In one case, at least 22,500 people in Uganda lost their homes and land to make way for a British timber company, the New Forests Company (NFC). Villagers told Oxfam that some evictions resulted in physical violence, and destruction of property, crops and livestock. Many have been left destitute, without enough food or money to send their children to school. They have received no compensation or alternative land. NFC denies that it was responsible for any evictions.
What’s more, NFC is supported by investment from international institutions which claim to uphold high social and environmental standards, including the World Bank and the European Investment Bank. In addition, HSBC, which prides itself as a responsible bank, owns 20 percent of NFC and has one of six seats on the NFC Board.
Preliminary research indicates that as many as 227 million hectares have been sold, leased or licensed in large-scale land deals since 2001, mostly by international investors. This modern-day land rush follows a drive to produce food for people overseas, meet damaging biofuels targets or speculate on land to make an easy profit.
However, many of the deals are in fact ‘land grabs’ where the rights and needs of the people living on the land are ignored. Global safeguards exist to protect poor people, but they are being flouted in the scramble for more land. And it’s women—who produce up to 80 per cent of food in some poor countries—who are most vulnerable.
Oxfam is calling for remedies to the Ugandan mass eviction and the other large scale land grabs included in the report. Investors, governments and international organizations must also put a stop to land grabbing by fixing the current policies, regulations and business practices, which frequently fail to ensure that local people are consulted and treated fairly during negotiations. They should also ensure that all relevant international standards are respected including the World Bank's International Finance Corporation Performance Standards and the Forest Stewardship Council's standards.
The US government should take a leadership role in curbing this growing phenomenon working closely with like-minded governments at the UN's Committee on Food Security in Rome next month to push forward strong and broadly supported Voluntary Guidelines on land tenure. Finally businesses and policy-makers should start to explore measures that the US government and industry can take to curb the worst abuses by US investors and US listed companies in affected countries, including measures to increase transparency around land deals.
Get the latest updates on the Uganda case and find out how you can show your support—join Oxfam's GROW campaign today.
Help shine a spotlight on the worrying practice of land grabs. Read Oxfam's new land grabs report and share it with friends.
Watch this video and share it with your friends.
]]>While witnessing the ravages of rain in the southern Sindh province, I stopped at a roadside relief camp in the Nandu area of Badin district. A middle-aged man beckoned me to come and meet a family that had taken shelter in a brick shed. The shed is meant for passengers traveling along the road to use for rest. There was a curtain - a patchwork of nylon on the door - and inside a woman sitting hunched on the floor, baking bread. I was soon to find out that her name was Lal Khatoon.
Lal Khatoon comes from Shadi Lal in Badin – the first and worst-affected district in the recent rains, which has experienced continuous rains since the second week of August….She gave birth to her seventh child during the rains. She was lucky not to have faced any complications during childbirth, as there was no trained health worker present at the time of her delivery.
But soon, she was faced with another challenge: when her baby girl was four days old, the roof of her one-room house [collapsed]. Lal Khatoon had to leave on foot and without any belongings….
Lal Khatoon and her husband work as sharecroppers. After working the land for a year, her family gets to keep 25% of the total crop – which is barely enough to sustain them. There is nothing left over once she’s seen to the needs of her family, so she has no savings.
[After leaving her home,] Lal Khatoon and other members of her clan walked for miles carrying her newborn baby, Abida (”worshiper of God“), and three younger children until a military vehicle picked them up and took them to a government camp in Union Council Nando, where she received a 10kg bag of flour from the government - an amount she is told will be delivered every ten days.
“We manage by skipping meals," she says, "and by eating a quarter or sometimes, if we’re lucky, a half a piece of bread.” During the rains, they went without food for ten days, as the stock they had only lasted for a week.
Lal Khatoon lives in constant fear: how will she manage to care for her child, who is already sick with skin rashes and diarrhea? How will she build back her house? The land she worked is underwater, and it will take at least six months for it to be cultivable again….
Oxfam is rushing aid to the flood-affected areas of Pakistan, supporting search-and-rescue operations and delivering clean water to areas hit hard by the disaster. We aim to reach 850,000 people with clean water and sanitation and help many of those who have been displaced gain access to food and the means to earn a living.
Donate now to support relief and recovery efforts in Pakistan.
As drought and food crisis spread throughout East Africa, families like Loliyak’s are feeling the effects of hunger. With support from Oxfam, and funding from the Office for Foreign Disaster Assistance, an emergency cash transfer program aims to help the hard-hit population of northern Kenya’s Turkana region. More than 5,500 families in the program will receive a payment of 3,000ksh, about $31, every month for the next six months. Because the aid comes in the form of cash, rather than food or other goods, people can choose to buy what they need most; the local economy benefits; and herders who’ve lost everything can seek new ways of earning a living.
For Loliyak, the new income means an opportunity to choose the most nutritious foods for her children. "If you have cash, then you can buy things [you] don't have in the house, like cabbage or beans. But with food aid, we can only eat maize for the whole month,” she explained.
Another participant, Abenyo, 25, said she hopes to use her payments to buy a goat—a first step toward replenishing her family’s assets. With most of their livestock lost to the drought, and food prices escalating out of reach, she and her three children have turned to foraging to survive.
Ekimat Maraha, whose family also lost all of their animals, said they have been living on wild fruit and gifts of food begged from their neighbors. Balancing her child on her lap, she signed the official paperwork with an indelible blue fingerprint to confirm receipt of her first cash payment. “With the money, I’ll buy food for my household and a roof for my home,” she said. “I hope one day I’ll return to my former glory.”
