Barry Coates' blog from the Horn of Africa
The food crisis in the Horn of Africa is threatening the livelihoods of over 13 million people. Oxfam New Zealand Executive Director Barry Coates writes from Kenya where Oxfam is providing people with life-saving water, food shelter and sanitation. Oxfam is providing relief in Kenya, Somalia and Ethiopia.
Watch a short video from Barry's visit:
October 4, 2011 — Rescuing hope
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| The first thing that struck me about Dadaab was the scale. Today, there are about 460,000 people living in the camps. |
I was nervous about going to Dadaab camp. I had expected to find people who were in desperate conditions, and for it to be a harrowing experience. But instead I found wonderfully upbeat people who were grateful to be able to have food, clean water, toilets and, above all, a safe environment. Their stories were inspirational.
We left Nairobi early, on a light plane for Dadaab. When we arrived there were dark clouds around, a sign that the small rains, due at this time of the year, will hopefully come soon. We visited the new refugee camps where the populations are rising by hundreds of people each day.
The first thing that struck me about Dadaab was the scale. Today, there are about 460,000 people in the camps. This is like putting the population of greater Wellington plus a few small towns onto a dry dusty plain in tents. The rain clouds drifted off and it became hot. The temperature in the tents that everyone lives in was like an oven. Dadaab is a haven for those escaping famine and conflict, but it is still a tough environment for people to live in.
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| Some of the stories of how people got to the camp were really tough. But what stayed with me was the incredibly positive attitude of the people. |
I was able to meet some of the people and talk to them through interpreters. Some of the stories of how they got to the camp were really tough. One women with a young child had walked for 30 days from central Somalia to get to Dadaab. Her husband had left her and she had lost a child on the journey. She, as others, said that the camp has saved her life. She would have died if she had stayed in her village.
A 13 year old girl, in her second year at school, was able to speak English. She had been driven from her home by fighting close to the Kenya-Somalia border. She said that her life was much better in the camp.
The majority of the new arrivals are women and children, and in the camps we visited, all from Somalia. We met few men. Many have been killed in the fighting over decades in their country, but others have stayed to look after the few remaining livestock. I had a chance to talk to a group of young men from a south-central district where Oxfam has been supporting food and water distribution, but it was not in a village where Oxfam has yet been able to provide assistance. I asked why they left. The young man said, “we had nothing left. We couldn’t grow crops for several seasons and our livestock had died. There are no jobs there. Nothing.” When I asked if they would go back if the rains come, they said no. Not until the fighting stops. This was the same story from everyone. There will be no return of refugees until there is peace in Somalia.
We also heard some really heartrending stories. The two children who had been abandoned and were being taken care of by people staying nearby in the camp. Their mother had left to try to find her husband. The kids had measles, along with many other children in the camp.
But what stayed with me was the incredibly positive attitude of the people. The woman who had started a little business with her generator, charging mobile phones. The man sewing shirts with an old-fashioned treadle sewing machine. The traders who had set up in the local market. And I remembered that Somali people are some of the world’s best traders. Wherever you go around the world, they are selling belts or scarves in the tourist destinations and setting up businesses. The dynamism and energy of these people was very evident.
But it was the kids who stole my heart. They were curious and playful and shy, crowding around us at any opportunity, with huge smiles. They are like children anywhere, enjoying the life that they can find, even in a really difficult environment.
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| It was the kids who stole my heart. They were curious and playful and shy, crowding around us at any opportunity, with huge smiles. |
Without exception everyone I talked to said that clean water and toilets provided by Oxfam were good – Oxfam is the lead agency for all the new camps in Dadaab. The logistics of gearing up to do that within a short period of time are impressive. We saw one of the boreholes that Oxfam has been installing – pumping out 80,000 litres of clean water per day – and the system of holding tanks, header tanks and tap stands to distribute it. This provides around 25,000 people with an average of 15 litres per day, way below the usage of most New Zealanders, but enough for people who are careful in their water use.
