Soaring food prices have conspired with crippling drought in the Horn of Africa to produce an appalling food crisis. The extent of the disaster is detailed in a new report issued today by the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC).
The looming crisis has prompted the IFRC to urgently appeal for some 113 million Swiss Francs (USD 95 million or EUR 73 million) to meet the immediate needs of more than 2.2 million people in the Horn of Africa. The planned operation - which will involve both emergency and recovery phases - will seek to tackle the dire situation that is forcing people to exist on the brink of famine in Djibouti, Somalia, and Kenya - and especially in Ethiopia, where some one million people are in urgent need.
Roger Bracke, who headed the IFRC's specialist team that produced the report and who has just completed two months in-depth research and monitoring in the region, says that this is not just more of the same.
"For the first time this current crisis is exacerbated by severe external factors such as the huge hikes in the price of imported food and fuel," he says. "Factors which could not have been foreseen by the people or governments of the Horn." "What's more, the considerable fluctuations in the value of the dollar have diminished the real value of remittances to many poor families. These factors have not just compounded the fallout from severe drought but can in fact be considered as major drivers of a massive food crisis now destroying lives and livelihoods in the Horn of Africa," says Bracke.
The report notes that large areas of the Horn of Africa are now facing an exceptional humanitarian crisis. Urgent food aid is vital to fight extremely high levels of acute hunger in the coming months. According to the IFRC, as many as 20 million people are now living on the margins of survival due to a complex cocktail of drought, conflict, displacement and chronic poverty. The IFRC report reveals that scant coping mechanisms are stretched to the limit, household assets are utterly depleted and people's overall resilience has been eroded. "Combined with the external factors which no-one could have planned for, these are simply too many successive shocks for already-vulnerable communities to absorb," adds Bracke. Furthermore, the majority of pastoralists has lost a minimum of 70 per cent of their livestock. Reconstituting herds that are large enough for families to recover sufficiently to resist future shocks will take from three to seven years. Nowhere is this evident, according to the report.
The report highlights that the recurrence, severity and duration of droughts has significantly increased over the past two decades in the Horn, signalling adverse climate conditions as a significant contributory factor. This has had a dramatically negative and swift impact on food production. Bracke explains: "For example, the failure of four consecutive rainy seasons has led to severe damage for pastoralists in Djibouti. And this is in a country that already imports up to 80 per cent of its food needs and not one of the countries in the Horn is fully self-reliant when it comes to cereals."
Overwhelmed by the crisis and anxious about what the near future holds, governments have now asked the IFRC and its global network of Red Cross and Red Crescent societies to aid with food relief and to strengthen ongoing efforts to develop real food security in the Horn of Africa.
"The time to act is now" says Bekele Geleta, Secretary General of the IFRC. "We must not wait until we are confronted with images of emaciated children on our television screens in the New Year, which is what will happen if we do not provide urgent support. This IFRC report gives us a clear warning and evidence to act now in the Horn of Africa," concludes Geleta.