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The Famine Early Warning Systems Network says some families in southeastern Ethiopia face a potential ‘catastrophe’ after large-scale livestock die-offs in the past year.
The USAID-funded watchdog writes in its latest November update that some populations of Ethiopia are forecasted to reach levels 4 to 5 on the five-point scale used to measure food security and famine.
“A major food security emergency is expected to continue in southeastern Ethiopia into mid-2018. Worst-affected areas include Dollo, Korahe, and Jarar zones, along with parts of Afder and Liben, which will be in Emergency (IPC Phase 4) through May 2018, while some households will be in Catastrophe (IPC Phase 5),” the watchdog group says.
FEWS NET works with agricultural, market, and weather data to forecast gaps that could lead to widespread hunger or famine.
Recently, southeast Ethiopia’s ongoing Deyr/Hagaya season (which runs from October to December) has performed better than other recent seasons. However, the report questions whether this improvement is enough to keep pastoral and agropastoral families in the region from falling into hunger.
“Substantial time and favorable performance in upcoming seasons is needed for households to reconstitute livestock herds and recover their key livelihood activities, following very high excess livestock deaths and sales due to drought in 2016/17,” reads the report.
Food security is also expected to be ‘stressed’ in parts of the Southern Nations Region from February to June next year, due to poor harvests this year, but humanitarian needs there will not be as bad as the Somali region.
FEWS NET recommends “large-scale, sustained assistance… in order to mitigate food consumption gaps and limited increases in acute malnutrition and the risk of excess mortality.”
The severe food insecurity in southeastern Ethiopia is similar to that experienced in neighboring Somalia, which has been suffering from a bad drought as well as an ongoing civil war.
In Ethiopia alone, 700,000 people are on the verge of starvation. It is estimated that 8.5 million people are hungry in the country.
A prolonged drought has caused crops to fail and livestock to die in huge numbers.
The situation could get much worse between now and September and likely to continue until April 2018, if people cannot get the help they need, as food stocks are low before the next harvest.
Across the Lake Chad Basin, some 7 million people struggling with food insecurity need asistance.
“Famine does not arrive suddenly or unexpectedly, it comes after months of procrastination and ignored warnings. It is a slow agonizing process, driven by callous national politics and international indifference.” By Nigel Timmins, Oxfam
Today, the world stands on the brink of unprecedented famines. About 30 million people are experiencing alarming hunger, severe levels of food insecurity and malnutrition in north-eastern Nigeria, South Sudan, Somalia, and Yemen. 10 million of them are facing emergency and famine conditions. Famine is already likely happening in parts of northern Nigeria, while Yemen and Somalia are on the brink. Thanks to aid efforts, it has been pushed back in South Sudan but the food crisis continues to spread across the country.
These are just four of the many countries that are facing high levels of food insecurity this year. In Malawi, Sudan, Afghanistan, DRC or Syria millions of people do not have enough food to feed their families. The situation in some of these countries could worsen if the international community do not address urgent needs and resolve the root causes.
What is famine?
Famine represents the most serious food insecurity situation in terms of both scale and severity.
It occurs when a substantial number of people are dying due to a lack of food or because of a combination of lack of food and disease. When more than 20% of households cannot eat, acute malnutrition exceeds 30% and death and starvation are evident we cannot talk about a humanitarian “emergency” situation anymore but a “famine”. Learn more about the language of food crises.
Famine threat on the map
What are the main causes of famine?
There is not a single root cause that just explains all famines – each context has its unique aspects. However, there is always a fatal combination of various factors that can include conflict, insecurity, access, chronic poverty, lack of trade and severe weather events such as persistent drought.
For example, ongoing war and conflict are the primary drivers of the situation in north-eastern Nigeria, South Sudan and Yemen, and for Somalia it is drought and weak governance after years of conflict. In some parts of Ethiopia and Kenya, communities are also suffering from a catastrophic drought which makes it incredibly hard for them to buy food locally or have any source of income.
What is sure is that we always have the power to prevent and end famine, but we always let it happen. A declaration of famine is effectively an admission that the international community has failed to organize and act in time and that national governments have been unable or unwilling to respond.
An acute humanitarian emergency is unfolding in Ethiopia’s Somali region, with malnutrition reaching alarming levels, the international medical organization Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) said today.
MSF teams in the region’s Doolo Zone report 67 deaths of malnourished children so far in June.
“The numbers of young children with severe acute malnutrition in Doolo Zone are the highest our teams have seen in the area in the 10 years we have worked in the region,” said Saskia van der Kam, MSF nutritional adviser.
MSF teams, working alongside Ethiopian health authorities, have set up 27 outpatient therapeutic feeding centers and four inpatient therapeutic feeding centers to treat children with severe malnutrition. In the locations of Danod, Lehel-Yucub, Wardher, Galadi, and Daratole, MSF teams have treated 6,136 children under five for severe acute malnutrition since January. By comparison, MSF treated 491 children in these areas for severe acute malnutrition during the same period in 2016—a more than tenfold increase.
In the first two weeks of June alone, 322 severely malnourished children were admitted in the four inpatient feeding centers supported by MSF. Despite all medical efforts, 51 of these children did not survive. The total number of deaths among children in June has risen to 67.
“The deaths of these children show the gravity of the situation,” said van der Kam. “What we are seeing is a humanitarian emergency.”
Thousands of People are Fully Dependent on External Aid
The malnutrition crisis comes in the wake of two failed rainy seasons. Many people have seen their livestock die because of the drought, which has forced them to abandon their traditional nomadic way of life. They have settled in informal camps, where they do not have enough food and safe water to survive.
“When the drought came, our animals died so we could no longer stay in the bush,” said Fardausa, a local woman who brought her three-year-old granddaughter, Maida, for treatment to one of the MSF-supported therapeutic feeding centers. “I have never seen a situation like this. We had animals that gave us everything we needed. Now we have nothing and our children become sick and die.”
Droughts are nothing new for people in this area. The mainly pastoralist population knows how to adapt to avoid losing as few camels and cows as possible until the next rains come. But after two failed rainy seasons in a row, many can no longer cope and are now totally dependent on external aid.
“Our teams are seeing entire communities left without milk, as most of their animals have died,” said Karline Kleijer, MSF emergency program manager. “Without their animals, they no longer have a source of income or the means of transporting food and water when on the move. People are knocking on our doors begging for food.”
Malnutrition Soars as Food Aid Runs Short
People in the camps have been receiving food aid and the regional government has been providing cooked meals in most of the informal camps. However, supplies of food are insufficient for the high number of displaced people in need and are now running out.
“In the last week of May, the distribution of cooked food was halted, and the monthly distribution of dry food rations was delayed, leaving large numbers of people without any food at all,” Kleijer said.
More concerning, the World Food Program has warned that its supply of emergency food aid for the Somali region will run out at the end of July, leaving 1.7 million people even more vulnerable to malnutrition.
MSF Urges Donors and Other Organizations to Scale up Their Support to the Somali Region
Fearing a stark deterioration of the nutrition and humanitarian situation in the Somali region, MSF is planning to expand its emergency response to other zones, including Jarar and Nogob.
“Our teams are working with the health authorities to reach as many children as possible to provide them with therapeutic food to reduce the immediate mortality, rather than provide comprehensive care to a smaller number of children,” said Kleijer. “But we shouldn’t have to make such a choice. More food aid and more humanitarian organizations need to arrive in this region urgently.”
MSF calls on donors to increase their support to Ethiopia to ensure that a continuous supply of food reaches people in need. Humanitarian organizations must also dispatch teams and supplies to the hardest-hit areas to prevent the crisis from escalating further.
According to the charity, an estimated 20 million people are at risk of starvation in South Sudan, Ethiopia, Kenya and Somalia unless provision of relief food is stepped up by national governments and bilateral donors.
So far, only South Sudan has declared famine in some parts of the country while Ethiopia, Kenya and Somalia could be the next epicenter of hunger and malnutrition.
NAIROBI, June 19 (Xinhua) — Countries in East and Horn of Africa region are staring at a large-scale humanitarian crisis occasioned by acute food and water scarcity, international charity, Christian Aid said on Monday.
According to the charity, an estimated 20 million people are at risk of starvation in South Sudan, Ethiopia, Kenya and Somalia unless provision of relief food is stepped up by national governments and bilateral donors.
“The recent disappointing rains in Ethiopia, and also in Kenya have shattered any faint hopes for water sources to fill up, pastures to regenerate and harvest to be viable,” said Christian Aid’s Head of Humanitarian Programs for Africa, Maurice Onyango.
The UN had earlier warned of a looming specter of mass starvation in the greater Horn of Africa region as acute drought and conflicts hobble efforts to feed the population.
So far, only South Sudan has declared famine in some parts of the country while Ethiopia, Kenya and Somalia could be the next epicenter of hunger and malnutrition.
The UN Office for Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (UNOCHA) says that cumulatively, 13.4 million people in Kenya, Somalia and Ethiopia are food insecure.
Onyango noted that the magnitude of food insecurity in the region has not matched the capacity of humanitarian agencies to respond.
“Communities affected by drought are relying more on outside aid, stretching humanitarian agencies and local authorities to respond,” said Onyango, adding that Christian Aid has so far provided life saving assistance to nearly 50,000 people affected by drought in the region
Besides providing emergency assistance to drought victims in the East and Horn of Africa, Christian Aid and a consortium of partners are investing in resilience projects to help communities cope with climatic shocks.
Onyango said the Charity has built the capacity of farmers and herders in arid zones to manage water and pasture in a sustainable manner.
“If the world wants to avert future catastrophes of this scale, we need to invest in helping communities become more resilient to disasters,” said Onyango.
FILE – People wait for food and water in the Warder district in the Somali region of Ethiopia, Jan. 28, 2017.
Forecasters are warning that Ethiopia could face more rainfall deficits, deepening a drought that has left nearly eight million of the country’s people in need of aid.
Dr. Chris Funk is a climate scientist at the United States Geological Survey (USGS) whose research focuses on African and Asian countries. He told VOA’s Horn of Africa Service that there is a 50 percent chance another El Nino weather event could form in the Pacific Ocean this year.
“If it’s a moderate or strong El Nino, that would definitely tilt towards odd, below normal rain for northern Ethiopia,” he said. “That is what happened unfortunately in 2015, when we had a strong El Nino that reduced rains in northern and central Ethiopia and we are concerned about that possibility.”
Ethiopia tends to receive its heaviest rain between mid-June and mid-September, especially in the north.
The moderate rainy season that runs from February to May was disappointing, said Dula Shanko, deputy director for the Ethiopian meteorological department.
“March rain was very poor for areas that get rain [in] this time,” he said. “In April and May it shows little progress but not enough.”
He added that rain was sparse in the southern regions of Somali and Oromia.
Out of 7.78 million Ethiopians in need of food assistance, 3.6 million are in Oromia.
Lower than normal rains in 2015 and 2016 contributed to the ongoing food crisis by killing livestock and reducing farm output. The drought has forced farmers and pastoralists to search for water, pushing students to drop out of school in some areas.
The impact has been especially harsh in Oromia, where massive protests against the government took place two years ago and officials have maintained a state of emergency. In this region, Borana, Guji, West Guji East, West Harerge, North Shewa, East Shewa, Arsi and Bale provinces are highly affected, according to a government report.
Ethiopian officials say they are working to counter the drought by providing food for both animals and people.
“The combined effort from local, federal government and citizens averted the country from falling to famine before it happens [and] saved countless lives by allocating millions of dollars for this purpose,” said Debebe Zewude, a public officer for the National Disaster and Risk Management Commission (NDRMC).
But government intervention only goes so far when it doesn’t rain.
“Carcasses of cows, goats litter over the roads throughout the districts,” said Dida Guyo of Nagelle Borana, a city in Oromia. “I would say thousands of animals are dead due to drought from this area.”
The situation is grave, said Borbor Bule, a resident of Dubluk, a town in the south of the country.
“This is our only source of income,” he added. “We have lost our proud breeds. I have lost more than 10 animals. More than 50 animals are dead in my village alone.”
“I have never seen anything like this in my life,” he said. “… God forbid, we are fearing for human life.”
NAIROBI, May 24 (Thomson Reuters Foundation) – Hunger is likely to reach emergency levels in Ethiopia and the number in need of food aid will rise beyond the current 7.7 million, experts said, as drought has decimated livestock, rains have been erratic and aid is in short supply.
Prolonged drought, followed by floods, has pushed millions across East Africa into crisis, with 7 million in neighbouring Somalia also needing aid, the United Nations said as it grapples with the highest global hunger levels in decades.
“Despite enhanced rainfall at the end of April into early May over many areas of Ethiopia, food security outcomes are still expected to deteriorate,” the U.S.-based Famine Early Warning Systems Network (FEWS NET) said on Wednesday.
Herders in southeastern Ethiopia will be worst hit over the next three months, it said, with hunger reaching the fourth “emergency” level on a five-phase scale, where the fifth level is famine.
“The current marginal improvements in pasture and water are likely to be depleted by early June, which will mean rangeland resources will rapidly decline, and subsequently livestock body conditions,” it said, with the next rains due in October.
The number of Ethiopians who need food aid surged to 7.7 million from 5.6 million between January and April.
This number is expected to increase in the second half of the year, the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said this week.
“Increased funding is needed urgently, in particular to address immediate requirements for clean drinking water, much of which is being delivered long distances by truck as regular wells have dried up,” it said.
The Trump administration has proposed to drastically cut U.S. funding for global health and food aid programmes amid opposition from Congress.
(Reporting by Katy Migiro @katymigiro, editing by Alisa Tang. Please credit the Thomson Reuters Foundation, the charitable arm of Thomson Reuters, that covers humanitarian news, women´s rights, trafficking, property rights and climate change.
