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The F**** Word

Bono, Lead singer, U2; Co-Founder

I’ve been known to drop the occasional expletive, but the most offensive F word to me is not the one that goes f***. It’s F***** — the famine happening in Somalia.

Drought, violence and political instability have invited in the grim reaper on a scale we have not seen in 20 years… more than 30,000 children have died in just three months. The pictures from Dadaab look like a nightmare from centuries past. Yet, this is the 21st century and these pictures are real and, on the whole, unseen. The food crisis in the Horn of Africa is nothing short of a humanitarian catastrophe, but it is getting less attention than the latest Hollywood break-ups and make-ups.

ONE’s new film The F Word: Famine is the Real Obscenity isn’t a typical emotional emergency appeal. It’s about focusing the media spotlight on the tragedy unfolding. It’s about building political support in the US and around the world for interventions that will stop the suffering today and break the cycle of famine in the future. Most of all, it’s about taking action — because famine is man-made.

Of course it’s complex, and solutions are difficult — especially in Somalia where there has not been a formal government for 20 years. But that is not an excuse for the world to look the other way. Most of us (thankfully) have no experience of starvation, but we do know what it’s like to lose someone you love. Each of those 30,000 children was someone’s daughter or son, someone’s sister or brother. If you look at reports from the Horn, there are stories of mothers having to decide which child to feed and which to let die; women leaving their children’s bodies on the side of the road as they walk for weeks in search of food and water for those still fighting for life.

History shows there are ways to prevent drought from becoming famine, even though it’s complicated. So check out the film and sign ONE’s petition to world leaders calling on them to live up to promises already made to invest in things proven to work… early warning systems… irrigation… drought resistant seeds… and of course, peace and security. At ONE.org there’s more explanation and information. And while ONE doesn’t solicit funding, if you want to give money, you can find links to other organizations providing emergency assistance in the Horn who need all the support they can get.

If you like this article, I’d recommend my book “If I Was Famous, I’d Have a Lot to Say”

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Famine in Somalia, by Ban Ki-moon, UN Sec Gen

Across the Horn of Africa, people are starving. A catastrophic combination of conflict, high food prices and drought has left more than 11 million people in desperate need. The United Nations has been sounding the alert for months. We have resisted using the “f-word” — famine — but on Wednesday we officially recognized the fast-evolving reality. There is famine in parts of Somalia. And it is spreading.

This is a wake-up call we cannot ignore. Everyday, I hear the most harrowing reports from our UN teams on the ground. Somali refugees, their cattle and goats dead from thirst, walking for weeks to find help in Kenya and Ethiopia. Orphans who arrive alone, their parents dead, terrified and malnourished, in a foreign land.

From within Somalia, we hear terrible stories of families who watched their children die, one by one. One woman recently arrived at a UN displacement camp 140 kilometres south of Mogadishu after a three-week trek. Halima Omar, from the region of Lower Shebelle, was once considered well off. Today, after three years of drought, she barely survives. Four of her six children are dead. “There is nothing in the world worse than watching your own child die in front of your eyes because you cannot feed him,” she said of her ordeal. “I am losing hope.”

Even for those who reach the camps, there is often no hope. Many are simply too weak after long journeys across the arid lands and die before they can be nursed back to strength. For people who need medical attention, there are often no medicines. Imagine the pain of those doctors, who must watch their patients perish for lack of resources.

As a human family, these stories shock us. We ask: how is this happening again? After all, the world has enough food. And yes, economic times are hard. Yet since time immemorial, amid even the worst austerity, the compassionate impulse to help our fellow human beings has never wavered.

That is why I reach out today — to focus global attention on this crisis, to sound the alarm and call on the world’s people to help Somalia in this moment of greatest need. To save the lives of the people at risk — the vast majority of them women and children — we need approximately $1.6 billion in aid. So far, international donors have given only half that amount. To turn the tide, to offer hope in the name of our common humanity, we must mobilize worldwide.

This means everyone. I appeal to all nations – both those who fund our work year-in and year-out, and those who do not traditionally give through the multinational system – to step up to the challenge. On July 25, in Rome, UN agencies gather to coordinate our emergency response and raise funds for immediate assistance.

