MALNUTRITION: HORN OF AFRICA: Greater food insecurity forecast

NAIROBI, 5 April 2012 (IRIN)

 Photo: Wendy Stone/IRIN
Poor rains could further undermine food security

 Food insecurity in the eastern Horn of Africa is expected to worsen as a result of less rain than previously forecast falling in the key March-to-May season.
The US Agency for International Development’s Famine and Early Warning Systems Network (FEWS NET) warned that rainfall in this period would be 60-85 percent of the long-term average and that there was a 30 percent chance of the lower figure materializing.
“An expansion in the size of the food insecure population and an increase in the severity of food insecurity is likely,” FEWS NET said in an 3 April report.
The report warned of “significant impacts on crop production, pasture regeneration, and the replenishment of water resources” in a region that in 2011 suffered one of its worst drought-related food crises in decades.
March to May is the major rainfall season for pastoral and agricultural areas of northern Kenya and Ethiopia and parts of Somalia, and accounts for 50-60 percent of annual rainfall in the region.
In an effort to prevent future weather shocks translating into new humanitarian crises, the Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD), a regional body, and international development partners, have launched an initiative to strengthen resilience in the region.
“We have mobilized funds [US$340 million] to support resilience programmes, and while the problems cannot be solved overnight, it is important to appreciate the need for long-term investments in such areas as education, water, and the need to identify problems early and deal with them in good time. People need to be helped to recover quickly from disasters,” Kristalina Georgieva, European commissioner for international cooperation, humanitarian aid and crisis response, told IRIN.
Political commitment from IGAD member countries, apart from development partners’ support, will play a crucial role in creating sustainable solutions to help people cope with the effects of the region’s recurrent droughts, according to Sileshi Getahun, Ethiopia’s minister of agriculture, in whose country some 3.2 million people are in need of humanitarian assistance.
Time to “stand up and be counted”
“We [regional governments] can’t talk about the same thing [drought] over and over and yet do nothing to help people. This is the time for regional governments to stand up and be counted,” Sileshi said.
Speaking to IRIN, the UK’s development minister, Stephen O’Brien, said: “Resilience programme support is an important part of humanitarian support and response and provides a more sustainable way to deal with disasters.”
Among things to be prioritized will be the provision of drought-resistant seeds, water, education, investing in weather forecasting technology, and scaling up nutrition programmes.
Solving the various conflicts in the Horn of Africa, which have seen thousands of people displaced and many more killed, will be crucial in improving the ability of people in the region to be resilient in the face of disasters, Mahboub Maalim, executive secretary of IGAD, told IRIN.
“In the face of disasters like drought and famine, people’s livelihoods are disrupted and efforts towards halting the various conflicts we see [in the Horn of Africa] cannot be ignored, because people can’t cope when conflicts persist,” he said.
http://www.irinnews.org/Report/95247/HORN-OF-AFRICA-Greater-food-insecurity-forecast

MALNUTRITION: Ethiopian child mortality, malnutrition rates drop

Nov 11, 2011 : Aaron Maasho

ADDIS ABABA (Reuters) - Ethiopia has more than halved its child mortality rates since 1990 through campaigns to increase the number of health workers and clinics throughout the country, government and aid officials said on Friday.
The Horn of Africa nation has long suffered from one of the world's highest death rates of children due to recurring droughts. Twenty years ago the mortality rate for those aged under five was about 20 percent.
"Today, according to the 2011 Ethiopian Demographic and Health Survey, that figure has been slashed by more than half to 8.8 per cent," said Keseteberhan Admassu, Ethiopia's State Minister of Health.
"Reducing malnutrition, which is an underlying factor in at least half of all under-five deaths, has had a profound impact on the survival rates of children," he told a gathering of representatives of United Nations agencies.
Keseteberhan said the nation-wide malnutrition rate has been slashed by 32 percent, with prevalence to being underweight dropping to 28.7 percent in 2010 from 42.1 percent in 2000.
The U.N. Children's Fund (UNICEF) attributed the reductions to increased access to health posts in remote and drought-stricken areas, and a growing number of health workers.
The number of health posts has surged to more than 9,000 in 2011 from a handful in 2004 with priority shifted towards food-insecure areas, UNICEF said.
"The vigorous training of health extension workers who are on the frontline in the work to provide integrated health, nutrition, sanitation and hygiene services to rural communities ... has paid off," said Ted Chaiban, UNICEF's representative to Ethiopia.
Across the Horn of Africa, a fierce drought is forcing more than 13 million people to rely on emergency food aid this year, according to aid agencies.
Some 3.7 million Somalis are at risk of starvation in the worst drought in decades, including some 2 million in rebel-held regions that most major humanitarian agencies cannot reach.
Though 4.5 million of Ethiopia's 80 million people are affected, the United Nations says Addis Ababa is better equipped to tackle the drought's impact on the impoverished country.
http://af.reuters.com/article/topNews/idAFJOE7AA0BD20111111?sp=true

MALNUTRITION: African rainfall data 'will improve climate predictions'

Mićo Tatalović : 22 July 2011

 Flickr/Oxfam International

Satellite data may help better predict future climate change in Africa

[LONDON] A comprehensive 30-year dataset of African rainfall could soon help test climate change predictions and improve climate models, according to a UK researcher.
David Grimes, who studies satellite data at the University of Reading, told SciDev.Net that his group will release the complete, open-access data set within a year.
Researchers can already provide good short-term forecasts of Africa's weather but lack the detailed and consistent long-term data needed for accurate climate predictions.
The new data come from a European Meteosat satellite that has been collecting data over Europe and Africa. The data will supplement the poor ground data on rainfall to help improve climate predictions, which are often contradictory.
"Some models predict an increase in rainfall in some areas, other models predict a decrease of rainfall in the same area, and part of the reason for that is that data coming out of Africa [are] very poor and very sparse," Grimes said.
Many experts think that climate change will make the African climate more variable, with more extreme events, such as this summer's drought in the Horn of Africa.
This increased variability may also raise the risk of floods. Geoff Pegram, emeritus professor at the University of KwaZulu-Natal in South Africa, expects "longer periods of dryness and, when we do have rain, it is likely to be heavier".
The lack of good rainfall data has prevented climate models making robust predictions about how the climate will change at specific locations.
The new data "can tell us whether the rainfall and the climate in particular areas, at particular times of year or seasons, have been changing in the past 30 years, and then we can compare that with what climate models predict," said Grimes. "If the climate models say the same thing as our data sets that would give us much more confidence in their future predictions."
Previous data sets have lacked consistency. The Global Precipitation Climatology Project, for example, has global rainfall data but uses different methods of calculation for different periods, said Grimes, making it harder to understand how the climate has changed.
Tufa Dinku, a researcher at the International Research Institute for Climate and Society at the Columbia University, United States, said: "This data set is unique in that it uses a single algorithm and single satellite sensor, which ensures the consistency of the time series. There is no other satellite rainfall product that goes back to 1983 at ten-daily time scale and spatial resolution of about five kilometres.
"But the dataset is as good as the number of stations used for calibration," he said. Before the data set can be used, it must be calibrated against ground data. Satellites provide rainfall estimates, but they must be compared with ground data to know how they translate to actual amounts of rainfall.
Grimes said that he is planning to run a series of workshops in Africa to calibrate the estimates against their rain-gauge data and train scientists on how to use the data set.
"Africa is the worst continent, outside Antarctica, for the distribution of rain gauges — that's really the reason we do the satellite monitoring, because if you just use the gauges you can't get a complete picture of what's happening," he said.
"If you don't know what the climate is to start with, then you can't really decide whether it's changing or not."
http://www.scidev.net/en/news/african-rainfall-data-will-improve-climate-predictions-.html

MALNUTRITION: Somalia: "It is a colossal outrage that the lessons of previous famines have been ignored," says Oxfam.

GENEVA, 27 July 2011 (IRIN)

Analysis: Horn of Africa aid must also build long-term resilience

 Photo: Dan Delorenzo/OCHA

The carcass of a camel that has succumbed to drought lies on a roadside in northern Kenya

The images of starving children bear grim witness to the extent of the crisis affecting millions of people in the Horn of Africa, but they also symbolize a failure to act in time, say aid experts.