On Thursday, the Ethiopian government increased its count of the number of people requiring emergency food aid from 5.6 million to 7.7 million, a move that aid agencies say was long overdue. The figure is expected to rise further as southeast Ethiopia confronts another fierce drought.
But with food crises erupting across the continent and the government’s budget strained by last year’s drought, the money isn’t there to fight it. There could eventually be as many people in Ethiopia needing emergency food assistance as in Somalia and South Sudan combined.
There have also been accusations that the government is playing down the severity of the crisis to keep the country from looking bad internationally. During the earlier drought, it was months before the government admitted there was a problem, in part because Ethiopia had gained a reputation as Africa’s rising star and didn’t want to go back to being associated with drought and famine.
The contrast is clear in the bustling capital, Addis Ababa, where rainy skies and a hive of construction projects make it feel thousands of miles away from any drought. While Pizza Hut restaurants are set to soon open in the capital, thousands of children in the arid southeast suffer from acute malnutrition, and cholera is ripping through the relief camps.
World Food Program supplies are distributed in a village in Jijiga district, part of Ethiopia’s Somali region. (Michael Tewelde/World Food Program)
ADDIS ABABA, Ethiopia — The announcement by the United Nations in March that 20 million people in four countries were teetering on the edge of famine stunned the world and rammed home the breadth of the humanitarian crisis faced by so many in 2017.
Yet even as donors struggle to meet the severe needs in the war-torn nations of Nigeria, South Sudan, Somalia and Yemen, another crisis, more environmental in nature, is taking place nearby — nearly unnoticed.
On Thursday, the Ethiopian government increased its count of the number of people requiring emergency food aid from 5.6 million to 7.7 million, a move that aid agencies say was long overdue. The figure is expected to rise further as southeast Ethiopia confronts another fierce drought.
But with food crises erupting across the continent and the government’s budget strained by last year’s drought, the money isn’t there to fight it. There could eventually be as many people in Ethiopia needing emergency food assistance as in Somalia and South Sudan combined.
Ethiopia, long associated with a devastating famine in the 1980s, returned to the headlines last year when it was hit by severe drought in the highland region, affecting 10.2 million people. Food aid poured in, the government spent hundreds of millions of its own money, and famine was averted.
Now it’s the turn of the lowland region, particularly the area bordering Somalia, where a drought brought on by warming temperatures in the Indian Ocean has ravaged the flocks of the herders in the region and left people without food.
With their sheep and goats mostly dead, the nomads are clustered in camps surviving on aid from the government and international agencies — but that food is about to run out.
“This response capacity that is currently holding it at bay is about to be overwhelmed,” said Charlie Mason, humanitarian director of Save the Children, which is particularly active in Ethiopia’s impoverished Somali region. “We’ve spent all the money we’ve got, basically.”
With donors focused on Somalia across the border, little international aid has found its way to the Ethiopian areas hit by that drought. “I think it’s partly because there are other priorities, and they are not signaling loudly enough to donor offices,” Mason said.
According to a document detailing Ethiopian’s humanitarian needs that was drawn up in January by the government and aid agencies, Ethiopia needs nearly $1 billion to confront the crisis, more than half of which it still lacks. That figure also does not take into account the revised estimates in the numbers of people requiring aid.
During last year’s drought, Ethiopia came up with more than $400 million of its own money to fight off famine, but this year, it has been able to commit only $47 million, probably because of an exhausted budget.
There have also been accusations that the government is playing down the severity of the crisis to keep the country from looking bad internationally. During the earlier drought, it was months before the government admitted there was a problem, in part because Ethiopia had gained a reputation as Africa’s rising star and didn’t want to go back to being associated with drought and famine.
The contrast is clear in the bustling capital, Addis Ababa, where rainy skies and a hive of construction projects make it feel thousands of miles away from any drought. While Pizza Hut restaurants are set to soon open in the capital, thousands of children in the arid southeast suffer from acute malnutrition, and cholera is ripping through the relief camps.
The United Nations World Food Program (WFP), which is working in Ethiopia’s drought-hit Somali region, has started cutting its food rations to 80 percent. It is short $121 million for its Ethiopia operation this year, and the money is expected to run out over the summer.
If no new money arrives, the rations could be cut to 420 calories for the whole day — the equivalent of a burger. The government’s food contribution will probably suffer a similar fate.
“It’s stretching the humanitarian community,” WFP regional spokeswoman Challiss McDonough said, referring to the string of crises in the Horn of Africa and elsewhere on the continent. “I don’t think of it as donor fatigue. Quite frankly, the donors have been extremely generous, continuing to be so — but they are overwhelmed.”
There is also the fact that the Horn of Africa has been incredibly unlucky these past few years in terms of weather. Though famine was averted, many parts of the Ethiopian highlands are still recovering from the 2015-2016 drought, which was attributed to the El Niño ocean-warming phenomenon in the Pacific.
The U.N. World Meteorological Organization said Friday that there is a 50 percent to 60 percent chance that the Pacific will see another strong warming trend this year, which means Ethiopia’s highlands will be slammed again at a time when world resources are scarcer than ever.
“The droughts are coming more frequently and more often and they are worse — and that’s climate change. That’s very, very clear,” McDonough said. “You talk to any farmer how are the rains now compared to 20-30 years ago, they see a difference in their lifetimes, particularly the older ones.”
Even while they have one of the smallest carbon footprints on the globe, herders’ fragile existence in the arid climate of the Horn of Africa is probably the most threatened by climate change.
Adding to aid organizations’ concerns is a proposal by the Trump administration to slash U.S. contributions to international aid institutions, including the WFP. The U.S. government is the largest donor to the program. The proposed cuts, part of the president’s 2018 budget blueprint, are likely to face stiff opposition in Congress.
Paul Schemm is the Post’s overnight foreign editor based in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, joining the paper in 2016. He previously worked for the Associated Press as North Africa chief correspondent based in Morocco and prior to that in Cairo as part of the Middle East regional bureau.
Freelance journalist based in Addis Ababa and regular contributor to IRIN
DOLO ADO, 19 April 2017
Dead camels rot on the outskirts of informal settlements in Ethiopia’s rain-starved Somali region as their owners, once proudly self-sufficient pastoralists, turn to government aid to stay alive.
Ethiopia is facing a drought so terrible that nomadic herders, the hardiest of survivors, have been pushed to the brink. The lucky ones receive supplies of food and brackish water, but the majority, who have settled in spontaneous camps in the remotest reaches, must look after themselves.
“We call this drought sima,” said 82-year-old Abdu Karim. “It means ‘everyone is affected’. Even when I was a child, no one spoke of a drought like this one.”
Across the Horn of Africa, people are struggling after three successive years of failed rains. In Somalia and Yemen, there is real fear of famine. While Ethiopia’s remote southern region has been spared the warfare that has deepened the crisis confronting its neighbours, the drought has been no less brutal.
“Having lost most of their livestock, they have also spent out the money they had in reserve to try to keep their last few animals alive,” said Charlie Mason, humanitarian director at Save the Children.
“For those who have lost everything, all they can now do is go to a government assistance site for food and water.”
Livestock are the backbone of the region’s economy. Pastoralists here are estimated to have lost in excess of $200 million-worth of cattle, sheep, goats, and camels. That is not only a blow to their wealth, but also deprives them of the meat and milk that is the mainstay of the pastoralist life-support system.
Last year, more than 10 million people were affected by an El Niño-induced drought. The government spent an unprecedented $700 million, while the international community made up the rest of the $1.8 billion needed to meet their needs.
This year, the appeal is for $948 million to help 5.6 million drought-affected people, mainly in the southern and eastern parts of the country. So far, only $23.7 million has been received.
“Last year’s response by the government was pretty remarkable,” said World Vision’s Ethiopia director, Edward Brown. “We dodged a bullet. But now the funding gaps are larger on both sides. The UN’s ability is constrained as it looks for big donors – you’ve already got the US talking of slashing foreign aid.”
Under strain
The government has a well-established safety net programme managed by the World Bank that supports the chronically food insecure, typically with cash-for-work projects.
But it doesn’t pick up those affected by sudden shocks like the current drought. They fall under a new and separate programme, which is struggling to register all those in need.
There are 58 settlements for the internally displaced in the Somali region currently receiving government aid. But that’s only a fraction of the 222 sites containing nearly 400,000 displaced people identified in a survey by the International Organization for Migration.
Forty-four percent of these camps reported no access to food, and only 31 percent had a water source within a 20-minute walk.
“People were surviving from what they could forage to eat or sell but now there is nothing left,” said one senior aid worker who visited a settlement 70 kilometres east of the southern town of Dolo Ado, where 650 displaced pastoralist families weren’t receiving any aid at all.
The only livestock left alive in the camp was one skinny cow, its rib cage undulating through its skin, and her new-born calf. In some shelters people were reported as too weak to move.
James Jeffrey/IRIN
“There’s a logical reason to limiting the number of temporary assistance sites – because otherwise getting assistance to people scattered over such a large area becomes a massive challenge,” said Mason.
“The authorities are doing their best. This is a natural disaster, which has affected a huge number of people over an area larger than the UK or New Zealand, and we’re in a race against the clock to get enough food and clean water to enough people in time.”
But given the security restrictions on travel in the Somali region, and the well-known nervousness aid agencies have over antagonising the government, it is very hard to gauge how many people may have fallen through the cracks and are not receiving assistance.
Refugees vs IDPs
The Ethiopian government is far more open over the refugees it helps. It has maintained an open-door policy and currently shelters an estimated 800,000.
Just outside Dolo Ado, where the Ethiopian border intersects with Kenya and Somalia, are two enormous camps. With rows of corrugated iron roofs glinting in the sun, each houses about 40,000 Somalis escaping their own food crisis and ongoing conflict.
“I came with my family because of drought and fear,” said 51-year-old Hasaam Muhammed Ali. He arrived in Buramino camp in 2012 with his two wives and 17 children. “People have different opinions but I know what is there – I will not go back. Perhaps, if the country gets peace like Ethiopia, I might.”
Refugees complain of headaches and itchy skin due to the pervading heat of 38 – 42 degrees Celsius, and of a recent reduction in their monthly allowance of cereals and grains from 16 to 13.5 kilograms.
However, they are guaranteed that ration, along with water, health and education services – none of which is available to IDPs in a settlement on the outskirts of Dolo Ado.
“We don’t oppose support for refugees – they should be helped as they face bigger problems,” said 70-year-old Abiyu Alsow. “But we are frustrated as we aren’t getting anything from the government or NGOs.”
Abiyu spoke amid a cluster of women, children, and a few old men beside makeshift domed shelters fashioned out of sticks and fabric. Husbands were away either trying to source money from relatives, looking for daily labour in the town, or making charcoal for family use and to sell.
“When people cross borders, the world is more interested,” said Hamidu Jalleh from the UN’s emergency aid coordination office, OCHA. “Especially if they are fleeing conflict, it is a far more captivating issue. But the issue of internally displaced persons doesn’t [generate] the same attention.”
In the Somali region’s northern Siti zone, IDP camps from droughts in 2015 and 2016 are still full. It takes between seven and 10 years for pastoralists to rebuild flocks and herds after losses of more than 40 percent, according to research by the International Livestock Research Institute and the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization.
“Humanitarian responses around the world are managing to get people through these massive crises to prevent loss of life,” said Mason. “But there’s not enough financial backing to get people back on their feet again.”
And Ethiopia’s crisis is far from over. The main spring Gu/Ganna rains have finally begun in parts of the Somali region, but they were a month late.
The forecast is that they will be below average and won’t regenerate pasture sufficiently for the pastoralists, who have lost so much, to rebuild their lives.
Acute food insecurity and conflict in Africa by Africa Center for Strategic Studies
Nineteen African countries are facing acute levels of food insecurity. Ten of those countries are experiencing internal conflict.
Nineteen African countries are facing acute levels of food insecurity. Ten of those countries are experiencing internal conflict. Click on image to download as PDF.
Historic droughts in East and Southern Africa have caused food prices to skyrocket to record levels, doubling the price of staple cereals in some areas. The areas of greatest food insecurity, however, are those affected by conflict. An arc of conflict-affected countries, largely overlapping regions of greatest food insecurity, spans the center of the continent from Somalia to Mali. In addition to disrupting production, conflict undercuts markets that would normally bring food to areas of greatest shortage. In some places, conflict prevents even conducting a full assessment of the level of food insecurity. And because countries in conflict lack the resilience or coping mechanisms of more stable areas, their food crises tend to last longer and have more lasting impact. In short: Nineteen African countries are facing crisis, emergency, or catastrophic levels of food insecurity Ten of those countries are experiencing civil conflict Eight of those ten countries are autocracies Those eight are also the source of 82 percent of the 18.5 million Africans that are internally displaced or refugees
Of the 19 African countries facing acute food insecurity, 10 are experiencing conflict, and 8 of those are autocratically governed. pic.twitter.com/h6gMwg6Osn
A negative Indian Ocean Dipole (IOD) resulted in below average rainfall over East Africa and led to drought situations in Somali, Oromia and SNNP regions. The humanitarian situation continues to deteriorate and more than 4.2 million people in these regions are targeted to receive food aid in 2017 (out of a total of 5.6 million people estimated to require food assistance in Ethiopia in 2017). These people are also in critical need of emergency water, health and nutrition services.
The Ministry of Health, with support from health partners and UNICEF, has started a regular national measles vaccination targeting 22.9 million children.
The Government of Ethiopia, with support from WASH partners, including UNICEF, is providing water rations to an estimated 839,500 people in Afar, Oromia, SNNP, Somali and Tigray regions.
Child protection and education sectors remain largely underfunded, with no funds received for 2017 in either programme. Both programmes play a critical role in protecting emergency affected children and addressing children’s psychosocial needs.