Meanwhile, we must all ask ourselves, as individual citizens, how we can help. This might mean private donations, as in previous humanitarian emergencies in Indonesia after the tsunami or Haiti after the earthquake, or it could mean pushing elected representatives toward a more robust response. Even in the best of circumstances, this may not be enough. There is a real danger we can not meet all the needs.

The situation is particularly difficult in Somalia. There, ongoing conflict complicates any relief effort. More broadly, sharply rising food prices have stretched the budgets of international agencies and NGOs. Operating conditions are complicated by the fact that the transitional national government of Somalia controls only a portion of the capital city, Mogadishu. We are working on an agreement with the forces of Al Shabaab, an Islamist militia group, to grant access to areas of the country that they control. Even so, serious security concerns remain.

We must also recognise that Kenya and Ethiopia, which have generously kept their borders open, face enormous challenges of their own. The largest refugee camp in the world, Dadaab, is already dangerously over-crowded with some 380,000 refugees. Many thousands more are waiting to be registered. In neighbouring Ethiopia, 2,000 people a day are arriving at the Dolo refugee camp – also struggling to keep pace. This compounds a food crisis faced by almost 7 million Kenyans and Ethiopians at home. In Djibouti and Eritrea, tens of thousands of people are also in need — and potentially many more.

Even as we respond to this immediate crisis, we need to find ways to deal with underlying causes. Today’s drought may be the worst in decades. But with the effects of climate change being increasingly felt throughout the world, it will surely not be the last. This means practical measures: drought-resistant seeds, irrigation, rural infrastructure, livestock programmes.

These projects can work. Over the last ten years, they have helped boost agricultural production in Ethiopia by eight percent a year. We have also seen improvements in our early warning systems. We knew this drought was coming and began issuing warnings last November. Looking ahead, we must ensure those warnings are heard in time.

Above all, we need peace. As long as there is conflict in Somalia, we cannot effectively fight famine. More and more children will go hungry; more and more people will needlessly die. And this cycle of insecurity is growing dangerously wide.

In Somalia, Halima Omar told us: “Maybe this is our fate — or maybe a miracle will happen and we will be saved from this nightmare.”

I cannot accept this as her fate. Together, we must rescue her and her countrymen and all their children from a truly terrible nightmare.

—The writer is Secretary-General of the United Nations

If you like this article, I’d recommend my book “If I Was Famous, I’d Have a Lot to Say”

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SOMALIA’S FAMINE: WAY FORWARD FOR THE AFRICAN CONTINENT

It is no longer making headline news that Somalia, a country located to the east of the African continent is presently besieged by an unprecedented famine in the history of the country. Media reports have confirmed over twenty thousand children dead out of malnutrition and associated aliments. Many residents have been forced to desert the country to neighboring nations for succor. Both local and international organizations, especially the United Nations have intervened by shipping and flying into Somalia tons of relieve materials ranging from foods, drugs, clothing, and other basic commodities necessary to improve the living condition of the people. The focus on Africa in the global community is centered on Somalia. The famine spreads across the shores of Somalia like an inferno as if with no obvious solution in sight.

In my view, its high time African leaders strategically position themselves to address human related issues facing the continent such as Somalia’s famine. Effort of African leaders in this wise should not be ‘politicized’. I mean to state there is an urgent need for African leaders to partner with appropriate bodies such as the Private sector in the continent, economic experts, the civil society groups,  forecasters and any other relevant institution that can be collaborated with in forestalling and managing a future re-occurrence of the ‘social epidemic’ ongoing in Somalia. This brings to fore, the readiness and responsiveness of African Leaders towards economic and other social crisis confronting the continent. As stated earlier, African leaders should come to appreciate that governance the world over especially in democratically entrenched nations, comprises both the public and private sectors. The economic and social developments of the West and East today are facts to the aforementioned. Government in these regions of the world out of recognition to the developmental roles of the private sector either partners or provide an enabling business environment for the private sector in facilitating economic and social growth.

Therefore, African leaders and policy makers should consolidate efforts aimed at managing the challenges peculiar to the continent as recently observed in Somalia. To this end, the major private players in Africa’s economy should be identified. African leaders under the auspices of the African Union can draw up a memorandum of Understanding (M.O.U) with these organizations. Both short and long term measures aimed at managing and proffering workable solutions real time will be drawn. These measures can be made to be part of an organization’s long-term goal, which will often be a subject of discussion during an organization’s board meeting or her Annual General Meeting. By this, an organization is made to integrate into its plans and programs- short or long term, the measures adopted to address any challenge confronting the continent out of its social responsibility.