Also participating in the program are 215 local shop owners, who not only receive cash themselves but work with Oxfam to distribute payments in their communities. In turn, the families buy food and other staples from the merchants’ shops, boosting their business during a time of hardship.
“Since the drought, I’ve been unable to provide customers with the things they need,” said Samuel, one of five participating shop owners in Loruth. “Thanks to Oxfam’s cash grant, I was able to purchase items that I couldn’t afford before, like wheat, maize, flour, and vegetables. As long as there will be a good circulation of cash, then I can go and buy new items.”
Jacinta opened her store in Nachukui in 1994, but said that lately she has struggled with rising food costs. A bag of flour, for example, costs her 40 percent more than it did before the drought. “A few days ago the shelves were bare, but now they've been restocked,” she said.
Many shopkeepers, like Abullah Mohammed and his wife Asinyen, let the neediest local families buy food on credit to tide them over. Thanks to the cash transfer program, many of those customers have now been able to repay their debts. “We got 1000ksh (about $10) in one day. We usually only make 300ksh ($3) per day,” said Asinyen. “With the extra money I make, I hope that I’ll be able to send my son to university.”
Many of Turkana’s herders have been devastated by the loss of their animals, and are left seeking new ways to provide for their families. “The pride that I used to have with my livestock is no longer there,” said one herder, Ebe. “I had lost hope with life, but because of this cash, hope is coming back. I’d like to start a petty trade so that I can sustain my family.”
Sabina Loliyak, the mother who lost half of her livestock, said she wants to use her future cash payments to make the transition from herder to small business owner. “Since the drought has come, everything has changed,” she said. “People who used to be pastoralists are now moving to the trading centers like Kaikor. There are [fewer] people in the mountains now.”
Faced with these changes, she is determined to adapt. “If we can start a business, then our life will change automatically,” she said. “Cash will help us to start a new life."
Oxfam aims to reach more than 3 million people throughout East Africa with a variety of support including food aid, clean water, and veterinary care for animals. We are also campaigning to change the root causes of this crisis. Find out how you can help saves lives in East Africa.
Reporting and photos by Caroline Berger; edited by Anna Kramer.
]]>Getting your goods to market; selling them for a fair price; paying for your education. These may not seem like unrealistic goals. But for Nunoncca and the Figueroas, they won’t be easy to achieve. As residents of the remote Andean village of Chiluyo—population 50, and more than 15,000 feet above sea level—they face the same challenges now affecting many of Peru’s rural people. Though locally led solutions can help, unpredictable prices, a declining investment in agriculture, and changes in the climate are making life for these herders and farmers more uncertain than ever.
Every Monday, Antonia Figueroa walks five hours to the nearest market, in Suykutambo, where she sells her alpaca wool, fiber, and chuño (a freeze-dried potato product dating back to the time of the Inca Empire). Last time, she sold 20 soles, or $7, worth of goods, and immediately spent the money on cooking oil, sugar, rice, and noodles for her family—all the while hoping the price of staples wouldn’t increase. “We are continually producing less and selling less, feeding our children less, and therefore our children’s health suffers,” said Figueroa.
Along with farming, most residents of Chiluyo and other highland communities rely on alpaca breeding as their main source of income. Because the area is so remote--making it difficult for people to reach markets where they can sell their products--it remains one of Peru's poorest regions. In the broader Suykutambo district, the average per capita income is just 127 soles, or $46, a month.
As small-scale producers like Figueroa and Nunoncca struggle to eke out a living, the Peruvian government has decreased its support for their efforts. For example, a recent study conducted for Oxfam by analyst Epifano Baca found that investments in small-scale agriculture made up just 2.6 percent of Peru’s national budget in 2010, down from 3.2 percent the year before.
“Why is there a lack of support for a sector of the economy that produces most of the food consumed in Peruvian cities?” asked Baca. “[Small-scale producers] sustain millions of families, especially those living in extreme poverty.”
In addition to economic challenges, residents of Chiluyo say weather patterns are changing in ways they have never experienced before. Periods of drought and extreme heat and cold affect not only people but the livestock they depend on for survival. “It doesn’t rain like it used to. We don’t have water for our pastures, [so] our animals die,” said Figueroa.
Oxfam’s local partner the Intermediate Technology Development Group (ITDG) gathered testimonies from rural people throughout Espinar province, where Chiluyo is located. They described water scarcity, harsher frosts (some zones have recorded temperatures as low as 3 degrees Fahrenheit), and increases in solar radiation which have destroyed agriculture and grazing lands, resulting in higher livestock mortality rates.
The Peruvian government’s response to climate change includes efforts designed to reach the maximum number of people, like increasing hydroelectric power supply to cities and building irrigation projects along the coast. But in far-flung villages in the Andean and Amazon regions, thousands of residents—mostly indigenous people—are being left behind.
Responding to growing concerns about drought, ITDG looked for ways to help communities manage water more efficiently, using methods like reservoirs, channels, and spray irrigation systems. To date, ITDG has built 20 reservoirs in Espinar at a cost of $1500 to $1800 each, benefiting a total of 40 to 60 families.
“While the focus is on water resource management, this project is part of a broader strategy that also introduces forage grasses resistant to weather conditions,” said Lorena del Carpio, Oxfam climate change specialist.
ITDG also worked with small-scale producers to make sure they had a voice in their local governments. Throughout Espinar, herders and farmers are now involved in developing community budgets that take their needs into account. Some municipalities have committed to allocating more than 50 percent of next year’s budget to pressing issues like water management and combating climate change.