SITUATION IN NUMBERS
5.6 million people* require relief food assistance in 2017
303,000 children* are expected to require treatment for SAM in 2017
9.2 million people* require access to safe drinking water and sanitation services
2 million school-aged children* require emergency school feeding and learning materials assistance
There are 801,079 refugees in Ethiopia (UNHCR, January 2017)
Situation Overview and Humanitarian Needs
The humanitarian situation continues to deteriorate in Somali, Oromia plus parts of SNNP regions. According to the 2017 Humanitarian Requirements Document (HRD), 5.6 million people require relief food aid in Ethiopia, including more than 4.2 million people in the Horn of Africa (HoA) drought affected regions. However, as the drought situation is worsening, an increase in people requiring food aid is expected. Water shortage and depletion of pasture have resulted in the displacement of mainly pastoralist populations to neighbouring woredas and regions as well as the deaths of a large number of livestock. In addition, the displacement of families has further disrupted already limited education opportunities for children and significantly increased the risk for children’s separation from families, abuse and exploitation. In Afar, failure of seasonal rains in December 2016 has resulted in critical water shortage.
In early February 2017, UNICEF has undertaken an assessment of the impact of the drought in the most affected zones of SNNP region (Gamo Gofa, Segen and South Omo). The assessment findings indicate that water, food and livestock feed are the most pressing needs in the affected areas.
The renewed influx of Somali and South Sudanese refugees into Somali and SNNP regions, respectively, has further stressed the already dire situation in these regions. In SNNP, a total of 4,800 families seeking asylum have fled South Sudan due to food insecurity and conflict and have reportedly settled in Ngangatom woreda of South Omo zone in January 2017. In Somali region, 4,106 asylum seekers from Somalia have arrived in Ethiopia between 1 January and 28 February 2017, fleeing from a conflict exacerbated by food insecurity.
Mr. Steinman advises foreign democracy movements. He authored the novel “Money, Blood and Conscience” about Ethiopia’s secret genocide.
In what could be an important test of the Trump Administration’s attitude toward foreign aid, the new United Nations Secretary-General, António Guterres, and UN aid chief Stephen O’Brien have called on the international community to give the Ethiopian government another $948 million to assist a reported 5.6 million people facing starvation.
Speaking in the Ethiopian capital, Addis Ababa, during the recent 28th Summit of the African Union, Guterres described Ethiopia as a “pillar of stability” in the tumultuous Horn of Africa, praised its government for an effective response to last year’s climate change-induced drought that left nearly 20 million people needing food assistance, and asked the world to show “total solidarity” with the regime.
Women and children wait for care at an outpatient treatment center in Lerra village, Wolayta, Ethiopia, on June 10, 2008. (Jose Cendon/Bloomberg News)
Ethiopia is aflame with rebellions against its unpopular dictatorship, which tried to cover up the extent of last year’s famine. But even if the secretary general’s encouraging narrative were true, it still begs the question: Why, despite ever-increasing amounts of foreign support, can’t this nation of 100 million clever, enterprising people feed itself? Other resource-poor countries facing difficult environmental challenges manage to do so.
Two numbers tell the story in a nutshell:
1. The amount of American financial aid received by Ethiopia’s government since it took power: $30 billion.
2. The amount stolen by Ethiopia’s leaders since it took power: $30 billion.
The latter figure is based on the UN’s own 2015 report on Illicit Financial Outflows by a panel chaired by former South African President Thabo Mbeki and another from Global Financial Integrity, an American think tank. These document $2-3 billion—an amount roughly equaling Ethiopia’s annual foreign aid and investment—being drained from the country every year, mostly through over- and under-invoicing of imports and exports.
Ethiopia’s far-left economy is centrally controlled by a small ruling clique that has grown fantastically wealthy. Only they could be responsible for this enormous crime. In other words, the same Ethiopian leadership that’s begging the world for yet another billion for its hungry people is stealing several times that amount every year.
America and the rest of the international community have turned a blind eye to this theft of taxpayer money and the millions of lives destroyed in its wake, because they rely on Ethiopia’s government to provide local counterterror cooperation, especially with the fight against Al-Shabab in neighboring Somalia. But even there we’re being taken. Our chief aim in Somalia is to eliminate Al-Shabab. Our Ethiopian ally’s aim is twofold: Keep Somalia weak and divided so it can’t unite with disenfranchised fellow Somalis in Ethiopia’s adjoining, gas-rich Ogaden region; and skim as much foreign assistance as possible. No wonder we’re losing.
The Trump Administration has not evinced particular interest in democracy promotion, but much of Ethiopia’s and the region’s problems stem from Ethiopia’s lack of the accountability that only democracy confers. A more accountable Ethiopian government would be forced to implement policies designed to do more than protect its control of the corruption. It would have to free Ethiopia’s people to develop their own solutions to their challenges and end their foreign dependency. It would be compelled to make the fight on terror more effective by decreasing fraud, basing military promotions on merit instead of cronyism and ending the diversion of state resources to domestic repression. An accountable Ethiopian government would have to allow more relief to reach those who truly need it and reduce the waste of U.S. taxpayers’ generous funding. Representative, accountable government would diminish the Ogaden’s secessionist tendencies that drive Ethiopia’s counterproductive Somalia strategy.
Prime Minister of Ethiopia Hailemariam Desalegn attends the 28th African Union summit in Addis Ababa on January 30, 2017. (ZACHARIAS ABUBEKER/AFP/Getty Images)
But Ethiopia’s government believes it has America over a barrel and doesn’t have to be accountable to us or to its own people. Like Mr. Guterres, past U.S. presidents have been afraid to confront the regime, which even forced President Barack Obama into a humiliating public defense of its last stolen election. The result has been a vicious cycle of enablement, corruption, famine and terror.
Whether the Trump Administration will be willing to play the same game remains to be seen. The answer will serve as a signal to other foreign leaders who believe America is too craven to defend its money and moral values.
5.6 Million Ethiopians are in need of emergency food assistance in 2017. Failed rains from late September to November caused a new drought in Oromia, Somali and SNNP regions. Pastoralist and agro pastoralist communities in Borena, Guji, Bale and East Hararge zones of Oromia region, all the nine zones of Somali region and Omo, Gamo Gofa and Segen zones of SNNP region are the most affected.
Drought exacerbated by El Niño, combined with extensive flooding, disease outbreaks and the disruption of basic public services, continue to have a negative impact on the lives and livelihoods of 9.7 million Ethiopians. Urgent funding gaps for the response remain across multiple sectors to the end of 2016, notably for response to Acute Watery Diarrhoea (AWD), for interventions in animal health and food assistance. Major funding requirements are already anticipated for early 2017, as there are concerning indications that the current negative Indian Ocean Dipole, may affect water availability, livestock body condition and Meher harvest performance in southern and eastern Ethiopia.
Some 2,000,000 pastoralists and agro pastoralists need emergency food assistance; serious water shortage continues to affect the regions
Ethiopia is one such part of the world where there is ongoing disappointment, and hope has been severely tested. The country, in the Horn of Africa, has experienced very bad drought since February 2015. There was no harvest at the end of last year, and it’s doubtful there will be much of one this year. Spring brought rain, and some relief, but in some places too much rain led to severe flooding, which displaced 190,000 people. “The majority of Ethiopian farmers are dependent on rain-fed agriculture. Rain failure is a disaster for farmers,” said Argaw Fantu, regional director in Ethiopia for the Catholic Near East Welfare Association. “Some areas are also naturally disadvantaged areas as the rainfall is so erratic, [and because of the] rocky and mountainous nature of the area.”
Though the situation is not as extreme as it was in the 1980s, when some 400,000 Ethiopians starved to death, more than 10 million people are threatened with malnutrition. The United Nations estimates that 15 million people are in urgent need of food aid due to drought, and that 33% of this population is already suffering the effects of severe malnutrition due to agriculture failure and death of livestock, Fides reported. It is estimated that, between October 2015 and April 2016 about 450,000 animals died, severely affecting the supply of milk, especially for children.
The colored corn and pumpkins decorating the front entrances of homes in North America, the weekend apple-picking ventures, the waning days of the farmer’s market in town all hark back to a time when America was a thoroughly agrarian society. So while “harvest time” may be more of a slogan than anything else anymore, in other parts […]
Ethiopians wait to fill water cans in February during the recent drought. With the return of the rains, however, have come flooding and disease — something the government is reluctant to discuss. (Aida Muluneh for The Washington Post)
ADDIS ABABA, ETHIOPIA — After going through its worst drought in 50 years, Ethiopia is again seeing rain. In fact, in some places, it’s falling too hard and has set off floods.
So while the number of people requiring food aid has dropped slightly from 10.2 million in January to 9.7 million, according to the latest figures, there is a new threat of disease in a population weakened by drought.
Measles, meningitis, malaria and scabies are on the rise. And most seriously, there has been an outbreak of something mysteriously called “AWD,” according to the Humanitarian Requirements Document, issued by the government and humanitarian agencies on Aug. 13.
“There is a high risk that AWD can spread to all regions with high speed as there is a frequent population movement between Addis Ababa and other regions,” it warned.
The letters stand for acute watery diarrhea. It is a potentially fatal condition caused by water infected with the vibrio cholera bacterium. Everywhere else in the world it is simply called cholera.
But not in Ethiopia, where international humanitarian organizations privately admit that they are only allowed to call it AWD and are not permitted to publish the number of people affected.
The government is apparently concerned about the international impact if news of a significant cholera outbreak were to get out, even though the disease is not unusual in East Africa.
This means that, hypothetically, when refugees from South Sudan with cholera flee across the border into Ethiopia, they suddenly have AWD instead.
In a similar manner, exactly one year ago, when aid organizations started sounding the alarm bells over the failed rains, government officials were divided over whether they would call it a drought and appeal for international aid.
Police break up anti-government protest in Ethiopian capital
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Hundreds of protesters on Saturday clashed with police in Ethiopia’s capital Addis Ababa after campaigners called for nationwide protests due to what they say is an unfair distribution of wealth in the country. (Reuters)
The narrative for Ethiopia in 2015 was a successful nation with double-digit growth, and the government did not want to bring back memories of the 1980s drought that killed hundreds of thousands and left the country forever associated with famine.
“We don’t use the f-word,” explained an aid worker to me back in September, referring to famine.
Like many of its neighbors in the region, Ethiopia has some issues with freedom of expression and is very keen about how it is perceived abroad. While the country has many developmental successes to celebrate, its current sensitivity suggests it will be some time before this close U.S. ally resembles the democracy it has long claimed to be.
Ultimately, the government recognized there was a drought and made an international appeal for aid. The systems put into place over the years prevented the drought from turning into a humanitarian catastrophe — for which the country has earned praise from its international partners.
In the same manner, even though it doesn’t call it cholera, the government is still waging a vigorous campaign to educate people on how to avoid AWD, by boiling water and washing their hands.
Yet this sensitivity to bad news extends to the economic realm as well. Critics have often criticized Ethiopia’s decade of reported strong growth as being the product of cooked numbers. The government does seem to produce rosier figures than international institutions.
After the drought, the International Monetary Fund predicted in Aprilthat growth would drop from 10.2 percent in 2015 to just 4.5 percent in 2016.
Prime Minister Hailemariam Desalegn, maintained, however, that growth would be a robust 8.5 percent, despite the falling agriculture productivity and decreased export earnings.
In the political realm, news of unrest and protests is suppressed. During a weekend of demonstrations on Aug. 6 and 7, the Internet was cut, making it difficult to find out what happened.
Human rights organizations, opposition parties and media tried to piece together the toll from the deadly demonstrations, which according to Amnesty International may have been up to 100.
The United Nations has called for international observers to carry out an investigation in the affected regions, which the government has strongly rejected even as it has dismissed estimates of casualties without providing any of its own.
“That is one of the factors we are struggling against with this government, the blockade of information,” complained Beyene Petros, the chairman of a coalition of opposition parties. “Journalists cannot go and verify. We cannot do that.”
Local journalists are heavily constrained, and as Felix Horne of Human Rights Watch points out, Ethiopia is one of the biggest jailers of journalists on the continent.
“Limitations on independent media, jamming of television and radio signals, and recent blocking of social media all point to a government afraid to allow its citizens access to independent information,” he said.
Foreign journalists do not fare much better, especially if they attempt to venture out of the capital to do their reporting.
In March, the New York Times and Bloomberg correspondents were detained by police while trying to report on the disturbances in the Oromo Region.
They were sent back to Addis Ababa and held overnight in a local prison before being interrogated and released.
In a similar fashion, a television crew with American Public Broadcasting Service was detained on Aug. 8 south of the capital trying to do a story on the drought conditions.
They and their Ethiopian fixer — an accredited journalist in her own right — were released after 24 hours, and they were told not to do any reporting outside of Addis.
In both cases the journalists were all accredited by the Government Communication Affairs Office, with credentials that are supposed to extend the breadth of the country but in practice are widely ignored by local officials.
The government spokesman, Getachew Reda, has dismissed the allegations about the information crackdown in the country and in recent appearances on the Al Jazeera network he maintained that there are no obstacles to information in Ethiopia.
“This country is open for business, it’s open for the international community, people have every right to collect whatever information they want,” he said.
The ruling regime, that appears to be more concerned with its international image than the suffering of those in need, has presented an ambiguous, contradictory picture of the famine.
Millions of the poorest, most vulnerable people in Ethiopia are once again at risk of starvation. Elderly men and women, weak and desperate, wait for food and water; malnourished children lie dying; livestock, bones protruding, perish.