As a case study: the A.U in collaboration with five major organizations operating in the continent on food security.  A short and long term plan is drawn on this. The government provides the enabling environment such as subsidies and incentives to the organizations involved in areas such as the importation of machineries for an intensive agricultural project, availability of raw materials, land amongst others. A committee comprising of both body’s representatives is constituted to supervise and provide necessary assistance in the actualization of the set goal. This supervisory body can constitute experts in the area identified. Out of the provision above, an emergency relief committee (E.R.M) should be in place for prompt action in the event of an emergency.

From the foregoing, African leaders should re-awaken there zeal and commitment to the people. The A.U should strengthen regional bodies such as SADC, ECOWAS in the drive towards achieving the stated objectives addressed above.  The ability of China being the world’s second largest economy today, a country that started the race to nation building few decades ago with African ‘giants’ such as Nigeria, South-Africa, Ghana, has demonstrated that Africa like the Asian Tigers can equally attain the same level of economic and social development. Sharing the sentiment of Chester Higgins, Jr..” We are not Africans because we are born in Africa, We are Africans because Africa is born in Us.. Yes, that Africa is born in Us should compel us a people despite our present challenges to believe in a bright future for our dear continent. It is our collective responsibility, both the government and the governed. We need to be the ‘CHANGE’ required to move Africa to the next level in the Comity of Nation in our respective ‘corridors’

If you like this article, I’d recommend my book “If I Was Famous, I’d Have a Lot to Say”

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Famine In Africa: Bono, Anderson Cooper, K’naan Call For Famine Solution (VIDEO)

CNN’s Anderson Cooper engaged Bono and Somali singer K’naan in a forthright and passionate conversation this past week about the need for aid in Somalia.

Bono, whose foundation ONE tackles health and agriculture issues, says the world needs to find long-term famine solutions. In his conversation with CNN, he said it’s time to take a cue from past famines in Africa and develop advanced agriculture programs with better seeds and fertilizers.

“As to the long-term stuff, we know exactly what to do with droughts,” Bono said. “You can blame droughts on God, but famines are man-made. We know exactly what to do, and this shouldn’t be happening.”

Bono also called on the Security Council to help ease access, including providing more troops to allow safer passage of food and supplies.

K’naan told CNN that the world needs to drop its negative stereotype of Somalia, born out of reports of piracy and past famines.

“People have created a psychological fence around their hearts when Somalia is concerned,” K’naan said. “We have to find a way to get past that.”

Cooper described his time at area hospitals, having spent time with a family who had lost their third child. He lamented that the hospitals lack enough medicine and basic supplies and said the gravity of the famine doesn’t seem to have hit people.

“You hear 600,000 children are at risk of starvation,” Cooper said. “And those numbers — they’re so big they almost don’t seem real. And we start to think this is just a normal thing. But I feel like this should be a headline on every paper on every newscast every day while this is going on. 600,000 at risk of starvation — on the brink of starvation — is a catastrophe.”

If you like this article, I’d recommend my book “If I Was Famous, I’d Have a Lot to Say”

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The Somalia Debacle

The situation in Somalia calls for reflection. It demands from other African countries, the need to be proactive in their planning process. No one could basically tell why the problem seems a hydra-headed one: from piracy to militancy, kidnapping, insurgency and, now the greatest of all- famine that has been sacking the two regions in the South Central Somalia. Media report has it that over 12,000 persons have been displaced from their homes to the nation’s capital-Mogadishu, as many more thousands are spewing-out to neighboring Kenya and Ethiopia without food and water and transportation. And the Transitional government and the world stand-still and helpless because Al-Shabab, Somalia’s most fearsome and deadliest insurgent group remained on the prowl.

Unfortunately, as the people are fleeing the famine region, they are been assaulted and the women are been raped while children die in their thousands! According to the UN, the scourge may in no distant time spread to other regions if nothing is done urgently to arrest the situation by wealthy nations and other aids agencies. Thus, the world supra body has declared famine in Somalia after about 19 years. Besides, Mr. J.J Rawlings, the AU representation has declared that if we do not act urgently, Africa would have many children to bury in the ensuing weeks. Somalians are trekking kilometers upon kilometers, escaping the food shortage in their land. Who is to blame for the severity of the food shortage?

