“By early 2009, about 452,000 hectares of land had been allocated in Ghana, including a single allocation of 400 hectares for the cultivation of jatropha and related plants for bio-fuels” said Kingsley Offei-Nkansah, the secretary of Ghana Agricultural Workers Union (GAWU) and Chairman of Food Security Policy Advocacy Network (FOODSPAN), the lead speaker at the press conference. “Even though the country is yearning for foreign investments, this new wave of land deals is not the new investment in agriculture that millions of Ghanaians have been waiting for.”
At 2.47 acres per hectare, this puts more than a million acres of land under cultivation of biofuel crops instead of food in Ghana, where experts are concerned that more than a million people in the country of nearly 25 million are facing shortages of food.
Continued Offei-Nkansah; “the government must put in place effective national regulations and enforcements to ensure that land owners provide secure access to land for small scale farmers, especially women.” He went on to say that women constitute the largest part of the agricultural labor force in Ghana accounting for more than 50 percent of farmers and producing more than 70 percent of the total food consumed.
Oxfam’s country director in Ghana, Sebastian Tiah, noted that the only way out of the dire food insecurity threatening more than 1.2 million people in the country is support to rural women farmers. “Supporting women is equal to reducing poverty and underdevelopment,” he said.
The press conference was part of Oxfam’s GROW campaign to urge policy makers to do more to support small-scale farmers and improve the access to food for the poorest people in the world.
]]>On Monday August 29th, Melini and Maldonado received anonymous threatening letters at their office. The threats were made following a presidential candidates’ debate on oil and mining issues in Guatemala convened by CALAS and moderated by Melini. CALAS has also recently denounced an attempt by the Guatemalan government to illegally approve a license for gas exploitation in an important Guatemalan protected area called “Punta de Manabique”.
Violence and tensions in Guatemala have intensified in the run-up to the country’s presidential elections on September 11. Large-scale mining operations in particular have been the source of protest, violence, and human rights violations since the early 2000s.
CALAS has sought to promote informed debate about the costs and benefits of oil and mining in the country and to promote greater respect for the rights of indigenous communities.
In 2009, Melini was seriously wounded in an assassination attempt. “I won’t be intimidated by these threats,” Melini said in a statement. “I will continue the struggle to defend human rights and protect Guatemala’s environment.”
Oxfam America has provided financial support to CALAS since 2005. The organization is a key partner in the global Right to Know/Right to Decide campaign for reform of the extractive industries.
“The ongoing threats against Yuri Melini and other human rights and environmental activists in Guatemala are completely unacceptable,” said Keith Slack, manager of Oxfam America’s oil, gas and mining program. “All Guatemalans have a right to express their opinion about mining and other kinds of development activity without fear of threats or violence.”
Oxfam America calls on the Guatemalan government to ensure Yuri Melini’s and Rafael Maldonado physical safety and to thoroughly investigate the origins of these threats.
Update - October 28, 2011During August and September 2011, Oxfam America supporters sent more than 12,000 emails to the president of Guatemala in support of Yuri Melini. On October 4, Melini sent the following letter in response to this outpouring of support :
"On behalf of the Guatemalan Center for Legal, Social and Environmental Action (CALAS) I would like to profoundly thank Oxfam America for its demonstration of solidarity and support, particularly for the urgent action carried out by the offices in Central America (CAMEXCA) and Washington, DC on behalf of Rafael Maldonado, our legal coordinator and myself, in the face of death threats of which we were the targets last August.
We sincerely appreciate the support that Oxfam’s supporters provided us, as well as actions by the president of Oxfam America, such as the letter sent to the US Ambassador in Guatemala, which demonstrated the interest and concern for our security and physical safety and that of the entire CALAS team.
This action and the other gestures were a strong backing and support to our work as human rights defenders and to our work in defense of the rights of communities to be informed and to decide on extractive industries in their territories, particularly because these activities put at risk the environment and communities’ present and future quality of life.