According to a statement issued by the World Food Programme (WFP) on 6th February, over 10 million of the most vulnerable require urgent humanitarian assistance. This figure was published in the Joint Government and Humanitarian Partners’ Document (HRD) in December last year, and does not take into account the seven and a half million people who annually receive support from Ethiopia’s Productive Safety Net Programme – PSNP, (established in 2005 to enable, “the rural poor facing chronic food insecurity to resist shocks, create assets and become food self- sufficient), taking the total in need to almost 18 million. The worst affected areas, according to USAID, are the pastoral areas of Afar and Ogaden Region – where people rely totally on their livestock – and the agricultural lowlands of East and West Haraghe – close to the capital Addis Ababa.
The WFP explain that the level of humanitarian need in Ethiopia has “tripled since early 2015…caused by successive harvest failures and widespread livestock deaths. Acute malnutrition has risen sharply, and one quarter of Ethiopia’s districts are now officially classified as facing a nutrition crisis.” With a shortage of food, families are forced to make children drop out of school to take up menial jobs to survive; such children, lacking a decent education, are unable to find well-paid jobs in adulthood, and so the spiral of exclusion, poverty and deprivation continues.
Poverty and Chronic Food Insecurity
Ethiopia is a large country (385,925 sq. miles), with a population of just over 101 million (13th largest in the world), which is growing at a yearly rate of around 2.5% (over double the world-wide average). Conflicts resulting in migration from the neighbouring states of Sudan, South Sudan, and Eritrea has brought an influx of refugees and asylum seekers, which according to USAID amount to more than 733,000.
More than half the population live on less than $1 a day; over 80% of the population live in rural areas (where birth-rates are highest), and work in agriculture, the majority being smallholder farmers who rely on the crops they grow to feed themselves and their families.
The people of Ethiopia have suffered chronic food insecurity for generations: the major reason, as is the case throughout the world, is poverty. Other causes are complex; some due to climate change, others result from the ruling regime’s policies. Action Aid (AA) reports that unequal trading systems are a factor. The Ethiopian government purchases crops from farmers at low, fixed prices. International organisations encourage Ethiopia to produce cash crops to export, which reduces the land available for growing domestic crops – yes, Ethiopia – where millions rely on food aid every year – exports food. The country’s top exports are Gold (21%) Coffee (19%), vegetables and oily seeds, followed closely by live animals and khat – a highly addictive narcotic.
The agricultural system itself is another major cause. Individuals do not own land; it is assigned, AA states, “according to the size of a family, and redistributed every few years.” This means that every time land is redistributed “it is divided between more people”, so each farmer gets less. The lack of investment, combined with the need for large yields from a small area, leads to soil degradation, resulting in poor harvests.
The Oakland Institute (OI) in their report on the country’s land sales makes clear that drought (15 droughts since 1965), state-fuelled armed conflict, as well as “inappropriate government policies (land tenure, access to markets, etc.), rapid population growth and lack of infrastructure,” add to the list of causes.
Land grabbing and hunger
Since 2008 the EPRDF government has been leasing huge amounts of fertile agricultural land to so-called “foreign investors’’: international corporations, domestic agents, fund managers, and nations anxious to secure their own future food security.
Detailed research by the OI in 2011 estimated that “3,619,509ha of land have been transferred to investors, although the actual number may be higher.” Incentives to investors include exemption from import taxes, income taxes and custom duties as well as ‘easy access to credit’; the Ethiopian Development Bank will contribute up to 70% towards land costs – which are extremely cheap to begin with.
Land is sold with the understanding that it is totally cleared of everything – including people, by government forces. Indigenous communities, who have lived on the same land for generations are displaced and herded into camps – the universally condemned ‘Villagization’ programme. OI state that over a million people have been affected, and that, “the loss of farmland, the degradation and destruction of natural resources, and the reduction of water supplies are expected to result in the loss of livelihoods of affected communities.” Despite this, the ruling regime maintains that the land sold – all land is state owned (with formal and informal land rights) – is unused, and is being leased off ‘without affecting farmers’.
Industrial size farms have been built and foodstuffs (not eaten by the native population) grown for export, – back to their homeland – India for example. Very little, if any, of the food grown is going into the Ethiopian food market, and there are attractive government incentives in place to ‘ensure that food production is exported, providing foreign exchange for the country at the expense of local food supplies’. Oakland found that these commercial agricultural investments, by national and multi-national companies “increase rates of food insecurity” in Ethiopia, and that, despite “endemic poverty and food insecurity, there are no mechanisms in place to ensure that these investments contribute to improved food security.”
OI makes clear that in addition to these land sales, ‘state-fuelled armed conflict’ is an underlying cause of food insecurity. One of the worst affected areas in the current famine is the Ogaden (or Somali) region in the Southeast corner of the country. The majority ethnic Somali population has been under military control since 1992. People fleeing the area report large-scale arrests of civilians, torture, rape and murder, as well as the destruction of land, cattle and property, and confiscation of humanitarian aid by government military and Para-military forces. With international media and most humanitarian aid groups denied access to the region since 2007, independent information on the conflict and the impact and extent of the current famine is in short supply.
Official duplicity
The ruling regime, that appears to be more concerned with its international image than the suffering of those in need, has presented an ambiguous, contradictory picture of the famine.
In a recent interview Arkebe OQubay, the ‘special adviser to the Prime-Minister’ told Bloomberg that the countries greatest achievement since 1984, was that “we are being able to feed ourselves. In 1984 we were struggling to feed our 40 million-population, but now we have 95 million population and we have food security.” This is pure fantasy: Ethiopia (according to most recent, 2012 figures) remains the largest recipient of food aid in the world, and millions are today at risk of starvation.
Shortly after this claim from his ‘special adviser’, the Prime Minister himself, Hailemariam Desalegn appealed for help in supplying humanitarian aid to the millions in need, saying, ESAT News report; “it is the responsibility of the international community to intervene before things get out of hand.”
The EPRDF government owns most of the media inside the country, exerts tight controls on any marginally ‘independent’ publications and seeks to restrict and condition reporting by international media. Interviewed by foreign news agencies, officials smugly reject claims of widespread human rights violations and paint themselves as a democratic government bringing economic prosperity, opportunity and stability to the country: A fabricated image, far from the truth.
With the government more or less controlling the flow of news about the situation in the drought-hit areas, detailed, open and honest information is hard to come by. The sole independent Ethiopian broadcaster ESAT News, which has reliable contacts in the country, carries the account of an aid worker who recently spent time in the worst affected regions – Afar in the North East and Ogaden in the South East. He reports that, “the famine was already taking its toll on humans and livestock………[and] that the situation in places near Jijiga and Shinile in Somali [or Ogaden] region was very serious.” He saw, children whose skins were fused with their bones at feeding centers in the regions,” and at a health center in Afdem (in central east part of the Ogaden), met “hunger stricken bony children.”
The government proudly boasts that the Ethiopian economy has been growing, by between 7% and 8% (UK GOV figures) for almost a decade, that malnutrition and famine are no longer possible and that within a decade Ethiopia will be a middle ranking power. Nevertheless Ethiopia finds itself ranked 174th out of 188 countries in the UN Human Development Index (inequality adjusted). This suggests that whatever ‘growth’ the country has achieved, it has not changed the lives of the majority of Ethiopians, and, as is evidenced by the millions suffering from hunger and malnutrition, has clearly not eradicated food insecurity – which should be the first priority of the government.
Donor response
The scale of the current crisis has led the UNOHCA to call for $1.4 billion of funding to supply emergency food and water, to ‘in excess of 15 million’ people. So far donors have been slow to come forward, prompting Save the Children’s Ethiopia Director to describe the reaction as “the worst international response to a drought that he has seen.”
Around 45% of the total has been donated, including $200 million from the ruling regime. However the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) says it has less than a third of the money it needs to keep the aid coming.
America has offered some small-scale additional support, sending, CNN reports, “20 disaster experts to provide technical assistance, conduct humanitarian assessments and coordinate relief efforts with partners on the ground,” as well as “$4 million in maize and wheat seed for more than 226,000 households.” This level of assistance, whilst welcome, is nowhere near enough, and it seems the motive is far from pure. “Climate-related threats pose an urgent and growing threat to our national security, contributing to increased natural disasters, refugee flows and potential conflicts over basic resources like food and water,” said USAID spokesman Ben Edwards. It seems the US is concerned about ‘stability’ in Ethiopia and the wider region, not human welfare; fearing that a lack of food and work may drive young people into the hands of extremist groups, and encourage migration, adding to the huge refugee flows.
The UNOCHA estimates the total current cost of worldwide humanitarian demand to be $21 billion. With Syria on fire, a huge refugee crisis in Europe, urgent demand in Yemen, Afghanistan and Iraq, in addition to ongoing international development commitments (including Ethiopia), donor nation resources (and attention) is turned elsewhere.
The need for sharing
It is the poor who die of hunger related causes throughout the world; it is the poorest people in rural Ethiopia – who constitute some of the poorest people on Earth – who are currently at risk. Every day 35,000 children in the world die of starvation and its attendant causes, but we live in a world of plenty; there is no need for a single man, woman, or child, – in Ethiopia or anywhere else, to die because they do not have enough food or water to survive. Oxfam report that, the world now “produces 17% more food per person today than 30 years ago. But close to a billion people go to sleep hungry every night.” And they all live, more or less, in seven countries: India, China, Ethiopia, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Bangladesh, Indonesia, and Pakistan.
Food, like water, shelter, access to education and health-care is a human right, and is enshrined as such in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Like all natural resources it should be shared equitably amongst the people of the world, so that nobody, anywhere – specifically the famine-affected regions of Ethiopia, where so many are once again in dire need – experiences food-insecurity and dies of hunger.
During my recent visit to Addis Ababa, one thing caught my eyes: the increased number of people on the streets begging for food and money. This is not the same Ethiopian capital I visited last year. It is very different due to a severe drought, and the government is trying hard to keep word from getting out.
Ziway Dugda district communities waiting for food distribution at Ogolcha food centre in a drought stricken area in Ziway Dugda district, during UN Secretary General, Ban Ki moon’s visit to Ethiopia, on 31 January, 2016.(AP/MulugetaAyene)
I asked a fellow journalist from Ethiopia – I will not mention his identity for security reasons – if I could take a photo.
“The government doesn’t want us (media) to write about this, and especially if you are a foreign journalist, you will be in much trouble. Most of the local journalists here are in jail for reporting the hunger stories and other stories that the government is against.
“The government thinks by telling the hunger stories, it is an embarrassment to the country,” he says, echoing what I hear from other journalists as well as NGOs.
Ethiopia is facing its worst drought in at least three decades, with devastating effects on agriculture and livestock, whilst millions of people face food insecurity. More than 10 million people – one in ten Ethiopians – are said to need emergency aid due to failed rains.
The Ethiopian government and humanitarian agencies have said that Ethiopia needs nearly US$600 million in international humanitarian assistance. But critics say the government’s new leasing law for foreign concerns is aggravating the crisis by blocking livestock from grazing in areas less-affected by the drought.
One-quarter of all districts in Ethiopia – mainly in the north of the country – are officially classified as facing a food security and nutrition crisis after the drought cut production by up to 90 per cent in some areas. That has caused a flight to the cities.
“Whenever the drought occurs in these areas, people migrate to areas less affected to look for food, and Addis Ababa is one of the areas they move to, especially those just in the outskirts of the city,” said Mitiku Kassa, the Commissioner in charge of Ethiopia’s Disaster Risk Management and Food Security Agency, in an interview with Equal Times.
According to the NGO Save the Children the number of those affected could be higher, considering that 7.9 million people are supported by the government’s safety net program that provides wheat, cereals and cooking oil. It says at least 6 million children are hungry.
Worst seen since the 1980s
The nation has historically struggled with hunger, including in the 1980s, when famine and civil war left hundreds of thousands of people dead.
Experts are predicting that Ethiopia will experience the worst drought in generations, one that will surpass the 1984 famine that killed one million people.
United Sates Department of Agriculture reports that Ethiopia sought 1 million tons of wheat late last year – more than what it bought last season. The government also purchased 500,000 tons more last month through the port of Djibouti, as Ethiopia is a landlocked country.
It is estimated that imports will jump to 2.5 million tons this year, up from the 900,000 tons purchased last year. And USAID, which has deployed a disaster response team to Ethiopia, last month announced that it would provide nearly US$4 million in maize and wheat seed for more than 226,000 households.
“The Ethiopian government is building distribution points and temporary warehouses for the food delivery,” Mohammed Said, the Ethiopian government Director of Communications and Media, tells Equal Times.
“All the centres in the drought-affected regions have been equipped with food they need, and focus is now shifting to providing seeds and fertiliser to farmers so they can start planting following the start of rains.”
He said that the government has a budget of US$381million to cater for those affected by drought, including their animals.
The UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) early this year announced an emergency US$50 million aid to help drought-hit Ethiopians.
Ethiopian Prime Minister Hailemariam Desalegn said Ethiopia has launched emergency food delivery and supervision system that helps provide food for the drought affected areas before the onset of the rainy season. He also called for more international assistance.
The United Nations also says that 5.8 million people in the country are in need water, sanitation, and hygiene services while the total assistance required in 2016 is US$1.4 billion.
The predicted number of children at risk from suffering from severe malnutrition this year is 430,000.
Paul Handley, Head of the Office for Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) in Ethiopia, said that by the end of the first quarter of 2016, 546,257 moderately malnourished children and pregnant and breastfeeding women were treated through the Targeted Supplementary Feeding (TSF) Programme. This represents 82 per cent of the first quarter target of 665,000 people.
“Food overall will become harder to access if we continue to see prices rise, food stocks deplete and livestock become weaker, less productive, and perish,” says FAO representative for Ethiopia, Amadou Allahoury.
“As soon as the rains start, FAO plans include distributing seeds and animal feed, vaccinating animals, delivering 100,000 sheep and goats to vulnerable households and giving farmers cash for bringing weakened and unproductive livestock to slaughter.”
He says that the current drought is not just a food crisis – it is above all a livelihood crisis.
