In a report, titled Ripping off the Band Aid, Christian Aid warns hunger has “more than doubled in one year.” On World Humanitarian Day 2021, there were 2.1 million people in Kenya facing food insecurity while 4.1 million Kenyans facing the same fate in 2022.
In Ethiopia, people facing food insecurity have dramatically escalated from 5.2 million to 20 million. Across Ethiopia and South Sudan, the UN reports gaps in funding have forced a cut to rations, incomplete food baskets and a reduction in the number of people helped.
The analysis also shows the catastrophic impact on crops, livestock and pasture has been compounded by other shocks, including conflict, flooding, desert locust infestations, the lingering effects of Covid on prices and now disrupted supply chains.
Christian Aid warns the crisis in East Africa has shown the aid system isn't fit to respond to the ever-increasing scale of emerging crises. To break the cycle of food hunger, the charity says it is now time to “rip off the band-aid”.
The development agency is calling for a scaling up of locally driven approaches that builds on existing capacity and local knowledge to strengthen resilience and create the flexibility to rapidly respond to unfolding needs in East Africa and further afield.
Pointing to the work of their local partner Community Initiative Facilitation and Assistance (CIFA), Christain Aid’s partner in Kenya, Christian Aid says their experience of building communities’ resilience through a partnership approach works.
Despite the drought’s persistence, a group of women working with CIFA have been able to keep up the productivity of their land to support livestock and the local market for fodder due to investment in improving their land in 2021.
The group has been able to successfully plant grasses and have sold off three harvests of hay, turning a profit each time above their projections. They are also selling firewood from the land in the local market.
Mbaraka Fazal, who is based in Kenya and is Christian Aid’s Global Humanitarian Manager, says:
“The hunger crisis has seen men and boys forced to trek further for water and pastureland, exacerbated conflict over these scarce resources and leaving women and girls at greater risk by being left behind for longer periods without a regular income or basic items.
“In a world where there is enough food for everyone it is a moral outrage that people are dying of hunger.
“While helping people currently facing life-threatening hunger is of the utmost importance, so too must we start thinking longer term. We must accept the aid system is but a sticking plaster that is not fit to respond to the ever-increasing scale of emerging crises.
“Christian Aid’s experience of working with local partner organisations in Kenya, Ethiopia and South Sudan shows that people’s ability to withstand failed harvests and rising food prices can be significantly improved with supportive preventive action.
“To break the cycle of food hunger, it’s time to rip off the band-aid and invest in building resilient communities during and between crises. That demands government backed finance and local knowledge to complement early warning systems and anticipatory action.”
ENDS.
Notes to editors:
Report linked here.
Analysis: Escalating Hunger in East Africa:
Christian Aid response:
In Ethiopia, Christian Aid’s programming is supporting resilience and basic needs during the drought. Local partner organisations working with Christian Aid are building the resilience of farmers, herders and vulnerable people with food and veterinary support for animals; access to clean water; and seeds, tools and cash.
In northern Kenya, Christian Aid works through partners to ensure people and animals have access to water; delivering cash for families to meet basic needs; and supporting animal health to build resilience to the drought conditions.
In South Sudan, Christian Aid is responding to the conflict-driven displacement and the effects of this season’s rains with unconditional cash to prepare communities for the upcoming planting season, and to support the basic needs of displaced people.
Recommendations:
To national governments:
- Support responses that put community resilience at the centre in all phases, from relief to recovery and rebuilding. Using processes that are conflict-sensitive, and consider the specific needs of various groups, such as IDPs and host communities, and farmers and pastoralists.
- Provide appropriate budgetary support to agricultural and livestock development, to recognise the outsize role of agriculture and livestock in the economies of East Africa and therefore in the resilience of communities. This support should favour, through subsidies if needed, agroecological approaches that work with nature and the current market realities regarding access to agricultural inputs.
- Mainstream adaptation into local and national development plans, with a focus on improving resilience, such as improving access to water and rangeland. This requires budgetary support; a promising example is Kenya’s County Climate Change Funds (CCCFs) which provide funding and training for adaptation activities and help communities connect vertically with county and national-level government.
- Provide adequate social protection funding and support to address the impacts of crises, particularly to those who are vulnerable, and for households who lose their livelihoods and assets. Prioritise working with donor governments to create sustainability plans so social protection systems are supported through domestic budgets.
- Support the humanitarian response at the needed speed and scale. All available funding in humanitarian and development funding pipelines should be released to the front line immediately given the scale of the need.
- Giving funding alone is not enough; donors should ensure transformative practice is followed in line with Grand Bargain 2.0 commitments. Funding must be flexible, multi-year and predictable, with pre-financing available to respond to early warnings with anticipatory action. It must be delivered through equitable local partnerships, with support to the leadership and delivery capacity of local responders, and the participation of affected communities.
- Support the scale-up of locally driven approaches to humanitarian response to complement traditional response approaches, such as Survivor and Community-Led Response, that build on communities’ natural strengths and cohesion to allow them to respond rapidly to meet their needs using their existing capacity, knowledge and opportunities.
- Support and incentivise a joined-up approach between humanitarian, development, disaster risk reduction and climate adaptation, positioning early warning and early action as a resilience approach. Carefully consider the timelines of the needed responses to ensure different funding mechanisms are coherent and layered to best respond to crisis, recovery and resilience-building stages.
