WFP, experts cautiously optimistic on food situation

Burkina Faso, confronting the fallout of natural disasters that smacked the Sahel region last year, appears for now to have dodged a widespread food crisis, but there are pockets of serious shortages and vigilance is essential, UN officials and food experts say. While the overall situation is stable, there are localised at-risk areas the government and UN agencies are monitoring closely for danger signs, UN sources said. Meanwhile an international aid organisation in Burkina has sounded the alarm that half a million people need immediate food aid. Officials with the UN World Food Programme (WFP) and the US-funded Famine Early Warning Systems Network (FEWS NET), just back from the latest in a series of missions to areas most affected by locusts and drought in 2004, say a number of factors have helped Burkina minimise the impact. Burkina has had good harvests for successive years and had national food reserves to help affected people early on, WFP deputy director Kerren Hedlund told IRIN on Tuesday. WFP recently conducted a mission to the northern Oudalan province, near the borders with Niger and Mali. “The rains started early, it’s green, the animals are in great shape and the cows are producing milk,” Hedlund said. She added that health services are seeing malnutrition rates stabilising, in some areas even declining. But Hedlund noted that throughout the Sahel the food situation is always delicate and everyone must remain highly vigilant. “If the rains stop tomorrow in the Sahel, which they can, it would be a disaster,” she said. “We’re in a better position, but can’t let down our guard until October (harvest time) when the situation stabilises.” WFP and the government have distributed food to populations most severely affected by crop damage. The UN food aid agency has expanded its school feeding programme and is providing supplementary food to families of undernourished children at health centres. In its July 2005 status report on Burkina, FEWS NET had said the case of Oudalan was “worrying,” given a lack of access to staple grains and dwindling household incomes. But Jean Simpore of FEWS NET said the situation has improved in recent weeks. “It has stabilised. There are more products in the market and prices are going down.” The arrival on the market of maize from neighbouring countries and a wild grain in Burkina, as well as interventions by aid groups, has pushed prices down, he said. “It seems they will avoid the worst.” But cries for help from farmers’ cooperatives tell a different story, according to Oxfam Intermon (Spain), which runs Oxfam activities in Burkina Faso. The organisation says at least 500,000 people in the Sahel zone and north-centre of the country need food aid. These regions are home to most of Burkina’s Tuareg and traditional herdsmen populations. “There is not a day that passes that villagers from these regions do not come and tell us they are in trouble and ask for help,” said Daouda Thiam, head of Oxfam humanitarian services in Burkina. “The government says there is not a food crisis, but the reality on the ground is otherwise.” The Burkina government has stated publicly that there is not a widespread food emergency, and has not appealed to the international community for blanket food aid. The 500,000 figure Oxfam cites comes from a government announcement following evaluations earlier this year; but UN sources point out that the government said only that 490,000 people were “affected by” crop losses in 2004, and did not qualify the populations beyond that. An official with the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said it is clear there are some pockets that remain particularly vulnerable. "Generally under control" Representatives of UN agencies, government, NGOs and local associations are scheduled to meet on Thursday to discuss preparations for localised emergency interventions if needed, Felix Alexandre Sanfo, national officer for OCHA, said. “The situation in general is under control,” he said. “But that does not mean there are not problems.” Sanfo noted that there has been a marked increase in Tuaregs leaving the north for the capital, Ouagadougou. While food prices are coming down in some areas, for many a 100-kilogram sack of millet, the staple cereal, costs between 25,000 and 35,000 CFA francs (US $47 to $66), more than double the cost in recent years. Families are trading 12 goats for a single sack of millet – the same sack that four goats would have bought last year, aid workers said. Karidja Sow, head of a women’s agricultural organisation, told IRIN a family member has sold 21 heifers this year, whereas usually he sells only two. People are forced to sell animals at such low prices this year that Burkinabe are referring to the exchange as “losing” rather than “selling” one’s animals. Opposition politicians in Burkina – where presidential elections are set for November this year – argue that the government is ignoring a creeping “famine”. A group of opposition politicians wrote in a 3 August open letter published in L’Observateur newspaper they “denounce the silence of the current leadership over the distress of rural and urban populations confronted with famine that is now spreading across all provinces of Burkina”. Benewende Sankara, president of the opposition Union for Rebirth/Sankarist Movement party, told IRIN that people all across the country are suffering. “Famine, for us, is very real. It exists,” he said. “When you are in contact with the population, you see – they don’t even have the money to buy a sack of millet.” Sankara said it is time to ask for outside food aid. “Right now, that is the only solution for Burkina Faso.”