- Listen to Barry speaking about the crisis live from Northern Kenya on Radio New Zealand's Checkpoint
The aid being provided by generous donations from Oxfam supporters is getting through and is making a difference to people’s lives. People are making the most momentous decision to leave their communities, their homes and their lives to embark on an incredibly dangerous and arduous journeys to Dadaab. The camps are a safe haven in a brutal world of famine and fighting. They provide a place for people to survive. The images of Dadaab have defined the public’s perception of this crisis. As the media cycle moves on, the images of starving people entering the camps are no longer on our TV screens. But the need remains, greater than before.
The Somali people in Dadaab will not be going home soon, and the camps will need our support until the rains come and peace is established in Somalia. This is a crucial time for people to give again to help the Somali people. Providing funding when there is blanket TV coverage shows generosity. Providing funding when the images have faded from public view shows real compassion.
Your contribution will make a huge difference in saving lives.
- Donate NOW online or call us on 0800 400 666.
Photogallery: care for malnourished children in Somalia
While in Nairobi I was given some photos from the Oxfam Country Representative in Somalia where Oxfam has been supporting a feeding programme for malnourished children. So far the programme has admitted more than 136,000 malnourished children at care sites in Mogadishu, including 66,000 this year. As the famine continues and more displaced families flee to Mogadishu, more than 3,000 malnourished children are admitted every week.
These photos show how the children are being diagnosed for malnutrition, treated in their own community, and brought back to good health. Oxfam has provided funding, and trained staff, including more than 80 nurses, clinicians and hundreds of outreach workers, plus monitoring and technical back stop for quality assurance.
Click on the images below to read the stories.
This set and others can be viewed on Oxfam New Zealand's Flickr page
October 3, 2011 — Delivering aid doesn’t get much more difficult than this
When I told my Oxfam colleagues in Auckland that I was able to visit the Horn of Africa, I asked what questions they had about the Oxfam response. A couple of people asked me how Oxfam was able to get help through to people in war-torn Somalia, one of the most difficult areas of the world to work in. That’s a question I asked Oxfam Somalia staff and one of our partners who has been supported by donations from New Zealand, Guhad Muhammed Adan, program officer for the Social-Life and Agriculture Development Organisation – SADO.
As Oxfam, our approach is generally not to try to deliver aid ourselves, but in most cases, to support local grassroots organisations. SADO is one of those. It was formed in 1994 and primarily works in 100-kilometre area around the district of Bardera, part of the Gedo region of southeast Somalia. Their approach is to support committees of elders, women and local business leaders in villages and refugee camps that have sprung up all over the area.
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"the rains are forecast to come in the next few weeks and seeds and tools, together with help for pastoralists to rebuild the herds of livestock, need to be geared up quickly." |
Together with these committees, they identify the households that are most in need of help, using agreed criteria. The choice of these families and the amount of aid is posted on a notice board for all to see, ensuring transparency and to make sure the aid gets to the right families.
Perhaps most importantly, the relationships between Oxfam, SADO and the local communities makes the aid system possible. The local communities gain the permission of all the warring factions to allow humanitarian relief to get through without any payments or restrictions. SADO’s long standing relationships to support these committees is crucial.
The most direct and effective form of aid is cash. It would be impossible in those areas to transport food and other necessities. Food is available in the market towns, trucked in from the ports, so although the prices are higher than usual, people can buy it.
There is a robust system of ensuring that the cash is given to the right family, generally the woman as head of the household, with careful checks of identity by the committee and regular monitoring by SADO and Oxfam Somali staff. They even set up a fenced area to distribute cash where people come in through one door and leave through another so they can’t possibly come back around again.
SADO distributes other supplies to the target beneficiaries – hygiene kits, soap, water containers, tablets for purifying the water, mosquito nets and other essentials are also distributed, along with building latrines for the refugees, water supplies and hygiene education. Guhad reported that the latrines are particularly important for preventing the spread of disease that comes from open defecation, and particularly valued by women.
SADO is also supporting families to be able to restore their livelihoods. Most of the animals have died and the forthcoming harvest is likely to be way below their needs, even in the short term. But the rains are forecast to come in the next few weeks and seeds and tools, together with help for pastoralists to rebuild the herds of livestock, need to be geared up quickly. Most communities will struggle to survive on food aid, at least until the harvest in January to March period. Even if the rains do come soon, emergency aid will be needed at least until early next year.