"It is a colossal outrage that the warnings went unheeded, that the lessons of previous famines have been ignored," says Barbara Stocking, chief executive of Oxfam.
The crisis in the Horn of Africa, triggered by drought, conflict and high food prices, is affecting at least 11.6 million people, with two regions of southern Somalia suffering from famine. And the situation may well deteriorate.
But the crisis, experts say, could have been mitigated by mobilizing the necessary resources ahead of time. There is increasing evidence that helping people become more resilient to the naturally recurring cycles of drought is far more effective than responding after disaster has struck.
It is also sound use of donor money, they say. As such, helping farmers find alternative livelihood options, or teaching them to grow drought-resistant crops, is far more effective than providing food aid when the harvest has failed.
"We have hard evidence, including from Africa, that we need only five Swiss francs [US$6.20] per capita per annum to build up resilience,” said Mohammed Mukhier, who heads the Disaster Risk Reduction unit at the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC).
“If you take the emergency response and emergency operations, you might need 200 francs [$250] per capita to deliver relief assistance for periods of just three or four months."
Humanitarian agencies and donors agreed at an emergency meeting in Rome on 25 July that the response to the crisis must address the immediate needs of the desperate population and help build resilience to avert similar crises in the future.

Risk reduction
Using donor money wisely is particularly urgent in view of the threats posed globally by natural disasters, including increasingly frequent storms, floods and droughts. Advocates of the risk reduction strategy argue that donors can no longer afford to provide funding for disasters primarily after the fact. The cost is rising and compromising regular development investment.

 Photo: OCHA

Intergrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) for eastern Africa

Yet, warnings of impending disaster in the Horn of Africa went largely unheeded.
"Measures that could have kept animals alive – and provided milk, and income to buy food – would have been much cheaper than feeding malnourished children, but the time for those passed with very little investment,” said Simon Levine, of the Overseas Development Institute. Now, "it is far too late to address anything but the worst symptoms", he wrote on the website of the independent British think-tank.
While massive funding often goes to post-disaster response, funds for preparedness and contingency planning are relatively scarce. Risk prevention is often hard to fund as it does not generate the same kind of media as a high-profile emergency response. Government donors answer to taxpayers and need to demonstrate impact – something that is difficult to do when disaster has been averted.
With donors mobilized - even if funds pledged still fall well short of the US$2 billion needed – the focus in the Horn of Africa is now on emergency as well as long-term assistance.
“Short-term relief must be linked to building long-term sustainability," said UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon. "This means an agricultural transformation that improves the resilience of rural livelihoods and minimizes the scale of any future crisis. It means climate-smart crop production, livestock rearing, fish farming and forest maintenance practices that enable all people to have year-round access to the nutrition they need."
Kanayo F. Nwanze, president of the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), stressed that building resilience in farming and herding communities required a long-term commitment. "But time - as we can see from the devastating situation in the Horn of Africa - is running out,” he told delegates at the meeting in Rome.
The challenge of seeking to avoid future food insecurity crises in the Horn of Africa is daunting. Conflict has severely hampered development and relief efforts in Somalia, and affects the mobility of pastoralists and their livestock, which is key to food security in the region.
But disaster risk reduction is increasingly seen as a humanitarian imperative, crucial to battling poverty and achieving sustainable development.
“Building resilience of farming and herding communities in East Africa requires a long-term, sustained commitment on the part of the region’s governments and the international donor community,” said Kevin Cleaver, IFAD's associate vice-president.

"The rains will fail. But let us not fail, too."

http://www.irinnews.org/report.aspx?reportID=93337

MALNUTRITION: Horn of Africa: MSF acts on malnutrition and drought

11 Jul 2011
The announcement by one of the main armed factions in Somalia, Al Shabaab, that foreign relief organisations would be welcomed in territories under their control has raised hopes for a desperately-needed scale-up of assistance inside the country.
“MSF has been working continuously in Somalia for over two decades running large-scale medical programs,” said Joe Belliveau, MSF operational manager.
“We have managed to maintain our programmes under Al-Shabaab, but restrictions on supplies and international support staff have prevented us from scaling up further. We hope that the Al-Shabaab statement leads to a lifting of these restrictions.”

Refugees
MSF teams are fully stretched in various locations inside Somalia, as well as assisting exhausted refugees crossing Somalia’s borders into Ethiopia and Kenya
“Most of our therapeutic feeding programs in Somalia are running over capacity with more than 3,400 children currently enrolled in our nutritional programs. We are running emergency nutritional projects in several locations in the Lower Juba valley region, in Galgaduud, Mudug, Lower Shabelle, and Bay region," said Mr Belliveau.
"The past weeks we’ve seen a sharp rise in cases with some people travelling hundreds of kilometres to get access to health care and treatment for their malnourished children,” he added.

Drought
Over the past year, the eastern Horn of Africa has experienced two consecutive poor rainy seasons, resulting in one of the driest years in decades in many pastoral zones.
The impact of the drought has been exacerbated by high local cereal prices, excess livestock mortality, conflict and restricted humanitarian access in some areas.
Large parts of Somalia have been ravaged by civil war for over 20 years, and people displaced have great difficulties accessing the few places where food aid and health care is extended.

MSF treatment centre
'Ader Mohammud, a 19-year-old mother of one, travelled around 250 km to bring her weakened child to the MSF treatment centre in Galcaayo. For daughter Najmo, 11 months old, the long journey had almost been too late and too long.
“I could not afford the transport cost, I have no support in Galcayo; I survive only with what other patients and caretakers give me,” says ‘Ader.
She does not know how she will go back home, she believes that selling her exit ration to pay the transport will be the only solution.

Somalia, Kenya and Ethiopia
The situation is equally dramatic in other areas in Somalia.
“In the town of Marere [southern Somalia] we noted a sharp increase in cases of severe malnourishment amongst people coming from all over the Juba valley,” says Joe Belliveau. “The majority of the hospital beds in Marere are currently occupied by malnourished children in need of intensive care, and additional staff has been recruited to assist.”
Meanwhile, tens of thousands of Somalis have been fleeing to Kenya and Ethiopia in search of assistance.

Dadaab camp
The sprawling Dadaab refugee camp in eastern Kenya has seen a rapid growth of new arrivals.
An assessment on the outskirts of one of Dadaab’s camp sites, MSF teams found extremely high malnutrition rates amongst the new arrivals.
As a consequence, MSF admitted 320 children to their In-patient therapeutic feeding centre in June alone – three times as many as in the same month last year. The survey also found that 43.3 percent of children aged five to 10 are malnourished.

New refugees and food
In addition, MSF is very concerned about delays in the assistance provided to the newly-arrived refugees. Since the 30th June, refugees have received food for 15 days upon arrival, but are told to wait as long as 40 days for the second food ration.
“Families arriving in Dadaab are seeking a safe haven, and it is unacceptable that they should be made to wait this long to receive even the most basic form of assistance, food and water,” said Emilie Castaigner, acting MSF head of mission in Kenya.
In Dolo Ado, in south-eastern Ethiopia, around 1,400 refugees cross the border every day, 2,700 on June 28th alone. Dolo Ado already hosts almost 100,000 refugees in camps originally designed for 45,000 people.

Transit camps
On arrival the transit camp in Ethiopia, before reaching the camps where they are reallocated, 37 percent of children under five years old screened by MSF are malnourished. MSF is currently treating more than 6,800 children in these nutritional programmes.
“MSF is increasing its capacity [in these camps] but the operational limits are being reached," explained Alfonso Verdú, head of MSF operations in Ethiopia."The engagement of other organisations to the nutritional crisis is essential while the present ones should uphold their responsibilities to avoid the deaths of many vulnerable people."
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MSF has worked continuously in Somalia since 1991 and currently provides free medical care in eight regions of southern Somalia. Over 1,300 Somali staff, supported by approximately 100 staff in Nairobi, provide free primary healthcare, malnutrition treatment, health care and support to displaced people, surgery, water and relief supply distributions.
MSF does not accept any government funding for its projects in Somalia, all its funding comes from private donors.
http://www.trust.org/alertnet/news/msf-acts-on-malnutrition-and-drought-in-horn-of-africa

MALNUTRITION: Explainer: The east Africa food crisis

Mark Tran 12 July 2011

East Africa's most severe drought in 60 years has left 10 million people desperately short of food. But what can be done, and should the call for help have been made sooner?

