EMERGENCY UPDATE Ethiopia July 2000 Sudan Wolayita Eritrea Tigray Amhara Addis Ababa ETHIOPIA Konso N. Wollo S. Wollo Djbouti East Haraghe Jijiga Oromiya Fik Red Sea Somali Gode Kenya Somalia at a glance KEY ISSUES AFFECTING CHILDREN SAVE THE CHILDREN RESPONSE KEY PARTNERS at least 5 million children are at risk from food shortages. The situation is now critical in Woloyita, Somali region and other southern areas; there is potential for the situation in the north to deteriorate as rain and a shortage of trucks is hampering the distribution of food stocks; the cumulative impact of consecutive droughts and crop failures has pushed more and more families into poverty and destitution. distributing 34,000 metric tonnes of food aid; deploying 4 nutritional teams to some of the most vulnerable areas in the north to closely monitor the situation of children providing supplementary food to children under 5 years in Fik Save the Children programmes emphasise the importance of strengthening local capacity. Projects are carried out in partnership with the government, local and international non-governmental organisations, and communities. summary Ethiopia continues to suffer from serious food shortages: in June, the UN estimated that 10 million people were at risk. The situation in Somali region which was reporting deaths from malnutrition March has now stabilised, but many children remain in a critical condition. Large numbers are also at risk in the nothern highlands. The early onset of the main rains in this area, combined with a transport shortage, is hindering transport of food and making it extremely difficult to pre-position stocks for later in the year. A gap in food distributions is expected in either August or September, when the population will be at its weakest. This could be catastrophic. Support to improve the transport capacity is urgently needed. Seeds, tools and livestock are also required to rebuild livelihoods, but longer-term investment in infrastrucure and economic development must be provided if further crisies are to be avoided.
current crisis SUMMARY THE SOUTH HIGHLAND AREAS In April, global attention was focussed on the food crisis in Ethiopia. People had begun to die from hunger in parts of the south and belg rains had failed for the second successive year in the highly-populated north, raising fears that a catastrophic famine was imminent. A major humanitarian relief effort combined with the eventual delivery of food aid averted a crisis at that time, but the danger is far from over. It is now estimated that there is enough food in country, or on its way, to meet needs this year. However, limited transport capacity means that getting food out to remote rural areas remains a serious problem, especially now that the rains have started. These difficulties could still cause a disastrous food crisis. Transport problems have seriously hampered food deliveries to the South. Reports from the World Food Programme suggest that only 25,000 metric tonnes of food have been delivered to Somali region since January, only a fraction of what is needed. Consequently the food crisis continues. In Somali children continue to die from malnutrition. Feeding camps have also been opened in the Southern People s. In Wolayita, there was a dramatic drop in nutritional levels between February and June 2000, which could easily worsen in coming months. In the Northern and Eastern Highlands there is growing concern that not enough food will be delivered to see families through the rainy season. The early arrival of the main meher rains has made transport extremely difficult and a gap in food distribution in August or September is now expected. So far nutritional surveys do not show any deterioration, but prospects for future harvests are bleak. The failure of the belg rains earlier this year prevented many areas (specifically north Tigray, North Wollo, North Shewa and Wag Hamra) from planting crops. This combined with the fact that many communities have already used up their food reserves and sold assets, means that disruption in food distributions could be disastrous. TRANSPORT DIFFICULTIES DISPLACED PEOPLE CUMULATIVE IMPACT OF CRISES The main transport difficulty is a shortage of short-haul trucks - the trucks that take food from regional hubs to remote villages. The shortage continues even though the private trucking fleet has been mobilised, and 65 per cent of all trucks in Ethiopia are now being used to deliver food aid. The 350,000 Ethiopians displaced by the war with Eritrea are particularly at risk of food shortages as the majority are entirely dependent on relief assistance. (These people were not significantly affected by the heavy fighting in May as this occurred mainly within Eritrea.) The immediate cause of Ethiopia s food crisis is 3 years of drought, but the current food shortages are also a symptom of more deep-rooted problems. Increasing poverty and destitution has pushed several million families in Ethiopia to the limit. They can barely sustain themselves, even in a good year. Many families are now without livestock, and plough oxen and seeds to farm their land. They are increasingly vulnerable to any fluctuation in the weather. Unless these underlying issues are tackled, food crises will continue for many years to come. 2 SAVE THE CHILDREN EMERGENCY UPDATE: ETHIOPIA FOOD CRISIS JULY 2000
background POVERTY FOOD SECURITY ANALYIS Ethiopia is one of the poorest countries in the world with appalling poverty and large areas permanently vulnerable to food insecurity. It has the world s lowest average income just $100 per person per year and the government faces an external debt of more than $10 billion, equivalent to 131 per cent of GNP. 1 More than half the population lives below the poverty line, and about 30 per cent live in absolute poverty. Food insecurity remains the principal obstacle to development in Ethiopia. Agriculture is the mainstay of the economy, but over a third of rural households farm less than 0.5 hectares of land, and the majority of farmers are dependent on highly variable rainfall. In the face of a rapidly growing population, per capita food production and domestic food availability have been declining since the 1960s. Even in a year of excellent harvests, approximately 26 million Ethiopians more than 40 per cent of the farming population do not produce enough food and