Q/A with WFP's regional director for East/Central Africa

UN World Food Programme's (WFP) director for East and Central Africa bureau, Holdbrook Arthur, was in Nairobi in early December for the launch of the Consolidated Appeals Process (CAP) for Somalia and the Great Lakes region. In an interview with IRIN, he spoke about WFP's work in Somalia and challenges it faces in that country. Below are excerpts. QUESTION: How will the formation of a new government in Somalia affect WFP operations in that country? ANSWER: It is not easy to predict the kind of relationship following the new government as you have said, but we will endeavour as much as possible to remain neutral. We would not have any biases on whom we want to deal with. If the government and the institutions arising from that are what the Somalis themselves have determined, we do not have any choice but to deal with them. We are very flexible, we can deal with anyone who would cooperate with us to make our work easy. Q: How has WFP responded to the drought crisis in the north and some parts of the south? A: In areas where they have had access, they have been able to provide assistance from two main sources - from Bossaso and Somaliland. They have done assessments; they have determined the number of people and have been able to provide support to the people affected by the powerful drought of the past four years. I have just learnt that there has been a change in the weather and there has been a very cold spell killing almost all the livestock - this calls for another type of intervention because you are dealing with livelihood issues. That is something I think the UN team together with the authorities need to see how to redress. It is not strictly a food aid issue, the food aid part of it will be on a very short-term basis. Q: How exactly do you think people in Gedo, Sool and Sanag areas can be helped to recover their livelihoods? A: This is where we need to get our colleagues in FAO [UN Food and Agriculture Organization] to see how best they design projects, but contact with donors is very very important because you are going to get into raising capital for people to be in a position to buy livestock to replace them. These are long-term issues that need collaborative decisions [and} assistance from all those who are interested in Somalia. Q: What has been the major challenge for WFP in Somalia? A: The major challenge has been one of security, followed closely by finding a suitable partner to work with [and] the absence of governance. You do not know whom to deal with from the perspective of local authority. There are going to be more challenges in the future once the new government has established [itself]. Then we would need to determine what can be done. There are several critical areas that WFP needs to look at with other partners. Education, training/capacity-building, assistance to agriculture in terms of regeneration of pastures, irrigation - but these are areas that need other partners with the necessary expertise and resources to complement what we are doing. Q: Would you like to comment on the CAP that was a launched on 6 December? [UN and other relief agencies appealed for about US $164 million for operations in Somalia in 2005]. A: I think the most important part of the CAP is not the value involved. What is going to happen is the capacity to utilise those resources which will come from the launch. I think for various reasons the capacity is not big enough, but in terms of requirements, that CAP is still very modest. If the situation on the ground changes it would be very evident that a lot more would be required. If the agencies don't have access to areas that are in need, then this becomes a very big programme, but if you look at the needs of Somalia this is a very modest CAP. Q: In the past there has been a problem of donor response to CAPs, with what is given falling far short of what was appealed for. Do you expect an improvement next year? A: It is going to continue to be so because I don't think we have given enough publicity to Somalia's needs. One thing the Under-Secretary General [Jan Egeland] tried to do [last week] was to re-engage the international community to refocus their attention on the needs of Somalia. So we hope that the attention of the international community will be different. Q: Would you like to comment on programmes in other countries that fall under the jurisdiction of WFP's regional bureau? A: Out of the 12 contries, five of them are conflict-affected. You have Somalia, DR Congo, Burundi and Eritrea and Ethiopia. What we have done in all these countries is to look at relief components, with the very minimum in terms of infrastructure development because our activities there are highly influenced by security levels. In those countries that go through periodic droughts - there is Ethiopia which has gone through droughts from several years in the past, Eritrea has also been hit by drought and then last year you had Kenya - in all these countries we have provided substantial assistance to alleviate the problems of drought. We expect that maybe in 2005 there will be lesser levels of the need for our intervention in these countries. Kenya might do well, but we will not know the extent until they have done the assessments.