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: Local wisdom key to combating animal diseases

NAIROBI, 21 June 2011 (IRIN)

 Photo: IRIN
Global problem: foot and mouth disease affects every continent except Antarctica

Flush with success over the unprecedented eradication of rinderpest, scientists are setting their sights on the next big livestock disease to rid from the world. Experts are aligning their crosshairs over foot and mouth disease, which affects every continent except Antarctica.
“In my opinion foot and mouth disease is by far the most important socio-economic disease of livestock worldwide,” said George Saperstein, a veterinary medicine professor at Tufts University. “It is highly contagious, affects multiple species, is difficult to control, has a major impact on international trade of animals and animal products, and causes dramatic reductions in livestock productivity for farmers on a global scale.”
“Foot and mouth disease could be the next big target for the international community at large,” said Kazuaki Miyagishima, deputy-director-general of the World Organization for Animal Health (OIE.) “There are still more than 100 countries suffering either endemically or periodically.”
The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and the OIE plan to hold a pledging conference next summer to motivate international donors to provide more funding for vaccine research to combat the disease.
But experts agreed that eradicating it would be an especially tall order.
There are several strains of food and mouth disease, so one vaccine will not protect against all types. The vaccination has to be kept cold, one of the most daunting challenges in administering it in remote locations. And the immunity it provides does not last very long; animals have to be vaccinated over and over again to keep them safe.

Eradication the goal?
Not everyone is on board with making eradication the goal. It took 50 years, hundreds of millions of dollars and a global effort to eradicate rinderpest, a relatively simple disease
“We should move away from the focus on eradication, which has had its day,” said Andy Catley, a Research Director at Tufts University. “It took us 50 years, hundreds of millions of dollars, and a global effort [to eradicate rinderpest]. And it was a relatively simple disease.
“Eradication is easy for the public and donors to understand. The question is, do you really need to eradicate any other disease in these pastoral areas? Technically it’s incredibly difficult and economically it might not be needed to get the trade benefits.”
Instead, Catley suggested bringing epidemiologists, economists, and livelihoods experts together to take a closer look at how to control diseases with community involvement, instead of bounding off on an overly-ambitious, and uncertain global eradication campaign.
Catley believed one of the reasons the rinderpest eradication worked was that it did not just involve local collaboration, it was based on it. But a community-based, culturally-appropriate local effort to control disease can be a hard sell and a long haul. “It’s a more complex, less sexy message to sell to donors,” he said.

Rinderpest lessons
When the highly contagious rinderpest virus was inadvertently introduced to sub-Saharan Africa in the late 1800s, it ruined pastoral economies and social structures, and left 90-95 percent of cows in Africa dead.
“It swept across the whole continent and all previously known livestock diseases paled into insignificance beside the trail of destruction left in its wake,” wrote IRIN journalist Louise Tunbridge in a 2005 book on animal health care in Southern Sudan. “Historians describe it as the greatest natural calamity ever witnessed in Africa.”
Once a vaccine was developed that could survive the scorching African heat without a cold chain, it took another decade for it to be deployed effectively to the desolate locales where the virus still lurked. Success started with 20 local herdsmen in Cameroon who were trained to vaccinate their own cattle and quickly proved they were able to access more cows than government veterinarians.
“The pastoralists knew how to inject their animals. They were also at home in the harsh terrain, wading up to their waists in swamps, clambering up rocky mountainsides and walking with heavy loads for days at a time,” wrote Tunbridge. “How many town-based professional veterinarians would endure such discomforts?”


 Photo: Catherine-Lune Grayson/IRIN
Local expertise: closely involving pastoralist communities is key to tackling animal diseases

Juan Lubroth, FAO’s chief veterinary officer, agreed that local wisdom was key to recognizing where to go to vaccinate in Southern Sudan and Somalia. But he said Western biotechnology and science still had a big role to play in combating diseases.