Somali refugees sit outside their makeshift home in Mogadishu, Somalia, after fleeing the south of the country. Thousands of people have arrived in Mogadishu over the past two weeks seeking assistance and the number is increasing by the day. Photograph: Mohamed Sheikh Nor/AP

The British public has so far donated £9m to an appeal launched by the Disasters Emergency Committee (DEC), an umbrella group of British charities, for people experiencing severe food shortages in east Africa. The region has been hit by the most severe drought in 60 years, wiping out cattle and crops. This has left at least 10 million people in Ethiopia, Kenya, Somalia and the newly formed Republic of South Sudan in desperate need of food, water and emergency healthcare.
Can the situation in east Africa be defined as a famine?

There has not been an official famine since 1984-85, when around 1 million people in Ethiopia and Sudan died. A famine is measured by rates of hunger, malnutrition and deaths, but the key to it is that it must be widespread, says Oxfam. Manoj Juneja, the new deputy director general of the Food and Agriculture Organisation, describes famine as a situation where there is an absolute exhaustion of, or inacessibility of, food in a given area leading to death. The situation in the Horn of Africa, says Juneja, has not reached that stage, but it is in a state of severe food insecurity that could rapidly deteriorate. "The situation demands immediate and constant attention," he says. In fact, famine as defined by the Food Security and Nutrition Analysis Unit (FSNA) based in Somalia has very precise criteria. The FSNA, started by the World Food Programme and funded by USAid, uses an integrated phase classification (IPC) five-point scale, ranging from "generally food secure" (1) to "catastrophe/famine" (5). Large areas of south east Ethiopia, southern Somalia and north east Kenya are already in phase four, the "emergency" phase. Some of the characteristics of phase five include acute malnutrition reaching more than 30%; deaths from hunger are two or more people per 10,000; water consumption is less than four litres a day; and intake of kilocalories is 1,500 a day compared to the recommended 2,100 a day.

Is there a famine early warning system?
After the 1984-85 famines, the US created the famine early warning system (Fews) to anticipate possible impending famines and advise policymakers on how they might be prevented. In 2000, the name was changed to the famine early warning systems network (Fews Net), a reflection of efforts to create and strengthen local food security information systems and warning systems within Africa with which the US could work. As far back as December 2009 Fews Net expressed concern at the food security situation in east Africa. In March 2011, the warnings from Fews Net grew more urgent, saying that relief efforts were inadequate to ease existing and expected food deficits and malnutrition. "The development of new strategies to reach affected households in restricted areas is especially critical," it said. "In addition, large scale contingency/response planning should begin immediately given that a failure of the March - May rains would result in a major crisis." The report also said in the worst case scenario "localised famine conditions, including significantly increased child mortality," were possible.

When did aid agencies first appeal for money?
Towards last year, the UN appealed for $500m (£310m) for Ethiopia, Somalia and Kenya to address food insecurity, but only half had been funded as of early this month, while a $30m appeal for Djibouti reached just 30% of the target. Juneja says early warning systems in November 2010 had highlighted the erratic rainfall throughout last year and that there had been subsequent alerts pointing to the deteriorating situation. Juneja attributed the shortfall in funding to a combination of the global financial crisis, with governments and the public tightening their belts, and to "donor fatigue" after other disasters. In recent years, the world has been asked to raise money for the Pakistan floods and the Japanese earthquake and tsunami. A joint statement from the FAO, the World Food Programme and Oxfam last week admitted: "We are already behind the curve, having lost a narrow window of opportunity to begin building upon food security gains in the Horn of Africa following several seasons of successful rains and harvests that had reduced the number of hungry people."

Has the appeal for money come too late?
Camilla Knox-Peebles, who specialises in food security for Oxfam, believes the appeal could have come sooner as the situation was already bad in 2009-10. "Every year the harvest was worse, people became more hungry and people were becoming less resilient," she says. But Knox-Peebles and others have pointed out that it is difficult to sound the alarm when the problem is one of incremental deterioration. Even the early warning systems talked in predictive terms, discussing possible scenarios and could not state categorically that a crisis is a complete certainty. "It is hard to get funding to tackle deeper-seated problems until there is an emergency," said Knox-Peebles. The situation is difficult for relief groups, which to an extent rely on media reports to bring home the scale of the problem to the public. The DEC launched its appeal last week following the lead given by the UN, when Baroness Amos, the head of humanitarian affairs, asked for donors to "dig deep". The decision by the Department for International Development to give £38m to Ethiopia, paved the way for charities to launch their appeal. They have been careful to avoid the word famine, though, as they do not want to be accused of being alarmist. "It's a difficult balancing act," said a DEC official. "We have to raise the alarm before it's too late, but we have to be factual, we do not want to give misleading information and we do not want to be accused of 'crying wolf'."

What is the long-term solution?
Everybody knows the answers: full funding of emergency requirements to stop hunger and malnutrition from accelerating and support of safety net programmes, such as school feeding and local purchase, supporting small farmers with tools, seeds, fertilisers, food-based nutrition and the knowledge needed to boost agricultural production and sustain rural livelihoods, support policies and investments that address challenges such as climate change adaptation, preparedness and disaster risk reduction. The problem is getting there. The signs of optimism is that agriculture is now high on the international agenda. In 2009, the G8 club of rich countries pledged $22bn for agriculture in the developing world over three years and last month, the G20 group of big economies agreed an action plan to improve food security.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/global-development/2011/jul/12/east-africa-drought-food-crisis

POVERTY: Horn of Africa: Forecasters warned of drought last year

Mićo Tatalović : 14 July 2011
 The drought is the worst in 60 years, according to the UN: Flickr/Oxfam International

[LONDON] Forecasting systems were warning about a serious drought in the Horn of Africa as much as a year ago — but communication problems between scientists and decision-makers meant the alerts went largely unheeded, according to forecasters.
Warnings about the drought — which the United Nations says is the worst in 60 years — were issued last August, when the Famine Early Warning Systems Network (FEWS NET) released a brief on food security in East Africa following the declaration of a La Niña event, a cooling of the sea surface in the Pacific Ocean known to affect weather in Africa.
"We were very confident that the October to December rains were going to be poor," Chris Hillbruner, a food security early warning specialist with FEWS NET, told SciDev.Net. "And there was an increased likelihood that the March to May rains were going to be poor as well."
Once the predictions for October–December proved correct, the agency started releasing food security alerts for the region in November, February, March, May and June, and organising multiagency meetings in Nairobi, in February, March and May.
The drought is now affecting ten million people in Djibouti, Ethiopia, Kenya, Somalia and Uganda.
Chris Funk, a climatologist with FEWS NET, said that the organisation's experts have been "a little frustrated that we provided this information quite early" but not enough has been done to make good use of it.
"The technology has outpaced the response systems," he said. "We are still developing rapid response capability around that."
And Hillbruner added: "At the technical level, there's been agreement about the situation for the past five months.
"What we've demonstrated over time, but particularly in the last year, is that systems have got to the point where they can do pretty good early warning within a timeframe that offers opportunities for response."
Randolph Kent, director of the Humanitarian Futures Program at the UK's King's College London, said that the drought response raised issues about how the humanitarian community turns scientific information and uncertain predictions into decisions about a response, particularly in turbulent regions.
His comments were supported by Molly Hellmuth, a researcher at the International Research Institute for Climate and Society at Columbia University in the United States, who co-edited a report about mitigating weather disasters, published last month in Climate and Society.
Hellmuth said clearer forecasts are needed that are aimed at decision-makers and come with recommended action steps stating what levels and types of action would be a sensible response.
And some 'no regrets' actions that may not have a negative effect even if the predictions do not come true could be encouraged — such as repositioning of food supplies and capacity building, she said.
Hillbruner agreed that the uncertainties in forecasting hamper its use: "In order to use early warning information most effectively, decision-makers have to be comfortable with that uncertainty — and it's difficult to be comfortable with it."
But Funk added that the monitoring systems used for forecasting are now playing a powerful role in the huge humanitarian response now underway, making it a much more effective response than that to the Ethiopian famine in 1984–5.
Simon Mason, who works with Hellmuth, said that his research has shown that both forecasters and the end-users have a fear of being proved 'wrong' which causes all players to dilute their predictions and actions.
In a recent assessment of early warning systems, which did not include the FEWS NET Horn of Africa drought forecasts, Mason found that forecasters are "playing safe; being very reluctant to issue strong warnings of severe climate events even when their models are suggesting there is a high chance of more extreme conditions".
Hillbruner, however, denied that this had been the case with the Horn of Africa drought predictions.
In the humanitarian community, Andrew Collodel, an emergency programme coordinator with the aid agency HelpAge International agreed that the forecasts had been made and communicated. HelpAge had listened to early warnings and worked in the region to prepare for the drought, but it had failed to garner sufficient funds in advance of the crisis.
Donors had faced "confounding issues" such as the global financial situation, troubled local politics such as the chaotic situation in Somalia, and several other recent major crises that had raided their resources, such as the one following the Haiti earthquake and the tsunami in Japan.
"The early warning systems are not a problem, how we react to them is," he told SciDev.Net.
http://www.scidev.net/en/news/forecasters-warned-of-horn-of-africa-drought-last-year.html

