As the UN reports that ongoing civil war and drought threaten all of southern-Somalia "slipping into famine," international aid agencies working in Kenya's city-sized Dadaab refugee camp have begun immunizations to prevent the spread of disease. Nearly 400,000 malnourished people residing in the camp, and thousands gathered outside the borders, are overwhelming the resources of medial workers.
Dadaab Refugee Camp, Kenya. July 2011. ©Andrew Buchanan/CARE
In an article published this morning, Euronews reports that Somalis are reporting being attacked en route to Dadaab by militant forces engaged in a five year civil war.
“We got here last night. We are attacked and all our bags were taken. We have nothing now – we hope we will get help here,” said refugee Habidya Ibrahim.
Last week, the UN announced tens of thousands of Somalis have already died as a result of four years of drought. Estimates suggest that 3.7 million Somalis are already malnourished.
Dadaab Refugee Camp, Kenya. July 2011.©Andrew Buchanan/CARE
Image from Al Jazeera "Horn of Africa Drought" coverage
East Africa Famine: 48 Hour Fundraiser
Please join us August 6 and 7 for a weekend blogathon benefit, East Africa Famine: 48 Hour Fundraiser.
Nextweek, DailyKos' EcoJustice is hosting a two-day 24/7 blogathon to raise funds for Médecins Sans Frontières to assist their work in Kenya’s Dadaab refugee camp. MSF has worked in Somali since 1991, and just yesterday announced an immediate need for medication to handle the outbreak of measles in the camp.
Also participating in this weekend of action are Oxfam International, WiserEarth,tcktcktck, deSmog Blog, MIT Climate CoLab, Climate Change: The Next Generation, MedicMobile, and RedGreenAndBlue.org. The Nonprofit Press has volunteered to send out a press release to engage more participants. Participants are selecting their own organizations for fund raising. DailyKos is raising funds to directly support the work of Médecins Sans Frontières in Kenya's Dadaab Refugee Camp.
There is one slot open in the DailyKos Blogathon, although anyone interested in participating is welcome -- we can shorten the time slots from three to two hours. A template will be available by mid-week, as will a 'badge' for placing on participants' Facebook, Twitter or Google+ accounts to show support for this benefit.
Daily Kos Lineup: ALL TIMES ARE PST
6-9 Una Spencer (introduction)
9-12 ASiegel: Reevualating "Relief" (possible topic)
12-3 rb137 (MSF overview)
3-6 wader
6-9 Jeremy Bloom
9-12:
Overnight: boatsie: Climate Change and Food Security: East Africa Focus
Sunday, August 7
6-9 blue jersey mom: Insufficient US budgeting for humanitarian foreign aid.
9-12 Jill Richardson
12-3 Ellinorianne
3-6 JekyllnHyde
6-9 Jennifer Miller Smith
9-12
Overnight: Chacounne
Ways to Participate
• Volunteer for a slot in the blogathon. We'd like as many participants as possible and can move shifts from three to two hours.
• Post the graphic (coming next week) on your site, Twitter, Google + or Facebook account to publicize your support.
• Participate in publicizing the event through social networking.
• Get in touch with your media contacts
• Let us know in comments below how you can help.
Meanwhile, detailed reporting is exploring how geopolitics, climate change, geographical sensitivities and the ravages of colonialism on indigenous cultures and livestyles have contributed to create the worst drought to impact East African nations in over sixty years.
"The drought was declared a famine when "it was no longer possible to conceal the deaths of almost 80,000 people from starvation"
In a deep investigative article, Genocidal politics and the Somali famine Al Jazeera reporter Abdi Ismail Samatar analyzes how famine occurs in a region which has long been plagued by drought.
... in the mid-1970s, there was a prolonged drought, known as "dabadeer" ["the long-tailed"], in several parts of Somalia. Fortunately, this drought did not lead to mass starvation because the Somali government moved quickly to assist the people. They mobilised the population and sought the assistance of international allies to deliver food and water to the needy.
Somalia's last major famine was in 1992 and was not caused by drought. Nearly 300,000 innocent people starved to death because of sectarian politics. The epicentre of that famine was in Bay, one of the country's most productive agricultural regions, and starvation was induced by warlords who used food as a weapon against farmers and pastoralists.
The blame for Somalia's devastating famine should not be levelled at the weather, but at geopolitics and armed militia.
(snip)
The Somali people in the affected regions have been made vulnerable to ecological disturbances because of several political and military forces. These include the US "War on Terror", the al-Shabaab terrorist group, Somalia's Transitional Federal Government (TFG), the Ethiopian invasion of Somalia and its continuous political and military involvement there, and finally East Africa's Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD) and the UN.
Why Africa's Drought Is So Catastrophic
Somalis have not been governed by a central government since 1991, which has aggravated a number of the famine's contributing factors beyond the oft-cited violent conflict and drought. Over the last year, fuel and food price increases have surpassed 300 percent in the Somali capital. Regional deforestation has devastated traditional ecosystems, eliminating trees, grazing land, and water and rendering the tri-nation area "more or less dry." Much of the productive farmland has been leased to China, Saudi Arabia, and India, so desperately needed food has been exported to foreign markets. Finally, local farmers lack machinery and fertilizer, leading to low agricultural outputs and the absence of food reserves to sustain people during droughts or other shocks.
On Monday, the U.N. World Food Program (WFP) announced a plan to airlift food aid into Somalia, and the United Nations has raised $1 billion to address the issue. While this may temporarily stem the number of deaths, it is unlikely to address the economic and climatological forces underlying the disaster.
Furthermore, foreign food aid itself--while life-saving--risks exacerbating the underlying problem.
As my colleague Laurie Garrett explainedin 2009,
"79 percent of all food aid last year from wealthy countries was delivered in the form of domestically produced surplus crops, shipped via rich-country transport mechanisms...Upwards of 40 percent of all food aid spending last year was eaten up by shipping and distribution costs... Hundreds of foreign aid organizations--in the UN system, bilateral government programs, and NGOs--have tried for decades to improve agricultural production inside poor countries... Shipping food, grown by subsidized farmers toiling inside rich countries, distorts local markets not only inside famine-affected countries, but across entire regions...The longer-term impact of donated food, then, is to destroy all positive market incentives for local farmers."
Drought Threatens Health of HIV-Positive People in Africa
Severe drought in the Horn of Africa could lead to starvation for millions of people and jeopardize the health of people with HIV/AIDS, PlusNews reports. More than 11.6 million people are facing starvation in Eritrea, Djibouti, Ethiopia and Somalia. Lack of food is a widely acknowledged barrier to successful antiretroviral (ARV) therapy. A 2010 Ugandan study found that ARVs increased respondents’ appetite and that side effects were worse without food. Also, people living with HIV in pastoralist communities often share water with animals, putting them at higher risk of contracting water-borne diseases, diarrohoeal diseases, skin conditions and other opportunistic infections.
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