Hunger and food crisis in West Africa prompted by poor international response

On the scoreboard of hunger, last year was bad for East Africa. For 2012 and onward it seems now is West Africa's Sahel turn and it may be projected with more horrible consequences. Food crisis in West Africa was purely preventable which now is entirely unavoidable. Death toll of the hapless is climbing startlingly and data suggests that international complacency is sure to play havoc with the lives of millions.
MDG-1, Maputo Accord (2003) and Charter to End Hunger have collectively failed to breed, nourish and proliferate the miseries of 18 million people in West Africa, called Sahel. Sahel is a massive swathe of terrain that stretches across eight countries right from Chad in the east to Senegal in the west, from the Atlantic Ocean to the Red Sea. Sahel comprises of Chad, Niger, Mali, Mauritania, Burkina Faso, Gambia, Cameroon and northern Nigeria. If Sahel is the world's poorest and the most hunger afflicted area, its epicenter is surely Niger (The Guardian 2012). Niger witnessed a mildly similar situation in 2005. The current is worst since 1973 when thousands of people had died of starvation (BBC 2012). Niger is 186th out of 187 countries in Human Development Index (Tran 2012). The Voice of America (2012) has portrayed Niger as "Niger sits at the heart of a drought-ridden band of territory stretching from Senegal to Eritrea called the Sahel. This is third food crisis to hit the region in less than a decade. Aid workers say many of those affected by this year's food shortages have not been recovered from the last crisis in 2010".
In this region the perennial drought has led to the hunger and malnutrition especially to the younger souls. Erratic rains, pest infections, conflictsand then floods have decimated crops in centre and profoundly in West Africa spiking food prices too. Things in Niger were already in an appalling shape. Even before the onset of the crisis, malnutritionrate was 20% higher than the suggested Global Acute Malnutrition standards (WFP2012). In 2011 cereal deficit reached more than 500,000 metric tons. More than 1,000,000 children's life is at risk mainly because of severemalnutrition and more than 10 million are now being considered being food-insecure. The Epoch Times (Jack Phillips 2012) has quoted executive Director of the WFP referring the present crises and comparing it with past crises of 2005 and 2010 as "it is even more complicated because of the evolving conflict situation in Mali as well as the high food prices".
Food crisis in Niger travelled into neighbours especially BurkinaFaso through high speculative food prices. UNICEF estimates that nearly 1.5 million children are near to starvation. Save the Children counts that nearly 1.3 million families are the most vulnerable in this region. The damage control mechanism of the WFP needs $789m and still in short of $361m to reach all crying destitutes. The USA was the largest contributor and the rest voluntary donations came from other governments, companies and private individuals (ABC News 2012). The WFP has scaled up operations to provide food backing to almost four million people in Niger alone. However it might not be able to outreach all mainly for want of funds.UNHCR's task is rather more diverse and challenging. It has to look after some 150,000 refugees in Mali and 160,000 in Burkina Faso, Mauritania, Niger and Algeria. The malnutrition profile of each Sahel country is depicted below (Caritas International 2012):
Population of the undernourishment in the total population:
-- Chad: 39% Male: 11% Nigeria: 9% Niger: 29% Burkina Faso: 10% Mauritania: 8% Senegal: 26% Source: WFP
-- % of children aged under 5 years suffering from chronic malnutrition and stunted growth:
-- Niger: 50% Niger: 38% Mauritania: 35% Chad: 41% Burkina Faso: 35% Senegal: 16% Mali: 38% Source: UNICEF
The ongoing fighting between Mali government and Tuareg rebels has displaced these refugees across the border. Households have been hard hit by the cereal shortages and by the persistently rising food prices.Followed by drought and poor harvests in Mali, crops have been reduced to a quarter and stimulated 50-60% average mount in food items as compared to the last five years. Chronic malnutrition was witnessed and it led to the hysteric sale of livestock. Similar or worse stories are echoing in all Sahel countries.
In Sahel rains are normally erratic and in 2011 it was compounded by the localised dry spells. Agronomist Oumro Niangado was of the opinion "agriculture in the sahel has always been to the vulnerable to low rainfall. In certain places there are good systems of agricultural collectives, plus strong NGO support. But our dependence on raid-fed crops and poor irrigation, one bad rainy season can ruin everything".
