“When my kids are having fun, when they’re not hungry, when they jump left, right, and center, that’s the most pleasure I get,” she said.

But with rain in short supply, Senussi is worried about what the future will hold. Across the Sahel region of West Africa, a number of conditions are converging that could trigger a new food crisis. Low rainfall and water levels, poor harvests, lack of pasture, and high food prices are all causing serious problems, even as people are still trying to recover from the last food crisis in 2010 which affected 10 million of them.

“If the rain does not fall, it will be a disaster for us,” said Senussi. “The animals and the people need the rainy season. Pastures grow during the rainy season. Without rain there is no life. We’ll have to migrate but now we don’t know what will become of us.”

For many families, hunger is a hardship they have long endured.

“Usually, a family should eat three times a day, but now that is not the case,” said Koubra Hamid, a 40-year-old mother of eight children who lives in Sallal, Chad. She has only enough food to prepare one meal a day for her family—a ball made of rice or flour and served with a sauce.

That single meal a day is all Hamid’s family has had for several years. They don’t have the resources for more. To buy grain in the market, families may first have to sell one of their animals to get cash.

“If we had animals, we could feed our children more often,” she said, but as the pastureland has shrunk, so has the size of their herd. And in the harsh calculus herders know well, the 13 camels Hamid’s family has held onto don’t add up to full stomachs for her children.

“To prepare two meals a day in one household like ours, the head of the family should own at least 30 animals,” said Hamid. “Our only source of income comes from the rain. Rain falls, grass grows, animals graze this grass, then we sell the animals to provide for us. If the rain doesn’t fall, we cannot talk of life here.”

Nor is it easy to speak of hunger and its devastating consequences.

“The truth is, we don’t have the right to say that someone has died because of hunger,” said Ashta Hamid, Senussi’s older sister. “We cover this and say they died because they were sick, but really, lack of food kills.”

In Chad, where crop production from a recent harvest was down 50 percent, reports have indicated that 13 out of 22 regions could be affected by food insecurity.

Oxfam is gearing up to address the needs of the most vulnerable people in the region and in some places across the Sahel the organization has already been working with communities to increase their resilience.

In the village of Kouzi Wahid in northern Chad, Fatna Bakhit is growing tomatoes, watermelons, turnips, and onions with seeds and gardening tools she received from Oxfam. She’s counting on the produce to help tide her family over: The last harvest was poor and they lost most of their crops. And her husband has now gone off to look for work.

“When this effort bears fruit, I will be able to take care of my small family whilst awaiting support from my husband,” said Bakhit.

Known as Section 1504 or the “Cardin-Lugar” provision of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, the law requires oil, gas and mining companies to disclose the payments they make to host governments for the exploration and extraction of oil and minerals. However, the American Petroleum Institute (API) and its oil company members are fighting back, threatening to sue the SEC, the regulatory agency responsible for issuing final rules, unless it withdraws its proposal and starts from scratch.

“The SEC has a strict mandate from Congress to follow the letter of the law and should not cave in to those who don’t want to,” said Ian Gary, senior policy manager of Oxfam America’s oil, gas and mining program. ”Our campaign aims to send a strong message that we’re watching, and ready to fight back if the regulatory agency issues weak final rules.”

The campaign, which includes a number of activities, will kick off on Friday in Washington, DC in front of the SEC, where activists will depict the oil and gas industry’s wooing of the regulatory agency.  Representing SEC commissioners and oil company executives, the activists will act out a number of scenes, including pillow fights, champagne toasts and snuggling to convey the message that they may be getting in bed together to undermine the law.

The activists will then head to Houston, Texas on February 16th to gather in front of the Chevron Building downtown. Dressed as the three wise monkeys embodying the principle “see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil,” the action will shine a light on the yawning gap between the transparency rhetoric of the industry and the reality of their actions, which has never been more apparent until now.

“The oil and gas industry loves to trumpet their support of international transparency initiatives and their tax contributions to the US government, but when a new law requires them to tell the public exactly how much gets paid to whom around the world, they bring out the lobbyists and lawyers,” said Gary.

