The crisis in the Horn are many and varied. The Horn has suffered from the worst hunger crisis the world has ever seen in this century. Thousands of children have already perished. Though children have been the most vulnerable, mothers also suffered from malnutrition.
The cause of hunger is poor harvest of food grain due to shortage of rain. Sometimes, there is too much rain that causes flooding of the entire farmlands. This makes framing a difficult task. Farmers eagerly wait for the rain to come on time, in line with seasonal activities. Too much rain or too little rain negatively affects the process of farming.
Unless, the government, and donor agencies intervene in time, thousands of people will suffer from the impact of erratic rainfall. Early warning systems are crucial in preventing people from hunger and death from it. These systems alert governments and donor agencies to get prepared for the worst situation to come. Efficient preparation against climate changes saves the lives of people.
What were the reactions of the world to this crisis? The world might have thought of it the same old story, a repeat of what had taken place in Ethiopia in 1984/85. But, we cannot get accustomed to environmental tragedy. Repeated famine does not make people immune to it. It is not a luxury to be enjoyed.
Famine could lead to deaths of people who suffered from long period of hunger. We can’t say “better late than never,” in the case of famine. Food aid should be delivered as efficiently as possible. In the case of famine, bureaucratic hurdles are agents of death. A slight delay in transporting of food aid is a cause of severe agony of death.
The charities, NGOs and other donors use “emotive photos” of the hungry people for gathering assistance. Such assistance take the form of money, food, and means of transportation. These agencies have been responsible for saving the lives of people who had been on the verge of death. But, they need the cooperation of local agencies of a country in the Horn.
These agencies have their own criteria of letting in food aid into the country for fear of political intrusion behind food aid. Such internal obstacles affect the timely flow of food aid to the hungry people.
Charities make several efforts to convince people of the developed countries to contribute funds to save lives in the Horn. They used video cameras to reflect the situation of hungry people. But, pride made it difficult to allow camera crew take pictures and films on the situation of huger in the Horn.
Such pride comes from those least affected by famine in their country. The well-to-do feel ashamed that their images are tarnished by hunger stricken citizens. They want to hide it from those who could save lives thereby impeding flow of aid. In fact, it should have been their duty to call for external assistance to save the lives of their citizens.
The extent to which famine was hidden from the public provokes imagination. Some officials threw camera men, for example, out of hospitals where hunger-stricken citizens were being treated.
Medical staffs were expected to avoid journalists who were eager to inform the public about it. These staff were more than willing, in some cases, to expose the hidden tragedy. But, information, somehow, leaked out and journalists exposed the situation of those affected by hunger and subjected to medical care.
Famine affected people were taken to refugee camps to avoid publicity. Pictures of famine stricken people were not allowed to be publicized. This was done to preserve the dignity of patients and refugees.
However, some concerned officials of government lamented that without pictures it would be difficult to move donors and charity organizations to assist the hungry people of the Horn. The media cycle was prevented from functioning properly on the question of famine.
There was a need for celebrity appeal on behalf of hunger-stricken people of the Horn. This was done against the will of some government officials. But, they could not hamper global celebrities from assisting those people of the Horn who suffered from famine.
Despite external efforts to coordinate donations for the poor hungry people, local initiative to provide support for these citizens was almost negligible. The whole secret behind such lethargic efforts to help poor citizens was pride. This was a puzzle. How could one run a government when its citizens were suffering from hunger? Why would one be proud when its citizens went to bed with empty stomach?
Impacts of Climate Change: Climate change would affect parts of the world where landscapes and livelihood were fragile. Seasonal activities, particularly farming activities, became distorted heralding shortage of food. Livestock would also be affected where rainfall varied from season to season. Ecological fragility caused disasters, leading to famine, affecting both people and livestock.
Where there was no early warning system that notified weather changes, particularly erratic rainfall, excessive aridity or flooding, it was like a holocaust. People died of starvation as a result of that. In the past, concerned government officials had paid in their lives for such negligence of duties.
Irrespective of relevant experience, the future looks bleak, for example, for arid and semi-arid region of the Horn of Africa. Experience is derived from past, but positive performances. Where past performance was poor in the area of managing climate change, its impact led to deaths of poor people of the Horn. Here poor performance was taken for granted. Measures were not taken against those responsible for it.
This costs a country in terms of losing its human resources. These resources were the only productive wealth of a poor country. They should not have been lost due to the negative impacts of climate change.