Under Ethiopian law, land is government-owned but occupants have customary rights. In 2010, Ethiopia passed a new farm policy to which the government is leasing 3 million hectares to foreign agricultural investors who mostly include Chinese, Indians and Saudis.
According to the government, the foreign investors will have to satisfy domestic food needs before they can export, while at the same time improve the social welfare of people in the rural areas.
“You cannot speak about land issues now especially with the food insecurity in the country. You will be arrested for that,” says one official who spoke on condition of anonymity. “The vast majority of land is being used by foreigners for agriculture, especially rice cultivation in the southwest region,” he says.
Although not as affected by the drought as the northern region, the southwest is where most of the food for the country comes from.
“Pastoralists would also move to this region whenever there is drought in the north, to graze their animals, but now they can’t,” the official says. “This is one of the reasons we are witnessing the worst hunger in the country.”
Ethiopia Faces Worst Drought in 50 Years, Millions Affected
By William Davison, bloomberg.com December 7, 2015
A worsening drought in Ethiopia means 10.1 million people, a 10th of the population, are facing food shortages next year in the Horn of Africa nation, Save the Children said.
The figure is an increase of 1.9 million people from the number the government says currently requires food aid. The assessment means 400,000 children are at risk of severe malnutrition in 2016, the London-based charity said in an e-mailed statement on Monday.
“The worst drought in Ethiopia for 50 years is happening right now, with the overall emergency response estimated to cost $1.4 billion,” said John Graham, Save the Children’s Ethiopia country director.
Ethiopia’s government has allocated $192 million for the crisis and received $163 million from donors since an appeal for $340 million in October, said Mitiku Kassa, who heads the government’s disaster response team.
Another 8 million vulnerable Ethiopians will receive food and cash transfers during the first six months of next year under a mostly donor-funded aid program.
Low rainfall this year had a “devastating effect” on agricultural production, with the next harvest not expected until June, the charity said. Ethiopia’s government has said the drought will not affect official growth rates of about 10 percent a year, despite rain-fed agriculture accounting for almost 40 percent of the economy.
ETHIOPIA RESPONDING TO AN EL NIÑO-INDUCED DROUGHT EMERGENCY:
The El Niño global climactic event has wreaked havoc on Ethiopia’s summer rains. This comes on the heels of failed spring rains, and has driven food insecurity, malnutrition and water shortages in affected areas of the country. A well-coordinated response is already underway and Trends in Severe Acute Malnutrition expanding rapidly, although the scale of the developing admission (2011-2015)3 emergency exceeds resources available to date. Given the lead in thousands times necessary for the procurement of relief items, the Government and its international partners have called for early 40 action to this slow onset natural disaster.
UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs
Ethiopia: Ongoing Drought in Ethiopia Being Hushed By Its Own Government
A Call to Take Responsibility: Exiled Ethiopian human rights advocate Yared Hailemariam, who is based in Brussels, speculates on why the government denies that the drought has turned into a famine. It is his opinion that the denial is due to a lack of competent governance, democracy, social justice and political will of the last three regime’s. He also says that the EPRDF (The Government of Ethiopia, the Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front) is highly corrupt, and that the development is not what it seems to be.
– The so called development is not humanitarian based – rather it is based on numbers and the economic aspect, but there is still lots of confusion regarding the double digit growth that has been reported to us over the last few years.
ANALYSIS By Fasil Girma, http://allafrica.com/
Birtukan Ali, a woman living in a rural district in Ethiopia, became a sensation following BBC’s report about the ongoing drought and famine. Thereport, which aired on November 10 2015, sparked a new kind of debate on the government’s intention in trying to cover up the famine – a story that remains untold.
Journalist Clive Myrie featured the story of Birtukan Ali who is from a small village called “Kobo” which is located in the North East of Ethiopia. It is a place where the drought is widespread and the effect of it is highly visible. Birtukan told the reporter that her son recently died due to severe malnutrition as a result of the drought in the area. The reporter said that at least two children die in similar cases daily.
The drought, brought on by the El Niño, a weather phenomenon described as a periodic warming of the sea surface, has severely affected the country. Ethiopia is mainly an agrarian economy and the agriculture is fully dependant on rain fall. Ultimately this means that no rain results in no crops, and therefore no food. This year the rainfall was inadequate to cultivate crops for two consecutive seasons. The United Nations estimated that 8.2 million people in Ethiopia’s drought affected areas need relief assistance. UNICEF said that the drought is expected to be the worst in 30 years and that 350,000 children are expected to require treatment for extreme malnutrition.
Ethiopian Government Denies Famine
In a press release by the World Food Program, it is stated that “a dramatic increase in the number of people in need of relief assistance, from 2.5 million at the beginning of the year to 8.2 million in October, led to a serious funding gap”. The Ethiopian government says that it has allocated $192 million USD for emergency food and other assistance.
However, the government and humanitarian agencies have said that Ethiopia needs nearly $600 million USD in international humanitarian assistance. The Ethiopian Prime Minister, Hailemariam Desalegn, has called for international assistance by appealing for food aid to help feed the 8.2 million people that are affected by the drought.
Nevertheless, at the same time, his government denies that there is a famine at all. Deputy Prime Minister, Demeke Mekonen, commented on the BBC report in an interview with a local journalist:
– It is obvious that the foreign media works with different bodies of special interest. There is no such thing as famine in Ethiopia these days, Demeke said.
Similarly, the Ethiopian embassy in the United Kingdom has condemned the BBC report as being “sensational”. The embassy denied reports of approximately two children dying from malnutrition in the area on a daily basis.
Five days after the airing of the BBC’ program, government owned Amhara Mass Media Agency, which is based in Bahar-Dar, the capital of the regional state Amhara, presented a televised program that ridiculed BBC’s report. The program includes Birtukan’s interview with the regional media. This time, however, Birtukan claims that her son died of unspecified “sudden illnesses” and not because of the malnutrition as she had told the BBC reporter.
Felanemunemunim, a local journalist and social media activist who is mentioned by his nickname, followed the news on Ethiopian television. He says that regional governors report as if the agriculture is good enough to produce plenty of food.
– They were talking about it on television for more than four months, but the truth is as BBC reported, even if there was exaggeration.
Government Accused of Diminishing the Extent of the Famine
The statements made by the Ethiopian government have sparked a debate among Ethiopian human rights activists. According to them, the government is trying to cover up the severe effects of the drought.
Argaw Ashine, an exiled journalist based in USA and founder of the web based Amharic internet radio Wazema, which is getting a wide acceptance in the Ethiopian online community for its credible information, commented on the drought. According to him, it is obvious that the Ethiopian government continues to hide the drought from the media, and he believes that they will continue to do so despite the United Nations and others predicting that the worst is yet to come. Admitting that there is a famine would create a problem for the Ethiopian government.
– It costs them politically. The success story they fed to Ethiopians and the international community falls severely short after an exposition of the hunger.
Wazema radio reports that the federal government passes strict instructions to regional governments and Ethiopian embassies all over the world to not give any kind of information to any media regarding the ongoing drought and famine. The instructions include denying access for all journalists to drought affected areas and to take necessary measures for nongovernmental organizations to not leak information regarding the crises to the media.
According to Argaw, media restriction is common during humanitarian crises, and specifically the local media is blocked from reporting the situation.
– They may allow some big international media organizations in to specific locations for only a couple of days. International media reporting is part of convincing the international community to send aid, yet the government does not want an in-depth report on the cause of the problem.
– Authoritarian governments are good at controlling the information flow, and the role of media during crises in Ethiopia is kept at a minimum. Media should be at the forefront to end hunger. Development and better life is impossible without vibrant media in Ethiopia, Argaw said.
A Call to Take Responsibility
Exiled Ethiopian human rights advocate Yared Hailemariam, who is based in Brussels, speculates on why the government denies that the drought has turned into a famine. It is his opinion that the denial is due to a lack of competent governance, democracy, social justice and political will of the last three regime’s. He also says that the EPRDF (The Government of Ethiopia, the Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front) is highly corrupt, and that the development is not what it seems to be.
– The so called development is not humanitarian based – rather it is based on numbers and the economic aspect, but there is still lots of confusion regarding the double digit growth that has been reported to us over the last few years.
Yared says that the first thing the government should do is to rescue those in need. The level of the ongoing and upcoming disaster that would take many lives, needs to be reduced. It is also important to take lessons from the past.
Despite its higher severity in terms of intensity and magnitude as compared to similar humanitarian crises in recent time, the current hunger in Ethiopia doesn’t receive adequate response yet from national and international aid organizations. Though good news are coming about bilateral aid support from U.S and certain EU members, the INGOs which have got ample experience in the area of humanitarian responses in the country are either still on the stage of preparation or did not yet plan to respond. The irresponsible position of the ruling party-EPRDF – that claimed the drought would not be beyond government capacity- might have contributed for the late and/ or no response acts of the aid organizations.
Moreover, Aid organizations become more curious about their mandate/roles and forced to operate under strict precaution (even in the case of emergency interventions) since the new civil society law enacted in the year 2009- that explicitly prohibited them to undertake any right based projects. The critical question usually asked by the practitioners goes, “is there any thing as such which can not be a right in the development endeavor? be it education, livelihood, economic empowerment or emergency food support?”. The ruling elites have never wanted to properly address such confusions emanated from their notorious enactment, as their main intention is to narrow dawn the space of civil society in Ethiopia’s political engagements.
Whatever the reasons, the emergency response support to millions who are severely affected by the disaster is already delaying. The results of such irresponsible acts might claim the lives of the vulnerable groups, if the trend continues so. The internationally accepted “Humanitarian” principles and standards are being compromised in Ethiopia due political irresponsibility in the ruling elites and lack of adequate sensitivity in the aid sector. The hunger incident has already severely affected the life of 15 million people through putting at least six regional states in “red level” hot spot situation. Oromia regional state having more than 125 most affected districts is leading in the humanitarian crisis. It should be noted that the recurrent drought crisis is proportionally shifting to South of the country during the recent incidents.
The claimed “food aid” through various government owned mechanisms do not address the need of all affected communities fairly and equally mainly due to autocratic political acts. The target community/ localities that showed their support to opposition forces during the recent national election 2015, for instant, would be discriminated by blind cadres during such government based aid support. Denial of such food aid-humanitarian support- to certain severely affected households due to failing to pay membership fee for OPDO- ruling party in Oromia region- was also observed in some areas.
Thus, alternative emergency response interventions should be in placed immediately. The Aid Organizations (INGOs) and other national civil society organizations as well as the entire community should act now, irrespective the prevailing political and bureaucratic challenges.
Related:-
SBO – Sadaasa 22, 2015. Oduu, Qophii Beelaa, Dhimmoota Adda Addaa Irratti Gaaffii fi Deebii Namoota Gara Garaa Waliin Taasifamee fi Qophiilee Biroo
Waan dubartiin san gaazexeessitootattii himtee keysaa akkana jatteen “Nuti hoongeen nuttii hammattee jirtii. Namnii goodanaa jiraa. Anuu ammaa goodansafiin demaa. Edaa edaatuu hiraata osoon hin nyatiniin bulee. Gargaarsi yeroo dhufe mallaqaa kaffalleeti katabamnaa. Abbaan araddaa maallaqa nurraa guurrateeti nu galmeeysaa. Qarshii san kan beeyladaa qabu horii gargureetii ittii kannaa. Walumaagalatti kan qarshii dhibbaa 300 hin qabnee gargaarsa kana hin fudhatu. Gargarsii osoo ummata hoongeen miidhame biraa hin geenye namootuma muraasaaf hiramee dhuma. Gargarsi aanaa keenyaa kan caasaalee araddaatifi kanuma nama qabenyaa qabuu tahe.” jattee icitii silaa isaan dhoysuu barbadaan mara jalaa bafte.
Galgaluma san TV Oromiyaa sagantaa kana dabarsee ture. Garuu kan nama aja’ibsisuu gazaxessooni kun waan intaltii dhala san ittii himtee hin dabarsine. Kan isaan dabarsan “rakkoo beelaa hin qabnuu tan nuti qabnu rakkoo bishaan dhugatiiti” tan jattu dabarsan. Kanaas kan ja’e nama bulchaan aanaa qopheesseen kan dubbatamee dha. Wanni nama gaddisiisu garuu bulchaan ummata bulchaa jiru kun ummata moo mootummaaf akka dhaabbateedha. Sagaleen ummataa ukkamamtee ummanni beelaan dhumaa jiraachuun kun akkamitti xiqqolee garaa isaan hin nyaanne jechuun ummanni bal’aan kaabinoota aanaa komachaa jiran.
Akka odeeffannoon gara Miidhagaa Lolaatii arra nu gahe tokko ibsitutti, hoongeefi beelaan wal qabatee haalli amma naannoo sanitti argamuu akka malee yaaddeessaa tahuu irraa kan ka’e abaar akka baroota dheeraa dura naannoo sanii namoota kumaatamaan baqachiisee turee san daran tahuun shakkisiisaa jira ja’an. Gargaarsi waajibir naannoo san dhufaa jiruus kan kallattiin ummata bira gahaa jiru osoo hin taane kan aangawoota araddaafi nama qarshii qabuu qofa akka tahe ijaan agartoonni naannoo sanii himaa jiran.
Haaluma wal fakkaatuun aanaalee walakkaan horsiifatee bultootaa tahan kan akka Qumbii, Mayyumuluqqee, Gola Odaa, Baabbile, Gursumiifi Cinaaksaniis beeyladaan isaani margaaf bishaan dhabaaf jalaa dhumaa kan jirtuufi ummanniis haala yaaddeessaa taheen beelaan xuruurfamaa jiraachuufi gargaarsi dhufu eessa akka gahu wanni beekan akka hin jirre odeeffannooleen garasii nu dhaqqabaa jiru ni hima.
