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20Jan
Aid Agencies Critical of their Own Response to East African Crisis
A DAMNING report by two of the UK’s leading aid agencies says systematic failures by the international community, NGOs and donor governments in responding to last year’s east African crisis cost tens of thousands of lives.
Oxfam and Save the Children say lessons needed to be learned and earlier intervention needed in order to avert another humanitarian disaster in the region.
And they warn another crisis may be imminent in west Africa and the Sahel, where growing food shortages have been reported.
Figures compiled by the Department for International Development (DfID) suggest that between 50,000 and 100,000 people, more than half of them children under five, died in the 2011 Horn of Africa crisis that affected Somalia, Ethiopia and Kenya.
The report, A Dangerous Delay, says more funding for food emergencies should be sought and released as soon as the crisis signs are clear, rather than the current system which funds large-scale emergency work only when hunger levels have reached tipping-point.
The report notes that the delays in activating relief operations last year massively increased the cost of subsequent assistance.
The aid agencies said many donors wanted to first see proof that there was a humanitarian catastrophe. That caused a funding shortfall that delayed a large-scale response to the crisis by around six months.
The report makes a series of recommendations, including improved risk-reduction strategies, greater funding flexibility, and preventative humanitarian work. “All actors and early-warning specialists need to develop a common approach to triggers for early action.”
The agencies are calling on governments to overhaul their response to food crises, as laid out in the Charter to End Extreme Hunger, a document that has already received backing from key international figures.
“We can no longer allow this grotesque situation to continue; where the world knows an emergency is coming but ignores it until confronted with TV pictures of desperately malnourished children.” said Save the Children’s chief executive, Justin Forsyth.
“The warning signs were clear and with more money when it really mattered, the suffering of thousands of children would have been avoided. All governments should sign the Charter to End Extreme Hunger to help ensure a crisis like this can never happen again.”
Some positive action by governments did take place – such as improved early warning systems and social protection schemes that meant families were given some early support, said the report. But overall, the scale of crisis outstripped these efforts, and more costly interventions had to be taken at a later stage.
Barbara Stocking, Oxfam’s chief executive, said: “We all bear responsibility for this dangerous delay that cost lives in east Africa, and need to learn the lessons of the late response.
“It’s shocking that the poorest people are still bearing the brunt of a failure to respond swiftly and decisively.”
A spokesperson for DfID said Britain has led the world in tackling food insecurity in east Africa in the last year and urged others to prioritise the “critical issue”.
“British taxpayers’ generous support has helped hundreds of thousands of people in dire need in the Horn of Africa and longer term British assistance in Ethiopia and Kenya has meant that millions more were not caught up in this terrible tragedy,” he said.
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