Stopping the Hunger

11 million people across four countries are threatened by the worst drought in the Horn of Africa for 60 years. At least 500,000 malnourished children in the Horn of Africa's drought-affected areas risk death if immediate help does not reach them the UN Children's Fund (UNICEF) has said. The United Nations declared parts of Somalia to be in a state of famine. Aid experts had predicted the emergency but appeals had been ignored and help is still months away, although warning signs were being reported a year ago by the Famine Early Warning System Network (FEWS NET) and the Food Security and Nutrition Analysis Unit.

Oxfam accused European governments of "morally indefensible wilful neglect"
Oxfam's regional director, Fran Equiza, said: "If more action had been taken we would not now be at the stage where so many people are facing starvation."

The UN humanitarian coordinator for Somalia, Mark Bowden, said "We still do not have all the resources for food, clean water, shelter and health services to save the lives of hundreds of thousands of Somalis in desperate need. Every day of delay in assistance is literally a matter of life or death for children and their families in the famine-affected areas,"

World Food Programme (WFP) executive director, Josette Sheeran, said: "WFP saw this emergency coming..."

According to the Integrated Phase Classification's five-point scale, a famine is declared when at least 20 percent of households face extreme food shortages with limited ability to cope, the prevalence of global acute malnutrition exceeds 30 percent and crude death rates exceed two deaths per 10,000 people per day. But naming a food crisis a famine does not legally require action in the way that announcing a genocide would, despite the politicization of the term and the gravity of the label. "Morally speaking, famine is a term that must elicit moral indignation," said Bruno Geddo, a representative of the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR). “Emotionally, it should push people to do more."

The UK’s international development secretary, Andrew Mitchell "It is a horrible thing in our world today that a baby should die due to a lack of food,"

SOYMB can only concur with that statement but we are sickened by his hypocritical crocodile tears offering sympathy to starving children, but offering no condemnation of the system that permits such a situation to exist and repeat itself. This is typical of the futility of a policy of reformism where many well-intentioned people spend an enormous amount of energy and time in trying to patch up capitalism. Despite setting up early-warning systems, better procurement methods and the rapid delivery of nutrition such as in the form of packets of plumpy nuts, the Horn of Africa has remained a hunger zone. What we need is a complete transformation of society not an elastoplast over a gaping wound. The only way to solve this awful problem is to abolish the system that produces it and bring about world socialism. People die in the Horn of Africa because there is simply no profit in saving them. The only genuine assistance the charities and aid community can give to the suffering people of this capitalist world is to stop collaborating with the owners of capital and instead, join forces with socialists to get rid of this system based on money. Oxfam and Save the Children could use their resources to help usher in a system where production is not for profits' sake but for the satisfaction of needs. Under such a system nobody will have to run around with begging bowls for funds in order to feed the starving.