government strives to help the poor after a popular uprising unseated the country's president.
To help finance the increased spending, Egypt will introduce a 10 percent capital gains tax and increase the income tax rate levied on corporations and individually owned companies by 5 percentage points, the government said.
Ratna Sahay, the International Monetary Fund's regional deputy director, said the IMF welcomed the budget's goal of promoting social justice.
"The measures go in the right direction of supporting economic recovery, generating jobs and assisting low income households, while maintaining macroeconomic stability," Sahay said in an emailed statement.
"Meanwhile, discussions between the IMF mission currently in Cairo and the Egyptian authorities on the government's home-grown economic plan that can be supported by IMF financing are progressing well."
Financial markets, however, were unnerved by the planned introduction of a capital gains tax and Egypt's benchmark index fell 2.7 percent on Thursday, its biggest one-day decline since April 18.
http://af.reuters.com/article/topNews/idAFJOE7510P020110602

MALNUTRITION: Cost of eating spikes for the Arab world

May 20 2011 : Olivia Ward
Let them eat bread. That refrain, from the authoritarian regime of President Hosni Mubarak, kept impoverished Egyptians from violent rebellion for decades. When food riots broke out in 2008, he contained them by promising to keep up the subsidies that were the barrier between malnutrition and starvation for one-third of the country’s 80 million people. The protests that brought down his regime were driven by hunger for democracy rather than bread. But as Egypt and other Arab countries remain volatile, there are fears that spiking grain prices could propel new discontent.
In the past week, wheat prices soared by 17 per cent, a worrying sign for those countries where it is a staple of the diet.
The Arab world buys about one-third of all the world’s traded wheat, says the World Bank, and that’s due to rise by 40 per cent over the next decade.

“In the U.S., people eat a lot of bread,” says Rami Zurayk of American University of Beirut, an expert in land and water resources. “But imagine a country where they eat about three times that much."
That would be Tunisia, where the Food and Agriculture Organization reports a total of 216 kilograms of wheat a year consumed by every person.
It is the world’s highest level of wheat consumption, and it far outstrips the U.S. and Canadian total of around 80 kilos a year.
But it isn’t unique in the Arab countries, where poverty is persistent, and bread and wheat products the cheapest way of filling a family’s stomachs.
Algeria’s per capita consumption is 210 kilos per year, and Egypt’s 185.
But Egypt is also the world’s leading importer of wheat, and the new transitional government must cope with escalating prices, along with pressure to continue the subsidies that Mubarak began. It’s a practice that other Arab leaders adopted in the hope of keeping their countries tranquil.
“In Egypt the poor aren’t starving, but they live on bread and tea for breakfast, lunch and dinner,” says Bessma Momani, a senior fellow of the Centre for International Governance Innovation. “If you take that away, you will have mass starvation.”
A large number of Egyptians, and other Arab citizens, spend most of their income to feed their families, and those at the bottom of the economic food chain feel the pain the most.
The spiking wheat prices should be good news for producers like Canada — which supplies only a fraction of Egypt’s needs, but sends more than 2 million tonnes of wheat to the Arab region, with Iraq Canada’s biggest client.
The prices are a boon to “farmers with grain in their bins,” says the Canadian Wheat Board.
But it cautions, this year “extremely wet growing and harvest seasons across most of the Prairies resulted in below-average production and quality for wheat, durum and barley,” while production of six major grains dropped 20 per cent, with spring wheat grades the lowest since 2004.
For Arab countries that supply wheat to their people at subsidized prices, the picture is worse.
“The politics taking place today makes it hard for them to cut back or re-target their food subsidies,” says Julian Lampietti of World Bank, who led a 2009 study of Arab food security.
But he adds, although the impact on government budgets is significant in some countries, “it’s probably not unmanageable. The combination of high oil and food prices shows a different effect too.”
While oil-importing countries suffer most, producers may balance the books by taking in bigger oil profits. And, Lampietti says, “there is a lot that can be done to cut down the cost of food,” through better management, including a change in the way grain is procured, unloaded and distributed.
But he warns, “I think we are looking at a new normal in prices. They are more volatile and leveling off at higher levels than in the 1990s.”
“Food prices in the past haven’t gone up the way they have in the last two years,” says Evan Fraser of University of Guelph, author of Empires of Food. “We are experiencing an extraordinary series of shocks to the food system.”
Grain reserves were once believed to be the answer, but the expense of stockpiling, and the opposition of the International Monetary Fund — which pushed indebted countries to reduce reserves for “market efficiency” and import grain when needed — has frayed that safety net. So has real estate speculation that gobbled arable land for development.
http://www.thestar.com/news/canada/article/994961--cost-of-eating-spikes-for-the-arab-world

POVERTY: EGYPT: Harder times as food, gas prices spiral

CAIRO, 11 May 2011 (IRIN)

 Photo: Amr Emam/IRIN
Egypt pays about US$1 billion a year to subsidize bread to feed its poorest people (file photo)

Abdel Moneim Ahmed was finally able to buy 10 loaves of subsidized bread after queuing for one-and-a-half hours with 30 people outside a bakery in the Egyptian capital, Cairo. Another woman, known only as Zeinab, said she had waited two hours. "You can see the problem for yourself,” she told IRIN.
The scene playing out in this El Sayeda Zeinab neighbourhood symbolizes a much wider problem. For the past few weeks, Egypt, which imports half its food and subsidizes bread prices, has experienced severe shortages of this key staple.
Egyptians call it "aish", literally meaning life. The price is fixed at five piasters (less than one US cent per loaf), against 50 piasters per unsubsidized loaf. Economists say Egyptian families spend about 40 percent of their monthly income on food.
"The real reason for the current inflation is that governments, even the existing one, do not protect consumers from merchants’ abuse,” said Ahmed El-Naggar, head economist at Ahram Center for Political and Strategic Studies, and editor in chief of its annual publication, Strategic Economic Directions.
The Egyptian economy took a bashing from protests that swept across the country earlier this year, hurting tourism revenues and affecting trade. "This led to a six percent decrease in exports in January and February," said El-Naggar.
According to the Finance Ministry, urban consumer inflation rose to 11.5 percent in the 12 months to March, its highest level since April 2010, from 10.7 percent in February.
"We no longer buy beef and chicken," Samira Abuzaid, a 45-year-old housewife, said. "I tell my children that we need to adapt to a diet without these two items."