PPR
While the vaccines for foot and mouth disease are technically and logistically problematic, another livestock disease called Peste des Petits Ruminants (PPR) already has a successful vaccine. An acute and highly contagious disease that affects mostly sheep and goats, it is caused by a virus similar to rinderpest, and according to OIE’s Miyagishima, could be a more promising target for eradication.
“We have a relatively good and cheap vaccine for PPR. The problem is that small ruminants have less economic importance so it’s harder to get countries and governments engaged,” he said. Since cows are traded on the global economy while poorer people keep small animals for household use, diseases that affect them are paid less heed by scientists, researches and donors.
“Small ruminants are usually held by the poorest of the poor; they don’t have the same value as cattle,” said FAO’s Lubroth. “For PPR, we have similar tools that we had for rinderpest; it’s related to it; we know a lot about it and we have diagnostics. What we don’t really have is the political support.
Miyagishima said foot and mouth disease would probably be prioritized despite its technical problems, because governments are more conscious of it and see more economic benefit in its eradication.
“Certain wealthy countries with sophisticated surveillance systems and favorable geography can keep [foot and mouth disease] out, but it is in everyone’s best interests to eradicate it worldwide rather than exclude it from individual countries - usually the wealthiest countries,” said Tufts University’s Saperstein.
Meanwhile, the InterAfrican Bureau for Animal Resources warned: “Unless coordinated action is taken to control the spread of the disease, small ruminant plague [PPR] is likely to spread to most of Africa, bringing with it untold losses of livestock and endangering the livelihoods of millions of African farmers and herders.”
“You can’t just be in a comfortable chair in the capital and know what’s going on on the ground,” said Miyagishima. Locals are essential in watching out for signs of the disease and reporting them to the authorities. “If they start hiding the disease, it will be propagated,” he said.
Animal owners often do want to hide evidence of an outbreak, since authorities respond to some diseases by killing animals, even healthy ones. Some developed countries have financial compensation schemes, or even private insurance. “But in most of the developing world, there’s no incentive to report disease,” said Miyagishima. “This is something that’s really important to address since early detection is key.”
http://www.irinnews.org/report.aspx?reportid=93033

MALNUTRITION: Is it easy to grow what is good for you?

 Photo: DFID: More, please!!

NEW DELHI, 14 February 2011 (IRIN) - The debates at the three-day International Conference on Leveraging Agriculture for Improving Nutrition and Health in New Delhi were peppered with phrases like “think multi-sectorally”, “inter-sectorally”, and “break down the silos”.
Participants pointed out that “nutrition and agriculture talk to each other, and so do nutrition and health”, but “health has never told agriculture what it needs,” because the links between the three sectors seemed to have broken down.
Veteran health, agriculture and nutrition experts – and there were quite a few of them among the estimated 1,000 government officials, academics, aid workers, donors and private sector representatives who attended – remarked that these discussions were at least three decades old.
Symptoms of the breakdown surfaced in 2007/08, when the world was jolted by the food price crisis, said David Nabarro, the UN Special Representative on Food Security and Nutrition. The crisis, sparked by various factors that influenced both the supply and demand side of food availability, pushed at least a billion people into hunger.
The fact is, “agriculture, health and nutrition are tightly wedded,” said John Hoddinott, a senior researcher at the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), a US-based think-tank and organizer of the conference.
Agriculture is the primary source of calories and nutrients worldwide, and in developing countries is often the major source of personal income, as most people are either subsistence farmers or farm labourers.
The links between nutrition and health are obvious. “Health status is… affected by the consumption of goods that directly improve or worsen health. Nutritional status affects health - for example, severe vitamin A deficiencies lead to blindness,” wrote Hoddinott, who developed a framework conceptualizing the links.