Alarm bells are ringing for a food emergency in Ethiopia. The UN says 15 million people will need help over the coming months. The government, wary of stigma and therefore hesitant to ask for help, has nevertheless said more than eight million Ethiopians need food assistance. Extra imports to stem the crisis are already pegged at more than a million tonnes of grain, beyond the government’s means. Inevitably, comment and media coverage compare the current situation with 1984 – the year Ethiopia’s notorious famine hit the headlines. Reports suggest this is the worst drought in 30 years. One declares it a“code red” drought. So how bad actually is it?
The country of close to 100 million people is huge, spread over an area of more than a million square kilometres that ranges from semi-desert to swamp to mountain ranges and fertile farmland. The weather systems and agricultural patterns are diverse and complex. Even within the higher-altitude areas of the country, the most densely populated, the typical rainy seasons vary and crops are grown at different times of the year. This year, the weather has been prone to even greater variation due to the global climate phenomenon El Niño, last seen in 1997-1998.
Ethiopia produces more than 90 percent of its own food. Last year, the cereal harvest was estimated to be 23 million tonnes, but imports in recent years averaged 1.2 million tonnes – just five percent of that. So even if 2015 and 2016 are bad years (the impact of a poor harvest is felt months later as food stocks run out), the vast majority of Ethiopian people will support themselves and eat produce from their own country. But in a giant like Ethiopia, 15 percent of the population is 15 million people – more than the entire humanitarian caseload of the Syrian crisis. An extra five percent of cereals is another 1.2 million tonnes.The costs and logistics become formidable at this scale.
WEATHER
The weather is only one part of the equation in whether people go hungry. Politics, economics, the availability of seeds and fertiliser, conflict, trade and labour markets, population pressure, social habits, and a host of other factors matter too.
While the science and sociology of food security is complex and layered, international agencies working on drought and hunger-prone countries, including Ethiopia, use a scheme called the Integrated Food Security and Humanitarian Phase Classification Framework (IPC) to simplify the mass of underlying data into a five-step scale – from minimal food security pressure to famine. Some parts of northern Ethiopia are already flagged as being in “Phase 4”, one step from the worst category. More are expected to follow, unless sufficient resources can halt the slide.
Even getting a single view of one year’s weather, let alone human interaction with it, is no simple matter.
For more than 30 years, meteorologists have gathered a giant archive of satellite data for Ethiopia. US satellites, in particular METOP-AVHRR, churn out petabytes of data. Triangulating that with other sources, including ground-based measurement, farm assessments, nutrition, and price monitoring provides a rich toolkit to estimate vegetation, rainfall, soil moisture and temperature – ultimately giving an idea of food on the table.
Considering all the variables, the drought and famine watchdog FEWS NET, established in the wake of the 1984 famine, has used direct, but not alarmist, language to describe the prospects: its latest report for Ethiopia is titled “Large-scale food security emergency projected for 2016”. The UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization, meanwhile, warned: “food security conditions sharply deteriorated.”
Political sensitivity, donor pressures, logistics, media distortion, inefficiency and scepticism may yet conspire to tip more Ethiopians into “Phase 4.” Even in the best-case scenario, the financial resources will be hard to find – $270m is still needed for 2015 alone, according to UN’s emergency aid coordination body, OCHA, and needs are set to rise sharply (the US, the UK and China have pledged relatively early to the response, according to the government).
To illustrate the complexity of weather patterns in Ethiopia and attempt to demonstrate a link with El Niño, IRIN analysed 30 years of satellite imagery to provide some visual evidence of the complex and erratic picture of weather in the Horn of Africa. Read more in the following link
We have been sold this “Ethiopia rising” meme for years now. The Ethiopian government keeps projecting this narrative 24/7. State media have been preoccupied with plastering images of construction projects and GDP rates on the minds of citizens; and Global “Experts on Africa” have added the “Ethiopia rising” meme to their already existing “Africa rising” meme as well.
The “Ethiopia rising” meme has become pernicious in part because it is half-truth. Construction projects are indeed visibly “booming”. We can at least see the Addis Ababa light rail with our own eyes. Sophisticated international economists tell us the latest GDP figures as well. Local, Bole resident, developmental government minions and cadres echo these GDP figures too; along with their fellow traveler, foreign born drive by reporters who are mostly based in Addis Ababa; They go out on field missions on few occasions and believe new buildings and a new light rail in Addis Ababa is the same as development of an entire country of 94 million people.
For such people, their echo chamber is filled with the “Ethiopia rising” noise. As a result, “Ethiopia rising” is the answer to everything. They have been so primed with this meme that they might even answer the question “What is 1 + 1?” with “Ethiopia rising”. Ask them if bricks can be bread or if starving children can eat a train and they will have no answer. (Or maybe they’ll just answer you with “Ethiopia rising”)
In addition, Ethiopia is now facing yet another severe drought and looming famine catastrophe ; the worst it has seen in 30 years and estimated 15 million people will likely need food assistance in 2016. UNICEF figures indicate a 27% increase in the number of children treated for Severe Acute Malnutrition already; 197 woredas had measles outbreaks; 14,300 suspected and 11,700 confirmed measles cases so far. Once again, the international community has started its never ending task of feeding hungry Ethiopians who are failed by their own government; yet another evidence for why the “Ethiopia rising” meme remains half-truth, if not a complete lie.
The extent of lives lost due to the ongoing drought is an unknown know reality for the moment. The government has suppressed report on mortality rates. Although public health information is incomplete without such vital statistics, UNICEF’s situations reports on the current humanitarian crisis bear no mortality rates. Even zero deaths should be reported in well-respected information sources such as the UNICEF. But that’s not the case here. UNICEF seems to have adopted a position that says “If the government says there are no children who died of starvation, then there are not children who died of starvation”. Yet, one BBC report states “The United Nations say two babies are dying of starvation every day in one area”. However, the government insists “No one has died or displaced due to lack of food in the areas affected by the drought”.
Without vital information such as mortality rates from independent sources, given the extent of Ethiopia’s previous famine disasters, previous and current governments’ denial and cover up on the extent of such disasters, and in spite of the “Ethiopia rising” meme, it’s hard to tell how bad the situation is. It might even be comparable with the 1984 famine.
The EPRDF government officials are repeatedly denying the current famine that around fifteen million people are facing In Ethiopia. International media are busy reporting about the famine showing the pictures of emaciated children; the dead bodies of hundreds of animals and telling stories of mothers who lost their children due to starvation. It is funny to hear what the government officials say regarding the drought and famine that is causing the death of many people and animals. Some of the government officials are even accusing these media (BBC for example) that tried to showcase the extent of the problem to the world saying that they have sensationalized reports about the drought in Ethiopia.
The EPRDF leaders say Ethiopia is food self sufficient; needs no aid from outside. They say there is no problem, no famine, no drought and no death. Other time they say, there is drought in some parts of the country and it is under control. Still, they say, only very insignificant number of people (15 million people out of 90 million people) are affected by the drought. Oh, my God, how on earth they say that 15million people are very insignificant? These people are gone out of their mind; the life of a single person matters let alone the life of 15 million people.
Recently, we have learned that the government is building very modern houses with 154million birr for six retired EPRDF officials. What a paradox! People are dying because they have nothing to eat while the government is allocating all this money for building houses for its corrupt retired officials who have been amassing unimaginable wealth over the last two decades.
Why does this government likes denying the facts on the ground? Why is it they are hiding the famine? is it because it contradicts with their 11% economic growth for 10 consecutive years?Please, guys come to your sense, tell the world the truth about the scale of the problem; mobilize all the citizens and gather the resources needed to save the millions of people who are on the verge of death. At least for now, forget the politics and do the right thing-saving the lives of people should be given a priority.#Ethiopiafamine
Ironically, while Ethiopia is facing a hunger crisis and making urgent appeals for aid, tonnes of food are actually leaving the country. This illogical development is due to the fact that the regime in Addis has sold large tracts of arable land to a range of foreign investors and corporations in transactions described as “land grabs.” The process also involves “villagization,” a government-led program which entails the forcible relocation of indigenous communities from locations reserved for large, foreign-owned plantations. Reports by rights groups list a plethora of human rights violations, including murders, beatings, rapes, imprisonment, intimidation, and political coercion by the government and authorities. A report by the Oakland Institute (OI), a prominent international human rights organization, vividly describes how via “strongarm tactics reminiscent of apartheid South Africa, the Ethiopian regime has moved tens of thousands of people against their will to purpose-built communes that have inadequate food and lack health and education facilities to make way for large, foreign-owned commercial agricultural projects.” Notably, the program has also led to food insecurity, a destruction of livelihoods and the loss of cultural heritage of ethnic groups.
Food insecurity is one of the most pressing humanitarian issues in the Horn of Africa, and the situation is expected to deteriorate further over the coming months. Ethiopia, in particular, is faced with a massive crisis. According to the European Commission, “the situation in Ethiopia is at present the most alarming, where the number of food insecure people has increased from 2.9 million at the beginning of the year to 8.2 million by early October. It is foreseen that these numbers will further rise up to 15 million by the end of 2015. Rates of acute under-nutrition are well above emergency thresholds in many parts of the country, while the response to this situation is hampered by an important shortage of nutrition supplies. In the worst affected areas in the Northern, Central and Eastern regions of the country hundreds of thousands of livestock deaths are reported.” Moreover, UNICEF warns that a large number of those facing hunger will be children; approximately 5 million children will “require relief food assistance during the last quarter of 2015,” with hundreds of thousands urgently requiring treatment for acute severe malnutrition.
The crisis is largely being attributed to the El Niño weather phenomenon and the underperformance of two consecutive rainy seasons, which have combined to negatively affect the country’s agricultural harvest cycle. During the last two months, prolonged, erratic and insufficient rainfall has led to poor vegetation conditions in southern Ethiopia, and widespread drought, which has severely impacted ground conditions.
However, although environmental factors have been significant, it is important to examine the crisis within a broader framework. The roots of hunger are multidimensional and complex; beyond immediate environmental causes, hunger involves a variety of factors including, amongst others, socio-political and governance dynamics. According to scholar Tim Hitchcock, “famines aren’t about the lack of food in the world. They aren’t about the lack of aid. We know that the harvest is going to fail in Eastern Africa once every 12 to 15 years. If you have a working state and your harvest fails, you raise the cash and you buy food and ship it in, and you make sure it is distributed. You don’t allow people to starve.” In Ethiopia, “[hunger and] food insecurity stems from government failures in addressing major structural problems” (Siyoum, Hilhorst, and Van Uffelen 2012).
The European Union (EU) has provided over €1 billion in humanitarian aid to the Horn of Africa since 2011, much of which has gone to Ethiopia. Annually, Ethiopia receives hundreds of millions of dollars in aid from a variety of bilateral and multilateral sources; across the 2004-2013 period, the country was the world’s 4thlargest recipient of foreign assistance, receiving nearly US$6 billion, while in 2011 alone, its share of total global official development assistance – approximately 4 percent – placed it behind only Afghanistan. However, even while it has long-been one of the leading recipients of foreign, humanitarian, and food aid in the world, the country continues to face crises. Why? One influential factor is the debilitating mix of domestic corruption and poor governance. According to prominent development scholar and international economist Dambisa Moyo (2009), aid is often closely linked to corruption and poor governance, and “aid flows destined to help the average African…[get] used for anything, save the developmental purpose for which they were intended.” Moreover, “a constant stream of ‘free’ money is a perfect way to keep an inefficient or simply bad government in power.” In the 1980s, during widespread famine and drought, Ethiopia’s brutal Dergue regime, led by Colonel Mengistu Hailemariam, diverted millions in humanitarian aid to the military, while under the despotic rule of Meles Zenawi, aid was frequently utilized as a political tool of manipulation and repression. Several months ago, leaked emails revealed that the Ethiopian regime, which is now making appeals for aid and external support, was paying the Italian surveillance firm, Hacking Team, to illegally monitor journalists critical of the government.
Corruption and poor governance remain deeply embedded within Ethiopia’s socio-political structure, and the country consistently scores extremely poorly on the World Bank’s Worldwide Governance Indicators, especially within the areas of corruption, rule of law, and governance (Kaufmann, Kraay, and Mastruzzi 2010; World Bank 2014). The indicators, based upon a variety of perceptions-based data sources, provide measures for various states, with scores ranging from around –2.5 (low) to around 2.5 (high). Table 1 illustrates that corruption, rule of law, and governance are significant problems within Ethiopia.
Another area of considerable concern is democracy and civil liberties. Ethiopia has been consistently criticized by an array of international rights groups for its broad range of human rights abuses including its harsh repression of minorities and journalists, press censorship, draconian anti-terror laws that are utilized to silence all forms of dissent, and brutal crackdowns upon opposition groups and protestors.
According to the Polity IV Project (Marshall and Gurr 2013), which is widely used in international comparative analyses of democracy, governance, and human rights practices, Ethiopia is one of the most authoritarian, autocratic states in the world. The Polity IV Project codes the political characteristics of states, using an array of data sources, to rank states from –10, representing least democratic and most autocratic states, to 10, representing most democratic states. Table 2 displays that Ethiopia’s scores place it within the autocratic, authoritarian category. The applicability of this categorization is underscored by the fact that, mere months ago, the government in Addis Ababa won 100 percent of parliamentary seats in a widely discredited national election that involved massive irregularities and intimidation, crackdowns, and arrests of the opposition.