Gas scarce
Another vital commodity that has become scarce and more expensive is cooking gas.
"Gas cylinders have suddenly disappeared," Emad Abul A'as said as he waited to buy a cylinder in the southern industrial city of Helwan. "If I do not get the cylinder from this centre, I will have to pay a lot for a cylinder outside."
Abul A'as, a 37-year-old cement factory worker and father of two, would have to pay six times the price of a subsidized gas cylinder elsewhere.
The government blames the situation in Libya and Gaza. Recently, Social Solidarity Minister Gouda Abdel Khaliq cited smuggling to Libya and Gaza as a reason for cylinder scarcity in Egypt, which imports 60 percent of its solid gas from Saudi Arabia and Algeria.
"Smugglers benefit from the difference in the price of the cylinders in Egypt," said Hossam Arafat, chairman of the petroleum section at the Federation of Commerce Chambers. "What makes this possible is that the government subsidizes the cylinders to the tune of 90 percent here."
Prices of other commodities have also risen dramatically in recent weeks. The prices of tomatoes, onions, green peppers, lemons, eggplants, potatoes, zucchini and beans have trebled, while items such as lentils are out of the reach of many.
"The future might be worse," said Rashad Abdou, an economics professor from Cairo University. "The prices might increase even more."

Consumer protection?
On 14 April, the World Bank said global food prices were 36 percent above their levels a year ago and remained volatile, driven in part by higher fuel costs connected to events in the Middle East and North Africa.
Another 10 percent increase in global prices could drive an additional 10 million people below the $1.25 poverty line, it added.
“More poor people are suffering and more people could become poor because of high and volatile food prices,” said World Bank President Robert Zoellick. “We have to put food first and protect the poor and vulnerable who spend most of their money on food.”
The government says it will try to bring down prices, according to Prime Minister Essam Sharaf in an address last week.
The deputy director at the at Ahram Center for Political and Strategic Studies, Abdel Fatah Al-Gibali, called for consumer protection, saying the supply of certain commodities had been monopolized by a small number of merchants, which affected the dynamics of the market.
“During the last period, or specifically since the start of the [protests] that toppled Mubarak, the society was not producing at all and the supply was less than the demand, [hence] an increase in prices,” he added.

http://www.irinnews.org/report.aspx?reportID=92682

MALNUTRITION: Out of the spotlight, the food crisis worsens

13 May 2011

While the world has its attention riveted on the political events in North Africa and the Middle East or on natural disasters such as those happening in Japan, an unprecedented food crisis is taking place that is affecting millions of people around the world.

Soaring food prices
In December 2008, food prices reached their highest level in 30 years. The economic crisis and market volatility then plunged millions of people into poverty. Yet, according to a report by the FAO in December 2010, new records have now been reached. In March, prices recorded a slight drop for the first time in eight months.

Dramatic consequences
Such volatility may seem innocuous, yet 44 million people will be pushed under the poverty threshold due to these price increases.
One billion people already suffer from chronic malnutrition. In the poorest countries, almost 80% of the family’s budget is spent on food that is often of poor quality. Children and pregnant women are most affected by malnutrition because they become then more vulnerable to infections and illnesses. But, families no longer have the means to seek medical care in such situations. As a result, approximately one third of deaths in children under five years of age are linked to malnutrition!

The crisis is already taking place
This is not simply a case of scaremongering. A crisis is already unfolding in numerous vulnerable countries such as Haiti or Egypt, to name just a few.
In Bangladesh, for example, the delegation from Terre des hommes carried out a survey in five periurban centres. It revealed that almost 33% of the children under five years of age who were examined suffered from acute malnutrition and 18% of those suffered from severe acute malnutrition. According to the World Health Organisation, the threshold for declaring a state of emergency is set at 15%. The projects on the ground were immediately reorganised to deal with this alarming crisis by opening up new structures or increasing support capacities. At the same time, the resilience of populations facing food insecurity was strengthened, and promotional efforts, as well as projects focusing on prevention, clean water, sanitation and hygiene, are now underway.
Terre des hommes is active in the area of health and nutrition with 19 projects currently being run in 15 countries. Its ability to respond to these types of emergencies and implement rapid and appropriate interventions depends to a large extent on donations.
http://www.trust.org/alertnet/news/out-of-the-spotlight-the-food-crisis-worsens

MALNUTRITION: Reagan's "instrument of American compassion" is facing budget cuts

April 12th, 2011: William Lambers

Details of the budget deal by Democrats and Republicans last Friday have emerged. Included is 140 million dollars in cuts to international food aid, including the Food for Peace program. A final vote on the budget is expected this week.
In 1984 President Ronald Reagan called Food for Peace "an instrument of American compassion" as well as vital to national security. Reagan added, "people who are hungry are weak allies for freedom."
Food for Peace is a program, or really a movement, born out of the World War II era. A famous slogan of that time, "Food will win the war and write the peace," recognized the powerful force of hunger in international relations. Food aid formed a foundation for war-recovering nations.
This philosophy carried over into the official creation of the Food for Peace program in 1954 (Public Law 480). This quickly meant flood relief for Austria, school lunches for Italy and Japan, a massive agreement to send wheat and rice to India, and many other life-saving and development projects.
Today, we need to remember these principles of food for peace to meet today's threats. We see the instability around us in countries which all share a common bond: high levels of hunger and malnutrition. Remember the protests in Egypt where people were chanting for bread and freedom.
In Afghanistan, we seek a peace. But how can we expect peace to take hold when so much of the population struggles daily just to get enough food. In Yemen, high food prices and malnutrition are the norm for many families. This is a continuing recipe for disaster in a country with political unrest and a strong Al Qaeda presence.
Food is the basis of reconstruction for many countries, including Pakistan and Haiti. Right now, hunger relief missions by the UN World Food Programme (WFP) in the aforementioned countries, as well as others, are facing funding shortfalls. Food for Peace happens to be the biggest supplier to WFP.
There is tremendous need for U.S. leadership in fighting hunger, and Food for Peace is at the forefront. So too is the McGovern-Dole school lunch program, which also faces budget cuts. School lunches are a key tool in fighting hunger and promoting development with education.
So, with nearly 1 billion people suffering from hunger, this is not the time to be slashing food aid. It's the wrong area to make cuts. Our national security strategy depends on an effective response to fighting hunger globally.
http://www.examiner.com/global-hunger-in-national/what-reagan-called-instrument-of-american-compassion-is-facing-budget-cuts

POVERTY: Egypt: poverty on the rise in Egypt

CAIRO, 14 April 2011 (IRIN)

 Photo: Amr Emam/IRIN
Construction workers in Egypt. The sector has been by a recession (file photo)