With new President Ollanta Humala taking office this month, the challenge now is to elevate these voices to the national level. Figueroa, for one, doesn’t hesitate to identify what she’d like to see from her country’s leaders—solutions to help her increase her productivity, access to markets, and urgent support in the face of climate change.
But she’s also clear that, like many of Peru’s forgotten farmers, the hardworking residents of Chiluyo are not looking for a handout.
“We don’t want them to give us anything,” she said. “We want to produce.”
]]>One of those children is Mohamed, who was less than a year old and terribly thin when his mother brought him to the center.
"I came here after my son, Mohamed, became very sick about two months ago," said Fadumo, a 30-year-old mother of five in Mogadishu. He had been suffering from severe diarrhea, and though it had stopped, it had sapped him of weight and energy.
Crippling drought in Somalia has made clean water increasingly scarce and has led to a spike in children with severe diarrhea and malnutrition being admitted to local hospitals. Coupled with food shortages and limited healthcare, the consequences have become heartbreaking for families: one of every six children in Somalia dies before reaching the age of 5.
Working with a Somali organization—SAACID—and in partnership with other agencies, Oxfam started the community care program in September 2009, to help address some of these critical needs in Mogadishu. The program aims to treat acutely malnourished children, as well as pregnant and lactating mothers, and to ensure that they do not fall back into nutritional crisis.
Children with the most severe malnourishment are provided with at least two months of care in an out-patient program where they receive therapeutic food. Following that, children continue for an additional two months in a supplementary feeding program to ensure they don’t slip back into the danger zone.
For children with less severe cases, the program offers them supplementary feeding and provides basic health care, along with measles vaccinations on a case-by-case basis.
The community-based program includes 240 outreach workers and 40 team leaders who steer families to the treatment sites as well as follow up with cases and deliver key health messages across the city on a daily basis.
It was one of the outreach workers who first recognized the severity of Mohamed’s condition—and told Fadumo about the therapeutic care program.
“When he was admitted to the program he was very thin and I thought that he would never return to his standard weight because he had stopped eating and drinking,” said Fadumo, adding that at two months he stopped breastfeeding. “Since that time, he was sick and he never had good health for even one day.”
But all of that changed when Mohamed started treatment at the center.
“After he began taking the special biscuits, he almost immediately began to eat and drink water and milk again,” Fadumo said. Until she learned about the program, Fadumo had been unable to seek treatment for her son because her family had no money.
“My husband is currently unemployed,” she said. “Our life now depends on what my husband’s brothers give us. In fact, it is not enough for us, but it is our only support now.”
But a bright spot is Mohamed’s progress.
Previously thin and listless, Mohamed began putting on weight and becoming more active. His smile even came back.
“This health center is clearly providing life-saving care, and there is strong support in our neighborhood for it,” Fadumo said. “We hope SAACID can continue supporting the sick, malnourished children.”
When Oxfam media officer Irina Fuhrmann traveled to Turkana earlier this month, she found herding communities under what she described as “a virtual state of siege.” But Fuhrmann also discovered something unexpected. Many people who had been affected by the region’s last drought were now weathering the current crisis, thanks to solutions designed to fight poverty and build resilience over the long term. Where local ingenuity and determination are paired with this kind of long-term investment, there is real hope—even reason to believe that the cycle of drought can be broken.
More than ten years ago, Alice Atanbo joined one of Oxfam’s cash-for-work programs in Turkana.
“It all began when I decided to invest a small amount, which Oxfam had given me when I participated in a cash-for-work project, to buy products like milk, flour, and sugar. As soon as people found out they could buy their basic food supplies in my shop, they started coming from all around. And over time, I’ve been able to go back and ask for more credit and increase my supplies,” Atanbo said.
Atanbo’s store now supplies her entire community, Milima Tatu, with essential goods. Since her husband’s livestock died from the drought, she and her eight children have been able to live on the income generated from her shop.
Meanwhile, Atanbo is working with Oxfam to distribute emergency food aid in her community. “I receive food for free distribution, and the neediest families come to pick it up at my shop,” she said. “Today, the food has arrived from the distribution center, and the people are already waiting impatiently, with their food vouchers ready.”
It’s unusual to find green leaves in the dry landscape of Turkana, but in the village of Kaaleng, several family gardens are beginning to thrive. Supplied with water by an Oxfam-installed solar-powered energy pump, the village maintains small patches of fertile soil even in this time of drought.
Several residents, such as Benson Kore, have begun to use their plots to grow vegetables for food. Corn, tomatoes, onions, and other plants thrive on a few square meters of soil that Kore cultivates with great care. Kore’s children and his sister’s children help him in the garden—the family has pulled together, he said, to compensate for the loss of the livestock on which they once relied for food and income. Now, the waste materials from his vegetable garden provide food for Kore’s five remaining goats.
Oxfam developed the Akadeli school for herdsmen as pilot project: a way for the herders of Turkana to regroup and support one another after a previous drought devastated their livestock. At their meetings, the herdsmen in the school share their knowledge and their experiences, which range from techniques for treating illnesses to making decisions about the best time to sell livestock. Given the seriousness of the current crisis, the group works to disseminate this information to their fellow herdsmen.
With the help of a system of community microcredit, the school has also become a way for herders who have lost all of their animals to try to find new ways to earn a living. One of these, supported by Oxfam, is the development of fishing in Lake Turkana. Thanks to these fish, which they dry and sell, the herdsmen have found new sources of income, and have also diversified the nutrients in their own diets at a time when good food is scarce.
