Humanitarian crisis - the way forward

Southern Africa's ongoing humanitarian crisis could only be resolved by integrating short-term emergency relief with longer-term policy goals, said the latest Southern African Development Community (SADC) Food Security Ministerial Brief. The UN World Food Programme (WFP), the Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO) and SADC on Thursday announced that at least 6.2 million people would require food aid this year. This was a significantly reduced figure from the more than 15 million who needed food aid at the height of the past year's food shortages. However, WFP regional representative Judith Lewis noted that the figure of 6.2 million could still rise. "Households and communities in the SADC region are considerably more vulnerable to food and livelihood insecurity today than they were a decade ago. This is illustrated by the impact of the 2002 food crisis compared to the 1992 crisis," the SADC ministerial brief observed. "In 1992, the magnitude of harvest failures was higher than a decade later, yet the impact on food security and livelihoods was lower. Households and communities are today bearing the brunt of compounded social, natural and economic shocks and trends. These adverse events and processes include: weather-induced shocks [such as drought], weak government institutions, inappropriate national and intra-regional policy frameworks, extra-regional trade restrictions, and increasing poverty and vulnerability - exacerbated crucially by HIV/AIDS," the brief explained. These factors, "taken together", were creating a situation which was "slowly overwhelming Southern Africa". The report recommended the linking of emergency and development programmes. "Governments, NGOs and donors will need to link emergency and development programming more effectively than in the past. As the region is characterised by frequent re-occurrence of natural or man-made shocks, coupled with deleterious social and economic trends, a linear, one-directional '[from] relief to development' approach will not sustainably raise incomes and reduce vulnerability," the report noted. Such chronic vulnerability meant that agencies needed to be able to adapt to changing circumstances by "cycling back from development to emergency responses" and focussing on long-term social safety net programmes. A major challenge would be blending support for agricultural growth with social protection. "Policy makers will need to make careful judgments between promoting increased agricultural productivity on the one hand, and minimising income and consumption variability on the other. Given the current and likely future vulnerability context of Southern Africa, the arguments for a risk management approach to household food security are strong," the report said. This meant improving social assistance to those who were chronically unable to make ends meet, and providing social insurance against damaging fluctuations in household access to food. "Inevitably, this will involve trade-offs with approaches that seek to increase agricultural growth, and this fact needs to be factored into the design of national poverty reduction strategies, agricultural recovery strategies, and rural and urban development programmes," the report noted. For the full report go to: www.fews.net