To coincide with these activities, Oxfam America, Global Witness and a number of organizations are supporting a six-figure advertising campaign calling on the oil industry to stop fighting transparency. The ads will begin running February 13th online in the Washington Post, Politico, Huffington Post and The Hill and in print in the Wall Street Journal.

While the oil industry continues fighting transparency, some companies, such as Talisman Energy, Statoil, AngloGold Ashanti and Newmont Mining, are embracing it. They already disclose payments in every country of operation and in some cases they volunteer this information at a project level. Some companies have complained that local laws might prevent them from disclosing this information, but companies have been unable to show the SEC a single example proving their argument.

In fact, investors representing more than $1.2 trillion in assets under management welcomed the law and draft rules the SEC issued in December 2010. Furthermore, outside the United States, the transparency movement continues to grow rapidly with the European Commission introducing a legislative proposal in October 2011. The legislative directive requires similar disclosures by oil, gas and mining companies. The European Parliament and Commission are likely to issue a final law later this year.  Oil companies are also actively lobbying in Brussels to weaken the proposed legislation.

“It’s time to blow the whistle on the industry’s transparent hypocrisy,” said Gary. “For more than 1.5 billion people living on less than two dollars a day in resource-rich countries, there’s no time left to wait.”

“This Valentine’s Day give a life-changing gift through Oxfam America Unwrapped,” said Stephanie Kurzina, vice president for development and communications at Oxfam America.   “Favorites such as a dozen chicks or honey bees go a long way in fighting poverty and hunger around the world while giving you a unique way to show a loved one you care.”

Oxfam America’s Unwrapped catalog offers items that symbolically represent the organization’s lifesaving work, and each purchase is a contribution toward Oxfam’s many programs that help people living in poverty throughout the world.

Oxfam America is offering a selection of more than 70 gifts at a range of prices, including Valentine’s Day favorites such as goats, books for kids, or a grove of “miracle trees.” All gift contributions are general donations to support Oxfam America’s mission of fighting poverty, hunger and social injustice in over 90 countries around the world. Gifts are fully tax-deductible.  For more information on how to gift better this holiday season, visit OxfamGifts.com.

Camera-ready art and Oxfam America spokespeople are available to the press.

A shorter commitment won't get the job done. It takes time to help people build skills and infrastructure, to get policies changed, and to ensure that governments spend their money more effectively.

Smart development demands monitoring and evaluation. Organizations should be accountable to report not only what they do, but also how they measure it. Don't believe stories that guarantee long-term impact after one or two years' investment; that's barely time to lay some groundwork.

We all crave the easy answer, the quick solution, but if eradicating poverty were simple, people living in poverty would have sorted it out long ago. They may lack resources like land, but they certainly don't lack intelligence or insight. Poverty is a global challenge—one that we can overcome together, but listening and learning from people living in poverty, and developing solutions with them, takes time and sustained effort.

This issue of OXFAMExchange includes inspiring stories, but they are just snapshots from a family album: moments in a long journey together. Each story is ultimately about perseverance and the need for long-term commitment.

In a new report, Crises in a New World Order, Oxfam said that while governments’ and agencies’ response to emergencies has greatly improved it still remains ‘too little, too late’ and is often determined by the vagaries of media and political interest rather than level of human need.

“Coping with the expected strains on the humanitarian system will mean a shift from global to local. We are already seeing the center of humanitarian action moving away from the Western world to the local and the national but this move needs to accelerate.

International aid agencies cannot just pitch up, patch up and push-off, they also have to ensure that people and countries are better prepared to withstand future shocks. Having local organisations already on the ground that are primed to go will increase both the speed and the efficiency of the aid effort and ultimately will save more lives,” said Jane Cocking Oxfam’s Humanitarian Director.

This shift is vital as significant demands will be placed on the humanitarian system through the expected rise in the number of people exposed to disasters, the rising number of weather-related disasters and the failure to resolve conflicts adequately and turn round failed states.