Oxfam aims to reach 3 million people in the East Africa region with a variety of support including food aid, clean water, and veterinary care for animals. We are also campaigning to change the root causes of this crisis. Find out how you can support our efforts.
Field reporting for this story by Irina Fuhrmann; written by Anna Kramer.
Puddles swallow trucks to their underbellies. And everywhere, green sweeps the hillsides: delicate shoots of teff, so vibrant it looks lit from within, mix with fields of corn, the stalks thickening by the day and inching skywards.
But here in this village of about 1,100 households in Ethiopia’s northern region of Tigray, they’re holding their breath. Will the rain stay steady? Will it fall in enough abundance to fatten the grains and produce a bountiful harvest on which so many here depend?
At night, in my hotel room in Abi Adi, I listen as the rain pelts the metal roofs and pours into the courtyards and muddy streets below. I think about all the uncertainties farmers in Adi Ha face, and then I think about the south and what happens when those uncertainties become life-threatening. There, where southern Ethiopia, northern Kenya, and south-central Somalia meet, a severe drought and food crisis has snared almost 12 million people, farmers and herders both. The UN has already declared famine in two parts of Somalia. And some areas of the region are the driest they have been in six decades.
Though the rain in Tigray brings hope, nothing is certain. Not when the weather has become increasingly erratic. And not when the vast majority of farmers rely on rain to feed their fields. Countless families here—like those now struggling in the south—have known the ravages of drought.
But in Adi Ha, and a growing number of communities in Tigray, farmers now have a means of managing some of that unpredictability: weather insurance for their crops.
Initiated in 2007 by Oxfam America and a host of partners, including the Relief Society of Tigray and Swiss Re, a new program has found a way for even the poorest farmers to afford insurance. Instead of cash, these farmers can pay for their premiums with labor, a resource they have in abundance. If insufficient rain falls during a critical period of the growing cycle, and their teff, wheat, or barley suffers, farmers will receive a payout—an infusion of cash that can help them cover their losses and weather the rough times.
“This insurance is very good,” said Selas Samson Biru, who paid 200 birr ($11.75) this year to cover half a hectare of teff—a tiny grain that is a staple of the Ethiopian diet. “The insurance is good because it’s saving our assets in a bad year.”
As she spoke, a heavy sky pressed down on the fields of Adi Ha. Nearby, farmers coaxed their oxen through rocky fields, hurrying to plow and plant. It felt like rain. But Biru was worried still. She expected her corn would be OK, but the teff?
“We have some doubt,” she said.
Readings at a small rain gauge across the river from one of Biru’s fields showed that, on the Ethiopian calendar for July, rain had fallen on only seven days until a thorough dousing on July 24, when 50 millimeters (2 inches) soaked the fields. Before then, the heaviest rain measured just 30 millimeters (1.2 inches).
With the green that rain has brought to Adi Ha, it’s hard to fathom just how dry the south is. And in fact Biru, far from any access to the Internet or TV, said she had not heard about the drought and suffering there.
“We are sorry about that news,” she said, worry creasing her brow. “We feel that type of drought might come to us.” And then she brightened.
“Have they bought insurance?” Biru asked. “This is one of the most important things that needs to be scaled up.”
That’s in the works. Through a new partnership, Oxfam America and the World Food Programme, together with Swiss Re, are helping to bring this insurance model—and a package of other resource-management techniques including savings, credit, and disaster risk reduction strategies—deeper into Ethiopia and across three new countries.
It won’t come in time to help families in the south, but the disaster there may finally spur some serious international interest in finding long-term solutions—like weather insurance—to the devastation drought brings.
]]>To shed more light on the impacts of food price spikes, Oxfam has created an interactive map of Food Price Volatility Pressure Points. This map shows the impacts of price spikes in some of the countries where food prices have complicated the lives of poor people and offers a chance to take action on to help address price volatility.
The map shows are areas that are highly vulnerable to price spikes, countries that have had extreme weather events contribute to global price hikes and places that have seen price spikes contribute to violence or unrest that has shaken the foundation of global stability. While this map alone does not tell the full story of how price spikes have impacted our world, it offers a global snapshot to give us a better understanding of what is happening in communities near and far.
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Failed crops—often caused by our changing climate—hit food prices hard. So does the rising cost of oil—used to grow, fertilize and transport food.
Short-sighted biofuels strategies play a part too—taking food off of people's plates and putting it into car tanks. And dysfunctional commodities markets mean that food prices go up faster and higher than they should.
But despite all these complex causes, the effects on poor people are painfully simple. Parents choose between feeding their children and feeding themselves.
Whole communities face an uncertain future, because all anyone can think about is where their next meal will come from.
It's time to grow out of food price spikes.
Food price spikes happen because of things like climate change and rising oil prices—so a major part of the solution involves getting those root causes under control.
But what's also needed is more effective global handling of food price crises when they do happen. That way, the poorest families have somewhere to turn even when things do get desperate—and when they suddenly can't afford even the meager amount they could afford a week earlier.
For our world to grow together, we need to get food price spikes under control.
]]>The innovative Saving for Change program is based on the mobilization of savings in small (20 to 25 members) groups. This approach differs from credit-based microfinance in that group members put their own money—sometimes as little as 25 cents a week—into a savings pool which is then loaned out to group members to cover emergency expenses or to start a small business. Saving for Change is now helping half a million people (primarily women, and a few men in Cambodia) with a safe and convenient place to save money, and as a source of small loans.