In their recent visit to Niger, UN chiefs of WFP and UNHCR have made an appeal to the world for help "the window of opportunity to save lives is narrowing by the day. Today we appeal to the international community on behalf of the vulnerable people in Niger and Sahelian countries. The time to act is now. West Africa is facing a deepening human crisis". The Global Post (2012) has also emphasised to act now "I call this humanitarian procrastination. Addressing the problem near the end of a drought is much less efficient and exponentially more costly. The time to act is before we see a wave of hunger and poverty hit the Sahel at full speed".
Earlier warning alerts raised by the INGOs, NGOs and other stakeholders had prompted Sahelian governments to set up domestic food distribution programmes and call for international assistance. In February 2012, EU pledged $166m and Great Britain $4.7 m to the region. WFP considers so far aid pledges and receipts as just peanuts. Besides WFP, ICRD, Save the Children, Christian Aid and Action Against Hunger are working on ground in this region. Their popular programmes are: blanket feeding, high prices with cash for work programmes, food vouchers and cash hand outs. These efforts can save a fraction of the hit population but the major chunk is feared to go unattended and huge deaths cannot be ruled out. Last year, in the Horn of Africa, severe famine killed more than 100,000people (New Internationalist 2012).
The WFP and the government of Senegal have conducted a joint study in February 2012 and found about 810,000 Senegalese are facing hunger and food shortage. As compared to 2010,in 2011 the production of cereal fell by 36%.The fall in the production of peanuts ,the main cash crop of Senegal was more dismal with 56%(IRIN 2012). International response on pledges side is abysmal and it's also factual in the case of Senegal. Cash strapped WFP is forced to take a tough humanitarian decision in Niger. Children below than 2 years only are receiving protein rich nutrition supplies from the agency, leaving thousands others vulnerable.
UNICEF needed $4million to fight malnutrition but actually it has received a quarter of the promised money. Drought is merciless equally for animals. It has dried a pasture worth of $23 million needed for the grazing. UN's FAO has just received one -third of the money it needed to assist 60,000 agro-pastoralists to enhance their crop production and feed their animals, Senegaleses' fundamental source of survival. Mauritania has been worst affected with 52% drop rate in crop production in 2011 as compared to the previous year. Whereas Chad food production is low by 50% followed by Niger's 27%.
According to the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification, an emergency threshold is considered when malnutrition exceeds 15% of the total area of the country. The governments of Burkina Faso, Chad, Mali, Mauritania and Niger have already reached that phase, announced emergencies and have called for international assistance (Guardian 2012). In January 2012, Niger's government declared emergency food assistance for 2.7 million people. The needy people are three times more than the previous year.
Nigeria's over 53 million out of total 150 million people are facing hunger that constitutes some 30% of the total population. The agricultural sector in Nigeria has faced neglect and more attention was being paid to the petroleum sector. Nigeria was in average spending $3 billion on food imports. Under Maputo Declaration (2003) Sahel countries are bound to spend 10% of their annual budgets on the production of food and development of agricultural sector. Hardly any Western African signatorycountry has paid heed to it including Nigeria. Under Charter to End Poverty leading international aid agencies along with the disasters host countries have chalked out a five point agenda. The first point is to prevent such disasters to happen (Whitbread 2012). In case ongoing Sahel's crisis even the first point was not fulfilled.
In February 2012, the UN convened an emergency meeting to apprise the international community of the gravest situation prevailing the Sahel region and to make fresh appeals for the money. Although UN needed $725 million but could only raise 20% by the mid of February.Oxfam was more vociferous and was the first one to launch emergency appeal for the Sahel. Oxfam Regional Director for West Africa said "millions of the people are on the threshold of a major crisis. All signs point to a drought becoming a catastrophic if nothing is done soon".
The Sahel Working Group, comprising of the leading international humanitarian assistance has summed up the situation in Sahel "the international response to the crisis was too little, too late. Despite information from early warning systems, the international community repeated mistakes made in previous food crisis. A slow response resulted in deterioration of the situation, unnecessary suffering, a loss of assets by poor households in both agricultural and pastoral areas, a huge increase in the level of need and a significant rise in costs".
(Zafar Haider Jappahas studied in Pakistan and Germany and is the member of the Civil Service of Pakistan. He has been contributing research articles for past many years which were published in Turkmenistan, Singapore, Nepal, Mongolia, Brazil and Pakistan. The views are his own).