Egypt has a relatively high average individual income, but 21 percent of its 80 million people still live in poverty, mostly in the south, according to a new report by the state-supervised Central Auditing Organization (CAO).
"The average individual annual income in Egypt is US$2,077," said the report focusing on 2009-2010, but noted that the number of poor people is on the rise. Some 12.2 million Egyptians, it said, lived in over 1,200 slums; 3,728 villages did not have access to sanitation; and 17 million adults were illiterate.
Commenting on the report, Rashad Abdo, an economics professor at the Cairo’s Arab Academy for Business and Financial Services, said the number of those living in poverty could be much higher. "The real figures about poverty might be stunning," he told IRIN. "There is a huge income disparity in our country, and unemployment."
The number of poor, he added, could rise given the recession that has hit important sectors such as tourism and the construction industry, following unrest since January. Matters will be worsened by reduced remittances from Libya, coupled with an influx of Egyptian migrant workers returning home from that country in recent weeks.
http://www.irinnews.org/report.aspx?reportid=92468

POVERTY: Transition in Egypt: the challenges of going beyond a democratic facade

March 17, 2011 Alina Rocha Menocal

Mass protests erupted in Egypt, the most populous country in the Arab world, in January 2011, as the revolution in Tunisia seemed to inflame an accumulation of grievances against the rule of President Hosni Mubarak. Mubarak resigned and turned over power to the military after 18 days of sustained protests, thereby ending 30 years of autocratic rule.
This momentous – and in many ways unexpected – transformation of the political landscape in Egypt has been greeted with great enthusiasm and hope for the future both within and outside the country. Egypt’s revolution is a truly twenty-first century phenomenon: a peaceful and historic popular uprising whose mobilisation was facilitated in large part by the use of the latest communications technologies, including Facebook, Twitter and YouTube. Yet, as Egypt embarks on a road towards democratisation, it is essential to remember that the ousting of Mubarak is only the beginning of a process that is likely to prove complex and challenging.
As the wave of democratisation that swept through much of Latin America, Africa and Asia beginning in the 1980s shows, overthrowing an authoritarian regime can be difficult, but institutionalising democracy is even harder. Only a limited number of countries that underwent democratic transitions as part of that wave have succeeded in establishing consolidated and functioning democratic regimes. Instead, many of them have ended up ‘getting stuck’ in transition, or reverting to more or less authoritarian forms of rule. These incipient democracies, or ‘hybrid’ regimes’, constitute ‘ambiguous systems that combine rhetorical acceptance of liberal democracy, the existence of some formal democratic institutions and respect for a limited sphere of civil and political liberties with essentially illiberal or even authoritarian traits’ (Ottaway, Democracy Challenged: The Rise of Semi-Authoritarianism).
Thus, the key challenge for the new emerging Egypt is establishing a regime that is democratic not only in name but also in practice. Giving real meaning to the country’s fledging democratic transition is likely to entail, among other things:
lifting the state of emergency
embarking on a nationwide dialogue to amend the constitution
ensuring that the process is widely participatory and inclusive of all political forces in Egypt
lifting laws restricting political freedoms
upholding human rights
reaching an agreement among all relevant players (including actors like the emerging youth movement, the military, Mubarak’s party, which is likely to lose power, the Muslim Brotherhood, etc.) that democracy is the ‘only game in town’ and a commitment to abide by the rules of that game.

Some progress has already been made on some of these issues. For example, a national referendum on constitutional amendments is due to be held as early as 19 March 2011, where Egyptians will be asked to approve amendments on several critical articles in the Constitution. However, this process has been led by a committee of legal experts and constitutional scholars appointed by the military and has so far not been broadly participatory. The state security agency associated with abuses under the previous regime has also been dissolved, and restrictions on the formation of political parties are expected to be lifted after the referendum.
Elections of course will also be vital – but not easy. Part of the problem in this respect is that, after 30 years of authoritarian rule, political organisation, especially in terms of credible (opposition) parties, remains extremely weak and fragmented. There are a few well organised groups that are also deeply rooted within certain sectors of the population (e.g. the Muslim Brotherhood), but these are the exception rather than the rule.
As suggested above, new technologies and online social networks played an important role in bringing together the mass movement against the Mubarak regime. But the movement remains diffuse and the ties that bind its different elements together are at best weak and transient. Social activism, transformational as it may be, cannot in itself substitute for adequate and coherent organisation. This point is forcefully illustrated by the youth movement that brought Mubarak down: so far it has lacked clear leadership and representation, which has made meaningful negotiation with the military government in charge difficult.
Thus, supporting the development of political parties seems an essential task. However, it is also a highly sensitive endeavour that is likely to take time and go well beyond the first electoral cycle.
Related to this, it is not yet clear whether Egyptians will allow the Muslim Brotherhood to participate in the next presidential and parliamentary elections. This is a decision that will need to be made through the country’s constitutional reform process. It is also a decision that will have an impact on the kind of system that is put in place, and to what extent it is inclusive, representative, and capable of channelling different citizen demands and resolving conflict(s) without resorting to violence.
In light of these different issues, both domestic and international actors must keep realistic expectations about the kinds of changes that the transition in Egypt can bring about, especially over the short term. Managing expectations is essential in order to avoid popular disillusionment with – and a potential backlash against – the very democratic system the Egyptian people have been fighting for.

http://blogs.odi.org.uk/blogs/main/archive/2011/03/17/57652.aspx?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=20110324