While the situation is blamed on nature, its most complex dimension is hinged on the Al-Shabab militant group that had been at war with the Transition government since 1992. Consequent upon this, there has been no government, no state police, no functional infrastructure and other basic necessities that make life meaning to citizens. The Al-Shabab militants’ strongholds are the worse-hit regions because they have barred food supplies from NGOs into these regions few years ago while they continue their heinous activities. Their illicit operations in the sea coast of Somalia has been hindering smooth movement of vessels and the crew men that have attracted international attention in the last two decades, yet the situation is more worrisome now that the food shortage is being heightened by the same group which had blocked the innocent population’s access to food supplies. Notwithstanding, the ban Al-Shabab has lifted on the food agencies and NGOs is tenuous and not all-compassing. What is the guarantee that the group would not kidnap aid workers, and confiscate food as they are famished too?

Certainly, Somalia is a failed-state. It does not have the capacity to curtail the situation all alone. The United Nations, other donor agencies have been doing their best to salvage the condition by making food and water available to the famished population in Mogadishu and those in refugee camps in Kenya. Nevertheless, many more are left stranded in remote areas. What are the other countries doing to help? Horrible footages of malnourished and dead children from Somalia are terrible enough to spur other African nations into action to help their dying neighbor.  It is not about waiting for the world to take a step first. They must act now. The African Union (AU) must live up to its role as an umbrella body which oversees activities of its constituent members. Having their representative in the person of the former president of Ghana, Mr. J.J. Rawlings is not enough. There is need for profound empowerment.

Essentially, the whole of East Africa is susceptible to the same scenario playing out in Somalia. The Somalia’s example should prompt their neighboring nations to take proactive and preemptive measures to tackle the situation head-on. They must not play the lie-and-wait game. Planning for food sufficiency through new technological innovations, making use of the natural resources and embracing good governance would go a long way to put off the imminent problem. While it is appreciated that the US and UN, have done much to bring peace to Somalia particularly, and other African nations; they could do more by assisting in the best innovative ways to tackle the Al-Shabab extremists group, so that Somalia can assume the status of a responsible nation- state with the capability to respond to its tasks as a sovereign nation that would require the least of assistance from other nations.

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Nurse Struggles to Save Starving Somali Children

KATHARINE HOURELD

DADAAB, Kenya — Nurse Serat Amin works in the world’s largest refugee camp treating the stream of starving children coming into Kenya from famine-struck Somalia, and although he has painful memories of the children who have died, watching the weak get stronger gives him the courage to carry on.

“You can see if a child is getting better just from the face of the parent,” he said. “Making a difference is what keeps me here.”

Amin works at a stabilization ward at the International Rescue Committee hospital in the Dadaab refugee camp, where dozens of tiny children with stick-thin limbs and oversize heads loll on plastic mattresses. Mothers use their fringed shawls to flap the humid aid around their babies’ faces while patient nurses poke intravenous needles into tiny hands. Amin, walking about the ward in his yellow T-shirt, knows them all.

“Most come in here very sick. Mihag was unconscious when he came,” said Amin, speaking of a tiny 7-month-old the same size as an infant. “But today he is picking up a bit.”

The child, which weighed as much as a newborn when he arrived, has put on 3.5 ounces (100 grams) in the past few days. The wailing babies are weighed in a wicker basket suspended from the ceiling.

The U.N. says parts of Somalia held by Islamist rebels are suffering from famine, and a total of 11.3 million people in the Horn of Africa need aid. Amin said the situation is the worst he’s seen it – they’ve had up to 42 babies in his ward for malnourished babies at a time, a sevenfold increase at the hospital since the beginning of the year. The hospital is just one of three treating Somalis refugees in Dadaab camp.

Most of the children are also suffering from pneumonia and other diseases after hunger weakened their immune systems. That’s particularly painful for Amin: his own cousin lost his eyesight after suffering from malnutrition and measles. It’s what led him into nutritional medicine in the first place.

Now the wards are full of hungry babies with medical complications. On Friday, there were eight more patients than beds, so women had to share overnight.