Sincerely,
Dr. Yuri Gionvanni Melini, Director General, CALAS"
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This emergency is so enormous, it is hard to grasp. We consider the Haiti earthquake of 2010 a huge disaster, and it was. It affected three million people, and it will be years before the recovery is complete. But in East Africa, the food crisis has already struck 12 million people, and the numbers are rising quickly.
To take the Haiti comparison further, it was challenging to deliver aid to Haiti because the port and airport were badly damaged by the quake, but in East Africa it’s even more difficult: We need to reach people in multiple countries spread out across a huge land area. Many are living in remote, hard-to-access areas, and some are caught in the midst of armed conflict.
And in Haiti, lives hung in the balance for the first 10 or 15 days while rescuers tried to free survivors trapped under the rubble; in East Africa the period of acute, life-threatening danger will be measured not in days but in months.
Oxfam is working in drought- and famine-affected areas of Somalia, Ethiopia, and Kenya. We're supporting farmers and pastoralists with seeds, tools, livestock, veterinary care for their animals, and water. For those who have already been uprooted by the food shortage, we have set up water and sanitation facilities in the camps. And for children who have been too hungry for too long, we are providing therapeutic feeding. We are also distributing food, but where possible, we are providing cash grants and cash-for-work programs to enable people to purchase their own food from local markets. By "we" we mean not only Oxfam but also the local organizations we are supporting.
Yes. Oxfam partners are now providing clean water and sanitation to 300,000 displaced Somalis in the camps outside Mogadishu. This is the largest public health program in the country. Partners are also running the largest therapeutic feeding program in Mogadishu: They are admitting 3,000 children a day. We have partners in other hard-hit areas of the country who are providing cash relief and cash-for-work programs, as well as water for people and livestock. In all, Oxfam partners are reaching more than 800,000 people with aid in Somalia.
Famine has very specific criteria: if 20 percent of the population of a region is eating fewer than 2,100 calories a day and accessing less than four liters of water, 30 percent of the children are experiencing acute malnutrition, and the death rate exceeds two per day per 10,000, the situation is designated a famine. What it means is that all systems have failed. The specificity of the definition helps ensure that the word isn’t used lightly. When we say famine, we mean this is no time for politics, blame, or delays. People are in a life-and-death struggle, and a failure to act will have drastic consequences.
There are four key contributors to the crisis: a drought that has lasted several years; a spike in food prices; armed conflict in Somalia, and chronic poverty.
Some areas are experiencing the worst drought in 60 years. Climate change threatens to lengthen and deepen weather-related disasters like this all over the world.
In some parts of the region, 60 percent-90 percent of the livestock has died; that combined with crop failures has driven food prices out of reach and forced people to try and survive on wild fruits and plants that can't sustain them.
At the root of the food crisis is poverty. On a good day in Ethiopia, Kenya, and Somalia, much of the population is living on less than $1 a day. Without savings or an effective government safety net, failed rains can push millions to the brink of starvation.
Once again, we are seeing what happens when climate change and poverty collide. For people who are barely eking out a living from the land, even small changes to the environment can be devastating. Unless communities are able to build their resilience, we will be looking at more food crises and more famines in the future.
We enter this response and all emergency responses with the understanding that people have the right to lives of security and dignity. At times of disaster, governments have the responsibility to uphold those rights and provide good-quality assistance. When a government lacks the capacity—or the willingness—to launch an effective disaster response, Oxfam steps in to help. Once on the ground, we work with governments to whatever extent we can, as a means of building their capacity to respond effectively to future emergencies.
An international organization shouldn't go into a community with its own inflexible agenda. Local people have a good sense of what's needed and what will work, and their participation in projects is crucial—from concept to planning to final product. At Oxfam America, we help community members take a leadership role in disaster and development projects—not only to improve the quality and sustainability of the projects but also to build people’s confidence in their capacity to advocate for themselves. Even if a community never experiences another emergency, it needs to be strong and organized to take steps out of poverty. It may need to call for better health care, better education opportunities, better representation in the political process. To do that effectively, it takes confidence and a strong voice as a community. We try to foster that.
