Famine whining

[troung]

Maybe the world is just tired of useless people making kids, committing horrible acts and then expecting a handout. A think a movie was made about the last time the civilized world tried to help them out.

I love the HR math - the number goes from as many as 50-100k to as many as 100k and soon it will be 100k people died - utter BS.

Why east Africa's famine warning was not heeded

Psychological and organisational reasons lay behind the poor response to this famine – not the hoary old 'lack of political will'
Why east Africa's famine warning was not heeded | Hugo Slim | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk
guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 18 January 2012 12.14 EST
Article history

Displaced Somali's who fled the famine
Displaced Somali's who fled the famine in the south of the Horn of Africa. Photograph: Mohamed Abdiwahab/AFP/Getty Images

Natural sciences can predict certain things quite well once they have established particular natural laws. But political and social sciences are notoriously bad at it. This is not surprising. Human events are deeply unpredictable, so we tend not to be too hard on ourselves when we miss things like the Arab spring.

But should we be much harder on ourselves when we miss a famine? Surely, there is quite a lot of hard science in a famine – indicators of drought, rising food prices, distressed asset sales, malnutrition and migration flows. Presumably, by now, we can predict a famine, especially in the Horn of Africa that has been saturated by government, UN and NGO "famine early warning systems" since the horrendous famine of 1984.

According to the Department for International Development, the current famine in east Africa may have killed up to 100,000 people. A new report by Save the Children and Oxfam says they saw this coming, but politicians did not take their warnings seriously enough and acted too late.

The British government has made a quite exceptional commitment to foreign aid at a time of extreme cuts in public spending and in Andrew Mitchell, the Department for International Development has a minister with a deep personal commitment to humanitarian action. Why famine early warning is not heeded is a complex human problem, perhaps even a so-called "wicked problem". It is certainly not one that can be easily answered by that lazy refrain – "a lack of political will". Few governments have shown as much political will on aid as this one.

So, why was international action late? Save the Children and Oxfam give a number of reasons; some of these are psychological and some are organisational. Psychologically, they suggest that government officials were reluctant to call a crisis until there was a crisis. This reluctance had three main drivers: a fear of getting it wrong; a fear of being too interventionist and undermining community coping; and "fatigue" and "resignation" in the face of so many droughts in such ecologically fragile parts of the world. I imagine these psychological reasons are pretty accurate. When I was a UN early-warning monitor in Ethiopia in 1987, I was always worried that I might call it wrong and look very stupid if food aid was piling up in the road as Ethiopians were bringing in a massive harvest. This report's suggestion of agreeing a "no-regrets" culture if you overreact seems psychologically sensible.

There are budgeting and organisational problems, too. Corralling hundreds of NGOs and UN agencies to agree the scale of a problem and then to act in concert is always going to be difficult. More importantly, budgets are still divided too strictly between emergency and development funds. You can't start doing emergency work from a development budget and vice versa. Quite rightly, Save the Children and Oxfam are asking for more flexible funding that moves between the two on a basis of agreed "trigger" points. Only by treating famine and development within a single mindset will we end the damaging split thinking that requires aid either to be laidback and long term, or hyperactive and hectic.

Britain is a thought leader in this area of global policy and needs to encourage others to follow suit, but international politics is only one part of the complex problem of famine prevention. The other is national politics. Millions of poor people who are vulnerable to famine live in fragile ecological areas that need peace, public investment, access to credit and governments that are focused on their needs.

It is politicians in Ethiopia, Kenya and Somalia who bear primary responsibility for preventing famine among their citizens. They need to be alert to early-warning systems, and make the most of international aid and economic growth for the poorest in their countries. But their hesitations, conflicts and power plays are just as much to blame for the late response to this famine. As warnings were raised about this crisis, the Kenyan political elite was obsessed with itself in its endless power-sharing wrangle. The Somali elites were at war. And, as usual in Ethiopia, everyone in the aid world was far too frightened to criticise prime minister Meles Zenawi's judgment of the crisis in case they got thrown out.

Managing food crises will be a continuing global challenge as prices rise and environments change. In many ways, the international aid system is now functioning as a nascent global safety net. This is real progress and means that hungry people can now be reached and helped in any part of the globe. All of us should expect our politicians and civil servants to pay special attention to the early-warning systems that guide this safety net. And, as Save the Children and Oxfam point out, we need to make it clear that we would rather politicians acted too early than too late.

[Repatriated Canuck]

I think they look into it too much. I think the lack of giving a shit is right now we all have our own problems. Everyone is looking at their own homes that need attention right now and Africa can wait. Maybe this is a good thing, no free stuff means do it yourself.