“I’ve asked UNICEF to come with some tents so we can set them up outside and start treating more people,” said Amin.

The children come in with two types of malnutrition: marasmus, or straightforward starvation where the child is so thin its skin stands up in folds when pinched, and kwashiorkor, where the child has had food but no protein or nutrients.

Habiba Dubow’s son Abdirahman is one year old and weighs nearly 10 pounds (4.5 kilograms). He should weigh 22 pounds (10 kilograms). He is so thin his tiny ribs are clear through his skin and they barely lift with his breathing. When his mother takes his shirt off, his limbs flop back onto the bed and his eyes roll back in his head until only the whites are showing. He is too weak to cry.

“We walked here for 20 days after we lost all our cattle,” she said. “He got sick on the way.”

The kwashiorkor children often have peeling skin or sores, swelling of the limbs or stomach and reddish hair, like Hamud Mohamed Abdi. The 2-year-old also weighs only half what he should for his age, but doctors say he is improving and might go home next week if he can get extra food every day. His parents are rail-thin themselves.

The weakest children can’t even hold onto their mothers’ breasts to get milk and are fed through tubes in their noses. The U.N. says it is the worst emergency in Somalia since the famine in the early 90s that triggered an international intervention that ended after two U.S. Blackhawk helicopters were shot down.

“This influx of severe cases we have not seen before,” Abdi said.

Most have recently arrived in Kenya from Somalia, a war-ravaged nation which has not had a stable central government for more than 20 years. The refugees arrive on foot, or packed into dented minivans, praying that gunmen won’t rob them or rape their daughters before they arrive at the overflowing camp, where nearly 400,000 people have sought refuge.

Among them was a couple who arrived at Amin’s ward with twins. One had taken sick on the journey and was barely clinging to life. He slipped away in just a few hours. Amin said it made him want to cry for all day. From time to time he sees the parents, and he always makes a point of going to speak with them.

“The situation goes with you when you go home,” he said. “I think that for every life we save in this hospital, there are so many more behind them we can’t reach.”

The U.N. has warned that routes out of Somalia are turning into ‘roads of death’ after parents were forced to leave dead children along the roadside. The ones who make it to Kenya but are too hungry, too sick or too weak to survive are buried in a small sandy graveyards near the hospital compound.

Most graves have no markers apart from thorny branches piled on top of the mounds. Plastic trash bags catch in the thorns, fluttering in the wind. The earth on many of them is fresh but the small sandy hills soon drift back into the ground. nearby children play football or fly small kites made from twigs and discarded plastic bags.

But most children survive with treatment, even those whose own parents have already let go.

“There was a child we treated last year – Aden – we had to treat him intensively for seven days. We didn’t know if he would make it. His father and grandmother said, why are you taking him? He is already almost dead. Now he’s walking around and his dad is talking about school,” said Amin.

“Sometimes you are walking in the camp and someone calls you by your name and you don’t recognize them, but they come up and thank you for helping their child

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East Africa Drought Solution Runs Deep

By Bekele Abaire and Sara A. Fajardo

Ethiopians remember keenly the devastating losses of the drought in 1984 and the more recent one in 2000. The numerous pastoralist communities in Ethiopia know that lack of access to water will kill their livestock and destroy the very fabric of their culture.

The East African drought of 2011 that is hitting Kenya and Somalia so hard is also proving to be one of the worst that Ethiopia has faced in 50 years. Currently more than 4.5 million people in Ethiopia alone are facing severe hunger due to the La Niña-induced rainfall shortage. The work that CRS has been carrying out in Ethiopia for more than 50 years is paying off in this drought.

One particularly hard-hit area is eastern Ethiopia near the lowlands of the Somali region. A common sight is pastoralists traveling across the barren landscape in search of water for their livestock. As the sources dry up, desperation is taking hold. Their animals, losing weight and producing less milk, are further weakened as the pastoralists are forced to move them up to six miles a day to find drinking water. In the worst cases, their herds die from thirst, starvation and exhaustion.

“When people hear the word drought, they automatically assume that there is no — or very little — water in an area. And while it is true that we’re dealing with the aftermath of poor rain seasons, the truth is that there is water in Ethiopia,” says Bekele Abaire, CRS water and sanitation program manager. “There is a solution to this problem of recurrent drought that has left millions to face severe hunger. The challenge is that the water runs below the surface in underground caverns as deep as 1,000 feet. This water is difficult but not impossible to access.”

