13 million in need of food aid

Close to 13 million people in six countries in Southern Africa are in need of food aid between now and March next year. That figure could rise further if the humanitarian response is delayed, or this season's winter harvest is lower than expected, UN agencies and NGOs warned on Thursday. "A full blown crisis is not yet with us, but is very much on the horizon," World Food Programme (WFP) Deputy Executive Director Jean-Jacques Graisse said at the opening in Johannesburg of a two-day meeting on the regional food crisis, attended by representatives from a wide range of aid agencies, donors, and regional governments. UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) and WFP crop assessments in six countries - Zimbabwe, Malawi, Zambia, Mozambique, Lesotho and Swaziland - point to the region facing the worst food crisis since the 1992 drought. A total of 12.8 million people are in need of assistance through to March. In Zimbabwe, the worst hit country, six million people - just under half of the population - are in need of food aid as a consequence of drought and the government's land reform programme. Faced with a foreign currency shortage and an inability to afford significant amounts of commercial imports, food aid is anticipated to account for an estimated 33 percent of the national cereal requirement. In Malawi, 3.2 million people or 28 percent of the population are in need of emergency assistance. In Zambia, provisional figures suggest that as many as 2.3 million or 21 percent of the population need food relief. While the total numbers of people in Lesotho and Swaziland facing food emergencies are significantly smaller, they represent 20 and 21 percent respectively of their tiny populations. Mozambique is confronted with a localised problem in the south of the country and some central districts, but the impact of drought has tipped 515,000 people into crisis. Nicholas Haan, Regional Programme Adviser for WFP's Vulnerability Analysis and Mapping unit, said the region was facing a "complex emergency". Aside from the impact of erratic rainfall at the beginning of 2002, political, economic and health factors have deepened the current crisis. The vulnerability of the region's poor has been exacerbated by economic failures, in some cases inappropriate food security policies, the exhaustion of coping mechanisms, chronic malnutrition, and HIV/AIDS, he said. According to figures from the UN children's agency UNICEF, 59 percent of Zambian children under five were already malnourished in 2000, 49 percent in Malawi, 44 percent in Lesotho and 27 percent in Zimbabwe. A rise in food prices has robbed already poor people of the ability to buy enough to meet their needs. In Malawi, the price of the staple maize rocketed by more than 400 percent in March this year compared with the same period in 2001. Even under normal conditions, subsistence farmers in Malawi can only grow 90 percent of their food needs. From December and the lean months until the next harvest in March, they eke out an existence by providing casual labour within the community using money earned to buy food on the market. HIV/AIDS further undermines food security by reducing people's productivity, increases household costs as money and time is devoted to care for sick members, and breaks up families. "The situation is one of complex vulnerability," Mike O'Donnell, Save the Children's Fund emergency food security adviser told IRIN. "Already weakened survival systems break under the strain." As a consequence of rising poverty, in some of the worst malnutrition-affected districts of Malawi, there has been a 50 percent drop in the number of children attending school. "This leads to an increase in child labour and an increase in their vulnerability to exploitation," said Nils Kastberg, director of UNICEF's office of emergency programmes. The two-days of discussions, co-chaired by Graisse and Ross Mountain, Assistant Emergency Relief Coordinator of the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), are aimed at reviewing the implications of the crisis over the next 12 months. They will address the need for a coherent humanitarian response, and resources required to address food and non-food requirements. A tardy donor and ineffective national government response to the current crisis, could see the numbers of people at risk in the region rise even further, Haan warned. There was also the possibility that 2003 could be an El Nino year, which could result in another dry season. He said that averting the immediate emergency would require the timely delivery of food aid. Targeting the needy, the development of comprehensive intervention strategies to compliment government efforts, and improvements to the functioning of the local market would also be needed.