POVERTY: Egypt faces huge problems of overpopulation, poverty

Joe Guzzardi
 March 19, 2011
Although America's attention has shifted to Japan's devastation, a look back at the recent Egyptian crisis proves that it was more about failed population than misplaced leadership.
For the last several years, former President Hosni Mubarak had been locked in a philosophical debate with Egyptian academics about family planning. Although the Egyptian total fertility rate has declined steadily since the early 1960s from a high of 7.2 children per woman and is anticipated to keep falling until it reaches 2.0 in 2025, Mubarak's government wisely endorsed continued spending on population control. Mubarak's approval of family planning comes as little surprise, since Egypt's population doubled to 82 million since 1981 when he took office.
Mubarak's opponents, however, claimed that when the Toshka Project is completed in 2020, it will have transformed half a million desert acres into arable land, thus reducing high density population pressures in the Nile Valley.
But whatever may happen to the Toshka Project, the inevitability of increased population growth, generated by the existing 8 million Egyptians, means huge challenges lie ahead. Demographics control destiny.
Here, in part, is what Egypt still has to overcome.
In Cairo, Egypt's capital and the seat of the citizens' revolution, some districts hold more than 41,000 people per square kilometer, or 100,000 per square mile. Manhattan, by comparison, has about 27,000 people per square kilometer.
More than 15 million Egyptians live on less than $1 a day, a key factor driving last month's protests. The divide in Egypt between rich and poor, where resistance to birth control is high, is startling.
Even though Egypt has severely limited resources, especially fertile land and water (only 3 inches of rain falls annually), the numbers of poor steadily increases.
In past years, the Egyptian government mounted an aggressive but unsuccessful advertising campaign to limit new births. One motto: "Before you add another baby, make sure his needs are secured."
Despite Egypt's progress in reducing its total fertility rate, currently estimated by the Population Reference Bureau at 3.0, that total is still unsustainably high. As long as Egypt's base population increases, no meaningful headway on critical social issues like education can occur.
Egypt offers free education and well-established literacy programs. But the numbers of Egyptian illiterates, one in every four or nearly 17 million, remains unchanged over the last two decades. Ghada Gholam, an UNESCO Egypt literacy specialist, said: "There are lots of successful efforts, but with the increase in the population growth it is really difficult to decrease the number of illiterates."
Population statistics reveal the grim story. Educators must teach 1.4 million Egyptians to read and write annually simply to keep up with the country's population growth. And for every 700, 000 who learn to read, the literacy rate is only reduced by one percent.
Other variables that limit access to education include the high post-puberty drop out rate for teenage girls and the inability of poor parents to pay for transportation or the textbooks. Nearly 70 percent of women, Egypt's mothers and future mothers, are illiterate.
Each year, Egypt's population swells by approximately 1.5 million. The United Nations projects that Egypt will grow from 95.6 million in 2026 to 114.8 million in 2065 when it will finally stabilize.
Egyptian high fertility has imposed costly socioeconomic burdens on the nation. Economic development is stalled and quality of life eroded because of reduced access to jobs, education, water and food.
Little wonder Egyptians took to the streets. But too many decades ignoring an exploding population have left Egypt with few options for future improvement.

Joe Guzzardi is a Senior Writing Fellow at Californians for Population Stabilization. He retired from the Lodi Unified School District in 2008. Contact him at joeguzzardi@capsweb.org.

http://www.lodinews.com/opinion/columnists/joe_guzzardi/article_a7290969-9429-5279-b8a1-438ecc79140b.html

POVERTY: Egypt: Poverty haunts City of the Dead

Joseph Krauss, Agence France-Presse February 20, 2011



Cairo's City of the Dead is a world way from Tahrir square and the massive uprising that pushed out egypt's president Mubarak. The people who live here are too poor to protest. Forty per cent of egyptians live on $2 or less a day.Photograph by: Marco Longari, Afp-Getty Images, Agence France-Presse

In a sprawling cemetery on the edge of Cairo, where thousands of Egyptians inhabit the tombs of bygone nobles in a City of the Dead, the promise of a revolution is haunted by the spectre of poverty.

The centuries-old maze of mausoleums is a long way from Tahrir Square and the Internet activists whose revolt chased Hosni Mubarak from power and united the country behind a vision of a resurrected Egypt, proud and free.
"I didn't go to Tahrir," said Nasser al-Said, 27, who makes a couple of dollars a day selling tea from a rickety wooden table by the roadside.
"I have to support my mother, my wife and my daughter. How are they supposed to eat if I go off and demonstrate?"
They squat in a tomb in the City of the Dead, a necropolis dating back to the seventh-century Islamic conquest, where the intricately patterned domes of medieval mosques rise above meandering dirt lanes of mausoleums.
Some have lived here for generations -preferring to be close to deceased ancestors honoured with monuments in a custom dating back to the time of the Pyramids -but most are here because they cannot afford to live anywhere else.
Forty per cent of Egyptians live on $2 a day or less, according to the World Bank, and unemployment is rife among the young, forcing many to put off marriage and children until well into their 30s.
Tariq Salah, 33, makes around $125 a month digging graves and guarding a 200-year-old mausoleum where he sleeps alone each night among the graves of Ottoman-era nobles.
"If you want to get married you have to have an apartment, you have to have everything. I can't save money because I only make enough to eat," he said.
The youth-led protests that brought down Mubarak and are now reverberating across the region were largely driven by such concerns, with chants of: "The people want the fall of the regime!" punctuated by: "I want to get married!"
Egyptians hope for a new, more democratic government that can help them prosper by rooting out corruption, with many citing reports -unconfirmed and very probably exaggerated -that Mubarak made off with $70 billion.
The technocrats of his sacked government, many of them banned from travel and the subject of graft investigations, did much to open Egypt to foreign investment and presided over several years of economic growth.
But as trendy cafes and new shops sprouted across Cairo's more fashionable neighbourhoods, most of the nation felt left behind.
"They may have had some good indicators in performance in GDP, growth rate and balance of payments," said Magdy Sobhi, an economist at the Al-Ahram Centre for Political and Strategic Studies.
"But at the same time you had this discontent . . . They said all the time that the trickle down would come, but later on. But this 'later on' never came."
Or, as tomb-dweller Said Ali, 37, put it: "There are 99 poor people for every rich person here . . . There is no middle class."
Any new government that emerges in Cairo will face many of the constraints of the old one -a growing population of more than 80 million, a lingering global economic crisis and, for now, the fallout from the uprising itself.
At the height of the revolt the economy was bleeding more than $300 million a day, according to the Egyptian unit of French bank Credit Agricole, which slashed its 2011 growth forecast from 5.3 to 3.7 per cent.
The stock market has repeatedly postponed reopening, citing "fears of instability," and a wave of strikes threatened to shut down the country before its new military rulers urged calm.
Egypt's vital tourism sector brought in $13 billion in 2010, with a record 15 million people visiting the Land of the Pharaohs.
But these days there are hardly any visitors at the domed citadel standing guard high above the tombs or the towering mosques of the old city.
On the highway that skirts the City of the Dead, a few vendors holding bundles of flags tried to wave down patriotic motorists, and the honking cars roared past.
 http://www.calgaryherald.com/Poverty+haunts+City+Dead/4316600/story.html#ixzz1FjeWksYC

