Food aid 2018:

 the never-ending crisis


The rise in man-made, protracted emergencies means millions are at risk of starving around the globe this year

Countries in crisis

Click to see funding needs

It’s a difficult new year for the humanitarian system and those reliant on it: a near-record number of people are in need and yet a yawning funding gap will limit what assistance can be provided.

According to the UN’s Global Humanitarian Overview for 2018, some $22.5 billion in aid will be required in the coming year to help 90.9 million of the 135.7 million vulnerable people in need of assistance and protection.

 

Funding can’t keep pace with need, so where are the biggest gaps and which groups are missing out most? This special IRIN report focuses on those who are most food insecure – those on the frontline of humanitarian emergencies who don’t know where their next meal is coming from.

The common driver in most of the food crises around the globe is conflict.

 

Today, around 80 percent of every dollar spent by the World Food Programme goes to operations in war zones.

 

This has some aid workers wondering if the funding tap will remain on in wealthy countries, where voters may cool to financing seemingly endless operations in countries beset by intractable man-made problems.

 

 

In early 2017, WFP identified four countries – Nigeria, Yemen, South Sudan and Somalia – where famine loomed for more than 20 million people, impoverished and displaced by their respective wars.

 

“Donors, I think, clearly understand that it is much more cost effective to prevent famine than it is to deal with the extreme mortality that happens when a famine is actually declared,” said Peter Smerdon, East African spokesperson for WFP.

Only four years earlier, drought-induced famine in Somalia claimed the lives of some 260,000 people – half of them children under five.

 

“The problem is the conditions that caused the famine have not disappeared, so in order to stop famine from reoccurring, you have to keep providing life-saving assistance to [vulnerable people] for years,” said Smerdon.

 

“I fear that donors, having pushed back the famine, may start to question constantly having to provide greater and greater humanitarian funding to save lives.”

 

People and governments tend to give more readily in response to natural disasters. The reality is also that some emergencies attract more funding than others.

 

Excluding flash appeals, some of the worst-funded emergencies in 2017 have been Sudan, Chad, and Burkina Faso. An upsurge in violence in the Democratic Republic of Congo has also caught donors flat-footed.

Tough choices

 

“There are definitely some countries that are less funded than others – [Congo] stands out as one where overall funding has been low and where Oxfam has also struggled,” said Emily Farr of Oxfam. “Needs are extremely high and money lags behind needs.”

Frontline aid agencies like WFP are not yet “at the buffers” of donor support for all their programming needs, said Smerdon. But the pressure to find funding for recurring emergencies means some projects can get starved.

 

For example, the Dadaab refugee camp in Kenya’s northeast has been open for over 25 years, and has suffered repeated ration cuts.

 

The latest, a 30 percent reduction, was introduced in November for the 239,000 refugees in Dadaab, as well as the 181,000 refugees in other camps in Kenya.

 

In Rwanda, WFP has been forced to make the first ration cuts since 2012, and may have to make bigger savings in 2018 if funding is not found now for its operations covering 130,000 Burundian and Congolese refugees.

 

School feeding schemes are currently at risk in Myanmar, Burkina Faso, and Guinea, where school meals work as an incentive for parents to send their children to school, while relieving hunger and malnutrition at home. They help reverse low enrolment and high dropout rates, particularly for girls.

These more developmental interventions, like social safety nets and resilience building, are “thinking about the root causes [of crises] rather than just dumping food aid”, explained Veronique Barbelet at the UK-based Humanitarian Policy Group.

 

For agencies like WFP, a global operation that never has all the money it needs, this endless battle to feed the most needy is a continual triage that helps those it can but inevitably keeps some vulnerable communities almost perpetually at the back of the queue.

(TOP PHOTO: United Nations World Food Programme truck delivering aid. CREDIT: Stevie Mann/WFP)

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(TOP PHOTO: United Nations World Food Programme truck delivering aid. CREDIT: Stevie Mann/WFP)
(TOP PHOTO: United Nations World Food Programme truck delivering aid. CREDIT: Stevie Mann/WFP)
(TOP PHOTO: United Nations World Food Programme truck delivering aid. CREDIT: Stevie Mann/WFP)
(TOP PHOTO: United Nations World Food Programme truck delivering aid. CREDIT: Stevie Mann/WFP)
(TOP PHOTO: United Nations World Food Programme truck delivering aid. CREDIT: Stevie Mann/WFP)
(TOP PHOTO: United Nations World Food Programme truck delivering aid. CREDIT: Stevie Mann/WFP)
(TOP PHOTO: United Nations World Food Programme truck delivering aid. CREDIT: Stevie Mann/WFP)