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 help saves lives in East Africa.
]]>The crisis has ensnared more than 10 million people across the Horn of Africa, but it’s in Somalia, plagued by years of conflict, where families are facing the gravest threats.
The United Nations uses a five-step scale to assess a country’s food security—or the ability of its people to access sufficient food to meet their needs and ensure active, healthy lives. The fifth stage is “famine/humanitarian catastrophe.” It’s declared when malnutrition rates climb higher than 30 percent, when more than two people out of 10,000 die each day, and when food is limited to less than 2,100 calories a day per person.
Rarely does one overriding factor cause a famine. Usually, a series of circumstances in concert are the trigger. In Somalia, a two-year drought has caused record food inflation, with the price of red sorghum, a grain, rocketing 240 percent higher now than it was this time last year. And the next harvest is expected to be just 50 percent of normal.
The drought has also killed much of the livestock on which herders in the region depend for food and income. In some areas, up to 90 percent of the animals have died. Without those assets, families have lost a great deal of their purchasing power. And making matters worse is the internal conflict gripping Somalia—a severe discouragement to development.
But underlying all of this has been the inability of Somalia’s government and donors to tackle the country’s chronic poverty, which has marginalized vulnerable people and weakened their ability to cope: There has been a lack of investment in social services and basic infrastructure and a lack of good governance.
In Somalia, and beyond to Ethiopia and Kenya, donors have reacted too late and too cautiously to the drought and food crisis. According to United Nations figures, $1 billion is required to meet immediate needs. Donors have committed less than $200 million, leaving an $800 million gap.
Humanitarian relief is desperately needed to save lives. But longer-term solutions are needed to address underlying problems.
The international community needs to provide more support for small farmers and herders. Parts of Africa have long faced chronic food shortages, where even small disruptions in harvests can result in terrible consequences for people. Small-scale food producers need help with hardier crops, cheaper inputs, and disaster risk management.
To alleviate rural African poverty, more investment is needed in physical infrastructure, such as roads and communication systems.
Ultimately, famine prevention in Africa rests with African governments. But some need help to rid their countries of conflict and to build democratically responsive, accountable, and transparent institutions so they can address fundamental problems of food production and access.
The famine in Somalia is now the fifth large-scale food crisis in Africa in this century—at a time when famine has been eradicated everywhere else. It serves as a wakeup call for long-term solutions to ensure that it doesn’t happen again.
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 help save lives in East Africa.
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Hardest hit is the triangle that includes south and central Somalia, southern Ethiopia, and northern Kenya, parts of which have suffered from the lowest recorded rainfall since 1950 and 1951. In the northeast Kenyan district of Wajir, just 100 millimeters of rain fell in the last 12 months—one quarter of the yearly average, which already was barely enough.
The price of staples, such as rice and corn, has spiked to record levels in many areas, and hundreds of thousands of animals, on which people depend for food and income, have died. In parts of Ethiopia and Kenya, 60 percent or more of the herds have perished. Livestock markets have collapsed, leaving people with far less purchasing power than before.
Oxfam is now responding to the crisis by providing life-saving water, sanitation services, food, and cash. The organization aims to reach 3 million people, including 700,000 in Ethiopia, 1.3 million in Kenya, and 500,000 in Somalia, where conflict has increased people’s suffering and malnutrition rates are climbing. Nearly half the children from southern Somalia seeking safety in Ethiopian refugee camps are arriving malnourished, according to the United Nations.
Drought-triggered emergencies have become increasingly common in the region, where many families make their livings as herders. The rains have failed in at least five of the last seven years. When grazing lands shrivel and ponds dry up, the pressure on herding families becomes extreme, often forcing them to travel great distances in search of necessities like water and pasture.
While immediate assistance will help people survive, it is not enough—not in the face of repeated drought, which has now become the norm in the region. Governments and the international community need to treat this as a long-term problem as well as an urgent crisis.