MALNUTRITION: HORN OF AFRICA: Poor Attention to Forecasts to Blame for Famine in Somalia

NAIROBI, Jul 21, 2011 (IPS) - By Isaiah Esipisu

 Children from families displaced by the drought line up to receive food at a feeding centre in Mogadishu. Credit:Abdurrahman Warsameh/IPS

The world had an opportunity to save thousands of lives that are being lost in parts of Somalia due to the famine, if only the donor community had paid attention to the early warning systems that predicted it eight months ago.

"The situation would not have been this bad if there was emergency response for prevention, despite the conflicts in the country," said Anna Ridout, Oxfam’s spokesperson.
The United Nations declared a famine in south Somalia on Jul. 20, following the two-year drought in the country, and the high child mortality rate due to the lack of food in the region.
According to the U.N., the southern part of the country hosts 310,000 acutely malnourished children at the moment. At the same time, nearly half of the population in Somalia is threatened with the famine. In some regions, at least six out of 10,000 children under the age of five die daily.
The death rate is three times higher than what the U.N. Children’s Fund defines in a famine, which is two people per 10,000 per day.
According to Oxfam, the U.N. announcement, which is the first one in the region this century, should be a wake-up call to the rest of the world.
"There has been a catastrophic breakdown of the world's collective responsibility to act. 3,500 people a day are fleeing Somalia and arriving in parts of Ethiopia and Kenya that are suffering one of the driest years in six decades. Food, water and emergency aid are desperately needed. By the time the U.N. calls it a famine it is already a signal of large scale loss of life," Oxfam said.
The organisation said that emergency aid was vital now to avoid people dying in massive numbers.
"Whenever there is an indicator of such a disaster, we must not only sit and wait for the emergency response. We can conveniently invest the funds by putting irrigation systems in place, vaccinating people, especially children, against anticipated diseases, and creating proper infrastructure to be used in case there is need for food supply," said Ridout.
Speaking from the Dadaab refugee camp in Kenya, Ridout said that refugees arrive daily and in huge numbers from Somalia. Nearly all the children are malnourished and women are weak and wasted after trekking for days in search of water, food and a chance to live.
"They tell of horrible experiences of children who died along the way, and even adults who drop along the way because they cannot make it to refugee camps, mostly in Kenya or Ethiopia," she said.
The most affected areas in south Somalia include the Lower Shabelle, Middle and Lower Juba, Bay, Bakool, Benadir, Gedo and Hiraan.
The effects of the drought were made worse by the Al Shabaab militia group, which had blocked donor agencies from operating within its territories in 2009 – now the famine zones.
"We are praying that the October rains expected in the East African region do not fail. Or else, we are likely to have a crisis in the area due to the looming drought," said Ridout.
However, despite the drought in northern parts of Kenya, Somali refugees keep arriving at various refugee camps on a daily basis. In June alone, 68,000 Somalis arrived in Kenya and 54,000 in Ethiopia searching for food and livelihood. At the moment, U.N. records indicate that 1,700 and 1,300 Somalis are arriving daily in Ethiopia and Kenya respectively.
According to Mark Bowden, the U.N. Humanitarian Coordinator for Somalia, 300 million dollars is required to scale up the emergency response for the 3.7 million people in need in the next two months.
One of the biggest setbacks for food aid distribution has been Al Shabaab. However, the extremist group recently lifted its ban on international aid agencies.
"We have security advisors on the ground. But most important, humanitarian organisations in the country are already working closely with local community-based organisations to access people in need," said Bowden.
"We are also involved in dialogue (not negotiation) with all community-based organisations, including groups like Al Shabaab, to ensure that there is cooperation for the aid to reach those who need it," he added.
However, despite the challenges, humanitarian agencies have already put in place response mechanisms. In an effort to reach more children with life-saving interventions, the U.N. and its partners have scaled up emergency nutrition, water and sanitation, and immunisation efforts to combat malnutrition and reduce disease.
"We have already started airlifting urgently-needed medical, nutrition and water supplies into the worst-affected areas," said Bowden.
Compared to previous famines, the current situation in Somalia compares or exceeds those reported during recent years in Niger (2005), Ethiopia (2001), Sudan (1998) and Somalia (1992). However, this is the most severe food security crisis in Africa since the 1991/92 Somalia famine, according to the U.N. Between January and June this year, 300,000 people in Mogadishu were given food assistance by humanitarian agencies on a monthly basis. Approximately 100,000 malnourished children were treated through some 418 nutrition centres in south Somalia from January to May 2011.
The U.N. further reports that 93,000 people received shelter, especially in Mogadishu, where the majority of those displaced by the drought fled to from other parts of the country.
The current crisis in Somalia is expected to have an increasingly devastating effect on other countries in the region. However, generally, the Horn of Africa has 11.5 million people in crisis, including the 3.7 million in Somalia.

http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=56574

MALNUTRITION: In pictures: Kenya refugee camp

12 July 2011
Distressing but informative pictures from BBC
Let's hope these pictures help contributions.
One might not like some of the actions in Somalia, but the children are not responsible, nor are the famine struck areas of Kenya and Ethiopia.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/in-pictures-14119487

MALNUTRITION: Horn of Africa: UK pledges £52.25m in aid for drought-hit Horn of Africa

16 July 2011




The money will help drought-hit areas of Somalia, Ethiopia and Kenya. The UK is to give £52m in emergency aid to help millions of drought victims in the Horn of Africa.
International Development Secretary Andrew Mitchell, who is visiting Kenya, said the money would be used there, as well as in Somalia and Ethiopia.
The World Food Programme estimates 10 million people are affected by the worst drought in over half a century.
Mr Mitchell said the situation was "getting worse" and urged the international community to do more.
The Dadaab camp in Kenya is overflowing with tens of thousands of refugees fleeing the parched landscape in the region where Somalia, Ethiopia and Kenya meet.
Mr Mitchell has arrived at the camp, which he will tour to see the scale of the drought.
The minister, who estimates that there are about 400,000 people in the camp, is meeting the head of the DEC, Brendan Gormley, and Justin Forsyth, chief executive of Save the Children during his visit.
He will also meet Somalian refugees.
The United Nation's Children's Fund estimates two million young people are malnourished.
The UK's aid package comes after a joint charity appeal by the Disasters Emergency Committee (DEC) saw more than £13m raised in a week.
The cash is in addition to the £38m food aid package announced on 3 July to feed 1.3m people for three months.
The Department for International Development (DFID) said the money would help:
500,000 people in Somalia, including treatment for nearly 70,000 acutely malnourished children
Over 130,000 people in the Dadaab camps to help provide them with clean drinking water and health care
100,000 people in Dolo Ado refugee camps in Ethiopia to provide them with shelter and clean drinking water as well as targeted treatment of starving children
300,000 Kenyans, including special rations to prevent malnutrition in children under the age of five and breastfeeding mothers.
Mr Mitchell said: "People across Britain have responded with great generosity to appeals by British NGOs (non-governmental organisations) working in the Horn of Africa.
"But the situation is getting worse - and is particularly devastating in Somalia, where families already have to cope with living in one of the most insecure countries in the world.
"More than 3,000 people every day are fleeing over the borders to Ethiopia and Kenya, many of them arriving with starving children.
"The international community must do more to help not only refugees but also those victims of the drought who remain in Somalia."