income to meet their families nutritional requirements 2. The consequences are evident in the very high levels of under-nutrition in Ethiopia. According to the World Bank s Social Sector Report (1998), almost two-thirds of children under six years of age suffer from stunting, and over 10 per cent from wasting. In rural areas stunting figures have increased from 60 per cent in 1983 to over 68 per cent in 1995. Many people are more vulnerable to food shortages today than they were at the time of the 1984/85 famine. Save the Children research suggests that this is because land holdings are getting smaller as the population increases; basic assets remain scarce as poor harvests force households to sell their belongings to purchase food; and farmers are increasingly buying, rather than growing, their own food leaving them dependent on earning income. However, employment opportunities are declining in the face of rapidly increasing demand. A further problem is that changing weather patterns are leading to shorter and weaker belg rains. Some farmers in the extreme highlands are totally dependent on belg rains to plant short-cycle crops that are harvested before the heavy rains and frost in July and August. But many more farmers plant their main, long-cycle crop during the belg rains. If the belg fails, these farmers are also forced to switch from long-cycle to short-cycle crops planted during the later rains. These short-cycle varieties produce far lower yields. There are also structural causes behind food insecurity. Central and western regions of Ethiopia often produce a grain surplus indeed, Ethiopia has in the recent past exported food to neighbouring countries. However, a poor road network and the lack of inter-regional trade means that this food rarely reaches areas with a food deficit. 1 World Bank, Entering the 21 st Century - World Development Report 1999/2000 Oxford University Press 1999 2 Special Report: FAO/WFP Crop and Food Supply Assessment to Ethiopia, 21 December 1998 SAVE THE CHILDREN EMERGENCY UPDATE: ETHIOPIA FOOD CRISIS JULY 2000 3
Save the Children s response RELIEF Save the Children will distribute 34,000 metric tonnes (MT) of food aid this year. This includes: 784 MT for East Haraghe and 9,000 MT for North and South Wollo (provided by the EU); transport difficulties have led to delays in the delivery of this food; 7,700 MT for Fik and Gode s in Somali region (provided by DfiD); this was distributed in May and June; 16,500 MT in the Wollo highlands of Amhara (provided by DfID, the EU and the Dutch government) In South Wollo, SC is providing supplementary food for 2,000 children and therapeutic food for 70 children, and in Fik supplementary food to all children under 5 years and therapeutic food for 180 children. The organisation is also assisting the government to develop guidelines on the targeting of food aid, which aim to ensure that those most in need are reached Further supplies of food aid have been applied for, including 16,000 MT for North and South Wollo and 4,200 MT for East Haraghe. Save the Children has also carried out a re-stocking programme in Jijiga. This initiative will be evaluated, and work extended to Fik as part of Save the Children s post-emergency rehabilitation plans. EMERGENCY NUTRITION MONITORING NUTRITIONAL SURVEILLANCE AND EARLY WARING In response to the major food shortages that emerged last year, Save the Children deployed five emergency nutrition monitoring teams: four in Wollo and one in East Hararghe. They produced monthly updates on the nutritional status of children in these areas, which in turn informed ongoing relief operations. This year, Save the Children has continued to monitor children s nutritional status in the Northern Highlands by deploying four nutritional teams to vulnerable areas. Save the Children s on-going monitoring work is well-established in Ethiopia. The Nutritional Surveillance Programme, set up after the 1973-4 famine, has developed into a nation-wide monitoring system that provides early warning of developing food crises and confirmation of existing food shortages. The programme also makes extensive use of the Household Food Economy Approach, developed by Save the Children in Ethiopia and elsewhere, which provides more detailed information about food security at a household level. At present, SC is training regional government staff in nutritional assessment and working with the government s Disaster Prevention and Preparedness Committee (DPPC) to improve food security monitoring in Somali (the current drought highlighted the dearth of information from this ). DESTITUTION STUDY Understanding the underlying problems of poverty and destitution is crucial to developing long-term solutions to Ethiopia s food security problems. As each new emergency develops, there is a tendency to ignore the chronic problems that underpin it. Research suggests that livelihoods are becoming increasingly unsustainable, because of the following trends: 4 SAVE THE CHILDREN EMERGENCY UPDATE: ETHIOPIA FOOD CRISIS JULY 2000
Consecutive poor harvests in recent years, with an inadequate relief response Household coping strategies are exhausted families have sold most of their assets and livestock Families do not have adequate resources, such as plough oxen and seeds, to prepare land Employment opportunities are limited, so few can earn a cash income Farms are getting smaller, and thus soil is becoming over-used and degraded, and families are unable to meet annual food needs from their own production. Save the Children is about to start a destitution study that will look at these trends in greater detail. SAVE THE CHILDREN IN ETHIOPIA Save the Children first delivered food aid to Abyssinia, as Ethiopia was then called, in 1932; programme work begun during the famine of 1973-74. Today, the focus of SC s long-term development work in Ethiopia is food security, that is, helping rural families achieve sustained and secure access to food. There are projects on monitoring and surveillance, improving agriculture, livestock health and emergency relief and rehabilitation. Other work includes health, child rights, education and community water development. For a more comprehensive overview of SCF s long-term work in Ethiopia, including food security work, see the Ethiopia Country Report, 1999. SAVE THE CHILDREN EMERGENCY UPDATE: ETHIOPIA FOOD CRISIS JULY 2000 5