POVERTY: Dire poverty root of Egypt revolt

MARILYN H. KARFELD:  February 18, 2011
With 40 million Egyptians living on about 25 cents a day, abject poverty was the root of the revolution that toppled Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak last week. Not protests in Tunisia that ousted the dictator there. Not Twitter or Facebook.
So said Mordechai Kedar, an Arabic studies professor at Israel’s Bar-Ilan University, who spoke last week at B’nai Jeshurun Congregation before the Egyptian military announced Mubarak had departed and left them in control of the country.
The media, which focused its attention on the recent 18 days of demonstrations in Cairo’s Tahrir Square, has gotten the story wrong, said Kedar, also a researcher at the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies at Bar Ilan University.
Rather than limiting its attention to Tahrir Square and protesters, the media should have covered the real face of Egypt during the last four or five decades. Entire families squeeze into a ramshackle wooden packing crate, living by the millions in “unplanned” neighborhoods in Egypt, without access to running water, electricity, phone service, roads or adequate schools, he said. Not surprisingly, the illiteracy rate is very high.
Drinking water stored in small jars outside each family’s crate comes from the Nile River, which also functions as a sewage canal, says Kedar. The bacteria is so rampant in these Egyptians’ bodies that the mufti of Egypt issued a 1987 decree, under pressure from the government, that Muslims are allowed to drink alcohol to quiet the organisms, said Kedar. Alcohol is forbidden in the Koran, but the government encourages whiskey consumption rather than having to treat sick people in hospitals, the Middle East expert maintained.
Forty-five percent of Egyptians live in these intolerable conditions, as drugs and crime flourish because police are afraid to respond to calls for help in these impoverished neighborhoods. By age 12, girls are married off by force, before “boys fool around with them,” Kedar said. The father can then foist off responsibility for feeding his daughter to the new husband.
There is one group improving the lives of Egypt’s huge underclass: The Muslim Brotherhood, noted Kedar. The Muslim Brotherhood is an umbrella entity of non-governmental organizations that solicit donations and provide social services, including women’s health clinics. The Islamic group, described by the Anti-Defamation League as primarily a political organization that supports terrorist causes, also employs some of the illiterate population.
With a notoriously corrupt Egyptian government and deplorable living conditions for the masses, it’s not a surprise that Egypt “blew up,” said Kedar. “One never sees on CNN anything about these unfortunate neighborhoods. They’re not nice. They don’t bring advertisers. The media has betrayed the profession.”
Other causes of the Egyptian revolution include Mubarak’s willingness to bequeath the presidency to his son Gamal, said Kedar. “Unrest has been in the air in Egypt for two to three years,” said Kedar. “Egyptians felt it was either now or never (to get rid of Mubarak).”
In addition, the government rigged the November parliamentary elections so that the Muslim Brotherhood only got one seat. “If there were honest elections, the Muslim Brotherhood would take 60% to 80% of the vote,” noted Kedar. The Islamic party’s sole representative quit the parliament in disgust.
The Tunisian uprising was a spark, Kedar admitted, but “Egypt was an explosion waiting to happen.” With the encouragement of the Muslim Brotherhood, the men from these destitute neighborhoods took to the streets in protest.
The Muslim Brotherhood sees the world “in two parts – the part that is Islamic and the part that will become Islamic,” Kedar said. “It is a genie let out of the bottle. It will influence the next phase of Egypt. And whatever happens in Egypt will influence the entire Middle East, Europe and the U.S.”
If the Muslim Brotherhood gains control, officials will announce that they “will tear up the peace treaty between Egypt and Israel,” he predicted. That might also affect the treaty between Israel and Jordan, which won’t want to be the only Arab state with peace with Israel.
In the meantime, the world will have to adopt a wait-and-see mode. President Obama needs to “hold his peace” because whatever he says will be held against him, Kedar added. Whoever the U.S. and the West support will become illegitimate.
“It doesn’t matter who is president,” he said. “As long as the Muslim Brotherhood controls the street, they will control the agenda.”
The Egyptian revolt has put the “domino effect” in play, Kedar said, with more Arab states – Yemen, Algeria, Libya, Morocco and Iraq – on the line. The only Arab countries likely to be immune from uprising are the Gulf states because one tribe makes up each nation. The exception is Bahrain, where a small minority of Sunnis controls the majority Shiites.
Asked if any religious leader now living in exile could return to Egypt and help fill the power vacuum, similar to what happened when Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini returned to Iran after the shah’s 1979 ouster, Kedar said it was possible. If the Muslim Brotherhood brought back Dr. Yusuf al-Qaradawi, the Qatar-based Egyptian grand mufti, al-Qaradawi might bring a religious authority to end the chaos.
The Israeli government daily discusses the ramifications from the Egyptian popular uprising, noted Kedar. “Today the Muslim Brotherhood is not looking for a connection with Iran. But things might change.” Meanwhile, Iranian centrifuges continue to produce enriched uranium. The world shouldn’t let the Egyptian crisis overshadow a nuclear Iran, Kedar added.
Despite all of the explosions erupting in the Arab world, Kedar pronounced himself “a compulsive optimist. I see the chaos (in Arab states) around Israel as reassurance the people of Israel will live forever.”
http://www.clevelandjewishnews.com/articles/2011/02/18/news/local/doc4d5d5cf5a3923865522702.txt

POVERTY: Poverty and joblessness fueling Mideast unrest

 BRIAN MURPHY : The Associated Press  1/30/2011

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — Just days before fleeing Tunisia, the embattled leader went on national television to promise 300,000 new jobs over two years.

 Khalil Hamra / AP


Egypt's President Hosni Mubarak did much the same Saturday as riots gripped Cairo and other cities: offering more economic opportunities in a country where half the people live on less than $2 a day.
The pledges-under-siege have something else in common: an acknowledgment that the unprecedented anger on Arab streets is at its core a long-brewing rage against decades of economic imbalances that have rewarded the political elite and left many others on the margins.
With startling speed — less than two months since the first protests in Tunisia — underscored the wobbly condition of the systems used by some Arab regimes to hold power since the 1980s or earlier. The once formidable mix of economic cronyism and hard-line policing — which authorities sometime claim was needed to fight Islamic hard-liners or possible Israeli spies — now appears under serious strain from societies pushing back against the old matrix.
Mubarak and other Arab leaders have only to look to Cairo's streets: a population of 18 million with about half under 30 years old and no longer content to have a modest civil servant job as their top aspiration.
One protester in Cairo waved a hand-drawn copy of his university diploma amid clouds of tear gas and shouted what may best sum up the complexities of the domino-style unrest in a single word: Jobs.
"They are taking us lightly and they don't feel our frustration," said another protester, homemaker Sadat Abdel Salam. "This is an uprising of the people and we will not shut up again."

The narrative of economic injustice has surrounded the protests from the beginning.
"The regimes and the leaders are the ones under fire, but it's really about despair over the future," said Sami Alfaraj, director of the Kuwait Center for Strategic Studies. "The faces of this include the young man with a university degree who cannot find work or the mother who has trouble feeding her family."
Tunisia's mutiny that ousted President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali was touched off by a struggling 26-year-old university graduate who lit himself on fire after police confiscated his fruit and vegetable cart in December. Apparent copycat self-immolations quickly spread to Egypt, Yemen and elsewhere.
In Yemen, the poorest nation on the Arabian peninsula, sporadic riots have forced President Ali Abdullah Saleh into quick economic concessions, including slashing income taxes in half and ordering price controls on food and basic goods.
On Friday in Jordan, thousands of marchers clogged streets to demand the resignation of Prime Minister Samir Rifai and call for measures to control rising prices and unemployment. Many chanted: "Rifai go away, prices are on fire and so are the Jordanians."
King Abdullah II also has tried to dampen the fury by promising reforms, and the prime minister announced a $550 million package of new subsidies for fuel and staple products like rice, sugar, livestock and liquefied gas used for heating and cooking.
What feeds the flames is common across much of the Arab world: young populations, a growing middle class seeking more opportunities and access to websites and international cable channels, such as Al-Jazeera, which have eroded the state's hold on the media.

