The International Federation of the Red Cross says the famine in Southern Africa is the worst food emergency in the world since the Balkan crisis in the 1990s.
Yet the food emergency affecting Lesotho, Malawi, Swaziland, Zambia, Zimbabwe and Mozambique is a different type of scourge. There are no sprawling refugee camps or flyblown hospitals to be photographed. In this famine people die anywhere, any time. And it is often unclear if the victims died of starvation or an Aids-related cause.
“The lives of 13-million people in Southern Africa are hanging by a thread and 300 000 people in the region could be dead by year’s end,” said Didier Cherpitel, secretary of the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies.
He ascribed the food shortages to the worst drought in Africa in a decade, poor harvests and a range of economic factors and government policies. “The impact of food shortages is made worse by high rates of HIV infection. For the first time, the world is seeing how Aids will savage affected communities.
“When Aids takes hold, food availability is reduced as workers become too ill to work the land, care for livestock and maintain essential machinery. This is especially true in areas such as Southern Africa, which uses labour-intensive farming methods.
“The pandemic first affects the most productive generation [those aged 15 to 49], leaving behind the elderly and children, unlike many other diseases that hit the most infirm first,” he said.
“The most affected African countries could lose up to 26% of their agricultural labour force within two decades, but access to food and basic care could keep workers alive longer.
“The elderly who can no longer till the parched fields are forced to care for malnourished, ill children. Pre-teen children become heads of households, prone to exploitation in a desperate bid to care for their siblings. Households affected can afford only a bare minimum of food, thus as income declines, supplies become less stable.”
Cherpitel said the Red Cross federation would deal with each humanitarian aspect of the disaster, carefully selecting the most desperate for food support: families affected by HIV/Aids; households headed by children; and grandparents caring for orphans. Water and sanitation projects are planned, local clinics will be supported, latrines will be built, material for shelter offered, and tools and seeds will be distributed.
“Community involvement will be prioritised. In the long term the commitment to ‘never again’ can only be made a reality if proper disaster mitigation and risk-reduction mechanisms are put in place,” Cherpitel said.
At a United Nations debate in New York recently the International Federation of the Red Cross urged states to stop looking at disasters as events, but rather as complex phenomena, triggered by multiple factors that require multiple solutions. Including development measures alongside the first food parcel is vital, the Red Cross said.