Not just food aid needed

The food aid response to the humanitarian crisis in Southern Africa has gathered pace, but underlying factors exacerbating the emergency needed to be addressed, an update to the UN's regional consolidated appeal said. "Food aid is good, but we need to ensure that social services are well supported, especially in the light of HIV/AIDS," Chris Kaye, the Regional Disaster Response Advisor of the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs told IRIN. A combination of erratic weather resulting in prolonged drought, the devastating impact of the HIV/AIDS pandemic and questionable government policies have all had an adverse effect on the Southern Africa region, placing the lives of 14.4 million people at risk in Lesotho, Malawi, Mozambique, Swaziland, Zambia and Zimbabwe. Zimbabwe represents about half of regional food needs. The UN inter-agency appeal launched in July requested US $611 million, with US $507 million for food aid. "While indications suggest that the response to the food aid requirement of the appeal is positive, there has been a limited response to interventions that support vital social services. Further, the timing of contributions has been disappointing. Limited availability of supplies and funds and the complications caused by the Genetically Modified Organisms (GMO) issue negatively affected plans to pre-position food ahead of the rainy season," the updated regional strategy document said. The key elements originally identified as shaping the humanitarian situation in the region were poverty, the prevalence of HIV/AIDS, food shortages, social service delivery capacity, economic and political factors and logistics capacity. Reviewing progress, although the impact of HIV/AIDS was understood, "the depth and breadth of its outreach was not fully factored into the response", the report acknowledged. "A dramatic deepening of household level poverty has precipitated the current crisis. At the same time the capacities of communities to participate in their own recovery has been substantially diminished by the HIV/AIDS epidemic. HIV/AIDS has weakened family structures and left thousands of orphans and elderly persons without the strength to plough fields, undertake supplementary income generation activities or seek appropriate health care even when services are provided free of charge," the document said. "There is a growing belief that the emergency in Southern Africa is driven by the HIV/AIDS pandemic and that the food crisis is the immediate and most visible manifestation of this more deep-rooted problem ... This is having a significant impact on the planning and orientation of the humanitarian programme both in terms of priority immediate and mid-term interventions," the report noted. The assessment confirmed the severity and complexity of the food crisis. For the six countries, 14.4 million people have been adversely affected by food shortages and risk losing their "livelihood assets", suffering from acute malnutrition or death, if food assistance is not provided. Against a regional deficit of 3.37 million mt of cereal, as of September, if planned food imports and pledged food aid materialised, there would still be an uncovered cereal gap of about 1.3 million mt. "There is an urgent need to expedite delivery of commercially imported maize to prevent further deterioration of the food supply situation later in the year and early next year," the report said. At the regional level, the major change or constraint to the original food implementation plan was government policies on acceptance of GM-content food aid. Five of the six governments have decided to only accept milled GM food. "Delays in the decision-making process and the need to mill most GM maize has meant that WFP [World Food Programme] has been forced to store large quantities of grains in port silos, affecting the through-flow of commodities into the region. "Although WFP had planned to mill some of the maize in any case for certain programmes and areas, it now has to explore capacities to mill much larger quantities. Such a large scale milling exercise, however, allows for a valued-added nutrition impact through fortification with a multi vitamin and mineral mix, for which a funding proposal has been submitted to donors by WFP," the report said. The full document