There are no clear signs on whether more protests could erupt.
Syria's authoritarian regime remains in firm control and has taken gradual steps to open up the economy. Rulers in the wealthy Gulf states have the luxuries of relatively small populations that often receive generous state benefits and other largesse. Kuwait's emir, for example, pledged this month 1,000 dinars ($3,559) and free food coupons for each citizen to mark several anniversaries, including the 1991 U.S.-led invasion that drove out Saddam Hussein's army.
But there have been stirrings of discontent in North Africa. Earlier this month, security forces in Algeria clashed with opposition activists staging a rally apparently inspired by neighboring Tunisia. In Mauritania, a businessman died after setting himself ablaze in a protest against the government.
A state-backed newspaper in Abu Dhabi, The National, ran interviews from four men from across the Middle East describing their trouble finding work. One 33-year-old Syrian, who has an English literature degree from Damascus University, complained he cannot find a teaching job or afford to get married.
"I feel as though I am in the Samuel Beckett play 'Waiting for Godot,' which I studied during my degree," Khaled Kapoun was quoted as saying. "I keep hoping that tomorrow a job will come along."
Even high Arab officials have expressed unusual candor following Tunisia's upheaval.
Earlier this month, the head of the Arab League warned that the "Arab soul is broken by poverty, unemployment and general recession."
"The Tunisian revolution is not far from us," Amr Moussa said in his opening address to the 20 Arab leaders and other representatives of Arab League members gathered in the Egyptian Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh. "The Arab citizen entered an unprecedented state of anger and frustration."
Moussa, who is Egyptian, called for an Arab "renaissance" aimed at creating jobs and addressing shortcomings in society.
But at the Global Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, some experts said an education overhaul is needed in the region to shift from emphasis on state jobs to more dynamic private sector demands.
"Many people have degrees but they do not have the skill set," Masood Ahmed, director of the Middle East and Asia department of the International Monetary Fund, said earlier this week.
"The scarce resource is talent," agreed Omar Alghanim, a prominent Gulf businessman. The employment pool available in the region "is not at all what's needed in the global economy."
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/41338881/ns/world_news-mideastn_africa/41325104

POVERTY: Egypt and Tunisia usher in the new era of global food revolutions

Ambrose Evans-Pritchard: 31 January 2011

Political risk has returned with a vengeance. The first food revolutions of our Malthusian era have exposed the weak grip of authoritarian regimes in poor countries that import grain, whether in North Africa today or parts of Asia tomorrow.


As we sit glued to Al-Jazeera watching authority crumble in the cultural and political capital of the Arab world, exhilaration can turn quickly to foreboding. Photo: REUTERS


If you insist on joining the emerging market party at this stage of the agflation blow-off, avoid countries with an accelerating gap between rich and poor. Cairo’s EGX stock index has dropped 20pc in nine trading sessions.
Events have moved briskly since a Tunisian fruit vendor with a handcart set fire to himself six weeks ago, and in doing so lit the fuse that has detonated Egypt and threatens to topple the political order of the Maghreb, Yemen, and beyond.
As we sit glued to Al-Jazeera watching authority crumble in the cultural and political capital of the Arab world, exhilaration can turn quickly to foreboding.
This is nothing like the fall of the Berlin Wall. The triumph of secular democracy was hardly in doubt in central Europe. Whatever the mix of aspirations of those on the streets of Cairo, such uprisings are easy prey for tight-knit organizations – known in the revolutionary lexicon as Leninist vanguard parties.
In Egypt this means the Muslim Brotherhood, whether or not Nobel laureate Mohammed El Baradei ever served as figleaf. The Brotherhood is of course a different kettle of fish from Iran’s Ayatollahs; and Turkey shows that an ‘Islamic leaning’ government can be part of the liberal world – though Turkish premier Recep Tayyip Erdogan once let slip that democracy was a tram “you ride until you arrive at your destination, then you step off."
It does not take a febrile imagination to guess what the Brotherhood’s ascendancy might mean for Israel, and for strategic stability in the Mid-East. Asia has as much to lose if this goes wrong as the West. China’s energy intensity per unit of GDP is double US levels, and triple the UK.
The surge in global food prices since the summer – since Ben Bernanke signalled a fresh dollar blitz, as it happens – is not the underlying cause of Arab revolt, any more than bad harvests in 1788 were the cause of the French Revolution.
Yet they are the trigger, and have set off a vicious circle. Vulnerable governments are scrambling to lock up world supplies of grain while they can. Algeria bought 800,000 tonnes of wheat last week, and Indonesia has ordered 800,000 tonnes of rice, both greatly exceeding their normal pace of purchases. Saudi Arabia, Libya, and Bangladesh, are trying to secure extra grain supplies.
The UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) said its global food index has surpassed the all-time high of 2008, both in nominal and real terms. The cereals index has risen 39pc in the last year, the oil and fats index 55pc.
The FAO implored goverments to avoid panic responses that “aggravate the situation”. If you are Hosni Mubarak hanging on in Cairo’s presidential palace, do care about such niceties?
France’s Nicolas Sarkozy blames the commodity spike on hedge funds, speculators, and the derivatives market (largely in London). He vowed to use his G20 presidency to smash the racket, but then Mr Sarkozy has a penchant for witchhunts against easy targets.
The European Commission has been hunting for proof to support his claims, without success. Its draft report – to be released last Wednesday, but withdrawn under pressure from Paris – reached exactly the same conclusion as investigators from the IMF, and US and British regulators.
“There is little evidence that the price formation process on commodity markets has changed in recent years with the growing importance of derivatives markets”, it said.
As Jeff Currie from Goldman Sachs tirelessly points out, future contracts are neutral. For every trader making money by going long on wheat, sugar, pork bellies, zinc, or crude oil, there is a trader losing money on the other side. It is a paper transfer between financial players.
You have to buy and hoard the vast amounts of these bulk commodities to have much impact on the price, which is costly and difficult to do, though people do park crude on floating tankers sometimes, and Chinese firms allegedly stashed copper in warehouses last year.
But that is not what commodity index funds with $150bn are actually doing with food, base metals, and energy. Only governments have strategic petroleum and grain reserves big enough to make a difference.
The immediate cause of this food spike was the worst drought in Russia and the Black Sea region for 130 years, lasting long enough to damage winter planting as well as the summer harvest. Russia imposed an export ban on grains. This was compounded by late rains in Canada, Nina disruptions in Argentina, and a series of acreage downgrades in the US. The world’s stocks-to-use ratio for corn is nearing a 30-year low of 12.8pc, according to Rabobank.
The deeper causes are well-known: an annual rise in global population by 73m; the “exhaustion” of the Green Revolution as the gains in crop yields fade, to cite the World Bank; diet shifts in Asia as the rising middle class switch to animal-protein diets, requiring 3-5 kilos of grain feed for every kilo of meat produced; the biofuel mandates that have diverted a third of the US corn crop into ethanol for cars.
Add the loss of farmland to Asia’s urban sprawl, and the depletion of the non-renewable acquivers for irrigation of North China’s plains, and the geopolitics of global food supply starts to look neuralgic.
Can the world head off mass famine? Yes, with leadership. The regions of the ex-Soviet Union farm 30m hectares less today than in the Khrushchev era, and yields are half western levels.
There are tapped hinterlands in Brazil, and in Africa where land titles and access to credit could unleash a great leap forward. The global reservoir of unforested cropland is 445m hectares, compared to 1.5 billion in production. But the low-lying fruit has already gone, and the vast investment needed will not come soon enough to avoid a menacing shift in the terms of trade between the land and the urban poor.
We are on a thinner margin of food security, as North Africa is discovering painfully, and China understands all too well. Perhaps it is a little too early to write off farm-rich Europe and America.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/comment/ambroseevans_pritchard/8291470/Egypt-and-Tunisia-usher-in-the-new-era-of-global-food-revolutions.html