And that has been Oxfam’s approach in Ethiopia where the organization works with local partner groups to provide emergency aid that also helps communities build their resilience to future hardship. Oxfam aims to reduce people’s risk to disaster by linking its emergency response to community projects that will make villages stronger in the years ahead.
A good example of that kind of link is the dam Oxfam helped construct in the rugged northern region of Tigray following the 2008 global food crisis, which hit as severe drought also had a stranglehold on many parts of the country. The combined crisis snared millions of Ethiopians.
Together with the Tigray regional government and the Women’s Association of Tigray, Oxfam built an earthen dam across a gulch in the hills of Boye Gararsa, allowing run-off from rain to pool into a lake behind the dam. The lake now provides a year-round source of water for more than 26,000 animals and 5,500 people, saving them from having to trudge with their water jugs to the nearest source 11 miles away—a trip they had to make any time their local ponds dried up.
Through a cash-for-work program during the crisis, Oxfam also ensured villagers had access to other essentials they needed for survival. Oxfam and the women’s association engaged local men and women to build terraces and trenches on the slopes around the lake to prevent dirt from running off and clogging it. Those soil conservation measures will help ensure their new lake has a long life. And the money that workers earned provided their families with a cushion, preventing them from having to sell off their assets, such as animals, to get cash to meet their basic needs.
Oxfam is now working with the women’s association on a plan to build drinking troughs for the animals and a treatment system to ensure the supply is clean for families.
“It was easier to give our children bread than water,” said Letebrhan Abera of the days before the dam. “We feared when our children asked for water. This dam has brought a lot of change.”
During the 2008 crisis, change is what some of the herders in Ethiopia’s southern Guji Zone said they wanted. A big change.
Depending only on animals raised on the hard-packed plains of Liben had become too difficult in the face of constant drought and other challenges such as the encroachment of brush on pasture and the privatization of common lands. So the herders asked if Oxfam would help with the development of a small-scale irrigation project along the banks of the Dawa River.
A total of 201 families joined the project and reaped a bountiful first harvest on 50.25 hectares of tilled land. Mishaps, including a flood that washed out the first pump house, dampened the herders’ enthusiasm for a while. But a new pump has been installed, two development agents and a supervisor have been assigned to the site, and families have now planted 85 percent of the available land.
In May, as drought gripped parts of southern Ethiopia, hope for the future ran high in the village of Melka Guba, where many of the small-scale irrigation participants live.
“With irrigation we can continuously produce,” said Alio Kuto, who owns animals but had also done rain-fed farming in the past. “We can harvest and at the same time plant.”
Support Oxfam's response to the current food and drought crisis in the region.
]]>Since the “precautionary measures” were issued by the IAHRC one year ago, mining has continued at the Marlin Mine, run by Goldcorp, despite local concerns about pollution and negative effects on the culture of 18 different Maya communities near the mine.
“The affected communities care the most about three fundamental things: water, the forest, and soil,” says Yuri Melini, Director of the Center for Environmental, Social and Legal Action (CALAS), speaking at a public event in Guatemala City. “They depend on these resources to live.”
People in communities near the Marlin Mine, in the western highlands of San Marcos, are reporting problems with access to drinking water and pollution, displacement from farming land, and threats and intimidation directed at people who openly criticize the mine.
Lack of action on the part of the government to comply with the precautionary measures led a delegation of representatives from civil society groups, including residents of San Miguel Ixtahuacán, the site of the Marlin Mine, to meet with the Minister of Energy and Mining Alfredo Pokus. “The Ministry of Energy and Mining has found no legal basis upon which to suspend the mine,” Pokus reported, and added that his ministry “is very concerned about the situation and has placed a delegate to supervise the area, 24 hours a day.”
"Oxfam is urging the government of Guatemala to comply with the precautionary measures,” says Juliana Turqui, Oxfam America’s program officer based in Guatemala. “The government had proven unable to control the negative impacts of mining activity, or prevent greater damage to the local population. We think that the suspension of the mine will alleviate the tense situation, and will help to guarantee better living conditions, security, and of protection of the human rights of the people in San Miguel Ixtahuacán.”
