Over the past
year, the eastern Horn of Africa has experienced two consecutive “severely
below-average” rainy seasons, and in some parts of Kenya, drought
conditions have persisted for longer, according to the U.S.-funded Famine Early
Warning Systems Network (FEWSNET).
The analysis
showed that, out of 15 drought-affected pastoral areas of Kenya and Ethiopia,
rainfall was below average for all for the period, with 2010-2011 being the
driest or second-driest year since 1950-1951 in 11 of the zones. Historical
data was too limited to include Somalia in the comparison.
FEWSNET
pointed out that other droughts, including 2008-2009, were longer and in fact
2009-2010 was an exceptionally good year for rainfall.
“Nonetheless,
the current drought is severe, and its impacts have been exacerbated by
extremely high food prices, reduced coping capacity, and a limited humanitarian
response,” it concluded.
WHY HAS
THE DROUGHT TURNED INTO AN EMERGENCY?
Failed
harvests have caused food shortages, and water is in short supply. Livestock,
on which pastoralist communities depend, are dying from a lack of grazing land
and water. Price inflation of more than 20 percent across much of east Africa
has put what food there is out of reach of the poor.
To make
matters worse, Somalia has been wracked by conflict for years, causing death
and displacement, and limiting humanitarian access especially in the south,
which is controlled by hardline Islamist rebels.
The drought
has added to Somalis’ woes, forcing tens of thousands to leave their homes and
undertake a long trek to camps across the Kenyan and Ethiopian borders because
they no longer have enough to eat, with an upsurge seen in June.
In the first
half of 2011, those factors combined boosted the number of Somalis facing
crisis and in urgent need of humanitarian assistance by almost 850,000 to some
2.85 million, or one in three people.
Yet aid
agencies have been operating in east Africa for decades, working on development programmes and responding to humanitarian
emergencies. This begs the question as to why food crises keep happening on
such a regular basis.
Bob McCarthy,
regional emergency advisor for the U.N. children’s fund (UNICEF), told AlertNet from Nairobi that local people are aware of the
growing threat of drought, but often don’t know how bad each one will be.
“(Humanitarian)
systems have improved, with early warning and satellite surveillance. They have
also got better at the community level, in terms of the work done to help
people manage their water and food assets and improve the nutritional status of
children,” he said. “But the scale of this drought has really
accelerated … Even if we didn’t have the Somalia refugee crisis,
the drought is already causing serious disruption to many people’s lives.”
IS THE
CRISIS WORSE IN SOME PLACES?
According to
a U.N. snapshot issued at the end of June, Kenya has the highest number of
people in need of humanitarian assistance at 3.5 million, followed by Ethiopia
with 3.2 million, Somalia with 2.5 million (since raised to 2.85 million),
Uganda with 600,000 and Djibouti with 120,000. Figures are not available for
Eritrea, although it also believed to be affected.
But these
totals are not a ranking of which places are most in crisis, and the situation
differs between – as well as within – countries.
Nonetheless,
UNICEF’s McCarthy said eastern Ethiopia overall has not yet reached
“tipping point”, and there is a sense of optimism that a “major
crisis” can be averted if donors respond to appeals and enough food aid
can be delivered.
In Kenya and
Somalia, food shortages have already reached the emergency stage, although the
prognosis for each differs. With the Kenyan government having declared a
national emergency and promising to increase cereal imports, there is an
opportunity to stop things getting much worse, McCarthy said.
But in
Somalia, the ongoing conflict raises a question mark about the ability of aid
agencies to respond. On Wednesday, Al-Shabaab lifted
a ban on humanitarian agencies supplying aid in the large swathes of the
country the rebel group controls, because of the drought.
The
international aid community welcomed the move, but remains concerned about
security. “We stand ready to scale up assistance in southern Somalia but
need guarantees that humanitarian workers can operate safely in the area and
will not be targeted or agencies taxed,” said Mark Bowden, the U.N.
humanitarian coordinator for Somalia.
COULD THE
DROUGHT LEAD TO A FAMINE?
For the July
to September period, FEWSNET estimates that northeast Kenya, southeast Ethiopia
and parts of Somalia – mainly in the centre and south
– will be in an “emergency” phaase of food insecurity, the stage
before “catastrophe/famine”.
For Somalia,
it has said “localised famine conditions (are)
possible in the worst affected areas (riverine and urban), depending on the
evolution of prices, conflict and humanitarian response”.
“After
August/September harvests, prices should fall slightly due to new supplies, but
are unlikely to return to their pre-crisis levels,” it noted in an alert
issued in late June.
It said the
persistence of the severe drought since the last quarter of 2010 has been
associated with La Nina conditions – unusually cool ocean surface temperatures
in the Pacific – which have now ended. But it is too early to assess what
impact this will have on October-December rainfall in drought-hit areas, the
forum added.
UNICEF,
meanwhile, said it needs around $75 million this year for its response to the
drought, covering the provision of food, water and health care in Somalia,
Kenya and Ethiopia. The U.N. refugee agency is also due to issue its own appeal
in the coming days to help Somalis at home and in neighbouring
countries.
As yet, U.N.
agencies and their NGO partners have not issued a joint appeal for the
emergency covering the whole region. Individual humanitarian appeals for Kenya
($605 million) and Somalia ($561 million) are around half funded.
“We have
had important media coverage, and the expectation is that donor support will
pick up very quickly,” he told AlertNet.
“But we won’t see much of an improvement (in the crisis) before the end of
the year.”
The World
Food Programme (WFP) is providing food assistance to
around 6 million people in Ethiopia, Somalia, Kenya, Djibouti and eastern
Uganda, but as the impact of the drought grows, it expect this number will rise
to as much as 10 million.
WFP estimates
it will need around US$477 million to address hunger needs in the region
through to the end of the year, but it currently has a 40 percent shortfall in
funding amounting to around US$190 million.
