SOMALIA: Displaced by drought, hit by rain

Photo: Mohamed Amin Jibril/IRIN

Many of the drought-displaced lack access to shelter, food or water in Mogadishu

MOGADISHU, 21 July 2011 (IRIN) – Heavy rains have fallen in the Somali capital of Mogadishu, making life harder for thousands of people displaced by drought who cannot find shelter, officials said.

“About 10,000 families displaced by the drought from Bay, Bakool, Lower Shabelle, Lower Juba and Upper Juba regions, who have come to Mogadishu, are now in a serious situation,” Aden H Ibrahim, Minister for Health in Somalia’s Transitional Federal Government (TFG), told IRIN. “They are without shelter, food, water, health facilities as well as latrines. These families are in 50 camps in the capital.”

More drought-affected people have continued to arrive in Mogadishu daily. On 20 July, the UN declared a famine in Bakool and Lower Shabelle regions. Across the country, nearly half the population – 3.7 million people – are now in crisis, an estimated 2.8 million of whom are in the south.

“The government is doing its best, but the problem is beyond its capacity,” the minister added. “For this reason we are calling on the international community to help with Somalia’s drought-caused catastrophe.”

According to the TFG, thousands of people in the south have died in the past few months from causes related to malnutrition, most of them children. Because of consecutive droughts and ongoing conflict, Somalia’s malnutrition rates are now the highest in the world, with peaks of 50 percent in parts of southern Somalia.

Long distances

Most of the drought-displaced who made it to Mogadishu, according to Mohamed Abrone, chairman of Taleh settlement for the displaced, are from four of the eight south-central regions: Bay, Bakool, Lower Juba, Upper and Lower Shabelle. The hardest-hit areas in these regions are the districts and villages of Qansadheere, Xabaal Barbaar, Ufurow, Afgoye Yare, Roobay, Dinsoor, Saakow, Gurabay, Juwerey, Il-Bete, Gaduday, Deemay and El-wareegow.

“Coming from that far distance, some walked all the way from their villages, taking 15 days, while others paid about 500,000 Somali shillings [US$16.66] after losing all their livestock during the two years of consecutive drought,” he said.

Not much aid has reached the displaced in Mogadishu. Abdi-Kadir Mohamed Hirabe, deputy director of Al-Ri’aya (Daryeel), a local NGO working with a Kuwaiti NGO, said the group had distributed food to 100 drought-displaced families in the capital.

“We have distributed rice, flour and cooking oil in amounts we think will last them about 20 days,” he said.

According to the TFG’s Ministry of Family affairs, an estimated one million people are facing starvation in Bay, Bakool, Lower Shabelle and Gedo regions in southern Somalia.

“The starving people, estimated at about one million, are in a serious situation,” Fadumo Hassan Ali, the ministry’s deputy minister, told IRIN in Mogadishu. “Each of the camps of Hamar-weyne and Kanisada [in the city] hold at least 300 families. The ministry distributed some money to 1,450 families in Mogadishu, each family receiving $5 for five days’ meals.”

That is still not enough for the drought-affected IDPs.

“We have nothing, our animals were lost,” Mohamed Abrone, a father of five, told IRIN at Taleh camp, near Km4. “We came to Mogadishu in search of survival; even though some local people have supported us by giving us food, we remain without shelter, water, latrines or anything else.”

maj/js/eo/mw source www.irinnews.org

SOMALIA: Time for immediate action on famine – UN

Photo: Mohamed Amin Jibril/IRIN

Thousands displaced by the drought are seeking shelter in Mogadishu

MOGADISHU/NAIROBI,  – The humanitarian crisis in Somalia has degenerated into a famine in two regions and could get worse because respite from drought, a major cause of the crisis, which is compounded by insecurity, lack of aid and food price inflation, is unlikely until December or January 2012, the UN warned.

“We still do not have all the resources for food, clean water, shelter and health services to save the lives of hundreds of thousands of Somalis in desperate need,” Mark Bowden, the UN Humanitarian Coordinator for Somalia, said.

Immediate action was required to avoid famine spreading to all eight regions of southern Somalia. “Every day of delay is literally a matter of life or death for children and their families in the famine-affected areas,” Bowden told a news conference in Nairobi on 20 July.