Women take centre stage
Per Pinstrup-Andersen, a professor at Cornell University and a 2001 Food Prize laureate, while trying to distil the talk into what needed to be addressed, emphasized “access to food, especially for the poor, often the smallholder farmer or labourer, who in most cases is a woman”.
Women’s health was a central feature in most of the debates. Various speakers pointed out that a woman’s well-being shaped the future of her children, especially her daughters, the mothers of the next generation. The future prosperity of the country often also rested on the shoulders of women, as agriculture not only created economic growth, but children who ate well often went on to earn better incomes.
Lawrence Haddad, director of the Institute of Development Studies at the University of Sussex, in the UK, cited research showing that women usually got the short end of the stick when subsidized farming inputs were made available, and suggested experimenting with gender-based quotas.
However, encouraging women to participate in farming meant they would have to spend more time in the field away from their children, which called for innovative solutions and commitment from government and civil society, said Meera Shekhar, a leading health and nutrition specialist at the World Bank. “We need to build a movement.”
Jay Naidoo, a former minister in South African president Nelson Mandela’s cabinet, said the initiative should be led by civil society and grassroots organizations, whose voice he found lacking at the conference.
You can always find the money - if you have the political commitment and drive then anything is possible

Home grown initiatives
Various initiatives have been trying to address these concerns, such as the one led by Ibtada, an NGO working with semi-pastoralist women in northeastern Rajasthan, a mostly arid province in western India.
Women in these marginalized conservative communities have traditionally not had a voice, but as the rains have become increasingly irregular, many men have been forced to seek work in towns, leaving the women to tend their livestock and small patches of land.
Ibtada persuaded the women to form cooperatives to farm and trade goats to supplement household income. “We get the time to look after our children but if we have to go [to the market], the men do not mind looking after them,” said Uganti Yogi, one of the beneficiaries. The women have earned the respect of their communities because they have become equal contributors to the family income.

Simple solutions
Purvi Mehta-Bhatt of the Kenya-based International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI), and Paul Sommers, head of agriculture at Save the Children, an international NGO, pointed out that policy-makers and academics might be complicating things unnecessarily - all it would take to empower women was the support provided by agricultural extension services.
“It need not be anything complicated - you just need to tell the extension worker that you need the farmers to grow this particular vegetable, legume, or fruit, because the community needs this particular nutrient,” said Sommers.
Prabhu Pingali, deputy director of agricultural development at the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, said identifying the nutritional needs of a community required data, which was lacking in most instances.
Haddad noted that donors needed assessments of the impact of agriculture on nutrition before they could pump money in, and there were hardly any around.
“You can always find the money - if you have the political commitment and drive then anything is possible,” said Bibi Giyose, senior food and nutrition security advisor at the African Union’s development agency, the New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD).
She cited the example of Botswana, which managed to halve its high levels of malnutrition within a decade by running an aggressive campaign to provide fortified porridge to infants, and meals to school-going children, without any donor funding.
Experts said it was time to re-establish the links between agriculture, nutrition and health, and perhaps educate each sector about the objectives of the others.

In his closing address, Shenggen Fan, director-general of IFPRI, said it was about sharing experiences and learning, but at least the dialogue had been reignited.
http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?Reportid=91907