“This is a population that has been scarcely touched by microfinance institutions and banks,” says Jeff Ashe, the director of Oxfam America’s Community Finance program. Ashe helped introduce the Saving for Change model to Oxfam America in 2005 after carrying out an evaluation of similar programs in Nepal, India, and Zimbabwe.
With support from a grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Oxfam is studying participation in Saving for Change and how this program is helping people provide some financial stability and improve their lives. Early results from studies in Mali are showing that participation in a Saving for Change group provides a valuable buffer against shock – if a household member gets sick, money is available to cover medical costs that might otherwise tip a very poor family into destitution.
“Knowing that their family can fall back on a loan from Saving for Change to deal with an emergency helps reduce stress,” says Janina Matuszeski, research coordinator for Oxfam America’s Community Finance Program. She says that this financial confidence “helps a woman get her head up and say, ‘what’s next?’ and take some control over her financial future.”
Saving for Change is currently operating in Mali, Senegal, El Salvador, Guatemala, and Cambodia. In total, the members in these groups are currently saving more than $9 million. The money these groups save (plus the interest on loans) is distributed to the group members every year when they need it the most, usually just before the harvest when families need food and have back-to-school expenses.
“Saving for Change groups are now starting to be used as platforms to introduce ecological agriculture and business and leadership training,” Ashe says. “We also want to build on initiatives that the women have taken on themselves such as the formation of girls groups and the purchase of grain to tide the members over the ‘hungry season.’”
Saving for Change is continuing to attract members, form new groups, and study the effects of the program on group members. “The objective is to develop a mass-scale and replicable model for building village economies at a modest cost per villager,” says Ashe. “We’ll study the outcomes, and then disseminate this model broadly.”
]]>Mothers and fathers, having literally run out of options when it comes to providing the basics for their children, are burying them instead of being able to nurture them. As a parent myself, I could imagine the despair to which parents were driven in this terrible struggle to survive.
This week I got to meet some of those parents during a visit to Kenya and Somalia with former Irish President Mary Robinson, who is now the president of Oxfam International.
We saw firsthand the trauma experienced by exhausted people who were pouring into Kenya across the Somali border. They had been walking for days in some cases, supporting elderly parents, coaxing young children along, and carrying young babies. Every single coping mechanism they might have had is gone. They have typically sold their livestock, eaten or sold any crops, and run out of money to buy food if it was available.
When families were lucky enough to reach the safety of the Dadaab refugee camp, they were able to get food, water, and shelter, along with medical attention for the severely malnourished. Thousands of people are now arriving in this camp each day.
In Somalia itself, people are also desperate. Our first stop was on the side of the road where a large group of exhausted women and children were settled under some trees. We spoke with Sadia Abdul, who had walked most of the way from Birbwell – 200 km (around 125 miles) away. She had left behind conflict, and any means of earning an income was gone. The group was hungry and in desperate need of food and water. Many had the listless look of people who have gone through so much and were nearly too weak to travel farther.
As we entered the village of Dollow, there was a reception party of boys and girls singing a welcome to Mary Robinson, and signs saying how much they appreciated the Irish focus on their plight and hoping that we can make a difference for them. Many locals remembered Mary Robinson from 1992, when she visited the country.
At the clinic there, we saw babies being weighed, measured, and checked for malnutrition. Too many babies were small and underweight for their age. The real worry now is that this is still early in the "hunger season." Hunger won’t peak until around October, and the head of the clinic believed that it could be worse this time around than it was in 1992.
The clinic is overwhelmed. Staff work from early in the morning until late at night, and people are already queuing when they open. The staff members give out a high-nutrition food known as Plumpy’nut to the children who are most malnourished. But because families have nothing else, they share this among themselves and no one gets the proper nutrition.
Sodo Abdulahi Nuh, 25, was having her 14-month-old malnourished baby boy weighed. He registered just 7 kg (15 pounds) on the scale. She has three other children to care for, too. Around six children die each week at this very clinic – because they have no food.
I spoke with a woman named Sofia, who had walked 40 km (around 25 miles) from Beladlow with her eight children. Her husband was killed in Mogadishu, and she is now staying with a host family that must be struggling desperately from this additional burden. She didn’t know what she was going to do next, but her priority was to try and get food for her family.
Amina had walked 50 km (around 30 miles) from Luk with three-year-old daughter, Asha. She had already lost two children. All of her cattle died, too.
In Kenya, too, families are running out of options. Karagi village in Turkana has buried 40 of its people in the past six months - most of them children, and all due to hunger.
The most striking thing about Karagi is that we didn’t see one man of working age. These men have travelled very long distances to try and find water for their livestock – the only source of income they have. They send back money when they can. The village is entirely composed of women, children, and elderly men who are on the brink of disaster. The sense of foreboding there was palpable.
In Marsabit, we heard from a 65-year-old from Tabich Galgal. He simply said that they have no food. Some members of the community are receiving food aid, but they share what they have with others, so everyone is trying to survive on rations.
The frustration in Tabich’s voice was evident as he described how they had tried everything. It’s not that they are not doing all they can to eke out a living - it’s just that the drought has placed such a huge burden on them, he said.
Then Elena Boru explained how the lack of water is having a devastating effect on women, who have to spend most of the day collecting it. She explained that there are plenty of people in the village who are more than willing to work, to do anything to help provide for their families, and she stressed that the elderly must be taken care of.