Humanitarian work can be effective in an emergency but more emphasis should be placed on preventing crises from escalating. Not only would it save lives, but it would also save money. The UN estimated that in Niger in 2005 it cost $1 to save a malnourished child’s life. Once Niger’s food crisis was in full swing it cost $80.

Too little has been done to prevent and reduce the risk of disaster. Aid to programs that reduce the risk of disaster stood at only 0.5 per cent of total aid spending in 2009. National governments have committed themselves to this work by signing up to the international agreements on disaster risk reduction. While many have developed policies and legislation too little effective action has happened.

Bangladesh is an example of the importance of this work. In 1991 a cyclone struck Bangladesh killing an estimated 140,000 people. A similar sized cyclone hit the country in 2007 killing 3,406 people, still a high death toll but much reduced due in part to the government’s efforts at implementing early warnings and evacuating people to safety.

“Shifting more money to preventing and reducing the risk of disaster makes eminent sense but it does not mean taking it away from urgent humanitarian response. It is not the case of either or. We will still need the funds to immediately respond to dire human crises,” said Cocking.

This vision of a new humanitarian world is fraught with challenges. Ensuring the quality of aid and the principles that guide humanitarian action will not be easy.

Over the last two decades a great deal of effort has been done to lay down minimum standards and quality of humanitarian aid. National governments and local organisations will need a great deal of support, and in some cases encouragement, to adhere to these standards.

The more fundamental challenge will be upholding the principles of impartiality – aid based on need - and independence – aid free of political interest. Many Western donors tend to focus on their spheres of influence and interest which may not coincide always with meeting human need. Non-Western donors are now becoming more important funders of humanitarian operations. But they too have their own particular interests. For example the Arab and Muslim countries in 2011 gave generously to Somalia, Libya and Yemen. These decisions reflect political and cultural affinities but also raise questions of how aid is to be targeted to human need.

New entrants into the operations of humanitarian aid will pose challenges to impartiality and independence. The increased involvement of the private sector in supporting the aid effort is welcome and has many benefits but running aid programmes themselves will challenge humanitarian principles given that commercial interest sits uncomfortably with putting human need first and foremost.

 
Read the report here.

Western-based donors, INGOs and the UN provide only part of the answer. Already, new donors and NGOs from around the world provide a significant share of humanitarian aid. Future humanitarian action will rely on them, and on the governments and civil society of crisis-affected countries even more. The UN and INGOs will be vital, but their contribution will increasingly be measured by how well they complement and support the efforts of others, and encourage every humanitarian actor to uphold humanitarian principles.

Across West Africa a new food crisis is looming over a population that has already endured three of them since 2005. The last—in 2010—affected 10 million people.

But with early action, the hardship and loss so many have suffered through in the past seven years could be softened and that’s what Oxfam America’s humanitarian workers Isaac Massaga, Julie Savane, and Greg Matthews are taking the first steps to put in place. They are just back from Boulal, a collection of villages in the north, where they were working to identify the greatest needs and the responses that would best fill them—now, and longer-term.

“We’re in a good position now to mitigate the serious consequences of an acute food crisis and to help people not resort to selling assets and cattle to meet their basic needs,” said Matthews, speaking from the Oxfam office in Dakar, Senegal’s capital.

Selling valuables—livestock, farm tools—is one of the strategies poor families without cash employ as a last resort when faced with no other way to get food: They’ll use the money to buy it in the market. But in selling these important assets, they are also limiting their ability to make a living, and that drags them deeper into poverty. Halting that cycle is key to averting a crisis.

During the last growing season, rainfall in Louga was erratic, said Matthews, sometimes coming in great gushes and sometimes not at all. For the crops—millet, cowpeas, and peanuts—the result was dismal.  The yields are off dramatically.

One farmer Matthews spoke with said he and his family had just consumed the last of the millet they had harvested in the end of October—300 kilograms worth. That was five times less than he would get in a good year. And the next planting season is still four months away.

