Every time you open your fridge and food cupboards, you step into the global food system. Sounds odd, but it’s true. The system is an enormously complex web of all the people, businesses, organisations and governments involved in the production, distribution, sale and consumption of food. Irrespective of who we are, or where we are on the planet, the food we eat is made available by this global food system.
One year after the declaration of famine in Somalia, a quarter of the country’s population are still surviving on humanitarian aid and over a million people could fall back into food crisis in the next two months, international agency Oxfam warned today. The agency is calling on the international community to increase investment in both emergency aid and long-term development so Somalis can sustain themselves through drought and conflict.
[Read more…] about Warning: “Deepening emergency” in Somalia may be two months away
The needs in Dadaab, which hosts over 465,000 people, remain urgent, but humanitarian agencies do not have sufficient funds to provide essential services for the care and protection of encamped populations in 2012. If more funds are not received immediately, the situation in the camps will deteriorate as vital health, nutrition, education, shelter, WASH and protection activities will either have to scale back or stop.
Development gains made in Afghanistan over the last decade are in danger of being thrown away if levels of aid fall away in conjunction with the withdrawal of international troops in 2014.
Ahead of a vital donor conference in Tokyo this week, Oxfam is calling on governments represented at the summit to maintain levels of aid to the country and ensure this aid reaches the Afghan men, women and children who need it most.
The agency is warning that decisions about aid levels and spending come at a critical time for Afghanistan, the country’s single biggest donor, the USA, having already dramatically cut development aid by nearly half in 2011, from $4.1bn to $2.5bn.
The withdrawal of international combat forces by the end of 2014 is likely to hit the already weak Afghan economy even harder with 97 percent of the country’s gross domestic product related to the international community’s presence. The World Bank has estimated that aid to Afghanistan could drop by as much as 90 per cent by 2025.
Oxfam has urged donors to follow the example of countries such as the UK, Germany and Australia, who have pledged to maintain or even increase aid levels in the coming years – or see the gains that have been made undermined or even reversed.
Almost $60 billion of aid has been given to Afghanistan since 2001. Over that period life expectancy in the country has risen dramatically from 47 to 62 years for men and 50 to 64 years for women, with basic health care now accessible in more than 80 per cent of districts. There have also been significant gains in education with more than 2.7 million girls enrolled in school compared to just a few thousand under the Taliban. However, Afghanistan remains one of the poorest countries in the world. Far too much aid has been poorly spent and too often tied to military objectives or projects designed to win hearts and minds in the short term, rather than supporting long-term development goals.
“Any significant cuts in support could have dire consequences on Afghan people and we cannot let this happen. While the past 11 years have seen substantial progress, millions of Afghans still lack adequate healthcare, schools, jobs, or law and order. A good hard look at the way aid is spent in Afghanistan is long overdue. Donors need to work harder to address the needs of women and girls, involve local communities in development projects, increase anti-corruption efforts, and ensure projects are designed to be smart, fair and sustainable,” said Oxfam’s Louise Hancock, head of policy and advocacy in Afghanistan.
The agency has welcomed recent moves by donors and the Afghan government to improve the transparency and accountability of aid delivery, but said it was vital that Afghan groups play a role in both monitoring these processes and holding their own government to account.
Oxfam warned that although many Afghan women and girls have seen positive changes to their lives, these gains remain fragile. Women and girls still lack access to justice or even basic services: one woman continues to die in Afghanistan every two hours from pregnancy related causes.
Hancock added: “Aid must work much better for women and girls over the next decade. Women have an important role to play in driving development in Afghanistan and helping to create a stable and prosperous country for all Afghans. Donors must ensure women are part of decisions made about the future of their county, from projects in their communities to political processes at the highest level.
“Afghanistan stands at a crossroads, and at Tokyo critical decisions need to be made. Now is not the time to pull back. It is the time to learn from our mistakes and deliver aid projects that the Afghan people need – ones that will have lasting benefits. If we do not, everything that has been achieved at such great cost could be lost.”
One year after South Sudan’s independence on July 9, the young country is facing its worst humanitarian crisis since the end of the war in 2005, under the weight of severe economic meltdown and ongoing conflict. Long-term and emergency efforts to help nearly half the population, who don’t have enough to eat, could be derailed by an economy out of control, warned the international aid agency Oxfam.
[Read more…] about One year on, South Sudan falters under failing economy
The 2011 drought across the Horn of Africa was, in some places, the worst to hit the region for 60 years. It was first predicted about a year beforehand, when sophisticated regional early warning systems began to alert the world to the possibility of drier-than-normal conditions in key pastoral areas of Ethiopia, Somalia and Northern Kenya, linked to the effects of the climatic phenomenon La Niña This report provides an update into the crisis one year on.
Site by