Meanwhile, Mr Forsyth said he had seen, at first hand, the suffering the drought had caused in the Dadaab refugee camp and across northern Kenya.
"Families I've met are absolutely desperate for food and water, and we know that the situation in Somalia is even worse," he said.
"It is the size of Bristol and this is just the tip of the iceberg, the levels of severe malnutrition in the region are increasing."
The charity director also praised the "unbelievable generosity" of the public for donating to the DEC appeal.
Mr Gormley said the need to "scale up" the response to the disaster was urgent, adding that he was pleased that the government had announced more funding.
He said: "Combined with the extraordinary generosity of the UK public to the DEC East Africa Crisis Appeal, we can truly say that the UK is playing a leading role in responding to this disaster.
"There is still, however, a great deal more to be done before we can say we have safeguarded the lives of the 10 million people at risk."
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-14171682

MALNUTRITION: Horn of Africa: La Niña blamed for east African drought

Thursday 14 July 2011La Niña blamed for east African drought
Environmentalists call for the development of early warning systems to help countries prepare for adverse weather

 
Carcasses of cattle lie on the ground near Lagbogal, Kenya, earlier this week. Scientists are blaming La Niña for the drought, which is the worst seen in the Horn of Africa for more than 60 years. Photograph: Sayyid Azim/AP

As parts of the Horn of Africa experience their driest periods in 60 years, pushing the numbers needing aid to beyond 10 million, some have been quick to blame climate change.
But no single event can be attributed to climate change, which involves long-term (decades or longer) trends in climate variability. There is, however, consensus in attributing the drought to the particularly strong La Niña event. The impact of climate change on the intensity and frequency of La Niña and El Niño in future is unknown.
IRIN spoke to two experts, an environmentalist and a scientist, who have worked extensively in the region.
Philip Thornton, a senior scientist who works part-time with the Nairobi-based International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) and the University of Edinburgh-based Institute of Atmospheric and Environmental Sciences, has done some pioneering work on projections of climate-change impact in eastern and southern Africa.
He told IRIN via email that projections of the climate change impact in east Africa were "a problem" as the authoritative inter-governmental panel on climate change's (the IPCC) fourth assessment report "indicated that there was good consensus among the climate models that rainfall was likely to increase during the current century.
"But work by other climate scientists since then suggests that ... certain Indian Ocean effects in east Africa may not actually occur.
"Some people think that east Africa is drying, and has dried over recent years; currently there is no hard, general evidence of this, and it is very difficult as yet to see where the statistical trends of rainfall in the region are heading, but these will of course become apparent in time."
The IPCC's fifth assessment report will be released in 2014.
Jan de Leeuw is the operating project leader in the vulnerability and sustainability in pastoral and agro-pastoral systems within ILRI's people, livestock and environment theme. He points out that this La Niña event is one of the strongest since the 1970s. But he says La Niña, along with El Niño, appear in cycles that "we don't understand".
What we do know is that La Niña started to develop in August 2010. It cools surface waters in the central and eastern Pacific Ocean, while allowing warmer water to build in the eastern Pacific. "The pool of warm water in the east intensifies rains in Australia, the Philippines, and Indonesia. Domino-style, this pattern also increases the intensity of westerly winds over the Indian Ocean, pulling moisture away from east Africa toward Indonesia and Australia. The result? Drought over most of east Africa and floods and lush vegetation in Australia and other parts of Southeast Asia," according to the US government's National Aeronautics and Space Administration.
De Leeuw writes: "La Niña events were common from 1950 till 1976. Since then we had two decades [until about 1996] with fewer events of lesser depth. This has changed since then and over the last 15 years or so we have had more frequent La Niña events."
Events as deep as the current La Niña occur once in 20 or 30 years, writes De Leeuw. "We are in a period now of more frequent La Niña events, but such a situation was there from 1950 till 1976 also."
Thornton has the last word when he says research attention must focus on developing effective early warning systems and ways to help people affected by these events, who have no use for "academic" consideration of the linkages with climate change to cope better with the current levels of weather variability, "whatever happens in the future".
http://www.guardian.co.uk/global-development/2011/jul/14/east-africa-drought-la-nina

MALNUTRITION: Somalia: WFP mulls resuming S.Somalia food aid

13 Jul 2011 : Source: alertnet // Megan Rowling : (Editing by Rebekah Curtis)


 An al Shabaab soldier stands next to women during food distribution at a displaced persons camp in Shebelle, about 50 km (31 miles) south of Somalia’s capital, Mogadishu, July 6, 2011. REUTERS/Feisal Omar

By Megan Rowling
LONDON (AlertNet) - The World Food Programme (WFP) is looking at whether it can restart aid operations in southern Somalia, after the hardline Islamist rebels who control the drought-hit region said relief agencies could resume assistance there.
The U.N. food aid agency withdrew from areas under al Shabaab control in southern Somalia at the beginning of 2010 because of threats to its employees, the imposition of informal taxes and a move to keep out female staff. It has continued to work in Mogadishu and central and northern Somalia, providing food assistance to 1.5 million people.
"As a humanitarian agency with a mandate to alleviate hunger, WFP will not stand by while the lives of hundreds of thousands – many of them children – are under threat in southern Somalia," WFP said in a statement on Wednesday.
"With needs so great in southern Somalia, WFP is working with the United Nations Humanitarian Coordinator to explore every possibility to return – if conditions allow, and if the necessary security clearance from the United Nations is granted," it added.
It will also consult with donor governments to ensure they are comfortable with the complexities and risks associated with restarting activities.
A week ago, insurgent group al Shabaab said it was lifting a ban it had imposed on some humanitarian agencies supplying aid in areas it controls in the Horn of African nation, mainly in the south.
Many Somalis are increasingly struggling to survive the compounding stresses of conflict and worsening drought. Thousands are abandoning their homes and streaming across the Kenyan and Ethiopian borders, seeking refuge in overcrowded camps.
An al Shabaab spokesperson told journalists that all aid agencies, Muslim and non-Muslim – "whose objective is only humanitarian relief" – are now free to help drought-stricken Somalis, once they have contacted its drought committee.
WFP spokesperson Greg Barrow told AlertNet from Rome that the agency has since reached out to the rebel group via the U.N. humanitarian coordinator, but has yet to receive a response.

SAFETY GUARANTEES
The United Nations says some 2.85 million people in Somalia need emergency aid, and in the worst-hit areas one in three children is suffering from malnutrition.
But local analysts in Somalia told Reuters al Shabaab had lifted the aid ban in the south to generate money to fund its war effort. It has previously asked aid agencies to pay a hefty registration fee.
The international humanitarian community has welcomed the announcement with caution, saying the safety of aid workers must be assured.
"We are ready to scale up assistance in southern Somalia but need guarantees that humanitarian workers can operate safely and will not be taxed or targeted," U.N. Emergency Relief Coordinator Valerie Amos said in a statement on Tuesday.
WFP's Barrow said the agency needs to know what the operating conditions in southern Somalia would be, because it is concerned about the security of its staff, of the food aid it would bring in, and of all the equipment required to support operations, including sub-offices, trucks and storage tents.
The U.N children's fund, UNICEF, told AlertNet last week it was hoping broad cooperation agreements could be put in place to allow humanitarian efforts to be stepped up.
The agency already has national staff working in southern Somalia, but operating conditions are difficult, said Bob McCarthy, UNICEF's regional emergency advisor based in Kenya’s capital, Nairobi.
A relaxation of the restrictions on aid agencies could provide an urgently needed window to stabilise the immediate crisis, as well as an opportunity to demonstrate the longer-term work UNICEF does to support children, he added.
http://www.trust.org/alertnet/news/wfp-mulls-resuming-ssomalia-food-aid/