Along our travels we saw very feeble and clearly malnourished older people – a shocking sight, considering all they have contributed to their communities during their lives.
Famine has now gripped parts of Somalia. This is the consequence of drought, climate change, conflict, entrenched poverty, and lack of investment in development. All those issues must be addressed, but first we have to deal with this humanitarian crisis. Twelve million lives are on the line, but if we act right now we can prevent further large-scale loss of life.
Oxfam is working throughout the region, providing food, clean water, and shelter, and helping people to earn a living again. We intend to reach three million people.
At the moment, Oxfam is implementing the single largest nutrition program in Mogadishu, the capital city, treating more than 12,000 severely malnourished children and pregnant and breastfeeding women. We are also providing water and sanitation for 300,000 internally displaced people and giving life-saving equipment to Somalia’s only functioning children’s hospital.
In Kenya and Ethiopia, we are giving people money through cash-for-work projects to build water tanks and reservoirs. We are trucking in water supplies for 32,000 people in Ethiopia and treating the water for drinking, cooking, washing, and keeping animals alive. We are helping people keep their livestock healthy and vaccinated. We are digging and repairing wells and boreholes, and providing sanitation and latrines.
But we can’t do it alone. We need the help of governments and the public to stop this human catastrophe from spreading and claiming greater numbers of lives.
Otherwise we are condemning countless thousands of people to a needless death.
Jim Clarken is the executive director of Oxfam Ireland.
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The mega floods of last year would have challenged any government, but the emergency response led by Pakistani authorities saved thousands of lives. However, Oxfam has expressed concern about the pace of recovery and reconstruction, which has left millions of people unnecessarily exposed to another disaster.
Husna La Shari is one survivor who is struggling to rebuild her life in Khawand La Shari in Shikapur, Sindh. Her family and community were hit hard by the flooding last July. Husna has 7 children and an elderly husband. She is responsible for providing for her entire family as her husband is too old to work. Before the floods last July, she worked on fields farming and harvesting. But after the floods, the fields are no longer fertile and Husna is struggling to feed her family. Oxfam is working in Husna’s village providing latrines and rehabilitating water pumps. Husna took part in Oxfam’s Cash for Work program in her village, clearing rubble and cleaning irrigation channels in the fields.
“It was difficult for me before the flood and it is now more difficult for me as there is no farming or harvesting. We cannot cultivate the land here this year… PDI (Oxfam’s partner) came and gave us money for doing labor. We collected whatever remained of our houses and we put it all in one place and together we cleaned the village. My husband was not capable, so I did it, I earned the money. PDI gave us kitchen pots, blankets, quilts and buckets and we are thankful as they helped us a lot. I am still in trouble to get food. How will I feed my family?”
Around 37,000 people affected by the 2010 floods are still living in camps in Sindh alone; and across the country, many of those who have returned to their villages have inadequate housing, with some still living in tents. More than 800,000 families are still without proper homes and many flood defenses, such as river embankments, destroyed in last year’s floods, have not yet been properly repaired. This increases the likelihood of breaches in future floods. For example, embankments in Sindh province have reportedly been increased by only two or three feet rather than the recommended six feet.
Neva Khan, Head of Oxfam in Pakistan, said:
“Pakistan needs to act now. Investing in measures today that reduce the impact of disasters is essential to save lives and safeguard development gains in the future. It will ensure schools built with aid funds are not washed away and that farmers can keep the crops they have toiled over. A year after Pakistan’s mega floods it’s time we learned this lesson.”
For children in the Shikapur district of Sindh, playing an interactive game is one way to avoid the risk of illness which often comes in the wake of a natural disaster. Julia Moore, a hygiene promotor for Oxfam, teaches children basic hygiene activities such as washing their hands and faces and showing them how to use a latrine.
“Pakistan is a disaster-prone country and has been flooded 67 times since 1947. Climate change will only increase the threat of floods. But while floods and earthquakes are inevitable, widespread devastation is not. For years, not enough has been done to protect ordinary Pakistani men, women, and children from disasters before they strike.” Says Kahn.
Lives and scarce resources could be saved in the future if the Pakistan government, with support from international donors, invests more in measures to reduce the impact of disasters. This could include flood resistant housing, and effective early warning systems – especially at the village level. In order to implement these programs, more funding is needed for local authorities and organizations that play a frontline role in preparing for and responding to emergencies.
]]>But, as of May 2011, a new addition is about to bring change to Hindeysa. For the last five months, Oxfam and members of the community have been drilling a well. When the finishing touches are completed, local people will finally have a reliable source of abundant water—five liters of it per second.
Shamsedin Afen, 20, says the drought has affected his entire family: his parents, sister and three brothers. “We cultivate the land, growing maize and sorghum, and keep livestock. We have 40 sheep, goats and cows.” But, their crops failing without rain, the family is relying on the food they stored from last year to see them through. Their animals are not so lucky. “We couldn’t cultivate enough forage this year to feed them--we’ve lost 13 sheep and goats.”
For Hawa Abdulayi, the situation is even worse: “I only had 20 sheep and goats, and it’s killed 10.” Because households run by women tend to be poorer and have fewer animals, drought can hit them especially hard.
There are other, routine losses, too. “Every day we lose six hours,” says Afen. That’s how long it takes to fetch water from the nearest source, the town of Dembel. “We don’t have a storage system, so we have to go each day.” What’s more, this water is only enough for people to drink. “The situation for the animals is very different--we can’t provide for them too, so we just leave them and return in the afternoon.”