“This is a time for exceptional actions” in terms of the speed at which aid is delivered, and the conditions under which donors should be willing to give, he added.

With malnutrition rates topping 50 percent in some districts, the UN announced that famine had hit Lower Shabelle and southern Bakool regions. A recent assessment, Bowden said, highlighted “the shocking severity of the crisis”, confirming that the rest of Somalia was “close to famine conditions”.

According to the Integrated Phase Classification’s five-point scale, a famine is declared when at least 20 percent of households face extreme food shortages with limited ability to cope, the prevalence of global acute malnutrition exceeds 30 percent and crude death rates exceed two deaths per 10,000 people per day.

But naming a food crisis a famine does not legally require action in the way that announcing a genocide would, despite the politicization of the term and the gravity of the label.

“Morally speaking, famine is a term that must elicit moral indignation,” said Bruno Geddo, a representative of the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR). “Emotionally, it should push people to do more.”

World Food Programme (WFP) executive director, Josette Sheeran, said: “WFP saw this emergency coming… It is now vital that the coalition of international action – involving United Nations agencies, governments, non-governmental organizations and regional organizations – quickly receive generous support and donations required to make a difference.”

Recently, Al Shabab militia, which control parts of Somalia, requested international food assistance. The inability of agencies to work in the region since early 2010 had prevented aid from reaching the very hungry, especially children, contributing to the crisis.

Mounting death toll

“Some 11,000 people have died due to drought in the past 45 days, 9,000 of them in the Bay, Bakool and Lower Shabelle regions, the rest in other regions in south-central Somalia,” Abdikadir Hirsi Shekhdon, a member of the government drought committee, said in Mogadishu.

“The government and the public are helping the vulnerable people,” he added. “For example, the president has distributed 1,000 tents, 1,000 blankets and 1,000 mats to some of the displaced in Mogadishu.”

But with nearly half of the Somali population - 3.7 million people - in crisis, of whom an estimated 2.8 million people are in the south, the scale of the crisis is huge.

“Today the world’s attention is on my country but I ask the world to address the fundamental causes of this humanitarian catastrophe and urgently ask for the resources needed to rebuild the Somali state in the midst of an ongoing conflict,” Somali Prime Minister Abdiweli Mohamed Ali said. “This is going to get worse for the Somali people, before it gets better.”

The crisis has forced thousands of Somalis to seek refuge in the capital, Mogadishu.

Photo: Mohamed Amin Jibril/IRIN

Farhiya Ahmed holds one of her two surviving children

“After two years of consecutive drought and the death of all our livestock, I decided to head for Mogadishu in the hope of saving my children,” Farhiya Osman Ahmed, 28, said. “Upon reaching the city, my children fell ill,” she told IRIN. “I don’t know what disease they were suffering from. Three of them died and the fourth one is still sick; his condition has worsened in the past two weeks.”

Warning signs

The humanitarian community has stepped up its response to the crisis, some by setting up cash-for-work or cash relief activities and distributing food. Action Contre la Faim, for example, is airlifting tons of food into Somalia, and UNHCR has added oral rehydration salts, high protein biscuits and water purification tablets to its emergency kits, items not usually included.

“So far donors have committed less than US$200 million, leaving an $800 million black hole,” Oxfam GB said in reference to humanitarian funding needs for the Horn of Africa before the famine announcement.

Help is still months away, yet warning signs were being reported a year ago by the Famine Early Warning System Network (FEWS NET) and the Food Security and Nutrition Analysis Unit.

According to Chris Hillbruner, a decision and planning support adviser for FEWS NET, this crisis showed that relatively good and accurate information could be provided well in advance but “there’s a lot of room globally for response to connect to early warning in a stronger way.”

Bowden told IRIN that although the early warning information and analysis was exceptional, it had not translated into prevention. “In Somalia, there is a mismatch between warning and response,” he said. “We must listen to our early warning systems and safeguard the impartiality of our humanitarian responses.”

Fran Equiza, Oxfam’s regional director, called for quick global action to avoid a repeat of such crises.

“Emergency aid is vital right now, but we also need to ask why this has happened, and how we can stop it ever happening again,” she said.