POVERTY: .Somalis displaced by drought hit by Mogadishu rains

15 July 2011



Somalis displaced by the drought find flooded camps in Mogadishu

People who have fled the drought in Somalia to camps near the capital Mogadishu have now been hit by days of heavy rain.
Aid workers say five people, including three children, had died of exposure. A doctor told the BBC that people could not find shelter from the cold rain.
The victims have been displaced by a drought that has devastated large parts of the Horn of Africa.
Some 10 million people are said to be affected across the region.
Osman Duflay, a Mogadishu doctor, told the BBC's World Update programme that camp residents were facing "disaster".
Extended drought is causing a severe food crisis in the Horn of Africa, which includes Kenya, Ethiopia, Djibouti and Somalia. Weather conditions over the Pacific means the rains have failed for two seasons and are unlikely to return until September.
Food shortages are affecting up to 12 million people. The UN has not declared a famine but large areas of the region are now classified as in crisis or emergency, with malnutrition affecting up to 35-40% of children under five.
The humanitarian problem is made worse by ongoing conflicts, which means that until July militant groups had only allowed aid organisations limited access to large parts of southern Somalia and eastern Ethiopia.
Since the beginning of 2011, around 15,000 Somalis each month have fled into refugee camps in Kenya and Ethiopia looking for food and water. The refugee camp at Dadaab, in Kenya, has been overwhelmed by 370,000 people.
Farmers unable to meet their basic food costs are abandoning their herds. High cereal and fuel prices had already forced them to sell many animals before the drought and their smaller herds are now unprofitable or dying.
The refugee problem may have been preventable. However, violent conflict in the region has deterred international investment in long-term development programmes, which may have reduced the effects of the drought.
Development aid would focus on reducing deforestation, topsoil erosion and overgrazing and improving water conservation. New roads and infrastructure for markets would help farmers increase their profits.
The result of climate conditions, conflict and lack of investment is that 6.7 million people in Kenya and Ethiopia are currently existing on food rations, and relief agencies estimate 2.6 million in Somalia will need assistance a new emergency operation.
 "Especially the under-fives and the pregnant women, they're suffering from malnutrition and communicable disease like the measles, diarrhoea and pneumonia," he said.
Earlier this week Mark Bowden, the UN humanitarian affairs co-ordinator for Somalia, told the BBC that the country was close to famine.
"The next few months are critical," he said.
Last week Somalia's al-Shabab Islamist militia - which has been fighting the Mogadishu government - said it was lifting its ban on foreign aid agencies provided they did not show a "hidden agenda".
The drought is said to be the worst affecting by the Horn of Africa's in 60 years.
The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) is reporting a dramatic rise in malnutrition rates even in the part of Somalia normally considered to be the breadbasket of the country.
Somalia, wracked by 20 years of conflict, is worst affected.
Some 3,000 people flee each day for neighbouring countries such as Ethiopia and Kenya which are struggling to cope.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-14165509

MALNUTRITION: Small farms key to global food security, U.N. says

By Robert Evans 05 Jul 2011

 A farmer transports sacks of freshly harvested rice on a donkey-cart near the Mwea Irrigation Scheme in Kirinyaga district, Kenya, July 23, 2009. REUTERS/Noor Khamis

GENEVA, July 5 (Reuters) - Governments must work towards a major shift towards small-scale farming if endemic food crises are to be overcome and production boosted to support the global population, the United Nations said on Tuesday.
In its annual World Economic and Social Survey, it said a transformation from large-scale and intensive systems of agriculture was vital if growing environmental and land degradation was to be avoided.
The food crisis of 2007-08 and a price spike this year "have revealed deep structural problems in the global food system and the need to increase resources and innovation in agriculture so as to accelerate food production," the survey declared.
Food production, it said, would have to increase between 70 and 100 per cent by 2050 to sustain a world population that would have grown by 35 per cent from the present 6.9 billion to around 9 billion by that time.
"With current agricultural technology, practices and land-use patterns, this cannot be achieved without further contributing to greenhouse gas emissions, water pollution and land degradation," the survey argued.
In its turn, the resulting environmental degradation would undermine any growth in food productivity.
Of the nearly one seventh of the global population, some 925 million people who are undernourished -- or lacking access to enough food to make possible an active and healthy life -- 98 per cent live in developing countries, according to the survey.Two thirds of them are concentrated in seven countries -- Bangladesh, China, Democratic Republic of Congo, Ethiopia, India, Indonesia and Pakistan. Overall, 578 million are in Asia and the Pacific and 239 million in sub-Saharan Africa.
The worst drought in 60 years in the Horn of Africa has sparked a severe food crisis and high malnutrition rates, with parts of Kenya and Somalia experiencing pre-famine conditions, the United Nations said last week.
The survey said achieving food security would provide a long-term solution to hunger and malnutrition, easing price volatility and protecting the environment.
It would require a radical change in existing policies, but this would result "in a strengthening of currently fragmented systems of innovation and an increase in resources for agricultural development and sustainable resource management."
"The main challenge is to improve incentives so that they promote and lead to the development of sustainable agriculture by small farm holders," said the survey, drawn up by economists in the U.N.'s Department of Economic and Social Affairs.
"Evidence has shown that for most crops the optimal farm is small in scale and that it is at this level that most gain in terms of both sustainable productivity increases and rural poverty reduction can be achieved."
But to ensure that small farmers were viable, especially in the face of tougher international competitition, strengthening of marketing chains and quality standards, they must have greater access to credits and grants. (Editing by Stephanie Nebehay)
http://www.trust.org/alertnet/news/small-farms-key-to-global-food-security-un-says/

MALNUTRITION: KENYA-SOMALIA: Drought decimates livestock, hits incomes

NAIROBI, 4 July 2011 (IRIN)

 Photo: Umuro Godana/PISP : Pasture, grazing land and migration routes traditionally used in emergencies are no longer available (file photo)

A severe drought ravaging the arid and semi-arid parts of the Horn of Africa region is threatening the livelihoods of pastoral communities, with massive livestock deaths recorded amid an increase in deadly conflict over resources.
Pastoralists depend on livestock for all their basic needs and any losses undermine their economic and food security. Livestock sales are often used to buy grain and lack of milk and meat contribute to high malnutrition levels.
"The value of livestock – people’s main assets in many of the worst affected areas – has plummeted and livestock markets have collapsed, so people have much less purchasing power than before. People’s livelihoods have already been decimated, but there is now also a real risk of large-scale loss of life,” warns Oxfam in a 1 July statement, adding that in some parts of Kenya and Ethiopia, at least 60 percent of the herds have perished.
The perception that emergency relief often does not appreciate the importance of saving livestock assets in emergencies has prompted the development of initiatives such as the Livestock Emergency Guidelines and Standards (LEGS), the equivalent of SPHERE in humanitarian circles. LEGS aims at improving relief programming with communities that rely heavily on livestock for their social and economic well-being.
According to a December 2010 International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) report, interventions to support livestock, such as supplementary feeding and commercial destocking (among recommended actions in LEGS), should be implemented before livestock are so weak they die.
In the 2008-2009 Kenyan droughts, truckloads of dead and dying heads of livestock were common.
“Supplementary feeding needs to target breeding stocks with sufficient time so that they stay healthy," states the ILRI report. "Conflict resolution to enable pastoralists to move to key grazing areas needs to be done in advance, before large numbers of animals need pasture. Late interventions are costly and unhelpful."

Falling prices
The weak condition of livestock has meant that the surviving cattle, for instance, have a far lower market value than normal – up to 40 percent less in parts of Kenya, says Oxfam, adding that “pastoralists in Somalia have also reported that their animals are now worth less than half of their value in late 2010”.
An oversupply of cattle in parts of Somalia due to destocking and restocking of small ruminants through cattle selling in Garissa, Kenya, meant that cattle prices were still 21 percent less in Somalia than in 2010, stated a 20 June Food Security and Nutrition Analysis Unit – Somalia (FSNAU) brief.
Increased camel exports - 7 percent of total livestock from January to May compared with 2 percent over the same period in 2010 at the Bossaso port - is an additional indicator of stress selling in drought-affected pastoral areas, notes FSNAU.
Northern Kenya, Somalia and southern Ethiopia, which are predominantly pastoral regions, are among the areas most affected by the drought. In Somalia, at least 65 percent of the population depends on the livestock sector; because of the effects of the drought, more people are sliding into food hunger and poverty.

