More than food aid needed for recovery - Yearender

The world's attention was grabbed by the calamity of the Asian tsunami at the end of the year, but millions of people in Southern Africa have entered 2005 unsure of whether they will find enough food to eat. The regional humanitarian crisis that began in 2002, and threatened 15 million people at its peak, has persisted in four countries: Lesotho, Malawi, Swaziland and Zimbabwe. The kingdoms of Lesotho and Swaziland have struggled with another drought year: half of the population in Lesotho and a quarter of all Swazis are at risk until the next harvest in March 2005. In Malawi some 1.7 million people, mainly in the south, need assistance. Forecasts for Zimbabwe earlier in the year estimated that 2.3 million rural people were food insecure, along with 2.2 million urban poor - but that was before a sharp increase in food prices deepened the pool of vulnerable households. DISAPPOINTING DONOR RESPONSE The response to a World Food Programme (WFP) appeal for US $404 million over a three-year period has not been encouraging. "To date, WFP has received only 2.5 percent (about US $10 million)," the agency said in a press release on 22 December. "The traditional lean season - from January to March - will be particularly tough, as we will have to cut rations even further unless we receive immediate cash donations," said Mike Sackett, WFP regional director for southern Africa. "WFP will run out of food for Lesotho by the end of January, and other countries in the region in the following weeks. By the beginning of March we won't have any cereals left." What has become apparent, analysts say, is that the nature of the Southern African crisis is not a simple issue of food deficits brought on by adverse climatic conditions, amenable to traditional short-term relief measures to "get people back on their feet". One new element is the direct impact HIV/AIDS has had on livelihoods in a region with the worst prevalence rates in the world. "It is now well recognised that household food insecurity in rural and urban Southern Africa cannot be properly understood if HIV/AIDS is not factored into the analysis," an Oxfam-GB policy research paper noted. "HIV/AIDS can, on the one hand, be treated in its own right as a shock to household food security, but on the other, it has such distinct effects that it is a shock like none other," said the report, 'The Underlying Causes of the Food Crisis in the Southern African Region - Malawi, Mozambique, Zambia and Zimbabwe'. The tiny mountain kingdom of Lesotho represents some of the key problems that turned a drought - a relatively regular and survivable event - into a humanitarian disaster. At the heart of the tragedy is the unrelenting impoverishment of people, who have exhausted coping measures, are marginalised in the economy, and have few opportunities for recovery.[More details] While the cash-strapped government estimates that half the country's two million population live in poverty, independent studies say more than 70 percent of Basotho are unemployed. Retrenchment from the mines in South Africa deprived households of a traditional source of remittances, and with a 29 percent HIV prevalence rate, many families have been drained by the cost of AIDS-related illness and death. Roughly 10 percent of Lesotho is arable, but the agricultural sector has been further constrained by its reliance on traditional rain-fed methods of farming, and the impact of international trade barriers. Governmental lack of capacity has resulted in an inability to deliver seeds and fertiliser to farmers on time, or provide extension and social services. Women have mostly borne the brunt of the rural economy's stagnation. IMPACT OF MARKET REFORMS "The widely shared perception is that vulnerability to food insecurity has increased significantly in southern Africa over the last decade. Over this period the impact of structural adjustment has led to a withdrawal of the state from the local level and, along with HIV/AIDS, this is seen to have precipitated a long-term livelihoods decline," noted an assessment for Britain's Department for International Development prepared by the Southern African Regional Poverty Network (SARPN). The aggregation of factors, both local and international, hollowing out the capacity of households to cope and governments to deliver means that "the next regional drought, in five or 10 years, can be anticipated to generate an even larger need for emergency support", the study noted. The response of humanitarian agencies has been to reconsider the traditional relief-to-development model, in which short-term relief, aimed to get people "back on track", is followed by a distinct development assistance phase. "The problem entails formulating responses that account for the structural and extended nature of the livelihoods crisis, while also responding effectively where people faced a devastating decline in their ability to support themselves," the Oxfam policy paper commented. "We need to have an ongoing combination of simultaneous approaches," Dan Mullins, regional HIV/AIDS coordinator for CARE, told IRIN. "No one organisation can possibly satisfy all those needs, so there needs to be partnership." Oxfam has used an integrated response to assist HIV-positive households in Malawi. It provides monthly food rations to tackle immediate needs, as well as basic home-based care items, like plastic bowls and blankets, with training in animal husbandry and orphan care as part of a longer-term development initiative. The Namibia Red Cross has taken a similar approach in an HIV treatment programme in the northeastern town of Katima Mulilo. [More details] NEED FOR COMMUNITY WELFARE The notion of welfare safety nets to improve the resilience of the most vulnerable has received new interest. "They are very powerful, very important: traditional safety nets [such as the extended family] have been under huge pressure for some time," Scott Drimie, author of the Oxfam policy paper, told IRIN. Such security mechanisms can be either informal, market based or public: for example, a community savings club, microfinance schemes or social grants. A number of innovative safety nets, linking social protection with development, have been launched in the region. One is the "Indlunkhulu" project in Swaziland, a revival of a traditional practice where chiefs' fields are made available to members of the community unable to support themselves, in this case children orphaned by AIDS. [More details] "Despite these diverse programmes in many of the region's poorer nations, there are lingering questions about coverage, integration and targeting," the SARPN assessment noted. Issues around affordability and management capacity must also be taken into account if these initiatives are to become comprehensive national programmes - although social protection can be advocated as an integral part of economic growth. Another aspect is that vulnerability analysis systems - which are relatively well developed in the region - are currently poorly linked to social protection programmes. Nevertheless, "a diversified set of safety nets, under the broad social protection framework, can provide an important part of the search for solutions to food insecurity and poverty", SARPN concludes.