“The warning signs have been seen for months, and the world has been slow to act. Much greater long-term investment is needed in food production and basic development to help people cope with poor rains and ensure that this is the last famine in the region.”

jb-maj/js/eo/mw source www.irinnews.org

UGANDA: Farmers battle uncertain weather patterns

Photo: Charles Akena/IRIN

A farmer winnows her beans harvest in Nwoya district

ALERO, 20 July 2011 (IRIN) – Having spent years uprooted by conflict, farmers in northern Uganda are again facing tough times – this time caused by the weather.

In late June, Joel Lacung and Margaret Ataro of Got-Ngur village in northern Uganda’s Nwoya district, laboured under the scorching sun as they drove two pairs of oxen to prepare their land for the approaching second rice-planting season.

They were among many rural farmers in Uganda whose livelihoods have been affected by increasingly erratic rainfall and high temperatures. Most were displaced by the years of conflict with the rebel Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) and remain poor and unable to acquire farm inputs.

Jackson Odong, a research assistant with the Uganda Refugee Law Project, said helping these farmers was critical to restoring some normality in that part of the country.

“We no longer have enough food harvested compared to 30 years ago; these days when it rains, it sometimes falls too much, making the crops over-grow… [and not] germinate, and when the sun shines, sometimes it goes on for a long time, withering the crops.”

Growing crops such as beans, groundnuts, sweet potatoes, sesame and millet had become difficult, he added.

For the past 20 years, the population in northern Uganda has depended on food aid because of the LRA conflict that forced about 1.2 million people into camps. The region, comprising savannah grass land and forests, is potentially very productive.

However, between May and June 2010, several farmers in the Acholi and Teso region in the north lost land to torrential rains that left fields water-logged, causing crops to rot.

In 2009, heavy rains in the first quarter and prolonged sunshine also left several farmers counting losses, undermining food reserves.

Uncertainty

“In the past, our grandfather could predict rain through cloud formations, direction of the wind and when certain trees begin to grow leaves,” Lacung said.

Faced with the effects of the unpredictable weather, a group of 600 rural farmers in the districts of Amuru, Gulu, Nwoya, Pader, Kitgum and Lamwo are adapting to alternative farming methods.

The farmers, supported by the Catholic Relief Agency (CARITAS) in the Acholi sub-region through a community managed disaster risk reduction programme (CMDRR), are adapting by planting early and using quick maturing seeds.

Photo: Charles Akena/IRIN

Growing crops such as beans, groundnuts, sweet potatoes, sesame and millet has become difficult in northern Uganda

Lacung said they also practised crop rotation, irrigation, inter-cropping and use of manure to help the soil regenerate.

Patrick Otto, a farmer from Kitgum, said the knowledge and support they had received had helped them improve their yields.

Jackson Lakor, an agricultural officer in Gulu, said farmers needed information on climate change to guide them in their daily farming activities.

He said the only way to minimize losses was to engage in activities that would help restore the environment, such as re-forestation and inter-cropping with perennial crops.

Longinous Olong Ogwang, CMDRR project officer, said the 300 million shilling (US$125,000) project would help farmers adapt to better methods through training and input provision.

Lessons learnt

Ogwang added that CMDRR hoped to replicate the project in more areas to help farmers become self-reliant.

“Here the farmers identify risks and we support them on how they can address these risks.

“If they identify delays in rain as a risk, we support them with knowledge on alternatives so that they are in a position to use seeds suitable for a given condition, and how to plant, when to plant,” he said.

“The farmers identified inadequate capacity to till larger portions of farm land and we provided them with oxen and ploughs,” he added.

Paul Isabirye, coordinator of the climate change unit in the Water and Environment Ministry, said the only way to help farmers cope with unreliable weather was to have a comprehensive programme that catered for all the sectors to address the different challenges.

“All government ministries have a role to play,” he said, referring to roads, health, education and disaster preparedness, among others. “Climate change is the main cause of the intense rainfall we are receiving, its poor distribution and erratic [patterns].”

He said addressing the effects of climate change varied according to the farming practice.

“There are different levels of adaptation depending on the availability of resources and geographical set-up of a place,” Isabirye added.

ca/jk/js/mw source www.irinnews.org