When the well is completed, “a better life will come," says Afen confidently. “This will benefit both the people and the animals—not only here, but also in the surrounding communities.” He estimates that the well will improve the lives of 8,000 people in total.
Afen anticipates not just that he and his animals will have enough to drink, and that the daily trek will be over, but that irrigation could bring long-term benefits for the local food supply. “We have a lot of resources that, without water, we can’t use. With water … we can grow vegetables like potato and tomato, and fruits like watermelon, papaya, and guava.”
For Abdulayi, the well is most of all a lifeline. “I was planning to migrate to another place,” she says, “but this has revived my hope of staying here.”
The community has helped in the construction however they can: cooking for the workers who built the well, fetching water from Dembel for them, and cutting trees and clearing an area to make them a shelter out of branches. When the pump’s finished, local people plan to contribute money to help maintain it and to form a committee to make sure it’s kept clean and hygienic.
When the pump was tested and water came out, “we had a huge ceremony,” says Afen. “We did all this because we have great expectations that the well will better our lives.”
Support Oxfam's response to the current food and drought crisis in the region.
]]>The macroeconomics of the rising price of staples are complex, but its effect on the lives of three women interviewed by Oxfam America is simple: they feel it every day.
For María Antonia León, or “Toñita”, life has never been easy. She remembers a time when she earned $3 to $4 a day selling tamales, pastries and snacks from her food cart and was able to buy weekly staples to feed her family of five. With this income, she could get six pounds of beans, half a pound of cheese, half a pound of cream, four pounds of rice, eggs, a chicken, and other basics.
“Before, with $20, I was able to fill a shopping cart. Now I can’t… I spend $40 and it’s not enough. I can’t even fill a shopping basket because everything is so expensive. Beans are $2.50, and cooking oil for 15 days is $2. We just can’t manage. This current crisis is really tough,” says Toñita. She doesn’t know how she will find the money to buy shoes or clothes.
But Toñita has now found a way to provide her family with nourishing food: Inspired by Saving for Change, she has started a garden and is raising chickens for their eggs. Saving for Change is an Oxfam program that encourages women to use the capital generated through their savings groups to participate in projects that help them achieve a sustainable livelihood. One such project seeks to promote women’s production capacity, entrepreneurial, and self-reliance skills by helping them establish vegetable gardens.
With her garden, Toñita has a new means to feed her family and avoid paying the high prices at the market. The cucumbers, radishes, tomatoes, peppers, cabbage, and mustard greens she is growing are providing her family with the vitamins and proteins they weren’t getting before. And now she is teaching other women in her community how to do the same thing. The best part is she sells her extra produce at below market prices to her neighbors facing similar difficulties.
Ana Elizabeth Barrera works at a market in the city of Santa Tecla. She cooks and sells prepared foods, and therefore intimately knows the issue of rising food prices. Ana Elizabeth has seen the price of staples climb steadily over the past five years, but notes an accelerated rise of 60 to 70 percent in the past year, most notably with oil, rice, beans and sugar.
“Six to eight months ago I would invest $100 for oil, rice and other basics, and today I am spending between $150-160 which buys the same amount. Consequently, I have to raise my prices, which means that sales have gone down,” says Ana Elizabeth. She has lost 40 percent of her clientele and has had to let go one of her two employees.
Iris Madrid finds herself in a vulnerable position after losing her job a few weeks ago. Although her income was modest, it was stable and allowed her to buy basic items for her home and support her three children. Now, without a salary and facing rising food costs, she depends on her mother who sells beauty products via catalog.
“If there is detergent, then there is no soap. Or if we have soap, then we have no detergent. If we have beans, then we won’t be eating cheese. If we have cheese, we won’t be eating beans… It hurts because when you have children and they ask you for something, you can’t give it to them,” explains Iris. There are days when all they eat are the mangos from the tree outside her house.
Saving for Change is a program that is growing every day. Since its launch in 2005, it has grown to more than 488,000 members in five countries. The hope is that it will continue to grow and reach people like Ana Elizabeth and Iris, like it has reached Toñita.
]]>Awalay, who has nine children, has lived here her whole life. Since the death of one of her sons, she has single-handedly raised five of her grandchildren---a task made all the more difficult by an increasingly punishing climate.
“Here we are agro-pastoralists – farmers who also keep livestock. We depend on rain-fed crops but in the last few years drought has come frequently and led to crop failure,” said Awalay. “I used to have 100 sheep and goats, but now I have less than 30.”
This year, a climate phenomenon known as La Nina has made the situation worse, causing drought across East Africa, which in turn has depleted the remaining pasture. For Awalay, whose livelihood has been wrecked by the last few years, this is the final straw.
“Livestock are our capital, but they are dying.,” she said. “There’s no forage, no grain, nothing for them to eat during the dry season. Because of the drought, everything is scarce. We don’t know what to do. We are waiting for Allah from the sky.”
The small ponds which usually provide Gobablay with water have dried up, so people leave at 5 a.m., and again in the evening, to traipse dirt roads to get water.
All around the Shinile zone, the story is the same.
“I have more children than animals now,” said Muuse Xoosh, joking before he grew more serious. “Now, even if I went to market and sold my animals, the money wouldn’t cover my living costs.”
A father of eight children, Xoosh currently depends on day labor for an income.
“I have no other means of surviving,” he said.
But this work is not reliable, as Abdi Bille, a father of seven, knows. When he doesn’t get work, he cuts down on meals, eating just once or twice a day--- a far cry from the days when he could depend on his cattle for milk, meat, and income for other food.