POVERTY: Nepal: Activists make inroads against servitude for girls

 MARK MAGNIER : Los Angeles Times : Jan. 3, 2011

GHORAHI, Nepal -- The scrubbing, cooking and sweeping started as early as 3 a.m. When the landlord's children awoke hours later, the 9-year-old girl got them ready for a school she could only dream of attending.
Afternoons and evenings were spent cutting hay and tending animals. Around 10 p.m., she'd collapse for a few hours before starting again, seven days a week.
It must be my fate, she thought, a feeling eventually replaced by anger and bitterness.
Every January or February she'd see her family for a week, only to watch her father "sell" her back into another year of drudgery for a mere $25. Although some of her friends spent most of their childhood this way, she was lucky: A civic group persuaded her parents to end the arrangement after three years.
For generations, ethnic Tharu girls as young as 6 have been handed over to landlords and brokers under a bondage system known as kamlari. The legacy of crushing poverty, caste and intergenerational debt has left many of the young victims scarred by sexual and emotional abuse.
"The landlord's son beat me many times," said Bishnu Kumari, 17, who was rescued a few years ago. "I felt dirty, unlucky to be born a girl. I was a slave."
These days, however, former kamlari victims are fighting back with notable success, the result of changing laws, activist pressure and nascent democracy in Nepal.
Charity groups have rescued thousands of girls in the last year, generally during the brief period when the annual agreements are renewed, by convincing parents that the practice is unjust, a daughter's education is worthwhile and that there are far less exploitative ways to earn family income.
Since most deals have traditionally been struck during the winter Maghe Sankranti holiday, rescued girls assisted by aid groups are staging street dramas, anti-exploitation marches and musicals. They also mount rescue missions in which parents and landlords are confronted and embarrassed into releasing the girls during the annual festival and other high-profile events.
The approach has proved so successful that the U.S.-based Nepal Youth Foundation estimates that 1,000 Tharu girls remain indentured, most in remote villages or with powerful families in the capital, Katmandu, compared with about 14,000 a decade ago.
Former victims Sunita Chaudhary, 17, and Anita Chaudhary, 18, who aren't related, sing, act and write scripts for the street plays put on here in this rural part of south-central Nepal, drawing on their experience of dire poverty, alcoholic fathers, exploitative landlords and low female social status.
At the end of the drama about girls forced into bondage, the troupe asks audiences who is to blame and how the play should end, sparking spirited debate. Many villagers are illiterate, have never seen a play and forget that it's not real. "People grab me and threaten to beat me up," said Hom Roka, 23, who plays the landlord.
These are complemented by "girls clubs," composed of former victims who urge new kamlari recruits to resist, backed up by adults in the community who have agreed to help fight the practice.
"Sometimes the landlords try to hit us," said Manjita Chaudhary, 21, Sunita's sister and a former indentured servant. "They lie, saying they educate and help the girls. But we usually wear them down."
In addition to carrying psychological scars, rescued girls have missed many years of schooling. Aid groups fund accelerated training to help them get back into mainstream classes, or in extreme cases, enter school for the first time.
A side effect of these efforts has been to swell the number of public classrooms: A dearth of girls restrooms can sometimes force female students having their periods to walk more than a mile to find a secluded spot, and civic groups have had to focus on school construction.
"I have 180 in my classroom," said Anita. "It can be quite difficult to hear the teacher."
A major parental concern is lost income. Although $25 to $50 for a daughter's annual labor may sound piddling to an American, it's huge in these dirt-poor communities. So activists started providing the families of liberated girls with a baby pig or goat, which sells at maturity for a similar amount.
"Who'd have thought a piglet could save a girl?" said Som Paneru, the Nepal Youth Foundation's in-country director.
Another concern, in a region with widespread alcoholism, is that fathers will drink the money away."The women told us, under no circumstances give money to the men," said Olga Murray, the charity's founder.
So piglets - or goats for some very poor families who even lack table scraps to feed a pig - are explicitly given to the girls, who, once educated and empowered, can better stand up to the men than the wives.
The poverty fueling the kamlari system was evident in remote Suraikula Narayanpur village, where 12-year-old Asha Chaudhary, who is not related to the other Chaudharys, was recently freed by aid groups after four years of servitude. Her father had leased her out to pay back a loan for fertilizer. The nine-member family lives in a two-room house where several undernourished, half-naked, sore-covered siblings play on the dirt floor as Asha chews on a dirty blue comb.
Life wasn't always so difficult for lower-caste Tharu. A century ago, they controlled these fertile plains near the Indian border, in part because of a natural resistance to malaria that higher castes lacked. After the disease's eradication around 1960, higher-caste people streamed down from the mountains.
Tharu, by their own admission, were easy targets. Largely illiterate, without property records but with a weakness for alcohol, many fell victim to theft and trickery.
Purna Prasad Chaudhary, coordinator for an emancipated group, said that half a century ago his grandfather, while drunk, had beaten a cow, a sacred animal in Hindu culture. A member of the Brahman priestly caste confronted his grandfather who, fearing that he wouldn't be reincarnated, agreed to give over half his land.
The Brahman immediately registered his windfall, then offered the man's family food, alcohol and loans, insisting each time on repayment in land.
"Soon we became sharecroppers on the land we'd owned," Chaudhary said. "We lost everything."
In 2000, a related kamaiya system involving adults was outlawed, as were debts passed down for generations, but child servitude wasn't made illegal until 2006. After that, the government promised free housing, retraining and education to dispossessed Tharu, although corruption and government inefficiency have undercut implementation, civic groups said.
With the kamlari system now under siege, former victims are daring to dream.
"Before I was taken away, my brother once asked me what I wanted to be and I told him, a lawyer," said Anita Chaudhary. "Now that I'm back in school, I'd still like to be a lawyer. So many girls are without rights or hope. I want to help protect them."
http://www.sacbee.com/2011/01/03/3295572/activists-in-nepal-make-inroads.html

