The Hon. SHAOQUETT MOSELMANE [6.35 p.m.]: In this article, "Somalia famine: There is no longer any excuse for inaction", Xan Rice, a Guardian reporter, writes:

Khadija Aliow Mohamed sits silently in the sand inside her tiny twig igloo, staring at the small bundle wrapped in a red and blue shawl on the bed. The 20-year-old Somali walked for 30 days with her two-year-old daughter, Madina, to get to this refugee camp in northern Kenya a few weeks ago.

Hungry and exhausted, the family escaped the worst drought in southern Somalia in decades. But while Khadija regained her strength in Dadaab, the world's biggest refugee settlement, Madina, her two year old, did not. Just an hour after the UN declared a famine in two regions of Somalia, Madina died. Her mother, who is pregnant, is too shocked to talk.

The call for aid always comes too little too late for many like baby Madina. Governments drag their feet and whatever action they take comes too little too late for hundreds and thousands, if not millions.

A massive drought, failed harvests, rising food prices and conflict has hit the Horn of Africa and the people are fleeing to refugee camps in their thousands. An estimated 11.6 million people are now in need of humanitarian assistance in Somalia, Kenya, Ethiopia and Djibouti.

Aid agencies and governments were for some time aware that food would run out, and animals were dying and crops failing. Yet, they only began the call for help, when children began to die.

Fran Equiza, Oxfam's regional director, as quoted in the article by Xan Rice, notes that "there is no time to waste if we are to avoid massive loss of life. We must not stand by and watch this tragedy unfold before our eyes. The world has been slow to recognise the severity of this crisis, but there is no longer any excuse for inaction." In some regions of Somalia, more than half the children are suffering from acute malnutrition and the death rates are climbing. Around 3.7 million people—almost half of the Somali population—are now facing severe food shortages. "Somalia is facing its worst food security crisis in the last 20 years," said Mark Bowden, the UN official in charge of humanitarian aid there. He added that "this desperate situation requires urgent action to save lives."

Other countries in the region, in particular Ethiopia and Kenya, are also facing a crisis because of the failure of rains in pastoralist areas—the worst situation for 60 years in some places—as well as soaring food prices and longer-term issues such as underdevelopment, internal civil strife and high population growth. John Vidal from the Guardian, in his article, Famine we could avoid, noted:

Fifty or so years ago, the region had regular 10-year climatic cycles which were mostly followed by a major drought, and now the droughts are coming more frequently and are lasting longer ... in the 1980s they came about every five years and in the 1990s every two or three. Since 2000 there have been three major droughts and several dry spells, this one being not the worst, just the latest.

But to claim the reason for this crisis is drought alone is incorrect. John Vidal maintains:

The 10 million people who the governments warn are at risk of famine this year are the same 10 million who have clung on in the region through the last four droughts and were mostly being kept alive by feeding programs.

Governments and international humanitarian and financial institutions must help now. They must develop plans to help poorer nations provide for the poor and adapt to the hotter, drier conditions they face and provide the necessities of survival. They require such things as better pumps and boreholes, better vaccination of cattle, help with education, food storage and transport. The president of the International Fund for Agricultural Development, in an article titled "Africa can feed the world," argues that money should be put into long-term development instead of emergency aid and feeding programs that keep people just above starvation. This tragedy could have been avoided.
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He maintains:

We found a community willing to transform their lives by harvesting rainwater, using biogas, terracing mountain slopes. There are crops for livestock, they are growing vegetables, wheat and maize, and generating income that allows them to build resilience.

Now urgent donations to any humanitarian organisation—whether it is the Red Cross, UNICEF, Union Aid Abroad or Australian People for Health, Education and Development Abroad—are desperately needed. Although $1 billion is required only $200 million has been pledged. Please donate and help those children in need.
 

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