How will people manage? Some, like the millet-grower, will pursue petty commerce, such as hunting for wood that they can sell as fuel in the market. But for many herders facing lean times, their strategy is to migrate with their livestock in the hope of finding pasture elsewhere.

Early migration

In Boulal this year, that migration has started much earlier than usual, said Matthews.

“The hardest months for pastoralists are April, May, and June—right before the rains begin,” he said. “But they’re starting to experience that now, in the beginning of February, so most of their productive animals have already started to migrate.” That means families must take their kids out of school prematurely and abandon other livelihood efforts, like gardens and small shops, that could help support them.

Poor harvests are also adding to the stress herders are feeling. With fewer crops pulled in from the fields that means fewer leftovers of leaves and stalks to feed to the livestock. And as the health of their animals declines, so does the value of sheep, goats and cattle.

Coupled with all of this, said Matthews, are climbing prices in the markets. A 50-kilogram sack of rice that once could be had in a trade of one sheep now costs a herder two or three.

“Because of all this, people are starting to employ early coping strategies,” Mathews said. “They are starting to change the way they eat and manage their finances to prepare for a long, hungry season.”

But even as they take these steps, the future hangs heavily.

“People are really worried about what will happen a month from now,” Mathews said. “Most of the food reserves are already exhausted.”

Solutions

Among the responses Oxfam is weighing are cash transfers—a tool that would allow hard-hit families to carry on as they would normally. With cash, they could buy the essentials they need during this critical period but not have to sell vital assets to do it, said Matthews. A second approach might be to help herders get access to fodder for their livestock, which provides both food and income for families.

But longer-term, the goal is to help communities become more resilient.

“The bottom line is working with communities to take charge of the issues and find solutions themselves,” said Matthews, pointing to a milking cooperative that had worked successfully in the area for a while. “It’s not about money. It’s about having, at the base community level, the desire to work together and the capacity to manage working collectively.”

If the rain continued at least there would be pasture for his two cows, guaranteeing their health and ensuring his family would have milk to drink. But the shorter rains, which should have fallen earlier in the season, had failed to come to Keih Tekli. And without them, Mehari was unable to sow his sorghum, one of two main crops he depends on. Instead, he would rely on teff, a tiny grain planted later in the year that is a staple of the Ethiopian diet.

For small-scale producers like Mehari, drought is the enemy—unpredictable and deadly. It’s the hardest part about farming, he says. And it’s one of the reasons that Mehari has joined more than 13,000 others in the Tigray region to buy weather insurance for their crops.

The insurance is part of a rapidly expanding program designed to help some of Ethiopia’s poorest farmers reduce the risk they face from disaster. When rainfall drops below a predetermined threshold, farmers who have bought the insurance receive a payout. Those too poor to pay with cash can trade their labor on community projects in exchange for the insurance. Launched by Oxfam in 2008 with the help of a host of partners including the Relief Society of Tigray, the program, now called the Rural Resilience Initiative, or R4, is set to expand into Senegal and two other countries in partnership with the World Food Programme.

Mehari has participated in the initiative for two years, swapping work—he has been planting tree seedlings in his community—for insurance. The first year he traded 16 days of labor for a premium worth 192 birr, or just over $11. That would have provided him with a payout of 600 birr, or nearly $35. Last year, Mehari invested 25 days of labor for coverage that would have given him a payout worth 800 birr, or more than $46.

That’s not enough to cover all his costs if he loses a harvest, but it’s enough of a buffer, perhaps, to prevent him from sinking deeper into poverty.

"It helps," he says, noting that if drought wiped out his harvest, the insurance would allow him to recover two-thirds of the 1,200 birr he invested in planting.

Divorced and the father of one daughter, Mehari says he had a basic understanding of how insurance works so when the opportunity arose to purchase some, he jumped at it. In his 38 years, he and his family had already experienced far more than their fair share of loss: Of the eight children to whom Mehari's mother gave birth, only two were still alive.