[Parihaka]

There are budgeting and organisational problems, too. Corralling hundreds of NGOs and UN agencies to agree the scale of a problem and then to act in concert is always going to be difficult. More importantly, budgets are still divided too strictly between emergency and development funds. You can't start doing emergency work from a development budget and vice versa. Quite rightly, Save the Children and Oxfam are asking for more flexible funding that moves between the two on a basis of agreed "trigger" points. Only by treating famine and development within a single mindset will we end the damaging split thinking that requires aid either to be laidback and long term, or hyperactive and hectic.

So they want to move from emergency response to permanent welfare. Who'd have thought.

[Officer of Engineers]

The top guys earned 300K+ a year. They have to earn their monies somehow. No, I don't begrudge them their salaries. After all, they raised millions more for their organization than a guy earning $10 an hour with but playing the guilt string on people barely making mortgage payments raises my blood pressure.

[Mihais]

I have a question.Why are people feeling guilty?

[Officer of Engineers]

They're not and that's the point.

[Mihais]

Finally.

[YellowFever]

Not me.

But then there are some of my koombaya acquaintences that think I should feel guilty for not feeling guilty over the situation....

[troung]

Oh no!!!!!11

Famine Crisis Warning for West African Sahel Region

01 Feb 2012 18:08

Famine Crisis Warning for West African Sahel Region - AlertNet

Warnings of a crisis are growing in some parts of the Sahel region of Africa. Threats are serious. SOS Children's Villages is vigilant as the population is predicted to suffer from food stress as early as February 2012 with the crisis expected to start in March and April 2012.

Early warning systems indicate famine is imminent in parts of Mali, northern Burkina Faso and parts of Senegal. Erratic rains in the region have led to poor harvests. As a result, food reserves are reaching critically low levels across the Sahel. SOS Children's Villages, the world's largest non-governmental organization caring for orphaned and abandoned children, is active in these countries and is taking action to help more children and families at risk.

The recent conflict in Ivory Coast led to reduced trade which has also contributed to food inflation of up to 40 percent in some areas. Those with resources are stockpiling supplies of food following the news that that food aid will soon be required to prevent the deaths of children.

In Burkina Faso alone, malnutrition threatened 144,000 children in 2011 – a year that was considered relatively normal in terms of food production. Half of those affected were under 5 years old.

In the regions that are now under threat of famine in Senegal, Mali and Burkina Faso, SOS Children's Villages currently provides support to 4,000 children through family strengthening programs across nine specific communities. A 30 percent increase during 2012 will provide an additional 700 children with a better start in life.

Many children in affected communities attend SOS Children's Villages' Hermann Gmeiner Schools where they are guaranteed to be fed. As some must undertake a one hour walk to and from school, good nutrition is vitally important. The Sahel Region is a place where access to rice, vegetable oil and a protein source can mean the difference between life and death for children.

The Christian Science Monitor - CSMonitor.com
Africa asks itself: Where is the aid money?
Africa asks itself: Where is the aid money? - CSMonitor.com
African nations pledged five months ago to do more to help each other when famine and disaster strike. But so far, they haven't come up with the promised cash.

By Mike Pflanz, Correspondent
posted February 1, 2012 at 5:11 pm EST
Nairobi, Kenya

Five months ago, in a grand auditorium and beneath a cinema-sized screen scrolling images of starving children, Africa’s leaders gathered to promise an end to a growing food crisis.

Aid appeals were being revised upwards weekly, highlighting just how severe the situation had gotten: By the time of that meeting, the first ever famine fund-raising conference by Africa for Africa, the amount needed to keep 12 million people from dying for a lack of food was nearing $1.5 billion.

What aid agencies call “traditional donors” – among them the US, Europe, Japan, Australia, The World Bank – were, belatedly, pumping hundreds of millions of dollars into the United Nations’ appeal account. By the close of the meeting, at the African Union (AU) headquarters in Ethiopia in August, more than $350 million had been pledged from the governments of a third of the continent’s countries and the African Development Bank. Until then Africa’s own contribution to keep its starving citizens alive had been paltry.

Think you know Africa? Take our geography quiz.

Jerry Rawlings, Ghana’s former president and the AU’s envoy to famine-hit Somalia, had talked of giving a “convincing response to the rest of the world that we're not incapable of supporting our own when the need arises.”

Yet according to figures obtained by the Monitor this week and confirmed by the United Nations, less than 15 percent of the promised money has turned up, from only seven countries.

The delays have caused outrage and frustration among activists who hoped that, finally, Africa’s leaders would take more responsibility for the continent's welfare instead of waiting for others to come in to clean up messes on their doorsteps.
Where's the aid money?

