"It's not right to just declare a famine without the evidence" - chief technical officer at FAO's Food Security and Nutrition Analysis Unit
NAIROBI (AlertNet) - The word "famine" is politically charged, and rarely used – at least by government officials and aid professionals.
No government likes to hear it connection with its country. Neither do international donors, because the f-word implies a collective failure to prevent a huge humanitarian crisis.
Yet, just months after famine was declared in Somalia, some media reports are already warning of potential famines in Sudan and the Sahel.
The Food and Agricultural Organization's Food Security and Nutrition Analysis Unit (FSNAU) was responsible for the July 20, 2011 declaration of famine in Somalia. On Feb 3, 2012, the United Nations declared the famine over.
AlertNet’s Katy Migiro spoke to Grainne Moloney, chief technical officer for FSNAU about the politics of famine.
Q: Some media reports are warning that “another gigantic famine” is coming to the Sahel. The Famine Early Warning Systems Network (FEWSNET) says acute malnutrition rates in Niger could reach 15 percent by March. Do you think we are going to see the same kind of crisis there as Somalia experienced last year?
A: To declare a famine you need the presence of three outcomes -- mortality of two deaths per 10,000 people per day, malnutrition above 30 percent and severe food access shortage (severe problems accessing food).
Without evidence of these, famine shouldn’t be declared. I am not aware of hearing these types of figures so far from any of those countries.
It’s not right to just declare a famine without the evidence. It’s such an extreme horrific event when it happens. You can’t underestimate the human suffering of famine. We shouldn’t have to call it a famine to continue to get the funding.
Q: What is famine?
A: People think famine means no food. It means a tiny amount of food over a very long time. We were estimating about 800 calories a day for about six months - that’s what people were probably surviving on. However you can’t survive for long, and then, they die at the end of that.
Q: Some say that the declaration of famine in Somalia was a political move, designed to generate funding. What’s your comment?
A: It’s just disappointing when people twist it and say it’s something that it’s not. We are not making data up and we have the evidence. We’ve got no hidden agenda. We talk about outcomes on people and on livelihoods – market prices, malnutrition and mortality. Serious humanitarian issues and human suffering should not be politicised.
We have 72 staff. It was the field staff from FSNAU that collected all the data in the field. Then the joint analysis on the food security side was with FEWSNET using the primary data collected from the field staff but also a lot of additional data, like remote sensing.
There has never been this much information, this much documentation of a crisis anywhere in the world, than there has been on this crisis. The evidence speaks for itself.
Q: What do you say to the argument of the Islamic militants al Shabaab that humanitarian aid creates dependency?
A: At the end of the day, when you have starvation, you need a humanitarian response.
Somalia is a food deficit country. In every country in the West, when people are struggling, they get social welfare. They don’t have that in many countries in Africa. So what’s your alternative? It’s humanitarian assistance.
To make out that people don’t have a right to assistance is immoral. These are human beings who have rights. And when the government can’t provide, then the international community has to. We are morally obliged to do that.
Q: If food aid works, why did it take five months to end the famine among displaced people in Mogadishu? It was under the control of the government which welcomed humanitarian actors in, unlike the Islamic militants in the south.
A: The people that came were in awful conditions. They were the worst of the worst. Basically, they had come from Bay and Lower Shabelle, which were the two regions where famine was declared. Many of them were severely malnourished.
When they came into Mogadishu in July August, there were really bad measles outbreaks, cholera outbreaks, so it was just horrible. They were living in the most awful conditions. It was raining.
Even if you can give them as much food as you like, you are going to have a highly vulnerable population as starvation makes people much more susceptible to disease. Disease just spreads like wildfire especially when you have large concentrations of malnourished people living closely together. Even when they are queuing up for registration for whatever type of assistance, diseases like measles are being spread. They weren’t vaccinated in the areas they came from so they didn’t have any ability to fight off infection because Shabaab didn’t allow campaigns to happen outside Mogadishu.
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