Sign our petition, which we will hand deliver to the Guatemalan Government.
]]>“This report aims to evaluate the performance of government in managing the challenges the emerging oil sector presents and to draw attention to issues that need immediate action by the government and its partners,” said Mohammed Amin Adam, the group’s convener, quoting from the report during the launch. “These challenges include, among others, addressing the large gaps in the legal framework …so the country can make the most out of the billions of dollars the government will receive from revenue in the oil sector.”
He revealed that the report scored the country a C, which many a commentator saw during the launch as a fair enough mark.
“The space for CSO engagement has been opened with the launch of this report,” said Steve Manteaw, chairman of the group.
“A big milestone has been achieved by the civil society in Ghana,” added Moussa Ba, Oxfam America’s West Africa regional coordinator for extractive industries. “This report raises key issues of transparency and accountability in the oil sector and opens the space for proactive and constructive dialogue among the relevant stakeholders.”
Oil was discovered in Ghana in commercial quantities in 2007. And with the commencement of production last December, after more than three years of intensive and intricate work and the injection of more than $3.5 billion dollars by licensed oil interests, there have been fears that the economic and democratic gains of the past two decades could be eroded by a sudden surge of oil wealth. Large-scale corruption and internal strife have followed the discovery of oil and its wealth in many developing countries. What is more, West Africa, with its abundance and diversity of mineral resources still records one of the highest rates of poverty in the world. But Ghana’s government officials have repeatedly allayed these fears.
Civil society organizations have been engaging the various arms of government with a view to ensuring that adequate regulatory mechanisms and a legal framework are in place to guarantee accountability and probity in the management of the envisaged proceeds from oil.
“With the commencement of oil production and the general elections coming up next year, all eyes are on Ghana to get it right,” said Adam. “After more than a decade of sustained international focus on addressing the ‘resource curse,’ and after a failed experiment in Chad designed to turn oil revenues into poverty reduction, many have pinned their hopes on our country.”
Ishac Diwan, Ghana’s country director of World Bank, commended the initiative of putting the report together.
“Oil could be managed better than gold to become a blessing in Ghana. Oil brings with it technological development and economic stability, but these processes take some time,” he said. “We are talking about first oil, mind you, and a production capacity of about 70,000 barrels per day. The potential could be there for several million barrels per day and that poses a different challenge. I have no doubt whatsoever about Ghana’s ability to manage this, judging by the way things are going.”
Ian Gary, Oxfam America’s senior policy manager for extractive industries, noted that Oxfam America has been working with civil society organizations in Ghana since 2007 when oil was found in the country.
“The progress made is significant in preparing for the oil sector,” said Gary. “There is a perceptible degree of openness. However, there is still need for transparency in issues pertaining to contracts, a legal framework for an independent regulatory authority, and strong environmental regulations.”
“The civil society in Ghana has assisted the Parliament in Ghana in no small measure in making laws that will make oil a blessing and not a curse,” said Moses Asaga, the parliamentary chairman of the Sub-committee on Energy and Mines. “The Parliament should also be commended. People should be appreciative of the inherent difficulties as there are no perfect laws. There will always be avenues for improvement.”
He noted that very wide consultations were made and various interests addressed in the making of the Petroleum Revenue Management Bill and that work has also commenced on the Local Content Bill. He said he was of the view that there should be open and competitive bidding for oil blocs in the western region of Ghana. “The platform will push for it to be extended to the other parts of the country,” noted Adam.
Inusa Fuseini, Ghana’s deputy minister of energy and mines, said that the report raises very interesting issues that will guide government action with regard to the petroleum industry.
“At every stage in this process government has been guided by the desire to ensure transparency and accountability in the oil industry,” he said. “This has been evidenced in the content of the emerging legal instruments which witnessed extensive consultations and addressed important issues such as institutional arrangement, economic and environmental challenges, and energy concerns.”
He described the launch of the report as “a giant step toward the realization of the dream of Ghana”.