Oxfam: UN Must Stop Niger Food Crisis Ever Happening Again

The UK international aid agency Oxfam is calling for the UN at its forthcoming Summit on 14 September to stop food crises like Niger from ever happening again.

Oxfam has proposed a US$1 billion permanent emergency food fund be put on the Summit agenda, said to be one of the biggest gatherings of world leaders in history.

The fund would require UN members to make regular payments in order that money be immediately available for any country facing a food emergency like Niger.

The current famine is threatening 3.6 million people in West Africa, including 800,000 children, with severe malnutrition and death.

World Vision is one of numerous Christian charities working in the region to help the victims of the famine. According to the charity child mortality rates under the age of five are now reaching more than three children per 10,000 a day, the level of an official emergency.

Canadian nutritionist Sarah Carr said: "The situation is escalating and we aren’t even in the peak of the hungry season between harvests yet."

World Vision has been supplying feeding packets for up to 5,000 moderately malnourished children outwith the feeding centres. Only children identified as severely malnourished are deemed acute enough to be admitted to the centres, with some children being transported from as much as four hours away.

Carr was particularly concerned with the high number of parents who still have not sought help for their starving children as it is the critical planting season.

According to Carr, "many just don’t have time for their kids to be sick right now."

"Mothers here have as many as nine children. Who’s going to look after the others if she takes one sick child to the hospital? Who will do the field work?" she said.

Carr said, however, that starving children without medical care were dangerously exposed to malaria, which can have a prevalence of 50 per cent during rainy season, making it "a certain death sentence".

The UN predicted the famine as early as November 2004, when it launched its first appeal for US$30 million. The World Food Programme also appealed for US$16 million.

The international community has been scorned by both the UN and Oxfam today for its indifference to the November appeals which could have prevented the tragedy reaching such epic proportions.

Oxfam’s Director of Campaigns and Policy Phil Bloomer said: "It is outrageous that the world waits until children are dying before acting to save them. The UN launched their appeal for Niger in November 2004, but it wasn’t until international TV crews arrived last week that money really started coming in."

Mr Bloomer criticised governments’ stingy response to the appeals, saying, "The amounts asked for are paltry. A small proportion of the new money pledged at the G8 would cover it. Money for Niger will eventually arrive, but it will be too late for many."

Both the UN and WFP funds fall well short of the required amount, with the WFP fund only 40 per cent fulfilled and the UN receiving only $10 million of the US$30 million needed.

The famine is now reported to be spreading to other parts of West Africa, including Ethiopia, Kenya and Eritrea.

Carr expects a worsening of the situation before the harvests in October: "Farmers are working hard planting right now and they’re expending a lot of energy but they have little food input."

Prices have soared for what little food is available, with a 100kg bag of millet now selling for US$60. During good times, the average Nigerien lives of just one dollar.

According to Oxfam, if donations had come in at the time of the first appeals, the cost per day to per person to prevent the food crisis would have been only US$1. That amount now stands at around US$80 to save each starving person.

Bloomer said: "Starvation does not have to be inevitable. The food crisis in Niger was predicted months ago and could easily have been prevented if funding was immediately available. In 50 days time, world leaders must set up a UN emergency fund to stop food crises like Niger ever happening again."