The discussion was more involved than I am able to recount here. But the answer in Somalia about how to ensure that the aid gets through is not so different than our work in places like Papua New Guinea. It is about supporting local groups that have emerged from the community, building their capacity to be effective in supporting local leaders and setting up the checks and balances to ensure that the aid is transparent and accountable.
One of my questions to Guhad was about his relationship with Oxfam. He paused and said, “The only effective NGOs are the ones who do capacity building. Oxfam is the only one. I have learned about policies and emergency responses and longer term development with Oxfam.”
Maybe he was being nice because he knows I am from Oxfam but I don’t think so. Building for the future, including young leaders like Guhad, is crucial. We need to be working, not only on the crises today, but building the structures of society, in a country that has none, to make a better future.
Your contribution will make a huge difference in saving lives.
- Donate NOW online or call us on 0800 400 666.
October 2, 2011 — Put people before politics
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| If a catastrophic crisis is to be averted, the world has to act now to ensure that the necessary aid is provided. |
Looking out from my room in Nairobi, it is hard to believe that only a few hundred kilometres to the north, there are over four hundred thousand people crowded into a refugee camp, having fled from the 21st Century’s first major famine. We go to visit Dadaab camp tomorrow.
The footage on TV and across the internet has made the sight of refugees from Somalia arriving in Dadaab after harrowing journeys all too familiar. But today, when I arrived in Nairobi, I heard much more about the plight of the people we don’t see. Across northern Kenya, Ethiopia and Somalia there are over 13 million people caught in this crisis. Coming from a country like New Zealand, the scale is hard to comprehend.
The deepest impact is in Somalia, a country wracked by conflict, without a functioning government for decades and without the infrastructure or services that we take for granted. And the drought is severe, the worst in 60 years for some areas. People are in desperate need but the challenges of getting aid to the people who need it in Somalia are huge.
Today I had the privilege of meeting some of our Oxfam team and a programme officer from one of the local partner organisations that Oxfam New Zealand donors are supporting. It was inspiring to hear about this great work from such passionate people. Unfortunately, these organisations are unable to work across all areas of Somalia because they cannot get access. The difficulties were highlighted by news reports today of people killed in fighting along the border between Kenya and Somalia.
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"The scale is huge. There are over 13 million people affected by the drought and the most credible estimates say that 750,000 people are at risk of starvation as a result of this crisis. " |
Through our partners, Oxfam is now reaching more than 750,000 people across Somalia and over 2 million across the region. But these people need more help, and there are many more who we cannot yet reach. Oxfam is trying to raise enough funds to achieve this goal.
The scale is huge. There are over 13 million people affected by the drought and the most credible estimates say that 750,000 people are at risk of starvation as a result of this crisis. A lack of urgent action now would put the rising death toll in Somalia on the scale of Rwanda or the ongoing tragedy in Darfur. This must not be allowed to happen.
Funding is urgent and crucial, but so is access. Twenty aid agencies, including Oxfam, published an open letter last week urging the international community to "put people's lives before politics if we are to stand any chance of aiding people suffering from the famine in Somalia."
The agencies said that while aid was getting through in many areas, "it is not at the scale needed to address the enormity of the crisis and hundreds of thousands of lives hang in the balance." They warned that with the coming rains expected to bring the threat of deadly disease, restrictions were still preventing the rapid boost in aid that was so desperately needed to save lives.
Managing this crisis without an even larger loss of life will take more money, and Oxfam is appealing for New Zealanders to be even more generous in the months ahead. But it will also need a far more intensive effort by all governments to put pressure on the warring parties to stop the fighting and allow humanitarian access. We need all-inclusive dialogue, a cessation of hostilities, unhindered passage of aid, and removal of restrictions.
It won’t be easy to achieve. But it is absolutely necessary to prevent this crisis from becoming one of the world’s major catastrophes. After the genocide in Rwanda, the world promised “never again.” Now is the time to act.
Your contribution will make a huge difference in saving lives.
- Donate NOW online or call us on 0800 400 666.
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