Importantly, scholars and analysts have pointed to the existence of an intricate relationship between democracy, civil liberty, and hunger or famine. According to internationally renowned development and human rights scholar Amartya Sen, “no democracy has ever suffered a great famine” (1999: 180-181). Specifically, Sen notes that throughout history famines have been avoided in democratic states because these states’ promotion of political and civil rights afford people the opportunity to draw forceful attention to their general needs and to demand appropriate public action through voting, criticizing, protesting, and the like. Authoritarian states, which curtail democracy and free press, sustain much less pressure to respond to the acute suffering of their people and can therefore continue with faulty policies. Sen’s discussion of many of the great famines within recent history – including those in Ethiopia, Somalia, Sudan, China, the former USSR, and North Korea – helps emphasize the fundamental relationship between democracy, civil liberties, and widespread famine and hunger (Sen 1999).
Ironically, while Ethiopia is facing a hunger crisis and making urgent appeals for aid, tonnes of food are actually leaving the country. This illogical development is due to the fact that the regime in Addis has sold large tracts of arable land to a range of foreign investors and corporations in transactions described as “land grabs.” The process also involves “villagization,” a government-led program which entails the forcible relocation of indigenous communities from locations reserved for large, foreign-owned plantations. Reports by rights groups list a plethora of human rights violations, including murders, beatings, rapes, imprisonment, intimidation, and political coercion by the government and authorities. A report by the Oakland Institute (OI), a prominent international human rights organization, vividly describes how via “strongarm tactics reminiscent of apartheid South Africa, the Ethiopian regime has moved tens of thousands of people against their will to purpose-built communes that have inadequate food and lack health and education facilities to make way for large, foreign-owned commercial agricultural projects.”
Notably, the program has also led to food insecurity, a destruction of livelihoods and the loss of cultural heritage of ethnic groups.
Essentially, the Ethiopian regime’s participation in “land grabs” represents a dire lack of leadership, prioritization, and proper governance. It has caused terrible disruption to local communities and greatly harmed food security in the name of economic development. Such failure is reminiscent of previous humanitarian crises in the country. As described by Mosse (1993), during the 1960s and 1970s, the nomadic Afars of Ethiopia were displaced from their pasturelands in the Awash valley. The Awash River was controlled in the 1960s to provide irrigation for Dutch, Israeli, Italian, and British firms to grow sugar and cotton. Consequently, the annual flooding of the river, which covered the valley with rich soil and provided grazing lands for the Afars, was disrupted. The Afars went in search of new pastures and attempted to make a living on the ecologically fragile uplands, which were poorly suited to their nomadic lifestyle. Cattle found less to eat and the Afars began to starve. Subsequently, when drought struck Ethiopia’s Wollo region in 1972, between 25 and 30 percent of the Afars perished. The problem was not due to particular inadequacies of the Afars – who had flourished for centuries; rather, the problem was with the attempt to develop the Afar lands and bring them into the mainstream economy, without any regard for their actual needs. Ultimately, the pursuit of economic growth or development, if not sensitive or responsive to local needs, can so damage existing local populations and communities that substantial harm, poverty, deprivation, and hunger are created as a result (Mosse 1993).
Ethiopia’s hunger crisis is an important humanitarian issue meriting immediate attention and concern. In order to fully understand the crisis it is imperative to recognize that while the environment has been an important contributing factor, a range of other structural socio-political and governance dynamics, including corruption, the lack of rule of law or democracy, poor governance, failures in long-term planning, and misplaced national and development priorities have also been highly influential.
“…UN now warning that without action some “15 million people will require food assistance” next year, more than inside war-torn Syria. ….Hardest-hit areas are Ethiopia’s eastern Afar and southern Somali regions, while water supplies are also unusually low in central and eastern Oromo region.” Unicef
Millions hungry as Ethiopia drought bites
(Unicef, News24, October 22, 2015): The number of hungry Ethiopians needing food aid has risen sharply due to poor rains and the El Nino weather phenomenon with around 7.5 million people now in need, aid officials said on Friday.
That number has nearly doubled since August, when the United Nations said 4.5 million were in need – with the UN now warning that without action some “15 million people will require food assistance” next year, more than inside war-torn Syria.
“Without a robust response supported by the international community, there is a high probability of a significant food insecurity and nutrition disaster,” the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, OCHA, said in a report.
The UN children’s agency, Unicef, warns over 300 000 children are severely malnourished.
The Famine Early Warning Systems Network (FEWS NET), which makes detailed technical assessments of hunger, predicted a harvest “well below average” in its latest report.
“Unusual livestock deaths continue to be reported,” FEWS NET said. “With smaller herds, few sellable livestock, and almost no income other than charcoal and firewood sales, households are unable to afford adequate quantities of food.”
Ethiopia, Africa’s second most populous nation, borders the Horn of Africa nation of Somalia, where some 855 000 people face need “life-saving assistance”, according to the UN, warning that 2.3 million more people there are “highly vulnerable”.
El Nino comes with a warming in sea surface temperatures in the equatorial Pacific, and can cause unusually heavy rains in some parts of the world and drought elsewhere.
Hardest-hit areas are Ethiopia’s eastern Afar and southern Somali regions, while water supplies are also unusually low in central and eastern Oromo region.
Sensitive issue
Food insecurity is a sensitive issue in Ethiopia, hit by famine in 1984-85 after extreme drought.
Today, Ethiopia’s government would rather its reputation was its near-double-digit economic growth and huge infrastructure investment – making the country one of Africa’s top-performing economies and a magnet for foreign investment.
Still, nearly 20 million Ethiopians live below the $1.25 poverty line set by the World Bank, with the poorest some of the most vulnerable to weather challenges.
Ethiopia’s government has mobilised $33m in emergency aid, but the UN says it needs $237m.
Minster for Information Redwan Hussein told reporters at a recent press conference that Ethiopia is doing what it can.
“The support from donor agencies has not yet arrived in time to let us cope with the increasing number of the needy population,” he said.
Drought, food crisis and Famine in Ethiopia 2015: Children and adults are dying of lack of food, water and malnutrition. Animals are perishing of persisting drought. The worst Affected areas are: Eastern and Southern Oromia, Afar, Ogaden and Southern nations.
The tale of two countries (Obama’s/TPLF’s Ethiopia and Real Ethiopia): The Oromo (Children, Women and elders) are dying of genocidal mass killings and politically caused famine, but Obama has been told only rosy stories and shown rosy pictures.
By Tokkicha Abbaa Milkii, http://www.ayyaantuu.net/
“We are still surprised by the prevalence of draught-induced food shortages in Africa, 3,500 years after the Pharaohs worked out how to store grain.” (The dictator’s Handbook, by Bruce Buend De Mesquita and Alastair Smith, p x-xi)
A recorded history shows that there was famine during the reign of Minilik. This famine was attributed to a plague called “ye Hidar Beshita” as their chroniclers put it. The story goes like this, “this plague killed people and their domestic animals like cows and oxen that caused a wide spread catastrophe and famine throughout the newly incorporated regions of the empire. The true story which the chroniclers did not want to mention was the plague broke out due to genocide committed in Oromia and the southern regions by Minilik army.
Somehow the plague killed millions of people and farm animals. Since the farm animals were extinct there were no means left to plow the land to grow crops. The chroniclers of the king’s history told us that the king ordered the skilled people to produce pickaxes to be distributed to the people to dig the land by hand in which the king himself participated in digging to prepare the land for growing crops. That was a “big technological innovation” discovered by Minilk to mitigate famine according to them.
This was narrated by his admirers to present Minilik as the innovative king who had concern for his people. For a shallow minded people it looks true. But Minilik who was an expert in amassing war technology like gun and ammunition from European countries to kill several millions of Oromos and the Southern Peoples had no sympathy to ask for medicine, food and farm technology aid from his war patrons.
If anybody think that this bloodthirsty monster had no knowledge how to get that aid is a fool. He had enough access and knowledge but did not want to save the subjects lives and introduce any sort of civilization into the newly incorporated regions.
To simply understand Minilik’s diplomatic ability and access to European countries it is enough to look at the next example. He amassed the next bulk of guns and ammunitions between 1968 and 1990 from four European countries with which he massacred millions of unarmed Oromos and the Southern Peoples.
Country guns ammunitions
1-England 15,000 5,000,000
2-France 500,000 20,000,000
3-Italy 50,000 10,000,000
4-Rusia 150,000 15,000,000 (Source Amharic book Written by Tabor Wamii titled “ye wugena Drsetochina yetarik Ewunetoch” p 499, translated from Amharic)
During Minilik’s reign a productive forces- all men capable of producing- from the north ( Habasha country) were forced to wage colonization war on the South (oromi’a, Sidama, wolayita,Somali, etc,) productive forces who resisted colonization. This process of war took more than two decades and during which all sort of production and progress was impeded. Therefore it is not a matter of wonder if famine and plague hit the people, because it was a man made famine and plague.
Take the case of Tewodros, he didn’t force the European missionary to produce improved farming tools. Instead he forced them to produce not even simple guns, but cannons. This shows that his appetite for mass destruction was overwhelming and clarified that Habasha rulers were and still are obsessed not with development and growth but with killing neighboring people to colonize and loot their wealth. This famine is inherent in this part of the world because the regimes were busy at war and looting the resource of the people rather than development and progress.
Out of thousands of Tewodros’s barbaric acts, to mention one of his anti-production deeds “Tewodros went to Karoda village. Karoda is known with its grain production and specially, in grape production. It was said that in Gonder one barrel of wine was sold with one bar of salt. Europeans said Karod wine was superior to European wine. He (Tewodros) ordered that grapes to be uprooted. Everybody who heard the King’s order uprooted his grapes. After that there was no wine in Ethiopia. Haleka Weldemariam wrote that, “Tewodros upon his arrival at Karoda ordered the people to be gathered at one place, 1700 people including children were gathered together. He packed all people in the houses at a maximum capacity and burnt them alive.” (Yewugena dirsetochina ye tarik Ewunetoch, by Tabor Wami, p416-417). Tewodros’s advocates try to convince us that he had a big vision for Ethiopia. I don’t understand how, the king who instead of rewarding those productive people at Karoda, burn them alive can be presented as visionary.
Tewodros never owned and resides in a palace and never settled in one place. He was called a king who lived in tent. He came to power through war, he waged war on different rival chiefs, brutally punished the people in the localities he found resistance. He committed genocide and brutal acts like mutilation of hands and legs, burning alive in mass, slain etc. wherever he set foot on. What makes Tewodros special is, even though he did the same crime on neighboring Wallo Oromos, his victims include Abisinyans. This does not mean that he had no hatred for other nations like Oromos, he had extreme rancor for Oromos and had a long intention to invade and evict them from their land. This evil intention was expressed in his letter written to Queen Victoria of England to ask for armaments to wipe out these Oromos whom he mentioned “pagans who occupied his father’s land”.
When we come to the modern era we find the Haile Selassie aristocratic and keliptocratic monarchy rule which the remnants of Naftenyas consider as nirvana. In actual fact it was as hell as the present time for the people who were expropriated their land and reduced to gabar, chisagna, slave, etc. This regime divided all the colonized peoples’ land among his invading army leaders who were changed to feudal land lords. This system of land ownership discouraged the farmers to produce in full capacity and famine was the day to day life style of the people. We can mention what famine meant to these rulers.
“Heart-wrenching images of starving children are a surefire way to stimulate aid donations. Since the technology to store grain has been known since the time of the pharaohs, we cannot help but wonder why the children of North Africa remain vulnerable to famine. A possible explanation lies in the observations of Ryszard Kapuscinski. Writing about the court of the Ethiopian emperor Haile Selassie, Kapuscinski describes its response to efforts by aid agencies to assist millions of Ethiopians affected by drought and famine in 1972.
Suddenly report came in that those overseas benefactors who had taken upon themselves the trouble of feeding our ever-insatiable people had rebelled and were suspending shipments because our Finance Minister, Mr.Yelma Deresa, wanting to enrich the Imperial treasury, had ordered the benefactors to pay high customs fees on the aid. “You want to help?” the Minister asked. “Please do, but you must pay.” And they said “What do you mean, pay? We give help! And we are supposed to pay?” “Yes, says the minister, “those are the regulations. Do you want to help in such a way that our Empire gains nothing by it?”
The antics of Ethiopian government should perhaps come as little surprise. Autocrats need money to pay their coalition. Haile Selassie, although temporarily displaced by Italy’s invasion in the 1930s, held the throne from 1930 until overcome by decrepitude in 1974. As a long term successful autocrat, Selassie knew not to put the needs of the people above the wants of his essential supporters. To continue with Kapuscinski’s description:
‘First of all, death from hunger had existed in our Empire for hundreds of years, an everyday, natural thing, and it never occurred to anyone to make any noise about it. Drought would come and the earth would dry up, the cattle would drop dead, the peasants would starve. Ordinary, in accordance with the laws of nature and the eternal order of things. Since this was eternal and normal, none of the dignitaries would dare to bother His Most Exalted Highness with the news that in such and such a province a given person had died of hunger……..So how were we to know that there was unusual hunger up north?’
Silassie fed his supporters first and himself second; the starving masses had to wait their turn, which might never come. His callous disregard for the suffering of the people is chilling, at least until you compare it to his successor. Mengistu Hail Mariam led the Derg military regime that followed Silassie’s reign. He carried out policies that exacerbated drought in the Northern Provinces of Tigry and Wollo in the mid1980s. With civil war raging in these provinces and a two year drought, he engaged in forced collectivization. Millions were forced into collective farms and hundreds of thousands forced out of the province entirely. Mass starvation resulted. Estimates of the death toll are between 300,000 and 1 million people. From the Derg’s perspective the famine seriously weakened the rebels, a good thing as Mengistu saw it. Many of us remember Live Aid, a series of records and concerts organized by Bob Geldof to raise disaster relief. Unfortunately, as well intentioned as these efforts were, much of the aid fell under the influence of the government. For instance, trucks meant for delivering aid were requisitioned to forcibly move people into collective farms all around the country. Perhaps 100,000 people died in these relocation.” (The Dictators Hand Book, by Bruce Bueno De Mesquita and Alastair Smith, P162-163)
What I mentioned above is to refresh your memory a little bit. Even though corruption and kleptocracy were not started by Habasha rulers they were the first to introduce it to Africa. H/ Silassie started hording billions of Dollars in Swiss banks long before any African country got its independence. Therefore he is considered to be the first kleptocrat, the father and teacher of corruption in Africa.
