Somalia in focus

Once again, the Horn of Africa is in the news and, once again, for all the wrong reasons - this time the focus is on Somalia and the famine currently devastating its people. In this brief section, we try to answer clearly, some of the questions most frequently asked.

What is the situation?

This famine was neither sudden nor a surprise.

Somalia is currently experiencing the worst famine the world has witnessed in a generation, the result of the region's worst drought in 60 years with more than 10 million affected in the region (the prolonged failure of rains began in late 2010 - on early warning systems related to famine, see - www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/fews/ ). The UN has classified large areas of Somalia, Ethiopia, Djibouti and Kenya as a crisis or an emergency and in July it officially declared Somalia's food crisis as a famine (in several parts of the country) with millions of people facing starvation and with deliveries of aid made all the more complicated by the fact that 'Islamist militants' (see notes below) control the famine zones.

According to the United Nations, a famine is the end result of five stages and is declared when 'acute malnutrition rates among children exceed 30%, more than 2 people per 10,000 die per day and people are not able to access food and other basic necessities.' (see notes below)

NGOs report that the drought and the war in Somalia have led to huge numbers fleeing across the border into Kenya, with about 1,300 people arriving every day. Three camps just inside Kenya are now home to well over 400,000 people, yet they were built to hold just 90,000 and are severely overcrowded with the inevitable consequences.

QUESTION - what do you think are the consequences?

The UN's Office for the Co-Ordination of Humanitarian Affairs reports that the numbers now affected are huge - approximately 3.2m in Ethiopia, 3.2m in Kenya, 2.6m in Somalia and more than 100,000 in Djibouti.

Many of those affected are pastoralists, whose lives and livelihoods are sustained by livestock. The drought has devastated their crops, and their animals are dying from lack of water and basic nutrition. People have been travelling, many walking for weeks, to reach urban centres and refugee camps in search of food, water and assistance.

Around one in three children in Somalia alone is estimated to be suffering from malnutrition. In Kenya's Turkana region, malnutrition levels are much higher than expected and have reached 37.4% - more than double the 15% level considered an emergency.

As a consequence of the situation, food prices have skyrocketed - in some places by 200%. The cost of maize has doubled in some areas. In northern Kenya, the cost of milk has trebled while in Somalia, people have faced similar price rises in basic essentials. Most people simply cannot afford such price rises as they have absolutely nothing - increasing the urgency to get assistance to those in need of water and nutrition.

SEE: Horn of Africa: Spread of Famine at reliefweb.int

How did the crisis occur?

In short, three key factors have led to the famine in Somalia:

  • The immediate cause is severe drought in a context of severe poverty; the region has experienced unprecedented drought conditions linked, some climatologists argue, to global warming. This has severely disrupted agriculture and, in particular subsistence food production; it has led to price increases for food, often putting it beyond the resources of the poor and it has meant that poor people have had to use up whatever reserves (poverty often means there are no reserves - food is difficult to preserve so livestock becomes the reserve and drought causes their death).

QUESTION - could famine be prevented by a focus on building up reserves?

  • The second, ongoing reason is a crisis of 'governance' generally (where there has been no effective government and the structure associated with it - in this situation, Somalia is regularly described as a 'failed state'). There has been a civil war for over 20 years with international interventions of various kinds (all claiming to build local stability and democracy, a claim many NGOs and observers deem to be false). The areas most affected by famine are controlled by a militant Islamist group - al-Shebaab, which expelled aid agencies in 2009 for being 'un-Islamic'. Many aid workers also argue that American government rules (that prohibit material support to the Islamists - who often demand 'taxes' for allowing aid through) make matters worse.
  • The longer-term, background reason is the is the macro - economic policies and realities forced on Somalia over the past three decades which have undermined local agriculture and food security and made people dependent on food imports (if they can afford them) or food aid (see below).

Some commentators call the crisis 'a perfect storm'; a humanitarian crisis surrounded by national and international politics, conflict and insecurity.

Notes:

  1. See additional background materials below.
  2. Defining famine - following international debate and disagreement on defining terms such as hunger and famine, the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the UN and aid agencies agreed in 2008 to a classification that has five stages referring to a country or to a region - 'food secure', 'moderately/borderline food insecure', 'acute food and livelihood crisis', 'humanitarian emergency' and 'famine/catastrophe'. The factors for a famine are 'acute malnutrition of more than 30% of children, 2 deaths per 10,000 people a day, access to less than 4 litres of water and 2,100 kilocalories a day and complete loss of assets or income'. The definition also includes large-scale displacement of people and civil strife - two characteristics of the current crisis in Somalia where refugees of war and hunger have been flooding across the border into Kenya.
  3. 'Islamist' militants - a term used popularly to refer to a particular brand of politics and political reform which argues for the re-structuring of all aspects of society and the re-ordering of politics and society in accordance with a very conservative and literal interpretation of Islam. The term should NOT be confused with Islam or Islamic as it represents only one interpretation of Islamic faith and values.

What can I do and what are the Government and NGOs doing?

Many Irish and international NGOs are responding to the crisis with a variety of practical, humanitarian interventions. Supporting such interventions financially is one key way of fulfilling our obligations to those immediately affected. There are many arguments to be had about aid and its effectiveness and these have been presented elsewhere (see Debating Aid published by 80:20 Educating and Acting for a Better World in 2010). However, one area in which there is almost unanimous agreement is in acceptance of our obligations to provide humanitarian assistance in situations such as Somalia.

