DEVELOPMENT: A Month’s Food a ‘Blessing’ for Many Africans – U.N.

By Thalif Deen Reprint | | Print |

Thalif Deen

UNITED NATIONS, Apr 8 2003 (IPS) - The United Nations is underlining the stark irony of an average war-battered Iraqi family being assured of at least one month’s food stocks while its African counterpart has to literally make do with nothing.

”I can assure you that 40 million Africans, most of them women and children, would find it an immeasurable blessing to have a month’s worth of food,” said James Morris, executive director of the U.N.’s World Food Programme (WFP).

The international community, which has been quick to launch a massive appeal for food and relief supplies for war-affected Iraqis, has virtually marginalized Africa and ignored the cries of hunger from a badly neglected continent, he added.

”How is it that we routinely accept a level of suffering and hopelessness in Africa that we would never accept in any other part of the world?” asked Morris on Monday as the U.N. Security Council held a rare session on the food emergency in Africa.

The U.N. humanitarian operation in Iraq is expected to be the largest ever in history, surpassing similar emergency food operations in the Horn of Africa last year.

Because of a nationwide distribution system established under the U.N.’s ”oil-for-food” programme, which operated until the U.S.-led invasion, it is believed that most people in Iraq have food supplies to last another month or so.

Their causes included ”a lethal combination” of recurring droughts, failed economic policies, military conflicts, and the widening impact of HIV/AIDS – all of which ”had damaged the food sector and the capacity of African governments to respond to need”, he added.

According to Bill Fletcher J., president of Washington-based TransAfrica Forum, 44 million people in southern Africa have been ”declared virtually dead” since September. ”Yet the world has ignored this.”

”(U.S. President George W.) Bush has put billions of dollars into an illegal war with Iraq when the real threat to humanity can be evidenced in the horror unfolding in Southern Africa,” Fletcher told IPS. ”Does more need to be said?”

Continuing shortfalls for food emergencies in North Korea and Afghanistan, as well as future demands in Iraq, further darken the outlook for Africa, he added.

Last week, the United Nations launched a global appeal for 2.2 billion dollars for post-war Iraq, including 1.3 billion dollars for food aid alone. The response was quick, totalling over 1.2 billion dollars, including pledges from the United States and Japan.

Prior to the invasion, more than 60 percent of the 27 million Iraqis nation-wide depended on the United Nations for food aid.

Morris expressed fears that Western donors may shift funds to Iraq from other needy regions, including Africa. ”Money for Iraq must be new funds, and not taken from our work in Afghanistan, North Korea and Africa,” he said. Only two countries, he noted, had promised not to do this – Japan and Germany.

Global food aid continued to decline last year, dipping below 10 million metric tons, down from 15 million tons in 1999.

Morris said that chronic hunger is actually on the rise in the developing world, outside of China, while the World Health Organisation (WHO) has announced that hunger remains the world’s number one threat to health.

Stephen Lewis, U.N. special envoy for HIV/AIDS, warned three months ago that the international community and the news media were paying too much attention to Iraq and too little to the calamities facing Africa.

At a U.N. press conference in January, Lewis predicted that if war broke out in Iraq, Africa would vanish from newspaper headlines.

”I want to say what we’re all saying privately to each other: if there is a war against Iraq come February, then the war will eclipse every other international human priority, including HIV/AIDS,” he warned.

U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan also lamented earlier this year that the only crises making headlines were Iraq and Palestine. The worldwide AIDS epidemic – specifically in Africa – will claim many more lives this year than even a war in Iraq would, he said, ”and then go on claiming more and more lives in 2004 and 2005”.

France and the United States are reportedly planning to place African food crises on the agenda of the upcoming meeting of the Group of Eight most industrialised nations, scheduled for June.

According to U.N. estimates, about 200 million people in Africa are malnourished, and about 40 million Africans are in even greater peril.

Ambassador Ismael Gaspar Martins of Angola told the Security Council that 80 percent of the WFP’s resources were dedicated to dealing with emergency situations, and only 20 percent to development and production of food.

Martins wanted to know if the WFP is trying to change that trend. ”(Is) it trying to invest in the resources for development, creating conditions for food production, rather than emergencies?” he asked.