POVERTY: PAKISTAN: Nomads without livestock

15 September 2010 (IRIN) - Thousands of people camped out along the main road from Quetta, capital of the southwestern Pakistani province of Balochistan, to Sukkur in Sindh Province, are living in primitive conditions, some with no shelter from the scorching sun. Among them are a particularly vulnerable group: nomads who have lost their livestock. One of them is Wali Jamote, 50, who fled his village in Nasirabad District early in August. "I lost everything we had - our tent, the few clothes, shoes and utensils we possess, and worse of all my goats and a camel," Wali told IRIN. He and his family move every few months in search of fresh pasture: "The animals were all we had. They provided us with milk and cheese, and without them my children have gone hungry." He said he had been given "no help at all" by any agency. Worse still, Wali and others like him have no idea what the future holds. "Will anyone give me a camel?" he asked. He also said he had no national identity card. "Some soldiers who passed by said I could receive no help without it - but they also said that with no fixed address I was not eligible for one." Maurizio Giuliano, public information officer for the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), played down this concern: "As regards humanitarian assistance provided by the UN and its partners, lack of an ID would not be an issue. When people need food or water to survive, humanitarians don't ask for ID documents to be in order," he told IRIN. However, people like Wali are unfamiliar with the process for receiving aid. They also have no idea how losses are to be assessed or what help they will receive with recovery. The minister for food and agriculture has told the media the loss of "agriculture and livestock runs into billions of rupees". [ http://www.dawn.com/wps/wcm/connect/dawn-content-library/dawn/the-newspaper/front-page/19-farm,-livestock-sectors-suffer-colossal-loss-380-hh-01 ] No schemes have yet begun to resupply livestock to flood victims, though the Pakistani government has announced it plans to compensate them in a number of ways and assist with rehabilitation. [ http://www.thenews.com.pk/14-09-2010/Top-Story/528.htm ] Camel rides plan There are no official figures on nomads, though one study, [ http://www.fspublishers.org/ijab/past-issues/IJABVOL_3_NO_2/30.pdf ] which analyses the different nomadic and pastoralist groups in the country, indicated their numbers have been declining. "My plan is to get to Karachi once roads reopen. My brother owns a camel there and offers rides at the seaside. Perhaps I can join him and get enough cash to buy my own animals," said Wali. He said he had taken his camels to the seaside to earn cash by giving rides before, "but this life is not for me in the longer term". For those totally dependent on their animals the losses mean they must find alternative livelihoods. This is especially difficult for people like Wali, who have no readily marketable skills, and no savings, to fall back on. "We live a simple life. We carry our home on our camels, as we move from place to place and live from day to day. But now we have lost our home, our animals and our freedom. I have no idea how we will survive." "The economic fall-out from this disaster on those affected will be catastrophic," economist Sikander Lodhi told IRIN. Meanwhile, aid efforts are patchy: For example in Nasirabad Division (comprising the Nasirabad and Jafarabad districts in Balochistan) only around 60 percent of the 400,000 flood-displaced persons have so far been reached with humanitarian assistance, according to an OCHA situation report of 9 September. [ http://www.pakresponse.info/sitreps/OCHA_SITREP23_9_September.pdf ]
Http://www.irinnews.org/report.aspx?ReportID=90477