But in the last few months, Awalay, Xoosh, and Bille and thousands like them have at least been able to rely on one source of income: Oxfam’s cash-for-work projects. By helping construct fences, trenches, dams, and other structures that protect and improve the pasture and farmland, they earn a steady income for weeks at a time.
“The money has absolutely changed the lives of me and my family”, says Xoosh, who earned $75 from two months of employment. “I used it to pay for my family’s daily expenses including food and clothes. Since we’re poor, the children lacked clothes”.
Awalay put her $91 towards food and clothes too, and her grandchildren’s education.
“In the past when my grandson asked me for school supplies, I couldn’t give him anything," she said. "But now when he says ‘I lost my pen’ or ‘I need a book’, I can get him one”.
The income isnnot just keeping people going it also means they don’t have to migrate to seek better conditions elsewhere.
Support Oxfam's response to the current food and drought crisis in the region.
]]>Unfortunately, that’s just what happened in September and October 2010. Abdoulaye N’Dao, a gregarious retired electrician with grey dread locks says the flooding in 2010 “was the most difficult compared to earlier ones… there was a lot more water.” He says his house had water up to his ankles in some of the rooms; he and his extended family of 25 people were bailing water out of the house and its courtyard for days. “Maybe crocodiles and frogs can live like that,” he says months later sitting in his now drier courtyard, “but not people.”
The heavy rains of 2010 triggered the fifth year in a row of serious flooding in Pikine, and capped off one of the rainiest years for Senegal since 1971. Dakar got a total of 20 inches, more than twice the normal amount of annual rainfall. Oxfam already was working with an organization in Pikine called Eau-Vie-Environnement (Water-Life-Environment, or EVE for short), and deployed $295,000 from Oxfam’s “Saving Lives 24/7 Fund” to help EVE respond.
The needs were urgent in Pikine: Oxfam and EVE estimated that 150,000 people in 3,600 families were badly affected, either completely displaced or living in flooded homes. With help from Oxfam, EVE planned an aggressive response, which included:
A fast survey of the worst-affected areas of Pikine, to identify families in the most need: EVE and Oxfam decided to focus its assistance on 2,812 families (roughly 30,000 people) primarily in seven of Pikine’s 16 districts.
Supporting 116 pumps, to remove water from 643 homes, 7 schools, and 18 mosques: EVE supplied fuel for pumps that moved more than a million cubic meters of water, which is something like 264 million gallons, enough to fill more than 400 Olympic swimming pools. This took 15,000 liters (about 4,000 gallons) of fuel. EVE worked with local authorities to help remove water from 228 roads in Pikine.
Removing waste: household garbage and other waste pose a severe health threat, so EVE supported the removal of 3,000 cubic meters (roughly 105,000 cubic feet) of garbage.
Delivering sand: to build up low-lying areas and shore up buildings at risk of being submerged, EVE delivered 10 truckloads of sand to each of seven districts in the city.
Promoting good hygiene: EVE distributed 2,806 hygiene kits with soap, bleach, clean buckets for storing water, mosquito nets, and water purification tablets. In follow-up visits, EVE estimated that 93.8 percent of the households it visited were using adequate methods to treat water, and that these and other measures likely helped reduce diarrhea cases from 3.12 percent of the households to 1.48 percent.
Direct financial support: With funds from Oxfam, EVE allocated 40, 000 CFA francs (about US$80) to more than 1,500 of the most severely affected households, so they could buy food, medicine, and clothing.
Abdou Diouf, the executive secretary of EVE, says Oxfam did not just provide some assistance during the crisis and then withdraw along with the flood water. “This is the first time since Pikine has experienced these floods, that an [international] organization has intervened during the flooding and has decided to continue intervening after the flooding,” he says during an interview in his office in Pikine in April. Diouf says EVE was able to use a small amount of money left over from a grant from Oxfam to deal with floods in 2009 to prepare for the 2010 rainy season. When the heavy rains hit in 2010, volunteer assessment teams were already in place and trained to take action.
Oxfam also is supporting EVE’s work in 2010 to help local governments to lobby for funding they can use to improve drainage systems, and keep the pumps running in chronically flooded areas of the city.
Diouf also says the cash transfers represented “… a revolution in our intervention this year. People really appreciated this; I had people coming to the office here to specifically thank EVE and Oxfam for the money.”
Each recipient got about 40,000 CFA francs, which is about US$85. It’s unusual for an aid organization to provide money instead of food, clothing, water, and other assistance. But it allows those affected by the flood to spend the money on what they need the most, rather than what an aid organization decides is best for them.
When Assiatou Niang got her cash, she immediately thought about food. “We had no food, so I bought a bag of rice,” she says. With 30 people living in the household, including most of her nine children as well as those of her injured sister, food was a priority. “I also needed cement to repair the house, and I needed money for daily expenses around the household.” Niang is 58, and recently widowed. The cash helped her feed her family and cover other expenses for about a month over the winter.
Distributing cash is also economically efficient, according to Isaac Massaga, Oxfam’s program officer based in Dakar. “If you distribute rice in a community, you are preventing the local dealers from selling their own stock,” he says. “By helping people access food in the local market, we also help suppliers, and at the same time it helps maintain the market.”
EVE and Oxfam found a credit union that supervised the distribution of the funds to only those with vouchers provided by EVE according to the results of its household surveys. EVE transferred more than US$130,000 to families in Pikine.
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