The 'international community' can very fairly be criticised by responding too slowly and too timidly to the crisis but this is no excuse for not responding effectively now.

Supporting your local aid agency is one effective way of supporting the Somali people now - asking key questions on why the situation is allowed to recur time and time again in the region is another way of supporting them for the future.

QUESTION: What high value food products from developing countries are available in your supermarket - Kenyan peas/beans; South American asparagus etc.? What might the consequences of this be for local farmers, people etc?

A brief background note on Somalia

The question is often asked as to how Somalia became a 'failed state'? The answer is complex and involves history, geography, politics and international interference. Somalia's geography does not help - its location in one of the world's most strategically sensitive areas where western (and now eastern) dependence on oil, Islamic fundamentalism and the politics of the Middle East collide together. Its history does not help either - Somalia has been a colony of both Italy and Britain with both occupied different parts of the country until 1960 when a Somali Republic was created (with boundaries drawn up by Britain and Italy). In 1969 Mohamed Siyad Barre took power in a military coup, declared himself President and used his power to attack internal rivals, increase the power and wealth of his own clan at the expense of other, rival clans.

Despite this, the early years of the regime were characterised by widespread public investment in areas such as education and literacy rates increased significantly. Emphasis was placed on traditional Muslim values of progress, justice and equality. But the hallmark of the new regime was its policy to establish centralised control in a country made up of regions with strong local identity and leadership. Many commentators have argued that this has been one of the key failings of all outside interventions in the country - the policy of attempting to establish a strong and compliant central government.

With initial support for his regime from the Soviet Union Siyad Barre consolidated his position and by 1977 was strong enough militarily to engage in a war with Ethiopia over the incorporation of lands in the Ogaden region into a greater Somalia but by that time, the Soviets (and the Cubans) had come to support the military regime in Ethiopia and the US now became a Somali ally (with initial Soviet and later US support, Somali had built up the largest army in Africa). Siyad Barre's regime became ever more oppressive and by 1990-91, its power was increasingly challenged by a variety of resistance movements (supported by Ethiopia) which led to the civil war and the collapse of the regime in 1991.

Somalia had remained self-sufficient in food until the late 1970s despite recurrent droughts but as early as the 1980s, under pressure from the US and the IMF, agriculture shifted from local subsistence crops to export crops and the country became increasingly dependent on food imports and eventually food aid - self-sufficiency (and the development of local markets which could have built up the reserves of cash and food that would prevent famine?) became a thing of the past, again with huge consequences for the Somali people.

From the mid-1970s to the mid-1980s, food aid increased fifteen-fold, at the rate of over 30% per annum and, combined with increased commercial imports, this influx of cheap surplus wheat and rice sold on the domestic market undermined local producers and led to a change in consumption patterns at the expense of traditional crops such as maize and sorghum. In 1981, the Somali shilling was devalued at the insistence of the IMF and, along with subsequent devaluations, led to significant increases in the price of fuel, fertiliser and agricultural inputs. The impact on local producers was immediate - urban purchasing power declined dramatically, government agriculture programmes were reduced (investment in agriculture declined by as much as 85% while vital veterinary services were privatised) and the deregulation of the grain market and the influx of food aid led to the impoverishment of farming communities. Increasing amounts of subsidised US grain were dumped on the Somali market.

According to Professor Michel Chossudovsky of the University of Ottawa:

'Rather than promoting food production for the domestic market, the donors were encouraging the development of so-called 'high value-added' fruits, vegetables, oilseeds and cotton for export on the best irrigated farmland' - Q for students: What high value food products from developing countries are available in your supermarket - Kenya peas/beans; American asparagus; etc. - consequences?

Additionally, during this same period much of the best agricultural land was appropriated by bureaucrats, army officers and merchants with connections to the government of Siyad Barre. It is a bitter irony, that one of the world's poorest countries should possess significant oil wealth and, according to the New York Times, nearly two-thirds of Somalia was allocated in 1991 to the American oil giants Conoco, Amoco, Chevron and Phillips Siyad Barre was overthrown. The US has always argued that its interests are purely humanitarian and the oil industry has dismissed as 'absurd and nonsense' allegations by aid experts, analysts and prominent Somalis that oil interests significantly shape US policy in the region. Yet, US oil companies remain in place, ready to exploit the resource when security permits this.

By 1989, expenditure on health had declined by 78% as against its 1975 level; from 1981 to 1989, school enrolment declined by 41%, textbooks and nearly a quarter of the primary schools closed down.

According to Chossudovsky Somalia's experience shows how a country can be devastated by the simultaneous application of food aid and macro-economic policy. He argues that the experience of Somalia shows that famine in the late 20th century is not a consequence of a shortage of food.

'On the contrary, famines are spurred on as a result of a global oversupply of grain staples. Since the 1980s, grain markets have been deregulated under the supervision of the World Bank and US grain surpluses are used systematically as in the case of Somalia to destroy the peasantry and destabilise national food agriculture. The latter becomes, under these circumstances, far more vulnerable to the vagaries of drought'

See:

Hunger