MALNUTRITION: EGYPT: Before uprising against Mubarak, decades of poverty and resignation

January 28, 2011 — Michael Owen

 Photo: Alia Qotb and husband Ahmed Gaballah have spent decades living atop a building in Cairo. Credit: Asmaa Waguih / For The Times


In Cairo, Egypt's capital, attention now is on the tanks in the streets. Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak warns of "chaos" while opposition leader Mohamed ElBaradei says, "It's now the people versus the thugs." But quieter dramas played in the country of 73 million before the present wave of protests, and several were chronicled by Jeffrey Fleishman, The Times' Cairo Bureau chief.
■ In Cairo, a fractured family lives in separate huts atop a roof. Alia Qotb was born in the basement of this building in 1939. The husband she's married three times and divorced twice lives here with her, as do three of Qotb's seven children. They're not the only roof dwellers in the vicinity; next-door, Samia Mekkawy peers over, whispering, "I look down and pity her. She has it worse."
■ In a village on the Nile Delta, two parents mourn the death of their 32-year-old son, Samir Asar, who hanged himself. Asar's wife and their five children have returned to her family in a neighboring village.
"The notice of his suicide appeared in a newspaper, the same day the suicides of two other delta men were reported. One was a 32-year-old handyman with five children who earned $72 a month. He jumped from a building. The other was a 31-year-old who hanged himself after his fiancee's family threatened to call off their marriage if he couldn't afford a new flat. He was found lying next to a toppled chair and a frayed rope.
Suicide is on the rise in Egypt, where about 45% of the population lives on $2 a day or less. Gamal Zahran, a member of parliament, has blamed the government for unemployment and poverty that he says have caused thousands of Egyptians to kill themselves."
■ A peddler roams the streets of Cairo with stacks of newspapers that answer some questions and leave others in mystery: "Why does rice cost so much? Who knows? Can a politically connected businessman get away with murder? Quite possibly."
Before the Internet, Mohamed knew about the news of the world — wars, intrigue, the broken loves of movie stars — ahead of just about anyone. It was a privilege, but such things don't last and what was once special turns into something else. His customers, though, still love the warm feel of paper in their hands, how it crinkles and can be rolled to swat flies or bat away crazy opinions of cranky old men in cafes.
But truth be told, pleasant as he is, Mohamed delivers doom.
"People are depressed," he says. "They don't want to read the news because it makes them more depressed. Political. Financial. The news never seems to get better. The baker and the tea shop guy don't want me to come by anymore. They said they're tired of reading about things that never change."
■ A waiter's survivors wonder what will come of the inquiry into his death; he appears to have been fatally beaten by police. They've been waiting a while: "There is no hurry to solve the case; the prosecutor has yet to even interrogate the officers."
■ The crowds on the Qasr el Nil Bridge at night are thick with youthful romances and diversions -- and shadowed by weariness:
"The future is murky," says Gamal, relaxed yet perturbed in a single breath. "God willing, we'll go to university, but will we find work when we finish? A lot of my friends don't have jobs. The government does nothing. It tries to distract the youth, but won't help them."
"The young won't bring about change," Gamal says. "They're too depressed."
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/babylonbeyond/2011/01/the-tanks-in-the-streets-of-cairo-hosni-mubarak-warns-of-chaos.html

MALNUTRITION: With a Little Innovation -- Bread Is (a Better) Life

January 8, 2011Marc Van Ameringen: Executive Director of the Global Alliance for Improved Nutrition