During the past 8 years, CRS — with generous funding from the U.S. Agency for International Development, U.N. Office for the Coordination of International Affairs, and donations from concerned Catholics and others of goodwill — has helped fight the effects of recurrent drought in Ethiopia.

“We brought in rigs to drill wells 1,000 feet into the earth. A recent visit to the field revealed that 95 percent of 28 wells we’ve constructed are still operational,” Abaire says. “These sites were built to serve up to 5,000 people in any given community, but we’re finding that the need is so severe that up to 10,000 are now flocking to these water points.”

Pastoralists travel in search of water. Drought, though, often forces them to stay in one place, their livestock dies off, or they move to cities to buy food. The strains of urban life are debilitating to them both psychologically and culturally. Taking these factors into account, a CRS water and sanitation team studied the migratory path of pastoralist communities to create a system that would meet their needs for water and help maintain their nomadic traditions.

“We’ve drilled wells along the route pastoralists often travel. The goal was to provide water without encouraging any given group to settle in one spot,” Abaire says. “It’s an approach that includes a drinking trough for livestock, water for human consumption, showers, and washbasins for women to do their laundry.”

The difference between communities with water sources and those without is remarkable. The livestock are plumper and produce more milk, which, in turn, means that the people themselves are nourished better. People in these areas rely less on food aid and more on their own means. Water is prized here. It is never squandered.

“Most years our system works beautifully. Pastoralists migrate and access water easily.” Abaire says. “A concern of ours now, however, is that, because of the current drought, many of them are settling near water points out of fear that they will not be able to access more. This puts a strain on the existing resources.”

Much more work needs to be done. Water is there, but more wells need to be built. Yet, few rigs in Ethiopia have the capacity to drill deep enough to access the water. Abaire says that the solution won’t come overnight, but, if planned right and with adequate resources, it can happen.

Bekele Abaire is a water and sanitation program manager with CRS. He is based in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. Sara A. Fajardo is CRS’ regional information officer for eastern and southern Africa. She is based in Nairobi, Kenya.

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Somalia on Brink of Humanitarian Disaster Due to Drought, Warns UN expert

2 March 2011 – A United Nations human rights expert today called on the international community to step up efforts to address the impact of the devastating drought in Somalia, warning that the country is on the brink of a humanitarian disaster if action is not taken immediately.

Shamsul Bari, the Independent Expert on the situation of human rights in Somalia, noted in a news release that the ongoing drought response is far from meeting the needs of the affected population in terms of access to food, clean water and health.

“The drought situation in the country and the slow international response is extremely serious and may lead to a natural and human disaster,” said Mr. Bari, who visited Somalia, Kenya and Djibouti last month.

“I strongly urge the international community, including the UN, to take immediate and concerted measures to address the dire humanitarian crisis that affects all human rights of the vulnerable Somali population, including women, children and the elderly as well as the internally displaced people (IDP) and minorities,” he said.

The drought is exacerbating an already dire humanitarian situation in Somalia, where civilians have been caught up in the fighting pitting forces of the country’s transitional government, who are backed by African Union peacekeepers, against insurgents of the Al-Shabaab armed group and other militants.

Mr. Bari warned that “the drought is now a cause for displacement in Somalia, in addition to conflict,” and expressed his deep concerns over its effect on the life of the population in many regions of Somalia.

“It was with shock and great sadness that during my recent field visit to Mogadishu, Puntland and Somaliland I learnt from local authorities and civil society from the various parts of Somalia that the drought affected population has sought assistance closer to urban areas, such as Mogadishu, where the ongoing fighting presents increased risk for the civilian population.”

Last month UN humanitarian chief Valerie Amos had warned that severe drought in Somalia had led to more people becoming internally displaced and others moving into refugee camps across the border in Kenya, as food and water scarcity worsen.

“People are moving due to the deteriorating living conditions and a lack of a way to make a living. Families are said to be selling their assets, including houses and land, to get by and to facilitate their movement to the refugee camps in Kenya,” she told reporters following a visit to the country.

An estimated 2.4 million people – 32 per cent of the country’s 7.2 million people – are in need of relief aid as a result of drought and two decades of conflict.

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