Anne Mitaru, coordinator of the grassroots continental campaign Africans Act 4 Africa, says it was a “great lapse on the part of our leaders.”

“I don’t want to say they don’t care, I want to give them the benefit of the doubt,” she says.

“But we have to say that the seriousness of how they are responding does reflect on their grasp of the gravity of the situation, and it’s not giving a good indication that they have an urgent commitment to respond.”

She listed the “good guys”: Angola ($2 million), Equatorial Guinea ($2 million), Gabon ($2.5 million), Mauritania ($1 million), Mauritius ($400,000), South Africa ($284,500), and Rwanda ($100,000).

However that total, with a variety of smaller non-state donations, adds up to $8.5 million sent by Africa’s 54 governments to the United Nations appeal.

That’s barely 15 percent of the $51 million promised at the August summit. (The largest pledge, $300 million, was from the African Development Bank and will be spent separately to the UN-channeled funds).

“It’s disappointing, when this was a call for Africa to respond to an African food crisis that has already caused tens of thousands of deaths,” adds Ms. Mitaru.
Look at the aid role models

But is it a surprise, that donors who stand up at so-called pledging conferences to brandish their checkbooks for the television cameras later fail to put that check in the post?

“We see this again and again, governments, and I’m talking about all governments, not just in Africa, pledge in haste and deliver at leisure,” says Ian Bray, a spokesman for Oxfam.

Figures are notoriously difficult to come by that show how much of a promised chunk of money eventually makes it onto the ground, whether in the Horn of Africa, Haiti, Burma, Pakistan, or any other crisis.

But the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) keeps score on who has paid up to its major global appeals, and who still owes what.

Run an eye down the list for the UN’s appeal to help Sudan last year, for example, and some usually highly-respected donor nations jump out on the late-payer column. Britain still owes $4.8 million (having sent $78 million), and Australia and Switzerland are behind on their promises too.

For the appeal for the occupied Palestinian territory for 2011, Belgium and Denmark together still owe more than $2 million. Only a little over 60 percent of the $579 million pledged to the Haiti Reconstruction Fund has so far been paid.

Even for the Horn of Africa appeal, the one for which Africa’s governments are being accused of dragging their heels, more than $940 million is still outstanding.

Among the laggards are Germany, Sweden, Norway, Switzerland, Finland, the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation ($350 million), India and the Ikea Foundation – which promised $62 million that the UN says has yet to hit its account.

The US, by contrast, has contributed all of the money it pledged, to all of the above appeals, according to the UNOCHA and Haiti Reconstruction Fund figures.

“This is the point, this happens with so many other organisations, there are pledges, there are delays, we chase them, they pay,” says Noureddine al-Mesni, spokesman for the African Union Commission, which is collecting the money its members promised at the August summit.

“There is nothing to worry about. The members have pledged and we will follow up. There are mechanisms to do that. But do not worry, the commitments are there, and we hope that we will get this money, it is a very noble cause.”

But delays sending money to the Horn of Africa drought appeals made a bad situation worse, according to a study released last week by Oxfam and Save The Children.

“It’s shocking that the poorest people are still bearing the brunt of a failure to respond swiftly and decisively,” Oxfam’s Chief Executive, Barbara Stocking, said at the report’s launch.

“We know that acting early saves lives but collective risk aversion meant aid agencies were reluctant to spend money until they were certain there was a crisis.”
Greater clarity?

There are an increasing number of initiatives recently established to work to bring greater clarity to how promised aid is delivered.

The International Aid Transparency Initiative, born out of commitments made at summits in Paris in 2005 and Accra in 2008, has already gathered 40 countries and many major aid agencies to work toward clearer presentation of data on how aid is spent.

Many pledges are presented for their cash value, but are in fact delivered “in kind” – ships offered to move food aid across oceans, experts flown out to help run clinics, or tools, parts or medicines donated from domestic supplies.

"Donors’ funding decisions are influenced by the decisions of others, so a pledge that is not honoured could have been fulfilled by another donor," says Jan Kellett, program leader for Global Humanitarian Assistance, which helps donors report how they spend their aid. "From the recipients’ perspective, pledges that are not honored or are delayed can ultimately be the difference between life and death."

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[USSWisconsin]

Charities like this call me - beg for money, and if I give them some - they reward me - by selling my name to other charities, then I get a flood of calls from people I never heard of, thanking me for a past contribution and asking me to do it again. they tell me about all kinds of heart wrenching stuff, and why they need all my money. I think about being homeless with my daughter, after giving them all my money - and tell them no (they say think of the children - or sometimes they just slam the phone down). Churches and outfits like the Salvation Army make sense to me, and they are honest about what they ask for - they don't try to trick me - or sell my my name on sucker lists.