Hungry for change

Further to earlier blogs here and here

The famine in Somalia is now the fifth large-scale food crisis in Africa in this century. Compared to previous famines, the current situation in Somalia compares or exceeds those reported during recent years in Niger (2005), Ethiopia (2001), Sudan (1998) and Somalia (1992). However, this is the most severe food security crisis in Africa since the 1991/92 Somalia famine, according to the U.N.

Headlines tell us that a severe drought in the Horn of Africa is responsible for creating “the most severe food security emergency in the world today.” But is it? Two seasons of failed rain, leading to crop losses and the deaths of livestock, have certainly had an immediate impact on the lives of farmers and herders. More than 10 million people in Somalia, Kenya and Ethiopia are in need of assistance. Levels of malnutrition are rising rapidly. Scientists are debating whether this drought is a direct result of climate change or a natural progression of changes in the environment.

Regardless of the causes, the effects — the widespread hunger and food insecurity — are anything but natural. There is the larger tragedy of a failing humanitarian system built around responding to emergencies, not preventing them. The crisis in East Africa is another example of a food system subject to the economic laws of capitalism and stretched to breaking point. Droughts in this region may be inevitable, but humanitarian disasters are not. Famine only occurs with political failure. When famine still occurs, it is either a result of deliberate action intended to cause starvation, serious mismanagement, bad or nonresponsive government failing to respond adequately to natural disasters, or lack of sufficient international cooperation in redressing a threatening situation. Every famine transpiring in modern times has had a manmade element.

Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/contributors/african-crisis-exposes-failed-logic-of-humanitarian-system-20110717-1hk0u.html#ixzz1SuSxr6s1

In Somalia, decades of war and instability have destroyed infrastructure, driven millions from their homes and devastated livelihoods. In Kenya and Ethiopia, a lack of effective social protection programs means that the poorest are the most vulnerable to crises. Recent increases in food prices make it even more difficult for vulnerable people to cope, especially since poor families already spend as much as 70 percent of their income on food. Staple prices have risen by up to 240% in southern Somalia, 117% in south-eastern Ethiopia, and 58% in northern Kenya. The food scarcity is causing prices to soar. Whoever can't pay them starves. "Millet is a very important foodstuff in Somalia and is twice as expensive as it was just a short time ago," Ralf Südhoff from the United Nations World Food Program said. "The people don't have any choices anymore."

Jeremy Scahill, national security correspondent for The Nation magazine and recently returned from Somalia, where he visited camps, explained "...part of what’s happening is that there is a Somalia crisis industry that is profiting from this, largely based in Nairobi, people with large salaries and maids and nannies, living in nice apartments in Nairobi, that never step foot anywhere inside of Mogadishu, except within the protected confines of the African Union or U.N. presence there near the airport. "

Simon Levine of the Overseas Development Institute, a think tank in London, denounced the humanitarian aid system as "dysfunctional." He said "We have lots of humanitarian organizations who are partly in competition with each other, fighting for territory, all busy doing their own things,"

In Kenya it is a crisis of a people who survive by drinking the milk and selling the meat of their animals – their only source of food, wealth and income – and whose animals are now dead or worthless. Without those assets, families have lost a great deal of their purchasing power. A cow whose value last year would buy six large sacks of rice now barely covers the cost of one. Families are agreeing to give their daughters as young as 13 in arranged marriages just to earn money from the dowry. "People are desperate, they need any money they can find to buy food". World Vision has received similar reports of these early marriages from the other parts of Kenya http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/africaandindianocean/ethiopia/8637978/The-forgotten-people-of-Africas-famine-cry-out-for-aid.html

The immediate prospects for the future do not bode well. “We do not expect heavy rains until September and October and in the meantime the Somali peasants, if they do have the energy, are expected to till the arable land in anticipation of the rains. The harvests are poor because the people are too hungry, malnourished and sick to cultivate the land in the traditional manner. They are forced to increasingly rely on food aid. Yes, Somalis need high protein biscuits, food aid, flour, cooking oil, dried pulses and other foodstuffs of high nutritional value. They also need readily available potable water.” pointed out Moe Hussein the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) Somalia advisor.

Hibaaq Osman, head of the Cairo-based NGO Karama and a Somali declares "Food aid is short-term and enslaves our people making them utterly dependent on foreign assistance for their sustenance. We want long-term solutions.”

Many aid organisations are already warning of the next famine - in South Sudan.

From any technical viewpoint, from the fact that abundant resources are available, and given the ability of every person to co-operate with others, the relentless horror story of men, women and children dying every day from hunger is so easily preventable. With the ending of rival capitalist states and the market system the world community in socialism would have the great advantage of being able to make the best use of the resources of the planet. The amount of food that can be sold on the markets is always much less than could be produced. Our inability to make full use of productive powers is a feature of capitalist farming but in socialism this restriction will be removed. Through voluntary co-operation and with the ability to freely organise and use all the factors of production and distribution, communities across the world will have no barriers against producing food in the amounts required for the needs of all, particularly those unfortunate to suffer from a localised catastrophe.