 Photo: Mohamed Gaarane/IRIN
In some parts of Kenya and Ethiopia, at least 60 percent of the herds have perished (file photo)

FSNAU estimates that at least 2.85 million people are facing food insecurity in Somalia, a 19 percent increase from January. In Kenya, the food-insecure population is estimated at 3.5 million.
Large livestock migration from northeastern Kenya and Somalia's arid areas of southern Gedo to Juba and Bay regions in southern Somalia may lead to early depletion of pasture and water in these regions, according to FSNAU.

Destocking
According to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA Kenya), subsidizing livestock markets, commercial livestock destocking and destocking for meat sales remain priority concerns in northern Kenya.
A government-run buy-back programme has been halted in some parts due to a lack of funds.
"The amount of money allocated was small considering the large population of livestock in Isiolo, Marsabit and Moyale," Zachary Nyanga, the Upper Eastern director of livestock, told IRIN.
Nyanga said KSh37.7 million (about US$419,000) allocated in April had been used to buy 13,000 goats and sheep from herders but the funds ran out in May. He said the programme would resume once additional funding, which has since been allocated, was received.
According to a local aid worker, who requested anonymity, government and aid organizations’ activities in livestock emergency response had to be coordinated. "The whole [off-take] programme was a failure from the beginning; the government was buying animals at a higher price than us,” the aid worker said.
The government was offering about KSh3,000 ($34) for a goat/sheep, while NGOs were offering half that.
In addition, the programme did not target cattle, which are worst affected by the drought.
"My intention was to sell my 40 [head of] cattle, save the money in a bank and then buy livestock [with the money] after it rains," said Peter Lepertet from the Wamba area of Samburu in the north. “I was also only allowed to sell four goats but I have more than 150 [sheep and goats]; it is meaningless.”
Wario Jirma, a resident from Marsabit district, northern Kenya, said: “We are losing livestock, [our] source of livelihood. The issue is very serious.”
In some areas, pasture, grazing land and migration routes that have traditionally been used in emergencies are no longer available, having been sold off, or allocated for tourism and large-scale agriculture. This has undermined pastoralists’ ability to cope with recurrent drought, notes Oxfam.

Clashes and displacement
In Kenya, at least 113 people were killed in clashes over resources between January and end-May, against 106 deaths in the same period in 2008, 138 in 2009, and 68 in 2010. According to OCHA Kenya, the high 2008 and 2009 killings occurred during above-normal dry conditions, similar to the present situation.
Conflict- and drought-related displacement has also affected education. At least 10 schools in Isiolo, Samburu and Turkana areas in the north have been closed.
"Hundreds of children have quit learning, many have moved with their parents to look for pasture, some have been displaced by a lack of water,” said Dade Boru, the Isiolo Teachers’ Union Executive Secretary. Livestock deaths and the resultant financial losses have meant parents are unable to raise school fees.
A local leader from the Oldonyiro area of Isiolo, Nicholas Lesokoye, said insecurity had affected business activities too and there were fears of more conflict. "We have received reports that a large number of armed herders have arrived and are still streaming in towards Isiolo," he said.
With drought known to be an ever-present hazard in the dry lands of East and Central Africa, relief programming should focus on the whole drought cycle, including normal and recovery periods, rather than just alert and emergency, states the ILRI report. This is because “any given area or community is... always in some phase related to current, recent or impending drought”.
http://www.irinnews.org/report.aspx?reportID=93142

POVERTY: HORN OF AFRICA: Food insecurity grips region

NAIROBI, 18 May 2011 (IRIN)

 Photo: Jaspreet Kindra/IRIN
Aid agencies have expressed concern over severe food insecurity in the Horn of Africa (file photo)

The number of people requiring humanitarian assistance in the Horn of Africa could increase sharply in coming months due to below-average rainfall and high food and fuel prices, say aid workers.
Moreover, funding shortfalls, drought and conflict could further increase the number of people needing humanitarian aid in the region from an estimated 8.75 million people.
Peter Smerdon, spokesman for the UN World Food Programme (WFP) in Kenya, told IRIN on 18 May: "The total number of people in need of humanitarian assistance in the Horn is 8.75 million; some of them get food aid from governments and other aid organizations. At least six million people need food assistance from WFP but this number could increase if the current rains are poor or below average."
According to Smerdon, by early May, about halfway through the rainy season, rainfall was well below average in most of the Horn, ranging from 5 to 50 percent of normal rates, and well below forecasts.

Funding shortfalls
Of particular concern, he said, were areas of southern and southeastern Ethiopia.
"Amid growing concern about the impact of drought in the southern and southeastern pastoralist areas, many of WFP's food assistance activities in Ethiopia face significant funding shortfalls," Smerdon said.
The agency said it was assisting 4.3 million people in Ethiopia.
In Somalia, WFP faces a 70 percent shortfall from May through October and urgently needs contributions of US$53 million to feed one million people in accessible areas for the next six months.
In Kenya, Smerdon said, WFP has a 50 percent funding shortfall of $47 million needed to provide food aid for the next six months to 1.7 million people.
In an April food security report Kenya's Agriculture Ministry said the national stock of maize - the country's staple - is expected to be about 5.9 million 90kg bags by the end of July, adequately covering only 1.7 months beginning in August.
The April–September 2011 Food Security Outlook by the Famine Early Warning Systems Network (FEWS Net) forecast that most households in the hard-hit pastoral areas would become extremely food insecure and many more livestock would die.
According to WFP, the Horn of Africa drought, which began with the failure of the short rains in December 2010, is the first since a two-year regional drought in 2007-2009 that saw the number of people needing humanitarian assistance in the region rise to more than 20 million.
Conflict could further increase the number of people requiring help. In early May, dozens of people were killed and others displaced when violence broke out on the Ethiopia-Kenya border between two communities over rising food prices.
The fighting between the Turkana community of Kenya and the Merille of Ethiopia, local media reported, reflected a broader pattern of inter-ethnic conflict resulting from food scarcity and persistent drought.
On 15 May, international NGO CARE called for more attention to severe food insecurity in Djibouti, Ethiopia, Kenya and Somalia, saying almost eight million people in these countries needed emergency aid.
"Chronic vulnerability, poverty, social injustice and climate change are all responsible for recurring food insecurity in the Horn of Africa," Mohamed Khaled, CARE's regional emergency coordinator for East Africa, said in a statement. "On top of that, a significant increase in food and fuel prices has worsened the current situation.
"In Kenya, for example, the price of maize, a staple food, has increased over 27 percent during the last three months. Sufficient attention is needed now to prevent further loss of lives and livelihoods. At the same time, the underlying reasons need to be tackled to break the recurring cycles that have persisted in recent years."

 Photo: Jamal Osman/IRIN
Conflict could further increase the number of people requiring help (file photo)

Measures taken
Djibouti and Somalia have declared the drought situation a national disaster while the Ethiopian government revised its humanitarian requirements document in April 2011 to reflect the growing needs and mobilize a scale-up of humanitarian response.
Khaled said: "While governments of the affected countries have already started interventions, short- and long-term international assistance is needed to help address critical needs but also underlying structural causes and chronic vulnerabilities. What is needed is a set of interventions which strengthens people’s own resilience capacity and coping mechanisms to survive such severe conditions while at the same time responding to their current humanitarian needs and protecting their livelihoods. It is crucial that people can feed themselves through their own means instead of being dependent on food distributions."

Somalia
Somalia's situation is dire as conflict continues. According to the UN Food and Agriculture Organization's Food Security, Nutrition and Analysis Unit (FSNAU), some 2.4 million Somalis are in food crisis, representing 32 percent of the population.
The effects of the ongoing drought, deteriorating purchasing power, rampant conflict and limited humanitarian space continue to aggravate the situation in most parts of the country, FSNAU said in an April update.