MALNUTRITION: NIGER: Chasing after pastoralists with truckloads of aid

DIFFA, 4 August 2010 (IRIN) - Parts of sparsely populated and arid eastern Niger, north of the city of Diffa, are strewn with putrid dead cows: Pastoralists travelled great distances to find food and water for their animals but in the end had to watch their most prized assets die. Two years of erratic rain have led to severe shortages of fodder, cereals and water. In 2009, only a third of the required amount of hay grew, meaning there was insufficient fodder, according to a national household survey of food security by Niger's Early Warning System. In Diffa region, more than a third of cattle might be dead by now, said the director of pastoral development at the Ministry of Livestock and Animal Husbandry, Haido Abdul Malik. This is especially dramatic in a region where, according to the authorities, 90 percent of the population relies on livestock for survival. Pastoralists who have lived through recurrent droughts say they have never seen such a bad situation, not even during the prolonged drought of 1968-1974 which killed a third of all livestock. [http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=89917] "This is worse than anything we have known. The whole of Niger is hungry," said stockbreeder Amadou Aouta. Half the country's population is affected by food insecurity, according to the UN. "I had enough cows, goats and sheep to look after my family. Now, I have nothing and I will have to rely on my two children," said a 70-year-old man who lost all his cattle. He hopes his children can find some unskilled work. For the first time since the beginning of the crisis, Aouta and 63 other nomadic families in Yoberou are receiving food aid. A group of women waiting for their ration of 100kg of cereals from international NGO CARE said the worst thing now was hunger. "We have nothing left to sell to buy cereals," said one. Some 60 tons of food will be distributed to nomadic pastoralists who have hardly received any support until now. Unusual operation The operation is unusual: The authorities, CARE and Niger's Association for the Revival of Breeding (AREN) have been driving through remote areas with truckloads of food in search of vulnerable families. "We are heading to places where there are no villages. We are mostly targeting people who are on the move," said Amadou Adamou, in charge of the CARE caravan. [http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=89909] The operation was launched after aid organizations and the authorities visited the region in July and returned saying it was probably too late to save the cattle, but there was still time to save people. They had hoped to bring along animal fodder, a medical team and money to buy weakened cattle at higher than the current market price, "but not all partners were willing to quickly change their methods," said the head of the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) in Diffa, Sylvain Musafiri. Assisting nomadic communities is a challenge. "They are far from urban centres, it is expensive to bring aid to remote areas, and it is difficult to reach people who keep moving," said CARE regional coordinator Ali Salé. "This is a population that is not accounted for in local censuses. We are used to organizing distributions in villages and not in temporary settlements." Constant movement also makes it difficult for malnourished nomadic children to get regular treatment over several weeks. "They go when they need to find some grazing land. They usually leave before the end of the treatment, once their condition has improved," said Abdulaziz Kimba Garba from Bilabrim health centre, near the Chadian border. Stockbreeders' children have traditionally been less affected by malnutrition, as they have access to milk, according to Save the Children UK's household economic surveys. [http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=89690] This may not be true this year. "Dying cattle will not produce milk. When there is no milk, nomadic children are left with little to eat," said AREN's regional coordinator, Hassan Ardo Ido. Bilibrim's small health centre has received several malnourished nomadic children since April. With more than 22 percent of its children under five acutely malnourished, Diffa has the highest rate of malnutrition in the country, according to a government survey in July. [http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=89657] Late response More should have been done earlier, but "people react only when they start seeing dead cattle," said OCHA's Musafiri. In April, AREN suggested that in order to limit losses, animal fodder should be placed along corridors used by the pastoralists, "but little was done," said AREN's Hassan Ardo Ido. The crisis was anticipated as early as the end of 2009, but the political situation [http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=88160] made it difficult to call for help, said the Livestock Ministry's Abdul Malik. "Even after the coup [of February 2010], donors had to assess where the new authorities were heading and the authorities had to officially call for help. We had to wait until April or May for support to come. It was already [too] late." "This year showed us that we can lose everything," said the chief of Nguelbeyli (2,000 inhabitants), Lamido Moumouni Kabori. He said weakened animals could recover in a month, but families who have lost most of their cattle have little to fall back on, as normal reproduction will not grow back the herds. "People are now wondering what the future will hold. We cannot rely on stockbreeding any more."