The sight of stacks of baladi bread piled high in market places is a common one in Egypt. This mainstay of Egyptian diets, while tasty, cheap and filling, provides calories but not necessary micronutrients. Millions of Egyptians suffer the effects of poor nutrition, including preventable miscarriages, birth defects and delayed physical and cognitive development. Iron and folic acid deficiencies lead to many health problems, most significantly anemia and neural tube defects in children which can be life-threatening and cause-life long disabilities.
Malnutrition remains arguably the world's most serious, but least addressed, global health issue. More than 2 billion people are impacted globally and more than 3.5 million young children die each year from lack of proper nutrition. For those that survive, inadequate nutrition during the early years of life has permanent and life-long consequences. Research shows that adequate maternal and child nutrition during the first 1,000 days -- from conception through year two -- shapes a child's physical and mental capabilities for their lifetime. We can't "go back" or address deficiencies later in life - damage done during this window is permanent.
For millions in Egypt, baladi bread is a critical part of daily sustenance; a key staple food that is deeply ingrained in the Egyptian culture. But what if this daily bread could not only satisfy hunger but also improve the cognitive and physical potential of the next generation?
That is indeed what is happening. The Global Alliance for Improved Nutrition (GAIN), World
Food Programme (WFP) and Egypt's Ministry of Social Solidarity are fortifying baladi bread with
micronutrients like iron and folic acid which are vital to a child's development. Millions of Egyptians are benefiting and this newly fortified baladi bread has the potential to protect entire generations. The government, global health community, businesses and civic organizations are all realizing that it is access to nutritious, quality food for the poor -- and not just access to quantities of food - that is critical.
The focus is no longer simply to eat, but to eat well. This is a factor which affects not only the poor, but increasingly the well off in every society. This past year, in the U.S., one in four children endured hunger and food insecurity. It is likely that the 17 million children who face hunger in this country will suffer life-long consequences as a result of having limited access to quality food. Without nutritious foods they are more likely to suffer from weak immune systems, colds, behavioral difficulties and impaired academic performance. Nutritious food, whether here, or Egypt, is fundamental to unlocking human potential.
While serious, malnutrition is entirely within our grasp to prevent. There are well-tested and cost-effective approaches common in rich countries, such as fortification with vitamins and minerals of staple crops and condiments, and ensuring pregnant mothers and babies six months and older have access to nutritious products. GAIN is working with hundreds of local companies to create nutritious products that are as varied as fortified flour in Africa, soy sauce in China and biscuits in India.
Nevertheless, today there remains a market failure in poor countries. Simply put, the majority of poor people do not have access to readily available and affordable nutritious food. For those children under two, who are most at risk from irreversible mental and physical damage from malnutrition, we need to stimulate business to produce affordable products that can make the difference for the rest of their lives.
Targeting these areas will promote innovation. It is innovation, like the fortified baladi bread reaching 52 million Egyptians every day, that will make the difference between surviving and thriving.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/marc-van-ameringen/with-a-little-innovation-_b_806102.html

POVERTY: Egypt’s “hottest summer in years” drives up food prices

 

Photo: Martina Fuchs/IRIN

17 October 2010 (IRIN) -

Small farmer Abdelrazek Basiony, 43, was hoping to use a bountiful tomato harvest to pay off his debts, but his crop was decimated by exceptionally hot summer weather: he got only three tons, compared to 20 tons in a good year.
"This year, Egypt had its hottest summer in years," said Mohamed Eissa, chairman of the Egyptian Meteorological Authority, adding the trend was set to continue.
Rising temperatures and poor harvests are driving up prices. According to the government’s Central Agency for Public Mobilization and Statistics (CAPMAS), vegetable prices soared 51 percent and meat and poultry by 28.6 percent in September.
A recent report by the Agricultural Research Centre (ARC) cited in the local media said crop productivity had dropped by almost 70 percent this year due to rising temperatures. The report - sent to the Agriculture Minister Amin Abaza - said most crops could not tolerate such a sharp increase.

http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?Reportid=90794

BIOTERRORISM: Inabilty to respond to threat

EGYPT: Did the government overreact to H1N1? CAIRO, 18 July 2010 (IRIN) - While a review is underway of how the World Health Organization (WHO) and national authorities handled last year's outbreak of the H1N1 virus, also referred to as swine flu, medical experts in Egypt have criticized their government for overreacting to the pandemic, provoking unjustified fear and wasting millions of dollars-worth of much-needed public funds. "Egypt is probably the only country in the world that acted in such an insane way towards the virus," Saed Aun, a former preventive medicine advisor to the Egyptian health ministry, told IRIN. "The Egyptian government applied the wrong policies in dealing with the crisis." When H1N1 was first detected in a university dormitory in April 2009, the Egyptian Cabinet in May decided to cull all the nation's more than 350,000 pigs obstensibly to avert the spread of the virus, although the link between H1N1 and pigs had not been officially established. [http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=84344] Apart from the enormous loss to pig farmers [http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=86742], the culling led to an accumulation of rubbish on the streets of the capital as pigs had been eating much of it previously. [http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=87853] In Cairo, the livelihoods of unofficial rubbish collectors - known as 'Zabalin' to Egyptians - and pig farmers were very much intertwined as the former collected organic waste from the capital's streets and sold it to farmers to feed their pigs. The cull hit the livelihoods of 70,000 former pig farmers and 'Zaballin' and their families in the Cairo area, according to local NGO Association for the Protection of the Environment. "The waste was a good source of profit for the rubbish collectors," said Israel Ayad, a pig farmer and unofficial spokesman for the rubbish collectors. "Why should they collect rubbish after the pigs are gone?" In reference to the health hazards posed by the piles of rotting waste in the capital, Chairman of the Doctors' Association Hamdy al-Sayed described the situation as a "national scandal". The government later said the cull was not related to H1N1 but was simply a general health measure. Schools hit hardest Experts say Egypt's schools were the biggest losers in the government's handling of the pandemic. In addition to the intermittent closures of some schools, the ministries of health and education ordered all schools to halve the sizes of their classrooms, which led to many children being able to attend only three days a week. [http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=86695] "The state of confusion surrounding the appearance of the virus harmed the educational process greatly," Nadia Youssef, an educational specialist at Cairo University, said. "The problem was that the virus appeared during the first months of the academic year. Some schools were closed down while parts of the curricula were removed, affecting the educational record of the students badly." Health officials in Egypt are divided over whether they can expect any more waves of H1N1 infections. [http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=88149] The country's 55 hospitals and health centres capable of dealing with H1N1 cases say they are ready to receive any new patients and have large stocks of vaccines. Fathi Shabana, head of Imbaba Fever Hospital, said his hospital had 60,000 doses of the H1N1 vaccine in preparation for winter, which is considered to begin in November. However, Mustafa Orkhan, head of the Swine Flu Centre, a local NGO which gives tips on H1N1, said he did not expect any more outbreaks of the virus in Egypt. "Egypt is safe as far as this virus is concerned," he said. Controversial vaccinations The issue of H1N1 vaccinations is at the heart of public and expert debate on the pandemic and how it has been handled. The government spent 30 million Egyptian pounds (US$5.4 million) to buy 1.9 million doses of the vaccine, having failed to secure the 5 million doses it was seeking to purchase. Later, a plan to inoculate 1.2 million schoolchildren went awry as hundreds of thousands of parents refused to send their children to schools to get the vaccine after rumours spread that the vaccines could cause physical deformities. [http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=87647] Now, the health ministry still has some 500,000 doses of the vaccine in its stocks. Some of these will be used to inoculate around 70,000 people travelling to Saudi Arabia in November to perform the annual Hajj pilgrimage, but the inoculation is optional. The remaining vaccines will expire in May 2011. "These vaccines will of course be thrown out after they expire," Aun said. "This is yet one more indication of the failure of the government to deal with the crisis wisely." Health officials said 16,356 Egyptians had contracted the H1N1 virus to date and 280 people had died - most of whom had other health problems. Globally, more than 15,000 people died as a result of the virus since April 2009 but the WHO had predicted two to four million deaths.