We are still in the same vicious circle of corruption and kleptocratic rule. Instead of avoiding the barbaric acts of their fathers and forefathers todays Fascist rulers modernized and continued the same barbaric acts. Instead of burning alive, mutilation of hands and legs in public like Tewdros and Minilik, and instead of killing and throwing the dead body of their victims on the streets of cities like the military junta, today’s rulers do it behind doors, in known and un known detention camps, and prison centers like H/ Silassie deed. A hidden war is waged on the people in all colonized regions too.
Therefore it is not a matter of wander if peoples of this part of the world are starved in millions year after year. All Monarchs, Communist Military Junta leaders and The Fascist TPLF Dictators are on the same set of war against the colonized people, corruption and looting. In all of the mentioned criminal regimes government revenue was and is spent on bribing supporters and left open for corruption and on buying the loyalty of a few key cronies at the expense of general welfare. Yet these corrupt dictators make sure that the people cannot coordinate, rebel, and take control of the state and endeavor to keep those outside of their coalition poor, ignorant, and unorganized.
That is what TPLF fascists are doing today. Instead of mitigating poverty and hunger they loot all tax payers money, borrowed and aid money to reward their supportrs and buy weapons with the extra money to wage war on the colonized peoples like Oromo, sidama ,Ogadeenia, afar etc. who ask for their freedom. What is heart breaking most is on the very day they preached the self- sufficiency of the country in food supply and the idea was praised by US President, the International Agencies and medias started disclosing at least 4.5 million people are starved in a “Praised Ethiopia for its double digit economic growth”.
These Fascists behave like shy to tell the truth to the people of the country they rule about the famine looming on the people. On another hand they are courageous enough to exaggerate the damage to the donor countries to attract more relief funds. Once the aid fund is secured, it is simple for them to divert it into their private accounts, rather than being steered towards famine mitigation. Letting people die is good governance for them. This is the behavior of corrupt rulers.
I want to quote “We started this chapter with an account of Hail Silassie’s shakedown of donors. By now it should be clear that this practice is all too common, and reflects the logic of privately given aid. When private donors provide aid, governments must either strike deals with them so that the government gets its cut-that, after all, is the value of aid to a small coalition regime-or, in the absence of such deals, they must shakedown well-intentioned private donors. Either way, the government must get its piece of the action or it will make it impossible for donors to deliver assistance.”(The Dictator’s Handbook, p.186) This prevalence of master thieves among world leaders is shocking.
As the writer of this book clearly stated this practice is all too common to day and the corrupt TPLF leaders are an expert in channeling aid money to their foreign bank accounts. Their so called Civil Society’s Law was declared only to shakedown donors like their grandfather did half a century ago. So this process is a vicious circle which does not go away by itself. Nothing can stop this peril except liberating ourselves from the grip of these keliptocratic fascist dictators with our own struggle and sacrifice and build democratic and accountable governance.
The essay I am reproducing below is a reply to a comment made in my blog by OromianEconomist regarding the pictures and short essay on my blog (You can find them HERE.) in which I referred to the Ethiopian drought of the early 1970’s. This was his comment:
“The same is going on right now in Ethiopia. Authorities are either hiding the presence of famine or stealing the food aid.”
I wrote this initially short reply to the Oromian Economist’s comment on my blog, but then I seemed to just keep writing and writing until it turned into an essay of sorts. The facts are from memory and I realize I need to do some further research and I’d…
What are really the causes? Why? What went/goes wrong? What are the main reasons for continued famine in Ethiopia? Is it an act of nature, an act of man or God? Who is to be blamed?
A combination of long period political and economic instability has produced chronic famine in Ethiopia. We could recall the 1972/1973 and 1984/1985 starvation episodes that devoured hundred thousands of lives. Even this time millions of people are starved to death.
It is taken for granted that millions who are starving or threatened with starvation in Ethiopia to day are the victims of a drought caused by an unpredictable and unpreventable reduction of rainfall or natural disaster. In other words, drought or decrease in the annual rain fall is offered as an explanation for famine in Ethiopia. In reality, however, the famine we are witnessing in Ethiopia is not due exclusively drought or natural catastrophe as the Tigray based Ethiopian minority regime and some “researchers” would like us to believe. It is a good example of an inevitable result of bad government polices.
Drought, climate variation and other natural calamities (disasters) occur not only in Ethiopia, but in any part of the world. However, drought does not necessarily result in famine. Famine can be avoided if the government takes its responsibility. Therefore, there are good reasons to consider political instability and lack of democratic governance as significant factors.
Famine should be understood more broadly as a symptom of some thing the solution of which strongly demands a deep understanding of political and environmental systems of the country. In other words famine vulnerability has to be sought in human and natural elements.
Let me try to elaborate this with a very simple formula.
F = HN
Where: F = Famine; H = Human intervention; N = Natural interference
Human Intervention
Lack of political and economic instability:
The TPLF government expends enormous resource to fight against opposition forces
There is restricted freedom of assembly
There is restriction upon the press Thousands of able bodied men and
women including journalist and experts are in prison detained without charge
Misplaced political priorities
Many educated and experts are in exile to save their lives
Environmental degradation mainly as a result of bad managementPolitical crises are thus the centre of the famine problem. When there is politically induced insecurity, instability, repression, people will be affected by famine. When there is lack of freedom of association and lack of voice, there will follow restrictions on economic opportunities. Human right violations cause persecution, suffering and forced displacement of people.
Lack of democracy and peace are major obstacles which have the main effect on famine in Ethiopia. Under authoritarian rule, it is always difficult to fight famine and poverty. The TPLF minority government which is obviously on turmoil seems determined to conduct its campaign under the so called democracy which may as well target national groups to fight what it calls narrow nationalism and separatism.
It has been observed that famine do not occur in democratic countries with a relatively free press and active opposition parties because people have established mechanisms to compel governments to address their pressing needs. Moreover, famine in general and starvation in particular happen because of the failure of governments. Democratic governments are bound by social and political contract to respond to the need of their citizen. They know that failure of the contract on their part brings an end to their stay in power. Elections and the possibility of public criticism make the penalty of famine affect the rulers as well – not the starving people.
Therefore, the main roots of the famine crises in Ethiopia are related to political instability and economic uncertainties. Changes in these features are required on a real urgent base.
Misplaced political priorities can also easily lead to famine. For example, if high emphasis is given to the agricultural development sector and annual imputes into the rural sector are increased, Ethiopia can feed itself with out any problem. Serious studies indicate that only 20% of Ethiopia’s 65% suitable land is used for cultivation.
Natural interference
Drought, pest and disease are good examples of natural interference. Pest and disease are not reported to cause the famine in Ethiopia (at least the government did not claim). Drought by itself is the result of deforestation, soil erosion and biological soil deterioration. Drought triggers the famine crises, but does not cause it. It is to be recalled that calamitous forest fires raged across large areas of the country especially in Oromia region and destructed a vast area of forest. Such type of destruction of forests leads to lowering of soil moisture and suppress rail fall because much of the rain comes from water evaporated off forests/vegetations.
Drought is an environmental issue that has political and social dimensions. Of course, famine preconditions and drought /Environmental degradation are related. The reasoning becomes dangerous however, if we neglect other important agents of famine described above and focus only on drought. Though the Tigray minority regime has failed to address the cause of famine in Ethiopia, there are serious documents that prove that the famine is caused by human intervention rather than by natural catastrophe. Droughts may lower the agricultural production, however, it does not necessarily result in famine anywhere in the world
As the forest is destroyed, it holds less water and produces a drier local climate or drought. Therefore destroying forest reduces not only the amount of rain but also the moisture to evaporate or run off damaged soils. The problem is that the soil’s water-retaining capacity has been reduced by human interference with nature.
The most important thing is to understand that drought is not the direct cause of famine. Assume that drought in Ethiopia has resulted in low levels of production. Does this lead us to conclude that it results in famine? No! People do not starve in a drought related famine simply because there is low production or no food. Famine is influenced by working entire economy. It is very important to take an adequate view of the politico-economic processes that lead to famine in Ethiopia which continue to kill millions of people. What determines whether a person is starving is its food entitlement that is the amount of food he or she can obtain, own and use, not just the total availability of food in the country or region. I can give Ethiopia as an example. Throughout the famine 1984-1985, Ethiopia was a net exporter of food, Ethiopia still export food.
Given the deep-seated interdependences that influence economic and political deprivations and famine, a narrowly drought centred view would defeat the purpose finding practical ways of fighting famine in Ethiopia. Political-economic-peace-democracy and famine interdependences have to be adequately seized for the ultimate elimination of famine and starvation in Ethiopia.
Conclusion!
Catastrophe political and human crises are taking place in Ethiopia. Millions people are on the edge of death, Children, young and old are dying every day.
The famine we are witnessing to day is the inevitable result of bad government policies, lack of political and economic instability, lack of peace and democracy and misplaced political priorities. Therefore, it is important to take an adequately wide view of the political and economic processes that lead to famine which continue to kill millions of people and blight the lives of hundreds of millions
Any attempt to overcome the famine situation in Ethiopia must involve broad understanding of political, economics, humanitarian, social, environmental crises as well as decentralization of the TPLF power, resolution of the demands for the national self-determination, democratization and peace full transfer of power in the country. Read more at :- http://www.ayyaantuu.net/famine-in-ethiopia-the-act-of-man-or-nature/
Related:-
Drought, food crisis and Famine in Ethiopia 2015: Children and adults are dying of lack of food, water and malnutrition. Animals are perishing of persisting drought. The worst Affected areas are: Eastern and Southern Oromia, Afar, Ogaden and Southern nations. #Africa #Oromia
(Tesfa News) — It was with dismay that we read todayalarming reports that warn of catastrophicfood insufficiency in Ethiopia. The grim picture shows that Ethiopia will need an extra $230 million from donors to secure aid for4.5 million people this year alone. How come this is possible must be a very big mystery as Ethiopia is considered to be one of the fastest growing economies of Africa.
To be fair to Ethiopia, the nation has been badly hit by failed seasonal rains. On the other hand, the whole region is suffering from the same phenomenon as weather conditions and other such ‘Acts of God’ neither know nor distinguish between nations; weather neither recognizes nor respects territorial boundaries.
Is it then not about time that the question gets raised why Ethiopia is the only country in the region which is too busy spending its resources on building up military might to terrorize neighbours, occupy sovereign foreign territories and be a general menace both at home and around the neighbourhood while her own people are constantly faced by drought, hunger and famine.
It is exactly thirty years and twenty-five days ago since the artist Bob Geldoff organized the Live Aid concert which was watched by an estimated 1.5 billion worldwide, featuring 16 hours of live music and raising about £50 million on the day, and about £150 million in the decades since the event from merchandise sales. The event which was held live and simultaneously at Wembley Stadium in London and JFK Stadium in Philadelphia on July 13, 1985 featured some of the biggest and most prominent artists of the day. This big charity event was to give aid to the starving millions of Africa as result of failing rains and droughts. Ethiopia was one of the major targets and beneficiary of that heroic effort.
At that time, Eritrea was illegally occupied by Ethiopia and was frenetically fighting for independence. Today, three decades later, Eritrea is a thriving independent nation. Eritrea is as badly hit by failing seasonal rains as Ethiopia, but these adverse effects of ill planning, ill management and poor governance making Ethiopia to go on begging spree year after year are a thing Eritrea left behind her the moment she won her independence.
So, what is Eritrea doing right and Ethiopia doing very wrong? President Obama has partly answered that question when he once said that what Africa needed was strong institutions and not strong men.
Do the Ethiopian leaders not read the holy scriptures? Even pharaoh had the common sense to plan when he dreamt about seven lean cattle devoured seven fat ones. Joseph deciphered the dream as a need to gather and save food during seven years of bounty to cater for seven years of drought and famine. The nation of Egypt thrived and survived those seven lean years without having to beg. Even ants save for a rainy day!
Eritrea is constantly yearning and working for sustainable peace between her and her giant neighbour. Ethiopia would have been more sensible to maintain a more peaceful and amicable co-existence with Eritrea and cooperate in the many sectors in which Eritrea has a proven track record of success such as agriculture despite failing seasonal rains.
UN says 4.5 million Ethiopians now in need of food aid after poor rains
Estimates of those requiring help have surged by 1.5m, and donors must urgently provide an extra $230m to meet their needs, say UN agencies
The food security risk index – map
‘The index has been developed by the risk analysis company Maplecroft for governments, NGOs and business to use as a barometer to identify those countries which may be susceptible to famine and societal unrest stemming from food shortages and price fluctuations. This map shows the results of evaluating the availability, access and stability of food supplies in 197 countries, as well as the nutritional and health status of populations,’ The guardian.
As Africa is clearly the most afflicted, with six (Ethiopia, Somalia, S.Sudan, Congo, Chad and Eritrea) of the seven states at “extreme risk.” Afghanistan was the only country outside of Africa at extreme risk , Maplecroft inside report. According to FAO’s study, out of Ethiopia’s total Population of 84.7 million the number of undernourished persons are 34.0 million, and prevalence of undernourishment is 40 %.
Oromian Economist 
“The same is going on right now in Ethiopia. Authorities are either hiding the presence of famine or stealing the food aid.”
He included the below link to an article written about the current drought which I suggest you read. https://oromianeconomist.wordpress.com/2015/08/27/the-cause-of-ethiopias-recurrent-famine-is-not-drought-it-is-authoritarianism/ My comments follow below.
Leaves in a Dry Wind