December 3, 2002
Executives of American humanitarian relief organizations, the United Nations World Food Program (WFP) and the U.S. Agency for International Development gathered last week to launch a coordinated global campaign to assist more than 34 million people at risk of starvation in Africa.
The leaders unveiled "The Baltimore Declaration: Africa in Crisis," a unified pledge of the non-governmental organisations and the WFP to act in an effort to prevent famine from taking hold in parts of southern, eastern and western Africa.
The Declaration also appealed to "governments, citizens' groups, private voluntary organisations, religious institutions and individual citizens to recognise the enormity of the crisis confronting Africa and to join in a massive and urgent response."
"This is truly an historic and unique gathering and we, the heads of 15 relief organisations, come together with the WFP and the U.S. government to commit ourselves to this Declaration and to averting a famine in Africa," said Ken Hackett, Executive Director of Catholic Relief Services (CRS), which hosted the meeting at its world headquarters in Baltimore. "We plan to carry this out with full intensity." Countries throughout Africa are currently facing severe food shortages as a result of a convergence of multiple factors, some natural, like drought and floods, and some man-made, like government policy. In eastern (Ethiopia and Eritrea) and southern (Zimbabwe, Zambia, Malawi, Lesotho, Mozambique and Swaziland) Africa, as well as in the Sahel of western Africa (Burkina Faso, Mali, Mauritania and Niger), more than 34 million people are facing food insecurity for the next 6 to 8 months.
"We commit ourselves to mobilizing our own organizations and joining with people of good will everywhere in providing the resources required to stave off this looming disaster," the Declaration said. "At the same time, we call upon governments in food insecure countries, donor governments, and the entire international development community to take the necessary steps to avert future crises of this nature."
If increased shipments of food aid are not delivered in time, African populations will face conditions similar to the Ethiopia famine of 1984-85, the international relief organizations contended.
"This is an unprecedented crisis, which calls for an unprecedented response," said James Morris, executive director of the World Food Program and United Nations Special Envoy for the Humanitarian Crisis in southern Africa. "The magnitude of the disaster unfolding in Africa has not yet been fully grasped by the international community. An exceptional effort is urgently needed if a major catastrophe is to be averted. Business as usual will not do."
The humanitarian leaders noted that the effects of famine will be even more devastating than 20 years ago, as African nations are now battling an unrelenting HIV/AIDS pandemic. Sub-Saharan Africa, with only 10 percent of the world's population, is home to 70 percent of the world's HIV-positive people. Malnutrition accelerates the onset of AIDS and those infected with the disease require 30 to 50 percent greater caloric intake than others.
"What we now see in Africa is a looming crisis of great proportion, " Hackett said.
The non-governmental organisations represented at today's gathering are members of the Coalition for Food Aid, a group of 15 American relief and development agencies involved in food assistance programs overseas. Member organizations provide direct emergency food aid, and carry out programs in agriculture and natural resource management, small enterprise, maternal and child health, HIV/AIDS and education.
The World Food Program was established in 1963 by the United Nations to fight against global hunger. Catholic Relief Services is participating in the World Food Program's food distribution network in southern Africa and is operating agricultural recovery activities, as well as programs to mitigate the impact of HIV/AIDS throughout the region. CRS has also begun emergency operations to reach more than 4.7 million people through April 2003 in Ethiopia and Eritrea.
CRS is the official international humanitarian agency of the U.S. Catholic community. The agency provides assistance to people in more than 87 countries and territories on the basis of need, not race, creed or nationality.
Income is not the only measurement of poverty, and economic growth alone will not end poverty. Escaping poverty depends on improving personal capacities and increasing access to resources, institutions and support.
The overall gap between rich and poor, globally and within countries, has been growing. The difference in per capita income between the world's wealthiest 20 per cent and the poorest 20 per cent grew from 30 to 1 in 1960, to 78 to 1 in 1994. It fell slightly to 74 to 1 in 1999.
Poor health, illiteracy, inadequate schooling, social exclusion, powerlessness and gender discrimination contribute to poverty. Poor health diminishes personal capacity, lowers productivity and reduces earnings. A high prevalence of disease and poor health in a country harms economic performance while higher life expectancy, a key indicator of health status, stimulates economic growth.
An analysis of 53 countries between 1953 and 1990 found that higher adult survival rates were responsible for about 8 per cent of total economic growth.
Progress has been achieved easier and faster in countries that have provided reproductive health services, including family planning, increased the coverage and quality of education, advanced gender equality, and developed responsible and accountable systems of governance and social participation.
A judicious combination of income-based, indicator-based, and participatory-based information should be used to assess poverty and derive policy implications. Institutions should have incentives to use this information for planning purposes.
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