"I knew what insurance was. But the community members were confused and skeptical. How can it work?" he recalls them asking. "I accepted it (the insurance) without hesitation because if the crop fails, for me--it's like a parent's support in a bad situation."

As rain from the roof pooled into fat drops over the door, Mehari contemplated what the future would bring. He had already sowed more than an acre of land with teff seed and planned to plant the rest very soon.

"If the rain continues--like now--it won't be serious," he says of the hardship farmers face because of the lost sorghum season. "But if there is an early exit (of the rain), that will be disastrous."

For Mehari, insurance would soften the blow. But for countless other farmers tilling the rocky soil of Tigray, uncertainty sits heavily on their minds, its weight growing as increasingly erratic weather changes the age-old rules of agriculture.

The pair of oxen alone puts him ahead of many poor farmers in this northern part of the country. Harnessed as a team, the animals give Tadesse the power he needs to plow his fields in a timely manner and to be ready for the rains when they fall.  But if they don’t come, he’s now experimenting with a tool that will soften the blow: weather insurance.

Tadesse, who lives in the village of Hade Alga, is one of the more than 13,000 small farmers who are participating in a new insurance initiative launched by Oxfam and a host of partners, including the Relief Society of Tigray, or REST. The program allows those too poor to have cash on hand  to pay for the insurance by working on environmental improvement projects that benefit the whole community—like planting trees. Tadesse is among the small percent of farmers able to pay with money.

When rainfall drops below a predetermined threshold, insured farmers receive a payout helping them to recover some of their losses from a failed or severely curtailed harvest.

“Everyone in this community is starting to understand the rationale of the insurance, so we want to continue this practice,” said Tadesse, sitting with his wife and two young children in their one-room home on a rainy morning in August. But he admitted that the idea took a little getting used to. “We were skeptical when we heard (about  )it. We were even confused. How can you cover the loss of crops? It’s god’s work.”

After a great deal of discussion among community members, and many questions for REST, the idea began to click with people, Tadesse said. The local belief system holds that if you expect good things to happen, they will, and farmers are beginning to embrace insurance as part of that thinking, he added.

In 2010, Tadesse spent 60 birr—or about $3.50—on insurance for his teff, a staple grain in Ethiopia. As it turned out, the rains were plentiful that year and his harvest was very good, negating the need for a payout. But that didn’t stop him from doubling his investment in insurance the next year, paying 120 birr for a premium that would provide him with 400 birr—or $23,17—to cover his potential losses. The expense felt like a smart move.

“Anything can happen,” said Tadesse. “As security for me, I decided to double it. Even in the future I may double it again. You wish for better (rain), but you also have to accommodate the worst. In the future I don’t know what will happen, so that’s why I’m paying. But if the rain is good, I don’t regret paying that amount of money.”

The insurance has given him a sense of greater security, too, Tadesse said, so much so that he now has the confidence to take out a loan for livestock production. Once the rainy season ended, he planned to borrow money to buy a small herd of sheep and goats.

“If you buy four or eight sheep, they’ll reproduce in a short period of time,” said Tadesse. “It’s a good source of income for my family. It makes our life comfortable.”

With the stability he is striving to create for his family—in an environment made increasingly uncertain by changing weather patterns—Tadesse said he hopes his children will go far in school, an opportunity that stopped for him after fifth grade when he had to quit to work on his family’s farm and help care for his aging parents.

“I’m very confident my children will go further—up to where they can reach,” Tadesse said. “Education helps you use your capacity, not only in farming but in trading—in every part of life. If you’re educated you introduce new ideas into your agricultural practices. You analyze the future. It all needs education.”

And with the bit of security insurance is now providing, the dreams Tadesse has for his family have moved a little closer. Soon, other small farmers in Africa will have a chance at greater security, too:  The weather insurance program, now called the Rural Resilience Initiative, or R4, is set to expand into Senegal and two other countries in partnership with the World Food Programme.