Women walk from Bakara market past a bullet-ridden building in Mogadishu


http://www.irinnews.org/report.aspx?reportID=92752

MALNUTRITION: DJIBOUTI: Drought appeal for 120,000 vulnerable pastoralists

Photo: IRIN: Tens of thousands of pastoralists in Djibouti need food and nutrition assistance
12 November 2010 (IRIN) -
A “forgotten emergency” has left tens of thousands of pastoralists in Djibouti needing food and nutrition assistance as well as longer-term coping mechanisms, according to the UN.
The tiny Horn of Africa state is the subject of a US$38.9 million appeal for food aid ($16.2 million), agriculture and livestock ($6.5 million), health and nutrition ($7.4 million), water and sanitation ($2.4 million), and emergency preparedness and sanitation ($6.4 million).
Pastoralists and other rural dwellers have been particularly affected by successive years of drought since 2005, according to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA).
"Water reserves have been depleted, there has been a massive loss of livestock, and as a direct result many people are facing the destruction of their livelihoods and lost sources of income," the agency said. "Increasing numbers of pastoralists have had to give up their traditional activities and are settling in urban areas."
Djibouti's food security situation is likely to further deteriorate due to the effects of La Niña events, expected to result in drier–than–normal conditions during the October–December rainy season, according to OCHA.
The country is also affected by the worsening violence and insecurity in neighbouring Somalia, OCHA said, with Djibouti hosting a refugee population of 14,500.
Launching the appeal in Geneva earlier this month, Valerie Amos, the UN Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator, said, “Due to high food prices and reduced purchasing power, too many people are unable to feed their families.
"While this appeal will help meet immediate humanitarian needs, like food and nutrition, it is important that we also address the root causes of recurrent food crises and improve the country's capacity to respond to these emergencies," she said.
Djibouti is considered a least developed low-income food deficit country and was ranked 147th out of 169 countries in the 2010 UN Human Development Index.
In an effort to mitigate the effects of drought, Djibouti abolished tax on food and some agricultural inputs and promoted the cultivation of unused arable land, according to Mohamed Siad Doualeh, the country’s ambassador to the UN.
http://www.irinnews.org/report.aspx?ReportID=91075

MALNUTRITION: HORN OF AFRICA: Livestock trade booms in borderlands

Photo: Nur Ali Farah/IRIN Radio
Hundreds of animals change hands in the Mandera livestock market, northern KenyaNAIROBI, 5 October 2010 (IRIN) - A booming trade in livestock has thrived for more than two decades between Somalia, Ethiopia and Kenya, despite rampant insecurity in the former and drought in the latter two, a testimony to resilience in extreme circumstances.
"I have been at this [trade] for over 20 years; I have seen good times and bad times," Abdi Mahmud Farah, chairman of the Mandera Livestock Market Association, told IRIN.
He said the association had 24 members from all three countries.
"The trade fluctuates, depending on the rains but also on the availability of foreign markets," he said. "The Middle East used to be the biggest market and we still send livestock there but it is not as big as it used to be."
He said Kenya also bought a lot of livestock for local consumption.
Farah told IRIN hundreds of animals change hands in the Mandera livestock market, the second-largest after Garissa, also in northern Kenya.
"On an average day, 300-400 heads of goats and sheep, 120-150 heads of cattle and about 50-60 camels are sold," Farah said.
He said a camel fetched between KSh50,000 and KSh60,000 [U$625 to $750], while a cow sold for KSh20,000-25,000 [$250-$312] and a goat or sheep cost KSh2,500-3,000 ($31-$37).
Savings
Gregory Akall, a Turkana pastoralist from northwest Kenya, who specializes in pastoralist and climate change issues in the Horn and East Africa, told IRIN on 5 October that livestock production was central to pastoralists’ livelihood and food security.
"Livestock trade enables pastoralists to diversify their income and reduce risk or losses during drought by having ‘bankable’ savings in the form of money, which cannot be wiped out by the drought but they can use it to restock after the drought."
The trade injects money into the local economy and gives pastoralists power and influence to pay for basic services such as food, education and health. "In addition, it reduces their vulnerability during droughts and natural disasters," Akall said.
Growth area
Choice Okoro, advocacy and outreach officer with the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, Kenya, told IRIN: “Cross-border livestock trade represents perhaps the highest growth area for regional trade in the Ethiopia, Kenya and Somalia border areas. But this can only be realized with more robust support. Well facilitated cross-border livestock trade serves as a critical strategy for poverty alleviation for the majority of pastoralists who are the predominant livelihood group in these border areas.”
Okoro said the annual profit from livestock trade was estimated by the Common Market of Eastern and Southern Africa at more than $60 million, including along the border between western Ethiopia and eastern Sudan.
Conflict resolution
Abdiladif Haji, who heads a committee of traders charged with security and conflict resolution, told IRIN that despite the civil war in Somalia, the trade in livestock never stopped.
"There was not a single day when the trade stopped because of problems on the Somali side," he said, adding, "traders face difficulties and have their share of problems, but we always manage to resolve them. We are faced daily with problems ranging from stolen animals to money disputes. Not once in my 20 years have we involved authorities. We resolve it.
We have developed very close links between traders from all three countries

"No one wants to spoil the trade," Haji said. "It is a thriving business and we want to keep it that way.
"We have people across the border; for example, if someone took livestock from Kenya and crossed into Somalia, our members there will make sure that the problem is resolved," Haji said. "The same is true for the Ethiopian side and the Kenyan side.
"We have developed very close links between traders from all three countries. The members all have clans and sub-clans but we have a common denominator - trade - and we don’t want to see it destroyed."
Social benefits
In a recent briefing paper for the international think-tank Chatham House, Hussein A Mahmoud said despite political and security problems in Somalia over the past 20 years, "the Kenya-Somalia-Ethiopia borderlands constitute a dynamic livestock trading zone that supports the livelihoods of thousands of people".
He said the trade also had social and political benefits.
"The cross-border clan relationships that always underpinned the trade are increasingly giving way to multiple clan business enterprises," Mahmoud said, adding that this helped to build trust and integration.
However, Mahmoud said the cross-border livestock trade also posed some challenges to authorities, in terms of "development and revenue collection and for border security management. The key challenge is to find ways to attain safe and secure borders that will also contribute to sustaining and enhancing this valuable trade and its benefits.”
http://www.irinnews.org/report.aspx?ReportID=90678

MALNUTRITION: DJIBOUTI: Widespread food gaps despite ongoing rains

NAIROBI, 13 August 2010 (IRIN) - The northwest and southeast regions of Djibouti should receive good rains from July to September, but thousands of pastoralists will still need food assistance until the end of the year, warns an agency. The Famine Early Warning System Network (FEWS Net) said the problems were due to several consecutive seasons of poor rainfall before the last two seasons of good rains. Other factors included above-average cereal prices, decreased demand for milk, and reduced remittances caused by the high cost of staple foods in urban areas. Djibouti is one of the Horn of Africa countries that suffers recurrent drought. In June, the European Commission warned that drought had affected the coping capacity of vulnerable populations in the region and 12 million needed help. "Drought is by far the main cause of natural disasters in the Greater Horn of Africa," said EU Commissioner Kristalina Georgieva, who heads the EC humanitarian aid portfolio. She announced a ?20 million (US$26 million) package on 23 June for six countries in the region. "Worryingly, the effect of climate change is felt more dramatically in this region." Climate concerns According to the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), more than 40 percent of the population in the Horn of Africa is undernourished. Millions are food insecure, especially subsistence farmers, pastoralists and agro-pastoralists, whose livelihoods largely depend on agriculture and animal production. "Although populations in areas affected by cycles of drought and flooding have developed specific coping mechanisms, [they] are strained as the climate is becoming more unstable and shocks increasingly severe," FAO said in its 2010 food security outlook. "More than half of the populations in the region survive on less than US$1 per day," it added. "With little or no saving and lacking the capacity or skills to diversify their sources of income, the poorest suffer the most from external shocks. "The needs of populations already food insecure or the most vulnerable to food insecurity, namely pastoralists, agro-pastoralists and marginal farmers, as well as women and girls across categories, should be prioritized." Children hit hardest Children, many of whom live in abject poverty, have been particularly hit. According to a recent report by the government and the UN Children's Fund (UNICEF), about two out of three children in Djibouti lack at least one basic right, including shelter, water and sanitation, information, nutrition, education and health. More than half lack proper housing. "The intensity of the poverty situation in Djibouti tells us of the dangerous environment in which children live, one that exposes them to exploitation and abuse," said Josefa Marrato, UNICEF representative in Djibouti. Most of Djibouti's 800,000 people live in urban areas. Conditions, FEWS Net said, were expected to improve in October, which would lead to an improvement in the health of animals. This would also be after September when schools re-open and petty trade plus casual labour employment opportunities pick up. But until then, 60,000 urban poor would require assistance.