Efforts to tackle impacts of climate change seemed uncertain. This was a fair assessment to draw after deliberations on how to curb greenhouse-gas emissions. In these deliberations no effective agreement on how to reduce emissions was reached.
The failure of political will to take real measures was evident. In such meetings Finance and Foreign Ministers of donor countries were normally missing. These were important figures to make decision or deal, but they never bothered to attend such meetings.
In these meetings some countries became defensive and others were poorly represented. Those on the defensive were the ones who have been responsible for environmental pollution. It was expected of them to assist those countries of the Horn who suffer from problems they were not causing.
Those countries that were responsible, but poorly represented in the greenhouse-gas emission meetings, could not be committed to efforts for reducing emissions. They did accept responsibility, but only in words. They did not offer practical or material assistance in the effort to mitigate emissions.
Some countries became outraged when it was suggested to them to cap their own emissions. They would be outraged at the hint of assistance to other poor countries suffering from environmental degradation. Moreover, they didn’t meet their obligations to mitigate the damage to which they contributed heavily.
What was sobering in all those meetings related to climate change was the willingness to seriously study its effects in arid and dry parts of Africa, particularly in the Horn. Though the studies were useful, the lingering question would be how to mobilize resources to reverse its impacts.
First and foremost, donors have to be convinced on the global nature of climate. It affected not only the countries of the Horn, but it severely affected the rest of the world. Gas emissions were mostly released by industrialized countries. Yet, they were reluctant to take responsibility for the environmental problems they had created.
These problems affected not only those who created it, but also those who had no means of creating it. The people in the Horn suffer from problems they had no idea about. Greenhouse-gas never emitted from the countries of the Horn as much as it did from the developed countries. This was proven beyond reasonable doubt. Yet, the poor people of the Horn were exposed to the severity of climate change impacts.
If you visited a country in the Horn, most probably you would come across people who suffered from impacts of climate change. One could see children with “bloated bellies, stick arms and legs; huge eyes staring out of skeletal heads; hungry mothers trying to suckle their babies on dried breasts,” as reported in studies.
The people residing outside of the Horn thought they might never see such a scene of famine again. But, it repeated itself on several occasions. Famine in the Horn has become recurrent. Millions of people ended up in emergency food aid centers. Livestock have been decimated.
Thousands of people were streaming to refugee centers looking for food aid. Malnutrition rate has increased at an alarming rate, becoming more severe than before. Many children and elderly people were dying of starvation again.
In the remote parts of the countries in the Horn, people roamed widely.
They were masters of themselves with a large number of cattle. But, over the years successive droughts and local skirmishes over grazing land and water resources had taken their toll. People suffered from severe droughts.
Another crucial impediment to economic development in the Horn was war between breakaway regions and the central governments of some countries of the Horn. This led to absence of peace that was very much required for survival. The war has created warlords that delineated their sphere of influence.
They collected protection fees and taxes from the people they rule in their domain. Battles between warlords created destruction and disaster. The worst case was when a warlord loses his battle against another. His followers suffer from loss of lives, body damages, losses of material and cattle. Village raids ravished homesteads, pastures, and harvests.
Of course retaliations were to be expected, causing lack of peace in the region. Some countries in the Horn were parceled into smaller sub-regions ruled by warlords. The longer these warlords lasted the more difficult it would be to recreate a country that was once unified.
The governments of the Horn were too busy in maintaining political power at any cost. They spent resources gathered from taxes on strengthening their security. Security forces targeted tax paying citizens, tormented and killed suspects, and wasted resources on political missions.
Governments of the Horn designed their budget focused on military and security with lesser emphasis on social and economic sectors. Military and security budget was not subjected to open parliamentary scrutiny on grounds of secrecy. This processes opened the door for corruption, perpetuating authority without accountability.
The culture of parochialism was and still is widespread in the Horn. This led to narrow-minded approach to political activities. Ethnic groups, clans, and communities guarded their own islands of political activities. These were precursors to disintegration of a country into miniscule, economically disintegrated, regions and sub-regions.
They reflected arbitrariness and clannish attachment in political and economic activities. They became fertile ground for ethnic entrepreneurs, who exploited insulator approaches to wealth creation. They lacked interconnections to local, regional and international markets. This made them susceptible to the slightest local social tremors, quakes and shocks.
3. Lessons and Trends: The people of the Horn of Africa have suffered enough from natural and man-made disasters.
The Ethiopian Herald June 16/2019
BY GETACHEW MINAS
